The dozen or so Klingons in the street split into two squads and charged at their attackers—one at Stretch’s squad, one at Quinn’s.

None of the Denn hesitated to shoot. Within moments both groups of Klingons found themselves trapped in the same overlapping fields of fire. A few of them tried to shoot back before they were cut down, but their disruptor blasts caromed harmlessly off the steel and concrete debris that the Denn had chosen for their cover.

The last Klingon dropped to his knees with a smoldering hole in his tunic and metallic sash. He gasped “ PetaQpu’!” before falling facedown in the dirt.

Quinn shouted, “Cease-fire!”

All at once, the street was silent again. Only the faintest hush of a breeze and the soft crackling of flames disturbed the blissful quiet.

“Check the bodies,” Quinn said. “Move in pairs. One man covers, one man searches. If you find a Klingon alive, kill him. Take their weapons, spare power cells, communicators, and sensor devices. We have to be gone from here in two minutes. Move out!”

Across the street, Stretch and his squad fanned out in the same search pattern. Working quickly, they took everything of utility from the dead Klingons, then regrouped at the front of the massacred convoy.

“Good work,” Quinn said. “First, turn off the communicators—they can be used to track us.” He held up a Klingon communicator and demonstrated the process. When they finished, he continued. “I’ll show you how to mask your life signs with their sensor devices later. Now double-quick-time back to base!”

He led them through the ruins, sticking to concealed paths and long stretches of old sewage tunnels that had been dry for ages. Less than an hour later they entered the underground hiding place of the Rocinante,where Bridy Mac and the other two squads of Denn guerrillas were waiting. The mood was subdued.

“How’d it go?” Bridy asked as Quinn and his men returned.

“We kicked some ass,” Quinn said. Nodding at the enemy equipment his men were toting, he added, “Brought back a few prizes.” Noting the glum faces that greeted his news, he asked, “Why do y’all look like you came from a funeral?”

Bridy motioned for him to follow her inside the Rocinante. “We have an unexpected visitor,” she said. “She claims she followed one of our recon patrols, and I believe her. Which means your boys need to work on their stealth skills.”

They stepped onto the main deck of the Mancharan starhopper. Seated on Quinn’s bunk was a Denn woman swathed in the bleached robes of a desert nomad. As soon as the woman saw Quinn and Bridy, she stood and said, “You are the aliens who teach the Shire men to fight the Klingon invaders?”

“Yeah, that’s us,” Quinn said. “Who are you?”

“I am Lirev, shahzadiof the Goçeba. My tribe has been enslaved by the Klingons at the temple.”

Quinn rolled his eyes. “Times are tough all over. I’d love to help you folks, really, but I just don’t—”

“The Klingons brought something to the temple last night,” Lirev cut in. “A gem the size of a skull.”

Bridy and Quinn traded doubtful looks, then Quinn said to the female nomad, “They’re decorating. So what?”

Lirev’s eyes burned with equal measures of fear and fury. “It is not a decoration—it is a vessel of pure evil.”

“What makes you so sure?” asked Bridy.

The nomad replied, “Because when the Klingons brought the stone inside the precursor temple, the world trembled in fear.”

As he put the facts together, Quinn felt the color bleed from his face. One look at his partner confirmed Bridy had arrived at the same terrifying conclusion: the Klingons had acquired something that enabled them to access the Shedai Conduit hidden inside the desert temple—and if their past mishaps with Shedai technology were any indication, Golmira was now in imminent danger of being blown up.

Quinn faced Lirev. “If I agree to come check this out, can I trust you and your nomad pals to not try to kill me?”

“I give you my word,” she said. “Truce and safe conduct.”

“Okay,” Quinn said, motioning for Lirev to lead the way. “Let’s go have a look.”

39

Trudging over one dune after another, Pennington kept his eyes on T’Prynn’s back and wished he knew voodoo and had a pin and a doll fashioned in her likeness.

“This is brilliant,” he muttered as they lumbered through the shifting sands. “More desert. Our three-day hike on Vulcan wasn’t enough for you?”

She answered without looking back. “I did not choose the location to which the Klingons transported their artifact.”

“No, of course not,” Pennington said. “But you did choose to land the ship plenty far away from it, didn’t you?”

T’Prynn reached the peak of the dune they had been climbing and stopped to wait for Pennington, who was lagging behind, a victim of fatigue and heat exhaustion. “It was necessary to set down at a safe distance from the Klingons’ ground forces,” she said. “Otherwise they would have heard and observed our descent, and we would now be in their custody.”

He joined her at the crest of the dune and squinted into the glare of sun reflected off a vista of pale sand. “Maybe,” he said. “But sometimes I get the feeling you just like walking in the desert.” He met her placid stare. “For the record, I don’t.”

“I gathered that,” she said.

They continued walking east. A gust of hot wind-blown sand scoured Pennington’s face. He winced and wrapped a length of fabric from his desert robes around his face and neck, then pulled his goggles down from on top of his head and fixed them into place. “How much farther?” he asked.

Over the howling wind, T’Prynn said, “Approximately twenty-eight-point-four kilometers.”

“And how far have we gone?”

“Since leaving the Skylla,we have traversed one-point-six kilometers of open desert.”

Pennington let out a long, pained groan. “Oh, I hate you.”

“If memory serves, you said quite clearly you were looking forward to spending some time outside the ship.”

“That was when I thought outsidewould mean grass or trees or water, or something besides sand.”

T’Prynn replied, “I see. Your dissatisfaction with our current circumstances stems from your failure to manage your expectations.”

He waved his arms in wild exasperation. “Or maybe it stems from having to tromp across a bloody desert!” Pennington waited for T’Prynn’s reply, but she said nothing and just kept on walking. Suspecting he was being manipulated, he asked her, “You’re just goading me, aren’t you?”

“Your reactions do provide a break from the monotony.”

“In other words, I entertain you.” He shook his head. “Is that all I am to you? A clown?”

“No,” T’Prynn said. “You are also a drain on expendable resources and a significant tactical liability.”

He fell into step beside her. “That’s funny, but who knew Vulcan humor was so cruel?”

“You confuse wit with humor,” she replied. “A common mistake among humans.”

Scrambling to keep up with the long-legged Vulcan woman, Pennington concluded to his chagrin that he had no comeback that T’Prynn couldn’t dismantle with ease. Instead he plodded along behind her, struggling to catch his breath with each step.

Several minutes later T’Prynn said, “If you begin to feel lightheaded, please try to make some sound before you lose consciousness, so I will know to stop and wait for you.”

Even silence is no defense,he brooded. He let out a heavy sigh. “Yes, I can tell already,” he said. “Your companionship will make this forced desert march just flyby.”

“You are welcome to turn back and go wait in the ship.”

He looked toward the fiery orb that was hammering his head with scorching heat, then glared at T’Prynn. “ Nowyou tell me.”