Enigma Ship - J. Steven York [36]
Roth was at the transporter console. Duffy slid in beside him. “We’re still not in transporter range.” He glanced at the sensor display, then did a double take. “There’s another ship registering out there.”
Omthon leaned closer to see. “Do you recognize it?”
“Oh yeah,” said Duffy, feeling another torpedo fire, “I recognize it. And I think Commander Gomez does too.”
* * *
“Torpedo away,” said Stevens. He watched the torpedo streak toward Enigma, heading straight for its heart. But the torpedo wasn’t designed to penetrate it, or even touch it.
It would explode just short of Enigma’s surface, and a carefully tuned magnetic plasma burst would shred Enigma’s holograms like confetti.
* * *
Duffy watched the screen anxiously. “The Roebling is trying to get multiple transporter locks on us, probably to beam the three of us troublemakers off the ship, but they can’t do it while our shields are up.”
“We’re almost to Starbase 12,” said Roth, his fingers flexing nervously over the console.
Omthon looked at Duffy. “They’ll have to drop shields to beam the Chinook people on board. We’ve got a problem.”
“What,” said Duffy sarcastically, “another one?”
* * *
P8 watched the sliding temperature scale on the wall console, her front leg hovering over the control. Just a little more. A little more. Now.
* * *
Soloman watched the torpedo sail past his module, and he did not hesitate to follow as it approached Enigma. Bynars did not have the excessive sensitivity to glare that humans had, so he had instructed the viewport not to polarize, as he would still be able to see everything.
Then it happened.
The torpedo exploded into an expanding ball of yellow plasma that struck Enigma. The force fields shimmered with arcs of energy, and the holograms began to flicker. At last, Enigma would be revealed.
“Good luck, my friends,” said Soloman, surprised at his words, especially given that there was nobody there to hear.
* * *
Stevens watched the tactical console in disbelief. “Captain, there’s a message coming from inside Enigma. It’s from Commander Gomez. It says—” His gut suddenly knotted, and misery crept into his voice. “It says, ‘Life or death, do not disrupt Enigma. Do not fire on Enigma.’”
* * *
“Something’s happening,” said Omthon, looking at the exterior view on a wall-mounted viewscreen. As he watched, the floating top that was Starbase 12 flickered, as did the Roebling flying close formation with them, the blue planet in the background, and the very sky itself.
“We’re too late,” said Roth, his face turning pale.
Duffy pushed him aside, scanning frantically for the combadges he knew would be there. For a moment, there were thousands, and then there were only three. “I’ve got a lock! Energizing!”
Three stunned Starfleet crewmen materialized on the transporter pad, but Duffy knew it wasn’t enough.
“Great Emerald gods,” said Omthon, staring at the screen, dumbstruck. “There must be millions of them, and they don’t have a chance.”
Chapter
11
Soloman’s eyes widened. Something was wrong.
As the holograms faded, there should have been a ship, a hull, but there was only space, and that space was not empty.
There was a vast cloud: unidentifiable pieces of machinery, most no bigger than his module. A few ships, most of them looking abandoned and derelict, some eroded as though by long corrosion.
But mostly there were bodies, beings, people flailing about, horrified as they found themselves dumped, unprotected, into space.
Soloman reacted instinctively. He saw a being near him, six-legged, pink-skinned, huge blue eyes that shined with both terror and intelligence.
He activated the thrusters, simultaneously extending a manipulator arm from the pod to grab the floating body. Two meters short, the pod stopped and rebounded.
He’d hit something. A force field.
Soloman accessed the module’s sensors and scanned the cloud. He read air, and several other exotic breathing mixtures, encased in millions of individual force-field bubbles.
Then he looked up again. He’d missed something the first time, because