Текст книги "Sword of Damocles "

Автор книги: Geoffrey Thorne

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Текущая страница: 12 (всего у книги 19 страниц)

  Vale was thinking that maybe telling her about the battle with the watchdog ship wasn’t the best idea when it struck her that A’yujae’Tak should have already known about that. She should at least have known about the watchdog’s destruction. Why didn’t she? Why didn’t she already know about the shuttle crash and about her own people being obliterated along with Titan?

  “It’s complicated,” she said finally.

  “You have wave devices that we do not know,” said A’yujae’Tak, holding up the tricorder in one talon and the phasers in two of her others. “Weapons that do not kill.”

  “We are peaceful explorers,” said Vale. “We try our best not to kill anything if we can avoid it.”

  This seemed to please A’yujae’Tak. Vale wasn’t sure how she knew that, only that an air of approval seemed to radiate briefly from the alien and wash over her. Maybe it was something pheromonal.

  “What do you know of the Eye?” said A’yujae’Tak after a little. When Vale didn’t answer right away, she took another sharp nudge to the sternum.

  “Answer, creature,” said the soldier. “Do as told.”

  “Less than you, I think,” said Vale. They were in dangerous territory, she felt, wandering close to the religious construct that informed this whole society.

  She missed Troi’s presence even more acutely then. Vale was no diplomat, and this genial conversation could become lethal in seconds if she didn’t handle it exactly right.

  “We know so little,” said A’yujae’Tak almost wistfully. “We try to please Erykon, to let the Eye sleep, but so many times we have failed and it has [possible meaning: destroyed] us.”

  “You seem to be doing fine now,” said Vale.

  “Since the time of the [possible meaning: Oracle], yes,” said A’yujae’Tak. “We have grown and we have hidden ourselves. The Eye sleeps and all is well.”

  A’yujae’Tak sailed into a rambling account of Orishan history, describing how, at intervals, the Eye had opened, looked down on whatever the Orishans had built and, not liking the view, had destroyed it utterly. According to her the Eye had split the earth, burned the sky, and generally wreaked apocalyptic havoc on the poor Orishans below. After each apocalypse the survivors would rebuild, believing themselves to have learned from the recent punishment how to modify themselves to suit their god’s desire.

  Only, nothing worked. It sometimes took a hundred years, sometimes four or five, but, no matter what sort of society the Orishans created, when the Eye looked down upon it, that society was doomed.

  The cycle continued for millennia until-and this was fuzzy to Vale-some sort of supernatural presence appeared and spoke to one of A’yujae’Tak’s ancestors. This Oracle guided the birth of current Orishan society, giving them the concepts of castes-Dreamers who did the planning, Hunters who did the fighting, Weavers who did the building, and the Guardians whose job it was to protect the world and its people.

  When, after a century of guidance, their Oracle fell silent, it was the Guardians who had led the Orishan people underground, where they could continue to live and thrive without fear of displeasing the Eye.

  “The others go about their lives,” she said. “They breed and weave. They toil and build. But we must protect them.”

  “It seems you’ve done well with that too,” said Vale.

  “The [Oracle] has not spoken in many cycles, Commanderchristinevale,” said A’yujae’Tak. “So much time without word to say if we have pleased Erykon. We have done so much. We have come too far this time to have it all destroyed.”

  In that moment Vale thought she understood. These beings weren’t hostile or malevolent. They were terrified. Whatever the Eye really was, whatever the truth of her religious stories really was, one thing was clear. Something had happened to Orisha, over and over, to the point that the entire civilization was little more than a whipped dog, fearing even the hint of its master’s displeasure. Having been on the wrong side of terror more than once in her life, she knew very well the lengths to which someone might go to find peace of mind.

  They had been on their own, in a permanent state of fear for centuries, without even this Oracle of theirs to help them. They were smart, inventive, and increasingly skilled at hiding themselves from the thing they feared most.

  “We must protect Orisha,” said A’yujae’Tak. “We must never suffer that way again. Erykon must see this. You come from above. You were in the Shattered Place. Do you know Erykon’s will, Commanderchristinevale?”

  They were all staring at her. Every Orishan in the room, from the Mater down to the lowliest drone, had focused all their attention on Vale and whatever tiny hope she might give. They had lived with the fear of their imminent destruction for so long, so constantly, that it now permeated everything they did, everything they thought. What could she possibly tell them that could take that away?

  “I don’t know Erykon’s will,” she said. “I’m sorry.”

  “Do you know Erykon’s nature?” said A’yujae’Tak. “Is Erykon [possible meaning: God]? Or merely some [possible meaning: mundane] celestial phenomenon?”

  “I-” Easy, Chris, she told herself. These people are desperate and terrified. You don’t want to shake their paradigm more than you have to. “I can’t answer that.”

  Something like regret rippled through the entire company, and Vale was sure she had disappointed them all in some fundamental, even primal way.

  “All right, Commanderchristinevale,” said the Mater. “Then perhaps we can learn the true nature of Erykon together.”

  A’yujae’Tak made a clicking noise in her thorax, and several of the smaller Orishans began frantically inputting codes into their various stations. The great central viewing monitor rippled, losing the image it had been displaying of one of the other Spires in favor of, well, Vale wasn’t exactly sure what it was she was looking at.

  There was a sort of undulating rainbow effect rolling across the screen, peppered all over with tiny black dots that seemed fixed in their positions.

  It took her only a second to realize she was looking at deep space via means developed by these beings. The black dots were clearly stars and, she guessed, the rainbow effect must correspond to the weird energy patterns in this system.

  Presently the image shifted again and other shapes became visible, ones that Vale found distressingly familiar. The first was a massive swirling orb of chaos. Was that Erykon? She couldn’t get a sense of its size without a reference point when that reference point presented itself in the form of a heavy-class Starfleet shuttle dropping out of warp distressingly close to the thing.

  All the blood rushed out of her face when she realized what she was seeing, what had obviously happened. That’s us, she thought. Before we fired the probe.

  It occurred to her also that there had to be something up there watching all this and relaying the signal back to the Spire, and she realized that she was watching her own actions of two days ago from the point of view of the watchdog vessel.

   They weren’t watchdogs at all, she thought. They were exploring, just like us. Only their motivations were different.

  “There is a larger [possible meaning: intruder] corrupting the local waves out beyond the other of Erykon’s creations,” said the Mater, and Vale was sure she heard a bit of malice creeping into the tone. “Do you have [possible meaning: knowledge] of this thing?”

  There it was. She could admit knowledge of Titan, of the mission, of the shuttle’s attempt to land on Orisha and get them to stop their warp experiments. She could beg the Mater not to allow the events she knew had already occurred to progress as they had before, thereby creating a paradox that should save her friends. Or she could follow the rules, protect the temporal line and let them and probably herself, Troi, Keru, and Ra-Havreii die.

  This was where Will Riker had been only days before, and now she understood the horrible price noninterference could exact on any officer, much less a captain.

   Screw it, she thought. They can court-martial me when we get home.

  The information poured out of her so fast she was sure the translator in her badge could never keep pace. She told them, as quickly as she could, of the events that had led Titanhere, what Titanwas, who it represented, and how there really was no need for anyone to fire anything at anybody much less the warp cannon on the nose of the Orishan ship.

  “You are [possible meaning: brain injured],” said A’yujae’Tak once Vale was done.

  “No,” said Vale, suddenly desperate and struggling futilely against the grip of the soldier who now held her. The watchdog vessel had already fired on the shuttle once and missed. It was now gearing up for its second shot. “It’s the truth. If you just let them alone-”

  But it was already too late.

  Vale watched, fascinated in spite of herself, as the warp cannon fired. The space around the bolt rippled very much like the waves the Orishans described. At the last instant another ripple appeared around the shuttle-Jaza’s unstable warp bubble. The bolt hit the bubble and after sending more ripples out through the waves of multicolored energy, seemed at last to grow still.

  Vale was the only one who knew it was just a momentary breather before the storm, and sure enough, even as the Orishans were puzzling over how the shuttle had twice survived their greatest weapon, a small spark of light appeared in the center of the thing they called the Eye.

  Vale, knowing what to expect, saw it first, but soon, one by one, all the Orishans present took notice. They all watched in obvious horror as the spark grew to encompass the entire swirling orb and then erupted.

  “They have awoken Erykon,” said A’yujae’Tak, aghast. “The Eye is open! Deploy the Veil. Now! Before we are lost!”

  It took Vale a confused moment to realize “the veil” did not refer to her, but something else entirely. Whatever it was, they were clearly desperate to have it activate. Everywhere workers scurried to obey their Mater. Buttons were pressed, commands were entered by trembling talons. Machinery, in the walls, in the floor, and for meters above began to hum and vibrate. Suddenly some force, some kind of invisible energy, rolled through the chamber, rattling Vale’s teeth as it went into the walls and up, up, up to the apex of the Spire.

  There was a flash of incandescent white that, for a moment, obliterated all sight. When it was gone, so was the image on the giant viewer. There was nothing to see there but a solid field of white.

  “Something is wrong,” said A’yujae’Tak. “This did not happen bef-”

  Everyone present was suddenly slammed to the ground as the earth above and around the chamber did its best to rip itself to bits. The noise was thunderous, impossible. It lasted long enough that Vale actually thought this might be the planet shaking itself apart, but as quickly as the quake had begun, it vanished.

  She barely felt the claws of the soldiers hefting her back to her feet, barely noted the Mater ordering someone to give her a visual shot of the world outside.

  “The sky,” said A’yujae’Tak. “Let me see the sky!”

  There was another flurry of workers running to obey, and then, slowly, the field of solid white on the main viewer gave way to an image of the sky above the Spire.

  Vale knew it wasn’t possible, that what she saw there was only the visual display of massive cosmic forces banging against each other, but it looked like fire. It looked exactly as if the sky over Orisha was burning.

  Vale lay on the floor where they had dropped her, unmindful of the bruises and cuts she’d sustained on the way down from the control chamber.

  She couldn’t hate them or weep or feel anything really beyond the wide black chasm opening up inside her and sucking her down and down and down.

  This was twice now that Titanhad died in front of her, but unlike the first time, this last destruction had been her fault. She had been too thick or too clumsy or not enough something to make the Orishans see in time what they were about to do.

  They were all dead, again, and as soon as the quakes had subsided, the Mater had assured her that she and the rest of her companions would join them.

  “You will feed our larvae,” she had promised Vale.

   Yes, she thought. I’m sure we will.

  So she lay there, waiting for it, feeling the occasional rumble in the walls and listening to-

  Somebody was humming.

  “Hello, Commander,” said Xin Ra-Havreii from some dark corner of the little cell. “When you are ready to hear it, I believe I have some news.”

  He went on humming after that and she went on listening, this time without the critical ear she’d given him previously. None of that mattered now. His eccentricities were trivial things, as were most of the frictions that had plagued them before.

  The melody was actually quite pretty, she realized, as was his voice, which was not deep, but full and somehow sensual. She’d heard him humming it so often in the last few days but had been too irritated by the fact of it to ask him what it was. She did so now.

  “It is an aural schematic of a Luna-class starship, Commander,” he said. “ Titan, specifically. I’ve been deconstructing and reconstructing it for days.”

  She recalled how his people on Efros Delta had been required to develop a predominantly oral tradition as they weathered the rigors of their world’s ice age. An entirely oral means of storing data necessitated an entirely aural means of deciphering it.

  She laughed then, bitterly. All the time she’d thought he was becoming less and less sane, becoming more and more intractably eccentric, he had, in fact, been carrying the entire schematic of the starship Titanaround with him in the form of this tune.

  Her laughter became hysterical at that, wrenching out of her in long shuddering jags that could just have easily been sobs. When she was done she looked over at him, sitting on the floor with his legs folded just so.

  “So what’s your news?” she said.

  “I was confused at first,” he said. “When I examined the ship’s wreckage, there was so much missing, so much that was destroyed, that I could feel the ghosts of the Lunareaching out for me. This is not an exaggeration, Commander. I’m sure Counselor Troi has kept you somewhat abreast of my…situation.”

  “It’s come up,” said Vale.

  “And rightly so,” he said. “Though I doubt it will again.”

  “Probably not,” said Vale, thinking of the hungry larvae.

  “I have aural schematics of all of the Luna-class vessels committed to memory,” he said. “Though they all leave drydock essentially the same, very soon their music changes as they experience different events.”

  “All right,” she said, picturing the starships swimming through the void, singing to one another like whales.

  “I have them all in my mind,” he said. “And specifically I have the music of their warp cores committed to memory.”

  “The news, Ra-Havreii,” she said, happy to feel something as mundane as irritation with his wandering conversation.

  “I listened to the warp core at the crash site, Commander,” said the engineer. “And I can tell you that, beyond any doubt whatsoever, while that is certainly a crashed Luna-class Starfleet vessel spread over the ground out there, it is, just as unequivocally, not the Starship Titan.”

Part Two

   Then Soon Now Once

   Once Then Soon Now

   Now Once Then Soon

   Soon Now Once Then

  -Tholian Axiom, First Iteration

Chapter Nine

   There was a split second-just long enough for everyone who was watching to realize what was coming-and then the wave hit.

   Titanscreamed as the surge of energy washed over it and through it as well. Metal twisted, software spiraled chaotically, and every member of her crew scrambled to protect whatever they could from the onslaught, mostly to little avail.

  The effect went through them all like a wave, inspiring everything from nausea and disorientation in some to catatonic neural shutdown in more than a few.

  Every device or system that dealt with or utilized energy fields as a matter of course buckled or shut down or exploded.

  Engineers blanched as the warp core bubbled and seized, riffling though the color spectrum until the plasma inside was nearly translucent.

  Rossini barked orders at his subordinates, including for someone to heft the stricken Ensign Torvig up from where he’d fallen on the deck and get him to sickbay ASAP. As it had before, the pulse had hit Torvig as hard as it had any of Titan’s mechanical systems-perhaps harder, as his mind certainly knew what was happening to his body. Titan, at least, couldn’t feel pain or terror.

  As he tried not to focus on the frail body of his friend twitching and writhing on the floor, his cybernetic appendages flailing wildly, Rossini couldn’t help but think that Torvig’s condition mirrored that of Titan.

  All around him there was pandemonium as those few who hadn’t been slammed into bulkheads or pitched over high railings ran to get their machines back under their control.

   Ten people trying to do the work of forty, he thought. Good luck.

  He didn’t feel he was ready for this, despite having survived Titan’s other harrowing adventures, but with the chief engineer off-ship and Baars having been knocked unconscious when he’d fallen from one of the upper tiers, he didn’t have time to let his insecurities reign. It was him or no one. He’d always hoped his time as chief engineer would follow years of climbing up through the ranks, after which he’d get assigned to some small research vessel where he could learn by doing and not have to worry too much about being killed.

  His greatest fear had always been of being given too much responsibility before he was confident he could handle it, and now here he was, living the nightmare. Although he might not be living it long if Titan’s warp core kept behaving as it was.

  His eyes stayed focused on the core as he prayed for it to return to its normal blue-white oscillation. If it settled in the next few seconds, thirty at most, they might have a chance of not being killed. If it didn’t settle, well, best not to think too much about that.

  “Secure for manual core ejection,” he bellowed to the room. “On my mark!”

  Bodies leaped to do as they’d been ordered. With her still-working arm Kanenya waved down from the uppermost tier that she was set. Someone had grabbed up poor Torvig and was in the process of hauling him away when the Choblik’s rear appendage whipped out, latched onto the doorframe, and held fast.

  “No!” he said. “No, I can help. With the core.”

  “You’ve got twenty seconds,” said Rossini.

  “Tuvok!” shouted Will Riker, pulling himself back into the captain’s chair. Like everyone else on the bridge, he’d been hurled to the floor as the massive wave of energy hit. “Status!”

  Somehow the Vulcan managed to maintain poise even in this circumstance, though the message he related in his calm baritone was less than reassuring.

  “Shields are buckling and down to thirty-one percent,” he said. “Failure is imminent. Artificial gravity and basic life support have failed on decks eight and thirteen. Titan’s warp core is cycling toward inversion.”

  Riker heard the casualty reports flooding in from everywhere. Dr. Ree obviously had his work cut out for him. There were people with shattered extremities and cracked skulls; at least a couple of the telepaths were incoherent. None of the children had been hurt, thank God. Only scared out of their minds. Riker knew how they felt.

  “Computer,” he said. “Initiate warp core ejection protocol. Authorization: Riker-Beta-One-Zero-Two.”

   “Unable to comply. Ejection system offline,”said the computer. The ship lurched again, violently, and he had the horrible notion in his mind of Titanrolling end over end in the darkness until the core finally killed them all.

  “Captain,” said Lavena, struggling to keep not only her seat but also what little control she had of the helm. “I’m getting massive torque readings on the port nacelle strut.”

  “How bad?” he said.

  “Bad, sir,” she replied. “Too much more of this and it will definitely splinter.”

  “Bridge to engineering,” he said and was quickly answered by a very tense-sounding Ensign Rossini. “Where is Baars?”

   “Down, sir,”said Rossini. “Along with about twenty of the shift.”

   My God, he sounds young, thought Riker. And scared to death. “I need you to perform a manual core ejection, Ensign.”

   “Yes, sir,”said Rossini, obviously unhappy about it. “But there’s just one thing.”

  “Now, son,” said Riker. “No time for any alternate plans.”

  “ But, sir, I think,”came Rossini’s voice, a little stronger maybe, a bit more firm. “I think we fixed the problem.”

  Riker was about to ask the young engineer what the hell he was talking about when, all of a sudden, the lights stopped flickering, Lavena gasped as her helm control returned, and Riker could feel his stomach properly seated inside him, which signified that the artificial gravity was no longer a problem.

  “Well done, Ensign,” said Riker, sweeping his gaze around the bridge to take in the damage.

  It seemed minimal. Tuvok was at his station, hip-deep in incoming data. Lavena grumbled over her helm but in a way that seemed less frantic and doubtful than it had in the previous minutes. Bohn and Kesi were back at navigation and science, respectively, and while the ship continued to lurch in the throes of the alien energy storm, it did so with considerably less violence. They were all right for the moment. Titanwas all right.

  “Tuvok,” he said, dreading the response. He had felt Deanna’s flash of panicked warning just before the wave had exploded at them apparently from nowhere. He had felt the sudden and absolute absence of her presence in his mind. He had felt it like an icy spear ripping through him, and now he felt the ache of the wound. “What about the shuttle?”

  “Sensors are unreliable, sir,” said the Vulcan, clearly having difficulty. “I am attempting to recalibrate.”

  “Aili,” said the captain. He couldn’t think about them now. He couldn’t think about her. “What’s the status on the port strut?”

  “Nominal for now, sir,” she said, obvious relief in her voice. He could see the same expression on her face even through the distortion of the water in her drysuit. “But I don’t recommend any more shakes like that last one.”

  “No promises,” said Riker. “Good work, Rossini.”

  “ It wasn’t really me, sir,”he said. “It was Torvig.”

  At first sight, main engineering looked as it had for the last few days: battered and patched as if it was under perpetual repair, which, of course, it was.

  Access plates hung off the walls; cables and chipsets hung from the openings as if some impossibly gigantic octopus had been trapped behind the paneling.

  The engineers themselves looked only slightly better than their domain. The humans were bruised, bleary-eyed, and spotted with the lubricants that had belched free during the recent unpleasantness. Riker wasn’t sure what the normal state of some of the nonhumans was, but if drooping antennae and orange-ringed eyes were any indication, they had been pulled through the same wringer.

  Worse than the sight of the engineers, worse than the ongoing pitch and roll of the ship as it continued to be battered by the forces outside, was the vision of Ensign Torvig splayed out on the floor beneath the main control console mumbling to himself as if in a trance.

  Riker had always found the ensign to be more sturdy than his appearance might imply. The Choblik’s seeming delicacy had always been offset by the many cybernetic enhancements he bore. Now it was those very mechanical bits that drew attention to just how frail and helpless Torvig was without them.

  Data cables ran from the control console to exposed nodes on every one of Torvig’s cybernetic parts. Some were translucent, pulsing with light at intervals in time with the convulsions of the ensign’s body.

  “What is he doing?” asked the captain at last.

  “He’s talking to the computer, sir,” said Rossini.

  “Is he,” said Riker, stopping as another shudder ran through the ensign’s body. “Is he all right?”

  As if in response, all the overhead lights blinked once, briefly but distinctly.

  “That means ‘yes,’ sir,” said Rossini, looking a bit sheepish. “Until he’s done, that’s the only way he can respond.”

  It seemed, after Torvig had been laid low by the effects of the initial pulse, his backup processors had kicked into high gear, rewriting the codes that allowed his body to interface with its cybernetic parts.

  It had never occurred to the little engineer that those same codes could be used to help Titanreestablish communications between its own systems. It hadn’t until the second destructive wave had washed over them and sent him plummeting to the floor.

  “It is sound,” said Tuvok, looking up from his analysis of Torvig’s code modifications. “Ship’s systems are returning to normal.”

  “Shields?” asked Riker, happy to have even the smallest amount of good news. “Weapons?”

  Tuvok shook his head slowly. “No, sir,” he said. “The same local conditions are still in effect. However-I believe, after seeing Mr. Torvig’s solution, that there may be a way to modify the shields as well.”

  “But not the phasers?” Riker hated to harp on the same subject, but the phasers were more reliable than either form of torpedo. If there was martial trouble, they could swing outcomes in Titan’s favor.

  “No, sir,” said Tuvok. “That is currently beyond my abilities.”

  Riker quickly calculated the number of torpedoes, quantum and photon, in the ship’s armory. He then began bringing to the front of his mind all the battle scenarios involving phaserless combat between starships.

  Though it had been closer to the source of this destructive wave, there was no guarantee that the alien vessel that had been menacing the shuttle had not also survived.

  Another thought of the shuttle brought with it those of its fate, and of Deanna’s as well. They’d survived a lot together, enough for him to cling to the hope that they might yet come through this, but then he’d never been so completely severed from contact with her before. There had never been that yawning emptiness inside him that was shaped like her.

  “Sir,” said Tuvok. “Are you well?”

  “Fine,” said Riker, resuming his poker face. He doubted he fooled Tuvok’s telepathic sensibilities, but he didn’t have the luxury of showing the junior officers how deeply her loss affected him. He told Tuvok to take who he needed and get the shields up ASAP.

  “Yes, Captain,” said the Vulcan, and turned to go.

   “Incoming vessel,”said Kesi’s voice over the comm. “Captain and tactical officer to the bridge.”

  The alien ship had survived after all. The sensors still had a hard time keeping a fix on it, but now that it was close enough, they could use the midrange viewers to get a look.

  No one present was happy with the sight. Whether intentionally by its makers or simply as a result of an unfortunate esthetic, the vessel resembled, at least to Riker, some sort of bizarre mixture of a predator insect and the head of a trident.

  They had registered the thing discharging a massive amount of energy when it had first appeared, and everyone had assumed it to be a weapon. They couldn’t be sure, with the sensors malfunctioning, but the power of the device, whatever it was, dwarfed their own phasers.

  This in itself wouldn’t necessarily have given Riker much pause-he’d smacked down enemies possessed of superior weaponry before. But those had mostly been in stand-up fights where he or his allies had been in possession of the full range of offensive and defensive accessories.

  Now, with Titanwobbling in the marsh of bizarre energies, made even worse by the recent eruption, with her shields failing and her weapons mostly offline or untrustworthy, he knew this would be anything but a stand-up fight.

  “That seems unfair,” said Bohn, watching the alien ship glide easily and ominously toward them through the soup. “How are they getting away with that?”

  “I am endeavoring to ascertain the answer to that exact question,” said Tuvok.

  “Are those warp nacelles?” said Riker.

  “Something similar, sir,” said Tuvok. “Scanning is difficult with so much distortion, but it seems they are somehow compensating for local conditions with some sort of external field buffers.”

  “Can we do the same?” said Riker.

  “I think not,” said Tuvok, pensive. “Though there is a large margin of error, current scans indicate the approaching vessel to be out of phase with normal space.”

  Under normal circumstances this news would have soured Riker’s mood. Years before he had been indirectly associated with a former C.O.’s ambition to create a cloak that could make a ship into a virtual ghost, able to pass through matter and energy without damage. Such a vessel would be the perfect weapon, capable of horrible destruction and at the same time totally immune to counterattack.

  The results of Starfleet’s abortive work had been both disastrous and tragic, leaving several officers dead and those in charge of the project with years’ worth of guilt over their actions.

  All the Alpha Quadrant’s major powers had since tried to make the cloak work. Thus far none had succeeded, for which Riker was always grateful. He’d had a bellyful of war over the last decade, and the conflict ensuing from the successful development of the phased cloak was something he didn’t want to entertain.

  There was one upshot that, in spite of everything, brought a very slight smile to Captain Riker’s face.

  “Mr. Tuvok,” he said. “Arm the first volley of quantum torpedoes and have them ready to fire on my order.” Plasma weapons and energy beams might not be effective here, but Riker had yet to see any energetic system, phased or unphased, that a few well-placed torpedoes couldn’t disrupt.

  Maybe this fight, if it came to that, might be more stand-up than he had supposed. He hoped it would surprise the hell out of the aliens as well, should that be their intention.