Platters were heaped with spoiled Pipius claws, rotting bregit lung, and mold-covered heart of targ. Steins overflowed with sewage-tainted warnog. Dishes of rokeg blood pie crawled with bugs. Skewers of zilm’kach melted into orange slag.
The gagh was dead.
Kutal’s men hurled their trays of inedible food against the walls. The crashing trays were not loud enough to drown out the chorus of Klingon vulgarities echoing through the ship.
Picking up a fistful of the expired serpent worms, Kutal looked at the ruined delicacy and shook his head in dismay at this final insult. “Who would be so ruthless?”
19
Through the dense silhouette of the Jinoteur forest, the sky paled with early morning light. Niwara gathered up the perimeter security devices that had helped protect the site next to the river, where she and Terrell had camped for the night. The first officer busied himself securing their packs for travel.
“How much longer do you want to continue downriver?” she asked, hoping that he would not be hasty to abandon the search.
He looked at the brown water flowing past, then peered downriver as if looking there for the answer. “As long as we can,” he said, “or until the captain orders us back.”
A gentle pass of Niwara’s nimble paw powered down the last sensor device. It retracted into itself, becoming compact for storage and transport. She picked it up and tossed it into her secondary pack. At the riverside, Terrell adjusted the settings on his tricorder. “Still no sign of her,” he said. He looked worried as he added, “And the interference is getting worse.”
“What’s it from?” She squinted at the shafts of white light that cut through the jungle at shallow angles. “Is it solar?”
Looking skyward, Terrell said, “I don’t know.” He put away the tricorder. “I can’t tell if it’s natural or artificial. All I can say for sure is that it’s intense and it’s everywhere.”
Niwara cinched shut her spare pack and was about to walk over and claim her main pack from Terrell when a change in the air bristled her whiskers. An ozone smell and a galvanic tingle made the fur on her tail stand at attention. She stood absolutely still, searching with her ears, her eyes, and her nose. Terrell noticed her hyperalert state and remained quiet. With slow, cautious motions he reopened his pack, then drew his type-2 phaser from his belt. Together they waited.
Overhead, the sky was clear. A soft breeze rustled the foliage around them and brushed the surface of the river with small ripples across the current. There was no sign of danger, no matter where the Caitian scout directed her acute senses, yet she remained certain that something hostile was nearby.
Then she felt it. A cold breath announced its presence. The glow of dawn through the trees dimmed. Daylight faded.
Giant blades of dark flame appeared in mid-jab, lancing out of the jungle in lightning blurs of shimmering indigo. The beam from Terrell’s phaser passed through them without resistance.
Niwara dodged the first thrusts and called out, “Run, sir!” Twisting to evade another death-stroke, she cried, “Take cover!” The bladelike projections behaved like serpents, attacking and recoiling repeatedly. One agonizing strike tore off part of her right shoulder and spun her around to see that Terrell was already under attack, surrounded and taking serious hits to his torso. A glancing blow across the back of his head stunned him. He dropped his phaser.
She sprinted toward him and leaped, knocking him backward into the river. Wounded and dazed, he submerged for a moment, then spluttered back to the surface. Niwara knew that merely submerging him would not be enough to protect him; he would need the signal dampener.
An overpowering blow swept her legs and hurled her into the air. Marshaling her species’ natural agility, she rolled through her landing and somersaulted toward the pack that held their signal dampener. As she rolled to her feet, a pointed tentacle of crackling energy slammed into her abdomen and impaled her. Slashes of glowing violet severed her left front paw. She let herself pitch forward and landed on her right paw.
The pack was only a couple of meters away. Pulling with one arm and kicking with both legs, she fought against the agony in her gut, ignored the sharp impacts falling on her upper back, blocked out the burning sensation that began to consume her. Sinister coils of scarlet fire entwined her legs and tried to drag her backward, but she refused to lose ground.
Centimeters now. Almost within reach…
Her fingers grasped the already opened pack and pulled it on its side toward her. She thrust her hand inside and grabbed the signal dampener. It activated with a simple push of a button. Extending her arm to throw the device to Terrell, she saw a blade of nightfire tensed above her.
She made the throw. It was a clumsy lob. The device barely made it to the river’s edge, where it rolled over the caked mud and disappeared into the murky currents. In her last moment, she looked for Terrell, but he was already gone.
Then a storm of cutting blows fell upon Niwara and ended her suffering with oblivion.
Getting knocked into the river had been a boon and a curse. Coughing out the dirty water had racked Terrell’s wounded body, but the momentary respite from the melee had given him a chance to collect his wits. He wished as quickly that it hadn’t.
A quartet of fearsome tentacles congealed into existence from empty air directly above him. His feet slipped on the muddy riverbed. Dammit, I’m off-balance, and I can’t move worth a damn in the water. Watching the tendrils assume the form of undulating spears, he braced for the worst.
The signal dampener thudded onto the mud in front of him. Niwara’s arm was still curled from having made the throw. A barrage of glowing shapes stabbed at her in a frenzy of violence. As the device rolled down the sloped riverbank into the water, Terrell saw that it had been activated.
He dived after it.
There was nothing to see under the water, so Terrell made his best guess and searched with his hands, making broad overlapping circles ahead of him, shifting side-to-side. He brushed the fist-sized object, which lay half-embedded in the soft mud. His fingers closed over it like a trap and yanked it free. He clutched it to his chest and kicked with what little strength he had left.
Panic propelled him for what felt like forever on a single breath. When his lungs screamed for air and his leg muscles burned from the effort of fighting to go forward and also stay submerged, he reluctantly surfaced. He lifted his head above the water slowly, expecting attack…but found only silence.
Daylight and a slow breeze greeted him as he waded ashore and collapsed in an exhausted heap atop the signal dampener. Mud had collected inside his jumpsuit and his boots. Sand and grit caked his close-cropped hair. He took a quick inventory. Phaser’s gone, he noted glumly. Left the tricorder behind. Checking his belt, he was relieved to find his communicator still firmly in place.
He was careful to keep the signal dampener close as he gingerly pulled off his torn, soaking-wet, muddy jumpsuit. Every move he made hurt enormously, and the pain in his midsection grew worse by the minute. Inspecting his own injuries, he winced at the sheer number of deep puncture wounds on his chest and abdomen—in particular, one deep wound that he knew ought to be bleeding copiously but instead was scabbed with the same peculiar crystalline substance that had encased McLellan’s leg after her brush with the Shedai. He recalled Tan Bao’s report that the crystalline substance was prone to spread quickly—and that when it made contact with vital organs, it would be fatal.
Vital organs are where I just got hit, he realized. Best-case scenario, I’ll be dead by noon.
Though Terrell was normally not one to foist his problems onto others, he decided as he reached for his communicator that in this case a call for help was definitely in order.