Equinox - Diane Carey [69]
"They polarized their hull to mask their approach! I believe they've... -mbush... team .. .the -net!"
"Get him back!"
"I can't"
"Ransom to away team! Prepare to beam back to the ship!"
"They're not down there." Gilmore's voice cracked.
Ransom dropped into his chair, his face stiff with grim determination, and struck the alert controls. "All hands to battle stations!"
"I've got them, Rudy," Gilmore said. "Thirty thousand kilometers-closing fast. They're firing!"
The ship rocked hard. Ransom rushed to the helm himself to steady the course. For a moment he couldn't make himself key-in a new vector, sensing that he was leaving crewmen down on that planet. She had said they weren't there anymore, hadn't she?
"Direct hit," Gilmore reported. "Minor damage."
"Return fire."
"They targeted our power core."
"Maria, come down here! Take the controls. Get some crew up here."
She fired the ship's phasers from up there, then stumble d down toward the helm, but Max Burke erupted from the lift, shot to the upper deck, and took over the tactical and science stations for her. Gilmore dropped into the helm and keyed the weapons consoles from there.
"They can't find the shield grid generator, I'll bet," Burke said with great satisfaction. "They're trying to divert more power to their sensors." He glanced with a
tricky glinting smile at Ransom. "She won't be able to do it. We've damaged their deflectors. If they go down, the aliens can break through. That'll distract her."
Ransom nodded, but couldn't muster a smile. Which "she" was he talking about?
"They're targeting our weapons arrays," Gilmore reported.
"Hello again," Burke muttered to his console. "It's B'Elanna. She's trying to bypass our security protocols."
"Stop her," Ransom authorized.
"Max!" Torres' voice came directly through the workstation where Burke was standing. "Listen to me!"
"Back for round two, BLT?"
Ransom almost interfered, but decided to let Burke handle that woman. The captain had his own woman problems. One at a time.
"I wish you didn't have to be one of them," Burke told the engineer over there.
"Max! Please!"
His shoulders set tightly, Burke cut her off just as a buffeting jolt slammed the ship three degrees to starboard.
"Weapons are down!" Gilmore cried.
"Janeway to Ransom. Surrender your vessel"
Ignoring the call, Ransom scanned Gilmore's helm. "We still have thrusters, don't we?"
"Aye, sir!"
"Lay in a course through the planet's atmosphere. Sixty degrees vector!"
"That's close ..."
"We're a science ship. We can go closer than she can."
"Crossing into the ionosphere ... vector ninety... eighty... seventy ... vector sixty degrees-"
"Hold that vector. I want to scratch Voyager's belly with those trees."
"She's following us," Burke reported. "They're starting to tremble. I can actually see it. Rudy, they're firing!"
"Shields are heating up, sir," Gilmore warned. "Friction reaching tolerance levels."
"What about Voyager?" Ransom pulled out of his chair and used the navigation monitor to access what Burke was seeing. "Her shields are weakening. Thirty-one percent... twenty-nine ... hold course, Maria. We can take it. She can't. That starship was never built to get this close."
Burke yelped with victory. "Their inertial dampers just fell! She'll have to bear off now. Why isn't she bearing off? Is she crazy?"
"She hates me," Ransom commented. "That does terrible things to a person. Look at her... She thinks she's angry because I've broken the rules of behavior, but it's really her own fear she's fighting. But look at her. In her panic to remain civilized, she's becoming uncivilized herself." His face began to glaze with sweat as the temperature in the ship rose. He gazed into the monitor, at the sight of Voyager shuddering as the two ships streaked through the dangerous thermospheric breath of the planet. "It's