Gowron was back on his feet. He held a d’k tahg in each hand and prowled toward K’Ehleyr.
She lunged toward the surgical instruments so she could arm herself, but he was quicker and cut her off.
Empty-handed and injured, she backed away from him.
He was wiry and agile, and clearly an experienced killer. As he backed her into a corner, he sneered and said, “Time to die, half-breed.”
He tested her responses with a rapid series of feints. Then he attacked in earnest, committed to the kill.
K’Ehleyr dodged the slashing of one blade and spun clear as he thrust the other at her heart.
She caught his wrist and turned it at an unnatural angle, breaking bones. His hand jerked open and dropped its weapon.
His other hand shot back in a blur. She barely blocked the slash at her throat. He swept her legs out from under her.
They collapsed together to the floor. He landed on top of her and pinned her with his knees on her chest and left arm.
Every second brought the tip of his dagger closer to her throat. She tried to shift her weight and throw him off but couldn’t get the leverage she needed.
He was so close to her, his mad eyes looking into hers, yearning to see her life fade when his blade struck home. His putrid breath made her want to retch.
She felt the first sting of cold steel against her throat—
—and then the tip of Gowron’s other d’k tahg erupted from his throat, thrust from behind and spraying K’Ehleyr’s face with her foe’s thick, pink blood. Gowron’s eyes opened wider than she would have thought possible, then his face and body went slack.
With a simple push, she cast his corpse aside.
“Good timing,” she said, ready to applaud Barclay for a well-executed rescue. Then she saw that it wasn’t Barclay who had put the knife through Gowron’s throat.
Duras loomed above her, offering her his open hand.
“Come with me,” he said. “There isn’t much time.”
Duras faced the door and stood guard while K’Ehleyr shimmied back into her stealth suit, which he had returned to her. He knew it was dangerous to turn his back on her, but the situation had become too volatile for him to indulge in paranoia.
As she dressed, she asked, “Why are you helping me?”
“Because we serve the same cause,” Duras said. “I’m an ally of Memory Omega.”
She chortled. “I find that hard to believe.”
“My family has been prominent in the Empire’s government for generations, but we’ve often clashed with its politics, and we’ve never been in favor of the Alliance,” Duras explained. “My father, Ja’Rod, tried to forge a pact with the Romulan Star Empire to undermine the Alliance.”
K’Ehleyr stepped into view beside him and pulled on her gloves, one at a time. “I’m guessing that didn’t go well.”
“No, it didn’t. Mogh assassinated him on Khitomer before he could meet with the Romulan envoy.” He handed her a disruptor pistol, which she accepted with a suspicious look. “But even though he failed to strike a deal with the Romulans, his sacrifice made Memory Omega take note of the House of Duras.”
“Touching,” K’Ehleyr said, holstering the borrowed weapon. “Assuming you’re telling me the truth, why risk your cover now?”
He handed her the pullover mask for her stealth suit. “Because I can’t let you fall victim to the mind-sifter any more than I can let Nechayev betray us by choice. That’s why I shut off the security systems in her cell and banished the guards when I questioned her. My people think I did it for political advantage. I was really doing it to contain the damage of her defection.” He nodded at the mind-sifter. “But if Gowron had put you in there, my efforts would have been for nothing.”
She pulled the mask over her head and tucked it into the high collar of the suit. When the two pieces made contact, they seemed to fuse together into a seamless skin. “All right,” she said. “What’s our next move?”
“Cloak yourself. I’ll lead you back to Nechayev’s cell and find a reason to dismiss the guards. Once they’re gone, you’ll kill Nechayev and make your escape.”
“What about her possessions?” asked K’Ehleyr, whose suit began to shimmer. “Where are they? I need to recover the master transceiver.”
Duras tried to conceal his amazement as K’Ehleyr all but faded from view. “The secure locker in the cargo impound,” he said. “Next to the landing pad.”
“Got it,” she said. “Let’s move out.”
He opened the door and checked the corridor. It was empty, but he heard voices and running footsteps echoing in the distance. “Clear,” he said. “Follow me.”
Moving at a quick step, Duras stole down the passageways, alert for any sign of trouble. Pausing at a corner, he looked back over his shoulder. He saw no sign of K’Ehleyr, and he realized he hadn’t heard her footsteps, either. In a careful whisper, he asked, “Still with me?”
“Right behind you,” she whispered back, into his ear.
Pressing on, Duras took the shortest route back to Nechayev’s cell. Every step of the way, he pondered what ruse he would employ to get rid of the guards. Turning the final corner, he saw it was a moot point. The guards were gone, and the door of Nechayev’s cell was open.
Duras rushed to the open cell. The two sentries were inside, on the floor. One’s face had been blasted away. The other’s throat was cut, and his disruptor was missing.
“Impossible,” Duras muttered.
“Hardly,” said K’Ehleyr, whose voice sounded as if it had come from in front of him. “She probably had half a dozen tricks hidden on her body that your scanners can’t detect.”
A clamor of running steps approached from the corridor they’d just left. “You need to go,” Duras said. “Find her before she gets off the base. I’ll stall my people as long as I can.”
“Thank you, Duras,” K’Ehleyr said.
He responded with a gruff tilt of his head. “Go.”
Then he turned and waited for his men. He remembered having to celebrate Kurn’s victory over the Terran rebellion at Empok Nor months earlier. Duras had done everything he could to thwart Kira’s investigation of the rebels’ activity in that sector, but once she’d involved Kurn, there had been nothing more Duras could do without drawing suspicion to himself.
It had galled him to hail Kurn as a hero of the Empire, and it hadn’t saved him from Martok’s spite or Kurn’s wrath; he’d still ended up on this forsaken rock. Now, at least, he thought it might all have happened for a reason. His misfortune would serve a purpose.
A squad of warriors sprinted around the corner and halted in front of him. The lieutenant in charge saluted him. “General, Colonel Gowron is dead, and his prisoner has escaped!”
“So has mine,” Duras said. “They must be working together. Deploy your men to secure the armory and the command center.”
The lieutenant saluted again. “Yes, General!” He barked orders at his men and led them at a run past Duras while shouting more orders into his wrist comm.
Duras watched them go and heaved a growling sigh. He’d done all he could. He hoped it would be enough, because he had only one thing left to live for now: seeing Spock’s plan fulfilled.
Until then, there would be no good days to die.
Nechayev stayed in the shadows as she skulked across the base.
Releasing the manacles that had bound her to the chair in her cell had been simple. A miniaturized signal emitter, embedded in her left palm and reachable by her index and middle fingers, had been designed to unlock a wide variety of Alliance security equipment, including cell doors.
She had decided to spring herself from custody as soon as Duras had left her to investigate the cause of the explosions rocking the base. Nechayev didn’t need to wait for the answer. It was either an attack by the Terran rebellion, in which case she stood a significant risk of becoming collateral damage, or it was the work of a Memory Omega operative, which meant they had come eithe
r to rescue her or to kill her.
Another series of rumbling blasts had masked the sound of her cell door opening, and the sudden fall of darkness in the corridor had given her the distraction she needed. She’d plucked a d’k tahg from one of her guards and used it to cut the other’s throat. As he’d sagged to the floor, she had snatched his disruptor and fired off a snap shot at the other guard, catching him in the face. All in all, killing them had been easy—at least, easier than dragging their bodies into her cell.
Now all that remained for her to do was to recover the master transceiver and steal herself some transport off this rock.
If Duras was too slow to strike a deal, that’s his problem, she decided. Because if he won’t give me what I want, I’ll just find another Klingon who will.
K’Ehleyr crouched at the edge of the detention center’s roof and searched for any sign of Alynna Nechayev on the ground below. Fierce gales pummeled the base with vast sheets of rain.
As if that weren’t sufficient to occlude her vision, Barclay’s demolitions handiwork was interfering with the enhanced settings of her stealth suit’s visor. His spider-bomb assault had reduced several buildings to rubble and flames, and the blooms of heat that blanketed the camp also obscured the thermal signatures of anyone in their vicinity. Not only was she unable to track the Klingon soldiers who were scrambling to and fro, but she had no way of pinpointing the subtle variation of a human heat profile in all of that infrared noise.
Knowing that Barclay would be monitoring their open comlink on his subaural implant, she asked, “What’s your status?”
“Hacking the g–g–gate on the impound locker now,” Barclay said. “J–just a few more seconds.”
“Watch your back in there,” K’Ehleyr said, shimmying down an exposed pipe to ground level as she continued. “Nechayev probably wants two things right now, and you’re next to one and blocking the way to the other.”
She heard Barclay chuckle over the comm. “Not for long,” he said. “I’m in the locker and s–sorting through her stuff now.”
“It’d be disguised,” K’Ehleyr reminded him, “probably as something small and personal.”
A troop of Klingons marched by her in formation, diagonally crossing the base’s open parade ground. As the rear rank passed her, she slipped out from cover and fell into step directly behind them, in their shadow. Her footfalls were muffled by the rhythm of their marching and the roaring patter of the rain.
The squad proceeded down a narrow road between two low buildings, one of which was ablaze. K’Ehleyr ducked back under cover in a nook of the nonburning building and skulked along its foundation toward the still-distant cargo center.
She paused as Barclay’s voice whispered in her ear, “Got it! Y–you were right. It was small, and very…p–p–personal.”
“Please don’t elaborate,” K’Ehleyr said. “Just go back to the ship and wait for me. Once I take out Nechayev, we’ll go.”
“Ack—” The word caught in his throat. “Acknowledged. I’m outta here.”
K’Ehleyr struggled to pierce the darkness, the rain, the fire, the smoke, and the mad activity of agitated Klingons, all to catch even one glimpse of Alynna Nechayev. It won’t take her long to find a way out of here, K’Ehleyr fumed. I can’t let her get away. The next time she talks, she’ll destroy us all.
Barclay clambered like a monkey through a dense obstacle course of entwined pipes, which supplied fuel and other essential resources to the landing pad.
Squeezing through the gaps between the pipe clusters was awkward, but it seemed to Barclay like the only safe escape route; every other stretch of ground around the cargo center was teeming with Klingon soldiers looking for something to shoot at.
Rainwater trickled through several rows of piping over his head, and the droplets plunked erratically inside the maze, striking faint echoes from empty tubes. Crisscrosses of metal and polymer on all sides of him broke and bent the searchlights that were sweeping the camp in the wake of his earlier attack.
He neared a cross-shaped maintenance passageway that separated the tube maze into four equal quadrants. Once he was in the passage, he’d be able to stand and move normally again.
All I have to do is go out the south hatch, reach the outer wall, create another distraction, and I’ll be home free.
Getting past the last obstacle entailed lying on his back and scuttling under a low, wide fuel main. For a moment, he feared he might have become stuck, but after a few seconds of panicked wriggling, he freed himself. He straightened, released another batch of spider bombs into the pipe maze, and sprinted for the south hatch, thirty meters away, past the intersection.
It was a foolproof plan, right up until the moment an arm shot out from behind the corner and clotheslined him.
He landed on his back in a greasy puddle, and all of the air was knocked from his lungs. Like a landed fish, he writhed while his body forced him to draw empty, futile gasps.
Nechayev emerged from behind the corner and pounced on him. She stuck a disruptor in his face as she yanked off the mask of his stealth suit, disabling its cloak. “Memory Omega,” she said as Barclay shimmered into view.
“General N–Nechayev,” Barclay said, barely able to breathe.
At first, she looked dumbfounded. Then her expression lit up with recognition. She smirked with scorn. “I know you,” she said, never once shifting the aim of her weapon. “You’re that stuttering twit who works with K’Ehleyr!” She touched her index finger to her temple, then snapped her fingers. “Broccoli!”
“B–B–Barclay,” he protested meekly, trying to sit up.
She pressed the disruptor’s muzzle against his nose. “That’s what I said.”
In his ear, Barclay heard K’Ehleyr say, “Keep her talking, Reg, I’m heading for the west hatch.”
Nechayev eased herself back to her feet, keeping her weapon aimed at his face the entire time. “Tell you what, Broccoli. I need to go now. As long as you don’t do something stupid, like get in my way, I’ll let you live.”
She inched past him, disruptor steady and on target, and moved toward the north hatch. Barclay recalled that the landing pad was at that end of the pipe maze. “General,” he said, “I d–d–don’t understand. We’re here to r–rescue you.”
She paused. “I was doing just fine without you.” Evidently taking the bait, she lowered her weapon a few degrees.
“Well, if you’re trying to reach the landing p–p–pad, don’t take the n–north hatch. It’s boobytrapped.”
She turned her head to glance at the distant portal.
He drew his disruptor in half a blink.
She snapped hers back on target for his head.
Then she smiled. “Who do you think you’re fooling, Broccoli?” She backed quickly down the passageway.
Barclay followed her, holding his disruptor level and maintaining his range and angle of fire. “Stop, General.”
“Or what? You’ll shoot me?” She shook her head and sneered as she continued backstepping.
“I’ll d–d–do what I have to.”
She was halfway to the north hatch. “No, you won’t. You’re no field agent, just a glorified button-pusher.”
“D–d–don’t make me shoot you,” he said.
“Don’t make me laugh. You’ve never pulled a trigger in your life.” She was at the steps to the hatch. “I know your kind, Broccoli. You’re a coward and a pacifist.” Carefully, she climbed the few steps behind her. “Not that it’s your fault—that’s just what Memory Omega raised you to be: weak.” From the top step, she added, “That’s why it’s going to lose.”
Reaching blindly behind her, she found the hatch controls with her free hand. With a press of her thumb, the hatch unlocked and slid open behind her, filling the passageway with the whine of engine noise and the susurrus of the storm.
Barclay knew that if Nechayev reached the landing pad and made it into one of the Klingons’ fueled and ready patrol shuttles, there would
be almost no hope of catching her again before she inflicted irreparable harm on the movement.
She backed up to the hatch’s threshold. “See ya, Broccoli.”
His voice was as steady as his aim. “I can’t let you leave.”
Nechayev lowered her weapon and gave him a small shake of her head and a pitying smirk. “You don’t have the balls to stop me.” She turned and stepped through the hatchway.
He pulled the trigger.
The crimson pulse slammed into Nechayev’s upper back and left a massive, circular scorch mark that burned through her clothes and deep into her flesh.
She staggered forward, dropped her disruptor, and fought to keep pulling herself up the stairs to the landing pad.
Barclay felt nauseated and dizzy as he took aim a second time. He’d never been a violent man, and certainly not a killer.
He fired again.
His second pulse struck the back of Nechayev’s head and blasted away her coif of silver-blond hair, as well as her face and the top of her skull. Smoking and limp, her body pitched forward on the stairs, then tumbled back through the hatchway in a charred, lifeless heap.
Several seconds passed. Barclay no longer heard the noise from the landing pad or the surges of the storm; his ears were full of his pounding heartbeat and labored breathing. Something vile and hot forced its way up his esophagus. He holstered his disruptor just in time to fall to his knees and vomit a watery spew of acid on the muddy ground under his gloved hands.
He coughed and spat for a minute afterward, trying to expel the taste from his mouth. As he picked himself up and retrieved his mask, he saw a tall feminine form shimmer into view before him. K’Ehleyr peeled off her own mask and pressed a reassuring hand to Barclay’s shoulder. “You all right?”
“Yeah,” he said, sleeving sour flecks of spittle from his mouth and chin. “Fine.”
She nodded toward Nechayev’s body. “Looks like you didn’t need me, after all.” Lifting an eyebrow, she asked, “Still have the master transceiver?”
Star Trek®: Mirror Universe: Shards and Shadows Page 42
