Gauntlet - Michael Jan Friedman [74]
A pause. “I’ll be right there,” the captain replied. And he no longer sounded the least bit fatigued.
Chapter Twenty-One
PICARD WAS A STEP AHEAD of Ben Zoma as they emerged from his ready room and crossed the bridge.
“How far?” he asked as he approached Gerda’s console.
“Slightly more than a million kilometers,” his navigator told him.
“Is it a ship?”
Gerda nodded. “I believe so, yes.”
Picard looked up at the viewscreen. All it showed him was a nest of blood-red gases.
Then he peered past his navigator at the screen on her console that had tipped her off. It showed him a black field with a green blip prominently displayed on it.
There was something there all right, Picard thought. Something that might be the White Wolf. And thanks to Valderrama’s radar, the Stargazer could track it down.
“Red alert,” he said.
“Raise shields and power weapons,” Ben Zoma added.
“Shields up, sir,” Vigo assured him from his weapons console. “Phasers and photon torpedoes ready.”
Of course, the torpedoes were a last resort. Picard still wanted to bring that cargo home intact—and the White Wolf as well, if he could.
“Bring us closer,” he told Idun.
She saw to it. “Aye, sir.”
His helm officer made the necessary adjustment in their heading. Nothing changed on the viewscreen, but Gerda’s monitors told the captain a different story. There, the object of their attentions was getting closer by the second.
“Four hundred thousand kilometers,” Gerda announced.
If it was the White Wolf, he didn’t seem to know he had company yet—and that meant Picard held a big advantage. He could get even closer before his prey knew it was being hunted.
Unless it’s a trap.
Picard’s mouth went dry at the unwelcome thought. Could that be it? Could his adversary be biding his time, every bit as aware of the Stargazer as the Stargazer was of him?
“Three hundred thousand kilometers, sir.”
Still no reaction from the White Wolf—if it was the White Wolf. The captain was beginning to harbor some doubts.
“Two hundred thousand,” Gerda reported.
“Fire when ready!” Picard barked.
“One hundred thousand . . .”
And their adversary woke up.
The White Wolf’s phaser salvo seemed to erupt from out of nowhere. It loomed rapidly on the main viewer, growing in volcanic splendor and magnitude until it blanched the entire screen.
“Evasive maneuvers!” Picard called out.
But it was too late.
The phaser attack bludgeoned the Stargazer with bone-rattling force, causing the deck to lurch beneath the captain’s feet. Grabbing the back of Gerda’s chair, he managed to stay upright, but only barely.
As Idun sent them twisting away from the enemy, Vigo launched a counterstrike. The Stargazer’s phased energy bolts vanished into the crimson haze, reaching for their unseen enemy.
“Missed!” Gerda hissed, consulting her radar in conjunction with a computer model of their phaser strike.
A second time, a ruby-red barrage loomed on their viewscreen. But this time, it swept past them without taking a toll. Obviously, Idun’s helm work was baffling the enemy’s weapons batteries.
Vigo unleashed another volley of his own. The captain tracked it on Gerda’s monitor, watching it stab across the screen at the green dot that represented the enemy ship. It was as true an attack as a phaser cannon could make.
But at the last possible moment, the White Wolf banked sharply and escaped unscathed.
At that point, the pirate might have turned tail and tried to shake them. But he didn’t do anything of the sort. He switched back and went for the Stargazer’s throat.
Picard glanced at Idun. She was accepting the enemy’s challenge, refusing to change their heading a single degree. But then, she had been raised by Klingons, and Klingons didn’t flinch when an adversary attacked them head-on.
As a collision became imminent, the captain wished his helm officer had been raised in a slightly less aggressive culture. And he wished so even more when the White Wolf’s vessel became visible on their viewscreen, no longer an abstraction but a fact.
And yet, for a fact it seemed remarkably ethereal