by Jeffrey Lang
His head twisted to the side, but otherwise the blow seemed to have no effect. Then, slowly, he turned his head and the doctor saw that there was a glowing filament plugged into a copper-colored port beneath the peeled-back skin of his right temple. “Please, doctor,” he said lightly. “Don't interrupt.”
Chapter Sixteen
The Enterprise listed to port and Deanna Troi felt her stomach yaw to starboard. Not a direct hit, but close. And then, incongruously, she reminded herself, For every action, an equal and opposite reaction.
“Inertial dampeners—compensate,” she called to environmental, then felt the AG fluctuate beneath her.
“Incoming!” Commander Heyes called from tactical. She had just turned over the bridge to Troi when the enemy vessel had risen suddenly from the planet's arctic region and opened fire. The impact had sent Tellisar, Troi's tactical officer, over the front of his console, unconscious, possibly dead. Heyes had scrambled from the turbolift doors to the weapons station while the deck seesawed under her feet and managed to fire off a volley of torpedoes.
Troi clutched at the arms of the command chair while around her, bodies hit the deck as the ship rolled to starboard.
“Shields down to eighty percent, Commander,” Heyes called. “Power is stable.”
“Attack pattern alpha one nine,” Troi ordered. “Commence fire.”
“Phasers firing.”
Lances of orange light tracked across the void, then vanished. Troi's forehead knotted uncertainly as she turned to Heyes. “Did we hit them?”
Reflected light danced across Heyes's face as she initiated a complex sensor sweep. “I'm not finding anything,” she said, and it didn't require Troi's empathic abilities to sense her confusion. “No ship, no debris, no energy signature, nothing.” Frustrated, she recalibrated the sensors and reran the search.
Troi gave her room to work. “Stations, report.”
Around the bridge, the station heads called off their status. Engineering and environmental systems were functioning at acceptable levels, and the helm was responding. Medics came onto the bridge, bundled Tellisar onto a stretcher and removed him. Troi saw that he was, in fact, breathing and felt regret that she hadn't at least tried to determine his condition, but then chastised herself: that wasn't part of her role when she was commanding the bridge.
“Could it have been a cloaking device?” Troi asked, turning toward tactical.
“I don't think so,” Heyes said, checking her readings for the third time. “We know what to look for with a cloak. There's no distortion, no graviton concentration, no energy spike—” Then, suddenly, she cried out, “Hard to starboard!”
Troi spun back toward the screen just in time to see the starfield flicker and ripple. The attacking ship seemed to slide out from under the skin of space, its hull shimmering like liquid, then suddenly crystallizing as it emerged completely. A wave of energy pulsed from its prow, twisting and distorting the edge of space/time.
The Enterprise rocked. Primary systems shut down and Troi felt the strange flicker and hum through the soles of her feet that meant the artificial gravity was on the verge of failing. “Primaries are offline,” Tolman, the engineering officer, announced. “Secondary systems are unavailable. Switching to batteries.” Work lights around the bridge flickered on and air recyclers struggled to clear the smoke.
“Route power to shields,” Troi ordered. “Helm, can we move?”
“Barely, Commander. Thrusters only.”
“Use them,” Troi said. “Try to keep moving.” She turned to look at Heyes, who must have cracked her head on the panel during the last attack because she had a large, bloody gash on her left temple. “What did they hit us with?” Troi asked.
“Good question,” Heyes said. “The sensors flared out, but I got some data before they went down. It's some sort of subspace waveform, the kind of thing we calibrate our warp engines to prevent from happening.”
“Has anyone ever heard of anything like this?” Troi asked. “Science officer?”
Casciato, at sciences, shook his head. It must have been his panel that had blown out because his eyebrows and the hair on his forehead were singed away. “Never,” he said. “It's theoretically possible, but impractical because the radiation generated behind the wave would be inimical to any form of carbon-based life we know.”
Heyes asked, “Could the ship be a robot? Remotely piloted?”
Troi shook her head, concentrating. “No, it's not a robot. I'm sensing anger. Intense, determined and constant.” She tried to regulate her breathing, to calm herself and float free of the bridge's controlled chaos. Reaching out across the void to the enemy ship, Troi tried to identify the source of what she was feeling, something that was somehow familiar, but twisted around on its axis. She felt a word forming in her mind, a name, a concept, but before she could grasp it, another voice intruded.
“I've got sensors again,” Heyes announced. “They're coming around. Moving slowly, but picking up speed. I'm guessing that they can't use that subspace weapon very often.” She checked the energy levels. “Recommend we keep them on our port side, if possible. Shields are stronger there.”
“You heard the commander, Ensign Welles,” Troi said to the conn officer. “Make it so.”
“Aye, Commander.”
The intership crackled overhead, then cleared. La Forge's voice said, “Bridge, this is engineering. What's happening up there?”
“We're in a fight, Geordi. Unknown attacker, new kind of weapon.”
“Understood,” La Forge said. “I was worried you were steering us into a planet again.”
I guess I'm never going to live that one down. “Don't tempt me,” she warned him. “I think that, whoever they are, they've used their big gun. If we can have power back, we should be able to take them.”
“That's what I like—confidence. Give me five minutes.”
“You've got thirty seconds,” was Troi's answer. “Bridge out.” Troi felt the mood on the bridge lift, though she knew that their confidence was not entirely well-founded. If their attacker regrouped before Geordi could bring main power back on line, she knew they could only take one, at best two more assaults.
The primary lighting came back up and, as if on cue, the turbolift doors parted and Captain Picard strode onto the bridge. He looked around quickly and took the temperament of the crew. Seeming satisfied, he nodded to Commander Heyes, then turned to Troi, who rose from the center seat. Picard took his chair and began to study the tactical logs. “What is our status, Commander?” Picard asked, reading and listening simultaneously.
Troi explained about the subspace weapon, pulling up the data Casciato had forwarded to the command station. Picard absorbed the basics, then turned to Heyes. “Do we have any specifics about their ship?”
“Coming up.” Heyes punched a series of controls and routed the tactical display to the center seat display. To the naked eye, the attacking vessel looked like nothing more than a wedge-shaped chunk of ice. According to sensors, the “ice” was actually some unknown form of ablative armor, thickly layered over what appeared to be a dense tritanium hull.
Picard frowned, then asked, “Weapons?”
“Two systems that we've seen: standard disruptors, somewhat more powerful than the Romulan version and the waveform gun.” She shifted the view to the sensor display and showed them a time-lapsed playback of the five seconds when the ship emerged from subspace. The discharge spike of the wavefront was impressive and Picard grunted appreciatively.
“Have they responded to our hails?”
“No, sir,” Troi said. “We've tried standard hails in all languages.”
Strange, Picard mused. Who are they? Why are they attacking, and what, if anything, do they have to do with Vaslovik and the missing android? The captain knew that these questions and a score of others racing through his mind would have to wait. His first priority was to neutralize the current threat.
“They're gone again,” Heyes cried out. “Dis
appeared into subspace!”
Troi activated the shipwide and announced, “All hands, brace for impact!” Two seconds later, the ship bucked under their feet and the main lighting flickered out. Troi tumbled to the deck, wrenching her wrist while attempting to break her fall. Picard barked, “Phasers and quantum torpedoes, full spread! Fire!” But there was no response from Heyes.
Climbing up off the deck, Troi could make out the tactical station through the smoke and haze, but couldn't see Heyes. Coughing, she stumbled toward the tactical console and almost tripped over Heyes's prostrate form. She found the torpedo control interface and fired the spread Picard had ordered, but the phasers were offline.
Troi twisted her hair into a knot and pulled it away from her face, then wiped her hands on her uniform. They were sticky with blood, but whether her own or someone else's, she didn't have time to check. “One torpedo hit, Captain, but I can't judge the level of damage.”
“Prepare for the next pass.”
Troi did as she was ordered and programmed another spread of torpedoes, but half the launcher indicator lights read yellow. She checked her panel and saw that the computer had successfully reinitialized the phaser arrays. They still had teeth.
Seeing that the bridge crew was more or less recovering, Troi took a moment to check on Heyes and was relieved to see that the woman was breathing. Two corpsmen emerged from out of the hazy air and lifted the commander onto a stretcher.
“Status report!” Picard snapped.
“Shields down to thirty percent.” The quantum torpedo board flickered, then reset with new indicators. “Aft torpedo launchers are now offline,” she read, “but main phasers are functional, though firing them would drain our reserves.” The ship rocked again, though not so fiercely as the last two attacks.
“Disruptors?” Picard asked.
“Affirmative,” Troi replied. “Shields are down to twenty-seven percent.”
“Picard to engineering.”
“La Forge here. Sorry about that, Captain. We weren't ready for them.”
“Let it happen again and you're fired, Mr. La Forge.”
“Understood, sir. That last one shook us up pretty badly. I've got coolant leaks everywhere and we had to eject one of the torpedo launchers. We had a live one in the breach and no firing mechanism.”
“What about secondaries?”
“Ten minutes minimum; more if they keep peppering us with disruptors.” The Enterprise shuddered again. “Like that,” La Forge finished. “Is there anything we can do to keep them off for a few minutes?”
“No promises, Mr. La Forge. Shields are low, so see what you can do there.”
“Aye, sir. I'll let you know if the situation changes. I can give you a burst of impulse if we need it.”
“Not really an option,” Picard replied. “We can't leave Galor IV undefended.”
“Wasn't suggesting it, sir. Just thought we might be able to lead them away.”
“I'll keep it in mind, Geordi,” the captain said. “Picard out.”
The ship rocked again and Troi watched as the shield level indicator dropped down to just under twenty percent. Around her, the bridge crew labored. Picard rose from the center seat and crossed to her console.
“Any word from the away team?” Picard asked.
She shook her head. “They missed their check-in, too. I was just about to call you when the first salvo hit us.”
“That might not be a coincidence,” Picard said softly. “It's quite possible that Commander Riker might currently be faced with his own problems.”
Riker pounded his fist on the pod's control panel. “Dammit,” he said. “Something's blocking our hail.” He stared out at the two ships—the Enterprise and the strange, icelike hulk—and seethed. The enemy, whether androids like the ones in Vaslovik's bunker, or something else entirely, was pounding his ship and he hated the feeling of helplessness. More, he despised himself for letting the frustration rob him of clear thought. There must be something he could do, but he didn't know what.
And his mind kept returning to Rhea McAdams. What the hell had she thought she was doing? Disobeying orders and playing hero in the middle of a crisis was a sure way to a fast court martial, if not an early grave. What did she imagine she could achieve down there that he couldn't? Or was she just inexperienced and misguided enough to believe that saving the more “valuable” member of the away team—namely, the first officer of the Enterprise —was worth risking her life and possibly Data's in some idiotic stunt?
Cursing under his breath, Riker punched the thrusters and the pod sped closer to the battle. He had checked its systems as soon as their flight vector had stabilized and Riker had been pleased to find that its sensors were better than anything he could have hoped for. The shields, also, were much enhanced, though there were no weapons worth mentioning—only a single phaser bank that wouldn't be much use against anything bigger than a squirrel. It was clear that whoever had refitted the pod had not had fighting in mind, but quick and stealthy flight.
As it had twice before, the attacking ship slid into subspace and Riker watched impatiently for the Enterprise to make some countermove, but it was clear that his crew were more than preoccupied with keeping the vessel stable. Riker had been through enough battles to recognize a ship that was, if not in peril, then fighting on the defensive. Ten heartbeats later, the iceship reemerged from subspace and though there was no visible weapons fire, the Enterprise shifted away as if swamped by some unseen wave. Every one of the pod's sensors redlined and the tiny craft bumped and hopped like a rowboat in a hurricane sea.
A ship I could feel under my feet. Riker remembered that wish from the previous day. That's what I had wanted. What the hell was I thinking?
“Uh, s-sir,” Barclay stammered, staring at the navigational display. “We're moving c-closer to the battle.”
“We're not moving closer,” Riker said. “We're circling. It would be foolish to approach without a plan.”
“No argument,” Reg said, his manner strangely detached all of a sudden. Riker had seen him like this once or twice before. Though Barclay was not what one would call an intrepid soul, neither was he a coward. “But I don't see that there's much we can do here that will affect the outcome of the battle. We have no weaponry, just impulse thrusters and warp drive. Maybe we should go for help.”
Not taking his eyes off the two ships, Riker asked, “What did you just say?”
Barclay repeated, “Maybe we should go for help . . . ?”
“Warp drive,” Riker mused, then grinned wickedly. “We have warp drive! Reg, you're a genius.” He tightened the straps on his restraining harness, then said, “Hold on,” and fired the pod's thrusters at full power. The enemy vessel suddenly grew larger as it stitched a seam of blue-green fire across the Enterprise's primary hull. Riker gritted his teeth against the gee forces, and searched the pod's systems for more power to feed the engines.
Troi, too, was searching her ship's systems for the last remnants of power, though she did not yet know what she would do with whatever she found. Deanna was beginning to feel the itch to slash at them with one good phaser strike, though she knew it might end up being the last thing she ever did.
Another hit.
The Enterprise shuddered, heaved and the bridge went dark. She felt her feet leave the deck plates and for a second Troi thought this might be the one. She tensed and waited for either fire or ice, but, no, gravity reasserted itself and the tactical console came back online. “That one got past the shields, Captain. Decks ten and twelve are open to space. The force fields failed . . .” And then she realized she was almost shouting. Collecting her reserves, Troi forced herself to speak calmly. “The force fields failed, but they've come back online.”
Picard, once again seated in the command chair, was grim and haggard. The left side of his neck and face had been badly burned when the monitor in his command chair had blown out, but he did not seem to notice the blistered skin. “Fatalities?” he aske
d.
Troi checked the internal sensors. “Twenty-nine, Captain,” she said as softly as she could.
Though his face did not show it, Troi knew her words had hacked away a slice of Picard's soul. He was the captain and people in his command had just died. Something deep inside him writhed in agony, but he said only, “Enemy position?”
“I can't get an exact fix, but they're off the port bow.” She studied the scant readings the damaged sensors were providing. “They're not moving. We may have damaged them worse than we thought.”
“Perhaps,” Picard said. “Or they might be waiting for something: a response from the surface. That might explain what happened to the away team.”
“Sir,” Troi said suddenly. “Commander Riker is signaling.”
“On audio.”
“Riker to Enterprise. Riker to Enterprise.”
Picard leapt to his feet and snapped, “Number One, report.”
“Have to keep this short, Captain,” Riker said. “I'm using a lot of power to punch through the interference.” He briefly explained what had happened after they beamed to Vaslovik's undersea lab, then outlined his plan. Troi felt the blood drain from her face. It wasn't much of a plan.
“But you're not sure you can get through their shields?” Picard asked.
“Not positive,” Riker admitted. “We found a weak spot under the stern, but it'll be touch and go. I was hoping you might be able to tag them with a phaser burst just before I went in.”
Picard looked at Troi, who nodded. Picard nodded. “One shot, Will.”
“Understood, Captain. Dare I ask how the transporters are holding up?”
Troi knew that Will would do what he had planned whether the transporters were functioning or not, but Reg might not, so she said, as confidently as she could manage, “Don't worry, Commander. We have a lock on you.”
“Great. I'd like someone waiting with a cup of coffee when I get back.”
Picard grinned. “I'll bring it myself, Number One. Good hunting.”
“See you all in a few minutes,” Riker replied, then signed off.