Shifting her gaze upward to the offices above the warehouse, Bridy saw movement in the window on the left corner. An older, gray-bearded Klingon stood up and beckoned someone. A moment later, the Klingon spy appeared, and the two clasped each other’s forearms in a fierce greeting. Then the older Klingon reached back toward his desk, and the window swiftly fogged gray and turned opaque.
Not much time,Bridy realized. I need to get in there before they transmit that data off-world. She squinted into the shadowy warehouse. It was stacked high with crates, barrels, and bundles, and there was a large land vehicle with thick front tires and wide rear tracks. She counted four burly Klingons, all wearing civilian clothes but openly brandishing sidearms. Too many to ambush.
Bridy dug into her pockets and made a quick inventory of her assets. Her phaser and communicator were gone, and her tricorder was smashed. All she had was a small pouch of local currency.
Money in hand, she made a beeline to a massive, muscular alien lying half-awake in an open doorway nearby. She didn’t recognize his species but could tell by the lacerations on his knuckles and the empty bottle in his hand that he belonged to the great galactic fraternity of angry drunks. As she approached him, the bruiser looked up and growled at her through bared fangs.
Undaunted, Bridy spoke softly in Federation Standard and prayed the lummox at her feet understood her. “Want to make some fast money?”
The thug narrowed its eyes. “How much?”
“Five hundred szeket. Cash.”
Fangs bared as a threat transformed into a grin of avarice. “Who do you want me to kill?”
“No one.” She dropped her pouch of Gorn crystal currency into the alien’s soiled lap and smiled. “I just want you to put on a show.”
Ninety seconds later, none of the four Klingons from the warehouse seemed to care which alien had started the fight in front of their place of work. Apparently, all that mattered to them was that the two hulking brutes were pummeling each other with wild abandon, each pile-driver punch launching sprays of blood and broken teeth while the Klingons cheered and shouted encouragements.
In fact, they were so thoroughly engrossed by the impromptu brawl that they didn’t pay the slightest attention to Bridy Mac as she slinked behind their backs and dashed through the dimly lit warehouse behind them. To her relief, the door to the rear stairwell was unlocked. She cracked it open, slipped through the gap, and eased it shut behind her. Then she took the stairs two at a time to the upper floor.
Pausing at the top of the stairs, Bridy listened for voices or footfalls in the hallway beyond. All quiet. A quick peek confirmed the path to the corner office was clear. She stole out of the stairwell and skulked to the office’s door, which was open. Two voices from within, low and guttural, speaking in tlhIngan’Hol. She could translate only a handful of words and phrases from memory. Orions. Sensor data. Spy. Human. Secure. Beneath their conversation, she heard the distinctive feedback tones of a Klingon computer terminal.
She barged through the doorway and moved in a straight line for the spy. He was standing between her and the desk, where the older Klingon, who Bridy presumed was the spy’s Imperial Intelligence handler, sat facing a display that showed the contents of the data card inserted into his desktop reader.
The spy grabbed a Klingon dagger off the desk and thrust it at Bridy. She dodged the attack, seized the man’s forearm, and twisted it until it broke. The handler bolted from his chair, drew a disruptor from his belt, and lunged toward an alert button on the far end of his desk. Using the spy’s trapped broken arm as an anchor, Bridy pivoted and caught the handler with a spinning kick that slammed him against the wall. Then she planted her feet, flipped the spy over her shoulder, and stomped on his solar plexus, taking the wind out of him.
Confident the spy was down, Bridy charged the handler as he tried to aim his disruptor at her. She sidestepped the weapon’s muzzle, spun, and seized the handler’s arm. He shifted his weight in an unsuccessful bid to free his arm, and Bridy jabbed her elbow into his nose, which broke with a wet snap.
The handler lurched forward, pulling Bridy with him. She grabbed the disruptor’s long barrel and wrenched the weapon from his grasp. He kicked her behind her left knee, and she stumbled backward. In the half second it took her to regain her balance, the handler slammed his fist down onto his desk’s alert button.
A booming alarm reverberated throughout the warehouse.
Bridy leapt at the handler, locked one arm around his throat, and pressed the disruptor’s muzzle to his temple. “One word out of you,” she said in broken, ungrammatical tlhIngan’Hol,“and you’ll have a cinder for a head.”
Despite Bridy’s limited command of Klingon vocabulary and syntax, the handler seemed to get her point. He didn’t resist as she plucked the data card from his desk reader and tucked it into her pants pocket.
Tremors of heavy machinery shook the floor and filled the office with a muted hum. The handler glared at Bridy from the corner of his eye. “The warehouse door is closed, and my men are coming. You’re trapped.”
“Not likely.” She pistol-whipped the handler, let him fall to the floor, and then she pressed the transporter-recall button on her wrist.
Nothing happened.
Sprawled at her feet and clutching the bloodied back of his skull, the handler chortled. “Intruder alert . . . activates transport scrambler.” He bared his teeth at her. “As I said, human, you’re trapped.”
From the hallway, Bridy heard the irregular percussion of running, booted feet. Even with two hostages, she knew that one disruptor against four would be very bad odds. She eyed the handler’s desk and considered turning it on its side to use as a barrier—and then she noticed a second button, right beside the one he had pressed. The markings above it were familiar, but their translation eluded her. She aimed at the handler. “What does ‘ lon’ mean?” He glowered and said nothing. Bridy was about to threaten him when she remembered that the warehouse was full of toxic chemicals and low-grade explosives. Then her Klingon-language training kicked in, and she remembered why the word lonwas important.
She pressed the second button, and a different, higher-pitched alarm wailed from the building’s PA system. Then she flipped over the director’s desk, fired a short fusillade through the open doorway to slow down the approaching goons, and then crouched beside the handler. Teasing him with a smirk, she said, “It means ‘evacuate.’ And according to Klingon standard operating procedure, an evacuation alarm drops all shields and transport scramblers.” She punched the handler in the face, then keyed her transporter recall. Almost immediately, she felt the pull of a transporter’s annular confinement beam. “Adios,” she said, flipping the handler a one-finger salute just before she started to dematerialize. “It’s been fun.”
She vanished just in time to avoid the barrage of disruptor fire that blasted the handler’s desk into smoldering splinters, and materialized in a golden swirl of energy inside the transporter pod aboard the Dulcinea,grateful that the rubindium-transponder transporter recall bracelet issued to her by Starfleet Intelligence had, for once, worked as promised.
She dashed out of the cocoonlike alcove as Quinn—scuffed, tattered, bruised, and bloody—scrambled into the ship’s main compartment via the starboard ramp. They collided, locked eyes, and declared in unison, “Time to go!”
9
Ganz narrowed his eyes at the viewscreen image of Kajek, whose Nausicaan visage he found inscrutable. “He got the drop on you?” The Orion furrowed his green brow in confusion. “You’re sure it was Quinn?”
“Absolutely certain.” A hint of amusement crept into his tone. “He wants me to give you a message. He says Zett came after him on a personal vendetta and got what he deserved. My life was spared to prove Zett’s death wasn’t personal.”