“Would you gentlemen care to let me in on whatever you’re pretending not to argue about?”
Quinn’s shoulders slumped with defeat, and he started the liftoff sequence. Pennington swiveled his chair to give Terrell a clear view out the front of the cockpit’s canopy. “Right, mate—you might want to have a look at this.”
Terrell leaned forward and focused his eyes past the rain and the roiling clouds. In the darkness below the storm lurked a city of titanic curves and twisting shapes, its undulating ribbons of light concealed by steady ground strikes of forked lightning.
The river he had been following flowed directly into the heart of the alien city, as did several others that snaked through the jungle valley. Pennington nodded at the sinister vista. “If your missing gal was riding the river, that’s where she’ll be.”
Terrell’s mind was racing. The young Scotsman was right, but with all the interference that had garbled his tricorder’s sensors, he couldn’t be sure Theriault was alive or, for that matter, where in that vast metropolis she might be. If only I could break through the noise and get a clear reading. Then he looked around at the cockpit itself. “Mr. Quinn, can I access your ship’s sensors from this console?”
“Um, yeah,” Quinn said. “Why?”
Terrell said, “I’m going to patch my tricorder into your sensors. You’ll provide the power and the hardware to give me the range I need; the tricorder’s software will make sense out of the signals it gets from your ship.” Activating the tricorder, he added, “If Ensign Theriault’s alive, we’re going to find her right now.”
Quinn raised his eyebrows in surprised admiration of the tricorder. “That little gizmo can do all that?”
“And a lot more,” Terrell said as he made the necessary adjustments to slave the Rocinante’s sensor array to the tricorder. It was a fortunate side effect of the signal dampener’s fading power that its effective range had shrunk to less than two meters, which would prevent it from interfering with the Rocinante’s sensor hardware.
A faint human life sign appeared on the tricorder’s screen.
“She’s alive,” Terrell said. “And she’s in there. Bearing zero-zero-three, range fifteen-point-two kilometers.”
Quinn grimaced with doubt as he looked at the churning mountain of black clouds atop a city under constant siege by heaven’s artillery. “In there?”
Pennington goaded his friend, “We’ve come this far, mate. Might as well go the distance.”
The scruffy older man frowned at Terrell, who simply repeated, in an imploring tone, “She’s alive.”
“Well,” Quinn said, “I guess that settles it, then.” He keyed the ship’s main thrust and accelerated toward the storm. “Strap in, kids. This is gonna be a rough ride.”
Me and my big mouth, Pennington lamented as turbulence rocked the Rocinante.
Wind buffeted the small ship and tossed it like a toy. The wings bobbled, and the nose dipped, threatening to knock the ship into one of the massive, organic-looking towers that it was dodging between. A steady stream of low curses attested to Quinn’s growing frustration at trying to hold a steady course.
The downpour had become so intense that visibility ahead of the ship was reduced to a few dozen meters. Jagged forks of lightning flashed across their path, flooding the cockpit with blinding light as godhammers of thunder pounded the hull.
A split-second to a collision. “Look out, mate!”
Quinn banked the ship hard to port, barely tilting the starboard nacelle clear of what would have been a shattering impact with a mist-mantled spire.
“Good call,” Quinn said. “Keep it up.”
An updraft nearly stalled their forward motion. Then it ceased, and they plummeted into a nosedive. Quinn struggled with the controls, and the engines howled as the ship fought its way back to level—only to find the airspace ahead blocked by a network of open causeways. Gunning the ship’s thrusters into overdrive, Quinn forced the ship into a steep climb. “I love this part,” he said through a clenched jaw.
“Bear to starboard when we’re clear,” Terrell called out over the roar of the engines. “We’re close to her, maybe two kilometers. I’ve got her life signs locked in.”
“Roger that,” Quinn said as he kept the ship’s nose up.
Pennington imagined that he was leaving finger dents in his seat’s armrest as he watched the city’s curved, sloping architecture pass within meters of the ship. The Rocinante cleared the coil of causeways and slipped between two majestic towers, then it barrel-rolled back to level flight—just as a crimson thunderbolt speared its aft hull.
An explosion rocked the ship. Sparks fountained from all the cockpit consoles, which then belched acrid smoke. The engines’ whine fell in pitch and volume, and Pennington felt their sudden reduction in speed. “Overload in the impulse motivator!” Quinn shouted. “Gotta set her down, fast!”
The helm controls stuttered on and off as Quinn guided the jerking, wobbling ship toward a wide, hollow space with a level floor inside one of the towers. Broad causeways stretched away from the tower in three directions, linking it to the center of the city as well as the outer reaches. The sides of the hollow looked alarmingly close as the groaning hulk of the Rocinante approached for an awkward, half-powered landing.
Pennington made a nervous, dry swallow and glanced at Quinn. “Sure you can make that?”
“I’ve made worse,” Quinn said.
“So that’s a yes?”
“It’s a maybe.”
A final tap on the thruster controls brought the ship to a rough and sudden stop inside the hollow tower. Quinn released his safety harness and scrambled out of his seat. “I gotta get the motivator fixed,” he said. “If we’re lucky, I can get us airborne in fifteen minutes.” Lifting his chin in a half-nod at Terrell, he added, “You got that long to find your gal, then we’re leaving.”
“Wait a second,” Terrell said, and to Pennington’s surprise Quinn stopped and listened. “We need the ship to find her.”
Hooking one thumb over his shoulder, Quinn said, “Pal, we’ll be lucky to punch through the storm and get back to orbit. Two more minutes gettin’ hammered in this mess, and we’ll be done for. This ride’s over.”
“What am I supposed to do?” Terrell asked sarcastically, waving his hand over his mauled body. “Run in and get her?”
Pennington glared at Quinn. Don’t say it. With all his wished-for psychic ability he commanded him, Don’t say it.
“Send the newsboy,” Quinn said.
Damn you, I told you not to say it.
Terrell turned his desperate gaze to Pennington. “Please, we’re her only chance. She probably doesn’t even know we’re out here.” He held up the tricorder. “This is locked on to her signal; you can follow it right to her. She’s only…” He checked its display. “One-point-nine-three kilometers away, toward the city center, almost on the same level.” Pennington stared at the tricorder and hesitated to answer. Going alone into an alien city under siege by rain and lightning, to face who knows what, was not the story he’d hoped to find by coming back to Jinoteur. Then Terrell repeated simply, “Please. You’re her only chance.”
He took the tricorder from Terrell. “Right,” he said, slinging the device’s strap diagonally across his torso, as he had seen the Starfleeters do on Vanguard. “I’m on it.”
Terrell handed him his communicator. “Take this, too. Contact us as soon as you find her.”
“Will do, mate.” Pennington tilted his head toward Quinn and said to Terrell, “Don’t let him leave without me.” He unlocked the aft ramp. The platform lowered with a pathetic series of metallic shrieks. The white noise of pounding rain and the constant rumbling of close thunder filled the main cabin.