“Captain, they are locking their weapons on us,” Akkar said.
Two seconds later, Excelsior was rocked by a blast of directed energy, and the bridge shimmied as the inertial dampers worked to even out the impact. Sulu grabbed onto his chair to stay steady as the deck righted itself.
“Shields at ninety-three percent and holding,” Akaar said.
“They’re using what seem to be multiphasic ion beams,” Fenlenn said from the science station.
[130] Sulu turned to face Akaar, who looked up from his station. “They appear to have weapons ports installed along the entire length and girth of their hull, sir. It is unclear whether all of their weapons employ directed ionic energy or not.”
“How strong are their shields?” Sulu asked.
“Hard to say, Captain,” Fenlenn said. “Our initial scans haven’t penetrated very far into the alien vessel. Its hull seems to contain a high percentage of some kind of refractory metal alloy.”
“They’ve only fired once, so I’d take that as a warning shot,” Chekov said.
“You may be right,” Sulu said, nodding, “but just because they aren’t firing at us right now doesn’t mean I’m going to stand by while they massacre this colony.”
“Unless they’re jamming outgoing signals from the settlers,” Rand said, “it’s likely that Tholian warships are already on their way, Captain.”
“Good point,” Sulu said. “Mr. Akaar, keep a sharp eye out. We may have some more company soon.”
“Aye, sir.”
Looking nervous, Lieutenant Hopman approached Sulu’s chair. “Captain, if we do get identified by Tholian patrols out here, not only will our presence here be known to the Assembly almost immediately, but it could even look as if we’re helping the Neyel. On the other hand, if we try to stop the Neyel, the Tholian warrior caste is just as likely to take offense.”
“That doesn’t make any sense.”
“Captain, by rescuing them without carefully negotiating with them in advance for the privilege, we’re all but telling their warriors that we think they’re incompetent. And, of course, just about every caste in the Assembly will be frustrated by our, ah, unauthorized incursion into their space.”
“Damned if we do, and damned if we don’t,” Sulu said, feeling grim. But he took heart in the fact that no Tholian warships had arrived as yet.
[131] “The aliens are firing on the Tholian outpost world again,” Akaar announced loudly, and the viewscreen showed the evidence of his words. Multiple ion lays lanced out from the Neyel ship and into the planet’s atmosphere.
“Asher,” Sulu said. “Take us into the path of those blasts, between the Neyel ship and the Tholian settlement. We’re putting a stop to this. Now.”
Chekov moved toward his chair and leaned in. “Please tell me you a have a plan,” he said quietly.
“If we lost only seven percent of our shield capacity from the previous attack, then we ought to be able to sustain another few direct hits without serious damage. And that may buy some time for the Tholians down there.”
“You hope,” Chekov finished for him. “If that first volley they fired at us really was only a warning shot ...”
“I can’t just allow the wanton slaughter of those people down there, Pavel. And if we can stop the attack without having to open fire ourselves ...”
“Big gamble,” Chekov said.
“I know,” Sulu told him.
Punching the comm button on the arm of his chair, Sulu said, “Chief Azleya, we’re going to take some heavy flak in a few seconds. Make sure our shields hold, however much power it takes.”
“You’ll have power to spare for the shields, Captain,” the chief engineer said in the mock-chiding tone to which Sulu had grown long accustomed. “So long as you don’t ask me to draft any new laws of physics, that is.”
Sulu grinned. “No promises, Chief. Sulu out.”
“We do not know what other weapons they may possess, sir,” Akaar said. “They may be able to shoot us out of the sky with something even more potent than what we have seen so far.”
“Or, they may listen to reason and stop shooting long [132] enough to hear us out,” Sulu said. “Let’s not assume the worst about them until they give us a reason.”
He saw the veins in Akaar’s neck throb visibly. Clearly, his security chief wasn’t happy with the situation. But it is his job to expect the worst, Sulu reminded himself.
“I haven’t given an order to stand down weapons in the meantime, have I, Lieutenant?” he asked, fixing the much taller man with his gaze.
“No, sir.” Akaar seemed to try, unsuccessfully, to restrain his enthusiasm.
“Good,” Sulu said. “I want to bring this affair to a peaceful conclusion if I can. But the Neyel did fire on the Tholians—and on us—first. And without any apparent provocation. Make sure all weapons batteries are ready.”
Akaar nodded. Without glancing at his tactical readout, he said, “Already done, sir. All phaser banks are fully charged, and all torpedo tubes are loaded and ready.”
Let’s hope we can greet them eventually with open hearts and hands, Sulu thought, quoting the well-known Capellan greeting. Rather than with our security chiefs closed fist.
He turned his attention toward Rand. “Janice, please keep trying to hail the Neyel ship. If you get through to them, put me on immediately.”
“Yes, sir.”
Sulu studied the viewer as the Neyel ship, with its long, weapons-festooned hull, loomed steadily larger in Excelsior’s flight path. He wondered for a moment if any sort of parlay or peace was even possible with such apparently hate-filled people. After all, the Neyel with whom he had spoken had referred to the Tholians as an “infestation.”
I just hope I’m not placing my ship and my crew in jeopardy over a lost cause, he thought.
In the torpedo bay on the starboard side of Deck Twenty, Chief Julia Pitcher’s crew scrambled to prep the [133] complement of photon torpedoes. She knew that the portside crew was simultaneously doing the very same job, under the command of Lieutenant Curry, one of the junior tactical officers.
Each torpedo had to be checked and double-checked before being loaded into the torpedo bays. Even though the equipment was scanned at least twice a day—mainly to check on the magnetic containment of each weapon’s internal supply of matter and antimatter—a red alert called for even more stringent quality-control measures.
“Julia, we’ve got a red light on the M/A fuel cell for Torp37A,” said Petty Officer Tagame.
Pitcher moved over to that particular torpedo quickly, her tricorder in one hand to double-check whatever she diagnosed with her eyes. She afforded a quick grin to the young Japanese man. “Since when do we use first names during red alerts, Mister Tagame?”
He blushed and stammered an apology as she crouched to check on the miniature warp fuel cell. “It’s okay, Gen,” Pitcher said good-naturedly. “If we have to be all spit-and-polish with our duties during battle, at least we can be informal with our use of names.”
A wisp of hair fell across Pitcher’s face as she leaned in to study the mechanism; she blew the hair upward with a gust of breath. Prodding the control panel on the device, she ran the scanner over the surface. As expected, it told her the same thing she already knew. “Pull this one, Gen. We’re going to have to replace the cell.”
As she stood, the room jolted violently, knocking several of her crew onto the floor. Pitcher had barely recovered her balance before another blow to Excelsior knocked her off her feet entirely. She heard a sharp cry from her left, simultaneous with a sickening, wet crunch.
Looking across the room, Pitcher saw that one of the torpedoes had gotten off track from its antigrav carrier and had [134] pinned Win Lemkopf. He was struggling to move the heavy casing, and something was clearly wrong with him.
Pitcher and two other crew members got on their feet to help him, even as the feminine computer voice droned out “Shields at seventy-four point eight percent. Minor damage to Decks Three,
Four, and Five.”
Lemkopf screamed in pain as Pitcher, Bell, and Rolquin lifted the massive torpedo off of him. As they moved it, Pitcher could see why. His leg was crushed, probably broken in several places, and a large shard of bone protruded from just above his knee.
“Sickbay, we’ve got a medical emergency coming your way,” Pitcher yelled. “We need a trauma team, Deck Twenty, Torpedo Bay Two.” The communicator channel on their consoles in the torpedo bay were locked on to allow for hands-free communication.
“Acknowledged,” came a female voice. Pitcher didn’t immediately recognize it, but figured it probably belonged to one of the new nurses. “We’ll dispatch a team immediately.”
“Need any help down here?”
Pitcher turned to see Lieutenant Shandra Docksey standing in the open doorway. The pretty East Indian officer generally worked the helm on the beta shift, but if she was here now, Pitcher wasn’t about to refuse her help. She knew that Shandra had had a good deal of previous experience working both in the photon torpedo bays and the phaser stations. Besides, Pitcher genuinely liked working alongside anyone whose disposition was as positive as Docksey’s.
“Stay here with Lemkopf until the medics arrive,” the weapons exec said. “We’ve got to prep these torpedoes.”
Docksey knelt beside Lemkopf, who was moaning in pain. She immediately removed her belt and cinched it around Lemkopf’s leg at mid-thigh. Pitcher turned back to the others and ordered them to get back to loading, then [135] moved to double-check the viability of the torpedo that had fallen on Lemkopf.
She heard a familiar hissing, followed by a thump, and a quick glance to the wall-mounted computer screens confirmed that the port torpedoes had just been deployed. Curry and his crew were no doubt readying their second salvo. We’d better finish getting our first salvo ready.
“Torpedo Bay Two, is your complement ready?” That was Lojur’s voice from the bridge over the comm channel. Pitcher knew that Lojur and Docksey had been an item for several years now, and that the day of their wedding was fast approaching.
She wondered if Lojur even knew that his sweetheart was down here.
The ship shuddered again as Pitcher prepared to reply. Pushing the torpedo that had fallen on Lemkopf onto the floor-mounted tracks that led into its launching bay, she yelled, “Two more to load, Commander Lojur. Give me five seconds.”
“Acknowledged.”
Bell and Rolquin slammed their own bay doors closed and gave her the thumbs-up sign. “Clear to launch,” Pitcher yelled to Lojur.
An instant later, the hissing sound became much louder and the coordinated thumps grew as sonorous as a gong as the torpedoes launched toward their target. Pitcher turned to see two white-suited medics rush into the room, and then—
A deafening roar filled the chamber, and Pitcher could hear metal tearing and an explosive decompression, directly below. “Warning. Hull breach on Decks Twenty-One and Twenty-Two,” the computer said. A beat later, it added, “Emergency forcefields now in place.”
One deck below us. One deck is all that separated life from death. Pitcher saw the same shocked look on her staff’s faces, [136] and realized that they all were having the same chilling thought.
“Torpedo Bay Two, are you all right?” Chekov’s concerned voice came over the comm system this time.
“We’re steady. What happened?” Pitcher watched the medics injecting Lemkopf with a hypospray. He passed out beside their antigrav stretcher.
“Weapons fire from the Neyel ship hit two of the torpedoes as they exited the ship,” Chekov explained. “The torps had already been armed.”
The Neyel. That must be who’s firing at us. Never even heard of them before. Pitcher looked to Tagame, Bell, and Rolquin. They all appeared scared but steady. As the medics carefully loaded Lemkopf onto the stretcher, Docksey stood. Pitcher saw Lemkopf’s blood spattered all over the woman’s tunic.
“They must have figured out where our torpedo launch bays are, Commander,” Pitcher said, projecting her words toward the communicator. “Is it safe to prep any more torpedoes?”
“They’re having more effect on the enemy vessel than our phasers are,” Chekov said, pronouncing one word as “wes-sel.” “We’re distributing more shield power across your decks.”
“Very good, sir,” Pitcher said, swallowing. “We’ll have another set prepped and ready in two minutes.” She allowed herself a gratified smile as she watched her crew, busy at their tasks.
“Anything else I can do here?” Docksey asked after checking and loading another pair of torpedoes. Behind her, the medics were gently carrying Lemkopf’s stretcher out toward the corridor.
Pitcher was about to respond when the communicator of one of the medics beeped. “Medical aid needed on Deck Five. Three members of the forward phaser crew are injured.”
“I think they could probably use some help there, Lieutenant,” Pitcher told Docksey. “They sound even more [137] short-handed than we are. As long as we don’t get breached, I think we’ll be able to hold the fort up here. Thanks for your help.”
Docksey gave Pitcher a quick smile before dashing off down the hall. Pitcher had rarely seen Docksey not smiling; maybe that was part of the reason she was so well liked among Excelsior’s crew.
The ship shuddered to one side again as Pitcher turned back to the torpedoes that still needed to be loaded.
Sulu gripped the armrests of his chair as the battle raged, and the two ships exchanged salvo after salvo.
The plan to block the Neyel from firing on the Tholian settlement had gone sour almost immediately, as the Neyel ship instead began to try to hit both Excelsior and the colony. However, Excelsior had finally been successful in drawing most of the Neyel vessel’s attention away from the planet by circling around the aggressor and firing successive volleys at its tough, refractory-metal hull.
And Excelsior had indeed inflicted some damage on the Neyel ship, enough for scans of some of the breached areas to reveal that the ship’s internal design was very different from that of Federation starships—rather than consisting of stacks of horizontally oriented decks, it was effectively a collection of nested curves, cylinders stacked within cylinders. This made the main power systems, which were presumably located in the relative safety of the Neyel ship’s core, extremely difficult to target.
Sulu could only hope that he wouldn’t be forced to destroy the Neyel vessel in order to disable it. And that it wouldn’t finish off Excelsior first.
“There,” Sulu said, rising and pointing to a particular spot on the main viewer, where Akaar had mounted a tactical diagram of what their scans had so far revealed of the Neyel ship’s internal layout. “If we direct a combined phaser [138] and torpedo bombardment there, I’m betting it’ll take down their propulsion system.”
“I agree,” Fenlenn said, and Chekov and Akaar nodded as well.
Lojur spoke into the companel on his console as he touched several lighted keys. “Phaser Array Three, we’re sending a spread to the coordinate sets on Lieutenant Akaar’s tactical display. Torpedo Bays One and Two, prep a set of torpedoes to coordinate set twelve, then another to set thirteen.”
Sulu watched the progress of his weapons teams on the computer, then gave the command, “Fire.”
Turning toward the forward viewscreen, Sulu saw thirty-odd phaser blasts strafing the hull of the Neyel ship, while several light bursts from the torpédos zoomed toward their target. Seconds later, a conflagration erupted in the intended portion of the enemy vessel, almost directly amidships. Suddenly, much of the cylindrical craft seemed to lose power, whole sections of its hull going as dark as the surrounding space.
Several people on the bridge let out small cheers.
“They’re not yet disabled,” reported Fenlenn, quickly damping the sense of triumph. “But there appear to have been significant casualties.”
Sulu felt a twinge of real regret, but he pushed it aside. After all, what choice had the Neyel left him?
&nbs
p; He turned to Rand. “Hail them again. Maybe now they’ll talk to us. And listen to reason.”
Docksey and two other off-duty crew members had arrived on Deck Five at approximately the same time. They made their way to Phaser Array One, located just behind the registry numbers on the forward dorsal side of Excelsior’s primary hull. The damage that had caused the injuries to the three technicians was obvious. One of the blasts Excelsior had taken sent an arc of power into the computer banks there, and two of them had exploded, their ODN relays and [139] scorched duotronic circuits spilling out like viscera from a slain animal. Those unhurt by the blast were now operating the phaser banks manually, since most of the control systems were off-line.
Quickly assessing the situation, Docksey was reminded of ancient Earth history, when powder-and-lead-crammed cannons had been manned by artillery crewmen who had rolled the ungainly weapons about on creaking wooden decks.
“Over here, Shandra,” a familiar voice called. It was Dennis Beauvois, another beta-shifter with whom she often had lunch in the mess hall. The dark-haired man had recently received some very good news; his wife, back on Starbase 35, had just given birth to a new baby boy, their third child. He had seen only holograms of his son so far, but he was quite excited to have a boy to join his two little girls.
Docksey hurried over to help him. “Quite a mess up here, isn’t it?” she said, her smile faltering.
“Yeah, two of the guys got burned pretty badly, and Fri’lin got skewered in the leg with some shrapnel when one of the consoles overloaded,” Beauvois said. He shook his head and added, “Nasty.”
“So, what’s the deal here?” Docksey asked. “You want me to take the target-lock or the trigger?” She was joking. The phaser cannons didn’t have triggers per se; but when run manually, they had to be triggered by a code sequence relayed down from the bridge on a display panel.
“You seem more like a trigger person to me than a squint-through-the-crosshairs-at-the-target type,” Beauvois said, grinning.
“They’re still refusing our hails, Captain,” Rand said.
STAR TREK: The Lost Era - 2298 - The Sundered Page 13