On the other side of the temple, the Rocinanteslammed into the Klingons’ camp. Then there was nothing to see except a white flash of fire, and nothing to hear but thunder.
T’Prynn held up her phaser and pointed out its controls to Pennington. “This adjusts the power level,” she said. “This changes the focus of the beam. And this is the trigger.”
Pennington nodded. “Seems simple enough.”
She closed her hand around the compact, box-shaped weapon and held it away from her human compatriot. “Do not change any of these settings,” she said. “It is currently primed to emit a narrow beam on heavy stun. Hold your fire unless you see a Klingon take aim at me. Is that clear?”
“Absolutely,” he said with another curt nod.
Despite harboring some doubts as to Pennington’s readiness to wield a potentially deadly weapon, T’Prynn handed him the phaser. “I will attempt to cross the narrowest patch of open ground between here and the Klingon camp. Once I have armed myself, retreat to our rendezvous point and do not engage the enemy. I will enter the temple, attempt to confiscate the artifact, and proceed to our rendezvous coordinates.”
“Got it,” Pennington said.
Doffing her heavy outer robe, T’Prynn said, “Very well. Take your position at the crest of the dune.”
Pennington crawled to the top of the dune and cautiously dug himself into the soft sand to create a platform for his arms, to steady his aim. T’Prynn moved up beside him and coiled herself to spring over the top.
Then her ears detected the sound of a starship’s impulse engine shrieking into a power dive. As she turned her head to seek the source, Pennington did likewise and said in a tense whisper, “I know those engines! That’s Quinn’s ship!”
From behind the temple, the Rocinanteappeared. It arced over the decaying stone ruins and ejected an emergency pod as it began a nosedive toward the Klingon’s compound.
The pod bounced across the temple’s roof and skidded down a stony slope as its hatch was jettisoned. A humanoid figure tumbled out as the pod slid over the roof’s edge.
An alert klaxon blared in the Klingon camp as the Mancharan starhopper pitched nose-first into the ammo dump.
T’Prynn ducked low behind the dune and pulled Pennington with her. An incandescent flash lit up the night, and a ground-shaking explosion made the sandy peaks of the desertscape ripple like waves in the sea.
A blast wave followed seconds later, pushing a scouring wall of sand outward from the temple. Pennington and T’Prynn huddled beneath their robes as the manmade sandstorm knocked them in wild somersaults into a valley between two dunes.
When the din and glare had passed, T’Prynn and Pennington peeked out from under their robes at each other.
Shaking off her shroud of sand, T’Prynn retained her untroubled mien. “New plan,” she said. “We wait and see what Mister Quinn has in mind.”
“Oh, I can tell you right now,” Pennington replied, using his fingers to comb the sand from his hair. “Whatever he’s doing, I guarantee you it’s phenomenally stupid.”
Stun pistol in hand, Quinn charged into a firefight with the Klingon squad stationed along the temple’s roof.
Dammit,he cursed at himself, this is really stupid.
All he had going for him were the element of surprise and the fact that most of the Klingon garrison had been vaporized by his pseudo-kamikaze attack with the Rocinante. The golden fireball from the crash was still expanding into the air behind him as he stumbled up the sloped roof and opened fire on the befuddled troops manning a nearby parapet.
By the time the four Klingon soldiers realized they were being shot at, Quinn had dropped three of them. The fourth returned a clumsy off-target shot at Quinn, who twisted to show the man as narrow a profile as possible. Quinn caught the Klingon in the chest and sent him sprawling over the piled bodies of his unconscious comrades.
Quinn reached the peak of the slope he was on and looked out over the rest of the temple’s roof. Peaks, towers, and turrets surrounded him. He searched for some way inside the temple and found only one—a wedge-shaped blockhouse with a heavy stone door several dozen meters away, across a flat rooftop terrace below him. As he clambered down toward the terrace, disruptor shots rained down upon him from a high turret.
Another massive explosion from the ground engulfed the side of the temple below the turret. Huge slabs of stone were hurled into the air inside a cloud of pulverized rock fragments. A great cracking noise accompanied the spread of a fissure on the side of the turret’s base, which sagged and began to slide away.
Jumping down to the terrace, Quinn saw in the corner of his eye Klingon troops desperately hurling themselves from the turret as it sheared away from the temple and broke apart; they all tumbled to their deaths in a storm of broken stone.
More of the temple’s sandstone edifice collapsed, taking with it the center of the terrace. As Quinn struggled to fall back to solid footing, the disintegration of the ancient ruin advanced toward him—and ended as it cut the temple’s roof in half, leaving the terrace divided by a broad chasm.
Dust surged into Quinn’s nose and mouth. So much for reaching the door,he decided.
Through the freshly wrought gap, he heard Klingon troops inside the temple regrouping and preparing to counterattack.
No way down from here,he realized. I could jump across to the next level with a running start, but it’s too far down. I’d break my goddamned legs.
He couldn’t stay put; on the roof he’d either be an easy target once the Klingons got reorganized, or he’d be cut off and unable to help Bridy Mac.
What I need is a stepping-stone.
He heard running footsteps closing in below.
Behind him stood a mostly intact turret. He climbed onto the slope that led to the turret’s base and sprinted to it. Taking an explosive charge from his backpack, he made his best guess as to where to place it. Have to eyeball it. He jammed it in a nook at the tower’s base, armed the trigger, and leaped away.
As a squad of Klingons appeared on the level below him across the chasm, he keyed his remote detonator.
An explosive flash vaporized a sizable wedge of the turret’s foundation. Just as Quinn had hoped, it toppled directly over the chasm.
Down below, the Klingons retreated in a panic.
Now the fun part,Quinn mused as he sprang to his feet, ran toward the chasm, and jumped into it.
The turret fell into the gap, smashing through the roof as it made impact. For half a second the tower slowed as it punched through the stony obstacles of floors and walls—and that was the moment Quinn landed on its crumbling surface.
As the rocky structure calved into chunks, Quinn leapfrogged from one to the next, then scrambled forward. Even as his stepping-stone and the floor beneath it dropped away, he bounded off it, rolled past the collapsing section of the floor, and landed on his feet, already drawing his pistol.
Ahead of him, the squad of Klingons stared in disbelief. Then their leader aimed his disruptor at Quinn.
Quinn shot first and took the man down.
The rest of the squad scattered, all of them returning fire on the run. Shots went wild and caromed off the walls, blasting away chunks of rocky shrapnel.
Charging forward and cursing like a berserker, Quinn made the best five shots of his life. As a flurry of light and heat raged past him and tore up the floor at his feet, he felled each of the men shooting at him with one shot apiece. Within seconds, he was the last man standing in the smoke-filled corridor.
Surveying his handiwork, he permitted himself a small, satisfied smile. Not bad, old man,he congratulated himself. This half-assed rescue might turn out okay, after all.