“Raising shields,” Gerda confirmed.
“Diverting power to phasers,” said Vigo.
“Their speed?” asked Picard.
“Full impulse,” Idun reported.
This was it, the second officer told himself, glaring at the enemy. This was the test of all their hard work. They would either turn the Nuyyad back or be destroyed in the attempt.
“Any sign that they see us?” he asked his navigator.
“None, sir,” said Gerda, her hands darting over her control panel. “They’re heading straight for the colony.”
As we expected, thought Picard. But he couldn’t help thinking of Simenon, whom he had left to help defend Magnia.
He hoped that he and the engineer would both be around to congratulate each other when the battle was over.
“Here they come,” said Simenon, tracking the two yellow blips on his black sensor screen.
Brentano, who was seated to the engineer’s left, cast a thought: Shields are at full strength.
Phasers powered and ready, replied Hilton-Smith, the blond woman to Simenon’s right.
“Target phasers,” intoned Shield Williamson, who had taken up a position behind the Gnalish.
Targeting, Hilton-Smith responded.
Range in thirty seconds, Brentano informed them.
On Simenon’s screen, one of the yellow blips unleashed a series of green energy bursts. A moment later, the other blip followed suit. Apparently, the engineer reflected, the Nuyyad’s weapons range was a little greater than that of the colonists.
Direct hits, said Brentano. But no damage to report. Shields are holding at eighty-six percent.
Range in fifteen seconds, thought Hilton-Smith.
Simenon watched the blips get closer. Again, they fired their vidrion cannons, and this time he thought he could feel a little tremor in the floor beneath him.
Shields down to seventy-two percent, Brentano told them.
Range in five seconds, Hilton-Smith reported, her eyes reflecting the light from her screen. Four. Three. Two . . .
“Fire!” Williamson commanded, his voice ripping through the chamber.
On Simenon’s monitor, a half dozen red phaser beams reached out and pummeled the enemy vessels. Inwardly, the Gnalish cheered. After all, he had personally helped increase the force of those beams.
“Their shields are taking a beating,” observed Brentano, pure excitement in his voice.
Of course, none of them expected to win this battle from the ground. If the Magnians were going to prevail, their allies in the heavens would have to take the lead.
Just as the engineer thought that, he saw a third blip enter the picture. The Stargazer has arrived, he announced silently, but not without a certain amount of pride.
Picard eyed the bright, diamond-shaped ships on his viewscreen. “Fire again!” he thundered.
A second time, the Stargazer’s phasers stabbed at the enemy vessels, wreaking havoc with their shields. What’s more, the Magnians’ sensor enhancements allowed each beam to find its precise target.
Finally, the Nuyyad must have realized that something new had been added to the mix. Both ships peeled away, resorting to evasive maneuvers.
But Picard knew he had the enemy off-balance. The last thing he wanted to do was give them time to regroup.
“Stay on them,” he told Idun Asmund.
“Aye, sir,” said his helm officer, following one of the Nuyyad ships as it sped away.
“Get a lock on their aft shield generators,” he told Vigo.
Again, they were able to benefit from the Magnians’ participation in their sensor operations. The Pandrilite looked up. “Got them, sir.”
“Fire!” barked Picard.
The Stargazer’s phasers raked the enemy’s hindquarters with a devastating barrage. Unfortunately, they could dog only one vessel at a time—and the second officer was wary of getting caught in a crossfire.
He turned to his navigator. “Where is the other one?”
“Bearing two-five-two-mark-six,” Gerda told him. “But it’s got its hands full with what the Magnians are throwing at it.”
Picard nodded, satisfied with the way the battle was going. It was just the way they had planned it.
Suddenly, Gerda swiveled in her chair, her eyes wide with surprise and anger. “Shields are down!” she snarled.
The second officer didn’t understand. “We haven’t even been hit,” he pointed out.
“Nonetheless,” the navigator insisted, “shields are down!”
Picard cursed beneath his breath. “Fall back!” he told Idun, the words leaving a bitter taste in his mouth.
But as if the Nuyyad had sensed the Stargazer’s untimely vulnerability, the enemy vessel wheeled and came after her. The second officer looked on helplessly as the Nuyyad’s cannons belched vidrion fury.
“Brace yourselves!” he cried out.
A moment later, the deck slid out from under him and sparks shot across the bridge. No, Picard thought. This cannot be happening. We had them.
Hadn’t the enemy been at a distinct tactical disadvantage? And hadn’t they just reconstructed the Stargazer’s deflector grid unit by unit? How could it have failed again so quickly?
Abruptly, a chill climbed the rungs of the second officer’s spine. The saboteur, he thought. It was the only explanation.
A second vidrion barrage pounded them, sending the Stargazer reeling to starboard. Flung into the side of the captain’s chair, Picard heard the deckplates shriek like banshees.
“Evasive maneuvers,” he told Idun. “Pattern Omega!”
As the helm officer sent them spiraling out of harm’s way, Pi card tried to take stock of his options. Shields or no shields, he told himself, he had to create an opportunity to strike back.
Then Vigo called out the best thing the second officer could have hoped to hear. “I’ve got the shields back on-line, sir!”
Uncertain as to how long they would stay on-line, Picard turned to the viewscreen. The Nuyyad vessel was bearing down on them, following up on the surprising damage done by its volleys. Quite possibly, the enemy commander expected to finish them off.
The fellow was going to be disappointed, the second officer thought. With the Stargazer’s shields restored, Picard had all his options in front of him again—and he knew which one he wanted to use.
“Divert power to tractor beam,” he snapped. “Target a point on their shields in line with their main emitter.”
Normally, a tractor beam was useless against an enemy’s shields. However, this wasn’t just any tractor beam. It was one that had the minds of more than a dozen Magnians to strengthen and manipulate it.
“Ready phasers and photon torpedoes!” the second officer called out.
But even as he gave the order, he saw the enemy release a volley of bright green vidrion packets. They loomed on the forward viewer, growing gigantic before Picard could do anything about them, finally filling the screen from edge to edge.
Then they tore into the Stargazer with all their savage, disruptive force. But Jomar’s vidrion-laced deflectors seemed to hold against the Nuyyad assault, keeping its destructive potential at arm’s length.
“Engage tractor!” the second officer told his navigator.
Gerda did as she was told—and used the ghostly beam to punch a hole through the enemy’s shields. Seeing the aperture, Picard smiled a grim smile and glanced at Vigo.
“Fire!” he said.
Instantly, the weapons chief drove his phaser bolts through the gap created by the tractor beam, piercing the outer skin of the Nuyyad ship. Then he followed up with a couple of photon torpedoes.
With neither shields nor hull to stop them or even slow them down, the torpedoes entered the enemy vessel and vented their matter-antimatter payload in a massive outpouring of yellow-white splendor.
Even if he had wanted to watch the resulting debris spin off into space, the second officer didn’t have the time. He had to turn his attent
ion to his other adversary.
“Give me a visual of the other ship,” he told Gerda.
The image on the viewscreen changed, showing him the lone surviving diamond shape. It was exchanging fire with the planet’s surface, perhaps unaware that its sister vessel had been destroyed.
“Target their deflectors,” said Picard, “just as we did before. Ready phasers and torpedoes.”
“Ready, sir,” came Vigo’s reply.
The Nuyyad vessel began to come about, leaving Magnia alone for the moment. Obviously, its commander had recognized a more pressing concern.
“Engage tractor beam!” snapped the second officer. On the viewscreen, the pale, barely visible shaft of the tractor opened a window in the enemy’s shields. “Fire!” he commanded.
The diamond shape didn’t stand a chance. Before it could launch an offensive of its own, before it could try to get out of the Stargazer’s range, a pair of crimson phaser beams sliced through the opening in its defenses and penetrated its hull.
As before, Vigo followed the phaser attack with a pair of photon torpedoes. And as before, they exploded inside the enemy ship, blotting out the stars with a splash of deadly, yellow-white brilliance.
“Well done,” said Picard. He turned to Gerda. “Damage?”
“Shields are down twenty-two percent,” the navigator reported. “Otherwise, all systems are functioning at rated capacity.”
The second officer was pleased beyond all expectation. “Well done indeed,” he told his officers.
“Sir,” said Paxton from his communications console, “Mr. Williamson is hailing us from the surface.”
Picard smiled. “Put him on screen, Lieutenant.”
A moment later, the Magnian’s visage appeared. “Tell me our instruments are accurate, Commander. The Nuyyad . . .?”
“Have been destroyed,” the second officer confirmed.
Williamson looked relieved. “And the Stargazer?”
“Has not been,” Picard said. “How is Magnia?”
“Unharmed as well,” the colonist reported. “Our only casualty was a stand of old trees of which I was rather fond.”
“It could have been worse,” the second officer told him.
He glanced at Vigo, recalling their momentary shield failure, and contemplated the danger in which it had placed them. If the weapons chief hadn’t managed to get the deflectors back online . . .
“Much worse,” he added.
Chapter 15
Picard sat behind Captain Ruhalter’s desk and regarded his acting weapons chief. “What happened out there?” he asked.
Vigo frowned. “Honestly, sir . . . when we lost our shields, I was too surprised to even think for a moment. After all, nothing like that had ever happened to me. Then I thought of the saboteur.”
“As did I,” the second officer admitted.
“I remembered how he had run a parallel data line through that command junction, and I started thinking of which command junctions were involved in the deflector function. As it turned out, there were only four of them, so I began bypassing them one after the other. After I bypassed the third one, we regained shield control.”
“And you brought the deflectors back up,” Picard concluded.
The weapons officer nodded. “That’s correct, sir.”
Picard sat back in his chair. “I hope I don’t have to tell you how critical that action was. If not for you, Lieutenant, our encounter with the Nuyyad might have had a very different conclusion.”
Vigo looked a little embarassed. “I was glad to be of help, sir.”
“You can be of further help,” the second officer told him. “I want you to examine this altered shield command junction. See if you can glean anything from it—perhaps in comparison to the first altered junction we discovered. Then report back to me.”
“Aye, sir,” said Vigo. But he didn’t get up from his chair right away.
“What is it?” asked Picard.
The Pandrilite looked apologetic. “Begging your pardon, sir, but are we going to return to the Federation with the saboteur on board?”
The second officer was about to ask why that would be of particular concern to his weapons chief. Then it hit him with the impact of a directed energy beam: the galactic barrier.
If their shields dropped just before they went through it, they would be naked to the phenomenon. The crew would be completely and utterly exposed to the barrier’s mysterious and volatile energies.
Kirk’s ship had had some protection, primitive as it might be by contemporary standards, and Gary Mitchell had still become a being capable of enslaving his entire species. How much more monstrous an entity might be created on a vessel that had no shielding at all?
“I see your point,” said Picard.
Clearly, they couldn’t go back to the Federation as they had planned. Not yet, anyway. First, they would have to identify and neutralize the saboteur, then scour the ship for lingering signs of his or her handiwork.
“I will find the saboteur,” the second officer promised. “I don’t yet know how, but I will do it.”
“I’m sure you will, sir,” said Vigo, his expression an earnest one. “If there’s anything I can do . . .”
“I’ll let you know,” Picard told him. “And Lieutenant . . .”
“Aye, sir?” said the weapons officer.
“As before, not a word of this to anyone.”
“You can trust me, sir,” Vigo assured him.
No doubt, Picard mused. He wished he could say that about everyone aboard the Stargazer.
Carter Greyhorse walked into the Stargazer’s lounge, where Commander Picard was already seated at the black oval table.
“Doctor,” said the second officer, by way of acknowledgment.
“You wanted to speak with me?” asked Greyhorse, pulling out a chair opposite Picard’s and sitting down.
“I did,” said the commander. “But I’d prefer to wait until the others arrive before I begin our discussion.”
Others? Greyhorse wondered.
He had barely completed the thought when Ben Zoma, Simenon, Paxton, and Cariello walked into the room, one right after the other. Nodding to the doctor, they took their seats.
Greyhorse hadn’t realized that this was to be a staff meeting. But then, he could easily have missed that part of Picard’s summons.
Ever since his visit from Pug Joseph, the medical officer had been unable to keep from thinking about Gerda Asmund again. He was so preoccupied, so distracted, he hadn’t even felt an urge to complete his tests on the psilosynine he had synthesized.
And with renewed longing had come a renewed sense of despair. Gerda was so forceful, so graceful, so vibrant . . . so unlike Greyhorse. What chance could he possibly have with her?
“Doctor Greyhorse?”
Greyhorse turned to Picard. “Yes?”
“I would like to get underway now,” said the second officer.
The doctor looked around and saw that Vigo and Jomar had joined them without his realizing it. They were sitting at the table along with the others. My god, he told himself, it’s worse than I thought.
“The reason I called this meeting,” said Picard, “is to discuss what course of action we should adopt next.”
Simenon looked at him. “I’m a little confused. Aren’t we supposed to be going home?”
“Yes,” said Cariello, “to warn the Federation about the Nuyyad?”
“Indeed,” Picard replied, “that is the agenda I had intended to follow. However, it occurs to me there is something more we can accomplish here before we return.”
“Explain,” said the Kelvan.
“As you will recall,” said Picard, “we were told about a supply depot that the enemy had set up on this side of the galactic barrier—one that seemed to be a critical part of their invasion plans.”
Greyhorse thought he could see where the second officer was headed. “You want to scout out this depot?”
Picard shook his h
ead from side to side. “No,” he told his assembled officers and allies. “I want to destroy it.”
The doctor looked at him, struck dumb by the audacity of his declaration. So, apparently, was everyone else sitting around the table.
“Are you sure that’s wise, sir?” asked Paxton.
“I believe it is,” said the second officer. “For one thing, you saw how easily we handled those two Nuyyad ships.”
“But not without the help of the Magnians’ phaser batteries,” Ben Zoma reminded him.
“No question,” Picard responded, “the colonists on the ground played a critical part in our victory. However, I believe we would have defeated the Nuyyad even without their assistance. Our enhanced sensor and tractor functions provided us with a much greater tactical advantage than I would ever have imagined possible.”
“Let me understand this,” said Simenon, his slitted eyes narrowing in his scaly face. “You want to attack an enemy installation—where we’re liable to face a force considerably larger than two ships? And you want us to do it entirely on our own?”
The second officer leaned forward. “I want to take the Nuyyad by surprise—and they won’t be expecting a countermaneuver so soon after their assault on Magnia. On the other hand, if we opt to alert the Federation and watch them put together a task force, the Nuyyad will have had time to increase the strength of their defenses.”
“Are we even certain there is a depot?” asked Greyhorse. “Wasn’t that just the bait in the Nuyyad’s trap?”
“It exists,” the second officer insisted. “Shield Williamson has given me the coordinates.”
“Can we believe him this time?” asked Cariello.
“A fair question,” Picard told her. “But since our arrival here, the colonists have made good on all their promises. I no longer feel compelled to question their sincerity.”
“Nor do I,” Simenon conceded.
“The elimination of the depot is a worthwhile goal,” Vigo observed. “One worth taking a risk to achieve.”
“Exactly right,” said Picard. “We can vastly improve Starfleet’s tactical position, giving Command the time it needs to prepare for an invasion . . . or perhaps even head it off.”
THE VALIANT Page 20