THE SHADOWS were growing long in the southwest corner of the Thieves Quarter. There were not too many people on the streets, what with most folks hustling to dinner appointments. Besides which, the Thieves Quarter was not the most crowded of areas even during the busiest times. It was, after all, where only the most adventurous of folks chose to go. Anything and everything could happen in the Thieves Quarter, and even though it was all a show, it was most definitely not for the faint of heart.
Sulu and Ling Sui stuck to the shadows, which was easy since they were fairly copious. Ling Sui craned her neck, peering around a corner and then ducking back.
"Any sign of your contact man?" asked Sulu.
"Not yet."
"Is he dependable?"
"I've worked with him before. His name is Kelles. His strength is, he's good. His weakness is, he knows he's good."
"And he's your buyer?"
"Of course not. He's representing them."
"Do you trust him?"
She glanced at him. "My, you're full of questions. Will I work with him? Yes. We'll be making the exchange right here. I give him the information, and the credit transfer will be made immediately thereafter.
"But will I trust him? No, of course not. I don't trust anyone."
"Not even me?" asked Sulu with a mock look of hurt on his face.
But Ling Sui did not smile. "Trust you?" she said flatly. "You? A Starfleet officer out to turn a profit? Allying himself with some strange woman dealing in some sort of nefarious who-knows-what? Sulu … let's be honest with one another, all right? I tend to react to people on a gut level. And on that level, I find you handsome … brave … perhaps someone who even fancies himself a bit of a lady's man … with a charming sense of chivalry and an overdeveloped sense of being a swashbuckler. If these were calmer times I would be very taken with the idea of seeing you socially. And if I happened to discover you in my bed, I doubt I would kick you out."
"That's … honest," said Sulu, surprised that his voice suddenly sounded a bit hoarse.
"But trust?" she continued. "No, trust you, I don't. I would be crazy to. I won't turn my back on you, nor take my eyes off you. And I fully expect you to treat me in the same manner, and if you don't, you're a fool."
"I see," he said evenly. "Now shall I be honest with you?"
"Don't bother," she informed him. "Since I don't trust you, then obviously it doesn't matter what you say since I have no reason to assume you're being honest with me. Q.E.D. Besides," and she inclined her chin slightly, "unless I'm mistaken, here comes Kelles."
It was not at all what Sulu was expecting. The vehicles that he'd seen in the city had mostly been period vehicles. Not this. This was a very impressive antigrav craft: a three-man shuttle, the type designed for inner-city use in that it didn't travel more than a few feet off the ground. After all, not everyone was licensed to maneuver the higher flying shuttles. Anarchy in the skyways would be the result; it had in years past when technology had briefly outstripped humanity's ability to regulate it. The legendary two-thousand-car pileup in San Diego remained a testimony to those dangers.
The shuttle's burnished exterior was sleek, almost looking like the head and beak of a bird of prey. Sulu recognized this particular model: Despite its street-level uses, it was called a Peregrine, after the falcon. The heavy-duty front windows were smoked, insuring privacy.
The Peregrine slid to a halt mere feet away from Sulu and Ling Sui. It hovered there a moment, then settled to the ground. The side door swung open with a sigh of air, and a tall, heavyset black man stepped out. He wore a battered brown hat pulled down low over his face, a white shirt with brown vest, and loose-fitting slacks. His black boots were thick with dust and looked as if they hadn't been polished for months.
"Kelles!" hissed Ling Sui.
Kelles looked toward Sulu and Ling in almost leisurely fashion. "You're early," he said. His voice was very low, and yet it seemed to carry.
"What kind of vehicle is that?" she demanded. "You're the one who always told me to be subtle. You're getting sloppy in your old age."
"Sloppy?" said Kelles, looking offended. "It's reverse psychology, girl. Drive something conspicuous; that way the enemy doesn't notice you because they figure you wouldn't be that stupid."
Ling looked dubious.
Kelles, in the meantime, was looking Sulu up and down. "Who's your friend?" he asked, the question addressed to her, the attention paid to him.
"Doesn't matter."
"It does to me," said Kelles. There was a quiet danger in his voice.
Sulu wondered how this new arrival fit into the grand scheme of things. There seemed to be only one truly logical answer. This fellow, Kelles, was going to be the means through which the whole charade finally ended. Ling would give him whatever it was she has allegedly stolen. He would pay her off. Maybe there would even be one final close call or two. And then it would be over. Ling would say something appropriately mysterious, vanish into the back alleys of the Thieves Quarter, and that would be that.
It was hard for Sulu to believe that it had all happened in one day. He had to admit that when Chekov organized something, he really pulled out all the stops.
"He's my new partner. Look, let's discuss this later," said Ling impatiently. "For all we know, you were followed."
Kelles gave her an incredulous stare. "No one followed me, Ling. That, I promise you. Now, where is it?"
She had a bag strapped around her waist. She started to reach for it.
And for no reason that Sulu immediately understood, his own words suddenly floated through his head. Words describing what it was like to helm the Enterprise, that sense of perpetual anticipation …
At any second, anything could happen …
Kelles's head exploded.
Sulu wasn't prepared for it, of course. After all, everything seemed to be going perfectly normally. It was only seconds later that the whine of the disruptor that had gunned down Kelles made itself heard. It was an angry sound, like hornets massing.
For a moment, just for a moment, it seemed to Sulu that he could perceive everything simultaneously. He saw his own jacket, with the blood from Kelles staining the front. He saw Kelles's body in motion, still in the process of falling to the ground. He saw Ling Sui's horrified expression, the blood draining from her face. He even saw the shooter, on a rooftop overhead, bringing his disruptor to bear. He saw the door still open to the Peregrine.
His course was laid in. All he had to do was keep her moving.
Before Kelles's body hit the ground, Sulu grabbed Ling by the wrist and yanked her toward the Peregrine. Another disruptor blast roared over his head. Close shot off the bow. It was a clean miss, though. Ignore it. Stay on course.
He practically threw her into the shuttle, leaping in behind her. The shuttle rocked slightly beneath his feet. He took in the controls at a glance. He'd never operated this particular model of shuttle in his life. It didn't matter. One look and he instantly knew how to operate it.
He leaped into the driver's seat, his fingers flying over the controls. "Belt in!" he shouted as the shuttle roared to life. The vehicle started to lurch forward …
… and someone shoved his way in through the still-open door.
Sulu's head snapped around in alarm. It was a man that Sulu hadn't seen before; he was roughly the size of a small mountain. He hadn't quite gotten his footing yet because of the vehicle's movement.
Ling Sui braced herself, gripping one of the two remaining seats firmly. She swung her legs forward, slamming them into the chest of the newcomer. He staggered, his arms pinwheeling, and Ling released her hold on the seat. She leaped through the air, spinning like a black-clad top, and slammed a spin kick to the side of the newcomer's head. He grunted once, which was the only sound he made during the entire encounter, and then fell backward out of the shuttle. The ground beneath the vehicle was moving faster and faster, and he tumbled out and away.
The entire encounter had taken no more than a couple of seconds. Sulu, who had instant mastery over the steering and operation of the Peregrine's engines, had taken a moment or two more to locate something as simple as the mechanism for closing the shuttle's door. But he found it now, activated it, and the door swung shut with a hiss.
The Peregrine shuddered as something struck in a concentrated blast. Sulu recognized it immediately for what it was: a disruptor, being shot directly at the vehicle. Fortunately enough for them, handheld disruptors—while devastating against human bodies—were less so against heavy-duty inanimate objects such as shuttles.
Pedestrians scrambled to get out of the way as the Peregrine roared down the main street. Sulu quickly glanced at the exterior monitors, surveying the area around them. Then he afforded a quick glance at Ling Sui. She was staring resolutely straight ahead, finishing the process of belting herself in to her chair. Her face was slightly flushed, but otherwise she had composed herself very quickly.
For Sulu, it wasn't quite that simple.
He had leaped to a conclusion the moment that Kelles's head had exploded onto him. But it was not one that he had fully assimilated until just this moment as he scrutinized Ling Sui.
"That man was dead. Really dead."
"I know," said Ling Sui tightly. "Damn him, I warned him. Warned him." In anger she slapped the control board in front of her. "He got too damned self-confident. Even so, he deserved better than that."
"Really dead."
She looked at him with mild confusion. "Not to sound insensitive, but you must have encountered the occasional corpse before."
"But I thought this was all a—"
But then he stopped talking as he noticed something on the monitors. "Oh, no," he said.
"What?" She leaned over to see what had elicited his worried comment.
There were pursuers. Four of them, clinging fiercely to high-speed stratopods. They were small, one-man, high-speed vehicles, oblong in shape. Sulu had had one in his youth. He'd been fairly adept at steering it, and knew how maneuverable they were. Far more maneuverable than a Peregrine inner-city shuttlecraft.
For a moment he thought that perhaps they were the authorities. That being the case, Sulu would immediately bring the Peregrine to a halt, get out and explain the situation. . . .
Although that was somewhat problematic. Explain the situation and say what, precisely? That his female companion was involved in some sort of shady dealing? That he was involved as well, except he'd thought it was an elaborate setup?
It quickly became moot, however, because Sulu suddenly recognized one of their pursuers as the gunman from the rooftop who had, only moments ago, redecorated the front of Sulu's jacket.
All around them, people were scrambling to get out of the way. Some weren't fast enough, knocked aside by the stratopods. The drivers of those small vehicles clearly weren't concerned about whatever damage they might do. If matters continued in the current way, civilians were going to be injured, even killed. This was an intolerable situation.
In the depths of space, Sulu had instrumentation to tell him where he was and where he was heading. That, however, really served as little more than backup to his own innate ability to determine such things. With the briefest of glances at star groupings, Sulu could easily locate himself and the Enterprise in relation to all the many systems that he carried around in his head.
So determining where he was now in relation to the rest of the city was, comparatively, child's play.
A map of the city sprang into his mind, and he immediately "saw" where he was relative to the rest of the environs. He also quickly determined his only option.
"Hold on!" shouted Sulu.
Ling Sui did so, gripping firmly the sides of her chair even though she was belted in.
Sulu cut hard left. The Peregrine angled sharply, its rear swinging around and slamming against the corner of a building before the shuttle continued on its way. The stratopod drivers course-corrected instantly and maintained pursuit, but without managing to close the distance.
"Where are we going?" demanded Ling Sui.
Sulu replied with an inclination of his head. Ling Sui looked ahead of them and gasped.
Large entrance gates to the city of Demora loomed squarely in front of them. They were several stories tall and made of synthetic wood. They were more than adequate to repel the attacks from fake desert raiders.
Whether they could, however, withstand a direct hit from a fast-moving shuttle was another question. Ling Sui was somewhat appalled to discover that they were going to get the answer firsthand.
"Are you crazy?!" she demanded.
"We've got no choice," he shot back. "I'm not putting innocent people at risk."
"What about us?"
"We're already at risk! Brace yourself!"
One moment the gate seemed to be at a great distance, and the next they were on top of it. Sulu had a brief glimpse of people trying to wave him off, and then they were clearing the hell out of the way.
Sulu resisted the reflex to slow down and instead sped up even more. The Peregrine smashed through the gate, synthetic wood shattering under the impact with an earsplitting crack. The shuttle roared forward and out into the desert.
The stratopods, not slowing, kept in tight pursuit.
Sulu and Ling Sui stuck to the shadows, which was easy since they were fairly copious. Ling Sui craned her neck, peering around a corner and then ducking back.
"Any sign of your contact man?" asked Sulu.
"Not yet."
"Is he dependable?"
"I've worked with him before. His name is Kelles. His strength is, he's good. His weakness is, he knows he's good."
"And he's your buyer?"
"Of course not. He's representing them."
"Do you trust him?"
She glanced at him. "My, you're full of questions. Will I work with him? Yes. We'll be making the exchange right here. I give him the information, and the credit transfer will be made immediately thereafter.
"But will I trust him? No, of course not. I don't trust anyone."
"Not even me?" asked Sulu with a mock look of hurt on his face.
But Ling Sui did not smile. "Trust you?" she said flatly. "You? A Starfleet officer out to turn a profit? Allying himself with some strange woman dealing in some sort of nefarious who-knows-what? Sulu … let's be honest with one another, all right? I tend to react to people on a gut level. And on that level, I find you handsome … brave … perhaps someone who even fancies himself a bit of a lady's man … with a charming sense of chivalry and an overdeveloped sense of being a swashbuckler. If these were calmer times I would be very taken with the idea of seeing you socially. And if I happened to discover you in my bed, I doubt I would kick you out."
"That's … honest," said Sulu, surprised that his voice suddenly sounded a bit hoarse.
"But trust?" she continued. "No, trust you, I don't. I would be crazy to. I won't turn my back on you, nor take my eyes off you. And I fully expect you to treat me in the same manner, and if you don't, you're a fool."
"I see," he said evenly. "Now shall I be honest with you?"
"Don't bother," she informed him. "Since I don't trust you, then obviously it doesn't matter what you say since I have no reason to assume you're being honest with me. Q.E.D. Besides," and she inclined her chin slightly, "unless I'm mistaken, here comes Kelles."
It was not at all what Sulu was expecting. The vehicles that he'd seen in the city had mostly been period vehicles. Not this. This was a very impressive antigrav craft: a three-man shuttle, the type designed for inner-city use in that it didn't travel more than a few feet off the ground. After all, not everyone was licensed to maneuver the higher flying shuttles. Anarchy in the skyways would be the result; it had in years past when technology had briefly outstripped humanity's ability to regulate it. The legendary two-thousand-car pileup in San Diego remained a testimony to those dangers.
The shuttle's burnished exterior was sleek, almost looking like the head and beak of a bird of prey. Sulu recognized this particular model: Despite its street-level uses, it was called a Peregrine, after the falcon. The heavy-duty front windows were smoked, insuring privacy.
The Peregrine slid to a halt mere feet away from Sulu and Ling Sui. It hovered there a moment, then settled to the ground. The side door swung open with a sigh of air, and a tall, heavyset black man stepped out. He wore a battered brown hat pulled down low over his face, a white shirt with brown vest, and loose-fitting slacks. His black boots were thick with dust and looked as if they hadn't been polished for months.
"Kelles!" hissed Ling Sui.
Kelles looked toward Sulu and Ling in almost leisurely fashion. "You're early," he said. His voice was very low, and yet it seemed to carry.
"What kind of vehicle is that?" she demanded. "You're the one who always told me to be subtle. You're getting sloppy in your old age."
"Sloppy?" said Kelles, looking offended. "It's reverse psychology, girl. Drive something conspicuous; that way the enemy doesn't notice you because they figure you wouldn't be that stupid."
Ling looked dubious.
Kelles, in the meantime, was looking Sulu up and down. "Who's your friend?" he asked, the question addressed to her, the attention paid to him.
"Doesn't matter."
"It does to me," said Kelles. There was a quiet danger in his voice.
Sulu wondered how this new arrival fit into the grand scheme of things. There seemed to be only one truly logical answer. This fellow, Kelles, was going to be the means through which the whole charade finally ended. Ling would give him whatever it was she has allegedly stolen. He would pay her off. Maybe there would even be one final close call or two. And then it would be over. Ling would say something appropriately mysterious, vanish into the back alleys of the Thieves Quarter, and that would be that.
It was hard for Sulu to believe that it had all happened in one day. He had to admit that when Chekov organized something, he really pulled out all the stops.
"He's my new partner. Look, let's discuss this later," said Ling impatiently. "For all we know, you were followed."
Kelles gave her an incredulous stare. "No one followed me, Ling. That, I promise you. Now, where is it?"
She had a bag strapped around her waist. She started to reach for it.
And for no reason that Sulu immediately understood, his own words suddenly floated through his head. Words describing what it was like to helm the Enterprise, that sense of perpetual anticipation …
At any second, anything could happen …
Kelles's head exploded.
Sulu wasn't prepared for it, of course. After all, everything seemed to be going perfectly normally. It was only seconds later that the whine of the disruptor that had gunned down Kelles made itself heard. It was an angry sound, like hornets massing.
For a moment, just for a moment, it seemed to Sulu that he could perceive everything simultaneously. He saw his own jacket, with the blood from Kelles staining the front. He saw Kelles's body in motion, still in the process of falling to the ground. He saw Ling Sui's horrified expression, the blood draining from her face. He even saw the shooter, on a rooftop overhead, bringing his disruptor to bear. He saw the door still open to the Peregrine.
His course was laid in. All he had to do was keep her moving.
Before Kelles's body hit the ground, Sulu grabbed Ling by the wrist and yanked her toward the Peregrine. Another disruptor blast roared over his head. Close shot off the bow. It was a clean miss, though. Ignore it. Stay on course.
He practically threw her into the shuttle, leaping in behind her. The shuttle rocked slightly beneath his feet. He took in the controls at a glance. He'd never operated this particular model of shuttle in his life. It didn't matter. One look and he instantly knew how to operate it.
He leaped into the driver's seat, his fingers flying over the controls. "Belt in!" he shouted as the shuttle roared to life. The vehicle started to lurch forward …
… and someone shoved his way in through the still-open door.
Sulu's head snapped around in alarm. It was a man that Sulu hadn't seen before; he was roughly the size of a small mountain. He hadn't quite gotten his footing yet because of the vehicle's movement.
Ling Sui braced herself, gripping one of the two remaining seats firmly. She swung her legs forward, slamming them into the chest of the newcomer. He staggered, his arms pinwheeling, and Ling released her hold on the seat. She leaped through the air, spinning like a black-clad top, and slammed a spin kick to the side of the newcomer's head. He grunted once, which was the only sound he made during the entire encounter, and then fell backward out of the shuttle. The ground beneath the vehicle was moving faster and faster, and he tumbled out and away.
The entire encounter had taken no more than a couple of seconds. Sulu, who had instant mastery over the steering and operation of the Peregrine's engines, had taken a moment or two more to locate something as simple as the mechanism for closing the shuttle's door. But he found it now, activated it, and the door swung shut with a hiss.
The Peregrine shuddered as something struck in a concentrated blast. Sulu recognized it immediately for what it was: a disruptor, being shot directly at the vehicle. Fortunately enough for them, handheld disruptors—while devastating against human bodies—were less so against heavy-duty inanimate objects such as shuttles.
Pedestrians scrambled to get out of the way as the Peregrine roared down the main street. Sulu quickly glanced at the exterior monitors, surveying the area around them. Then he afforded a quick glance at Ling Sui. She was staring resolutely straight ahead, finishing the process of belting herself in to her chair. Her face was slightly flushed, but otherwise she had composed herself very quickly.
For Sulu, it wasn't quite that simple.
He had leaped to a conclusion the moment that Kelles's head had exploded onto him. But it was not one that he had fully assimilated until just this moment as he scrutinized Ling Sui.
"That man was dead. Really dead."
"I know," said Ling Sui tightly. "Damn him, I warned him. Warned him." In anger she slapped the control board in front of her. "He got too damned self-confident. Even so, he deserved better than that."
"Really dead."
She looked at him with mild confusion. "Not to sound insensitive, but you must have encountered the occasional corpse before."
"But I thought this was all a—"
But then he stopped talking as he noticed something on the monitors. "Oh, no," he said.
"What?" She leaned over to see what had elicited his worried comment.
There were pursuers. Four of them, clinging fiercely to high-speed stratopods. They were small, one-man, high-speed vehicles, oblong in shape. Sulu had had one in his youth. He'd been fairly adept at steering it, and knew how maneuverable they were. Far more maneuverable than a Peregrine inner-city shuttlecraft.
For a moment he thought that perhaps they were the authorities. That being the case, Sulu would immediately bring the Peregrine to a halt, get out and explain the situation. . . .
Although that was somewhat problematic. Explain the situation and say what, precisely? That his female companion was involved in some sort of shady dealing? That he was involved as well, except he'd thought it was an elaborate setup?
It quickly became moot, however, because Sulu suddenly recognized one of their pursuers as the gunman from the rooftop who had, only moments ago, redecorated the front of Sulu's jacket.
All around them, people were scrambling to get out of the way. Some weren't fast enough, knocked aside by the stratopods. The drivers of those small vehicles clearly weren't concerned about whatever damage they might do. If matters continued in the current way, civilians were going to be injured, even killed. This was an intolerable situation.
In the depths of space, Sulu had instrumentation to tell him where he was and where he was heading. That, however, really served as little more than backup to his own innate ability to determine such things. With the briefest of glances at star groupings, Sulu could easily locate himself and the Enterprise in relation to all the many systems that he carried around in his head.
So determining where he was now in relation to the rest of the city was, comparatively, child's play.
A map of the city sprang into his mind, and he immediately "saw" where he was relative to the rest of the environs. He also quickly determined his only option.
"Hold on!" shouted Sulu.
Ling Sui did so, gripping firmly the sides of her chair even though she was belted in.
Sulu cut hard left. The Peregrine angled sharply, its rear swinging around and slamming against the corner of a building before the shuttle continued on its way. The stratopod drivers course-corrected instantly and maintained pursuit, but without managing to close the distance.
"Where are we going?" demanded Ling Sui.
Sulu replied with an inclination of his head. Ling Sui looked ahead of them and gasped.
Large entrance gates to the city of Demora loomed squarely in front of them. They were several stories tall and made of synthetic wood. They were more than adequate to repel the attacks from fake desert raiders.
Whether they could, however, withstand a direct hit from a fast-moving shuttle was another question. Ling Sui was somewhat appalled to discover that they were going to get the answer firsthand.
"Are you crazy?!" she demanded.
"We've got no choice," he shot back. "I'm not putting innocent people at risk."
"What about us?"
"We're already at risk! Brace yourself!"
One moment the gate seemed to be at a great distance, and the next they were on top of it. Sulu had a brief glimpse of people trying to wave him off, and then they were clearing the hell out of the way.
Sulu resisted the reflex to slow down and instead sped up even more. The Peregrine smashed through the gate, synthetic wood shattering under the impact with an earsplitting crack. The shuttle roared forward and out into the desert.
The stratopods, not slowing, kept in tight pursuit.