Quinn grimaced with doubt as he looked at the churning mountain of black clouds atop a city under constant siege by heaven’s artillery. “In there?”

Pennington goaded his friend, “We’ve come this far, mate. Might as well go the distance.”

The scruffy older man frowned at Terrell, who simply repeated, in an imploring tone, “She’s alive.”

“Well,” Quinn said, “I guess that settles it, then.” He keyed the ship’s main thrust and accelerated toward the storm. “Strap in, kids. This is gonna be a rough ride.”

Me and my big mouth, Pennington lamented as turbulence rocked the Rocinante.

Wind buffeted the small ship and tossed it like a toy. The wings bobbled, and the nose dipped, threatening to knock the ship into one of the massive, organic-looking towers that it was dodging between. A steady stream of low curses attested to Quinn’s growing frustration at trying to hold a steady course.

The downpour had become so intense that visibility ahead of the ship was reduced to a few dozen meters. Jagged forks of lightning flashed across their path, flooding the cockpit with blinding light as godhammers of thunder pounded the hull.

A split-second to a collision. “Look out, mate!”

Quinn banked the ship hard to port, barely tilting the starboard nacelle clear of what would have been a shattering impact with a mist-mantled spire.

“Good call,” Quinn said. “Keep it up.”

An updraft nearly stalled their forward motion. Then it ceased, and they plummeted into a nosedive. Quinn struggled with the controls, and the engines howled as the ship fought its way back to level—only to find the airspace ahead blocked by a network of open causeways. Gunning the ship’s thrusters into overdrive, Quinn forced the ship into a steep climb. “I love this part,” he said through a clenched jaw.

“Bear to starboard when we’re clear,” Terrell called out over the roar of the engines. “We’re close to her, maybe two kilometers. I’ve got her life signs locked in.”

“Roger that,” Quinn said as he kept the ship’s nose up.

Pennington imagined that he was leaving finger dents in his seat’s armrest as he watched the city’s curved, sloping architecture pass within meters of the ship. The Rocinante cleared the coil of causeways and slipped between two majestic towers, then it barrel-rolled back to level flight—just as a crimson thunderbolt speared its aft hull.

An explosion rocked the ship. Sparks fountained from all the cockpit consoles, which then belched acrid smoke. The engines’ whine fell in pitch and volume, and Pennington felt their sudden reduction in speed. “Overload in the impulse motivator!” Quinn shouted. “Gotta set her down, fast!”

The helm controls stuttered on and off as Quinn guided the jerking, wobbling ship toward a wide, hollow space with a level floor inside one of the towers. Broad causeways stretched away from the tower in three directions, linking it to the center of the city as well as the outer reaches. The sides of the hollow looked alarmingly close as the groaning hulk of the Rocinante approached for an awkward, half-powered landing.

Pennington made a nervous, dry swallow and glanced at Quinn. “Sure you can make that?”

“I’ve made worse,” Quinn said.

“So that’s a yes?”

“It’s a maybe.”

A final tap on the thruster controls brought the ship to a rough and sudden stop inside the hollow tower. Quinn released his safety harness and scrambled out of his seat. “I gotta get the motivator fixed,” he said. “If we’re lucky, I can get us airborne in fifteen minutes.” Lifting his chin in a half-nod at Terrell, he added, “You got that long to find your gal, then we’re leaving.”

“Wait a second,” Terrell said, and to Pennington’s surprise Quinn stopped and listened. “We need the ship to find her.”

Hooking one thumb over his shoulder, Quinn said, “Pal, we’ll be lucky to punch through the storm and get back to orbit. Two more minutes gettin’ hammered in this mess, and we’ll be done for. This ride’s over.”

“What am I supposed to do?” Terrell asked sarcastically, waving his hand over his mauled body. “Run in and get her?”

Pennington glared at Quinn. Don’t say it. With all his wished-for psychic ability he commanded him, Don’t say it.

“Send the newsboy,” Quinn said.

Damn you, I told you not to say it.

Terrell turned his desperate gaze to Pennington. “Please, we’re her only chance. She probably doesn’t even know we’re out here.” He held up the tricorder. “This is locked on to her signal; you can follow it right to her. She’s only…” He checked its display. “One-point-nine-three kilometers away, toward the city center, almost on the same level.” Pennington stared at the tricorder and hesitated to answer. Going alone into an alien city under siege by rain and lightning, to face who knows what, was not the story he’d hoped to find by coming back to Jinoteur. Then Terrell repeated simply, “Please. You’re her only chance.”

He took the tricorder from Terrell. “Right,” he said, slinging the device’s strap diagonally across his torso, as he had seen the Starfleeters do on Vanguard. “I’m on it.”

Terrell handed him his communicator. “Take this, too. Contact us as soon as you find her.”

“Will do, mate.” Pennington tilted his head toward Quinn and said to Terrell, “Don’t let him leave without me.” He unlocked the aft ramp. The platform lowered with a pathetic series of metallic shrieks. The white noise of pounding rain and the constant rumbling of close thunder filled the main cabin.

As Pennington started down the ramp, Quinn called out, “Tim!” When the reporter looked back, Quinn added simply, “Good luck.”

Pennington nodded his thanks to the older man and hurried down the ramp. He checked his bearings, then sprinted across the rain-slicked, lightning-flanked causeway toward the fog-shrouded grandeur at the heart of the alien metropolis.

Halfway across the bridge, sprinting through the deluge, deaf from the cannonades of thunder, he realized that he was laughing. He knew that there was a good chance his beau geste would get him killed and end in failure, but the journalist in him had to admit the obvious: this was the most amazing thing he had ever seen, and this was the best thing he had ever done.

And that had to count for something.

“I’ll hold the plasma conduit steady,” Threx said to Torvin. “You lock it in. And make it fast.”

Before the spindly young Tiburonian engineer’s mate could explain to Threx that hefting the end of a plasma conduit by hand without an antigrav was impossible, the burly Denobulan had already done it. “Threx,” he said. “That’s not possible.”

Forcing words through a pained grunt, Threx snapped, “Just lock it in, Tor!” His gruff instruction drew the attention of nearly the entire crew, including Captain Nassir, who was pitching in to speed the repairs.

Torvin put aside his fascination with Threx’s display of raw strength and rapidly sealed the mag clamps that would secure the starboard nacelle’s plasma line to the ship’s warp core. Halfway through the job he stopped and strained to pick out a muffled sound from behind the clatter of work on the top deck and the ambient low-frequency warble of the river.

Threx quickly grew annoyed as Torvin stood motionless and stared blankly at the overhead. “Dammit, Tor, would you hurry—”

“Shh,” Torvin hissed. “I hear something. Outside.”

Ilucci, overhearing their exchange, told everyone on the deck in a sharp whisper, “Hold the work! Quiet!” In seconds a hush fell over the crew, and Torvin closed his eyes to concentrate on the sounds that were all around them. He tuned out the huffs of the others’ breathing, the gentle humming of the computer core, even the sound of the river itself.

Then his delicately sensitive ears found it, far off but getting closer: irregular percussive tremors, throbbing along the riverbed, through the ship’s hull, and into his feet. “Impacts,” he said to the captain. “Something punching through the water and hitting the bottom, over and over again. And it’s coming this way. I’d say we’ve got ten minutes, tops.”