Double Helix 03_ Red Sector - Diane Carey [64]
“Closing,” the kid said. “Twenty meters… fifteen meters…” “Pass one” “Passing one!” “Hold two” “Two holding” “Capture one!”
“Forward starboard thruster one quarter and shift down port bow 10 degrees.” “Forward one quarter, port bow down ten, aye.” “Pass four, hold one.” “Passing four!” “Hold one, aye.” “Two and four, haul away.” “Haul away two!” “Haul away four!”
Music, music. the church chimes of efficient rafting. Thirty seconds to spare. Snuggling his CST up to a big, powerful, scarred, smoldering battleship in the middle of a flashing firefight-ahh The chunky hull of the CST didn’t fit well against the streamlined multihulled destroyer, so he had to pick and choose which umbilicals would line up best, then cast one and pivot in on it. What a gorgeous process.
“I love skirmishes” he effused happily. “That’s good! Cut thrust. Engine crew, stand by. Mr. Blake! Scan for stress” “Scanning, sir.”
As disruptor fire flashed on some of the smaller monitors, showing the ongoing space battle between another destroyer and those Romulan buzzsaws, Stiles nodded in satisfaction, even though Blake couldn’t see him. Greg Blake had known him since they were both fifteen years old. The “sir” was almost silly in that regard, but he knew his long-time crew threw it in for effect at moments like this. There were always impressionable midshipmen and junior officers serving on the CST, most of whom would move on ‘after the grueling training they would receive here.
On the screen to his left, the streamlined body of the Destroyer Lafayette drew close to the lurebering CST, in fact close enough to touch if that viewport had been a window they could open. He saw the gleaming hull plates and the buttonhead rivets as clearly as his own fingernails.
“What a great way to live,” he muttered. “She gets all the glory and the headaches, she has to guess what the enemy’s doing-and on top of that she has to protect us in the middle of a battle. This is the best damn duty around.”
“You could ask for a date,” Travis suggested. “I bet she’d go, the way she sounds when she talks to you. Maybe if you grow your beard back-“
“I’m not dating anybody who outranks me,” Stiles commented, aware of the glances from Midshipman Zelasko at the commstation and the two little ensigns over at the engineering board. “Bad enough having a cocky Canadian first officer around. And the beard itched.”
Outside, close enough to smell the gunpowder, seven other ships were engaged in a spark battle, a border skirmish with hotheaded Romulans. These eruptions had been going on for months now, sparks of aggression that seemed like temper tantrums from isolated Romulan units The empire kept claiming nothing was wrong, that these were just dissatisfied commanders venting their frustration, but Stiles didn’t believe it. Something was going on in the Romulan Empire that was causing rogue attacks. The Federation wanted to be prudent. Ignore acts of war. Avoid any one of these bursts turning into a lit fuse that couldn’t be put out by anything other than full-out conflict.
“Okay, Travis,” Stiles said when he was satisfied that the ships were as close as possible and the umbilicals were taut. “Go do that voodoo that you do so well.”
“Ten seconds and counting,” Travis responded, and hit a comm button. “Rivet team, hit open space. Signal when you’re on the davit boom.”
“Acknowledged,” one of the Bolt brothers responded. “Ready.” “Launching.” Travis hit his controls. The hiss of the airlock shot through the whole ship. There was no place on the CST to get away from that big sound as the lock depressurized and the repair crew sprayed out from the tender on a spider web of cables from the swinging davit, two men to a cable, a total of twelve men in spaceworthy snits, each fully armed with a trapeze harness and a tool vest. Their job wasn’t to fight the enemy-it was to fight the enemy’s results.
The interior of the CST fell oddly silent, giving way to the bleeps and whirs of shipboard mechanical redundancy, and a symphony of eyes swept the wall-wide grid of screens. Dozens of angles,