The sensor screen was larger than he had expected. Ganz’s drawing of the device had not been to scale, and it had led Quinn to believe that its removal would be as simple as unplugging it and tucking it under one arm. On the contrary, the cylindrical machine was almost as big as Quinn himself, and, if his approximation of its duranium content was on the money, it was at least twice as heavy. He considered stealing one of the miners’ cargo pallets, but then he remembered how much noise the lifter would make. Damn thing’ll wake the entire camp, he groused silently. This would’ve been easier if my ship had a transporter. He had often toyed with the notion of installing one, but his ship’s limited power-generation capability meant that to operate a transporter would require sacrificing another system of equal energy level. Unfortunately, the only one that came close was the inertial dampener, and since it was the one thing that prevented routine starflight from turning him into chunky salsa, he was loath to part with it.

An idea occurred to him: I could just steal the active component and leave the power module. Just take the part that’s hard to get. Examining the device more closely, he realized that the top segment constituted the screen generator, and that once it was separated from the much larger and heavier power supply he would be able to carry it out on his own. He dug into the lower pockets along his pants leg, found the tools he needed, and set to work. Another quick scan registered no sign of power inside the device; it appeared to be inert. That was for the best, in Quinn’s opinion. A few simple twists and toggles later, he decoupled its primary power-supply cable.

No sooner had the cable come free than a scramble of data flooded his scanner. Eyeing the readings, he made the belated discovery that the sensor screen had, in fact, been active the entire time he had been here—and, true to its intended function, it had fooled his scanner.

His ears detected the muffled din of an alarm klaxon. Doors banged open against sheet-metal shelter walls. Running footfalls slapped through the mud, converging on his location. Using a sonic screwdriver he’d swiped from a rather daft chap back on Barolia, he torqued off the sensor screen’s restraining bolts, wrapped his arms around the screen generator, and hefted it with an agonized grunt. He stumbled backward, tripped over something that he couldn’t see in the dark, and dropped the device.

With the unmistakable crack of something breaking, the device struck whatever unseen piece of junk had found its way under Quinn’s feet. A sizable chunk of it struck his foot hard enough to launch a string of vulgarities from his mouth. Hopping on his good foot proved an unwise reaction, as he immediately slipped and wound up on his back, in the mud, and looking at a cluster of angry miners at the end of the alley.

“Hey, fellas,” he said, flailing in the muck to get himself upright. “I know this looks pretty bad, but—” One of the men drew what Quinn was certain was a Starfleet phaser pistol. Assessing the situation calmly, Quinn ran like hell.

With his arms and legs windmilling as he struggled for traction on the greasy mud, his movement was so clumsy and erratic that the first phaser shot—whose tonal pitch Quinn recognized as level-five heavy stun—narrowly missed him and scorched the wall behind his head. Finding his footing, he sprinted out of the alley on a mad dash for the tree line. As he crossed the street, he heard the group of armed men running up the alley to follow him.

Two more simultaneous phaser shots quickened Quinn’s already frantic pace. One sizzled the mud behind his heel; the other passed over his shoulder and crisped its way through the foliage. He plunged straight into the stygian forest, zigzagging through the densely packed trees and ducking through nooses of vine. Blue phaser fire shimmered in the gloom, slicing wildly around his chaotic path.

Where’s the damn trail? Seconds seemed stretched by the adrenaline coursing through Quinn’s brain. He felt like he’d been running twice as long as necessary to find the path back to his ship. Then he broke free of the jungle’s clinging tendrils and stumbled out onto the narrow, dry creek bed he had followed down this side of the hill from his ship. At the time, landing on the other side of the hilltop had seemed clever. Banked in steep, thick cloud cover even at this low elevation, it had enabled him to glide in unseen and unheard.

Now, unfortunately, it meant running for his life uphill.

His pursuers were getting closer. Time for tricks, he concluded. Several meters ahead, a sizable boulder offered him some cover. He reached the rock and dove to the ground behind it just before another volley of neon-blue phaser beams lashed across its pitted face. Fumbling through assorted bits of junk in his pockets, he found the detonator. The angry whine of another phaser blast bit off nearly a quarter of one side of the boulder that was shielding him. The odor of scorched carbon and iron reminded him of the stink of an empty pot left on a flame. The crackle of trampled underbrush resumed. They were coming.

He keyed the detonator switch.

Crimson flashes lit up the ink-black night, and a series of tooth-rattling concussive blasts provoked a mighty cacophony of startled noises from spooked animals—followed by the squeak and groan of splintered tree trunks jackknifing and collapsing under their own weight. Alarmed cries of “Fall back!” and “Get down!” mingled with the dull impacts of dozens of high-canopy trees, which dropped in an overlapping pattern carefully planned to foil pursuit. A heavy curtain of smoke obscured his pursuers’ line of sight, and the crackle of small fires caused by the diversion covered the sound of his mad dash through the loose secondary-growth brush. He heard someone in the group below, probably the leader, confirm that all his people were okay, then order them back to the camp.

Quinn was glad that no one had been hurt. He had long ago learned the value of simple lies, clear exit strategies, and unexpected diversions. There were few “codes” he actually considered worth living by; most lacked the “moral flexibility” and “ethical adaptability” that he had come to consider indispensable. But the one that he clung to was that no job was worth killing someone over. Sucker-punching them? Sure. Stun them? If need be. But serious harm or killing? That was a line Quinn crossed only in self-defense.

Minutes later, rounding the crest of the hill to its steeper, rockier side, he clambered across loose chunks of flat stone toward the Rocinante. Beneath a sloped shale overhang, the ship looked at home in the shadows. Its center fuselage was shaped like a long, thin wedge. Attached to either side were ponderous warp nacelles, bulkier-looking than most and nearly two-thirds as long as the main hull section. Navigational fins, which normally were extended down at a slight angle from the nacelles, were folded upright into their landing configuration. Quinn stepped over the deep gouges the ship’s landing gear had cut through the broken rock and dry, granular soil beneath. The entire vessel was dark gray, mottled with slightly lighter-toned splotches where its hull had been crudely patched in one alien shipyard or another over the years. Its four-seat cockpit bay was hidden behind a dark-tinted viewport.

Reaching under his belt, he found the security remote. His fingers were still shaking, from the panic response of almost being shot, as he keyed in the code to open the ventral gangway. The plank separated from the hull and descended with a hydraulic hiss. Plumes of vapor from leaky coolant coils tumbled down like the ghost of a waterfall as he climbed the ramp into his ship. Once inside, he pressed the ramp-closing switch on his way forward to the cockpit. With a sickly gasp and a grinding groan, it lifted shut behind him as he collapsed into his seat.