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  “Shh!” Ganag hissed, waving a threatening backhand at the boy. Shikorn placed his hand over Lerec’s mouth before the boy complained again. In the street beyond the alley, a Venekan armored attack vehicle rolled slowly past, its heavy treads grinding up the brittle and heavily weathered pavement. Marching on either side of the AAV were several Venekan infantryman, all wearing torso armor and anti-gas masks.

  Ganag knew that the X’Mari Resistance had never used poison gas; he could only assume that the Venekans had equipped their soldiers to protect them from their own weapons.

  I should’ve known better than to hang around, Ganag chastised himself. Should’ve left as soon as we’d delivered the object. After the sun had set last night, Ganag had left Lerec and Shikorn in the skiff to guard the object, and he had snuck into Lersset and made contact with Jonen, the Resistance leader whom Hakona had told him to seek out. It had been nearly midnight by the time he’d led Jonen and his commanders to the object, and a few hours more before they’d smuggled it back to the group’s base of operations on the other side of town.

  The commanders had rewarded the boys with fistfuls of cash and backpacks full of food, medicine, and ammunition, as well as new reconnaissance orders. Should’ve left then, while it was still dark, he thought. But they hadn’t left; they had stayed to bask in the praise that the commanders had heaped upon them. It had felt good to be recognized for a change. To be needed.

  Now we’re just trapped, he fumed, as he watched three more AAVs roll past flanked by dozens more soldiers. They must have the whole town surrounded. And it’s probably because of us.

  The street buzzed with the angry roar of assault rifles. A massive explosion rocked the ground under his feet and knocked him down. In the street, a fireball laced with huge slabs of metal debris hurled a dozen Venekan soldiers backward through the air and dropped them like so many limp rag dolls on the muddy ground. A torrent of burning fuel rained down and turned the street into a lake of fire. The blazing liquid pushed into the alley, toward Ganag and his friends.

  “Run!” he said as he sprinted past Lerec and Shikorn. He retreated from the fuel fire that was spreading rapidly into the alley. “Go right! We’re heading for the river!” Neither of the younger boys questioned his order. They simply turned right and kept running, following a half-stride behind him.

  The river would be dangerously cold. Trying to float submerged back to their skiff would be a risky proposition; there was a good chance they’d all end up with hypothermia, or catch who-knew-what kind of illness. Sick is better than dead, he told himself, and it’s our only way out of here.

  Fighting to remember every pathway and abandoned building between the alley and the river, he sprinted ahead to the next shortcut and prayed they reached the water before Lersset went up in flames.

  The entire town was alive with the chatter of weapons fire and the irregular percussion of large explosions. Gomez could barely hear Abramowitz’s whispering voice over the transceiver.

  “Abramowitz to away team!”

  “Gomez here.”

  “The refugees are getting ready to move out, I have to hide the tricorder. Have you reached the probe?”

  “Not yet,” said Gomez, who was growing both impatient and frustrated. She leaned out from behind the trash bin to see if the fire at the end of the alley had dwindled enough to allow passage to the street. A wash of searing heat stung her face. She ducked back behind cover. “We’re kind of stuck.”

  Going back was no longer an option: A pair of missiles had collapsed a building in the intersecting alley behind them, blocking their only avenue of retreat.

  “Well, you need to get un stuck,” Abramowitz said. “The probe’s moving. Street level, coming right at you.”

  Gomez, Stevens, and Hawkins scrambled out from behind the trash bin and squinted to see through the flames and the wavy wall of heat radiation. From an alley beside the target building a truck emerged and pulled into the street, where it awkwardly navigated an obstacle course of burning debris. Inside the front cab of the truck were two Tenebian men with sky blue skin and metallic-gold hair. “Those aren’t X’Maris,” Stevens said.

  “And they aren’t wearing Venekan uniforms,” Gomez said.

  “Game on,” Hawkins said. He ducked his head under his serape and ran toward the wall of fire. Diving through it, he rolled out the other side, singed and smoldering, but all in one piece.

  Gomez and Stevens glanced at one another, then turtled into their own serapes. They sprinted forward, leaped through the flames, and hit the ground running.

  Chapter

  8

  Gomez’s running footsteps slammed against the cracked pavement and sent painful tremors through her shins. She had almost become accustomed to Teneb’s gravity, but now, as she tried to sprint, she really felt it pulling her into the ground.

  Hawkins was in front of her and Stevens was right beside her. The truck carrying the crashed Starfleet probe rounded the corner and began climbing a gradual incline. Hawkins veered away from the chase, toward the building the away team had been staking out. “Hawkins!” Gomez said. “Where are you—”

  “Playing a hunch!” Hawkins shouted over his shoulder. “Stay on the truck, I’ll catch up!”

  Gomez pushed ahead after the truck. In regular gravity, an unburdened run up such an incline would be no problem for her. But she watched the truck gain speed up the slope even as she felt the muscles in her legs begin to burn and ache. Several dozen meters ahead, the truck neared an intersection.

  Stevens kept pace beside her. She sensed that he was holding back. “Don’t worry about me,” she said, gasping for breath. “Go.” He hesitated for a moment, then steadily gained speed—not enough to overtake the truck, but enough to leave Gomez behind.

  Stevens was running on fumes. He hadn’t eaten in a day and a half, and he’d been pushing himself much harder than normal.

  His throat burned with every ragged gulp of biting-cold morning air. Gusts of breath exploded from his mouth in clouds of mist that quickly evaporated.

  Push through the pain, he told himself. Pain is my friend. He tried to force himself into a “runner’s high,” but he knew it was still far away, on the other side of a mountain of agony he wasn’t prepared to scale.

  The truck turned right at the intersection and disappeared around the corner.

  He forced his legs to pump faster, fight harder against Teneb’s merciless gravity. His grunts of pain became growls, then gasping cries. His body desperately wanted to stop. His leg muscles felt like knotted cable. Sharp knifing pains stabbed between his ribs with every frantic pull of frigid air.

  He refused to slow down. He flailed through the right turn in a stumbling run. The truck was far ahead, fortuitously slowed by another maze of exploded car husks in the road.

  A few more steps, he begged himself. Just a few more steps.

  “Fabian!” Gomez shouted from behind him. “Take my hand!”

  He looked back and saw a large cargo van hurtling up the road toward him. Hawkins was in the driver’s seat, securely strapped in. Gomez stood in the open passenger-side door, her hand extended toward the exhausted Stevens.

  He forced himself to keep running, alongside the van. He held up his hand and left it there until Gomez seized it and pulled him up, through the open door into the vehicle. He crouched between the two seats. Gomez got in behind him and slammed the door. “Thanks for the lift,” he said between gasps.

  “Jump in back and tell me what’s there,” Hawkins said.

  Stevens turned and opened a narrow door that led into the van’s cargo area. He squeezed through into the windowless space, which was dark except for the narrow shaft of daylight slashing in through the open door behind him.

  He reached toward an overhead light fixture in the middle of the cargo area. The van swerved suddenly, and he tripped over a heavy object on the floor. He righted himself as Gomez joined him. He reached up and turned on the light.

  The ba
ck of the van held an arsenal. Its sides were lined with assault rifles and submachine guns. Boxes of grenades and ammunition covered the floor. “Vance?” he said. “If you want weapons, today is Christmas.”

  “I figured that much,” Hawkins said. “What’ve we got?”

  Stevens looked around, more than a little spooked by the primitive, savage weaponry. “Projectile weapons galore, a ton of ammo, and a lot of grenades.”

  “Are the grenades smooth on the outside, or bumpy?”

  “Like Cardassian neck ridges,” Gomez said.

  “Okay, those are high-explosives. Careful with those. Anything else?”

  Stevens opened a long, narrow box. An odd weapon was nestled inside, packed securely in custom-cut blocks of foam. “I have an empty metal tube with a targeting sight,” he said. He opened the large square box next to it. “And a box of…I have a rocket launcher.”

  “Good to know,” Hawkins said. A staccato rattle of gunfire was followed by the sound of cracking glass. The van swerved wildly, tossing Stevens and Gomez back and forth against the walls of guns. “Load me up a small semi-auto,” Hawkins said, “and grab two for yourselves. Bring extra rounds.”

  “I don’t know how to load one of these things,” Stevens protested.

  “Neither do I,” Gomez added.

  “Didn’t you guys read my mission briefing?” Hawkins said.

  “Did you read mine?” Stevens retorted.

  Another buzz of gunfire was followed by ricochets off the van’s front hood. “No,” Hawkins said grudgingly.

  “Tell me what to do,” Stevens said.

  “See the open slot in front of the grip?”

  Stevens picked up a submachine gun. It was much heavier than the phasers he was used to. “Yeah,” he said, looking at the bottom of the weapon. The van lurched side to side again, but he was starting to get used to the chaotic rocking motion, and he swayed with it.

  “Look for a clip full of bullets that fits into it and slap it in.” Stevens and Gomez rooted through the boxes at their feet. Gomez found the matching magazines, jammed one into her weapon, and handed one to Stevens. He loaded his weapon while Gomez armed another for Hawkins. Stevens picked up the box of loaded magazines and moved back toward the van’s cab.

  “Stay down,” Hawkins said. “We’re taking fire.”

  Stevens crouched and shuffled back into the cab, pushing the box of ammo ahead of him. Gomez inched in behind him and handed a weapon to Hawkins, who ducked low behind the steering wheel and peeked occasionally to see where he was going.

  The windshield was spiderwebbed with cracks radiating from a constellation of bullet holes. The engine roared as Hawkins stomped on the accelerator.

  The passenger-side windshield exploded over Stevens’s head. A storm of glass shards rained down on him and Gomez as bullets dented into the rear wall of the cab.

  “Shoot back!” Hawkins said.

  Gomez and Stevens lifted their weapons over the dashboard and aimed them out the shattered windshield in a vaguely forward direction. They opened fire. The weapons were incredibly loud. Stevens found his gun impossible to control—it jerked and jumped in his hand like it had a mind of its own.

  By the time he and Gomez released the triggers, they were sprawled atop each other on the floor. Smoking bullet holes cut a path across the van’s roof. The van’s cab smelled of sulfur.

  Hawkins was pressed down against his door and glowering at them. “Whose side are you on?” he shouted. “Use both hands. Short, controlled bursts. And watch your ammo.”

  Another sweep of enemy gunfire turned the rest of the van’s windshield opaque with damage. Hawkins punched the windshield with the flat of his palm and knocked it out of its frame. It slid across the bullet-scarred hood and fell into the street. Icy winds whipped dust into the cab and stung their faces.

  Stevens and Gomez sat up and steadied their weapons on the van’s dashboard as Hawkins swerved around more burning wreckage in the street. Stevens felt the flames licking at his face as they sped through a curtain of fire with a whoosh.

  He opened his eyes and saw the escaping truck thirty meters ahead. The back of the truck was open. Two Tenebian men crouched inside, both brandishing large assault rifles.

  The muzzles of the Tenebians’ weapons flashed. Bullets zinged past Stevens’s head. He held his breath and steadied his aim as he stared into the cold wind, then pulled the trigger.

  Beside him, Gomez opened fire, her face a mask of grim determination, the frigid gusts watering her eyes with tears.

  The weapons chattered in their hands.

  They filled the back of the truck with a spray of bullets. The two Tenebians hit the deck as ricochets rebounded and tore out through the canvas-covered, wooden-plank sides of the truck, which Stevens guessed probably had been “borrowed” from a livestock or poultry purveyor.

  His and Gomez’s weapons clicked empty. He tried to pull the empty magazine out of the weapon, but it refused to come free.

  “Press the release on the right side of the rear grip,” Hawkins said as he aimed his own weapon one-handed out the front windshield. He spun the steering wheel through a tight right turn and peppered the truck ahead with more harassing fire.

  Stevens fumbled with his weapon’s release catch, then felt the magazine slide easily and fall from the weapon to the floor. He picked up a fresh magazine and slapped it in.

  Beside him, Gomez locked and loaded. She nodded to him.

  They sprung back into position, facing into the wind, weapons planted on the dash.

  Looking back at them from the truck, now only twenty meters ahead and racing toward a Y-shaped merge with another road, were the two Tenebians—both of them aiming rocket launchers.

  Stevens saw the look on Hawkins’s face, and he knew:

  We’re so screwed.

  A moment before the Tenebians fired their rockets, their truck barreled into the Y-merge—at the same moment that a speeding passenger car raced into the merge from the other fork of the Y and accidentally broadsided them. The car caromed off the truck and spun into a dusty collision with a brick wall.

  The Tenebians’ shoulder-fired rockets careened off-target. One screamed into a deserted building to the left of the van. The other plowed into the street directly ahead of it.

  Hawkins slammed on the brakes. The van skidded to a halt just shy of the explosion in the road, which kicked up a smoky storm of glowing-hot broken asphalt that pattered down onto the van. Past the smoldering crater, the rocketed building collapsed into a broken-stone mountain that blocked the street.

  “Can we go over it?” Gomez said.

  “Not in this thing,” Hawkins said.

  The security guard poked his head out his window, looked around quickly, then spun the van through a reverse whip-turn. He shifted gears and stepped on the accelerator. The van sped forward. He hooked a quick left turn, then made another left down an alley so narrow that a shower of sparks fountained from either side of the van as he accelerated.

  “Chief,” Gomez said, “where are you going?”

  “I don’t know,” Hawkins said. “I’m making this up as I go.”

  Commander Zila monitored his army’s drive into Lersset from a bank of monitors installed in his personal jumpjet. Sitting opposite him, facing his own bank of monitors, was Legioner Goff, whose attention had become much more narrowly focused during the past few seconds.

  “What is it?” Zila said.

  Goff held up a hand to signal that he needed a few more moments to concentrate. He looked up at Zila. “Reports of a van chasing a truck in southern Lersset, near the riverside. A recon unit says the two vehicles have exchanged gunfire.”

  “On my monitor,” Zila said. Goff transferred the command-and-control screen to Zila’s computer. The time-stamped reports scrolled quickly up the side of the screen while blurred, grainy images snapped by an aerial reconnaissance drone showed moment-by-moment details of the chase.

  “That’s it, that’s our ta
rget,” Zila said. “Order all forces to intercept and capture. No heavy munitions—I want those vehicles and their cargo intact.”

  “And the passengers?”

  “Expendable.”

  Hawkins kept the accelerator pinned to the floor and barreled up streets, down alleys, and through the occasional vulnerable-looking fence. Stevens rode shotgun, his safety harness now securely fastened.

  Hawkins glimpsed the morning sun as intermittent, yellow-orange flashes in the narrow seams between the decaying buildings he raced past.

  Leaning forward, he glanced upward, then swung the van wide through a right-hand turn, followed by a quick left turn. Stevens held on to the dash with white-knuckle intensity.

  “What’re you following?” Stevens said. “Their scent?”

  “No,” Hawkins said, pointing skyward. “The planes.” Several blocks away on either side of the van, flying low over the rooftops, were two Venekan jumpjets. They were approaching from different directions, but seemed to be converging on a point several blocks ahead of the van.

  “Nice work,” Stevens said.

  “Well, Starfleet didn’t hire me for my looks.”

  “Obviously,” Stevens quipped.

  “Don’t make me come up there,” Gomez said.

  The buildings melted past in a blur as Hawkins pushed the van to its top speed. As the van rounded a long gradual bend in the road that ran along the river, behind the docks on the west side of town, the truck came into view.

  Two jumpjets converged several dozen meters behind the truck. One aircraft assumed an attack position; the other dropped back over the river, to cover the leader’s wing.

  A ground-to-air rocket soared up from the back of the truck and sliced like a blazing scalpel through the leader’s right wing. As the aircraft pitched nose-first in a death-spiral toward the ground, a fiery chunk of debris expelled from its wing was sucked into the follower’s left turbine intake. The second jet’s left-wing engine exploded, taking half the aircraft with it in a massive, aviation-fuel conflagration.