SULU SHOVED THE PEREGRINE to its maximum speed, hoping that, whatever that might be, it would be faster than their pursuers. Ling Sui had lapsed into silence. She was, however, gripping the armrests so tightly that her knuckles were dead white. She stared resolutely out the smoked front windshield, watching the ground race past them at dizzying speed.
"Don't worry," said Sulu confidently. "This is a lot smaller and a lot slower than a starship. If I could helm that, I can certainly handle this."
"I think you should know," she said slowly, "that I have a fear of moving at high velocity."
"No reason to be concerned about going fast," he told her.
"I know, I know. It's the abrupt stops that should concern me."
"Exactly."
It was odd. With all the insane events in the past hours (again, it was hard to believe that it had all happened so quickly) he had remained confident. It was a confidence built on an incorrect belief on his part … a belief that he had nothing to worry about, because all the jeopardy was manufactured.
Yet now that he knew, beyond any doubt, that the danger was real—that his life and that of his companion were at risk—he felt no less confident. Because he was at the helm. He had his steady hand managing his fate, and he had utter belief in his ability to be master of his own destiny.
He had the conn, and when that was the case he knew he could certainly steer the ship to safety.
There was a heavy impact against the side of the shuttle, and the vessel rocked slightly under it. Sulu glanced at his monitors and, sure enough, the stratopods were closing. He could see the four pilots crouched, strapped in, controlling their trajectory with one hand and gripping disruptor guns in the other.
The city of Demora had already been left far behind. In front of them stretched endless vistas of the desert—unchanged, unspoiled. The Peregrine hugged the curve of the land as it swooped and dove, shooting up one sand dune, hurtling down another. The stabilizers kept the shuttle relatively even, but the sensation of forward motion was steady and, in Ling's case, apparently somewhat daunting. Despite the peril they were in, Sulu found it a bit amusing that this capable, resourceful, and intelligent woman had a bit of a weakness. It made her seem more accessible somehow.
The stratopods were closing and the riders fired again and again. The collective barrage was starting to take its toll. The last couple of hits caused the Peregrine to buck under Sulu's steady hand, and the helmsman came to the realization that simply moving wasn't going to be enough. He was going to have to attack somehow.
The thought of possible loss of life wasn't of major concern to him. Certainly he had launched enough photon torpedos, targeted enough phasers, so that the prospect of having to kill an opponent was not a daunting one. It was a necessary evil, but if it was a question of who was going to survive, then as far as Sulu was concerned it was no question at all.
The only problem was that the Peregrine had no weapons. Nor was Sulu himself armed. Nor was …
He looked at Ling. "Do you have a weapon on you?"
"I wish."
Okay. So much for that.
She looked at the monitor. "Here they come."
They were coming in a two-by-two formation, moving faster than Sulu would have thought possible. His first instinct was to activate deflectors. His second was to open fire. He had to remind himself that neither option was viable.
"All right," he said. "I suppose we're going to have to get innovative."
There was something in his voice that prompted her to glance at him. She saw where his hand was hovering. "Excuse me … that's the door," she said, trying not to sound patronizing.
"I'm aware of that," he said. There was one good thing about maneuvering through the desert; there were even fewer obstacles than steering through space. He watched the monitor steadily, gauging the speed of their approach. Closer they were coming, and closer, and still his right hand remained poised unflinchingly over the door button. One could have balanced a glass filled with wine on the back of his hand, and there wouldn't have been so much as a ripple in the surface of the drink.
They were drawing up right alongside the speeding shuttle. With any luck, that would prove to be a tactical error. "Just keep steady," he said under his breath to the pursuers, although naturally they couldn't hear him. "Three … two … one …"
He activated the door.
Obediently it swung upward, slamming into the stratopod driver who had, at that very moment, pulled alongside the Peregrine. It slammed him to the side and he lost control of his vehicle, the gyros smashed by the impact of the door. On the monitor Sulu had a brief glimpse of his face, twisting in a soundless shriek, and he recognized him as the man who'd been on the roof. The stratopod spiraled and then hit the ground, shattering and turning from a vehicle into a twisted mesh of metal. By the time it stopped rolling, the shuttle was long gone and Sulu was already concentrating on the other three.
He had already slammed the door shut again, reasoning that there was no way they were going to fall for such a stratagem again.
They were straddling the shuttle, pacing him on either side (although the fellow on the right, as Sulu had surmised, was keeping back from the door).
"Hold on," Sulu told Ling again. This time she didn't utter any word of protest, made no snide comment. Instead she simply nodded, and a smile had crept across her face. She seemed in the process of reassessing him.
The Peregrine lurched wildly from side to side as Sulu tried to send the shuttle slamming into the pursuers. He clipped one, but the operator recovered with more adroitness than the one whom Sulu had already managed to dispose of.
Sulu wished desperately that the Peregrine could go at a higher altitude, but it simply wasn't designed to maneuver that way. It had to be within a few feet of ground for the antigrav to function properly.
There was the shriek of weapons fire again, and this time the wall right nearby Sulu's head dented. He snapped his head back reflexively and cast the wall a worried look.
"All right," he said. "This is going to be tricky. I hope you don't get dizzy easily."
"What do you mean by th—?"
She didn't have time to finish the question, nor was it necessary. Sulu quickly demonstrated precisely what he meant.
He sent the Peregrine into a spin. The shuttle whirled, sailing to the left and moving like a buzz saw. It slammed into one of the stratopods, crushing the pod and driver instantly. The stratopod overturned and smashed into another one of the drivers. The driver howled in fury and overturned, colliding with the rear of the still-twirling shuttle. The stratopod erupted in flame, hitting the ground and leaving a skid mark thirty yards long.
Sulu felt the jolt, glanced at the controls. He'd lost some power to the engines from that last impact. He fought to pull the shuttle out of the spin. Ling Sui, for her part, gripped the sides of her chair firmly. Her jaw was set, giving her a very determined air, although Sulu suspected that most of the determination centered around not wanting to vomit.
The last of their pursuers had clearly decided to give them considerable distance. He was hovering meters away, keeping a safe distance from the wildly pivoting shuttle.
Sulu fought desperately with the controls, trying to bring the shuttle on line. The vehicle was within a hairsbreadth of flipping completely over, tearing up a large stretch of the desert sands. Sulu battled and pulled the vehicle back into line. It bucked slightly and then roared forward.
Another disruptor blast, and another, rocked the Peregrine. It was all Sulu could do to hold it on course. He checked the engine readings and didn't like what he saw at all. Then he looked at the monitor at their lone remaining pursuer, and he liked it even less.
For now he could clearly make out what he hadn't before; the man who was after them was Taine, his face twisted into an infuriated snarl. He brought his disruptor gun up and squeezed off a shot.
And then, suddenly, the shuttle shuddered under more disruptor fire and the monitors blinked out. Taine, resourceful fellow that he was, had managed to knock the exterior cameras out of commission. Except for visibility through the front windshield, they were flying blind.
Sulu surveyed their options and didn't find too terribly many. The hull of the Peregrine whined in protest. The vehicle was designed for travel, not combat, and Sulu had already pushed it to the limits of its structural capacity. Maybe even beyond the limits.
His mouth started to form words, but Ling beat him to it. "Let me guess: 'Hold on,'" she said.
"Exactly," he replied. He watched as Ling Sui braced herself once more. She looked at him with an expression that held utter confidence. It was fortunate she had it in him, because his own confidence was starting to waver ever so slightly.
"Here we go," he murmured, and slowed the shuttle's forward motion by half.
The stratopod shot right past it, Taine's head whipping around as he realized his target was no longer beside him. Sulu, banking on his reactions, counted on him to slow down out of reflex.
Which was precisely what he did.
And as he did that, Sulu immediately gunned the shuttle. As a result, the Peregrine leaped forward, roaring past the stratopod.
Leaving the next move as the trickiest. Sulu, one step ahead of his opponent, deduced that Taine—suddenly finding himself left behind—would immediately try to speed up once more. In anticipation of the move, Sulu slammed the shuttle to a complete halt … but at a ninety-degree angle relative to its previous position. Basically, he had just turned the Peregrine into a roadblock.
It all happened so quickly that Ling Sui didn't even have time to question what was going on. The result of Sulu's maneuver was exactly what he figured it would be: a loud thunk and a shudder as the accelerating stratopod collided broadside with the shuttle. In front of them, a twisted and empty stratopod fell away.
There was deathly silence for a moment … a moment to contemplate how fortunate they were that the monitor was down, so that they didn't have to stare at the sight of the stratopod's former occupant smeared all over the exterior of the shuttle.
"You … you did it," Ling Sui managed to say.
Then the windshield cracked, accompanied by the now-familiar whine of a disruptor.
It was the only warning that Sulu had. Hopefully it would be enough as Sulu sent the vehicle flying forward.
"He's on the roof! The bastard's on the roof!" shouted Ling Sui.
She was right. Sulu heard a thudding from overhead, the sound of a body tumbling. But it hadn't necessarily fallen off.
And then it happened. Repeated blasts from overhead, the ceiling denting in and then ripping open. Sulu tried to steer the shuttle violently enough to throw off their dedicated pursuer, but there were spiders who were less tenacious than this.
All that was visible was Taine's hand clutching the disruptor as he shoved it into the cabin of the Peregrine. He fired blindly as Sulu leaped away from the controls barely in time. The blast struck the control board, sparks flying from it, the board starting to melt into rivulets from the impact and the impending fire.
"Take over!" shouted Sulu as he lunged for the intruder's arm.
Ling looked helplessly at the ruined control board. The shuttle's forward motion had not diminished; if anything, it was picking up speed. "Take over what?" she shouted in exasperation.
Sulu wasn't exactly in a position to reply at that moment. He had barely dodged another blast, and now he had grabbed the wrist of their assailant and was struggling desperately, trying to pry the disruptor loose from his hand.
The hole in the ceiling ripped wide, and Taine tumbled down and through into the cabin. He was still clutching the disruptor with single-minded determination.
For all the battering he had taken, Taine did not seem to have been slowed down in the least. He nearly lifted Sulu off his feet as he slammed him up against a far wall.
Ling desperately tried to reroute control functions back through the main board, but there was nothing she could do. The shuttle was completely out of control, lurching wildly. Smoke was starting to pour from the ruined panels, blinding her. Then she heard Sulu's alarmed voice shout "Get down!" and she did so as a disruptor bolt ripped just above her head and blew apart the already-stressed windshield. Wind blew in, accelerating the spread of smoke through the cabin.
Sulu was still struggling hand to hand with Taine.
"You idiot!" snarled Taine. "I don't know what kind of game you think this is … but you're going to lose it!"
Sulu didn't bother to respond. What was there to say? He had thought it was a game. He pushed away from his mind the realization that he had been incredibly lucky thus far. Here he hadn't been taking the threat of Taine and his thugs seriously, and he could easily have been dead before realizing that he was in any true danger.
He struggled for leverage, found it, and drove a knee into Taine's gut. Taine grunted, didn't quite double over, but the wind was knocked out of him. He did not, however, lose his grip on his disruptor.
Ling Sui was trying to get close to help, but she was moving warily, keeping an eye on the barrel of the disruptor. It fired again and she barely managed to get out of the way.
One of the lower struts of the shuttle struck a dune, flipping the shuttle around. It sent Sulu and Taine tumbling, crashing into Ling Sui, and all three of them went down in a tumble of arms and legs.
For a moment they were frozen there, the three of them, and Taine and Ling Sui were snarling into each other's faces. Then Ling Sui head-butted him. He rolled back, clutching at his face, and Sulu yanked her to her feet.
In Ling Sui's hand was the disruptor. She swung it around and aimed it squarely at Taine.
"No!" shouted Sulu, yanking her hand wide, the disruptor blast exploding against the far wall.
She looked at him in shock. Sulu didn't bother to exchange words with her, because with the Peregrine hurtling wildly out of control, now was not the time to discuss the relative morals of the situation.
Taine lunged at them. Sulu sidestepped, gripping the disruptor firmly, and slammed the butt into Taine's head. It opened up a vicious gash in Taine's head, blood flowing from it and blinding him. Sulu shoved him aside, spun, and fired short, fast, and concentrated blasts at the top and bottom of the door. The door swung open, hanging loosely by strips of metal, and Sulu had a brief glimpse of the ground whizzing past.
Snagging Ling's wrist, he started for the door, apparently ready to hurl himself to his death. For the briefest of moments Ling hesitated, and she looked into Sulu's eyes.
And for the first time since the whole mad adventure had begun, something seemed to "lock" between them. As if in seeing each other, they actually saw each other for the first time.
She gave the slightest nod of her head, and moved with him. Sulu charged forward and slammed into the door, ripping it free from its moorings. For a moment Sulu and the door teetered on the edge, and in that moment he swung Ling Sui around so that she grabbed on to his back. And then the door fell clear of the hurtling shuttle, Sulu lying flat on his belly and Ling Sui holding on for dear life.
The door hit the desert sands and continued moving at the same clip as the shuttle. It was like being a child and riding on a sled, which would have brought back fond memories for Sulu if he'd grown up somewhere other than San Francisco. Sulu, however, was nothing if not a fast learner.
His fingers held fast to the underside of the door, the sand ripping his knuckles. He gritted his teeth, oddly reluctant to give in to his impulse to cry out. Ling Sui's body, curiously enough considering the circumstances, was relaxed against him. Maybe she had utter confidence in him. Maybe she had just shut down her mind so as not to deal with the still-imminent possibility of their mutual demise.
The door fishtailed around, slowing, and then suddenly it flipped completely over. And now Sulu did yell, an alarmed yelp, and he lost his hold on the door. They tumbled off, but fortunately they had slowed enough so that they were able to roll to a stop with only a few more bumps and bruises on them.
"You all right?" Sulu shouted.
"Yes. You?"
"I'm fine!" he shouted.
"Good!" She raised her voice. "Why are you shouting!?"
It was because his head was still ringing and his hearing was thrown off, but there was no need to go into details. Instead Sulu, his sleeves ripped, already feeling aches in his joints that would only get worse as time passed, looked after the hurtling shuttle.
It was moving so quickly that it was already a speck on the evening horizon, vanishing behind a series of dunes. Then suddenly there was a burst of light, followed moments later by the sound of the explosion.
Sulu and Ling Sui watched for a long time as flame danced across the miles-off dunes, smoke curling lazily into the air.
"Is he dead, you think?" asked Ling Sui after a while.
"We're not," Sulu pointed out.
"Yes, but we're the good guys."
"Are we?" Sulu propped himself up on one elbow and looked around, surveying their situation. The sun had almost set, which was actually the most positive thing they had going for them. Because the fact was that they were out in the middle of the Sahara with no supplies, no conveyances, and no way of covering the distance back to the city except on foot.
"What do you mean, 'Are we'?"
"We'll discuss it later."
"Sulu …"
"Later," he said firmly. "Come on."
"Come on where, exactly?" She looked around. "I can't see Demora from here. And we flew so far, so fast, I have absolutely no idea where the hell we are. Which way do we go?"
He paused a long moment, then looked up to the sky. The long red fingers of the setting sun were almost totally withdrawing, replaced by the twinkling of the stars.
"Wait," he said.
"Wait for what?"
He put up a finger and repeated patiently, "Wait."
She opened her mouth, but then closed it again, deciding to wait and see what this most curious of gentlemen was up to.
The sun vanished, the coolness of the nighttime desert settling in. Sulu continued to stare upward, as if communing with the stars. Ling found herself watching him with rapt fascination.
When he spoke it was so abruptly in the silence of the desert that it made her jump slightly.
"That way," he said, pointing.
She squinted, trying to imagine what in the world he might be pointing at. There was no sign of the city from this distance. "How do you know?"
He smiled confidently and held up his palm. "You might as well ask me how I know this is my hand. I look to the stars, and the stars guide me. People can be deceitful. People can tell you one thing and do another. But the stars don't lie."
She didn't say anything, merely shrugged.
Without another word, Sulu set out, with Ling Sui falling into step behind him.