Текст книги "Harbinger"

Автор книги: David Mack

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Praise for

USA Today Bestselling Author

David Mack

“There are few authors who can write action sequences…the way David Mack does.”

“Incredibly powerful, compelling and thought-provoking…. Stunning and climactic…seat-of-your-

pants action-adventure.”

“David Mack exhibits superior skill in drawing the reader into the story to such a degree that you have to stop and remember to breathe.”

–Jacqueline Bundy, TrekNation.com

“[A Time to Heal] is a tightly written, riveting book. A fast read that offers believable intrigue, stunning war descriptions, striking character struggles and nemesis confrontations. If [it] were the score for an opera, it would obviously be the crescendo to the curtain drop.”

–Kathy LaFollett, The Lincoln Heights Literary Society

“If you need a story that combines fear, pain, sorrow, suffering, thrills, humor, and an atmosphere awash in raw, intimate emotion and life-or-death tension, Mack is your man.”

–Killian Melloy, wigglefish.com

“David Mack clearly has his finger on the pulse of Star Trek as we once knew it and as we know it now, elevating him into the top echelon of expert storytellers in both Star Trek and in the world of literature…. [A Time to Heal] could have easily been ripped from today’s headlines or the current techno-thriller novels of Tom Clancy.”

–Bill Williams, TrekWeb.com

An Original Publication of POCKET BOOKS

POCKET BOOKS, a division of Simon & Schuster Inc.

1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

Copyright © 2005 by Paramount Pictures. All Rights Reserved.

STAR TREK is a Registered Trademark of Paramount Pictures.

This book is published by Pocket Books, a division of Simon & Schuster, Inc., under exclusive license from Paramount Pictures.

All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever. For information address Pocket Books, 1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020

ISBN: 1-4165-2181-X

First Pocket Books paperback edition August 2005

POCKET and colophon are registered trademarks of Simon & Schuster, Inc.

Cover art by Doug Drexler; station design by Masao Okazaki; background image courtesy of NASA and the Hubble Heritage Team (STScl/AURA)

Visit us on the World Wide Web: http://www.SimonSays.com/st

http://www.startrek.com

We shall not cease from exploration

And the end of all our exploring

Will be to arrive where we started

And know the place for the first time.

–T. S. Eliot, Little Gidding

Historian’s Note

Harbinger begins in early 2263, shortly before the promotion of James T. Kirk to captain of the Enterprise, and concludes in 2265, between the events of “Where No Man Has Gone Before” and “The Corbomite Maneuver.”

2263

Prologue

Commodore Matt Decker wasn’t entirely certain what to call the swath of fuzz that currently adorned the lower half of his face. It was too long to be stubble, but far too sparse to be a beard. Scratching it gently during the turbolift ride to the bridge, he found the description he was looking for: It was scruff.

Well, that won’t do, he decided. In his opinion, the commanding officer of a starship could be clean-shaven, bearded, or even a bit prickly from time to time. Scruffy, however, was not an option. Unless it’s an intermediate stage on the way to a beard, he mused. That would be all right. Every few months he toyed with the idea of growing a beard. Then he’d note yet another subtle increase in the number of gray follicles populating his chin, and once again the dense bramble of hair would be shorn away until the next piquing of his curiosity.

The hum of the turbolift crested and fell quiet; then the doors swished open. A cascade of gentle synthetic chirps filled the bridge of the U.S.S. Constellation. As the burly commodore’s first step hit the deck, his deceptively fragile-looking first officer, Commander Hiromi Takeshewada, rose from the center seat and greeted him with a single, graceful nod. He gave her a curt half-nod in return as he strode quickly past the gamma-shift communications officer, whose name once again eluded him, despite his repeated attempts to commit it to memory.

At the science station, Lieutenant Guillermo Masada—whose own neatly trimmed beard Decker struggled not to envy—peered into the sensor hood, which cast a pale blue glow across his brow. The science officer’s short ponytail didn’t violate any regulations, but it drew a sharp contrast between Masada and the vast majority of Starfleet’s close-cropped male officers. Though Decker rarely said so, he often found Starfleet’s lockstep mind-set more than a little stultifying.

Takeshewada joined Decker in flanking Masada, who looked up from his sensor readings with an apprehensive side-to-side glance at his superior officers.

“Report,” Decker said, cutting straight to business.

Masada reached behind his ear as if to scratch, then gave an almost absentminded tug on his ponytail as he straightened and pivoted toward Decker. “We were running a routine gene-sequence scan on the biosamples from Ravanar IV,” he said. “Most were nothing to write home about.” He gestured for Takeshewada to look at the sensor data for herself. “Then we found this.”

Decker tried to be patient, but at times like this it was hard. “Guillermo, please don’t keep me in suspense.”

“Sorry, sir. It’s a gene sequence unlike anything we’ve ever seen before. My best guess would be that it has several million chemical base pairs, and it’s more complex than simple G-A-T-C. It has molecules we’re still trying to identify.”

Takeshewada lifted her gaze from the blue-gray sensor hood. Her already fair complexion looked paler than normal. “That’s incredible,” she said.

Folding his arms across his chest, Decker said to Masada, “Where did it come from? Some kind of über-life-form?”

“Hardly,” the science officer said. “From a simple mold.”

“Simple?” Decker shook his head, as much in disbelief as in sheer wonderment at the never-ending tricks the universe had up its proverbial sleeve. “That’s a lot of DNA for something I’d scrape off my breakfast. Speaking of which—” He turned toward his yeoman, who happened to be walking past. “Lawford, get me some coffee, will you?”

“Lawford transferred to the Yorktown two weeks ago, sir,” the yeoman said. “I’m Guthrie.”

Decker squinted in disapproval. “And that has precisely what to do with my coffee?”

“Nothing, sir.”

The commodore pointed the yeoman toward the food slot. “Milk, no sugar.”

“I know, sir.”

“Thanks, Lawford.”

“Guthrie, sir.”

“Whatever.” Decker turned back toward the science station while the yeoman plodded away, muttering quietly. Returning his attention to Masada, Decker said, “Why would mold need that much genetic information?”

“I don’t think it does,” Masada said.

Decker was getting annoyed. “That’s what I’m saying.”

“No, sir,” Masada said. “What I mean is, I think only a very small portion of the genetic string has anything to do with the mold itself. The rest is…well, just kind of there.”

Takeshewada tilted her head in a way that implied she found Masada’s answer less than satisfactory. “But what does it do, Guillermo?”

The science officer’s eyes widened as his lips tightened into a thin line and his shoulders rounded into a shrug. “No idea. I can tell you that it’s big, but other than that…” He just shook his head.

“And our tradition of excellence continues,” Decker said with a sour inflection. His darkening mood was brightened by the arrival of his coffee. He accepted the mug from Guthrie, then turned immediately back toward Masada. “How soon can you finish some tests and get me a real report?”

“I’m not sure I can,” Masada said. “Our lab’s good, but it’s not this good. We’re gonna have to send all of this—the samples, the scans, the whole kit and kaboodle—back to Starfleet Command and let them handle it.”

Decker’s shoulders slumped with disappointment. “Are you serious? We make a once-in-a-lifetime find, and you’re telling me we have to punt?”

“I’m afraid so, sir.” Masada looked even more disappointed than Decker felt. “With our hardware and manpower, we could spend years on this and not make a dent.” Dejected, he added, “It’s just too big for us to tackle alone.”

With a heavy sigh, Decker resigned himself to the situation. “There’s an old saying on Earth,” he said as he gave Masada’s shoulder a consoling squeeze. “There’s no ‘I’ in ‘team.’ ” Sipping his coffee carefully, he walked down the short stairs to his seat, settled into it with a muffled grunt and a few pops from his aging knees, and pivoted around toward the communications officer. He opened his mouth to issue the order, then remembered that he didn’t know what her name was. Glancing at Takeshewada, he gave her a quick nod to carry on.

To the first officer’s credit, she knew exactly what Decker needed her to do and covered his lapse seamlessly. “Ensign Ponor, open a secure channel to Starfleet Command,” she said. “Prepare to relay information from Lieutenant Masada’s station, on his mark.” Ponor acknowledged the order, and minutes later Masada finished the data transfer. Takeshewada appeared at Decker’s side as he finished his coffee. “Transmission complete, sir. And we have new orders from Starfleet.”

“Do tell,” Decker said, handing his empty cup to Guthrie, who was breezing past at precisely the right moment to relieve the commodore of his petty burden.

“We’ve been ordered back to Federation space,” Takeshewada said. “To begin patrolling the Klingon border in the Gariman Sector, before putting in for resupply at Deep Space Station K-7.”

Decker looked at the mesmerizing drift of warp-distorted stars on the main viewer. “Looks like the Taurus Reach will have to wait for someone else to plant our flag. Helm: Plot a course for Station K-7, and hug the border all the way there.”

“Aye, sir,” the helmsman said.

It cut against the grain of Decker’s nature to turn his back on a mystery such as the meta-genome that Masada had uncovered. Even more difficult was turning away from the exploration of such a vast unknown as the Taurus Reach in favor of a mundane border cruise. But as the starfield on the viewer blurred and shifted, and the Constellation turned homeward, he knew that the work he and his crew had begun here, hundreds of light-years from home, was no doubt in very good hands.

2265

1

Captain James T. Kirk walked alone through the crowded, busy corridors of the Enterprise. He moved quickly, like a man with a purpose, but the truth was that he had been wandering without a destination for the better part of an hour. Memories of Delta Vega haunted him. Gary Mitchell’s eyes, fiercely aglow with the alien power that had corrupted him, refused to stop staring back at Kirk every time he tried to sleep. Night after night, the ghost of Kirk’s best friend, dead by his hand, awaited him in his dreams, his spectral stare an inescapable silent reproach.

Even though the power packs Scotty had salvaged from the Delta Vega lithium-cracking station had enabled the Enterprise’s warp engines to be restarted, the ship’s current top speed was well short of its rated maximum. At their current best possible speed, they were still months from the nearest Federation base. By now Kirk’s after-action report—filed via subspace radio—had likely reached Starfleet Command. He did not regret the simple notation he had entered for Mitchell, despite the fact that the man had tried to commandeer the Enterprise and had turned his new psionic powers against Kirk. The young captain continued to remind himself that the being who had jeopardized his ship and crew had not been Gary Mitchell—not really. After the Enterprise’s failure to breach the energy barrier at the edge of the galaxy, Mitchell—and, later, psychiatrist Dr. Elizabeth Dehner—had been changed by the experience, transformed. Kirk had to believe that the man he had known would not have been capable of such casual cruelty…of murder. Instead, he had noted in his log only that Mitchell had died “in the line of duty.”

A door opened as Kirk passed by, and the aroma of fresh coffee lured him into the galley. Dr. Mark Piper sat alone at a table, gratefully inhaling wisps of hot vapor snaking upward from his burnished aluminum mug. “Morning, Captain,” the grizzled, aging physician said, his voice rough.

The greeting brought Kirk up short. “Is it?” He checked the ship’s chronometer, mounted over the galley door.

“It’s almost 0100,” Piper said. “Technically, it’s morning.” He sipped carefully at his beverage.

“I guess it is,” Kirk said with a wan grin. “Burning the midnight oil?”

“Emergency call,” Piper said. “Nothing serious enough to wake you for. But I guess that’s not an issue.”

Kirk stood in front of the food dispenser, eyeing his choices. “Who was it?”

“Alden,” Piper said, then puffed gently on his coffee.

None of the menu choices appealed to Kirk. He sat down across from Piper. “What happened?”

“An accident in engineering.” He took another sip, inhaled through gritted teeth, and set down his mug. “Spock’s probably writing the report for your morning briefing even as we speak.”

“No doubt,” Kirk said. His half-Vulcan first officer was nothing if not efficient. However, the same suppression of emotion that enabled Spock to exercise unimpeachable logic in his other official capacity, as ship’s science officer, had also led him to urge Kirk to kill Gary Mitchell before his new powers drove him to enslave or exterminate the Enterprise crew. Kirk had not heeded Spock’s warning, and helmsman Lee Kelso had paid for Kirk’s mistake with his life. The captain knew that it was absurd to blame Spock for what happened, or to be angry with him for being so quick to condemn Mitchell to death. Spock’s chief duty as first officer was to protect the ship and its crew, even if that meant sacrificing one to save the others.

Knowing those things made Mitchell’s death no easier for Kirk to accept, however. He had pulled the trigger and brought a ton of rock down on his friend. No amount of rationalization was going to erase the lingering guilt that had shadowed his every thought since that desperate moment.

After a silent minute, Piper said, “You should eat something.”

“I’m not hungry.”

“Try getting some sleep, then.”

Kirk chuckled ruefully. “Easier said than done.”

“On this ship, I guess that’s true.” Piper grabbed his mug and stood up. “I have to head back to sickbay. Want to stop in and say hi to Alden?”

Before he could accept the invitation, Kirk was cut off by a two-note whistle from the overhead speaker. “Captain Kirk to the bridge,” came Spock’s voice over the intraship channel.

Stepping away from the table, Kirk thumbed the transmitter switch on a nearby wall panel. “On my way. Kirk out.” He closed the channel and looked back at Piper. “Give my best to Alden.”

Piper’s reply of “Aye, Captain” trailed Kirk as he exited the galley, grateful for something new to think about.

Spock rose from the center seat as Captain Kirk emerged from the turbolift. “Report,” the captain said, making a beeline for his chair. He seemed primed to face a crisis that did not exist.

“Receiving an audio-only hail from a Federation outpost, Captain,” Spock said, moving to the right of the captain’s seat.

Rather than sit, Kirk stood to the left of his chair while he assessed the situation. “Which one?”

“Starbase 47,” Spock said, “a Watchtower-class space station, also known as Vanguard.”

“Vanguard?” Kirk narrowed his eyes while he pondered that information. Spock had yet to determine what benefit the captain accrued to his concentration by reducing his visual acuity. “I thought that base was years away from being operational.”

“Apparently not.” Spock added, “They await our reply.”

The captain glanced at Spock but said nothing. In one fluid motion he pivoted into his chair and swiveled it toward the communications officer. “Lieutenant Uhura, patch them in.”

“Aye, sir,” Uhura said. The young woman deftly routed the signal to the bridge’s main speakers. “Channel open.”

“Starbase 47, this is Captain James T. Kirk of the Starship Enterprise. Do you read me?”

“We read you, Enterprise,” a youthful-sounding female voice said. “Go ahead.”

“We require extensive repairs to a number of key systems. Are you in a position to assist us with maintenance?”

“Affirmative, Captain. Should we clear a berth for you?”

The captain frowned before he answered. “Please.”

“Consider it done. What’s your ETA?”

Kirk looked to Spock, who answered in a clear baritone, “Six days, three hours, and twenty-four minutes.”

“Acknowledged,” the female voice said. “Vanguard out.”

The channel clicked off. Kirk leaned on his elbow and stared hard at the slow drift of starlight across the main viewer. Under his breath he said to Spock, “A fully operational starbase, all the way out here. Must be our lucky day.”

Spock sensed the suspicion radiating from his commanding officer. “You seem less than encouraged by the news, Captain.”

“How long does it take to build a Watchtower-class station, Spock?”

From memory, Spock said, “On average, four years, nine months—”

“And how long ago was the Vanguard project initiated?”

That required a few moments of thought. “Two years, seven months, and ten days.”

The first officer watched the slow curling of Kirk’s hand into a fist. “Somebody was in a big hurry to get this station built. With all the saber-rattling the Klingons have been doing, why put a major base this far from the Federation?”

Spock considered the most likely possibilities. “Support for a colonization effort?”

The captain looked unconvinced. “Maybe.”

“In the absence of another rationale, it would be the most logical explanation.”

“Dig up everything in the databanks on Vanguard,” Kirk said. “I want a full briefing before we make port.”

2

The sultry jungle night buzzed with the sawing song of nocturnal insects. With a casual sweep of his hand, Cervantes Quinn pulled a long twist of his tangled, bone-white hair from his eyes and tucked it behind his ear. An insidious humidity amplified the post-sundown radiant heat and left Quinn’s sweat-sodden clothing clinging like a skin graft with pockets to his thick-middled, past-its-prime body.

He straightened from his crouch and reached into his left pants pocket. Nestled deep inside, under the lock-picking kit, past his last snack stick of meat-flavored synthetic something-or-other, was his flask. As quietly as he was able, he pulled it free, unscrewed the cap, and downed a swig of nameless green liquor. It tasted horrible. He kept it in his flask only because his most frequent employer, an Orion merchant-prince named Ganz, had an irregular habit of demanding that other people pour him impromptu drinks—and then shooting anyone who poured something he didn’t like. Ganz liked the green stuff.

Awful as it was, it still constituted a minor improvement over the stale aftertaste of the pseudo-beef snack stick Quinn had devoured an hour ago. He took another swig, then tucked the half-empty flask back into the bottom of his pocket. This stakeout was taking longer than he had expected. He had imagined himself long gone by now, the pilfered device securely hidden behind the false wall panel in the cargo bay of his private freighter, the Rocinante. Instead, he swatted blindly at the high-pitched mosquitoes that he could hear dive-bombing his head but couldn’t see unless they passed between him and the lights of the camp below.

From his vantage point deep in the undergrowth, beyond the tree line that marked the perimeter of the mining camp, he saw the prospectors moving from one semipermanent building to another. Most were winding down for the night, settling into their bunks, making final trips to the latrine. Vexing him were the two who continued to sit inside their Spartan mess hall, playing the most uninspired game of cards Quinn had ever seen.

He was certain he could beat them handily in just about any game, from Texas Hold’em to Denobulan Wild-card. For a moment, he allowed himself to consider scrapping his mission of covert confiscation in favor of card-sharking the mining team. Quinn’s common sense awoke from its slumber and reminded him not only that it would be wrong to cheat honest working folks but that, if he returned to Vanguard without the sensor screen he’d been sent to steal, Ganz would garnish his next buffet with Quinn’s viscera.

Patience was not one of Quinn’s stronger virtues, but his impulses were usually kept in check by his healthy fear of death, injury, and incarceration. Long after he had become convinced that his knees had fused into position and would never allow him to straighten again, the last two miners restacked their cards, snapped an elastic band around them, and left them on the table as they got up. They turned out the mess-hall lamp and stepped out the door into the murky spills of weak orange light from lamps strung on drooping wires between their shacks. Despite the multilayered soundscape of the jungle that surrounded Quinn, he heard their every squishing step as they trudged across the muddy dirt road and passed out of sight on the far side of the barracks. Their shadows, long and blurred, fell across another building. Deep, repetitive clomping sounds echoed around the camp as the miners kicked the wet filth from their boots. Finally they entered their barracks, and the door slam-rattled shut behind them.

Batting away lush fronds and dangling loops of thorny vines, Quinn skulked forward toward the camp. An arthritic aching in his knees threatened to slow him down, but he ignored it, lured forward by the promise of an easy night’s work. He paused at the edge of the tree line. There was no sign of automated security devices—no cameras, motion detectors, or sentry guns. Not that he had expected any, necessarily, but the presence of the sensor screen in a mining camp had aroused his suspicion. It wasn’t the kind of equipment normally found in civilian hands. Ganz hadn’t said how he had come to learn of its presence here on Ravanar IV, and Quinn wasn’t foolish enough to ask.

He unholstered his stun pistol. The street was empty. In the distance, something shrieked three times in quick succession and something else roared in reply. With his hand resting lightly on the grip of his sidearm, he emerged from the trees and moved in a quick, low jog across the street. The mud under his boots made every step an adventure; it slipped like congealed hydraulic lubricant and stank like the open sewers of Korinar. Several quick steps brought him back into the cover of shadow. He leaned sideways and cast a furtive glance around the corner into the dark, narrow stretch between the barracks and the equipment shed. It was empty, and he stole into it, his feet seeking out the driest—and therefore quietest—patches of ground from stride to stride.

The sensor screen was larger than he had expected. Ganz’s drawing of the device had not been to scale, and it had led Quinn to believe that its removal would be as simple as unplugging it and tucking it under one arm. On the contrary, the cylindrical machine was almost as big as Quinn himself, and, if his approximation of its duranium content was on the money, it was at least twice as heavy. He considered stealing one of the miners’ cargo pallets, but then he remembered how much noise the lifter would make. Damn thing’ll wake the entire camp, he groused silently. This would’ve been easier if my ship had a transporter. He had often toyed with the notion of installing one, but his ship’s limited power-generation capability meant that to operate a transporter would require sacrificing another system of equal energy level. Unfortunately, the only one that came close was the inertial dampener, and since it was the one thing that prevented routine starflight from turning him into chunky salsa, he was loath to part with it.

An idea occurred to him: I could just steal the active component and leave the power module. Just take the part that’s hard to get. Examining the device more closely, he realized that the top segment constituted the screen generator, and that once it was separated from the much larger and heavier power supply he would be able to carry it out on his own. He dug into the lower pockets along his pants leg, found the tools he needed, and set to work. Another quick scan registered no sign of power inside the device; it appeared to be inert. That was for the best, in Quinn’s opinion. A few simple twists and toggles later, he decoupled its primary power-supply cable.

No sooner had the cable come free than a scramble of data flooded his scanner. Eyeing the readings, he made the belated discovery that the sensor screen had, in fact, been active the entire time he had been here—and, true to its intended function, it had fooled his scanner.

His ears detected the muffled din of an alarm klaxon. Doors banged open against sheet-metal shelter walls. Running footfalls slapped through the mud, converging on his location. Using a sonic screwdriver he’d swiped from a rather daft chap back on Barolia, he torqued off the sensor screen’s restraining bolts, wrapped his arms around the screen generator, and hefted it with an agonized grunt. He stumbled backward, tripped over something that he couldn’t see in the dark, and dropped the device.

With the unmistakable crack of something breaking, the device struck whatever unseen piece of junk had found its way under Quinn’s feet. A sizable chunk of it struck his foot hard enough to launch a string of vulgarities from his mouth. Hopping on his good foot proved an unwise reaction, as he immediately slipped and wound up on his back, in the mud, and looking at a cluster of angry miners at the end of the alley.

“Hey, fellas,” he said, flailing in the muck to get himself upright. “I know this looks pretty bad, but—” One of the men drew what Quinn was certain was a Starfleet phaser pistol. Assessing the situation calmly, Quinn ran like hell.

With his arms and legs windmilling as he struggled for traction on the greasy mud, his movement was so clumsy and erratic that the first phaser shot—whose tonal pitch Quinn recognized as level-five heavy stun—narrowly missed him and scorched the wall behind his head. Finding his footing, he sprinted out of the alley on a mad dash for the tree line. As he crossed the street, he heard the group of armed men running up the alley to follow him.

Two more simultaneous phaser shots quickened Quinn’s already frantic pace. One sizzled the mud behind his heel; the other passed over his shoulder and crisped its way through the foliage. He plunged straight into the stygian forest, zigzagging through the densely packed trees and ducking through nooses of vine. Blue phaser fire shimmered in the gloom, slicing wildly around his chaotic path.

Where’s the damn trail? Seconds seemed stretched by the adrenaline coursing through Quinn’s brain. He felt like he’d been running twice as long as necessary to find the path back to his ship. Then he broke free of the jungle’s clinging tendrils and stumbled out onto the narrow, dry creek bed he had followed down this side of the hill from his ship. At the time, landing on the other side of the hilltop had seemed clever. Banked in steep, thick cloud cover even at this low elevation, it had enabled him to glide in unseen and unheard.

Now, unfortunately, it meant running for his life uphill.

His pursuers were getting closer. Time for tricks, he concluded. Several meters ahead, a sizable boulder offered him some cover. He reached the rock and dove to the ground behind it just before another volley of neon-blue phaser beams lashed across its pitted face. Fumbling through assorted bits of junk in his pockets, he found the detonator. The angry whine of another phaser blast bit off nearly a quarter of one side of the boulder that was shielding him. The odor of scorched carbon and iron reminded him of the stink of an empty pot left on a flame. The crackle of trampled underbrush resumed. They were coming.

He keyed the detonator switch.

Crimson flashes lit up the ink-black night, and a series of tooth-rattling concussive blasts provoked a mighty cacophony of startled noises from spooked animals—followed by the squeak and groan of splintered tree trunks jackknifing and collapsing under their own weight. Alarmed cries of “Fall back!” and “Get down!” mingled with the dull impacts of dozens of high-canopy trees, which dropped in an overlapping pattern carefully planned to foil pursuit. A heavy curtain of smoke obscured his pursuers’ line of sight, and the crackle of small fires caused by the diversion covered the sound of his mad dash through the loose secondary-growth brush. He heard someone in the group below, probably the leader, confirm that all his people were okay, then order them back to the camp.

Quinn was glad that no one had been hurt. He had long ago learned the value of simple lies, clear exit strategies, and unexpected diversions. There were few “codes” he actually considered worth living by; most lacked the “moral flexibility” and “ethical adaptability” that he had come to consider indispensable. But the one that he clung to was that no job was worth killing someone over. Sucker-punching them? Sure. Stun them? If need be. But serious harm or killing? That was a line Quinn crossed only in self-defense.

Minutes later, rounding the crest of the hill to its steeper, rockier side, he clambered across loose chunks of flat stone toward the Rocinante. Beneath a sloped shale overhang, the ship looked at home in the shadows. Its center fuselage was shaped like a long, thin wedge. Attached to either side were ponderous warp nacelles, bulkier-looking than most and nearly two-thirds as long as the main hull section. Navigational fins, which normally were extended down at a slight angle from the nacelles, were folded upright into their landing configuration. Quinn stepped over the deep gouges the ship’s landing gear had cut through the broken rock and dry, granular soil beneath. The entire vessel was dark gray, mottled with slightly lighter-toned splotches where its hull had been crudely patched in one alien shipyard or another over the years. Its four-seat cockpit bay was hidden behind a dark-tinted viewport.