[Star Trek TNG] - Double Helix Omnibus

by Peter David

“You wanna just…come over here and give me a shove?”

  “If you prefer.”

  From the port side, McCoy offered, “I’ll come and push you if you want.”

  Stiles gave him a floppy wave with his free hand. “Thanks, Doctor, consider me pushed. We need to even things up. Shields first.”

  “How?” Spock asked.

  At the same time, McCoy beefed, “Rhodinium against tissue paper!”

  Stiles glanced at them. “Oh, we’re a little tougher than that, Doctor. Jeremy, we’ve got that warp trigger box with the surger for emergency ignition of cold warp cores, don’t we? We replaced the last one, right?”

  “Always.”

  “Go back there and take it off the clamps and put it in the airlock, activated. We’re going to dump and detonate.”

  “It’ll short out our shields!”

  “If we’re close enough it’ll short out his too. He wants us alive—let’s use that and play some chicken.”

  Flushed, Jeremy raced through the hatch toward the aft section.

  “Ambassador,” Stiles requested, “I’ll bet you can take the science boards, can’t you?”

  “Most certainly I can.” Spock moved with fluidity across the bridge and settled at Jeremy’s station as if he’d been painted there. Darned if he didn’t look happy.

  “Travis, fire up the magnetic grapples. Two and four on the port side.”

  Travis swung full about and gaped at him with his mouth open and eyes like eggs, but talked himself out of asking. “Aye aye,” he responded, and got to work.

  Stiles stood beside his command chair and watched the screen that showed the approaching blue fighter. “Ready about!”

  “Ready about, aye!”

  A flurry of activity blew across the bridge, and everybody was suddenly working. Luckily they’d stopped asking what he was up to. Good thing, because he didn’t know.

  “Helm, you know what to do. Come about and meet him head on, as if we were rafting for a repair.”

  “While he’s moving?” Jason Bolt confirmed.

  “Just as if we had to grapple a damaged ship under power. Do it by the numbers. We’ll see what happens. Helm over.”

  “Coming about.”

  “Then what?” Travis asked—not in challenge, but because to make it work he had to know the next move.

  Stiles shook his head and shrugged. “Oh, I dunno, I’m probably about to get us all killed.”

  Okay, not the greatest slogan to stitch on a banner of war, but there was something to be said for being honest with them. He drew one long breath and held it, watching the forward screen now as the CST turned on its mid-ships keel and the constellation fighter came around. Broad on the bow…three points…two points…one…fine on the port bow…dead ahead.

  Now the two ships were heading at each other in a game that would destroy one of them if somebody didn’t flinch.

  “Incoming!” Travis called. “They’re shooting at us!”

  A bright white blast blew from the other ship, looking as if somebody had fired talcum powder out an exhaust port—but when it hit them it didn’t feel like powder. The CST shuddered violently but did not turn off her course. Rather than striking them with a single impact, the powderbeam slathered all over the ship as if they’d plunged into a glass of milk, washing along from the prow to midships before dissipating, snapping systems all the way back.

  “Hold course!” Stiles called over the shattering of circuits all around them.

  “Intentions?” Spock asked. “Do you mean to ram them?”

  “We’ve got an asteroid-cutter prow,” Stiles told him. “If they want to try it, I’m game. We can’t outrun them. All we can do is make them flinch.”

  Spock straightened from watching the science panel. “Do you know this man well enough to predict his response?”

  “Orsova? Sir, we’re willing to die for a cause. Orsova isn’t. All we have to do is stand him down.”

  “Yes, Mr. Stiles, but remember—Orsova has little or no spacefaring experience. It’s unlikely he’s piloting that ship.”

  Stiles looked at him. “Who do you think is?”

  “I should say whoever provided him with the fighter.”

  “Oh, good, I love unknown quantities.”

  Annoyed with himself for not realizing that Orsova couldn’t possibly be driving that ship, that he was in fact fighting somebody he’d never met in a ship he didn’t recognize, with weapons he’d never seen before, Stiles dealt with a tumbling stomach and a dry mouth as the ships drew speedily closer.

  He struck the nearest comm link. “Jeremy, blow that trigger out the hatch right now.”

  “Ready…it’s away!”

  They waited as the octagonal warp trigger box drifted out into space, visible on a side monitor at starboard, floating lazily out there, brainless to what else was going on.

  “Distance?”

  “Eight hundred kilometers,” Spock ticked off. “One thousand…twelve hundred…”

  “Ignite it.”

  Before his words were even out, space at their side blew bright with disruption and the whole ship was swept sideways away from it. Half the crew was thrown down. Stiles kept his feet only by hanging onto the command chair with both hands. He found himself looking at Dr. McCoy and thanking all the lucky stars out there that the old doctor had been sitting down. Travis was also holding McCoy in place with one hand, himself with the other.

  Over the crackle and fume of their own damage, Spock reported, “His shields are losing integrity. They’re flickering.”

  “Ours are down completely,” Travis announced, taking the gloss off their victory. “Whatever happens now, we’ll feel it hard.”

  “Enemy vessel is slowing down,” Spock announced briskly. There was a clear ring of win in his voice. “You’ve called their bluff.”

  “Either that or they’re not willing to die for whatever we represent to them,” Stiles said. “Doesn’t mean they won’t keep trying to kill us.”

  “Incoming!”

  Stiles gritted his teeth as they rode out another hit of the powder-beam. Damage reports came chattering in from all sections, none of them good. Stiles ignored them.

  “Travis, are the grapples ready?”

  “Ready, aye.”

  “Keep up speed until we’re at proximity range. Let me know when we get there—”

  “We’re there!” Travis said. “We can reach now.”

  On the main screen, the dark blue enemy ship drew up its braking thrusters and surged upward so they could see its underbelly, just as a rowboat surges up on a swell before settling into the sand. They really didn’t want to get hit by the Saskatoon’s cutting prow.

  Stiles couldn’t help a little snicker. “Magnetic grapples two and four—launch!”wheeeeeeeeeeeCHUNK—CHUNK

  “Got ’em!” Travis yelped. “Both grapples are on their hull. Now what?”

  “Let you know soon as I think of it,” Stiles muttered. “He can’t blow us up if we’re riding him. Pull up as close as you can, Travis. Zack, heat up the welding phasers!”

  “Where do you want me to cut him?”

  “Any place you can reach. I want you to connect those white dots into my initials. Right there where I can see.”

  The Bolt brothers both laughed in spite of the moment’s heat.

  Heat—yes, it was getting hotter on the bridge, proof that systems were damaged and the ship’s computers were selectively saving what they could and sacrificing what they couldn’t while waiting for repair. The CST’s welding phasers lit up under the viewscreen and scored the blue body of the other ship, leaving trails of white-hot melted metal and snapping circuits exposed to open space. Still…how much of this could they do?

  As the two ships danced in their locked-together waltz, Spock peered into his monitor. “Reading a power buildup.”

  “Weapons?” Stiles asked.

  “No, sir. Routing shield power, I believe….” He didn’t sound sure at all.

&n
bsp; Heavy-legged with damage and with the weight of the other ship pulling on the grapples, the Saskatoon lumbered around, pushed by the pointless power of the two ships exerting force on each other while going absolutely nowhere.

  “Jeremy, can you still hear me?” Stiles called.

  “You’re breaking up. Boost your signal.”

  “Forget it.” Stiles stalked to the aft hatch, cranked the handle, yanked the hatch open, and yelled through the body of the ship. “Turn on the external hoses! Seal up their impulse ports! Got it?”

  “I like that!”

  Stiles turned back to the main action, grumbling. “Yeah, I like it too.”

  Within seconds, the CST’s external hoses clacked on. Clear on the main screen, attached to them so closely that they could’ve touched it if the screen hadn’t been there, the blue enemy ship cranked and yanked against the magnetic grapples, trying to break the hold. Now tons of semiviscous compound spewed from the hose nozzles and splattered all over the aft section of that ship, totally clogging the impulse exhausts as if the gods were spewing milkshakes into goblets.

  Except this wonderful composite milkshake stuck like glue and hardened chemically within four seconds of contact.

  “What’s that stuff?” McCoy asked.

  “It’s chemical fiber bond,” Stiles told him. “We use it to coat repairs before putting the hull plates back on. Nasty stuff.”

  “Their impulse ports are clogged,” Spock noted. “They’re attempting to fire impulse engines anyway.”

  On the screen, in the upper corner, they could just see the impulse ports turning yellow, orange, then red with backed-up energy. Volcanic spurts of power blasted through the fiber bond, only to be almost instantly sealed up again. Another kind of battle was going on—between the power of the engines and the strength of a resealing compound that wouldn’t take no for an answer.

  Flash…flash…sizzle…flash…The constellation ship fought with itself, spitting and surging, taking the CST with it on every blurting ride.

  The whole CST then began to shake furiously, as if it would break into a billion pieces around them. The sound was horrible, terrifying, the kind of sound that made Stiles wonder what the hell he was doing here in the first place, why anybody would want to come to space when he could stay on a nice solid planet somewhere. Suddenly all the screens flashed a nasty yellow light. A snap of electrical surge flailed through the ship, popping everybody’s ears.

  “What happened!” Stiles called.

  “Feedback along the magnetic lines!” Spock called back. “They’ve thrown us off—power surge is running up the grapples!”

  “Damn!”

  “What do we do now?” Travis cried. “Surrender?”

  “Not since Gabriel’s last tea party in hell! Full about! Make some speed!”

  McCoy fingernailed Spock in the arm and pointed at Stiles. “I like the sound of that, don’t you?”

  Still spitting fire every few seconds as the impulse engines coughed through the clinging fiber bond, the enemy ship wheeled clumsily around to face them with its main weapons ports.

  “Uh-oh…” Stiles’s whole body went cold. “Doesn’t look like they want to take us alive anymore….”

  Spock straightened and watched the ship out there. “Your logic is impeccable…we are in grave danger.”

  His memory nerve tingling, Stiles looked at him. “What?”

  “Just a bit of nostalgia. I suggest we distance ourselves.”

  “Travis, disengage! Jason, full impulse!”

  At point-blank range the other ship opened up on them in what could only be described as a fit of anger. Its weapons cut into the CST’s unshielded body, blowing systems all around the bridge and all the way through the ship. Stiles agonized as he heard the screams and shouts of his men and knew they would have to see to themselves for now. He hated that—the urge to go back there nearly crushed his chest.

  “Speed, Jason,” he implored.

  “Doing my best.”

  “Reading power-up on torpedo launchers,” Spock warned. “We cannot possibly gain enough distance.”

  No distance and no shields. No weapons worth spitting back at that ship. Stiles felt his heart sink. He’d bought time, but there was nothing more to do with it. He’d stopped them from maneuvering in space-normal, but the CST couldn’t get away fast enough to take advantage.

  “Shoot,” he ordered. “Fire at will, whatever we can throw at them. At least we’ll go out shooting.”

  The CST’s internal systems crackled and complained. His men fired what little working phasers they had left. But they weren’t a starship—what could they do? Go over there and rebuild the enemy to death?

  As Stiles watched the enemy ship on the screen, pursuing them in fits and bursts with those clogged impulse tubes, he knew that despite its falling behind they couldn’t possibly outrun its firepower.

  The whole main screen and two lateral ones—the two still working—blasted bright white with incendiary drama. Stiles crimped his eyes, but refused to close them. He wasn’t going to die with his eyes closed.

  Then he didn’t die—couldn’t even do that right.

  “Romulan bird-of-prey on our starboard stern!” Travis called, horrified. “It’s fired on that blue ship! It’s driving them off!”

  Spock bent over the science station. “Confirmed. Romulan standard warbird…in battle mode.”

  “Now what?” Zack cranked around. “Fire on that one too?”

  “No!” McCoy rasped.

  “Don’t shoot!” Stiles countered at the same time. “Give me ship to ship!”

  “You’ve got ship to ship.”

  Stiles leaned over the arm of his command chair’s comm. “Dr. Crusher, I assume that’s you inside that ugly thing.”

  “It’s me, Commander. Everyone all right? Mission accomplished, I hope?”

  “Accomplished so far, Doctor.” He blinked at the bronze war wing hovering on their flank. “Ugly or not, I’m glad to see that big-eyed bug!”

  “It worked.” Spock’s announcement was reserved, but victorious.

  “Enemy is moving off at emergency warp one on a retreat vector.”

  “They’re moving off, Commander Stiles. What do you recommend we do? Chase them down?”

  Stiles sucked a long breath and heaved it out with a shudder. “No, no, don’t chase them. Let them go, Doctor. And…stand by.”

  “Standing by,” Crusher acknowledged.

  “Do they show any signs of turning back?” he asked his own crew.

  “None,” Spock congratulated.

  Jason’s hands shook on his controls. “Think we beat ’em!”

  Looking around the deck, Stiles had a hard time believing they’d beaten anybody at all, considering all the wreckage and mess and sparking components. He hadn’t even noticed the parts and pieces blowing around him and now cluttering the deck. But the rush of victory was undeniable on the bruised faces of his crew.

  “What’s that whine?” somebody asked.

  “What whine?” Stiles wasn’t even sure who asked, and didn’t hear anything at first.

  Then he did.

  “Transporter!” Spock called over the noise that suddenly filled the bridge.

  They pressed back, not knowing what was happening until a band of energy crackled into formation in front of the helm and coalesced into humanoid shape. As they stared in amazement, the sparkling form hardened into Orsova.

  Stiles opened his mouth to shout an order, but Orsova was already moving, leaping like an attacking lion at Zevon. Stiles didn’t see a weapon until the last second before Orsova and Zevon’s bodies collided. A flash of metal, as if he were watching a scene from a swashbuckling movie—unmistakably a blade.

  For just a flash this made no sense—why would Orsova, who had at his disposal every weapon on a whole planet, use a blade?

  Sykora cried out some unintelligible protest, but Spock and Travis managed to hold her back. Zack and Jeremy sprang from their posts
, dove forward over the helm, and snatched at Orsova’s clothing. It took both of them to pry him off Zevon. By then, Stiles was there.

  “Hold him back!” he shouted. He clutched Orsova’s left wrist and the metal weapon in it—some kind of spike, polished to a silk finish, with a wooden handle like an ice pick. It’s silver surface was spackled with Zevon’s blood.

  As Jason Bolt joined the effort to hold Orsova, Stiles handed the weapon to Travis and rushed to Zevon. He grasped Zevon by both arms and held him up. Was he hurt? Was he dying?

  “Zevon?” Stiles held him and looked for a wound. He found it under Zevon’s right hand, pressed to his left side. Pulling Zevon’s hand away, Stiles cajoled, “Let me look, let me look.”

  As Zevon stiffened in pain against him, he found the entry wound, and blessedly an exit.

  “It’s just a flesh wound, I think.” Weakened by relief, he grinned at Zevon. “You just got a good poke!”

  Fighting the shock of having been stabbed, seriously or not, Zevon winced and nodded but couldn’t manage to let go of Stiles just yet.

  Stiles had other ideas. He twisted around and glared at Orsova. “You missed, you filthy ox!”

  Orsova slammed an elbow into Jason Bolt and smacked Zack in the face, driving him back. After that, though, he didn’t attack anybody, instead crossing to the port panel where the long-range scanner was showing a clear picture of the constellation ship getting smaller and smaller as it ran.

  “Voice! Voice, save me!” he cried. “Beam me away, Voice! I did what you wanted! Where are you! Come for me! Voice!”

  But nobody came to rescue him.

  “Pathetic,” Stiles commented.

  Apparently just now realizing he was in deep trouble, Orsova cranked around and glared as if trapped in a box. He could do nothing as Stiles closed on him, pressed his fingers into the flesh at Orsova’s throat, backed him tight up against the portside scanner panel. “I was afraid of you? You’re just a quivering little coward when you’re standing alone, aren’t you?”

  “You better not hurt me!” Orsova pressed backward against the panel.

  “The Voice is coming back for me!”

  “Not soon enough.” Letting loose a dozen years of frustration—and even anger at himself, that he’d been haunted for a third of his life by the face now crimping before him—Stiles bent Orsova back over the panel until he could push no more. Orsova choked and gagged as Stiles’s knuckles kneaded into his throat.