Requiem - Michael Jan Friedman [72]
As it was, he’d been able to find the place with little trouble. It was just where Julia had said it would be. And with any luck, his communicator would be nearby.
Keeping low so as not to be spotted, the captain used his fingers to sift through the dirt and detritus at the bottom of the slide. It had to be here somewhere, didn’t it? If it had been found on his person, Travers would certainly have mentioned it. After all, he’d mentioned everything else that seemed odd about Picard.
Given enough time, the captain told himself, he was certain he would turn up the device. But he didn’t have much time. Travers was no doubt leading a search for him by now—a search that wouldn’t last long at all, once the colonists picked up his trail with their tricorders.
Odds were the communicator hadn’t been buried very deeply; it had probably slipped just under the surface when it fell. With that in mind, he hastened to cover as much area as possible, feeling the sand grind into his knees as he moved from place to place.
Abruptly, the knuckles of his left hand struck something hard. Most likely, a rock—but if so, it was an unusually smooth one. Groping for it, his fingers closed around a wonderfully familiar shape.
Dredging it up, Picard confirmed his most fervent hope. Holding the device up to the sun, he brushed it off. It was his communicator, looking every bit as functional as when he’d last used it on the alien station.
He felt like a treasure-hunter who had just unearthed a chest full of gold dubloons. Better, in fact—for his very life had depended on this discovery. And even more than his life, given the responsibility he’d been charged with on the Gorn homeworld.
Suddenly, the captain heard voices. Ducking instinctively, he took a quick look all around him. So far, there was no one to be seen—which meant that his pursuers probably couldn’t see him either. But that would change momentarily, as they used their tricorders to track him down.
He had to move—and quickly. But which way? Picard tried to ignore the sound of his pounding pulse, to listen through it. There were the voices again, about as faint as before. And unless he was imagining it, they were coming from the direction of the armory—more or less the same approach he had followed in seeking out his communicator.
It was hardly a coincidence. The hills were easier to negotiate if one entered them by that route, the slopes longer and gentler and less rocky. It made for a quick pace—one that had worked to the captain’s advantage earlier, but was helping Travers’s search team now.
Again the voices, noticeably closer—and definitely following his track, whether they knew it or not. Turning the other way, Picard assessed the terrain: a shallow, meandering valley, ending in a pronounced cleft. The footing wouldn’t be too bad, as far as he could tell; loose dirt and rocks seemed to be at a minimum.
But there wasn’t much in the way of cover. If he sprinted out from behind the debris of the landslide, and the commodore’s party was anywhere nearby, he would be difficult to miss. No—make that impossible.
Still, there wasn’t much of an alternative. Gritting his teeth, the captain took off for the distant cleft, not daring to look back over his shoulder. For a fraction of a second, he could almost feel a phased energy beam bearing down on him, reaching out to strike him square in the back.
However, the only phaser beam was in his mind. Two-thirds of the way to his destination, his breath rasping sharply in his throat as he pushed himself to the limit, Picard realized that he was home free.
Once he had a hillside for cover, he could circle back around the colony and find a place to hide his communicator—a place where the Gorn wouldn’t stumble on it. After that, his job would be over. It would then be just a matter of Will Riker’s scanning the right—
Pummph!
The captain dove