Enigma - Michael Jan Friedman [37]
He went along without comment. As they walked, Shockey said, “Odzig wasn’t lying about the knife, you know. I really should have left him alone.”
“You think so?” asked Nikolas.
“Definitely. He’s not a bad sort. Under normal circumstances, he wouldn’t have flown off the handle that way. But this waiting, this constant peering out observation ports to see if a ship is bearing down on us…” Her jaw muscles worked. “It’s driving all of us out of our minds.”
It was a tense situation, no two ways about it. Nikolas had tried to put it from his mind, and succeeded for the most part. But it appeared to be taking its toll on his crewmates, even more so than he would have imagined.
Unfortunately, things weren’t going to change in the near term. The captain wasn’t going to turn the ship around. She had made that plain enough.
After all, they were in the heart of the danger zone. It wasn’t going to help them to come about. The fastest way to find safe harbor now was to hew to their original course.
And hope their luck held out.
Picard was in his quarters, pulling on his captain’s uniform after a fitful night’s sleep, when he heard his name called via the ship’s intercom system.
Looking up, he said, “What is it, Mister Paxton?”
“Sir,” said the com officer, “they’ve located the Gibraltar.”
Picard tamped down a surge of apprehension. “What sort of shape is she in?”
“Nearly all her systems have been compromised, sir. But there were no fatalities. All hands are alive.”
Just like the Antares. The captain breathed a sigh of relief.
“These aliens…” he remarked, “if they’re conquerors, they’re remarkably accommodating.”
“It seems that way,” agreed Paxton.
And now they knew even more about Federation starship technology, since they had had an opportunity to examine a few specimens firsthand. If the invaders had been formidable before, they might be even more so now.
But why did they need to attack three ships to serve their purposes, when all three were of the same class and design? Wouldn’t one vessel have satisfied them?
And why not destroy the ships of their enemy, as long as they had the chance? By refraining, the aliens had merely increased the odds against them.
It was baffling. And unless the Federation found a way to stand up to the aliens, it might never become less so.
“Any word on Ben Zoma and the others?” he asked Paxton.
“None, sir,” came the response.
Under the circumstances, Picard didn’t know if that was good news or bad. However, he continued to take solace in the knowledge that the Livingston hadn’t reached the Antares yet when the starship was attacked. That meant the shuttle might still be free….
At least for the time being.
Ernesta Rodriguez of the Starship Gibraltar felt a sharp pang of loss as she surveyed her bridge.
Everything was dark—the forward viewscreen, the helm and navigation consoles, the aft stations on either side of the turbolift. And she could have left it that way, with the shadows created by the wide beam of her palmlight only suggesting the damage that had been done there.
But she didn’t want to. It was important to her that she examine everything, that she absorb the sight of it and file it away for future use.
So Rodriguez narrowed her palmlight’s beam and traced a path, starting with the bulkhead to her left and working her way around, illuminating each section of the bridge in turn.
When she got to the helm console, she stopped for a moment. The enemy’s very first barrage had turned it into a fountain of flames and sparks, forcing the captain to switch to auxiliary helm control—and send her helm officer to sickbay with third-degree burns. Now the console was a slag heap, cold and twisted and useless.
Rodriguez stopped again when she got to the engineering station, which was set into the bulkhead aft of the navigation controls. There was a blotch of dried blood there where Cherry, her first officer, had careered headfirst into the metal-alloy surface.
And she hadn’t been able to get him to sickbay right away, because he got hurt while the enemy