As Pennington started down the ramp, Quinn called out, “Tim!” When the reporter looked back, Quinn added simply, “Good luck.”
Pennington nodded his thanks to the older man and hurried down the ramp. He checked his bearings, then sprinted across the rain-slicked, lightning-flanked causeway toward the fog-shrouded grandeur at the heart of the alien metropolis.
Halfway across the bridge, sprinting through the deluge, deaf from the cannonades of thunder, he realized that he was laughing. He knew that there was a good chance his beau geste would get him killed and end in failure, but the journalist in him had to admit the obvious: this was the most amazing thing he had ever seen, and this was the best thing he had ever done.
And that had to count for something.
“I’ll hold the plasma conduit steady,” Threx said to Torvin. “You lock it in. And make it fast.”
Before the spindly young Tiburonian engineer’s mate could explain to Threx that hefting the end of a plasma conduit by hand without an antigrav was impossible, the burly Denobulan had already done it. “Threx,” he said. “That’s not possible.”
Forcing words through a pained grunt, Threx snapped, “Just lock it in, Tor!” His gruff instruction drew the attention of nearly the entire crew, including Captain Nassir, who was pitching in to speed the repairs.
Torvin put aside his fascination with Threx’s display of raw strength and rapidly sealed the mag clamps that would secure the starboard nacelle’s plasma line to the ship’s warp core. Halfway through the job he stopped and strained to pick out a muffled sound from behind the clatter of work on the top deck and the ambient low-frequency warble of the river.
Threx quickly grew annoyed as Torvin stood motionless and stared blankly at the overhead. “Dammit, Tor, would you hurry—”
“Shh,” Torvin hissed. “I hear something. Outside.”
Ilucci, overhearing their exchange, told everyone on the deck in a sharp whisper, “Hold the work! Quiet!” In seconds a hush fell over the crew, and Torvin closed his eyes to concentrate on the sounds that were all around them. He tuned out the huffs of the others’ breathing, the gentle humming of the computer core, even the sound of the river itself.
Then his delicately sensitive ears found it, far off but getting closer: irregular percussive tremors, throbbing along the riverbed, through the ship’s hull, and into his feet. “Impacts,” he said to the captain. “Something punching through the water and hitting the bottom, over and over again. And it’s coming this way. I’d say we’ve got ten minutes, tops.”
“Trying to flush us out,” Nassir said. “Crude search-and-destroy tactics.”
“Crude but effective,” Ilucci said. “Time to brainstorm, people. No idea’s too stupid. Whatever you got, let’s hear it.”
Most of the time, Torvin was content to let the others formulate the plans. He was the youngest, least experienced member of the crew. It felt presumptuous to him to think that he could suggest something they hadn’t thought of, but the notion that he’d been toying with since returning to duty after the crash was too compelling for him not to share. He raised his hand and haltingly said, “I have an idea.”
Ilucci made a broad gesture and said, “The floor’s yours, kid. Whatcha got?”
“The dampening frequency we used in our shields when we entered the system,” he said, looking around at the others, who watched him with patient expectation. “It worked for a while, but it wasn’t enough to keep the Shedai from coming after us. But what if it was more concentrated? We could set the phaser emitters to the same frequency. We’d only get one shot before burnout, but a really good dose might back them off.”
Captain Nassir nodded and smiled approvingly. “The best defense is a good offense, eh? I like it. What do you think, Master Chief?”
“I think it sounds like a plan, Skipper,” Ilucci said. “Sayna, Sorak, Razka—you’ll do the honors. Cahow, reroute the battery power from shields to phasers.” He clapped his hands. “Move with a purpose, people! Clock’s ticking!”
Everyone snapped into action. Sorak, zh’Firro, and Razka went forward toward the access crawlspace for the phaser systems, and Cahow went aft toward the battery power taps. As Torvin turned back to help Threx finish connecting the port plasma conduit, Ilucci gave the young man a friendly pat on the back. “Good work, Tor,” he said with a brotherly smile, and he moved on.
Threx’s knees trembled under the burden of holding the half-secured plasma conduit, and fat beads of sweat rolled down his scruffy face. “Proud of you, Tor,” he said through a voice pulled taut with effort. “Now get this thing secured before my guts end up on the deck.”
Sharp cracks of breaking stone surrounded Theriault and the Apostate as they traversed a long enclosed passageway. Outside, massive slabs of the city’s ramparts and towers slid away into the yawning chasms between the steeply sloped structures, like icebergs calving from a glacier. Inside, fissures spiderwebbed across the massive arched ceilings, raining fine gray dust on Theriault’s red hair.
“The city’s falling apart!” she said, ducking stone debris.
Several heavy chunks of the ceiling were deflected by a nimbus of energy that sprang into being above the Apostate. Only belatedly did she realize that he had enlarged himself and now towered mightily over her. “The Colloquium contracts,” he said. “Something terrible has occurred.” A malicious gloating darkened his aspect. “I warned them not to underestimate your kind.”
“You mean my shipmates?” she asked.
He signaled her to follow him as he continued down the rib-walled passage toward the dome-shaped structure he had called the First Conduit. “No. Others like you, on a planet far from here. Many thousands, and several of your starships.” She jogged along beside his enormous but ghostly form, grateful for the shelter he offered from the jagged boulders of broken obsidian that fell from the crumbling ceiling. “A great commitment of power was made there, to serve as a warning…and an example.” Again, that cruel amusement. “It does not appear to have produced the result that the Maker intended.”
The Apostate halted without warning. Theriault stumbled to a stop beside him. “What’s wrong?”
“Others draw near,” he said. “Your presence has become known to the Colloquium.” As if summoned by his words, eight hulking black shapes separated from the walls behind and ahead of them, as if shadows had been transmuted into stone. They were the deadly killing machines that Xiong had warned them about.
Watching the dark crystalline giants lumber forward, Theriault instinctively drew her phaser. As she did so, eight more identical obsidian sentinels grew from the floor, even closer than the others. Her finger tensed in front of the firing stud. Then she held her fire—the newly arrived sentinels moved to intercept the others. She looked up at the Apostate, hoping for good news. “Are they with you?”
“They are me,” he answered as the battle was joined. Shards of crystalline shrapnel filled the air as the sentinels mercilessly hammered one another to pieces. Every few seconds, one of them shattered and fell to dust, only to be replaced by another from the ceiling or walls. It was a brutal stalemate. Then the tide of the melee shifted, and the attackers began losing ground; the circle of safety around the Apostate widened.
Huddled in his penumbra, Theriault watched the struggle with wonder. “You can control multiple bodies at once?”
“Several limbs, several bodies,” he said. “One mind. It is a difference not of kind but of degree. They are the Nameless, limited to one form at a time. I am Serrataal. I am legion.”
A tremor-inducing rumble drew swiftly near. At the far ends of the passage in which she and the Apostate stood, hundreds of sentinels emerged from between the ribs of the passageway’s sloped walls. “Um, I think we have company.”