The Sky's the Limit - Marco Palmieri [163]
Slowly, Riker began to pull himself out of the pond. He moved carefully to keep the water from dripping off of him and back into the pond. He wanted no noise to alert the Tellarite. He pushed himself onto the muck-encrusted ground. Even though the blinking device in his chest reminded him how short his time was, he forced himself to creep forward with disciplined motions. After freeing his back foot from the last of the sticky morass, he surveyed the area more carefully and decided that this area had probably been a tropical paradise before the polar shift. Now it was a swamp, and a particularly unpleasant one at that. Some of the hardier vegetation had managed to survive, and even thrive, overrunning the area surrounding the facility.
Riker kept low, crouching to stay behind the unkempt bushes that ringed the facility. He moved closer to the vegetation, using it for cover but careful not to rustle it too much. Between that and the florid trees, he was able to work his way to the edge of the building. Along the way, he managed to find a decent-sized branch that he might be able to use as a weapon.
He took a quick glance around the corner of the building, taking in as much information as he could of what lay in front of the facility. He could see the Tellarite fifty meters away. He was overweight, even for a Tellarite, but for a being whose girth indicated inactivity, this Tellarite was anything but sedentary.
He was pacing near the main entrance of the medical center, waiting for whoever was inside finally to emerge so that he could attack. He moved back and forth with quick, agitated steps that caused the wire connecting his cargo gun to the backpack to bounce up and down. Occasionally, he would strike the blast door with his fists or probe it with the barrel of the cargo gun, looking for a weak spot. When his blows proved ineffective and his probing accomplished nothing, he returned to his pacing, more frantic than before. The waiting seemed to be killing this Tellarite. Good, Riker thought grimly. Turnabout is fair play.
The Tellarite still held the cargo gun at the ready, poised for action. But the backpack that held the gun’s transporter buffer was large and unwieldy, and Riker figured it would make the Tellarite relatively awkward. It was his only advantage and he intended to press it. He definitely didn’t want to get shot with that device again.
The quarantine shield and blast doors held firm, frustrating the scavenger’s every attempt to use his gun to burrow through the wall. Clearly, the Tellarite was intent upon finishing the job of covering his crime by waiting out the witnesses left inside and eliminating them when they came out.
Riker adjusted his combadge to silence the normal chirp activation sound and contacted Beverly. “Doctor,” he whispered, “I want you to disengage the quarantine protocols and open that door on my mark. Stay out of sight as best you can until I’ve engaged him.” Riker took one last look at the Tellarite, the distance he needed to cover, and the sealed facility. On a good day, he could cover the distance pretty quickly, but this wasn’t a good day. The bushes he’d used for cover ended at the edge of the facility and would provide him with no more protection. Still, he resolved himself to his plan and gripped the branch tighter. He tried to find the Tellarite’s pacing rhythm, to have Beverly open the door when the scavenger was looking away. “Mark.”
The quarantine doors opened with a grinding screech and the Tellarite turned to see what had happened. While the alien was looking at the opening doorway, Riker broke into a dead run. When he was ten meters from the Tellarite, Riker began his diversionary tactics by shouting his favorite curse at the piglike scavenger. Let’s see your universal translator