What Judgments Come

In response, the Tellarite twisted his considerable bulk in a bid to block him, and Reyes responded by punching him a second time, this blow landing on the guard’s sizable nose. The reaction to the attack was immediate: the Tellarite howled, reaching for his face with both hands and providing Reyes the opening he needed to land another strike, this time driving his fist into the thug’s groin. The Tellarite responded by sagging forward, offering his defenseless chin to Reyes, who promptly grabbed the guard’s head while driving his knee into his face. He felt the cartilage of the Tellarite’s nose breaking, and the goon fell back, unconscious before his limp body dropped in a heap to the deck.

“Damn you, Reyes!”

Hearing the words at the same instant light glinted off something metal and shiny in his peripheral vision, Reyes pulled back his head just as Nakaal’s arm slashed forward, the knife in his hand slicing the air between them. Reyes jerked to one side, struggling for maneuvering room in the cramped hallway and almost tripping over the Tellarite’s body. Nakaal kept coming, stepping over his companion and waving his knife before him as he advanced. Backpedaling, Reyes tried to avoid getting forced into the corner he knew was behind him as the passageway made a turn to his left. He watched the Orion’s hand as it waved the blade before him, trying to determine from the movements if Nakaal was really all that skilled with the weapon. Reyes decided he was good enough.

Nakaal, perhaps sensing his opponent’s hesitation, seemed to decide he had the advantage and was looking to press it. His knife held before him, he stepped forward, and Reyes noted the look of satisfaction that seemed to brighten the Orion’s face.

Then, his expression went blank and his eyes widened before his entire body went slack and he sank forward, dropping to the deck in a disjointed heap.

Standing behind Nakaal, her arm extended to where she had applied a nerve pinch at the junction of the Orion’s neck and shoulder, was T’Pry

“Son of a bitch,” Reyes hissed, blowing out his breath in a relieved sigh.

T’Pry

Sparing a glance to the fallen Nakaal, Reyes checked the corridor in both directions, searching for more of Ganz’s men. “Not that I’m ungrateful, Lieutenant, but what the hell are you doing here?”

As she turned and set about searching the fallen guards, T’Pry

“He ordered the hit on me for tonight?” Reyes asked, holding out his hand as the Vulcan passed the purloined weapon to him. “That sounds a bit too coincidental.” He tried to backtrack his movements during the evening, searching for whatever it was he had said or done to arouse Ganz’s suspicion about his activities and push the Orion toward ordering his men to take action.

“Not at all,” T’Pry

His eyes narrowing as he parsed her comments and realization hit him, Reyes glared at his former intelligence officer. “Wait, so you knewthey were coming after me tonight, and didn’t tell me? What the hell is thatabout?”

“I did not wish to alarm you,” T’Pry

Reyes shook his head, giving up on translating any of that. “And your big backup plan was to come and get me? Basically, you’re just making this up as you go along, right?”

“That is essentially correct,” the Vulcan said.

Noting the weapons they each carried, Reyes asked, “You didn’t bring any weapons?”

T’Pry

The observation was enough to make Reyes check the power gauge on the disruptor she had given him. It offered no stun option, and even the lowest setting would still be sufficient to inflict serious injury on his intended target. He resigned himself to what that might mean should he and T’Pry

Them or you, ace.

“Okay,” he said, “what’s your plan?”

Moving to step over the Tellarite, T’Pry

Reyes was startled by the sound of the security chief’s voice inside his head as Jackson answered, “ Right here, Lieutenant, and it’s good to be hearing your voice again, Commodore.”

“Didn’t anybody get the memo about my court-martial?” Reyes asked, scowling, though it was good to know that T’Pry

T’Pry

“I’m not even going to pretend I understood any of that,” Reyes said. “Whatever. With sensors offline, that just means Ganz will send more goons out to find us. So, what do you say we get the hell out of here?”

“ Hang on,” Jackson said. We’ve got a problem. It looks like somebody just activated a transport inhibitor shield around theOmari-Ekon.”

Reyes replied, “That means he knows somebody’s here, trying to help me.”

“A logical conclusion,” T’Pry

Reyes took another look at the disruptor in his hand. “You said internal sensors were offline? I’m thinking that means we might have another card to play.”

25

Ganz was more than ready to kill someone. Diego Reyes was his preferred target of choice, but at the moment, anyone would do.

“Where is he?” Turning from the railing of his balcony, which overlooked the Omari-Ekon’s gaming deck, Ganz moved back into his office and regarded Tonzak. To his credit, the head of security seemed appropriately terrified, which did little to alleviate Ganz’s increasingly foul mood.

Clearing his throat, Tonzak replied, “I don’t know. I had three teams following his movements. The last time I heard from Nakaal and Drev, they had spotted Reyes heading away from the gaming deck and into the service passageways. They tracked him to a maintenance compartment in section six, but they don’t know what he was doing.”