Bridy had no idea how or when the Klingons had captured one of the ancient aliens known as the Shedai, but her orders from Starfleet Command had been clear: terminate the Klingons’ research program on Zeta Aurigae IV immediately and with prejudice. At first it had seemed a tall order for two undercover agents such as herself and Quinn. Then she had realized that all she’d needed to do was disrupt the power to the artifact. The Klingons’ captive Shedai would do the rest.
The entity was more than living up to her expectations. Massive ribbons of energy lashed out from within the artifact, cutting down entire squads of Klingons with each stroke and filling the air with terrifying cracks, as if from a giant bullwhip. Blood and viscera sprayed from dismembered Klingon bodies, clouding the air around the artifact with a grotesque fuchsia mist.
Counting off the seconds in her head, Bridy sprinted for the compound’s gate, dozens of meters from the operations shack. Behind her, the screeching of disruptors tapered off and was replaced by the agonized groans of the dying. Her shadow stretched away ahead of her, preceding her to the gate. Then another shadow arced toward hers. She dodged left and dove for the ground.
A javelin-tipped tentacle of shimmering fluid shot past her, close enough for her to feel its rush of displaced air. The Shedai’s pointed appendage tore a long, ugly divot into the ground ahead of her.
I set it free and this is the thanks I get?She rolled away while firing her phaser back at the wildly flailing creature. Talk about ungrateful.
Quinn’s ship, the Dulcinea,appeared from behind a nearby ridge and sped toward the compound’s main gate. Bridy pushed herself up from the ground and ran flat out toward the gate while using her thumb to increase her phaser’s power setting to maximum. The droning of Dulcinea’s engines was drowned out by the Shedai’s roar, an unearthly noise like a thousand rusty horns. The din overwhelmed Bridy, who felt it like needles being stabbed through her skull. Her stride faltered. She fell to her knees and instinctively covered her ears. Then the shrieking was replaced by thunderous impacts that shook the ground.
Bridy looked back. The Shedai was free of the Conduit and pummeling the structures inside the Klingons’ compound into rubble and dust.
She forced herself back into motion and staggered toward the gate. Her gait was sloppy, like that of a drunkard, and as she lifted her arm to aim her phaser, she could barely keep it pointed in the gate’s general direction. Pressing the trigger, she hoped she wouldn’t hit Quinn’s ship by mistake.
A blinding flash of phaser energy vaporized more than half the metal gate and a significant chunk of the reinforced thermocrete wall to its right, creating a gap more than wide enough for Bridy’s escape. She stumbled through, careful not to touch the glowing-hot metal or stone with her bare hands. As she cleared the phaser-cut passageway, the Dulcineatouched down directly ahead of her. Its starboard-side hatchway was open, and its ramp had been lowered.
Through a pane of the cockpit’s windshield, Bridy saw Quinn beckoning urgently, and she heard his voice over the open communicator in her hand: “C’mon, sweetheart! We gotta go!”
Bridy all but threw herself onto the ramp and used its railings to pull herself inside the ship, a state-of-the-art Nalori argosy that Quinn had “inherited” from his late rival, Zett Nilric, after killing the assassin in self-defense a few months earlier. The ramp lifted shut behind her, pushing her the rest of the way into the vessel’s main living compartment. The deck and bulkheads thrummed with vibrations from the ship’s engines as she moved forward to the cockpit. Its door slid open ahead of her, revealing a slowly rolling view of the distant horizon.
“We’re clear,” Quinn said. The lean and weathered former soldier of fortune had one hand on the ship’s flight controls and one on its sensor panel. A small display on the center console between the pilot’s and copilot’s stations showed the Shedai laying waste to the few Klingon structures still half-standing and slaying the remainder of the base’s personnel. Quinn nodded at the image of the berserk Shedai. “Any idea which one it is?”
“The Warden, I think.”
“Not a friend of ours, then.”
The Conduit on the surface crackled with violent energy, and the Shedai transmuted into a serpent of black smoke. Intense white light flashed in the Conduit’s center, and when it faded the black smoke had dissipated, leaving no trace of the homicidal alien hegemon. Quinn shook his head. “Great. Now that thing could be anywhere in the Taurus Reach. God help whoever finds it next.”
Bridy laid a reassuring hand on Quinn’s shoulder. “Let’s just hope it’s not us. The Shedai tend to hold grudges.”
“No kidding.” He glanced toward the planet’s surface as he guided the Dulcineathrough a steep, banking turn. Except for the Shedai Conduit itself, nothing remained of the Klingon research base except debris and ashes. “Looks like our work here is done,” he said. “Let’s call in the cavalry and have dinner.”
2
Ganz curled his hand into a fist as he stared at the comm display.
“Where is he?”
Kajek, a Nausicaan bounty hunter, shrugged. “I don’t know.”
“You said you’d found him.”
“No, I said I found his ship.”Kajek uploaded a series of images to Ganz’s screen via the subspace comm link. “It was on Zeta Aurigae IV two days ago.”
The Orion gangster studied the photographs and paid close attention to their details. The markings on Zett’s vessel were unmistakable, as was the unique bit of battle damage visible on its dorsal hull, just behind the cockpit canopy. “That’s his ship,” Ganz said. Then the image switched to one showing the vessel’s registry. “Those aren’t Nalori markings. Those are human symbols.”
“It says ‘Dulcinea’ in Federation Standard. I have no idea what it means.”
“It means someone stole Zett’s ship. Who has it?”
More images appeared on Ganz’s screen, narrated by Kajek. “Two humans. A man and a woman. I suspect he is the pilot and she a passenger.”
“You’re half right.” Ganz massaged his left temple to stave off a nascent headache induced by the bass-heavy music resounding from the gaming floor outside his office. “The man is Cervantes Quinn, and he’s almost certainly the pilot. But that woman is no mere passenger—she’s a Starfleet agent. I suspect they’ve been working together for some time now.”
It had been over a year since someone—Ganz had never been entirely certain who—had cleared all of Quinn’s debts with Ganz’s operation. All his attempts to trace the money to its source had proved futile. The only fruit of that labor had been a stern warning, delivered through intermediaries, that Quinn was to be left alone unless Ganz wanted to awaken one day with his throat cut.
Since taking that advice to heart, Ganz had suspected Quinn was working with Starfleet Intelligence, but until he had seen evidence of Zett’s stolen starship, he would not have believed Quinn bold enough to risk inviting Ganz’s wrath.
The Nausicaan interrupted Ganz’s somber reflection with a loud grunt. “Am I finished, then? Or do you have a new commission for me?”
“Hang on, I’m thinking.” He put the comm on standby and looked past its display toward his lover, Neera. She reclined in a seductive pose on the sofa, her raven mane spilling wildly over her jade-hued shoulders and concealing the choicest bits of her bare torso. “What do you think?”
She fixed him with a cold stare. “You knowwhat I think.”
“The situation has changed.”