Текст книги "Precipice"

Автор книги: David Mack

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Текущая страница: 14 (всего у книги 20 страниц)

38

The Klingon convoy announced itself from a few kilometers away with a tower of golden dust that rose from the road behind it.

Quinn lay prone behind a jumbled mass of broken stone, watching through a crack in his rocky cover as the Klingons approached. His squad of Denn recruits crouched on either side of him, their hands closed like vices around the rifles he had given them. After weeks of sniping and hit-and-run attacks, this was going to be their first major assault on the enemy.

“Everyone stay calm and follow my lead,” Quinn whispered to the men. “Stretch and his boys are waiting for us to make the first move, but don’t worry—they’ll be there.”

Gesturing as he spoke, he addressed his troops one at a time. “Hopalong, remember to fire a few shots at a time, and check your targets. Don’t waste your power cell if you can’t hit anything. Slugger, stay behind cover; if you go chargin’ into the open without me tellin’ you to, I’ll shoot you myself. Doc, you got the mortar, so land your shots right in the middle of their formation. Turtle and Spaz, just do what I do and shoot anybody who ain’t one of ours. Everybody clear?”

Five upturned thumbs assured him they were ready.

He hunkered down and listened as the Klingons’ treaded all-terrain vehicles turned a corner and advanced toward his position. They were right on schedule.

Every week since their arrival, the Klingons had sent their convoy to round up a new batch of laborers and transport them out to the excavated temple. Until the ATVs made their pickup, their only passengers were Klingon soldiers.

Reckon they don’t figure it’s worth wastin’ shuttle fuel to move slaves,Quinn thought.

In the final moments of quiet, every detail seemed hyper-real to Quinn: the uncommon warmth of the early-morning sun, the stillness of the air, the sky’s deep shade of blue, a bead of sweat tracing a circuitous route down the side of his face to fall from his jaw to the dusty ground.

Then the convoy rolled squarely into the kill zone, and Quinn’s fist closed around the master detonator switch.

Improvised explosive devices on both sides of the street engulfed the four-vehicle convoy in surges of white fire. The earsplitting thunderclaps of the blasts came a split-second later, followed by the rending of metal as the blast waves shredded the four armored ATVs.

When the initial rush of flames and pitch-black smoke mushroomed up and away, the two ATVs in the center of the convoy had been mangled and knocked onto their sides. Both were on fire. The lead and follow vehicles had been badly damaged: both had lost most of their treads, leaving them immobilized.

Quinn barked, “Doc, hit the lead truck! Squad—now!” He scrambled to one knee, aimed over his protective wall of concrete slabs, and opened fire on the convoy.

His men leaped into action beside him. Just as Quinn had taught him, Doc unleashed a mortar round on the first ATV in the convoy. The plasma charge hissed through the air and slammed through the armored vehicle as if it were made of paper. Half a second later, a detonation inside the ATV scattered its parts and passengers in multiple directions.

Hatches slid open on the two toppled ATVs, and Klingon troops began hurtling up and out, rolling to their feet ready to fight. The passengers in the last ATV also evacuated their vehicle and jumped to cover moments before Stretch’s mortar man blew the armored ride to pieces.

The dozen or so Klingons in the street split into two squads and charged at their attackers—one at Stretch’s squad, one at Quinn’s.

None of the Denn hesitated to shoot. Within moments both groups of Klingons found themselves trapped in the same overlapping fields of fire. A few of them tried to shoot back before they were cut down, but their disruptor blasts caromed harmlessly off the steel and concrete debris that the Denn had chosen for their cover.

The last Klingon dropped to his knees with a smoldering hole in his tunic and metallic sash. He gasped “ PetaQpu’!” before falling facedown in the dirt.

Quinn shouted, “Cease-fire!”

All at once, the street was silent again. Only the faintest hush of a breeze and the soft crackling of flames disturbed the blissful quiet.

“Check the bodies,” Quinn said. “Move in pairs. One man covers, one man searches. If you find a Klingon alive, kill him. Take their weapons, spare power cells, communicators, and sensor devices. We have to be gone from here in two minutes. Move out!”

Across the street, Stretch and his squad fanned out in the same search pattern. Working quickly, they took everything of utility from the dead Klingons, then regrouped at the front of the massacred convoy.

“Good work,” Quinn said. “First, turn off the communicators—they can be used to track us.” He held up a Klingon communicator and demonstrated the process. When they finished, he continued. “I’ll show you how to mask your life signs with their sensor devices later. Now double-quick-time back to base!”

He led them through the ruins, sticking to concealed paths and long stretches of old sewage tunnels that had been dry for ages. Less than an hour later they entered the underground hiding place of the Rocinante,where Bridy Mac and the other two squads of Denn guerrillas were waiting. The mood was subdued.

“How’d it go?” Bridy asked as Quinn and his men returned.

“We kicked some ass,” Quinn said. Nodding at the enemy equipment his men were toting, he added, “Brought back a few prizes.” Noting the glum faces that greeted his news, he asked, “Why do y’all look like you came from a funeral?”

Bridy motioned for him to follow her inside the Rocinante. “We have an unexpected visitor,” she said. “She claims she followed one of our recon patrols, and I believe her. Which means your boys need to work on their stealth skills.”

They stepped onto the main deck of the Mancharan starhopper. Seated on Quinn’s bunk was a Denn woman swathed in the bleached robes of a desert nomad. As soon as the woman saw Quinn and Bridy, she stood and said, “You are the aliens who teach the Shire men to fight the Klingon invaders?”

“Yeah, that’s us,” Quinn said. “Who are you?”

“I am Lirev, shahzadiof the Goçeba. My tribe has been enslaved by the Klingons at the temple.”

Quinn rolled his eyes. “Times are tough all over. I’d love to help you folks, really, but I just don’t—”

“The Klingons brought something to the temple last night,” Lirev cut in. “A gem the size of a skull.”

Bridy and Quinn traded doubtful looks, then Quinn said to the female nomad, “They’re decorating. So what?”

Lirev’s eyes burned with equal measures of fear and fury. “It is not a decoration—it is a vessel of pure evil.”

“What makes you so sure?” asked Bridy.

The nomad replied, “Because when the Klingons brought the stone inside the precursor temple, the world trembled in fear.”

As he put the facts together, Quinn felt the color bleed from his face. One look at his partner confirmed Bridy had arrived at the same terrifying conclusion: the Klingons had acquired something that enabled them to access the Shedai Conduit hidden inside the desert temple—and if their past mishaps with Shedai technology were any indication, Golmira was now in imminent danger of being blown up.

Quinn faced Lirev. “If I agree to come check this out, can I trust you and your nomad pals to not try to kill me?”

“I give you my word,” she said. “Truce and safe conduct.”

“Okay,” Quinn said, motioning for Lirev to lead the way. “Let’s go have a look.”

39

Trudging over one dune after another, Pennington kept his eyes on T’Prynn’s back and wished he knew voodoo and had a pin and a doll fashioned in her likeness.

“This is brilliant,” he muttered as they lumbered through the shifting sands. “More desert. Our three-day hike on Vulcan wasn’t enough for you?”

She answered without looking back. “I did not choose the location to which the Klingons transported their artifact.”

“No, of course not,” Pennington said. “But you did choose to land the ship plenty far away from it, didn’t you?”

T’Prynn reached the peak of the dune they had been climbing and stopped to wait for Pennington, who was lagging behind, a victim of fatigue and heat exhaustion. “It was necessary to set down at a safe distance from the Klingons’ ground forces,” she said. “Otherwise they would have heard and observed our descent, and we would now be in their custody.”

He joined her at the crest of the dune and squinted into the glare of sun reflected off a vista of pale sand. “Maybe,” he said. “But sometimes I get the feeling you just like walking in the desert.” He met her placid stare. “For the record, I don’t.”

“I gathered that,” she said.

They continued walking east. A gust of hot wind-blown sand scoured Pennington’s face. He winced and wrapped a length of fabric from his desert robes around his face and neck, then pulled his goggles down from on top of his head and fixed them into place. “How much farther?” he asked.

Over the howling wind, T’Prynn said, “Approximately twenty-eight-point-four kilometers.”

“And how far have we gone?”

“Since leaving the Skylla,we have traversed one-point-six kilometers of open desert.”

Pennington let out a long, pained groan. “Oh, I hate you.”

“If memory serves, you said quite clearly you were looking forward to spending some time outside the ship.”

“That was when I thought outsidewould mean grass or trees or water, or something besides sand.”

T’Prynn replied, “I see. Your dissatisfaction with our current circumstances stems from your failure to manage your expectations.”

He waved his arms in wild exasperation. “Or maybe it stems from having to tromp across a bloody desert!” Pennington waited for T’Prynn’s reply, but she said nothing and just kept on walking. Suspecting he was being manipulated, he asked her, “You’re just goading me, aren’t you?”

“Your reactions do provide a break from the monotony.”

“In other words, I entertain you.” He shook his head. “Is that all I am to you? A clown?”

“No,” T’Prynn said. “You are also a drain on expendable resources and a significant tactical liability.”

He fell into step beside her. “That’s funny, but who knew Vulcan humor was so cruel?”

“You confuse wit with humor,” she replied. “A common mistake among humans.”

Scrambling to keep up with the long-legged Vulcan woman, Pennington concluded to his chagrin that he had no comeback that T’Prynn couldn’t dismantle with ease. Instead he plodded along behind her, struggling to catch his breath with each step.

Several minutes later T’Prynn said, “If you begin to feel lightheaded, please try to make some sound before you lose consciousness, so I will know to stop and wait for you.”

Even silence is no defense,he brooded. He let out a heavy sigh. “Yes, I can tell already,” he said. “Your companionship will make this forced desert march just flyby.”

“You are welcome to turn back and go wait in the ship.”

He looked toward the fiery orb that was hammering his head with scorching heat, then glared at T’Prynn. “ Nowyou tell me.”

40

Quinn slithered on his belly up the slope of the dune. Poking his head over the top he caught sight of the precursor temple rising from the desert.

A Klingon garrison patrolled outside the ruins, cracking the proverbial whip on hundreds of enslaved Denn workers, who were helping the Klingons excavate the site. Men and machines worked side by side, carefully peeling away the artistically carved stone façade to reveal the obsidian, biomechanoid structure entombed within. For the most part the Klingons had focused on exposing the front entrance of the Shedai Conduit; most of the temple’s multilevel roof, with its slopes, platforms, and turrets, remained in place though not wholly intact.

That’s at least a full company of troops,Quinn observed. Noting a row of prefabricated structures erected alongside the temple, he retrieved a pair of holographically enhanced binoculars from a pocket of his desert robe and surveyed the Klingons’ camp compound.

Mess hall,he figured. Barracks. Latrine. The one with the climate module is probably the CO’s office.Then he spied the only structure that was under guard. Bingo,he thought with a smile. Ammo dump and weapons cache.

He adjusted the settings on the binoculars and pointed them at the temple’s entrance. Filtering out the glare of daylight, he zoomed in on the interior of the ruins, where a Klingon scientist surrounded by high-tech gizmos was conferring with a trio of Klingon officers. True to their reputations, the three soldiers were shouting at the gray-bearded Klingon civilian, who seemed to be making protests the troops didn’t want to hear.

In short order the matter seemed to have been decided. The scientist unlocked a protective case and opened its lid. Then he reached inside the container and lifted out a peculiar object.

It was a twelve-sided crystal polyhedron; each of its pentagonal faces had five edges of equal length. The crystal’s core pulsed with an intense violet glow. As the scientist lifted it free of its case, the three military men stepped back fearfully.

“Well, I’ll be damned,” Quinn muttered to himself. “The little one-eyed kook wasn’t kiddin’.”

The scientist carried the dodecahedron to a pedestal in front of what looked like an altar at the center of the double-arched platform. As the crystal was lowered into a pentagonal indentation on the pedestal, the glossy black surfaces of the Conduit rippled with indigo light, and a deep rumble shook the earth beneath Quinn.

Goddamn,he wondered, what the hell is that thing?

Just when Quinn figured his day couldn’t get any worse, his gloomy train of thought was derailed by a smug voice that he had hoped never to hear again for as long as he lived.

From behind him, Zett Nilric said, “Hello, Quinn.”

Quinn lowered his binoculars and twisted slowly to look down the dune at Zett, who stood holding his disruptor level and ready. The jet-skinned Nalori bastard flashed a grin of coal-black teeth, and even though he was standing in a desert, he was dressed to the nines in a spotless white suit, pale gray shirt, off-white tie, and shoes made from the hide of some ivory-colored reptile.

“Lookin’ good, Zett,” Quinn said.

Zett shrugged at the compliment. “I do my best.” Lowering his chin at Quinn, he added, “Long time no see.”

“Not long enough.”

“Imagine finding you of all people here,” Zett said. “I have to confess, I’m curious what you’ve been up to all this time. Last I heard, someone mysteriously settled all your debts with Ganz. And just like that”—he pantomimed huffing a feather from his fingertips—“you vanished. Quite a trick.”

“Yeah, it’s a beauty,” Quinn said. “You should try it.”

“Oh, I will, soon enough.” He widened his grin. “So tell me: What are you doing here, Quinn?”

“Same as always,” Quinn lied. “Lookin’ out for number one.” Nodding over his shoulder toward the temple, he asked, “What about you? Working for the Klingons now?”

“Yes and no,” Zett said. “I take their money for the occasional odd job, but that’s hardly the same thing as being on their side.” A twitch of his thumb changed his disruptor’s power setting to maximum. “Of course, I didn’t go to the trouble of safeguarding a major heist on Vanguard just to see you screw up the deal by sticking in your nose on this backwater rock.” He raised his weapon to eye level. “And killing you won’t be business—not like bombing that transport on Vanguard or setting up the hit on Reyes. No, eliminating you will be my pleasure.”

Quinn was relieved to know this was about nothing more than Zett’s psychotic old vendetta. At least I know my cover’s not blown,Quinn told himself as he got to his feet. That means Bridy might still be safe. Standing up halfway down the dune, he said to Zett, “Okay, get it over with.”

“I’ll shoot you if I have to,” Zett said. “But I’d prefer to take my vengeance one cut at a time. And because I’m such a good sport when it comes to murder, I’ll even give you a chance to defend yourself.” Gesturing with his disruptor, he added, “Drop your sidearm and grab a knife.”

It took all of Quinn’s self-control not to smile as he unfastened his belt. As he let it and his holster slide to the ground, he recalled the words of Napoleon Bonaparte: “Never interrupt your enemy when he is making a mistake.”

He drew his hunting knife from his boot sheath, tucked its flat edge against his forearm, and held it edge-out and ready to draw blood.

Zett holstered his disruptor, drew his curved yosablade, and prowled up the slope toward Quinn. “I’m going to enjoy this,” he said with a sneer.

“Not as much as I am,” Quinn replied.

The assassin was still a few meters from Quinn when the smooth slope of the dune behind him heaved upward. As Zett spun toward the hush of spilling sand, more shapes rose from the ground on his flanks. In less than a second he was surrounded by Lirev and four of her nomad clansmen. Each pointed a wide-bladed sword at Zett, whose expression of horror was even more satisfying to Quinn than he’d hoped.

“Meet my insurance policy,” Quinn said.

The nomads lunged to attack.

Zett pressed a button on a bracelet around his wrist and vanished in a crimson swirl of energy. Lirev and her people slashed at the transporter beam’s afterglow until it faded away.

Rubindium transponder,Quinn realized. Linked to an automatic transporter recall.He recognized the setup from one of his first meetings with Starfleet Intelligence. They had been very excited to entrust him with one until he had pointed out the Rocinantehad no transporter.

Lirev sheathed her sword and approached Quinn, followed by her clansmen. “Did you see the gemstone?”

“Yeah,” Quinn said. “I did. It’s just like you said. Now I gotta get back to my partner so we can plan our next move.”

The nomads murmured among themselves, and then Lirev asked Quinn, “Does this mean you will help us liberate the temple from the invaders?”

“We will, if you’ll vow to stop attackin’ the Shire people and help us fight the Klingons.”

A buzz of protests began to rise from the other nomads until Lirev turned and silenced them with a frown. Then she turned back toward Quinn and said simply, “Agreed. On behalf of the Goçeba,you have my word. Peace with the Shires, and alliance against our shared foe.”

“All right, then,” Quinn said, moving at a quick step back toward their melluls. “We’ve got work to do. Let’s ride.”

41

The playback from Quinn’s holographic binoculars was projected a meter above the deck in the main compartment of the Rocinante. McLellan ate her dinner from a scratched metal plate and watched as Quinn enhanced the image to clarify the details he had recorded of the temple’s interior.

“I reckon we’re talkin’ about a hundred and twenty, maybe a hundred and thirty troops,” Quinn said as he finished fiddling with the projector’s controls. “Looks like they’re usin’ a virtual perimeter to keep the workers from runnin’ off. Nothin’ we can’t bypass to get in.” Pointing at the scientists in the recording, he added, “Only a few of these labcoat guys. Don’t think they’ll be a problem.”

McLellan swallowed a bite of her vegetable wrap—the least disgusting option from their remaining rations—and said, “I think the real problem is your old pal, Zett. Are you sure he said the object in the temple had been stolen from Vanguard?”

“Not in so many words, but that was the gist,” Quinn said. “Look, don’t worry about Zett. He seems to think I’m here work in’ an angle, which means our cover’s safe.”

“I’m not worried about our cover,” McLellan said. “I’m worried about you getting killed by an assassin with a grudge.”

Quinn shook his head. “Ain’t gonna happen. He got the drop on me once. Now that I know he’s here, I’ll be ready next time.” He motioned toward the holographic projection. “Let’s focus on this. We’ve got less than forty-eight hours before your Starfleet buddies get here. If we want off this rock, we need to do everything we can to put the lobster-heads in a twist.”

McLellan shoved the last bite of her wrap into her mouth and studied the projection while she chewed. “Okay,” she said at last. “Whatever that glowing thingamajig is, if the Klingons took it from Vanguard, we need to find a way to take it back.”

“Hang on,” Quinn said. “Smackin’ a bees’ nest is one thing. Stickin’ your hand in to steal the honey is another.”

Lifting her hands in mock surrender, McLellan said, “If you want to play it safe, let’s talk about lying low till our backup gets here. But if you want to make a difference, we need to find a way to get that gemstone. Because if the Klingons bug out and take it with them, we might never get another shot at it.”

He unleashed a disgusted sigh. “Goddammit,” he muttered. “Fine. Last I saw, they had it patched into the Conduit through some kind of pedestal. If it’s still there in the open, we might be able to draw their forces away with a hit-and-run attack and then slip inside to make the grab.”

Backing up the holographic playback, McLellan pointed out the image of the scientists taking the object from a shielded case. “What if they store it in there between experiments?”

Cocking his head and frowning, Quinn said, “Pickin’ the lock’ll take too long. We’d have to grab the whole case and make a run for it.”

“But then the grab’s not a one-person job anymore,” she said. “And sneaking two people inside increases the risk.”

He shrugged and flashed a grin. “You knew the job was dangerous when you took it.”

She shook her head. “We need more intel. I have to know whether they leave the stone in place or pack it up.”

“So we’re talkin’ about another recon op,” Quinn said. “Gettin’ that close to the temple won’t be easy unless we ask Lirev’s people for help. And this time we’ll need to keep a better eye out for Zett.”

“Y’know, I lied before,” McLellan said. “I am worried about him talking to the Klingons. Whether he knows we’re with SI or not, if he gives them a heads-up we’re out here, it could mean big trouble.”

Quinn nodded. “True, but I don’t think that’s his game. He’s waited a really long time to cap me himself. If he goes and gets the lobster-heads involved, they might get all gung-ho and kill me before he gets a chance to gloat.”

“Yes, that would be a shame,” McLellan deadpanned.

“Just callin’ it like I see it,” Quinn said. “Still, no point gettin’ sloppy this close to the finish line. We should assume he’s workin’ with ’em, and that they know I’m here.”

McLellan nodded. “Sensible. So how do we play it?”

“The only way I know how,” Quinn said. “Head-on.”