THE VALIANT

by Michael Jan Friedman

  “Range?” he asked.

  “Twenty-two billion kilometers,” said Gerda, “and closing.”

  At warp seven, the Stargazer would cover fifty percent of that distance in the next minute and meet the enemy halfway. It didn’t leave them much time to gird themselves for battle.

  The second officer turned to Vigo. “Power up phasers and photon torpedoes,” he said.

  “Aye, sir,” Vigo responded.

  Picard looked to Gerda again. “Raise shields.”

  “Raising shields,” she confirmed.

  The commander took a deep breath and watched the Nuyyad ships loom larger on the screen. For the time being, they were content to fly parallel courses, though that would no doubt change in the next few seconds.

  As if on cue, the enemy vessels peeled off in different directions, aiming to catch the Federation ship in a crossfire. Picard thought for a moment and turned to his helm officer.

  “Go after the one to starboard,” he commanded.

  “Aye, sir,” said Idun.

  Abruptly, the Stargazer veered to the right, keeping one of the Nuyyad ships in sight while momentarily ignoring the other. It was the maneuver that had been recommended by all Picard’s tactics instructors at the Academy—but not as a long-term solution.

  It would buy him a few seconds, at best. But if luck was on his side, that would be all the time he needed.

  “Lock on target,” he told Vigo.

  “Targeting,” came the reply.

  “Phaser range,” said Gerda.

  “Fire!” snapped Picard.

  Twin phaser beams lanced through space and skewered the enemy ship. At normal strength, the commander would have expected them to weaken the diamond-shape’s shields, perhaps even shake up the Nuyyad inside.

  The crimson beams didn’t do that. They did a lot more.

  Instead of softening the enemy’s defenses, they seared right through them and penetrated the Nuyyad’s hull. Before Picard could give Vigo the order to fire again, his adversary suffered a vicious, blinding explosion amidships. With the second officer looking on in morbid fascination, the Nuyyad succumbed to a second explosion and then a third, and finally came apart in a white-hot burst of debris.

  “Enemy vessel to port,” Gerda reported.

  “Bring us about,” Picard told Idun.

  As they swung hard to port, the viewscreen found their other antagonist. But at the same time, a string of vidrion bundles came slicing from the vessel’s cannons, filling the screen with their fury.

  The second officer braced himself, but the impact wasn’t as bad as he had expected. Their vidrion-reinforced shields were holding up well—he could tell even without asking Gerda for the details.

  “Target and fire!” he told Vigo.

  A moment later, their phaser banks erupted again—gutting the enemy ship as they had gutted the other one, and with much the same results. The Nuyyad was ripped to shreds in a chain of spectacular explosions, one right after the other. The last of them left nothing in its wake but a languidly expanding wave of space junk.

  Suddenly, the Stargazer was alone in the void, registering nothing on her forward viewscreen but the light of distant stars. Picard expelled a breath he hadn’t known he was holding.

  Ben Zoma appeared beside him. “Apparently,” he said, “Jomar knew what he was talking about.”

  “Apparently so,” the second officer replied.

  But there was still the question they had brought up when Captain Ruhalter was still alive—as to whether the plasma conduits could tolerate the kind of stress Jomar’s enhancement would place on them. With that in mind, Picard asked Vigo to run a diagnostic.

  After a moment, the weapons officer made his report. “The stress appears to have been considerable, sir. But the conduits held. There’s no sign of damage to them.”

  The commander nodded. “Thank you, Lieutenant.”

  Ben Zoma looked at him. “Now what?”

  Picard frowned. There was really only one option, as far as he was concerned. “Now we go after the depot.”

  His colleague smiled a halfhearted smile. “I was afraid you were going to say that.”

  “If you were in my place,” asked the second officer, “would you be turning back now?”

  “If I were in your place,” said Ben Zoma, “I wouldn’t have come this far in the first place.”

  Picard shot him a disparaging look.

  “You asked,” his friend reminded him.

  By the commander’s estimate, they were still two hundred and fifty billion kilometers from their target—more than twenty minutes’ travel at warp seven. With their pursuers out of the way, there was still plenty of time to change course and head for the barrier instead.

  But Picard had undertaken a mission, and he was determined to see it through. “Resume course,” he told Idun.

  The helm officer seemed to approve of the decision. “Aye, sir,” she said, and made a small adjustment in their heading.

  Soon, the commander reflected, their struggles would be over—one way or the other.

  Pug Joseph looked down at Serenity Santana, whose dark eyes were closed in recuperative repose.

  She might have died in her fight with Jomar, he told himself. The Kelvan might have miscalculated and killed her. And then Joseph would never have had the chance to speak with Santana again . . .

  And to tell her he was sorry.

  Not for being vigilant, because it was a security officer’s job to be vigilant. But for not accepting her apology when she tendered it to him in the engineering support room on Deck 26.

  On the other side of the triage area, Dr. Greyhorse was puttering around with his instruments. He seemed distracted—as distracted as Joseph had been when he last visited sickbay. Or maybe, knowing how the security officer felt about Santana, the doctor was simply giving him some privacy.

  Joseph gazed at the colonist again and resisted an impulse to straighten a lock of her hair. He had been so determined not to get fooled again, he had almost prevented her from going after Jomar.

  If he had been successful, the Kelvan would have faced Picard and Ben Zoma alone, without any help from Santana. There was no telling what would have happened to the officers then.

  Picard trusted her, Joseph thought. Maybe I should have trusted her too. He resolved to tell her that when she woke.

  There’s no need, said a voice in his head. You’ve told me already.

  And Santana opened her eyes.

  He felt his face flush with embarrassment. “You were reading my mind,” he said accusingly.

  “Are you upset with me?” she asked, her voice thin and reedy from the medication Greyhorse had administered.

  The security officer started to say yes, started to protest that she had violated his privacy. Then he stopped himself. “Not anymore,” he told her. “Not after what you risked to stop Jomar.”

  Santana smiled wearily. “I was afraid he would transform me into a tetrahedron,” she murmured, “the way he transformed Brentano. That made me fight a little harder.”

  “So he wouldn’t get the chance,” Joseph deduced.

  “Uh huh.” The colonist drew a breath, then let it out. “I’m glad you’re not angry at me.”

  So was he. He said so.

  “I’m so tired,” Santana told him, stumbling over the words. “Would you do me a favor, Lieutenant?”

  “Anything,” the security officer answered.

  “Would you stand guard over me? Just for old times’ sake?”

  He nodded. “I’d be glad to.”

  A moment later, Santana was asleep.

  Picard regarded the Nuyyad supply installation on his screen and counted the number of warships circling it.

  “Is it my imagination,” he asked Ben Zoma, “or are there four vessels defending the depot again?”

  “There are four, all right,” said his friend. “Apparently, the Nuyyad had other ships in the area.”

  “And maybe more on
the way,” the second officer noted. “All the more reason to act quickly.”

  Ben Zoma didn’t respond to the statement, but his expression wasn’t one of complete confidence. Then again, he hadn’t been eager to go after the depot from the beginning.

  Picard took another look at the depot and its fleet of defenders. Was his friend right? Were they out of their league? Or would their secret weapon be enough to pull off a victory?

  There was only one way to find out.

  “All hands to battle stations,” he said.

  All over the ship, he knew, crewmen were rushing to their predetermined posts. He remembered what it was like to respond to such an order, to know that a battle was imminent.

  On the bridge, it was a different experience entirely. It was at once headier and more daunting. After all, he wasn’t just responsible for one isolated job. He was responsible for all of them.

  “Strafing run?” Ben Zoma suggested.

  The second officer shook his head. He had already considered the idea and rejected it. “I would rather be in their midst, where they will have to worry about hitting each other with their vidrion bursts.”

  Just as the second officer expressed that sentiment, he saw two more of the enemy ships move out to meet him. Apparently, the choice of approach had been taken out of their hands.

  “Phaser range?” he asked Vigo.

  “In a few seconds, sir,” the weapons officer told him.

  “Target the foremost vessel,” said Picard.

  “Targeting,” Vigo responded.

  “Range,” Gerda announced.

  The commander eyed the viewscreen. “Fire!”

  The Nuyyad tried to twist out of the way. But the Stargazer’s phaser beams punched through the vessel’s shields, shearing off its nacelles on one side and cutting a deep furrow on the other.

  A moment later, the enemy ship met its demise in a ball of yellow-white flame—a blast so prodigious that it licked at the extremities of the victim’s sister vessels.

  “Evasive maneuvers!” Picard called out. “Pattern Gamma!”

  Accelerating, the Stargazer split the difference between the Nuyyad ships and blew right through the remnants of the vessel she had destroyed. The enemy must have been surprised, because it didn’t even get off a volley.

  “Pattern Alpha!” the second officer demanded. “I want them both in our sights again!”

  Idun muscled the ship hard to port until the Nuyyad appeared on the viewscreen. Then she bore down on them.

  “Target the starboard vessel and fire!” said Picard.

  At close range, their enhanced phasers were even more effective. The beams rammed through one side of the Nuyyad ship and came out the other. And in the process, they started a series of savage explosions that gradually tore the vessel to pieces.

  The third vessel raked them with a vidrion barrage, causing the Stargazer to jerk to port. But again, their shields kept them from serious harm. Then it was the Federation ship’s turn again.

  “Target and fire!” Picard told his weapons officer.

  Once more, Vigo’s aim was impeccable. Their phasers speared the Nuyyad vessel through its heart, causing it to tremble and writhe with plasma eruptions until it was claimed by a massive conflagration.

  For the second time that day, the second officer found himself the winning combatant. But he wasn’t done yet—not while the supply depot still lay ahead of them.

  “Resume course?” asked Idun.

  Picard nodded. “And give me a visual of the installation.”

  Instantly, an image of the depot leaped to the viewscreen. Up close, the thing was even more gigantic, even more daunting than before. It dwarfed its lone remaining defender.

  The second officer focused himself on the task ahead. He hadn’t forgotten that he chose this course over the objections of others. If it failed, he would have only himself to blame.

  That is, if he was still in a position to blame anyone at all.

  Abruptly, the last of the Nuyyad ships came after them. No doubt, its commanding officer knew the other vessels had failed miserably, and his was likely to do the same. But it didn’t stop him.

  “Phaser range,” said Vigo.

  Picard regarded the enemy. “Target and fire!”

  This time, the enemy veered at just the right moment and eluded the Stargazer’s first volley. But her second assault nailed the Nuyyad ship. Pierced to its core, it shivered violently and succumbed to a frenzy of yellow-white brilliance.

  That left only one target. The second officer considered its mighty sprawl of diamond-shaped plates on the viewscreen.

  It hadn’t fired a single shot. Maybe I was wrong about its firepower, Picard thought. Maybe it’s a sitting duck after all.

  “Aim for its center,” he decided. “Fire when ready, Lieutenant.”

  “Aye, sir,” said Vigo, his long, blue fingers skittering over the lower portion of his control panel.

  But the supply depot struck first.

  It sent out a stream of vidrion bundles that far surpassed anything the Nuyyad’s ships had thrown at them. Seizing the captain’s chair for support, the commander rode out one bone-jarring impact after the other.

  “Status?” he called out, as Idun did her best to make them a more difficult target.

  “Shields down twenty-six percent,” Gerda responded crisply. “No hull breaches, no casualties.”

  “Sir!” said Vigo, his voice taut with urgency.

  Picard turned to him. “Lieutenant?”

  The Pandrilite looked stricken. “Sir, phasers are off-line!”

  The second officer felt the blood rush from his face. Without the amplified phaser power Jomar had given them, they were all but toothless.

  And the depot still hung defiantly in space, ready to serve as the key to a Nuyyad invasion of the Federation . . .

  Chapter 19

  Another pale-green flight of vidrion packets blossomed on Picard’s viewscreen, seeking to bludgeon his ship out of space.

  Idun gave it the slip with a twisting pattern that tested the limits of the inertial dampers. However, she couldn’t keep it up indefinitely. The installation’s gunners were too accurate, their weapons too powerful.

  And there was no telling how many more enemy vessels were on their way, eager to finish what the depot’s vidrion cannons had started.

  To this point, Picard had relied on the talents of the Magnians and a Kelvan to get him past the rough spots. Now he was on his own. If he was going to prevail, he was going to have to rely on himself.

  But what could he do? The depot was significantly better armed than they were, better equipped . . .

  Then he remembered something one of his professors had taught him back at the Academy, when he and his classmates were studying shield theory. The larger and more complicated an object’s shape, the more difficult it is to protect effectively.

  The depot was very large, very complicated. Its armor had to have some chinks in it. All the second officer had to do was find them.

  “Mr. Vigo,” he said, approaching the weapons console, “analyze the installation’s shield structure. See if you can find a weak point.”

  He peered over the Pandrilite’s shoulder as he called up a sensor-driven picture of the enemy’s shields. Together, they pored over it, knowing that they might absorb a vidrion barrage at any moment.

  “Here,” said Vigo, pointing to a spot between two of the massive diamond shapes that encircled the depot. “There’s a lower graviton concentration at each of these junctures. If we can get close enough, we might be able to penetrate one with a few well-placed photon torpedoes.”

  Picard agreed. “We will get close enough,” he assured the weapons officer. Then he turned to Idun. “Aim for a juncture between two of the diamond shapes. We need to hit it with a torpedo barrage.”

  His helm officer did as she was instructed. Like a hawk stooping to take a field mouse, the Stargazer darted for the depot’s weak spot.

&nb
sp; The Nuyyad gunners must have seen them coming. But unlike a ship, the installation wasn’t mobile. It couldn’t evade their attack. All it could do was punish its enemy with all the firepower at its disposal.

  Picard felt the bridge shiver as the first volley rammed into them. The viewscreen went dead for a second, then flickered back to life.

  “Shields down forty-two percent,” Gerda called out.

  The second volley hit them even harder, rattling the second officer’s teeth. An unmanned console went up in sparks and filled the air with the acrid smell of smoke.

  “Shields down sixty-four percent,” the navigator barked.

  The third volley forced Picard to grab Vigo’s chairback or be knocked off his feet. As he recovered, he saw that a plasma conduit had sprung a leak.

  “Shields down ninety percent,” Gerda reported dutifully.

  They couldn’t take another blast like the last one, the second officer told himself. But then, maybe they wouldn’t have to.

  “Now, Mr. Vigo!” he shouted over the hiss of seething plasma.

  A string of golden photon torpedoes went hurtling toward the depot. Before the enemy could fire again, the torpedoes hit their target—and were rewarded with a titanic display of pyrotechnics.

  But did they pierce the Nuyyad’s shields? As Idun Asmund pulled them off their collision course, Picard peered at the weapons console and checked the depot’s status.

  For a moment, he couldn’t believe his eyes. Then Vigo said it out loud, giving his discovery the weight of reality.

  “We must have hit one of their primary shield generators, sir. They’re defenseless from one end to the other.”

  As defenseless as the Stargazer had been after its initial encounter with the Nuyyad. As defenseless as the Magnians had been when the second officer found them.

  Picard eyed the viewscreen, which was still tracking the enemy depot as Idun brought them about. The installation didn’t look any different to the human eye, but to their sensors it was naked and unprotected.

  He had a feeling the Nuyyad would remember this day. Certainly, he knew he would. “Target and fire,” he told his weapons officer.

  Vigo unleashed one torpedo assault after the other, pounding the installation in a half-dozen places. And everywhere the matter-antimatter packets landed, they blew something up.