She struck in a flash of thought, an action of pure will. The attack was unstoppable, its effect irreversible.
Her loyal host recoiled in shock and horror. The blow had found its mark—and the Apostate was unbowed.
You cannot unmake me, he taunted the Maker. That age is past. Dead secrets have been resurrected, and I shall bow to you nevermore. In the hush that followed his proclamation, he freed another Kollotaan. Fifteen roads remain. I guarantee safe passage to all who depart now—and oblivion to all who remain.
The Maker trembled with rage at his heresy. Then she cast off her avatar and passed through the Conduit into exile.
So began the second exodus.
Legions of Serrataal abandoned their shapes of the moment and followed one another in panicked flights, seeking safe havens under distant stars. The Apostate permitted them to escape, knowing even as they renounced this world that one of their ranks would not follow them, spiteful to the very end.
Brash beyond her years, the Wanderer burned with hatred and held her ground. This battle is not over, she pledged.
But the war is, decreed the Apostate. And you have lost.
26
“Eight hundred thousand qelIqams and closing,” Tonar reported. “Disruptors ready.”
Captain Kutal eyed the tiny Starfleet ship on the main viewscreen. Hardly a prize worthy of us, he lamented. But that doesn’t mean I plan on letting her get away. “Arm a volley of torpedoes,” he commanded. “Wide dispersal. I want that ship captured, not destroyed—understood?”
“Yes, sir,” Tonar replied.
Recalling the beating his ship had taken during its last two sorties into the Jinoteur system, Kutal eyed the fourth planet’s trio of satellites with suspicion. “BelHoQ,” he said, summoning the first officer with a jerk of his head. “Any activity on those moons?”
“None, Captain,” BelHoQ said.
From an auxiliary tactical station, second officer Krom reported, “The Starfleet ship has begun evasive maneuvers.”
“And the hunt begins!” Kutal bellowed with a sharp grin. “Helm, stay with them. Full ahead.”
“Full ahead,” Qlar responded as he pushed the ship’s sublight drive to its limits. The hull of the Zin’za vibrated with the rising pitch of the strained engines.
Kutal surveyed his bridge crew and was pleased. Despite the overpowering and surprisingly persistent stench that infused the ship as a result of its septic sabotage on Borzha II, his men had pushed the foul reek from their thoughts and focused on the mission. It’s all about good men, Kutal reminded himself. You have to have good men. Good warriors.
“Four hundred thousand qelIqams,” Tonar announced.
“Hold for optimum firing range,” Kutal said.
On the main screen, the diminutive ship twisted, rolled, and vanished off the bottom edge of the viewer. “Agile at sublight,” BelHoQ observed.
“Very,” Kutal agreed. He barked at the helmsman, “Qlar, if they get away, you’re dead.”
The Zin’za’s engines shrieked with the effort of a high-impulse turn coupled with a corkscrew roll. Motivated by the threat of imminent execution, Qlar was discovering a new level of mastery over the battle cruiser’s flight controls. Less than six seconds later the Starfleet ship bobbed and rolled back into view, almost close enough for Kutal to read its markings.
Tonar called out, “Two hundred thousand qelIqams.”
“Fire torpedoes,” Kutal ordered. The ship echoed with the percussive ring of missiles leaving the forward torpedo tube. Six self-propelled munitions split up and tracked the Starfleet ship in wide, spiraling trails that skimmed the fourth planet’s upper atmosphere, leaving wispy contrails in their wakes. When all six torpedoes flanked the enemy ship, they detonated, enveloping the outrider in an antimatter-charged blaze.
“Now disruptors,” Kutal said, smiling broadly. “Let’s see what it takes to make them surrender.”
“Port shields buckling,” Sorak reported, sounding to McLellan as if he thought it was just any other item of business.
Smoke and warning lights blanketed the bridge of the Sagittarius in crimson fog. McLellan could barely see her hands on the console in front of her, but the warning lights on her display burned bright through the haze. “Port nacelle’s venting plasma!” she shouted above the wail of engine noise. Disruptor fire from the massive Klingon battle cruiser strafed the Sagittarius, which heaved and lurched as its inertial dampeners stuttered from the overload. “Update,” she added. “Port nacelle is on fire.”
“Sayna,” Nassir said over the din, “get us out of the atmosphere. Head for the closest moon, and hug the surface.”
“Aye, sir,” zh’Firro replied, banking the overtaxed scout ship hard away from the planet.
A warning beeped on Sorak’s console. “They’re locking disruptors—”
“I don’t think so,” zh’Firro said, her competitive streak in full effect. The starfield spun into a blur as she executed a maneuver so swift and complex that McLellan lost track of their position—until she saw the Klingon cruiser dead ahead of them, on a collision course. Its twin disruptor beams slashed past them, barely missing the Sagittarius. Then the scout ship zipped beneath the Zin’za and raced away from it as the larger vessel fought to make a clumsy rolling turn and continue its pursuit.
Xiong stood over the science station—or, at least, what was left of it now that he had extinguished the fire in its duotronic relays. He kicked the access panel shut and set down the emergency fire extinguisher. “Primary sensors are gone,” he said, crossing the bridge. “I’ll fire up the secondary.”
Sorak spoke over his shoulder, “The Klingon cruiser has come about and is back in pursuit. Range two hundred thousand kilometers and closing.”
McLellan got up from the engineering console and favored her left leg as she moved to stand beside Captain Nassir. “Ming,” she said, “look for structures on the moons we can use for cover, and relay the data to Sayna.”
“You got it,” Xiong said, patching in all of the ship’s still-functioning sensor systems.
Nassir swiveled his chair toward Sorak. “Any sign they’ve detected the Rocinante?”
“Negative, Captain,” Sorak replied. “We appear to be their sole object of interest.”
The captain smirked ruefully at McLellan and confided, “I guess that’s the bad news and the good news.”
McLellan replied, “Vulcans are very efficient, sir.”
“And we have excellent hearing,” Sorak added with a reproving lift of one age-whitened eyebrow. “Range one hundred thousand kilometers and closing. They are locking disruptors.”
Another pinwheeling turn turned stars to streaks. Then McLellan was looking at the pockmarked gray landscape of an airless moon. Reddish-orange beams of disruptor energy coursed past the Sagittarius and cut long, charred streaks across the moon’s surface. As they leveled out of their vertical dive, the hard angles and tailored curves of artificial structures came into view ahead of them. Though there were gaps in the dense array of towers and artillery emplacements, McLellan couldn’t imagine that any of them were large enough to grant passage to a starship, even one as compact as the Sagittarius.
“Please tell me we’re not—”
“Yes, we are,” zh’Firro said, cutting her off. “You might want to close your eyes, though.” At that, the young zhen guided the ship into a slow roll and started navigating through a narrow maze of rock-hard surfaces in which one error would spell instantaneous destruction.
McLellan wanted to shut her eyes, but morbid fascination made that completely impossible.
Even at one-eighth impulse, the obstacles and surfaces were nothing more to the second officer’s eyes than a pale gray blur, then a sun-bleached white blur. Every few seconds a close disruptor shot peppered the Sagittarius with rocky debris. Undaunted, zh’Firro rolled and banked the ship, slipping it through walls of fire and evading barriers of broken stone.