Текст книги "Reap the Whirlwind"

Автор книги: David Mack

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Текущая страница: 18 (всего у книги 29 страниц)

21

A sudden stop and the dry scraping of sand on the outside of his helmet woke Xiong from his fitful, wave-tossed slumber. His eyes opened to darkness, and he remembered that he had lowered his helmet’s glare shield. Lifting it, he found only more darkness, but this time it was speckled with stars and streaked by clouds glowing with light from one of the planet’s three moons.

Reaching down, he felt the shifting grit of sand beneath him. He sat up and looked out upon the wide ocean; its low, languid breakers washed over his lap. Sinking slightly with the shift in his weight, he sat on the shore of a tiny island overgrown with towering trees and tangled foliage.

“If only I had a flag to plant,” he said, talking to himself as he awkwardly staggered to his feet. His legs were unsteady, wobbling with each step he took up the shallow slope of the beach. His broad boots sank and slid in the shifting sand. A check of the passive sensors on his suit’s forearm showed the external temperature was twenty-nine degrees Celsius, with humidity of just more than forty percent. “A warm and balmy island paradise,” he muttered as he disengaged the environmental seals on his suit. He released the clasps on his helmet and pulled it off. Moist air perfumed with floral scents flooded in, replacing the thrice-filtered air he had been breathing for more than twenty-four hours. Savoring a few deep breaths, he turned slowly to take in his surroundings. “Might be a nice place to put a hotel.”

Within a few minutes he was free of his environment suit, which he folded carefully and stored between some large boulders near the tree line, safely away from the beach. Might need this if the weather changes, he reasoned, thinking ahead to prepare for every eventuality. After all, I might be here awhile.

From the suit he retrieved the built-in tricorder. It was intact and undamaged. Though the device was not normally used for communications purposes, it possessed an emergency beacon. He pressed the beacon’s transmission switch and waited for a double tone that would confirm its signal had been received.

Several seconds passed without a response, then a minute. He tried again, five times in five minutes, then he set the tricorder’s emergency circuit to a receiving mode, in case the ship—or anyone else from Starfleet—tried to signal him.

“First priority,” he said aloud, organizing his thoughts. “Clean water. Second priority, edible food. Third, shelter. Fourth, rescue.” Lifting his tricorder, he set himself to work. He knew that shelter was not likely to be a problem; the environment suit would be hardy enough to protect him from the weather. As for rescue, he had a working beacon; it would be only a matter of time until help arrived. For all I know, I’m in better shape than the Sagittarius. Water and food, however, would be his responsibility until help arrived.

It took only seconds for the tricorder to lock on to clean water within a short distance of the tree line. Xiong walked the jungle’s perimeter until he found a less heavily overgrown area that he could penetrate. Under the intense glow of moonlight, the jungle forest was a study in contrast—a chiaroscuro of shimmering leaves and vines over a deep background of blackness. The coordinates on his tricorder led him to a thick vine; the readings indicated that clean water was inside. He slung his tricorder at his side, grabbed the vine with both hands, and snapped it open. Warm, clear water spilled over his hands, and he lifted the vine to his mouth and drank. A faintly sugary taste lingered after he had finished. Another scan with the tricorder confirmed that the plant was rich in sucrose. Good to know, he thought with a smile. If I’m stuck here long enough, maybe I’ll make syrup.

Now that he had learned where to get clean water, his only serious remaining challenge was finding something to eat. He changed the tricorder’s settings and began looking for anything that resembled fruits, vegetables, fungi, or animals. After several minutes he became convinced that he had set the device incorrectly—because nothing other than simple green plants, molds, and bacteria registered on its sensors.

“That can’t be right,” he mumbled as he verified that the tricorder’s settings were as they should be. Everything about the device checked out. He ran the scan again, searching the jungle, the beach, and the ocean…and he found nothing. No land-based animal forms. No birds, no fish, no insects—nothing that registered as an animal life-form of any kind. More distressing, there were flowering plants but no sign of any bearing fruit or vegetables.

“Well,” he said to his tricorder, “that limits my menu, doesn’t it? Guess I’d better get used to eating green salads.”

Xiong had visited young M-class planets before; he knew that some worlds, early in their development, boasted vegetation long in advance of animals. Why would such a primitive planet be so important to the Shedai? he wondered. Why would they go to such lengths to defend a star system whose only habitable planet has no higher-order life-forms? He shook his head and prepared a more encompassing scan. I’ve got to be missing something here.

On a hunch, he ran a full-spectrum search for traces of the Taurus meta-genome and any recognizable sequence from the Shedai carrier wave. Seconds after he started the scan, his tricorder’s display flooded with data. It had detected an enormously complex and powerful energy signature that contained patterns that he realized matched each of the known samples of the meta-genome; it used the carrier wave as a repeating pattern and seemed to come from every direction and everything that he scanned.

It’s everywhere, he realized. Every plant…the air…the water…the rocks. This pattern’s in every bit of matter on the planet. He made a few adjustments and directed the tricorder’s sensors toward the moon overhead, to analyze its reflected light. It’s even coming from the star itself.

Xiong had no idea what the pattern was, but he knew that it had to be studied. He wondered how much of it he could record on the tricorder’s memory disks. If I dump all its stored data and overwrite my logs about the Tholian ship, I might be able to document a fraction of what I’m reading here.

He wiped the nonessential data from his tricorder and started making a record of the waveform, which he decided to name the Jinoteur Pattern. I’ll probably come home with less than one-tenth of it, he knew, but that’ll be a hundred times more than what we had yesterday.

Shocked by the Apostate’s account of his exile, Theriault asked, “They banished you? For disagreeing with them?”

“Their voices are many, and ours are few,” he said. The Apostate had come ashore much diminished in stature, though he was still a few meters taller than Theriault. Reduced to a less titanic scale, he nonetheless remained impressive. Wrapped in flowing raiment of colored light, he hovered more than a meter above the ground, and his voice continued to resonate and tremble the ground.

She seized upon his choice of words, which she understood implicitly that he had learned from her mind while she had slept in his healing care. “Ours? Others feel as you do?”

“My partisans,” he said. “Standing against more than twice their number, they are only barely outmatched. But we are the victims of a conspiracy of numbers…a tyranny of the majority. In this manner our people have succumbed to stagnation.” A sweep of his hand peppered the air above the pond with countless incandescent, stationary motes of light. “Ten thousand star systems we governed. Trillions of lives did we direct.” He declared with majestic pride, “This was the Shedai.”

The young science officer gazed upon the impromptu star map with wonder and curiosity. Until today, she had thought that the Federation, with more than one hundred star systems counted as members, was a massive astropolitical entity. Ten thousand star systems, she marveled. It would have constituted a sphere of control greater than all the known Alpha Quadrant and Beta Quadrant political entities combined.

“How could you govern something so vast?” she asked. “The travel times across those distances must have been incredible.”

With the flick of one spectral digit against a mote of light, the Apostate made the glowing speck flare—and at the exact same moment, another mote at the far side of the pond flashed in unison. “Our voice is instantaneous,” he said. He flicked the same mote again, and a different counterpart in a far-removed corner of the cavern pulsed in sympathy. “Our will is done regardless of distance. Form is an illusion; our power resides in our word, and our word is given by our voice.”

Theriault was awestruck. “You’re capable of instant teleportation across distances that great?”

“Only our voice,” said the Apostate. “Only our will. Forms are transitory. We leave them behind.”

Sensing that this was an important detail to clarify, she asked, “You shed your bodies?”

“The subtle body is freed from the crude prison of the corporeal,” the Apostate said—and, as if to underscore his point, his glimmer faded, and his humanoid figure evaporated. Before she could ask if he was still there, a warm billow of air passed by her, and another humanoid figure made of plasticized water ascended from the pond. “Physical forms are shells,” said the Apostate’s liquid avatar, “to be used as needed and then set aside.” His body of water bubbled furiously and erupted into a cloud of mist, which then reassembled itself into the radiant, looming figure it had been only moments before. “Matter exists to serve the will.”

She began to understand. “So…when you move to another world, you let go of whatever body you’re in, and you transmit yourself—just your consciousness.”

“Yes,” the Apostate said in a rare moment of brevity.

“How?”

He turned his gaze upward, toward the opening in the cavern ceiling, then looked back at Theriault. “I will show you.” As he drifted away in a straight path above the pond, a narrow bridge of stone appeared from the water beneath him. “Follow me.”

Theriault cautiously traversed the stone bridge until it reached the center of the pond, directly beneath the opening high overhead. There the bridge ended at a broad circular platform. As soon as she stepped upon it, the bridge behind her sank back under the water. Above her, the Apostate glowed like burnished bronze in sunlight. Transfixed by his beauty, it took Theriault a few seconds to realize that the ceiling of the cavern appeared to be growing closer. Then she looked down and discovered that she was being lifted on a swiftly rising pillar of stone, whose ascent was as gentle as that of an inertia-dampened turbolift. Looking back up at the Apostate, she asked, “You can control this place?”

He replied, “I am this place. This world…is Shedai.”

The platform lifted her into the blinding rays of the sun. She lifted her arm to shield her eyes and squinted into the white glare…and then she saw it: a city. It was unlike anything she had ever seen before. Long swoops and towering curves defined the architecture. Delicate fluted causeways linked massive, organic-looking structures, like strings of wire uniting cathedral-sized conch shells. Shades of aquamarine and verdigris blended in epic swaths across the façades. Slow streamers of rainbow light danced through the spaces between structures, like earthbound auroras.

A lush valley surrounded the strangely biomechanoid pastel metropolis, and in the distance rolling hills and ragged cliffs bordered the valley. No fewer than six large rivers flowed toward the city, which straddled the valley’s grand basin. The sky was streaked with shredded clouds separated by slashes of hazy daylight stretching from the heavens to the jungle canopy.

“It’s beautiful,” Theriault said, in a voice that felt much too small to praise such a wonder.

A rippling image followed the Apostate’s hand as he swept it across the landscape before her. “Aeons ago, our Colloquium filled this valley. Our voice gave us hegemony.” He directed her attention to a massive dome that topped the highest structure in the city. “Our voice spoke through the First Conduit…our word was law.” The vision of the city’s ancient grandeur faded away, and melancholy mixed with anger infused the Apostate’s tone. “Then came the awakening.”

Fearful of provoking him, Theriault timidly asked, “Awakening of what?”

“Of our voice,” he said. “The revolt of the Kollotuul. It was a rebuke we earned with our hubris.” A sphere of fire encircled her and the Apostate, but the absence of any heat helped Theriault realize it was just another of his illusions. They seemed to be gliding above a rocky surface pitted with volcanic crevices and bubbling pits of sulfur.

“Hundreds of millennia ago we found them,” he said. “Mindless vermin graced with a gift beyond their ken.” From several of the fiery pits emerged scorpionlike arthropods, glowing like embers in the superheated environment. “Their minds could link when they made physical contact. Such a precious talent…and fate wasted it on scavengers.”

When the beings passed beneath Theriault’s feet, she recognized the faceted shapes of their orthorhombic component structures. Just as early primates had exhibited features that marked them as evolutionary cousins of what eventually became Homo sapiens, these small skittering creatures were, to Theriault’s trained eye, unmistakably Tholian.

“The Shedai brought the Kollotuul’s potential to fruition.” With an almost fatherly pride he added, “We taught them to speak in our voice. As our voice.” The sphere of flames faded to reveal the image of a Shedai conduit populated with the primitive Tholians, all writhing in a steady stream of dark charged plasma. The Apostate’s elegiac bitterness returned. “They repaid us in fire.”

She and the Apostate hurtled forward and emerged into a black void. Orbs drifted past them, images of planets glowing like coals beneath ashen blankets. “When the Kollotuul awakened, they retained much of our knowledge. They did not revere us for making them sentient—they feared us, hated us.” A ghostly image of a city laid waste replaced the darkness, surrounding Theriault with a vision of millions of humanoids lying slain in the streets. “Using our own Conduits, our own voice, those first awakened ones roused all their kin. In the span of a thought, the Kollotuul turned our weapons against us. A thousand worlds perished instantly, a war within a breath.”

Liberated from the illusions, Theriault found herself standing on one of the high ramparts of the city, at the far end of a sliver-thin bridge that led to the great dome of what he had called the First Conduit. A stiff breeze fluttered her blue minidress. Overhead, the sky blackened. Clouds heavy with rain crowded together and flashed with heat lightning.

The Apostate stood beside her, cloaked now in a vaguely humanoid shape of translucent dark glass. His voice, though still deep, now had a merely human scale. “We did not think of ourselves as tyrants,” he said, sounding a note of profound regret. “Membership in our union was voluntary. Worlds that joined with us received many boons. Our Conduits defended them from attack. Our science cured all known diseases. We could rescue planetary ecologies from the brink of collapse or engineer new ones. For those who lived beneath our aegis, immortality was all but assured.” He looked away toward the First Conduit. “But for the Kollotuul, that was not enough.”

“But you admit that you’d enslaved them,” Theriault said.

The Apostate bristled. His voice was sharp and defensive. “They were not sentient when we yoked them to the Conduits. They were beasts of burden.” Calming himself, he continued, “When they awakened, they attacked our worlds. They could have asked for freedom; instead they chose to be our enemies.” He stepped away from her, out onto the narrow bridge. She followed him. “The Kollotuul banded together, harnessed our power to build ships, and fled our space,” he continued. “In the aftermath, we struggled to govern our far-flung territories—but without the Kollotuul to amplify our voice, the most distant worlds fell beyond our influence. Over several millennia our sphere of control diminished. Our hegemony fractured and fell.”

Theriault noticed as they walked that the Apostate’s feet did not actually make contact with the surface of the causeway. Rather he appeared to glide above it, as though he were pantomiming the act of walking solely for her benefit.

“As our former glories began to pass away and a new order of powers started to rise in the galaxy,” he continued as though recounting some simple matter, “some of our number took on mundane forms and moved among the petty and ephemeral. Others followed the Maker into a slumber of the aeons, as if the galaxy would be content to grant them quiet, dreamless sleep. I chose to spend my millennia in quiet exile…in reflection.”

In the middle of the precariously thin walkway, he stopped and turned back to face her. She made the mistake of glancing down at the chasm under her feet. They were hundreds of meters above the ground. Fighting to keep her balance, she looked back up at the Apostate. “Now the whole gang’s back in town, huh?”

He was unnervingly still. “As I foretold ages ago, they could not rest when they felt their power in another’s hands.”

“The Conduits,” she blurted out as the first wayward droplets of rain teased her face. “Starfleet woke them up when it started experimenting on the Ravanar Conduit.”

“Its song filled the heavens,” he said, “but the only ones who could hear it were us…and the Kollotuul.”

The motive for the Tholians’ ambush of the Starship Bombay at Ravanar became clear to Theriault.

“And your people created the meta-genome,” she said. “We always find them together. Why?”

“Seeds,” he said. “A foundation upon which to build our future hegemony.”

She glanced down again and felt a slight spin of vertigo. “Could we, uh, keep walking, please?”

The Apostate moved his feet in a convincing approximation of ambulation and floated ahead of her on the causeway, toward the cluster of huge shapes in the heart of the city. As they neared the other side, she mustered the courage to ask, “Now that your friends are awake…what are they doing?”

He reached the other side, stepped clear, and waited for her to join him under an arched overhang before he replied, “They have gathered here for the Colloquium.”

“Which is what, exactly?”

“A discussion,” the Apostate said. “About the future of this galaxy—and how they will shape it to their liking.”

“Oh, galactic domination,” she said in her most irreverent tone of voice. As a steady gray rain began to fall in pattering torrents, she flashed a goofy grin at the dark, godlike being to her left. “And I thought we were in trouble.”

It is done, proclaimed the Maker. The Conduit’s song faded, and the silence of exhaustion lingered over the Colloquium.

They all had been weakened by the effort of effecting the great transit of the Nameless to Avainenoran. Already a handful of the Nameless had engaged pockets of Telinaruul resistance on the planet. Moving now in numbers, they soon would be poised to eradicate the remaining trespassers in a single assault.

For some of the Serrataal there was no rest, even after such a labor. The Avenger hunted the downed Telinaruul, her tireless search siphoning a steady stream of power from the First World’s overtaxed geothermal reserves. Meanwhile, inside the Colloquium, the Warden’s thoughts radiated concern. Another ship has entered our system, he announced, crafting its shape overhead with lines of fire. It is on an approach vector to penetrate our atmosphere.

Destroy it, counseled the Wanderer.

The Sage interjected with soothing blue hues of restraint. Our strength is depleted, he warned. All our reserves have been committed to the liberation of Avainenoran.

The power we shifted there can be reclaimed after the Nameless destroy the ships above that world, the Maker noted.

Burning with impatience, the Wanderer argued, By that time, more Telinaruul will have landed here.

Her caustic protest seemed to amuse the Maker. Let the newcomers land—and lead the Avenger directly to their friends.

“T’Prynn’s directions were specific,” Quinn said, speaking around his lit cigar. “Make sure you check the settings.”

It was the fourth reminder he’d given Pennington in the last hour, and the reporter was now thoroughly annoyed. “They haven’t changed since the last time I checked them,” he said.

“Don’t go gettin’ snippy,” Quinn shot back. “I ain’t in the mood to get fragged today. If you are, get out and walk.”

Pennington humored the older man’s request and verified that their shields—paltry and underpowered as they were—were still cycling on the tremendously unusual harmonized frequency that T’Prynn had specified in her subspace message, which had sent them back to this remote star system. “Shield frequency verified,” he said with grouchy apathy.

“All right, then,” Quinn said. “Hang on to yer hat, I’m taking us into orbit.” A few taps on the helm console, and the rickety old freighter made a short-hop warp jump. What had been a very bright point of light in the starscape inflated in less than two seconds to the overwhelming mass of a planet. They dropped to impulse over its equator and skirted the atmosphere, which erupted in pale flares around them as the ship sliced through the rarefied gases. Turbulence rattled the ship as Quinn threw a few more switches on an overhead control board. “Anybody locking weapons on us?” he asked.

Staring blankly at the blinking parade of lights in front of him, Pennington replied, “How would I tell?”

“Never mind,” Quinn said. “I’m locking in the surface coordinates.” Flashing a grin from the side of his mouth, he added, “Hope you remembered to tie down the booze.”

The Rocinante dived toward the planet, blazing through the air in a nimbus of fire. It was a far more aggressive approach pattern than Quinn normally used. “Ease up, mate,” cautioned Pennington, who realized that his hands were white-knuckle tight on the ends of his seat’s armrests.

“Hell, no,” Quinn said. He plucked the cigar from his mouth. “We’re making great time.”

A patchwork of clouds spread out beneath them. Quinn guided the ship through a clear pocket of sky and leveled out in steep turn that crushed Pennington to his chair. When the dancing purple spots cleared from his vision, he watched a rugged landscape of limestone towers, dense jungles, and winding rivers blur past. A colossal, natural rock formation loomed in their path, enlarging with alarming speed. Pennington pointed at it. “Um…Quinn?”

“Relax,” Quinn said, banking the ship nearly ninety degrees to slip through an empty space in the rocks. When they emerged safely on the other side, Pennington stopped holding his breath; outside the cockpit, the landscape rolled around them as Quinn executed a corkscrew maneuver. He had never seen this dare-devil facet of Quinn’s personality before, and he wasn’t enjoying it.

As if sensing Pennington’s discomfort—and, more surprising, actually giving a damn about it—Quinn leveled out their flight. “Better?” Less caustically he said, “I get carried away. Sorry.”

“No worries,” Pennington said, trying not to sound as discombobulated as he felt. He checked their position with the navigation computer. “We’re almost at the coordinates.”

“I’m on it,” Quinn said, reducing the ship’s speed. Harsh white sunlight streamed across the jungle canopy as far as Pennington could see, in every direction but one. To the north, a massive storm front boiled close on the horizon.

The Rocinante drifted to a halt above a muddy brown river. Quinn punched a few numbers into the computer, then fired some of the ship’s thrusters a few times to correct their position to within a meter of the coordinates. “All right,” he said. “This is the spot. I’ll send the hail. Get down to the cargo bay and stand by on the winch.”

Pennington unfastened his safety harness and patted Quinn’s shoulder as he stood up. “Nice flying, mate.”

Quinn shrugged. “Just a couple dumb tricks by an ol’ space-dog. Still can’t stick my landings.”

“Tell me about it,” Pennington said as he left the cockpit. He walked back through the main compartment to a hatch panel in the deck. A switch on the wall unlocked it; as it lowered with a sharp squeak, it unfolded into a steep stair-ladder to the cargo deck. Pennington hurried down as it finished its lethargic deployment. He had bounded off onto the cargo deck by the time it touched down behind him.

Countless old odors called the dimly lit cargo bay of the Rocinante their home. The most recent stench was from decayed vegetables, a vivid reminder of the Nejev contract that had gone so miserably wrong just a day earlier. Old machine oil and well-hidden patches of mold and mildew competed to create the most pervasive stink. Pennington was no fan of the smell of bleach, but he would have welcomed a few gallons of it just then.

Secured on a thin metal pallet in the center of the hold was the ship’s sole item of cargo: a magnetic-containment pod full of antimatter. They had taken it aboard by opening the Rocinante’s ventral cargo bay doors and pulling it up from the vendor’s warehouse with the ship’s motorized winch; the plan was to deliver it the same way. Pennington checked the safety locks on the harness around the pod and was satisfied that they all were secure; the power supply to the winch was steady, and the cable feeder was clear and free of obstructions. He thumbed an intercom switch to the cockpit. “We’re tight,” he reported. “Have you made contact?”

“Roger that,” Quinn answered. “They’re comin’ up now. Open the bay doors and get ready.”

“Opening bay doors,” Pennington said. He keyed in the sequence to unlock the long doors that constituted most of the deck inside the cargo hold. They parted with a deep groaning drone, and a shudder traveled through the hull.

A sliver of light formed between the massive doors, and that crack widened as the doors slowly lowered open, leaving the fuel pod suspended in its harness attached to the winch cable. Reflected sunlight from the planet’s surface flooded the cargo bay. Wind noise and the roar of the Rocinante’s engines in hover mode drowned out the doors’ servomotors as Pennington squinted against the blinding tropical glare. Warm, humid air rushed in, thick with the scent of the jungle. Seconds later his eyes adjusted, and he saw the river frothing wildly less than fifteen meters below. The first silt-strewn gray curve of the Starfleet ship’s hull emerged from the boiling foam, followed a moment later by its entire oval-shaped primary hull and the top halves of its warp nacelles.

A broad hatch in the middle of its secondary hull slid open, and Pennington saw several members of the ship’s crew gazing up, returning his stare. He waved. A brawny, bearded man with heavy ocular ridges waved back.

Over the intercom, Quinn drawled, “Unless yer plannin’ on teaching ’em sign language, you can lower the fuel pod now.”

Pennington swallowed his reply and turned the key to feed out the winch cable slowly, to minimize the payload’s swing as it descended. The bearded Denobulan inside the Starfleet ship waved to signal everything was okay. As the fuel pod neared the opening at the top of the other ship, the Starfleet personnel gathered around and guided the large cylinder carefully inside their vessel.

The Denobulan held up his hands, wide apart, and slowly moved them closer, advising Pennington of the distance remaining to the Sagittarius’s deck. The young Scot watched carefully, his hand poised to halt the cable feeder. Then the bearded man clapped his hands together and turned his palms upward. Pennington turned off the cable feeder and spoke toward the intercom. “Touchdown.”

“Nice,” Quinn said. “Good to know at least one of us has a knack for landings.”

Pennington grinned at the compliment and looked back down at the Starfleet ship. They had finished detaching the harness from the fuel pod. The scruffy Denobulan signaled him to retract the cable. Pennington gave him a thumbs-up and turned the winch key in the other direction to take up the slack.

Minutes later, after he had closed the ventral cargo bay doors, he climbed back up to the main deck and returned to the cockpit. “So,” he said as he fell into his seat, “is that it?”

“Not quite,” Quinn said. “I was waiting for you. Their captain wants to talk to both of us.” He reached forward and pressed a key on the console. “Captain, we’re both here.”

“Gentlemen,” said a dignified-sounding voice with an accent that Pennington couldn’t place. “This is Captain Adelard Nassir. First off, I want to thank you both, on behalf of my crew, for bringing that antimatter on the double.”

“Yer welcome, Captain,” Quinn said.

Nassir’s tone became somber. “Since we’re already in your debt, and seeing as you men are civilians, I feel like I have no right to ask another favor of you…but my first officer is several kilometers downriver, stranded and wounded.”

Quinn shifted his cigar from one side of his mouth to the other. “You need us to pick him up and bring him back?”

“It may not be that simple,” Nassir said.” We’re not alone down here, gents. Every second you stay, your lives are in danger. Rescuing my officer might be more than just a taxi run.”

With a glance in Pennington’s direction, Quinn said, “Well, I can’t speak for my friend, Captain, but if you’ll point me toward your man, I’m ready to go get him.” To Pennington he added, “Tim, if you’d rather stay here, I’ll understand.”

“If it’s all the same to you, mate,” Pennington said, hearing the words tumble out of his mouth before he knew what he was saying, “I’ll come along.”

A string of data appeared on one of the small, cracked monitors mounted in the hump between the pilot’s and copilot’s seats. “We’ve sent you Commander Terrell’s communicator ID frequency,” Nassir said. “Lock that into your ship’s sensors, and it’ll lead you right to him.” They heard the captain clear his throat. “I can’t thank you men enough for this. Good luck, and Godspeed.”