“That’s the Christine I know,” Corsi said. “Come on, let’s go kick this guy’s ass.”
The hike was the longest three kilometers of Corsi’s memory, completely uphill. Konya—pick-a-deity love him—had remembered to grab canteens from Sarjenka’s supply kit. So, they were all starved when they reached Lupon’s little hideaway in the trees, but they definitely weren’t dehydrated.
And when Corsi considered the warm tropical air that surrounded them, she was doubly grateful for Konya’s foresight.
“You’re welcome, boss,” the Betazoid said.
“Stop that,” Corsi shot back.
“Stop projecting your thoughts, then. Don’t think this is any easier for me, either.”
Okay, so maybe the idea of a Betazoid on every security team wasn’t as good as she’d initially thought. Definitely need to add in some training for the non-telepaths on how to protect themselves from their own teammate.
Before they left the cover of the glade, Corsi made a note to work with Konya to see what it took to protect the crew’s privacy, just in case. While there was every probability that his newfound ability would go away as soon as they were out of the field, she couldn’t help but want to be prepared, just in case it didn’t.
CHAPTER
10
Lupon was everything Corsi had expected, and then some. The den of iniquity that contained his eminence was one full of old furniture, old rugs, and even older henchmen. Every single thing in the room gave it a unique, rather varied odor. Old crap and old alcohol. All we need is a match and this place is done.
The overfed, under-cleaned, and decidedly reptilian creature looked more like something out of a bad holodrama than the real world. He reclined luxuriantly on a long chaise, his ample belly jiggling when he laughed. “I told you, little girl,” he said, his voice an officious slither that just curled up in the back of Corsi’s brain and made her want to throw up, “I don’t know anything about any spheres.”
Vale, to her credit, took her right crutch and poked the fat lizard in the gut. “See, I’ve got people saying you do.”
Konya stared at Lupon.
“What?” Lupon asked. “You got yourself a deaf mute there? Wasn’t aware that Starfleet was that much of a champion of equal opportunity cannon fodder.”
He knows where it is, boss. Something about the gesula bowl.
Corsi, for about the tenth time that day, thanked the field for giving Konya his additional abilities. “No, I’ve got better. Enough toying around.” She brought the machete up to Lupon’s neck—or, what she thought was his neck—and said, “I think you know where the sphere is, Lupon. And I think you’re going to tell me.”
Lupon laughed, and it sounded like a bottle fizzing over. “Is that so, little girl?”
“What’s in the gesula bowl?” Corsi asked.
Lupon reached a grimy hand into it, pulling out something that was almost elliptical, but covered in moss. “My dinner, little one.”
“Do you always eat stones?”
If Lupon had had an eyebrow, Corsi was convinced he’d have raised it. “Of course, little one. Minerals are good for my skin. Probably would be good for yours too, if your puny human stomach could handle it.”
Corsi’s jaw hardened. She’d taken condescension before, and from more qualified sources than this Gorn wannabe. Although she really didn’t want to know how he knew about his favorite snack and the human digestive system. The two Tellarite bodyguards that stood on either side of the dais had faces so pockmarked that it looked as though they both had taken good old-fashioned buckshot rounds to the face. Either that, or puberty had been particularly cruel to their complexions. They were large, burly men, though, easily one hundred kilos each if not more, with projectile weapons as their sidearms that she was sure were probably supposed to look frightening. Corsi wasn’t altogether fond of the idea of having to dodge bullets from these two, but she was fairly sure she could outrun them with ease if necessary. It was getting the sphere from Lupon that was going to be the hard part.
Don’t worry, boss. He’s full of it.
“Lupon,” Vale said, hobbling toward the large dais where the lizard was reclined. “You know as well as I do that the Federation doesn’t want a bunch of archaeologists here any more than you do.” She put on a sickeningly sweet smile and said, “If you just help us out here, we can help you and get out of your way. You won’t have to worry about the Federation being in your backyard. How about that?”
Corsi walked over beside where Vale stood. “Got a second?” she asked.
“Sure.” Vale gestured toward a relatively empty corner with a jerk of her head. “Over there.”
Konya, need you here too.
You’ve got it. What’s up?
When they were all ensconced in the relative quiet of the corner of what could charitably be called Lupon’s “office”—this corner only held a dead, leafless plant in a busted vase that appeared to be only held together by what remained of the plant’s root system—Corsi whispered, “What else aren’t you telling me, Christine?”
“What?”
“You know damn good and well what I mean. What you just told Lupon. What else don’t we know?”
Vale shook her head. “Nothing. It’s not exactly a secret he wants the Federation out of his backyard. The only reason the planet’s governor allowed the dig was because the Federation Council itself backed Gabriel’s persistent requests. The smaller village rulers like Lupon hated the idea, but they put up with it.”
“So how do we get the sphere back?”
Christine raised an auburn eyebrow. “That, my friend, is your job.”
Corsi looked to Konya. You think it’s in his food dish?
He definitely thought about it.
Good, that’s where we go next.
“Lupon!” Corsi said, turning back toward the slimy lizard and plastering on her most winning smile. “How’s lunch these days?”
The reptile gave that fizzy laugh once again. “I didn’t think stones were to your taste, human?”
Corsi eyed the gesula bowl. “I don’t know. My people have some strange customs. Stones wouldn’t be the weirdest thing in the world. Try eating something that’s poisonous sometime.”
Lupon reached into the bowl, picking up a stone the size of Corsi’s fist. He opened his large jaws and tossed it into his mouth with a flip. His jaws came down on it with a crunch the likes of which Corsi had never heard in her life. The beast gestured back toward the bowl and said, “Help yourself, human.”
Corsi leaned forward slowly, her—and, she felt, Konya’s—eyes on Lupon for any movement. With her machete at an easy grasp in her right hand, she looked into the gesula bowl.
And that was when she found it, caked with mud and moss and other things she didn’t really want to consider, but it was a sphere, and it was exactly the right size. She reached her left hand into the bowl, ignoring the squelching sound of the cold muck that accompanied her motion, and grabbed the sphere. When she held it in her hand, she used what fingers weren’t holding the thing to try to clean it off a bit. Gotta make sure this is the right thing.
When she felt the glyphs buried deep in the ick, she knew they were set. Now, they just had to get out of there.
“If that’s the one you want,” Lupon said, “I can take care of it for you. Too big for your tiny human jaws.” He reached forward, grabbing the sphere from Corsi’s hand before she could do anything. With a toss, he opened his jaws and swallowed the sphere in one gulp.
Corsi knew the No. Just no. look on her face must have matched the expressions on Konya’s and Vale’s faces. Instinct took over at that point. They needed the sphere too much to let Lupon take it away. Corsi grabbed the machete, reached forward, and held the point to Lupon’s throat. “That was what we came for, Lupon.”
“Was it now?” he said, not sounding the least bit surprised. “I’m sure you’ll get it back in a day or two.”
Corsi’s stomach turned a bit
at the notion of waiting on the sphere to pass through the lizard’s digestive system. If he lived off of the minerals, there was no way there would be enough of the sphere left for them when it finally emerged.
Boss, don’t do it.
“Corsi,” Vale said, an obvious warning in her voice.
Konya, get Vale out of here. We may need to move fast.
She was comforted by the sound of a weak groan from Vale, followed closely by Konya’s feet walking across the battered hardwood floor until he reached Christine. “Hey, boss,” Konya said. “I’ll get her back to the shuttles. She looks like she’s losing it.”
“Go ahead,” she said, “I’ll finish up with our friend Lupon here and meet you.”
Finish up? Or finish him?
Konya’s thoughts weren’t too far removed from hers. Whatever needs to be done to get that damned sphere, that’s what.
Oh, she didn’t want to do it at all. But what other choice did they have? How many of the humans in Sarjenka’s care had two days left to them? Sure, they could have tried forging a third sphere, but with what? They didn’t have any way to determine what minerals were. Oh, Corsi, you’ve been around Fabe far, far too long. You’re starting to come up with his kind of half-assed schemes. They needed that third sphere, preferably before Lupon’s digestive tract started working.
Lupon, for his part, didn’t seem too fazed by the presence of a machete point at his throat. “And just what do you think you’re going to do with that, little one?”
“Get our property back,” she said.
“And you’ll kill me to do it?”
Corsi’s expression hardened. She had never really thought herself a killer, but when the situation necessitated it, she wasn’t above it. The Dominion War had been her teacher, and by all accounts, she’d been an excellent student.
Memories of Dar kept coming back to her, as she considered what she was about to do. Necessity had dictated it then, and now was no different. She kept reminding herself that what she was doing would save all of their lives, mentally repeating it over and over as she slit Lupon’s throat from jaw to sternum, ichor spraying all over her, the shocked bodyguards, and the rest of the room, until she saw the sphere. Grabbing it from the muck and blood and digestive acids, she quickly wrapped it in a tablecloth and ran like a bat out of hell half a step in front of the quickly recovering guards. Konya and Vale were already through the front door, Vale hobbling as fast as she could on the crutches, and Konya behind her to cover.
Corsi bolted through the front door, shouting, “Run!” at the top of her lungs.
They needed to get out of there as fast as possible, because Corsi hated the odds of their few machetes against the projectile weapons of Lupon’s men.
Corsi had been right about being able to outrun the two goons, but the more gunfire she heard from behind them, the more certain she was that one of the three of them would be hit.
Although, those weapons didn’t look as though they held much in the way of ammo.
No sooner did the thought cross her mind than the sound of the firearms clicking on empty barrels made it to her ears. Corsi, Vale, and Konya kept running, trying to put as much distance as possible between them and the goons before they could reload.
CHAPTER
11
“Take her in easy, Wong,” Gold said, hoping his nerves didn’t make it into his voice. Ever since Stevens had presented this crazy notion to him, he had been having flashbacks of the last time he’d taken the da Vinci into an atmosphere. His biosynthetic left hand tightened reflexively at the thought. No, we’re not leaving any more body parts on the bridge this time.
“Aye, sir,” Songmin Wong replied from the conn station. “Entering atmosphere.”
Flames lapped up against the viewscreen, a small gap of air somehow standing between the ship’s hull and the white-hot flame as they sank rapidly through Icaria Prime’s atmosphere. His stomach turned as memories replayed in his mind. In two quick steps, he was away from the center of the bridge, pacing an area far closer to his ready room than his command chair. He wouldn’t be there again.
He wouldn’t put his people through that again.
But aren’t you doing that now, David? He could hear Rachel’s voice in his head just as clearly as if she were standing beside him. In an effort to distract himself, Gold glanced over at P8 Blue, who was monitoring the ship’s structural integrity with her usual diligence. “How are the upgrades holding, Blue?”
P8 Blue turned her upper body toward him. “So far, so good, sir. The new hull plating is rated for three thousand degrees Kelvin. The hull temperature readings we’re getting aren’t even half that. Even if the shields fail, the hull will hold.”
The ship gave a little shake as it proceeded through the atmosphere. “Wong, what was that?”
“Thermal, sir. Nothing to worry about.”
Gold took a deep breath. Thermals he could understand. Thermals weren’t usually trying to crush his ship into a tiny ball with him still inside. “Stevens, this is your handiwork, how far from the surface should we go?”
Stevens stepped from his chair to stand behind Songmin Wong at conn. “Take her down slowly. No more than one kilometer from the surface. If we can skim the top of this field, and push enough power into the comm channels, I think we can punch through.”
Wong raised an expression that questioned Stevens’s sanity, to which Gold simply replied, “Do whatever he says, Wong. This is his ball game now.”
“Aye, sir. Bringing us down to two kilometers from the surface.”
Gold raised a gray eyebrow. Two kilometers wasn’t quite as low as Stevens had wanted, but it wasn’t a bad place to start. They sailed down over the trees, sweeping by villages and small towns, until finally they reached the coordinates Gomez had initially recorded for the field. “Altitude achieved, sir. Taking up stationary position two kilometers above recorded coordinates.”
“How are our shields holding?” Gold asked, not entirely sure he wanted to hear the answer.
“Shields are holding at one-hundred twenty percent of normal, sir,” Shabalala said.
Damn, I knew Conlon was good, but that’s impressive. “Okay, let’s try the comms. Give me an open channel.”
“You have it, sir.”
Gold stood, beginning to slowly pace the deck as he spoke. “Da Vinci to Gomez, do you read?”
Nothing.
“Da Vinci to away team, do you read?
Silence was the only response.
“Can anyone on the surface hear me?”
The silence was deafening this time.
“All right, Stevens, you’re up.”
Stevens ran a hand through his dark hair. The kid’s got a bad case of nerves. Hell, I would too, if Rachel were down there. Gold chose that moment not to remind him that the safety of not only the away team was at risk here. If they dipped one meter too close, well, Gold didn’t want to think about that, either.
“Take us down another half-kilometer,” Stevens said. “No need to go any farther than we have to. And boost the gain on the comm system. We need to put out the strongest signal we can.”
Nancy Conlon’s voice appeared out of nowhere. “Don’t worry. We’ve got the thing turned up to eleven. If they can’t hear us, it’s not our fault.”
“Can we push it to twelve?” Stevens asked, a pained note to his voice.
“Not unless you’re willing to trade off some shield strength. Every spare drop of power I have is going to the shields and the comms.”
“What if we took it from somewhere else?” Gold asked.
“I’m sorry, sir. But I’ve already run a simulation on that scenario. It won’t give us enough power to make any of this work out. There’s a direct correlation between what communications needs to raise the output, and what tactical needs to keep us shielded from the field. I’ve already got a small team trying to figure out where else we can draw power from without taking out life support, sir.”
Gold
raised an eyebrow as an idea struck him. “Conlon,” he began. “What if we reduced the draw on life support? Move the crew to the emergency backup areas and shut off life support everywhere else?”
To her credit, Conlon didn’t dismiss the thought immediately. “I didn’t want to go there, but that might do it.”
He stepped over to the comm station, turning the communication to shipwide. “This is Captain Gold. Folks, some of our people are down on this planet, and we can’t reach them. We don’t know whether or not it’s an emergency. But we need all of your help to find out. To do that, we need everyone to fall back to their emergency protected zones. We need to reduce the power drain from life support as soon as possible. I want to stress, the ship is not, I repeat not in danger. We just need every drop of power we can get out of the warp core. You have fifteen minutes to reach your designated emergency protected zone. Zone managers, please notify the bridge as soon as your people are present and accounted for. Gold out.”
The minutes seemed like hours. Stevens remained at that station, though, trying what looked like every trick in his book to reach the away team. Gold got a quiet sense of pride out of the fact that it looked as though he was even trying to write some new pages in that book. Wong kept slowly lowering the ship, and Stevens kept calling.
When the fifteen minutes was up, and all of the zone managers had reported their personnel present and accounted for, Gold finally gave the order. “Conlon, we have emergency protocols in place. Bulkheads are sealed. Take life support from the empty zones if you need it.”
“Aye, sir.”
When the ship reached Stevens’s magic number of one kilometer from the surface, Conlon was able to boost the output on the comms to an astounding one-hundred fifty percent. Damn, the girl is good. I’ll give her credit for that.
“Now if the communications pathways will just hold that much power going through them long enough,” Stevens said, his voice trailing off.
Star Trek™: Corps of Engineers: Remembrance of Things Past Book Two Page 6
