by David Mack
Breathe slowly, he reminded himself. Be absolutely still as you await your prey. He adjusted his grip on his d’k tahg. The flat side of the ceremonial dagger’s blade was cool against his bare forearm. Though the night air outside the hollow building had begun to cool at sunset, the brick and mortar shell around the humans’ ship radiated the heat it had absorbed all day long.
Gortog sniffed and caught the faintest hint of the male human’s scent. He was close, but there still was no sound or sign of movement in the tunnel.
Looking up to signal his sentries for reports, he saw no one on the catwalks. And he caught a new scent in the air: fresh blood. Klingon blood.
He activated his wrist communicator, lifted it close to his face, and said in a low voice, “Huruq, Kmchok, this is Gortog. Report.” Seconds passed without any reply from the men who were supposed to be guarding the roof and walls. Gortog felt his pulse quicken. Perhaps this human is a worthy foe, after all.
His eyes darted from one shadow to another, seeking any clue as to the human’s position. With his comm unit all but pressed to his lips, he said, “Gortog to Marax. Respond.”
There was no answer from the soldier inside the ship.
Gortog turned off his communicator and skulked away from the tunnel entrance. Somehow the human had found another way in.
Moving beside the wall, Gortog circled the ship. There were no lights on inside its cockpit or main compartment. None of its systems had been powered up.
As he neared the aft end of the vessel, he saw Marax’s body lying on the boarding ramp.
Then he stepped in a pool of viscous liquid. A heavy drop of something warm splattered onto his shoulder, and he looked up.
Kmchok’s lifeless eyes looked down at him through a gap in the catwalk’s crooked planks. His throat had been cut.
Tightening his grip on his d’k tahg, Gortog trusted his instincts and prowled toward the ship. Regaining control of the vessel was certain to be the human’s objective, so if he wasn’t already there, he soon would be.
From the far side of the building’s ground level came the faint sound of a pebble bouncing across a rocky dirt floor.
Gortog crouched and advanced with silent steps beneath the parked ship. Sheltered in the near-perfect darkness under the vessel, he strained to pierce the shadows beyond the ship. There was no sign of movement. He stalked forward and slipped between the ship’s rear landing struts to prevent his enemy from seeing his silhouette in motion.
Searing pain slashed through the tendon behind Gortog’s left ankle. Another brutal cut severed the ligaments behind his right knee. His legs buckled as the tip of a blade stabbed into his lower back. He spun as he fell, trying to strike back, but all he could do was flail as he lost his balance and collapsed.
His d’k tahg was blocked by another, and a glint of dim light flashed across the temper line of a human-made knife as it cut Gortog’s right wrist. Then the knife snapped back and plunged into Gortog’s throat. It ripped free, trailing flesh and dripping blood as he landed on his back, unable to move or breathe.
The human male kicked the d’k tahg from Gortog’s hand. He stood over the fallen Klingon and watched him suffer his death throes. Maybe the human will end my misery with a mercy stroke, Gortog hoped.
His enemy turned, walked away, and left him to die.
Quinn stood under his ship and disabled the booby trap the Klingons had clumsily installed in the Rocinante’s impulse drive coil. They’re nothing if not predictable, he mused.
He tossed aside the inert explosive device. It landed on the dirt floor beside the homing beacon he had found behind a bulkhead in the ship’s cargo bay.
He shook his head. Amateurs.
Walking back up the ramp into the main compartment, he was relieved to get away from the stench of blood that permeated the air outside. In the muggy heat of the late-summer evening, the four dead Klingons—who had not smelled particularly pleasant while alive—had quickly become putrid.
With the push of a button, he closed the ramp behind him. He hurried forward to the cockpit, powered up the ship, and confirmed all systems were operational.
First things first, he reminded himself.
He took the tricorder from his belt and followed the steps Bridy had taught him for uploading its memory core to the ship’s computer. When a soft double-beep from the console confirmed that the transfer was done, he began an encrypted burst transmission to Vanguard, sending them all the readings he had taken at the temple ruins in the desert. Though the tricorder had been active for only a short time, it had recorded a massive amount of data.
As the burst transmission continued, Quinn warmed up the ship’s impulse engine and sealed off its antimatter fuel pods. Won’t need those where I’m going, he decided.
A green light flashed on his command console. The burst transmission was complete. Time to get this show on the road.
He engaged the antigrav module and the maneuvering thrusters. The Rocinante wobbled under him for a moment as it began its vertical liftoff, the engines splitting the air with their high-pitched whine and kicking up roiling clouds of dust from the building’s floor. Then the ship’s ascent became swift and smooth. The mottled gray starhopper broke through the ramshackle roof, scattering timbers, scrap metal, and a flurry of thatch in all directions. Then it pivoted and raced north toward the temple.
Quinn guided the ship in a low-altitude lightning streak above the Golmira landscape. As he passed over the seashore, he ejected his ship’s antimatter pods, which splashed down and sank into the ocean. Then he was back over land, and the sparse vegetation of Leuck Shire gave way to a wind-driven sea of sand. He would reach the desert temple within moments.
The best plan is a simple one, Quinn decided. He called up his tricorder scans of the Klingons’ compound outside the temple and set his ship on a collision course with the cluster of buildings that housed the troops’ barracks, ammunition depot, and command office. As he locked in the coordinates, he calculated the precise point in his flyover at which he would need to abandon ship in his lone escape pod to make a hard but solid landing on the temple’s roof. Then he triggered an audible countdown and patched it through to the pod.
“Eject in twenty seconds,” declared the vaguely feminine and utterly mechanical-sounding computer voice.
He dashed out of the cockpit, grabbed his backpack filled with emergency supplies and explosives, and sprinted aft as the Rocinante sailed alone on its final flight.
“Eject in ten seconds.”
The hatch of the escape pod creaked loudly as Quinn yanked it open and jumped inside. It was about as roomy as a really large coffin, but a lot less comfortable. He slammed the lid shut and primed the ejection sequence.
“Eject in five seconds.”
A board dotted with small indicator lights flickered weakly and stuttered into darkness.
“Four …”
Quinn bashed it with the side of his fist, and it surged back into service with all lights showing ready.
“Three …”
He set his thumb above the master ejection switch. The engines screamed as the ship began its last dive.
“Two …”
Remembering all the times this beat-up old rattletrap of a ship had saved his worthless skin, he choked back tears and made a silent apology: Sorry, old girl.
“One. Eject.”
He pressed the ejection switch. Nothing happened.
Fuck.
Before he could curse the ship for spitefully taking him down with it, the pod lurched and kicked his guts into his throat as it hurtled into free fall.
Through a sliver of a viewport on the side of the pod, Quinn saw the roof of the temple rush up toward him.
He braced himself. This was going to hurt.
It did. The pod smashed hard against the stone rooftop. Quinn bounced around inside the pod like a rag doll.
The shocks of impact ceased, and the feeling of swift downward motion returned. Through the narrow
viewport he saw the pod had missed the flat section of the roof and was sliding down one of its sloped portions. Not good.
He pulled the hatch-release lever. Small explosive charges blasted the metal door off the pod, which continued to roll erratically down the roof.
With one hand pushing him toward freedom and the other clutching the strap of his backpack, Quinn jumped from the pod. He continued sliding beside the pod, headed toward a very long fall, and flailed to find a grip on the rough stone.
His fingers dug into a deep crack between two slabs, and he hung on with all the strength that existential terror gave him. He looked down and watched the pod tumble over the edge into the night. A few seconds later he heard it make impact.
On the other side of the temple, the Rocinante slammed into the Klingons’ camp. Then there was nothing to see except a white flash of fire, and nothing to hear but thunder.
T’Prynn held up her phaser and pointed out its controls to Pennington. “This adjusts the power level,” she said. “This changes the focus of the beam. And this is the trigger.”
Pennington nodded. “Seems simple enough.”
She closed her hand around the compact, box-shaped weapon and held it away from her human compatriot. “Do not change any of these settings,” she said. “It is currently primed to emit a narrow beam on heavy stun. Hold your fire unless you see a Klingon take aim at me. Is that clear?”
“Absolutely,” he said with another curt nod.
Despite harboring some doubts as to Pennington’s readiness to wield a potentially deadly weapon, T’Prynn handed him the phaser. “I will attempt to cross the narrowest patch of open ground between here and the Klingon camp. Once I have armed myself, retreat to our rendezvous point and do not engage the enemy. I will enter the temple, attempt to confiscate the artifact, and proceed to our rendezvous coordinates.”
“Got it,” Pennington said.
Doffing her heavy outer robe, T’Prynn said, “Very well. Take your position at the crest of the dune.”
Pennington crawled to the top of the dune and cautiously dug himself into the soft sand to create a platform for his arms, to steady his aim. T’Prynn moved up beside him and coiled herself to spring over the top.
Then her ears detected the sound of a starship’s impulse engine shrieking into a power dive. As she turned her head to seek the source, Pennington did likewise and said in a tense whisper, “I know those engines! That’s Quinn’s ship!”
From behind the temple, the Rocinante appeared. It arced over the decaying stone ruins and ejected an emergency pod as it began a nosedive toward the Klingon’s compound.
The pod bounced across the temple’s roof and skidded down a stony slope as its hatch was jettisoned. A humanoid figure tumbled out as the pod slid over the roof’s edge.
An alert klaxon blared in the Klingon camp as the Mancharan starhopper pitched nose-first into the ammo dump.
T’Prynn ducked low behind the dune and pulled Pennington with her. An incandescent flash lit up the night, and a ground-shaking explosion made the sandy peaks of the desertscape ripple like waves in the sea.
A blast wave followed seconds later, pushing a scouring wall of sand outward from the temple. Pennington and T’Prynn huddled beneath their robes as the manmade sandstorm knocked them in wild somersaults into a valley between two dunes.
When the din and glare had passed, T’Prynn and Pennington peeked out from under their robes at each other.
Shaking off her shroud of sand, T’Prynn retained her untroubled mien. “New plan,” she said. “We wait and see what Mister Quinn has in mind.”
“Oh, I can tell you right now,” Pennington replied, using his fingers to comb the sand from his hair. “Whatever he’s doing, I guarantee you it’s phenomenally stupid.”
Stun pistol in hand, Quinn charged into a firefight with the Klingon squad stationed along the temple’s roof.
Dammit, he cursed at himself, this is really stupid.
All he had going for him were the element of surprise and the fact that most of the Klingon garrison had been vaporized by his pseudo-kamikaze attack with the Rocinante. The golden fireball from the crash was still expanding into the air behind him as he stumbled up the sloped roof and opened fire on the befuddled troops manning a nearby parapet.
By the time the four Klingon soldiers realized they were being shot at, Quinn had dropped three of them. The fourth returned a clumsy off-target shot at Quinn, who twisted to show the man as narrow a profile as possible. Quinn caught the Klingon in the chest and sent him sprawling over the piled bodies of his unconscious comrades.
Quinn reached the peak of the slope he was on and looked out over the rest of the temple’s roof. Peaks, towers, and turrets surrounded him. He searched for some way inside the temple and found only one—a wedge-shaped blockhouse with a heavy stone door several dozen meters away, across a flat rooftop terrace below him. As he clambered down toward the terrace, disruptor shots rained down upon him from a high turret.
Another massive explosion from the ground engulfed the side of the temple below the turret. Huge slabs of stone were hurled into the air inside a cloud of pulverized rock fragments. A great cracking noise accompanied the spread of a fissure on the side of the turret’s base, which sagged and began to slide away.
Jumping down to the terrace, Quinn saw in the corner of his eye Klingon troops desperately hurling themselves from the turret as it sheared away from the temple and broke apart; they all tumbled to their deaths in a storm of broken stone.
More of the temple’s sandstone edifice collapsed, taking with it the center of the terrace. As Quinn struggled to fall back to solid footing, the disintegration of the ancient ruin advanced toward him—and ended as it cut the temple’s roof in half, leaving the terrace divided by a broad chasm.
Dust surged into Quinn’s nose and mouth. So much for reaching the door, he decided.
Through the freshly wrought gap, he heard Klingon troops inside the temple regrouping and preparing to counterattack.
No way down from here, he realized. I could jump across to the next level with a running start, but it’s too far down. I’d break my goddamned legs.
He couldn’t stay put; on the roof he’d either be an easy target once the Klingons got reorganized, or he’d be cut off and unable to help Bridy Mac.
What I need is a stepping-stone.
He heard running footsteps closing in below.
Behind him stood a mostly intact turret. He climbed onto the slope that led to the turret’s base and sprinted to it. Taking an explosive charge from his backpack, he made his best guess as to where to place it. Have to eyeball it. He jammed it in a nook at the tower’s base, armed the trigger, and leaped away.
As a squad of Klingons appeared on the level below him across the chasm, he keyed his remote detonator.
An explosive flash vaporized a sizable wedge of the turret’s foundation. Just as Quinn had hoped, it toppled directly over the chasm.
Down below, the Klingons retreated in a panic.
Now the fun part, Quinn mused as he sprang to his feet, ran toward the chasm, and jumped into it.
The turret fell into the gap, smashing through the roof as it made impact. For half a second the tower slowed as it punched through the stony obstacles of floors and walls—and that was the moment Quinn landed on its crumbling surface.
As the rocky structure calved into chunks, Quinn leapfrogged from one to the next, then scrambled forward. Even as his stepping-stone and the floor beneath it dropped away, he bounded off it, rolled past the collapsing section of the floor, and landed on his feet, already drawing his pistol.
Ahead of him, the squad of Klingons stared in disbelief. Then their leader aimed his disruptor at Quinn.
Quinn shot first and took the man down.
The rest of the squad scattered, all of them returning fire on the run. Shots went wild and caromed off the walls, blasting away chunks of rocky shrapnel.
Charging forward and cursing
like a berserker, Quinn made the best five shots of his life. As a flurry of light and heat raged past him and tore up the floor at his feet, he felled each of the men shooting at him with one shot apiece. Within seconds, he was the last man standing in the smoke-filled corridor.
Surveying his handiwork, he permitted himself a small, satisfied smile. Not bad, old man, he congratulated himself. This half-assed rescue might turn out okay, after all.
He felt a surge of confidence as he turned to descend a staircase to the lower levels of the temple. Then he felt something collide with his forehead.
So much for Plan A, he thought, before he sank like a rock into the black pool of oblivion.
47
“Well, that’s not good,” Pennington said as he saw through his binoculars a pair of Klingon warriors dragging the semiconscious Cervantes Quinn into the main chamber of the temple.
Peering through her targeting scope, T’Prynn replied, “It is an unfortunate turn of events.” She turned her head a few degrees and added, “There is movement in the dunes on the far side of the temple.”
Shifting his gaze, Pennington watched hundreds of natives in desert garb stand up in droves, emerging from the sand like ghosts born of the desert. Without pause they charged and attacked the Klingon troops defending the ruins.
“I think this is about to get interesting,” he said.
T’Prynn put down her scope and took out her phaser. As Pennington lowered his binoculars, T’Prynn said, “This assault by the natives is unlikely to succeed, and certainly not in time to save Mister Quinn. However, it should provide an adequate diversion.” She handed him her phaser. “Cover me until I reach the temple. Once I am inside, withdraw and return to the Skylla. If I do not return in one day, or if I fail to reach the temple, go back to Vanguard and tell them everything we have learned.”
“Are you sure that’s—”
