Ghost Ship - Diane Carey [31]
Geordi instantly brought a hand up to shield his visor. “Chrrrrist-“
The fireworks blazed across their faces and ran amuck on their fears. It was a thing utterly alien, and struck panic in all their hearts-it looked like fire, like electricity. Like the face of hell itself.
Suddenly Troi came to life behind Riker and the captain, her horrified expression even more horrifying as the fulmination from the screen glared on her skin and in her eyes.
“Stay away from it! Don’t let it get near us!”
Picard was beside her as though appearing out of nothing. “Counselor?”
Her slim hands clamped on his arm like talons. “Captain! Do not let that thing come near us!”
“I can’t just-“
“Do not let it!” she repeated. “Captain, what am I doing on this ship if you do not take my counsel? If I’m wrong, I’ll resign my position! If I never do anything worthwhile in my life again, I’ll have done this! Captain, please!”
The purplish veins of light played ugly patterns between them, glowing as though to hammer out Troi’s words and the conviction in her eyes.
The captain held her by the arms and bored through her with eyes that were doing something other than questioning her veracity. At once he sucked in a breath and his voice gripped the bridge. “Raise shields! Go to red alert status.”
“Red alert!” Riker echoed instantly, flashing the words toward Tasha. “Speed and ETA?”
“Warp six now! Sixty-one seconds ETA!” She flinched under the prismatic light from the screen. Her blond hair sparkled orange, then amethyst, then blue, then a cruel white. Her arms moved among the fireworks, and the ship whooped into alert. Lights of their own flashed now throughout the starship, and all around the vessel, high-energy defensive shielding buzzed to life around the great hulls and nacelles.
Picard pressed Deanna Troi behind him, back toward the three lounges that were their command places in better moments, and shouldered his way into the glaze of lights. “Lieutenant Yar, fire phasers across its bow. Make our intentions absolutely clear. Warn that thing off”
Behind him he heard Troi whisper, “Weapons … no!”
But it was too late.
Without acknowledgment, Yar played her controls and before them long-range phasers lanced space, thin as needles, their power twisted into threads so slim that they could strike even at this distance and be felt like solid blades.
“Captain, it’s accelerating!” she shrieked then. “It’s put on a burst of speed-warp ten now … warp twelve! Warp fourteen-point-nine!”
“LaForge!”
The captain’s roar bombarded the bridge.
LaForge smeared his palms over the controls, jamming the starship into emergency warp. The change of speed was so abrupt that even sophisticated Starfleet equipment couldn’t compensate for the stomach-sucking effect.
The starship wheeled in space and bolted into a sudden warp five, but there was no warp fifteen in its vocabulary. Before the ship could maneuver more than one light-year’s distance, the thing was upon them.
St. Elmo’s fire blanketed the bridge as the new Enterprise was given the shakedown of the millennium. A billion tiny firecrackers erupted across the heavy-duty shielding. Electrokinetic jolts fanned through the ship, through every person’s body, through every bone and nerve, every circuit, every conduit, every skin hair, and crackled through every inch of stuff, living or mechanical.
Troi felt a short scream squeeze out of her as she crumpled against an enemy she somehow recognized. All around her, jagged voltage profaned the bridge with ugly blue fingers and left sparks wherever it touched. She saw her crewmates falling, writhing, fighting. She heard the whine of the ship’s gallant battle against this electrical storm, and knew the Enterprise, like her crew, was defying the attack.
The weight of a thousand minds crushed into her head and she forgot the ship, forgot everything but the pain of it. They were screaming at her, shrieking the reedy noises of zombies