Текст книги "Well of Souls"

Автор книги: Ilsa J. Bick

Соавторы: Ilsa J. Bick
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Текущая страница: 27 (всего у книги 30 страниц)

“I read minor damage to the aft hull. Shields are holding. The shock waves from those disruptor blasts are going to be tricky for the captain in terms of maneuverability, but as long as her axial stabilizers are functional she ought to be able to dodge them. She appears to be on course directly for us. She’s fine, for the moment.”

“Dammit, how finecan you be with a Cardassian disruptor pointed down your throat?” said Castillo.

“Anything, Mr. Bulast?” asked Bat-Levi, judging Castillo’s question to be rhetorical.

“Nothing, Commander. She’s not hailing, so she must believe we’ve left the area. Castillo’s right. If the Cardassian can’t see us, then she can’t either. Even if she knew we were here, I can’t imagine that she’d alert the Cardassian to our presence.”

“Well, we’ve got to do something!”Castillo blurted. His face was getting pink. “That’s the captainout there! Look, she’s trying to make a run for the star. Well, we’re here.What, we’re just going to wait and congratulate her if she makes it? We can’t just stand around and do nothing!”

Kodell had come to the bridge as soon as Glemoor had sighted the Cardassian bearing down on the fourth planet. (Bat-Levi thought it curious for him to be on the bridge at all; Kodell could just as easily handle his duties down below. But she found his presence reassuring, and then wondered if that’s what he’d had in mind.) Now he turned from his station and favored the ensign with a cool glance. “I’m sure the commander doesn’t require youto remind herthat something needs to be done, Ensign.”

Bat-Levi held up a hand—her bad one, as it happened, but she wasn’t feeling self-conscious at the moment. “No, it’s all right,” she murmured, her eyes scanning the main viewer and watching how the space around the shuttlecraft and Vulcan shuttlepod erupted in fiery blossoms of ignited gas and plasma. “I’m just trying to figure out how many orders I want to disobey in one day.”

There was movement behind her left shoulder, and then she heard Kodell’s voice, low, pitched for her ears only: “But you doneed to do something.”

That made her mad, but she kept her voice down. “Thanks for the reminder. You know damn well I can’t fire on the Cardassian scout, without raising all kinds of hell. We’re in disputed space and we’re here because of a breach in Starfleet security, remember?”

“The captain’s turning!” Castillo sang. “Heading back toward the shuttlepod!”

“What?” Bat-Levi didn’t want to say it, but she thought that this bordered on suicidal.

“May I remind you,” Kodell continued, as if nothing had happened, “that if that Cardassian doessee us and lives to tell about it, the end result will be the same? All they have to do is report back to their Central Command, and we’ll still have an incident on our hands. There are, however, creative ways to bend the rules, without you having to fire one directshot.”

Kodell nodded toward the viewscreen, and Bat-Levi turned in time to see another piece of space around the shuttlecraft flare. “That’s a lot of plasma out there,” said Kodell. “A lot of very volatileplasma.”

Her anger evaporated. Bat-Levi looked from Kodell to the viewscreen and then to Kodell again.

“Oh,” she said, showing her teeth in a savage grin, “you are good.”

“He’ll blow,” Stern warned. “No way Halak’s going to last they keep firing at him like that.”

“He’s not the only one. Can you raise him?” Garrett spun the shuttle port and down thirty, but not soon enough. The shuttle lurched and bucked, and she heard Stern curse.

“Crap,” Stern rapped. Then: “No. We’re too far away. Too much damned interference.”

“Any closer, and we might as well charge admission,” said Garrett, trying to force the shuttle into a turn by dint of her will. She felt the vessel turn, turn, turn…then slam into a shock wave. Garrett gasped, felt her stomach bottom out as gravity failed for an instant then came back.

Those damn disruptors, they’re touching off plasma explosions left and right, shock waves from all sides…

Clearly, they were trying to stop her from making a run for the brown star. Succeeding, too. She understood the Cardassians’ strategy. If they couldn’t get her with a direct shot, they could ignite the space around her. Like having a whole bunch of phasers. No, better than that: mines. Garrett pushed a shock of hair out of her eyes and tried to think. Either her shields would fail, or the ship would simply buckle and break apart from the shock waves, all that radiation and charged particles slamming into their hull. She couldn’t fault the Cardassian on his tactics either. She’d have done the same thing herself if she had enough firepower.

She watched Halak’s shuttlepod flounder through space. Somehow, miraculously, the commander had managed to eke out some power from a maneuvering thruster and he’d avoided the Cardassian so far. Not for long, though: She watched the Cardassian scout peel off and bear down on Halak’s vessel. As the Cardassian ramped up his speed, she saw a brief pink flare erupt then disappear as the Cardassian’s vented plasma ignited a swirl of ionized gas.

Enough firepower. Garrett’s breath caught. My God, of course!

“Hang on!” Garrett slammed the shuttle into a reverse turn, pivoting the vessel on its long axis and bringing it around. She punched the shuttle to max acceleration, and the vessel leapt toward the Vulcan shuttlepod.

“What are you doing?”Stern shouted. Grabbing onto her console, she braced herself. “Are you trying to end this soonerrather than later?”

Garrett didn’t answer. She punched up Halak’s comchannel. “Commander!’

A wash of static, then: “Here.”

“Do you still have phasers?”

“Affirmative.”

“What about shields?”

“Twenty percent, max. But…”

“That will have to do. Listen. I want to try something. Two words: Kolvoord Starburst.”

An instant’s silence. “Captain, I don’t have the maneuverability. There’s no way I’ll be able to cross your flight path and ignite my plasma trail without ramming into…”

“You and I won’t have to get that close. Listen. It’s the same principle, but instead of us crossing each other’s flight paths, I want us to pull closer to the Cardassian and concentrate…” It took her five seconds to explain, and two for him to agree.

“My God.” Stern was shaking her head as Garrett dropped the ship at Z-minus-70 and brought the shuttle around. “You’re both certifiable. You are going to get us barbecued.”

“Not if I can barbecue them first.” Rushing toward the Cardassian scout, Garrett targeted the space behind the vessel. She brought her phasers on line, full power. “Shields at maximum. Commander, on my mark, in three, two, one, fire!”

Garrett’s phaser beams sizzled across space. The energy from Halak’s phaser joined hers. There was a split second where absolutely nothing happened—when Garrett watched the Cardassian plowing through plasma whorls and ionized gas toward Halak’s shuttlepod. Then there was a blinding flash, so bright and quick that the automatic polarizing filters didn’t have a chance to snap into place and Garrett winced, threw her hand up to shield her eyes. Then she watched as the space ignited behind the Cardassian, streaming up the Cardassian’s vented plasma trail the way fire licks along a stream of kerosene. The space behind and around the Cardassian exploded in a fireball, and the scout disappeared in an orange-yellow maelstrom of ionized gas and ignited plasma.

“Shock waves!” Stern cried.

A wall of ionizing radiation crashed against the shuttle like water barreling through a broken dam. Something shorted just behind Garrett’s head; she smelled ozone and scorched metal.

“Jase!” she shouted, battling for control of the ship. She watched, helplessly, as her port maneuvering thruster went out, and her starboard thruster flickered.

But her son was already out of his seat. “I got it!” he cried, grabbing for an extinguisher. Wrenching it free of the bulkhead, he thumbed the extinguisher on and opened up with a short burst once, twice. He staggered back as the shuttle rolled then canted on its short axis.

“I’m losing her, I’m losing her!” Garrett shouted. She tried slowing the ship’s spin, but she had no thruster control.

The hull began to vibrate, the consoles to rattle. “Shields and phasers off-line!” Stern reported, shouting above the din. “Rachel, your inertial dampers are failing.”

Garrett’s teeth gritted. “You need to tellme this?” she grunted, wrestling with the controls. “We’re going to break apart.”

Then she heard Stern gasp. “Oh, my Lord.”

Garrett looked up. “Oh, God,” she said, going numb with horror. “Oh, my God.”

There, like some phoenix arising from the ashes, was the Cardassian. The scout barreled though the firewall and, although Garrett thought it couldn’t possibly notbe damaged in some way—for God’s sake, that was the equivalent of several thousands of megatons going off—the Cardassian wasn’t hurt enough.

She felt Jase’s hand on her shoulder. Garrett slid her arm around her son and pulled him tight. “I’m sorry, son,” she said.

Jase’s face was pale but calm. “It’s okay, Mom.”

Garrett pulled Jase’s head down to her chest. “Don’t look, baby. Don’t look.”

The Cardassian filled space until that was all Garrett saw.

Dear God.Garrett uttered a silent prayer. Make it quick, make it…

In the next instant, there was a bright flash, and then space blew apart. And then the Cardassian was spinning out of control.

“Phasers, fire!”Bat-Levi shouted.

“Aye!” Glemoor’s voice was gleeful.

They watched as the Enterprise’s phasers lapped at the space around the Cardassian, setting off another plasma burst.

“Report!”

“Thatgot their attention!” Glemoor’s voice was taut with excitement. “Breaking off pursuit, coming around. Impulse engines only! I read that their axial stabilizers are down fifty percent.”

“Those impulse engines,” Kodell said from his station, “they’re fluctuating.”

“Damage?”

“Very likely.”

“Mr. Glemoor, are they still with us?”

“On our tail!”

“I like this better and better,” said Bat-Levi. She took the command chair. “Bulast, hail the captain—and try to raise the T’Pol.Mr. Castillo, bring us about. Head directly for the brown star.”

“Forit?” Castillo twisted his chair around. “Commander, with all due respect, don’t you want to lead them away…”

Bat-Levi silenced him with a look. “Full. Impulse. Now. Kodell, reinforce those aft shields, those Cardassians are likely…” She was interrupted as the ship vibrated. “Likely to fire,” she finished wryly. “Damage report, Mr. Glemoor.”

“Disruptor cannon fire. Aft shields at ninety percent. Minor hull damage, Decks 15 and 18.”

“Order evacuation of all personnel away from the outer hull areas. Kodell?”

“Already doing it,” said Kodell. “Reinforcing aft shields. The problem is, it goes both ways. We try to burn up space around them…”

“And they try to do the same to us,” Bat-Levi said. “Understood. Steal me power and buy me time, Kodell. Mr. Bulast, they getting off any distress calls?”

“Not that I read, but I’ve got the captain.”

Bat-Levi spared Kodell a quick glance. “On audio.”

Garrett’s voice sputtered through static. “Enterprise,just what the hell are you doing?”

“Disobeying orders, Captain.” Bat-Levi couldn’t help it; she grinned, insanely, and wondered what Tyvan would say about thatas a manifestation of her anxiety.

“You are notto engage the Cardassians! I repeat you are notto engage!”

Bat-Levi raised her voice. “I’m sorry, Captain, you’re breaking up. What’s your status?”

“They’re firing again!” Glemoor shouted.

“Evasive maneuvers! Hold your fire, Mr. Glemoor!”

The ship rattled and lurched. “Keep those stabilizers on-line!” Bat-Levi ordered.

“Switching to backup systems,” Kodell reported, “firming up.” Then he shook his head. “Stabilizers read nominal but those aft shields, they’re at eighty percent. It’s not the Cardassian himself; it’s what he can do with the plasma. Hull breach reported on Decks 23 and 24. Force fields up, damage control parties en route.”

Then Garrett’s voice came back. “I heard that.” There was a moment of dead silence, and Bat-Levi thought they really hadlost contact. She was about to order Bulast to get Garrett back when Garrett continued. “You get this, Commander, loud and clear. You are notto engage. Do you copy?”

Garrett’s tone was ominous, her meaning crystal clear. Bat-Levi swallowed. “Perfectly. And I promise: I won’t fire a shot at them. Now, please, what’s your status?”

Garrett rattled off her damage. “And my maneuvering thrusters are gone. Shields were too, but we’ve managed to coax fifteen percent. Life support’s fine, for all the good it does.”

Kodell spoke up. “Captain, if you shut down life support and get into your suits, you can steal power to reinforce your shields.”

“Will I need them?”

He and Bat-Levi exchanged glances. “I’d recommend it for the time being,” he said. “Can you relay to the commander?”

“Yes.” Another pause. “Bat-Levi, tell me you have a plan.”

“Yes, Captain, and…” Bat-Levi laid the plan out. She waited in an agony of suspense then, her lips dry, her heart racing. If the captain didn’t agree, Bat-Levi wouldn’t do it—even if the captain said great, fine, do it, but forget that near-warp transport stuff, are you crazy—because, quite simply, she wasn’t about to kill her captain.

After a few seconds that seemed like days, Garrett’s voice, tinged with static, came on. “Take care of my ship, Bat-Levi. Anything happens to her, I swear that when I get back aboard, I’ll bust you down so fast you’ll think you’ve been greased.”

Bat-Levi didn’t even have time to feel relief. “Aye. Enterpriseout. Mr. Bulast, any response from T’Pol?”

“Negative, Commander. She’s receiving, but she’s ignoring us.”

“Damn. Keep trying; we’ve got to get her to talk to us.” Bat-Levi spun the command chair back toward the helm. “Mr. Castillo, distance from Cardassian scout.”

“Seven thousand kilometers, and closing. Shall I accelerate?”

Bat-Levi breathed in deep. “Negative. Cut speed to one-half.”

Castillo’s back stiffened, but he complied without a word of protest. “One-half impulse, aye.”

Bat-Levi punched at the command companel. “Transporter room, reroute transporter control to the bridge.” She looked back at Kodell. “You can handle both ships? All three, if we raise T’Pol?”

“The captain and Halak do their job,” said Kodell, his hands flying over his controls, bringing the transporter on-line, “I’ll do mine. Like you said, I’m good.”

“Excellent.” She turned away as Kodell ordered a medical team to the transporter room. “Bulast?”

“Still nothing from T’Pol.”

Bat-Levi debated a half second. “It can’t be helped. We don’t have the time to waste. Mr. Kodell?”

“Vent tubes five, seven, and eight at maximal capacity.”

“Stand by to vent. All available power to the shields, Mr. Kodell, I don’t want them to so much as burp. Glemoor, arm photon torpedoes one and four. Proximity detonation.”

If the Naxeran had any reservations, he didn’t show them. His movements were quick, economical. “Photon torpedoes armed. Three-second delay.”

“Mr. Castillo, on my mark, bring the ship about, hard starboard, reverse course, and accelerate to warp two. Take us right down their throat, Mr. Castillo.”

She saw Glemoor nudge Castillo and wink. “Hold onto your hat,” Glemoor said.

“Uh-huh,” said Castillo, his tone clearly indicating that, perhaps, he ought to kiss his ass good-bye instead.

On the viewscreen, Bat-Levi saw the brown star loom closer and closer. The plasma streamers, the ones created by the tug of the neutron star, unfurled like the thick bodies of twin serpents.

“Almost,” she said, and her good hand gripped the arm of her command chair. She felt the hard edge of plastic polymers bite into her skin, but the pain was good.

“Cardassian’s closing,” said Glemoor. “Six thousand five hundred kilometers. Six-three.”

The ship bobbled, righted. “Passing into gravity well,” said Glemoor. “Cardassian right behind, four thousand nine hundred kilometers, taking the bait, pushing his speed up! Three-eight, two-nine…he’s close enough for a shot! One thousand kilometers!”

“Now!”Bat-Levi was on her feet. “Kodell, vent tubes five, seven, eight! Drop shields!”

“Venting! Dropping shields!”

“Bulast, signal the captain and Commander Halak! Glemoor, fire photon torpedoes, proximity detonation!”

“Torpedoes away!”

Bat-Levi’s teeth were bared. “Kodell, activate transporter! Mr. Castillo, hard starboard, go to warp two… now!”

“Aye, hard starboard!” Castillo reflexively grabbed onto his console. “Reversing course! Warp two!”

The space around the ship elongated then compressed upon itself as the warp bubble initialized. And then everything happened quickly and precisely the way Bat-Levi had imagined. The Enterprisehurtled starboard, its nascent warp field intensifying, expanding the gravity well of the brown star, and then the Enterprisewheeled about, shooting past the Cardassian and literally dragging gravity with it. The expanding wavefront slammed into the Cardassian; Bat-Levi watched the scout shimmy, stagger. And then, the coup de grace: The Enterprise’s photon torpedoes detonated. The plasma streamers whirling off the brown star ignited into a fury of red plasma flame that propagated forward and back. The brown star flared and bulged and began to break apart.

The Cardassian’s hull sheered, split—and then the Cardassian scout imploded.

“Yes!” Castillo cried, pumping his fists like a maniac. “Yes!”

It was the cue everyone on the bridge had been waiting for. The bridge erupted in relieved laughter, Bat-Levi’s included. Glemoor preened his frills over and over, and Castillo kept whooping, “Yes! Yes!”

But Kodell—Bat-Levi suddenly froze—he hadn’t said…the captain…

“Kodell,” Bat-Levi said, urgently, turning so quickly her servos squalled, and she almost lost her balance. “Kodell, report! Did we get them?”

“Commander.” Kodell was standing, hands clasped behind his back and quiet triumph written on his face. “Confirm transport, five individuals—alive and well.”

Oh, thank you, God.Bat-Levi felt weak and she backed up, groping blindly for the command chair, swiveling the chair so she could sit. With the smallest of sighs, Bat-Levi slid back, and her servos, for once, didn’t make a sound. She felt eyes on her, and she looked up—and into Kodell’s smiling face.

“Well done, Commander,” he said. “And all without firing a shot—more or less.”

Gaining. Talma had pushed the T’Polengines into the red but still the distance between her and the Cardassian scout was dwindling by the minute. Gaining—she ground her teeth together—the Cardassian was gaining!

Just ahead, she saw the great dense ball of the nebula cloud, its pink and purple colors more intense, the entire cloud more substantial now so close to the neutron star whirling at its heart, being fed by plasma streamers coursing from the brown star.

The Enterprisehailed again, but Talma ignored them. She’d listened to their twaddle: something about her dropping shields the instant they went to warp so they could beam her aboard. She’d cut off the transmission, finally. What, did they think she was that gullible? Probably blow her out of space the moment her shields were down.

Well, she’d take care of herself, thanks. Talma found every spare ounce of auxiliary power and re-routed to the engines. If I can just get inside that nebula, I’ll lose that Cardassian, and to hell with Garrett’s ship. She wouldn’t have a lot in the way of sensors and her tactical would be fried, but the trade-off would be worth it. The Cardassian would be blind; and then she’d hang there and bide her time.

T’Poledged past the outer fringes of the nebula; minute particles of dust and debris scoured her hull. The computer warned, in polite Vulcan, that the radiation level outside the ship would reach lethal levels in sixty minutes. Talma told it to shut the hell up then gave a more refined command, in Vulcan. She watched the random flashes of energy radiating through the nebula like the flow of neural energy through a network of nerves and dendrites. Almost there—her eyes fixed on the screen, as if willing the nebula closer would make it so– just a few more seconds, and I’m safe.

And because she’d told the computer to can it, and because her gaze was riveted upon her viewscreen, Talma didn’t see the other Cardassian scout disintegrate; she didn’t know that the Enterprisehad gone to warp; and she most definitely did not register the flow of ignited plasma rippling from the exploding brown star and propagating itself along the plasma streamers being pulled toward the neutron star until the nebula was a ball of plasma flame—and that was much too late.

All she could do then was scream, and even that was lost as T’Polflashed, vaporized, and was gone.

She would have taken some comfort in knowing that, a split second later, the Cardassian found that it was much too close indeed.

The wall of fire expanded. It tore through one planet. Then two. A few minutes later, the third planet shuddered and convulsed and died.

And on to the fourth.

His throat was so dry he could barely draw a breath. Chen-Mai’s broken wrist throbbed, and he’d tucked it into his suit. But every step jolted bone against bone, and once he’d fainted, fallen. Awakened to find that he’d gashed open his forehead so that he had to blink blood out of his eyes. Still he dragged himself through the maze of tunnels and blind alleys, going by feel, groping along the walls with his good hand. And then, because he was so frightened, he started running, fell, clawed his way to his feet as his wrist screamed in pain, and then fell again. This time, he couldn’t get to his feet, because the ground was moving.

What was happening? The ground was alive; Chen-Mai felt the rock jolt, ripple as if composed of something liquid, not solid. An earthquake. No—Chen-Mai tried to get his mind to work rationally– not possible, the planet was dead, it was dead, the planet was dead!

Something sharp bit his cheek. Chen-Mai flinched, turned his face toward the arched ceiling of the tunnel. He heard the sharp pop and ping of compressed rock splintering, and then a long, loud roar as the mountain began to tear itself apart.

High above, the shock waves from the neutron star coupled with those from the brown star, and rolled over the fourth planet. In a few seconds, the landscape was flattened, the mountains collapsing in, falling toward the planet’s dead core.

And, deep underground, the rock groaned, opened beneath Chen-Mai’s feet. Screaming, he tumbled into the abyss.

And on to the fifth planet.

And, finally, into empty space.