Текст книги "Precipice"

Автор книги: David Mack

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Текущая страница: 17 (всего у книги 20 страниц)

48

Ragged chunks of the ceiling fell from high above Quinn’s head and shattered on the steps ahead of him as he ran up a flight of spiral stairs in pursuit of Zett Nilric.

The ruins quaked. Thunderous sounds reverberated in the temple’s walls and echoed through its passageways. A haze of dust rained down on Quinn, who coughed and wheezed. He squinted in pain as fine particles drifted into his eyes, which watered as he struggled to keep Zett in sight.

All Quinn could see of the Nalori thug were his feet, several meters ahead and just shy of the curve of the staircase’s inner wall. The rest of Zett was out of sight, sparing the assassin a well-deserved shot in the back.

A massive slab of rock smashed down in front of Quinn, pulverizing three steps into rubble. He stumbled backward and pressed himself against the outer wall as the huge piece of debris rolled past him.

He sprinted forward and almost impaled himself on Zett’s knife.

Twisting at the waist, Quinn dodged the stab.

Zett snapped his arm back to wind up for another blow. Quinn raised his arms. The knife jabbed forward.

Quinn swatted the blade aside with his forearm—and a metallic clang of impact as the knife struck the armored bracers concealed beneath the sleeves of Quinn’s jacket.

Noting Zett’s wide-eyed stare of surprise, Quinn smiled. “I thought we might end up doin’ this little dance. Came prepared.”

Zett lunged as if hoping to gut Quinn with one stroke. Quinn sidestepped the attack and struck Zett’s wrist with a scissoring blow of his armored forearms.

The knife flew from Zett’s grasp and tumbled down the stairs behind Quinn, its blade ringing like a chime as it bounced off the stone steps and walls.

As Quinn cocked his arm to pummel Zett, the Nalori’s foot snapped forward and hit Quinn in his solar plexus. Pain shot through Quinn’s gut as the air left his lungs, and he fell backward. Zett turned and continued his mad dash up the stairs.

Fighting for breath and summoning strength to push through his pain, Quinn forced himself to continue his pursuit.

As he neared the top of the staircase, the tremors plaguing the temple worsened, and the mortar between stones in the walls began to turn to powder. Great fractures split blocks of sandstone with sharp cracking noises.

The staircase let out onto a wide, flat terrace nestled in the temple’s roof. Across a small gap, on an adjacent terrace, a Klingon shuttle was powering up to make a hasty retreat.

Zett sprinted toward the shuttle, apparently hoping that with enough of a running start he could leap across the divide to the next terrace, where the Klingon shuttle crewmen were waving for him to hurry.

The assassin came to an abrupt, clumsy halt, pointed, and shouted in tlhIngan Holto the Klingons.

The Klingons stared in confusion for a moment before they realized Zett was pointing behind them, and they turned.

A tall spire toppled over and collapsed onto the Klingons and their shuttle. Tons of rock crushed the small spacecraft into a heap of twisted, sparking metal.

Having nowhere left to run, Zett turned and faced Quinn, who had drawn his borrowed disruptor and aimed it at the sharp-dressed killer. “Lose your weapon,” Quinn said. “Two fingers only.”

“Don’t be stupid about this,” Zett said as he lifted his sidearm from its holster using only his thumb and forefinger. “This place is eating itself. You can see that, can’t you?”

“Yup.” Gesturing with a tilt of his head, Quinn added, “Toss it over the side. Now.” Zett threw his disruptor off the roof. Quinn nodded. “Good. Now ditch your knife. The special one you keep under your left arm.”

Frowning, the Nalori discarded his yosablade. “There,” he said as his last weapon tumbled away into the darkness. “Now what?”

Quinn hurled his disruptor off the roof, then drew his own knife and cast it away into the night. “A fair fight.”

Another violent quake rocked the temple, and part of an outer wall collapsed with a roar. From far below, inside the temple, came a nightmarish groaning, as if from Hell itself.

“This is hardly an ideal setting for a duel,” Zett said.

Quinn shrugged off his backpack. “Looks okay to me.”

He prowled toward Zett, who eased into a fighting stance. The two combatants circled each other.

Zett flashed a predatory grin. “You’re going to regret this, Quinn. You forget, I’ve seen you fight.”

“No, you haven’t. You’ve seen me get my ass kicked when I was drunk. You’ve seen your goons beat me up while holding me at gunpoint.” Quinn smirked. “You’ve neverseen me fight.”

They stopped moving. Locked eyes.

Zett charged and launched himself at Quinn. He landed a flying kick to Quinn’s chest.

Quinn stumbled backward then steadied himself as Zett charged again, leading this time with his fists.

There was no time to think, only time to react in a brutal dance of motion and collision. Ducks and blocks, strikes and counter-strikes. Hands and feet, knees and elbows.

Crushing blows left Quinn’s head swimming with dull echoes of impact. He tasted blood from his own split lips as he felt Zett’s nose crack under his fist.

Zett came at Quinn in a frenzy and landed a flurry of hits. Quinn snared the man’s arm and twisted it until the wrist broke and the shoulder dislocated.

With his free hand, Zett punched Quinn in the throat. Quinn let go of Zett. They staggered apart, both stunned and bleeding.

“I’ll give you credit,” Zett said as he steadied himself. “You’re better than I thought. But you’re still going to lose.”

“We’ll just see abou—”

Quinn barely saw the spinning kick that nearly knocked off his jaw. A falling sensation preceded a rolling blur of motion. He felt his body strike the roof, kicks and punches slamming against his torso, three of his teeth splintering as they were liberated from his gums. Everything he saw looked purple.

Fighting for balance and solid footing, he eked out one last moment of clear perception—then saw Zett’s side kick hit him in the chest. The blow knocked Quinn off his feet. He flew backward and flailed desperately as he rolled over the edge. His hands shot out, looking for purchase.

Just before gravity could lay final claim to Quinn, his left hand seized a small lip in the roof’s edge. Despite a lifetime of people telling him never to look down, he did anyway. Far below lay an unwelcoming patch of rocky ground.

Half alive and dangling by his fingertips, he watched Zett step to the roof’s edge and loom above him.

“Told you so,” Zett gloated.

“Yeah, yeah,” Quinn said, his throat tight from the full-body strain of hanging on by one hand. “I know. Fighting was never my strong suit.”

The assassin smirked and lifted his foot to stomp on Quinn’s fingers. “You havea strong suit?”

Zett froze as he saw the detonator in Quinn’s right hand. “Yeah,” Quinn said. “Demolitions.”

He pressed the trigger.

The charges in Quinn’s backpack exploded, engulfing the terrace above him in white-hot fire and high-velocity shrapnel. Searing flames vaporized Zett’s suit as bits of metal and stone raked his flesh. The blast wave lifted the assassin into the air and hurled him over its edge.

Fire stung Quinn’s fingers as he fought to hang on a few seconds longer, howling in pain the entire time. Turning his face away from the light and heat, he watched Zett’s scorched body fall to the ground. The moment of impact was not pretty, but Quinn found it very satisfying.

Above Quinn the blaze abated. He dropped the detonator and reached up to grip the edge with both hands. That was as far as he could get. He was out of strength and too badly hurt to pull his own dead weight back over the edge. Great plan,he chided himself. I get to celebrate for all of ten seconds before I wind up as the stain next to Zett.

The rock under his hands began to crumble. He half expected to see his life flash before his eyes, but all he could think about was that moment—the grit between his fingers, the pull of gravity, the pain in his head, the lead in his limbs …

Two hands locked shut around his wrists.

Bridy Mac was pulling him up to safety.

Her face was red and scrunched with effort as she power-lifted him, starting from a deep squat so she could use her legs and back muscles. As soon as she had his waist above the roof’s edge, she let herself fall backward so gravity could work for her instead of against her.

They collapsed together on the blast-scarred terrace. “Thanks,” Quinn said. “ De nada.”

A major quake rocked the temple’s ruins, and another large section of the ancient structure fell away and sank earthward in a cloud of dust.

“Time to go,” Bridy Mac said, climbing off Quinn and pulling him back to his feet. She led the way back to the spiral staircase, and they hurtled down it three steps at a time, bouncing wildly off the walls as they ran.

Several landings short of the bottom, the staircase began to implode. Quinn pulled Bridy back from a collapsing step and out of the staircase onto a landing that wasn’t in much better shape.

“That way!” Quinn shouted, pointing down a corridor whose stone floors already were heaving and buckling. He sprinted ahead, leading the way, leaping from one unstable section of disintegrating floor to another.

He was about to make another jump as Bridy grabbed his shirt collar, yanked him backward, and pulled him with her into another spiral staircase that looked as if it was still intact.

Several seconds later they were back at ground level and making a frantic run for the nearest exit.

Then a terrifying voice boomed behind them, its majestic tenor at once monstrous and feminine, its affect as sharp as thunder and as deep as the sea. Worst of all, Quinn heard it in his mind as much as in his ears.

“I know you,”it declared, freezing both Quinn and Bridy in mid-stride. “Both of you.”

They turned and gazed upon the demonic presence towering above them. Violet motes of energy swam in the dark titan’s hypnotically shifting form of liquid and shadows. It wore a gruesome horned visage, and murderous hatred burned in its eyes. Trapped inside its form was the crystal artifact.

Quinn had seen this kind of being before. On Jinoteur.

“You were on the First World. You defiled it with your mere presence. For that alone you both deserve to die.”

Mustering a weak smile, Quinn said to the creature. “Um, yeah. Well … nice catching up with you.” Then to Bridy Mac he added in a sharp whisper, “Run!”

They sprinted toward open ground.

A tentacle of shimmering black fluid shot past them. It smashed through stone walls and branched into a web of tendrils, blocking their exit.

Dodging and weaving, Quinn and Bridy scrambled toward another exit. More tentacles stabbed at them, transmuting into gleaming blades of obsidian just before the moment of attack. Each black blade sheared with ease through blocks of sandstone.

Quinn dived and rolled clear of two more thrusts while Bridy somersaulted over a near miss.

Then a flurry of disruptor shots peppered the creature. Turning to look for the source of the covering fire, Quinn saw a squad of desert nomads wielding captured Klingon weapons.

Oh, jeez,he thought. They don’t know what they’re getting into. He ran toward them, waving his arms. “Stop!” he shouted. “Run! Fall back!” Bridy was right behind him—and the Shedai was right behind her. All at once the nomads seemed to understand what was happening, and then they were running, too.

The monster doubled in size as it pursued them down the passageway toward one of the temple’s secluded interior courtyards. It bashed through walls and load-bearing columns, and it swatted away multiton slabs of rock as if they weighed nothing at all. It’s a goddamned self-propelled demolition machine,Quinn marveled even as he ran for his life.

At the threshold of the courtyard, the creature had them. Fire and fury blazed in its very essence. Its tentacles reared up and coiled to strike.

Then it shrieked as if in agony, and it contracted in size. Immediately it turned away and charged back inside the temple, hammering through anything and everything in its path. In its wake lay nothing but rubble and dust.

Bridy looked apprehensively up at the crumbling temple ruins surrounding them. “We’re trapped,” she said.

Quinn turned and looked at her—then he looked past her. As the dust cloud dissipated, his eyes pierced the dark to see a sleek, Nalori-built argosy parked on the other side of the courtyard. “The hell we are,” he said with a broad smile. He led Bridy and the nomads toward the ship as he added, “Come with me.”

49

T’Prynn emerged from the rapidly imploding temple ruins to see Tim Pennington hurrying toward her—surrounded by more than two dozen armed Starfleet personnel.

At the front of the group was a tall human woman with fair skin and brown hair. She wore a gold tunic whose sleeves bore the stripes of a lieutenant commander, and she carried a type-II phaser. Making eye contact, the woman asked, “Are you T’Prynn?”

“I am.”

“Report. Quickly.”

T’Prynn halted as she was met by the woman. “To whom am I reporting?”

“Lieutenant Commander Katherine Stano, first officer, U.S.S. Endeavour.” Stano nodded to a dark-haired human man who stopped beside her. He wore a blue tunic and held an octagonal crystal device in one hand. “This is Lieutenant Stephen Klisiewicz, science officer.”

“Very well,” T’Prynn said. “There is a Shedai inside the temple. It has acquired a crystalline object that appears responsive to Shedai energy waveforms.”

A tall, brown-skinned human man with a mustache stepped closer and asked T’Prynn, “Are there any humans inside the temple?”

Stano noted T’Prynn’s reluctance to answer with a small measure of exasperation. “This is Lieutenant Paul McGibbon, our deputy chief of security.”

T’Prynn nodded. “Yes, a civilian named Cervantes Quinn and a Starfleet officer from the Sagittariusnamed Bridget McLellan are inside the temple.”

“Okay,” McGibbon said. “Let’s do this.” He nodded to his platoon of red-shirted security officers, who fanned out into a skirmish line. As they settled into their battle formation, Klisiewicz activated the eight-sided crystal device in his hand.

Pennington edged forward. His eyes went wide as he saw what was transpiring. He asked Klisiewicz, “What’re you doing, mate?”

Grinning like a child with a new toy, Klisiewicz replied, “Using this gadget Ming Xiong built to lure the Shedai out of the temple and here to us.”

Horrified, Pennington exclaimed, “Why the bloody hell would you want to do that?”

Before anyone could answer the anxious reporter, a hideous shriek rose up from the temple and split the night. Then came the low rumble of destruction and the steady rhythm of impact tremors shaking the sand under T’Prynn’s feet.

The Shedai was coming.

With an epic roar, it burst free of the mountain of pulverized rock that once had been a temple.

It swelled as it surged forward, lashing out with tentacles that glowed with millions of motes of energy. Burning in the center of its mass was the twelve-sided crystal object T’Prynn had seen the entity seize from the pedestal inside the now-buried Shedai Conduit.

McGibbon raised his phaser and ordered his men, “Fire!”

Bright blue phaser beams slashed the darkness and struck the Shedai with electric flashes. None of the blasts seemed to cause the creature any harm; if anything, it only grew stronger.

Stano glanced sidelong at Klisiewicz. “Now?”

“Not yet,” said the science officer, his thumb hovering above a button in the center of the device in his hands.

The Shedai scuttled on its tentacles and rapidly crossed the open ground separating it from the landing party. It closed to within twenty meters and was sprouting new tendrils with which to strike.

Visibly nervous, Stano asked Klisiewicz, “Now?”

“Wait for it,” he said.

The ends of the Shedai’s tentacles solidified into obsidian and shaped themselves into massive spearheads.

“Now,” said Klisiewicz, pressing his thumb on the button.

The device in his hand pulsed with blue light—and then so did the crystal artifact inside the Shedai’s body. A volatile reaction ensued around the crystal polyhedron.

Another horrific shriek emanated from the Shedai. It shrank rapidly and forcibly ejected the artifact from its body. The crystal tumbled like a die over the sands and rolled to a stop a few meters from the landing party. Then the Shedai flew straight up, away from the object, toward orbit.

The XO pulled her communicator from her belt. “Stano to Endeavour.”

A woman replied over the comm,

“Go ahead, Commander.”“Captain, Xiong’s little gizmo did just what he said it would, but you’ve got one ticked-off creature heading your way.”

“She’s already gone,”said the Endeavour’s commanding officer. “Broke orbit at full impulse and didn’t look back—just like the Klingons.”

“Chalk that up as one little victory,” Stano said.

“Let’s not celebrate yet. What’s your status?”

Stano surveyed the landscape. “We’ve secured the Mirdonyae Artifact, and the locals seem to have the Klingon garrison under control.” From the far side of the ruins, a nondescript small spacecraft lifted off and cruised away toward the horizon. “Any word from our little cousins?”

“Affirmative,”Khatami said. “They say hello, but they really must be going.”

“Acknowledged,” Stano said. “Stand by to beam us up. Stano out.” She flipped her communicator shut and looked at Klisiewicz. “Go get the artifact and prep it for transport.” Then she nodded at McGibbon. “Lieutenant, you know what to do.”

McGibbon pointed his phaser at T’Prynn, and his security team surrounded her and Pennington. “Lieutenant Commander T’Prynn,” he said. “You are under arrest for multiple violations of the Starfleet Code of Military Justice. Drop any weapons you are carrying, step forward, kneel, and place your hands on top of your head.”

T’Prynn slowly set down her disruptor rifle, stepped away from it, and kneeled as she placed her hands on her head.

Another security guard confiscated T’Prynn’s phaser from Pennington and prodded him toward her. “You too,” the guard said. “On your knees, hands on your head.”

“Timothy Pennington,” said McGibbon. “You’re under arrest for aiding and abetting a fugitive from Starfleet justice.”

As the security team closed magnetic restraints around his and T’Prynn’s wrists, Pennington looked at her and smiled.

“Ah, yes,” he said. “I’d almost forgotten about this part. Our heroes’ welcome.”

Quinn sat at the helm of his late rival’s vessel, the Icarion,and admired the way it handled. Zett was a bastard,Quinn mused, but he had great taste in ships.

Bridy stepped into the cockpit, followed by Noar, the female leader of the squad of nomads she and Quinn had rescued from the collapsing ruins minutes earlier. “Starfleet’s on the scene,” Bridy said. “They have the ruins under control, and our friend with the tentacles has taken a rain check.”

“Nice,” Quinn said. “And our neighborsin orbit?”

“Bugged out,” she replied with a knowing smile. “Which means it’s time for us to move on.”

“Not quite,” Quinn said. “First we’ll head back to Tegoresko and make sure our people and Naya’s get properly introduced.”

Bridy smiled. “Sounds like a plan.”

Out of the corner of his eye, Quinn saw Noar fiddling with the switches on one of the auxiliary consoles. “Hey,” he said to her. “Don’t touch that.”

“Why?” the young Denn asked. “What does it do?”

“Don’t know yet,” Quinn said. “But I’d rather you didn’t mess with it before I find out.”

Noar threw a confused look around the Icarion’s cockpit. “Is this not yours?”

“Well …” Quinn shrugged. “It is now.”

Accusingly, she asked, “Did you steal it?”

“No, I borrowed it.”

“So whose shuttle is this?”

“It’s not a shuttle. It’s a starship.”

“Oh. Whose starship is this?”

“Zett’s.”

“Who is Zett?”

Quinn chuckled and couldn’t help but grin. “Zett’s dead, baby. Zett’s dead.”

Interlude

50

September 12, 2267

Jetanien and Lugok sat on opposite sides of a small portable table, facing each other like bookends. They were finishing dinner. Each had brought his own repast, and they ate together in silence, as they had for weeks on end.

There was nothing left to talk about. All the topics of idle chatter had been exhausted, and the maddeningly consistent weather in this region of Nimbus III wasn’t providing much conversational fodder. During the daytime they tried to avoid each other as much as possible, dropping little more than curt nods on those rare occasions when their paths crossed.

Behind Lugok the sun was setting. Its last surge of dying light flared straight up from the horizon, culminating in a peak that for Jetanien evoked the ancient Chelon myth of his world’s first mountain, which rose from the sea to stand before the sky. Had he been a superstitious person, he might have seen the moment as an omen of a beginning.

Instead the moment caught him by surprise.

The wind kicked up and blanketed his dinner with dust. A soft but deep thrumming followed. Lugok was staring straight up, so Jetanien did the same.

A ship descended toward the plateau. It was very quiet, and though its design had a vaguely Vulcan quality, it was unfamiliar to Jetanien.

Lugok and Jetanien rose from their seats as the craft extended three squat legs and made a gentle touchdown a few dozen meters from their ships. As it settled onto the ground, the low purr of its engines faded, leaving only the hush of wind and the dry patter of settling rocks and sand.

On the underside of what appeared to be the vessel’s bow, a hatch lowered and unfolded with nary a sound. A dim green glow bled from the ship’s interior, painting the pale ground before the ramp as it made contact with a low scrape. Jetanien thought for a moment he could smell the fragrance of incense wafting out of the peculiar vessel.

A silhouetted figure in a deep-hooded robe stepped into the ship’s doorway and walked down the ramp with a slow, shuffling gait. The dark-gray fabric of the visitor’s cloak fluttered in the arid wind outside the ship.

Jetanien and Lugok stepped forward together to meet the newcomer. When he and they were finally close enough to shake hands, the lone figure stopped and drew back the hood of his cloak, revealing the white hair and creased visage of a very elderly Romulan. “Gentlemen,” he said in a rasp of a voice.

“Senator D’tran?” asked Jetanien.

The Romulan replied, “Indeed. You must be Ambassador Jetanien.” Cocking one snowy eyebrow at the Klingon diplomat, he added, “And this, I presume, is Ambassador Lugok.”

Lugok responded with a curt half nod. “Senator.” Then he added, “You’re late.”

D’tran folded his hands at his waist. “I apologize for my tardiness, gentlemen, and I thank you for your remarkable patience. I regret that I was unavoidably detained on Romulus.”

“Apology accepted, Senator,” said Jetanien. He gestured toward the table he had shared with Lugok. “Your seat awaits you. Will you join us?”

“With pleasure,” D’tran said. “We have much to discuss.”