Gauntlet - Michael Jan Friedman [76]
Which was more than the captain imagined could be said of their adversary. Of course, without traditional sensor readings, he had no way of knowing how badly he had damaged the White Wolf. But there was a way to find out.
“Go after him!” Picard commanded Idun. Then, as the helm officer’s fingers flew over her controls, the captain glanced at Vigo and added, “Ready phasers!”
The gas clouds slid sideways on the viewscreen as the Stargazer came about and offered pursuit. Turning to Gerda’s monitor, Picard saw the green blip in full flight.
“Range?” he asked.
“One hundred twenty-five thousand kilometers,” his navigator informed him.
Farther than they would normally have attempted weapons fire, even with their normal array of sensors in operation. However, the White Wolf wasn’t bobbing and weaving at this point. His attempt at escape was straight and unswerving.
Picard gave the order. “Target and fire!”
A moment later, his forward phaser banks belched crimson fury. It pierced the softly tinted gas clouds ahead of them and was almost immediately lost to sight.
However, the phaser beams hadn’t ceased to exist. With luck, the White Wolf would soon find that out.
“Fire again!” the captain said.
As before, two seething beams of phased energy poured out of the Stargazer and buried themselves in the sea of gases. And as before, he could only imagine their effect.
But this time, Gerda gave him something more concrete than his imagination. “The enemy is slowing down,” she announced triumphantly. “Half impulse at best.”
Glancing at her monitor, Picard could see the gap between them and their prey diminishing precipitously. One hundred thousand kilometers. Eighty thousand. Sixty thousand.
“Match their speed and fire!” he said, his voice sounding stentorian in the narrow confines of the bridge.
Idun slowed them down, and the Stargazer’s phaser batteries poured destruction into the roiling clouds. As the captain watched them vanish, he was joined by Ben Zoma.
“How are we doing?” the first officer asked.
Picard kept his eyes on Gerda’s radar monitor. “Better than before, Number One. Much better.”
“So what made you think of that stop-and-fire tactic?”
What indeed? “I was thinking of Captain Ruhalter. We used to fence, as you know, and one of his favorite moves was something called a stop-thrust. It often began with a retreat.”
Ben Zoma seemed impressed. “I see.”
“We must have hit them again,” Gerda said. “They’ve slowed to a crawl, sir.”
Indeed, the behavior of the green blip bore out her observation. The pirate was hardly making any progress at all.
“Looks like he’s had it,” Ben Zoma remarked.
Something occurred to the captain. “Unless our friend the White Wolf is laying a trap for us.”
Ben Zoma looked at him. “Feigning disability to bring the Stargazer in closer, so he can let us have it with both barrels?”
Picard nodded. “Precisely.”
“Our regular sensors aren’t completely dead,” Ben Zoma reminded him. “If we get within fifty kilometers of the bastard, I’ll bet we can get a full scan of him.”
The captain considered the option. If the White Wolf attacked them with phasers at a range of fifty kilometers, it could leave the Stargazer a shambles. But they had a mission to complete, and they weren’t going to complete it by hanging back.
“Slow to one-eighth impulse,” he said.
“One-eighth impulse,” Idun confirmed.
Picard watched Gerda’s radar screen. The pirate ship’s behavior wasn’t changing one iota. She was still moving through gas-drenched space at a snail’s pace.
When they got within sixty kilometers, the captain called for thrusters only. At fifty-six kilometers, some of the traditional sensors began to kick in. By the time they reached fifty-two kilometers, they had enough information to know where they stood.
The White