Precipice Read online

  “You’re the only one I can trust. Please help me.”

  4

  February 18, 2267

  Diego Reyes hoped he was dead. He stank as if he were.

  His chest expanded by reflex; he sucked in sultry air with a sound that was part yawn, part gasp. Then he gagged on a mouthful of bitter medicinal slime.

  He spat it out and coughed. Bits of phlegm from someplace deep in his chest flew out of his mouth.

  Feeling a rising urge to vomit, he rolled to his left but collided with a solid barrier. It was smooth and metallic. He gripped the edge and convulsed with heaves.

  When the spasms in his diaphragm stopped, he opened his eyes. At first all he could discern was a shadowy red glow. Then his eyes focused, and he saw he was lying in a coffin-shaped pod inside a spartan room that had the hallmark of a compartment on a starship.

  Standing around the pod and scowling down at Reyes were a trio of Klingons dressed in military uniforms. These were a different breed of Klingon from those with whom the Federation had been dealing lately. These men had prominent cranial ridges extending almost halfway to the tops of their heads. They wore their wiry black hair in thick, loose manes.

  One of the Klingons pointed a small device at Reyes. The gadget buzzed and whirred for a second. The man checked its readout and muttered something guttural in the Klingons’ native tongue. One of the other Klingons nodded but kept his unblinking gaze trained on Reyes.

  Reyes returned the stare and asked, “Where am I?”

  The one glaring at him replied in heavily accented English, “On the I.K.S. Zin’za. I am Captain Kutal.” Lifting his chin at the other two Klingons, he barked some orders in tlhIngan Hol. Reyes felt at a disadvantage without a universal translator.

  Kutal stood back as his two subordinates grabbed Reyes by the arms and lifted him out of the pod, naked and dripping in viscous goop. They dropped him onto the grated deck. He landed hard on his hands and knees and winced in pain.

  For a moment Reyes considered standing up but thought better of it. They might take it as a challenge, he realized. And I’m in no shape for a fight. He looked up at Kutal. “What happened to my ship and crew?”

  The question seemed to amuse Kutal. “You mean the Nowlan?” Reyes nodded in confirmation, which only broadened Kutal’s jagged-toothed grin. “First of all, Mister Reyes, the Nowlan was not your ship. You were aboard her as a prisoner. Second, they were of no use to us, so they were destroyed.”

  “Not by you,” Reyes replied, recalling the unusual vessel that had attacked the Nowlan. “Who’d you get to do your dirty work this time?”

  “The same petaQpu’ you hired to sabotage my ship in the Borzha II spaceport. Or did you think I’d forgotten?”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Reyes lied, “and you won’t get away with this.”

  All three Klingons roared with laughter. Kutal bent down and slapped one callused hand on the back of Reyes’s neck. “We already have. It’s been weeks since your transport was blown to bits. As far as Starfleet’s concerned, you’re dead.”

  Reyes shook free of Kutal’s hand. He glanced at the coffinlike metal cylinder in which he’d awoken and realized it was a hibernation pod. Turning his irate stare back at Kutal, he said, “So, do I have you to thank for my life?”

  “Hardly.” Kutal spat on the deck between Reyes’s hands. “Had it been up to me, you would have died on the Nowlan.” The Klingon captain snapped orders at his men, who lifted Reyes from the deck and stood him upright against a bulkhead. Then Kutal said to Reyes, “We’re told you Earthers enjoy something called showers. You smell like you could use one.”

  Kutal nodded to his men.

  One of them lifted a hose attached to the bulkhead opposite Reyes. The other turned a valve and pressed a button.

  Freezing-cold water sprayed from the hose, dousing Reyes. It hit him like a blast of ice-needles, stinging his skin. He lifted his hands to guard his face and turned sideways. The frigid stream slammed against his rib cage and thighs. When he turned away from it, the hideously cold torrent scoured his back raw.

  It stopped. Through the desperate rasps of his own breathing, he heard runoff water dripping through the metal deck grates to the gutter below. Chilled to his core, he shook and swayed like a weak tree in a storm.

  More orders from Kutal; Reyes was given a towel. He dried himself. Kutal’s men gave Reyes some clean clothes: underwear, a dark gray coverall, and shoes. He donned the drab utilitarian garb while his captors watched.

  They escorted him out of the compartment at gunpoint. Moving through the tight corridors of the dimly lit vessel, they passed crewmen who eyed Reyes with contempt but said nothing. Reyes felt like a piece of prized livestock: valued up to a point but basically ignored.

  They descended a series of ladders and arrived at the brig. Kutal ushered him into a cell and activated the force field as soon as Reyes stepped over its threshold. Reyes turned to face Kutal, whose parting words gave Reyes his first inkling of what was going on. “Be grateful,” the captain said. “Someone high up wants you alive and unhurt.”

  The three Klingons departed, leaving Reyes alone in his cell. He eyed its gray-green walls, solid deck plates, and uncushioned slab of a bunk. The lavatory was just a simple seat platform that extended from the wall when called for and retracted into the bulkhead when not in use.

  Cozy, he mused with weary sarcasm.

  From his point of view, the attack on the Nowlan had lasted only a few minutes. Before the attack, he had been in a cell on the Nowlan’s lower deck. Now, after being conscious for less than fifteen minutes, he was back in a cell.

  He was about to decide he’d broken even when he remembered the last thing he’d been doing before the Nowlan was ambushed. He’d been reading the interstellar bestseller Sunrise on Zeta Minor, and he’d just gotten to the good part.

  Lying on the bunk and folding his hands behind his head, he let out a disgruntled sigh.

  Crap. Now I’ll never find out how that story ends.

  5

  February 19, 2267

  The nocturnal sounds of Vulcan’s desert hills had Tim Pennington on edge. From the ever-closer shrieks of a felinoid predator known as a Le-matya to the echoing cries of carrion birds that T’Prynn said were called lankagar, the darkness resounded with animal hungers.

  “There is no need for concern,” T’Prynn said, her voice almost a whisper. “That is the mating cry of the Le-matya. If it were hunting us, we would not hear it until it attacked.”

  “Hardly comforting,” Pennington said.

  T’Prynn detoured off the trail to an unusual-looking rock formation. “Follow me,” she said.

  Pennington accompanied her into the ring of tall stone slabs, which had become weathered and broken over the course of millennia. Standing in their midst, Pennington realized the slabs were menhirs, hewn by ancient Vulcan hands and arranged in a circle at the foot of the L-langon Mountains.

  For a moment, he wondered if T’Prynn was indulging in some moment of mystical reverence, perhaps following some tradition of venerating elders, or meditating on the words of Surak. He watched as she reached out to a boulder, pinched its surface, and pulled away a blanket that bore a desert-camouflage pattern.

  What had seemed to be a rock a moment ago now was two beige backpacks filled with gear. “Take one of these,” T’Prynn said. She picked up a pack and helped him put it on. Turning away from him, she said, “Now please assist me.” He hoisted the other pack onto her shoulders.

  “These should have everything we need to reach the other side of the mountain range,” she said, “as long as we ration our food and water.” She folded the camouflage blanket and stuffed it into one of the outer pockets of Pennington’s pack. “We will need this later.” Then she walked out of the circle of stones and back to the trail.

  “Hang on,” he said. His raised voice rebounded off the rocks with alarming clarity. “We’ve been walking for hours. Aren’t we maki
ng camp soon?”

  She turned back. “We have been walking for precisely fifty-six minutes since our rendezvous at the water-collection tower. And we must continue walking for another seven hours and twenty-nine minutes. At that time, we will have exactly thirty minutes to set up camp before daybreak.”

  Without waiting for him to reply, she resumed walking. Not wanting to be left by himself in the middle of the desert outside ShiKahr, Pennington hurried after her. “You could’ve bloody warned me before I came out here that I’d be walking all night.”

  “If I had, would you have come?”

  “At least tell me why we have to walk all night.”

  “Because the lower temperatures and absence of direct solar radiation will enable us to use less food and water than we would and walk for longer consecutive periods than we could in daylight.”

  As usual, there was no questioning her logic.

  They trudged ahead into the mountain pass. Pennington stayed close behind the Vulcan woman.

  During their first hour of hiking, he noticed she was limping slightly. As the wind-carved spires of rock seemed to grow taller on either side of them, the trail became deathly quiet. In that silence, Pennington heard T’Prynn fighting for breath.

  As they clambered over small mounds of loose rocks that tumbled away beneath their feet and filled the air with faint, semimusical collisions, it became apparent to Pennington that T’Prynn still had not fully recovered from her long coma and arduous psychic trauma. In all likelihood this journey was as physically difficult for her as it was for him.

  Leading him off the rocky slope, T’Prynn veered wide around one of the few patches of smooth ground he had seen since leaving ShiKahr. She pointed at the path’s sandy stretch. “Avoid that. There is a sinkhole beneath it.”

  “Noted,” Pennington said. He resolved to step where she stepped and not question why until they were out of the desert.

  Hours passed as they followed the narrow, winding road through majestic towers of rock. Lightning forked between faroff peaks and was followed by a crash of thunder.

  Eventually, Pennington lost track of time and was aware only of the gnawing emptiness in his stomach, the parched feeling in his mouth, and the dull aches in his feet and lower back. Despite a few brief respites during which they sipped water and devoured small pieces of dried fruit from their packs, the lean young journalist felt as if he were growing heavier with each step.

  Plodding forward in a trancelike state, he was startled when T’Prynn stopped, turned, and declared, “It is time to make camp.” She doffed her pack and started to pull out fabric. “I need your help. There are additional pieces in your pack.”

  He set down his burden, opened its top flap, and began pulling out stakes, rope, and anything that looked like a tent component. Looking around, he asked, “Where are we setting up?”

  T’Prynn pointed to a spot in the shadow of a long slab of rock lying on a diagonal against some boulders, creating a large gap underneath. “In there. We will first have to check it for aylakim and k’karee.”

  “I’m sorry—for what?”

  “The aylakim is a hand-size scavenging arthropod with two stinging tails. The k’karee is a venomous serpent.”

  “Brilliant.”

  Pennington focused on assembling the tent while T’Prynn checked their daytime shelter to ensure it was free of other occupants. When she returned, the sky showed the first traces of predawn gray. “Suns are coming up,” he said.

  “We should make haste,” T’Prynn said. “Minerals in these rock formations will mask our life signs from scanners, but we must still evade visual scans.”

  As he continued putting together their tent, which he noted had an outer skin made from the same camouflage-printed fabric that had concealed their packs, he remained fixated on the implications of what T’Prynn had just said. “Why are we evading sensors and search parties?” When she didn’t answer him, he filled in the blanks for himself. “Because you left Kren’than without permission. You’re AWOL from Starfleet, aren’t you? A fugitive.”

  She met his accusatory look with an untroubled gaze. “Yes, I am.” Acting as if there were nothing else to be said on the matter, she finished assembling the tent’s frame and began stretching the fabric over it.

  “Why would you flee custody?” Pennington asked. “Won’t that just make things worse when they catch you?”

  Dragging the tent under the rocks, T’Prynn said, “That is a risk. However, it is a necessary step if I am to continue my career as a Starfleet officer.”

  Pennington planted the first stake to secure the tent. “Sorry, ‘fraid you’ve lost me. Why is it necessary?”

  As they placed the rest of the stakes and secured the tent with ropes, T’Prynn explained her reasons in a calm, matter-of-fact tone. “Had I surrendered to the Starfleet Security personnel who were waiting to escort me from Kren’than, I would have faced an immediate court-martial. The outcome of such a proceeding is not in doubt: I would be convicted.

  “Mental illness is the only plausible defense I can present to explain why I tampered with my own Starfleet medical record and abused my security clearance to do so. However, even if a court-martial accepts such an argument and spares me the indignity of incarceration, I will still be made to accept a dishonorable discharge from Starfleet.”

  She finished securing the tent and moved it into place beneath its broad rock roof. Pivoting to face Pennington, she added, “Regardless of whether my conviction leads to prison or to a discharge, the premature termination of my Starfleet commission will render wasted my decades of acquired skills and experience. If, on the other hand, I can redeem myself through some meritorious action prior to my surrender, I might yet be able to salvage my career.”

  “I see,” Pennington said. “You’re looking for leverage.”

  She arched one elegant eyebrow. “Exactly.”

  “Nice to see you still think it’s all about you,” he said. “At least you’re consistent.” He pulled open the tent flap and ducked inside. “Now, if you don’t bloody mind, I’m going to sleep. Wake me when the suns go down.”

  6

  February 20, 2267

  Cervantes Quinn hung upside down in his ship’s cargo bay and reminded himself pain was his friend.

  All the muscles in his torso burned with the effort of folding himself up toward his knees, which were hooked over a horizontal beam he’d installed a year earlier, during the Rocinante’s refit by Starfleet Intelligence. He kept his feet tucked under a second beam, which braced him securely while he fought toward his goal of a hundred inverted sit-ups that morning.

  Ninety-three, he counted in his head, determined not to stop short. Resisting the pull of the ship’s artificial gravity, he relaxed slowly from the tuck and eased back to the starting position rather than let himself fall. With his arms crossed over his chest, he pushed himself into another crunch. Ninety-four …

  Sweat dripped from his buzz-cut head and bare upper body. Despite the thick carpet of hair on his chest and midriff, he could see the outline of his abdominal muscles. He had shed nearly twenty kilograms of weight in the past year, most of it excess body fat. His face had angles again, and for the first time in more than two decades he had only one chin. The only details that differentiated him from his younger self were his receding hairline, gray stubble, and ever-creased forehead.

  Ninety-five …

  Bridy Mac descended the metal ladder from the ship’s main compartment. Though she was still an active Starfleet officer, she dressed in civilian clothes because of her undercover status with SI. Her sable hair was tied back in a simple ponytail, as it often was. She walked down the aisle between the stacks of cargo containers, which were secured in place against the outer bulkheads, and stopped a couple of meters from Quinn as he relaxed out of a crunch.

  He smiled at her. “Mornin’.” He folded himself upward. Ninety-six …

  “Good morning. Almost done?”

  Grunting w
ith exertion, he said, “Almost.” Down and up again without delay. Ninety-seven …

  She folded her arms and eyed the packed-to-capacity cargo bay with a wry smile. “How much of this is tannot ore?”

  “ ’Bout three-quarters,” Quinn said, dropping from his tuck. One deep breath, then up. Ninety-eight …

  “In other words, enough to level a small city.”

  Without pausing his routine, he asked with a grin, “Got one in mind?” Ninety-nine …

  “Just making conversation.”

  She sat on top of a crate. Quinn noticed the small data slate in her hand.

  He finished his last sit-up, grabbed hold of a chain dangling beside him, unhooked his feet, and swung himself down to the floor. His legs felt wobbly and uncertain, so he sank into a squat, leaned forward, planted his fists on the deck, and did some pushups.

  The dull gray deck plate under him smelled of the ammonia he’d used to swab it the day before, and it vibrated with the infra-sonic pulse of the ship’s impulse drive.

  He looked up at Bridy Mac as he started his regimen of a hundred slow reps on his knuckles, and asked, “New orders?”

  “How’d you guess?”

  “It’s the only time you ever come down here.” He paused and rolled onto his side. “So what is it this time?”

  “Another recon.”

  “Pirates, lobster-heads, or monsters?”

  Lobster-heads was Quinn’s epithet du jour for the Klingons, and he’d referred to the Shedai as monsters ever since his return from their obliterated homeworld, Jinoteur.

  “Monsters,” Bridy Mac said. She handed him the data slate. “It’s a new lead from the scientists on Vanguard.”

  Quinn studied the classified communiqué and frowned. “If these coordinates are right, we’ll be pokin’ around in the lobster-heads’ backyard on this one. This is what, maybe ten light-years from their border?”