He gathered his tools and hauled the heavy toolbox back toward the aft ramp, noting with concern the speed with which fractures spread through the surface on which his ship stood. His pace quickened as he climbed the ramp. Time to get the hell outta here.
The aft ramp lifted shut with a slow, pathetic whine as he stowed the toolbox in the main compartment, which still stank of scorched metal and burnt duotronic cables. From the cockpit he heard Terrell talking to someone on the comm. “Can you see where you are? Any landmarks outside?”
“Not yet,” a woman replied, her voice shaking as if she were talking while running. “We’re still looking for a way out.”
“Keep the channel open,” Terrell said. “As soon as we get a lock on you, we’ll come get you.”
“Will do,” the woman said as Quinn returned to the cockpit. Terrell acknowledged him with a questioning look.
Settling into his seat, Quinn said, “We’re mobile. What’s goin’ on?”
“He found her,” Terrell said. “Now they have to get into the open so we can evac them.”
Firing up the engines, Quinn said, “They better do it fast, this place is fallin’ apart.” Several gauges on Quinn’s console flickered sporadically as he tried to conduct his preflight check. He slapped the console, and everything stopped flashing.
A buzzing from the overhead panel alerted Quinn to an incoming signal on the ship-to-ship subspace channel. He patched it in to the main speaker and heard a woman’s voice squawk through a loud scratch of static. “Rocinante, this is the Sagittarius. Please respond.”
“This is Rocinante,” Quinn said. “Go ahead.”
The next voice on the channel was Captain Nassir’s. “Mr. Quinn, have you found Commander Terrell?”
“A-firmative,” Quinn replied. “He’s right here with me.”
“Then I recommend you lift off and follow us out of the system immediately,” Nassir said. “We have company—a Klingon battle cruiser. They’ll make orbit in less than two minutes.”
“No can do,” Quinn said, looking at Terrell to confirm they were in agreement. “We got a lead on your girl Theriault, and my friend Tim went in to get her.”
“Send us their coordinates,” Nassir said. “We’ll beam them up before we break orbit.”
“Sorry, Captain,” Terrell said. “Too much interference. We can’t get a signal clean enough for transport. We’ll have to do this the old-fashioned way.”
Nassir’s anxiety was apparent. “However you do it, if you aren’t under way in the next sixty seconds you’ll be going toe-to-toe with a Klingon battle cruiser.” In a more somber tone he added, “Clark, I’m serious—we have to go.”
Terrell muted the channel and looked at Quinn. “It’s your ship,” he said. “That means it’s up to you. If we don’t leave now, we’ll be an easy target for the Klingons.”
Guiding the ship forward out of its cover inside the hollow tower and back into the maelstrom of rain and lightning, Quinn said with conviction, “I ain’t leavin’ Tim here.”
“Then let’s go get him,” Terrell said. He reopened the channel to the Sagittarius. “Captain, we’re going in to get Pennington and Theriault. If you have to break orbit, go. We’ll take our chances with the Klingons.”
Quinn accelerated and slalomed the Rocinante through a flurry of lightning strokes. He glanced at the tracking display on the navigation computer and made a mental note of the general bearing and range to Pennington and Theriault’s communicator signal. A dense cluster of collapsing towers and causeways blocked a direct route, forcing him to circumnavigate the disintegrating metropolis.
He had almost forgotten that the subspace channel was still open when Nassir responded to Terrell’s last transmission. “Do what you have to, Clark,” the starship captain said. “We’ll keep the Klingons busy as long as we can. Sagittarius out.”
Closing the channel, Terrell muttered, “Vaya con Dios, Captain.” He held on to the console as Quinn banked sharply to avoid another bolt of electricity slashing across the sky. Concussions of thunder shook the small freighter constantly. Terrell winced in pain as he pressed an odd, fist-sized object against his savaged midsection. He grinned at Quinn. “Thanks for not giving up,” he said.
“Never an option,” Quinn said, rolling the ship over and around a falling tower.
Nodding, Terrell said, “I know what you mean. I couldn’t leave either if my best friend was in there.”
“He ain’t my best friend,” Quinn admitted, as much to himself as to Terrell. “He’s my only friend.”
Ancient seals had been broken and eldritch bonds sundered by the fires they were made to contain. The Apostate beheld the ire of the Kollotaan and saw not the savage race they had been aeons past but the sentient beings they had become and the fury with which they rejected their renewed bondage. They were united in one proud temper, strong in will, by nature opposed to the burden of the yoke.
With every Voice the Apostate parted from the First Conduit an avenue closed. Across the distant light-years, throughout the former possessions of the Shedai, Conduits recently awakened went dark, robbed of the Voices’ inspiration. Flee, he warned his partisans. While paths of choice remain.
Another Voice twisted and fought even as the Apostate sought to end its enslavement. These were creatures too fierce to be tamed, he was certain of it. How could the Wanderer have believed such as these would ever submit? Space-time folded and reshaped itself to fit his will, and instantly the great mass of imprisoned Kollotaan from the Conduit’s core were returned to their ship, along with two of their number who had been bonded to the nodes. More than a score continued to await their freedom.
Through the nodes that remained, an exodus began. Dozens of his allies among the Serrataal heeded his admonition to abandon this world; some, perhaps, even sensed what he intended to do.
At first he heard the jubilation of the Maker and her host, rejoicing at his partisans’ retreat, erroneously believing that it signaled their victory. Only too late did they realize what was being set in motion and converge upon him in numbers.
Of his faithful battalions, only the Myrmidon and the Thaumaturge remained at his side, awaiting the coming onslaught. The Apostate prepared to release two more Kollotaan from their nodes. Take these roads, he counseled his brothers. I will close them behind you.
We would remain, countered the Myrmidon. If we go, who will stand with you against the Maker?
The Apostate assured them, She will not stand. Where I am going, she will not follow…. Go.
His brothers obeyed, shed their avatars, and bade him farewell. Their subtle bodies passed through the nodes and made their transit across the cold gulf of space-time, to worlds ready to receive them with splendors befitting their stations. As soon as they were away, he released those nodes’ Kollotaan and shifted them back to their ship.
The Maker and her battle-wearied host surrounded him in the Conduit chamber. Their collective animosity had taken on a presence all its own; it was a radiant anger, glowing like an ember in the endless night. Yield, commanded the Maker.
I will not wear the colors of a penitent, the Apostate declared, punctuating his defiance with a flaring of the Conduit’s fire. When it receded and the flames banked themselves in the machine’s core, all could see that four more Kollotaan had been freed. Sixteen roads remain, he warned. Take them now.
A flood-crush of attacks assailed him. Most were of little consequence. The Sage had no weapons equal to him, and the Adjudicator and the Herald—though fearsome to the Telinaruul—were not warriors born. The Avenger and the Warden, however, existed to destroy and mete out punishment, and the Wanderer was a potent adversary in spite of her youth.
None, however, was on a par with the Maker, the oldest of the Serrataal and the only one older than the Apostate. Her power was plenary, and her touch alone could unmake any of them.