Broken Bow - Diane Carey [54]
The grapplers struck the Suliban ship and magnetically adhered to its hull. Archer gripped his chair, glad that metal was metal on any side of the galaxy.
“He’s ejecting!” Hoshi called, and pointed.
A cockpit hatch sprang open on the Suliban cell. The pilot was gone in a blast of vapor and disappeared through the layer below.
To land where? Archer winced. No surface ...
He hoped the Suliban had that covered, but there was no way to tell.
“Back up, Travis,” he ordered.
“Rising, sir.”
The ship moved back up toward the turbulent layers, now trailing its prey on a silken cord, drawing it closer and closer to the hangar bay.
Reed eyed his station and uttered, “Hello ... their ship is in the launch bay, sir.”
Archer nodded. Reed smiled. A new toy.
Fifteen minutes later, he and Mayweather and Tucker crowded around a table graphic in the situation room off the bridge. The table showed graphics of the cell ship, all different angles of the exterior, engine schematics, flight controls ... they tried to study these while the starship trembled and shook around them, battling the turbulence, but she was built to do that, like ships immemorial before her.
“All right, what’s this?” Mayweather was pointing at something.
“The pitch control,” Tucker said. He sounded confident about that one.
“No,” Mayweather argued. “That’s the pitch control. This is the guidance system.”
“Pitch control ... guidance system ... I got it.”
“The docking interface,” Mayweather went on. “How do you deploy it?”
Archer hunched over the graphics. “Looks like you release the inertial clamps here, here, and here, then initialize the coaxial ports.”
“Good. Where’s the auxiliary throttle?”
“Mmmm—” Tucker squinted. “It’s not this one ...”
Mayweather straightened up then. “With all due respect to Commander Tucker, I’m pretty sure I could fly this thing, sir.”
“I don’t doubt it,” Archer agreed. “But I need you here.”
“Captain?” T’Pol’s voice thrummed under a low-frequency boooom that suddenly grew louder and erupted in a hard bam.
They turned.
“That charge contained a proximity sweep,” she said from her post. “If we remain here, they’re going to locate us.”
Archer nodded and turned to Mayweather. “You’re gonna have to speed this up a little, Travis.”
“How complicated can it be?” Tucker howled. “Up, down, forward, reverse! We’ll figure it out.”
Booooom! Boooooom!
“Inverted depth charges, Captain!” T’Pol called.
She didn’t have to report the damage. Archer could feel it. He stepped out to her, and she met him in the middle of the bridge. “We’ll be back before you know it. Have Mayweather plot a course for Qo’noS.”
“There’s a Vulcan ship less than two days away,” T’Pol offered. “It’s illogical to attempt this alone.”
“I was beginning to think you understood why we have to do this alone.”
She paused. “You could both be killed.”
He looked up, rather sharply. “Am I sensing concern? Last time I checked, that was considered an emotion.”
As soon as he said it, he regretted his cocky accusation. She hadn’t deserved that. Now who was the one doing the deliberate hurting and insulting?
T’Pol’s expression turned blank again. “If anything happens to either of you, the Vulcan High Council will hold me responsible.”
Archer smiled at her, offering a little understanding. Then Reed approached with two silver equipment cases, and Archer’s attention went there. “You’re finished?”
Reed flipped the lid on one case to reveal a rectangular device. “It should reverse the polarity of any maglock within a hundred meters. Once you’ve set the sequence, you’ll have five seconds.”
Archer looked down at the device with appreciation.
“One more thing,” Reed added. He flipped open the second case and pulled out two Starfleet-colored hand weapons with pistol grips and handed them both to Archer.
“Ah—our new weapons?”
“They’re called ‘phase pistols,’ ” Reed introduced. “They have two settings.