Then she noted with trepidation, “Captain, we’re about to run out of cover.”
Nassir asked, “Can we double back?”
“We had disruptors on our tail the whole time,” Xiong said.
“That was a one-way trip.”
The ship streaked back into open space above the surface of the moon and was immediately rocked by a powerful disruptor shot. McLellan was launched forward and down, and her right leg, already stiff, buckled under her.
“Dorsal shields collapsing, Captain,” Sorak said.
“Continuing evasive maneuvers,” zh’Firro said.
The captain jabbed at the intraship comm. “Bridge to top deck. We need warp speed, Master Chief!”
“And I need to fix the valve on that crappy fuel pod!” Ilucci snapped back in reply.
Nassir thumbed off the comm switch and looked at McLellan, who had just pulled herself back to her feet by his side. Three more disruptor strikes pounded the ship in quick succession. This time McLellan held on to the captain’s chair for support as the ship pitched and rolled.
“Clark usually has a bright idea right about now,” Nassir confided to McLellan.
A nearby torpedo detonation hammered the Sagittarius, and Sorak barely leaped clear of the weapons console as it exploded, showering the bridge with brilliant sparks.
Xiong looked up from the auxiliary science station. “The Klingons are in transporter range.”
“They won’t begin transport until they have us in a tractor beam,” Sorak interjected.
McLellan wasn’t encouraged by that news. She looked at Xiong. “How long until they’re in tractor-beam range?”
“Sixty seconds,” he said. “Maybe less.”
Nassir nodded. “Just enough time.”
Not sure she wanted to know, McLellan asked, “For what?”
“To brush up on our tlhIngan,” Nassir said with a smirk. “I don’t suppose you know the Klingon word for ‘mother,’ by any chance? I want to make a strong first impression.”
Pennington was halfway around the corner when Theriault snagged his rain-sodden shirt and yanked him backward. A shuttle-sized wedge of black marble crashed down in his path, burying itself in the stone floor, which shattered like an eggshell.
Theriault pointed. “This way!”
He followed her down an adjacent passage that led back outside. Groundquakes were disintegrating the city’s foundation and pulverizing its lofty arches. In every direction they turned, tunnels imploded. Gone were the warring goliaths; all that remained was a city collapsing into itself. A constant, deafening roar assaulted Pennington and Theriault as they ran; he was unable to tell whether it was thunder from the storm raging outside or the death throes of the city.
The passageway rolled to the left, hurling them both against the wall. Ahead of them, the end of the passage broke away from the promenade that ringed the building’s exterior. A jagged edge of broken rock began to rise, blocking the end of the tunnel. It’s not rising, Pennington realized. This building is sinking. He scrambled to his feet and pulled Theriault with him as he sprinted toward the tunnel’s swiftly closing exit.
He reached the edge first and kneeled, offering his cupped hands as a step for Theriault. She leaped onto his hands and pushed off of his shoulders as he launched her through the narrow opening above him. The nimble ensign tumbled and rolled to her feet. He leaped up, counting on her to return the favor as he scrambled to pull himself through the gap before it scissored him in twain. She didn’t disappoint him: her hands locked onto his arms with fierce determination, and she tugged him clear.
Rain slashed over them, driven by a moaning wind. Behind them, the interior of the great building sank into a churning vortex of crushed obsidian that swirled and flowed like a liquid. Only the broad curves and steep slopes of its exterior were left standing. A flash of lightning revealed the shattered, crumbling cityscape all around them. Ahead of them stretched a long causeway, which led to a tower whose odd organic shape reminded Pennington of a bone.
They were three steps onto the bridge when another staccato burst of lightning betrayed the fact that the tower they were running toward was toppling sideways—and taking their bridge with it. Slipping to a precarious stop on the rain-slicked surface, Pennington caught Theriault. “Go back!”
She scrambled through a flailing turn, with him directly behind her. They tumbled off the bridge as it sheared away from the promenade and broke into hundreds of pieces swallowed by the storm. There was no cover, no room to retreat. Pennington flipped open the communicator Terrell had loaned him. “Quinn! Can you hear me? We’re trapped! Where are you?”
Through the spattering of static and the oscillating wail and whine of random signals, Pennington thought he might have heard Quinn’s voice. Dismayed to find his luck running true to form, he slapped the communicator shut and tucked it back in his pocket. Then Theriault’s arms were around him, squeezing tight.
In an electric slash of light across the blackened sky, he saw the reason for her sudden embrace. Another tower was pitching over and falling to its doom—directly toward them.
Time felt to Pennington as if it had slowed down. His mind was racing against the moment, and where he had expected to find nothing but panic and paralysis he found clarity.
The tower fractured as it fell and cut a path through the storm that deluged the city. The rain whipped at their bodies and faces; it kicked off of the buildings’ façades in a gray mist and ran down them in sheets, hugging the organic curvatures of the biomechanoid metropolis. Far below, frothing eddies of runoff merged and flowed toward low ground.
There was no time to think it through, only time enough for a simple assurance—“Trust me,” he said to Theriault—and a leap of faith. He wrapped her in a bear hug, lifted her off the ground, and made a running jump into a softly angled groove in the building’s exterior, on a slope partially shielded from the falling tower. He wasn’t surprised that Theriault screamed as they dropped off the promenade into free fall; he was surprised that he didn’t.
It felt as if they were dropping without resistance. He spread his feet against the slippery wet sides of the groove in the wall and applied all the pressure he could. They continued to fall faster by the second, but he felt his back settle squarely into the groove, which was several inches deep with water and getting deeper the longer they fell. It got steadily colder and stung him with icy needles of pain.
Fear and adrenaline made it impossible for Pennington to know how long they actually fell before they found themselves completely submerged in a rushing vertical torrent of water. Then he felt his momentum working against the familiar pull of gravity. Their heads broke the surface. They’d passed the trough of the slope and had begun speeding up its opposite side. At its top it twisted and threw them through a hard turn, then another in the opposite direction. Then it pitched downward again, on a steep but at least not vertical gradient. It’s like riding a luge underwater, Pennington thought.
He might have been tempted to laugh and enjoy the ride, but then he saw that the end of this slope spewed its water out into open air toward another building.
Theriault’s arms closed so tightly around his chest that he could barely breathe. “Tim…” she said, her voice trailing off.
“This may have been a bad idea,” he confessed a moment before they were launched out of the trench and through billowing curtains of rain at the side of another building a dozen meters away. With all the strength he had, he twisted and turned in mid-air, placing himself as much as possible between Theriault and the point of impact.