Double Helix 03_ Red Sector - Diane Carey [88]
“Those are only five-minute charges,” Travis explained, with sudden fear in his eyes. “They’ll take out a mile and a half. You’ll never get away in time.”
“We’ll do something,” Stiles shabbily assured. “Let’s try it. Ready the transporter.”
“Are you nuts?” Jeremy grabbed at Stiles’s arm, keeping one hand on his controls. “Give me tune to analyze the reflector envelope! Maybe you can’t beam through it.” “How long before it pulls us down, did you say?”
His face sheeting to white, Jeremy shook his head. “All right, all right.”
Some inner checklist rang in Stiles’s head, and he turned to Spock, prepared to use all the resources he had at his disposal-and this was one dynamite resource. “Can we?”
Now that he’d been invited, Spock leaned to look at Jeremy’s science monitors that gave them the energy analysis of that beam. Even after several seconds of study and two significant frowns, Spock could only postulate, “Possibly.” Stiles’s leg muscles knotted. “Let’s try beaming through.”
On his other side, Jeremy protested, “Let me beam something solid out first.”
“You got thirty seconds. Somebody get me a jacket. I’m going myself.” “You are?” McCoy asked. “Damn! Another hotshot!”
The comm button was hot under Stiles’s finger. “Jason, bring me two of the shaped charges we use to blow off nacelles. Meet me in the transporter section.” He accepted and yanked on a jacket somebody handed him from the aft bridge locker. “I’ve got to find Zevon. Nobody else knows-“
“Neither do you know the way around the city;’ Spock pointed out. He stood squarely before Stiles. “You were a prisoner. But I do.” That’s what he needed-a super-shadow.
But he couldn’t think of any reason that didn’t make absolute sense. Pushy, pushy Vulcan…
“What about me?” Dr. McCoy made a rickety effort to stand up.
Stiles gaped at him, instantly in a bind. His mouth opened, closed again, opened what could he say? McCoy couldn’t possibly run or fight, but if he stayed here… and what about the others? Offer to beam a hundred-and-some-year-old man down to save his life and leave the entire young crew behind with their lives dangling?
McCoy’s ice-blue eyes sharpened. “Are you going to refuse one of the greatest explorers and pioneers in Starfleet history?”
Choking on what he hoped was damage smoke and not something else, Stiles uttered, “I… I… uh….”
“Eric,” Jeremy interrupted, “We’re slipping. They’re not pulling us down with our energy now, but it’s still pulling us with whatever energy it can muster itself. We’re slipping deeper into the atmosphere. Sixteen minutes till we hit the surface.”
Travis looked at him. “Can we turn so we don’t hit engines first?” “No chance.”
Spock stripped out of his ceremonial robe and dumped it on the deck. “We should go, Commander.”
But Stiles was still gawking at McCoy without ‘knowing what to say.
The aged physician leered back at him with singular determination.
Spock snapped up the front of his formal jacket-it turned out the big clunky Vulcan molded jewels also had a clasping mechanism-and simply preempted, “Doctor, please.”
Levering a finger at Stiles, McCoy huffed, “If you don’t come out of transport with your arms sticking out of your head and you find that Romulan, you bring me the whole package, not just a sample of his blood. I’ve got to have a constant warm, living source for several days to do what I need to do. I need him, got it? Not a sample. Him, himself” “Thank you” Spock said. “We shall do our utmost.” “You’d better”
And McCoy stepped aside, out of the way of everybody who was working to keep the CST in the atmosphere.
“Travis, come here.” Stiles grasped his friend’s arm and held it fiercely. “Backup plan three, got it!’ “Really?” “Yes, really. Got it?” “Got it.” ”Travis… don’t let my ship sink.”
Somehow Travis found a smile. “We’ll do what we have to, Eric.”
Stiles started to respond, but his words stuck in his throat. Travis assured