Ghost Ship - Diane Carey [46]
He glanced once again at Captain Picard, and yes, it was there too. Awe. The captain didn’t seem afraid. More than anything, he looked a bit miffed at the entity for making him break his ship in two.
Or is it something else? Riker wondered. I know him so little.
Their trance was broken as Picard turned to Troi and bluntly asked, “Getting anything at all?”
The black curls of her hair made her face seem pale, the dark eyes set there like onyx chunks. “Nothing yet, sir.”
“Worf, any changes in its energy pattern?”
Worf’s guttural response carried a distinct impatience. “Only the same flux and shift it’s been doing all this time, sir.”
“Lieutenant Yar, you keep an eye on the locations of the saucer and that thing. I want to know if they’re about to run afoul of each other, and I want to know ahead of time.”
“Yes, sir,” she said, and instantly bent over her glossy board.
“On second thought, best we not wait. Mr. Riker, let’s make a noise in the darkness.”
Riker nodded, never mind that it was a silly gesture. His throat was dry and he didn’t want to speak up until he’d swallowed a few times. Then he tapped the command intercom and said, “Riker to engineering. Do we have warp power?”
Engineer MacDougal spoke up so quickly she might as well have been on the battle bridge with him. “Stardrive is still down, sir, but we should have it back on line soon. It was an electrical burnout and not a matter of power generation.”
“I’m not asking for warp drive yet,” Riker said, watching Picard to see if this was what the captain had in mind. “I just need a flush of power through the tubes. Say, ten percent. Enough to keep its attention off the saucer until they’re out of the area. Be ready to shut down immediately so we can hide again too.”
“I understand what you need, Mr. Riker, but warp power isn’t that easy to control. There has to be a grace period on either side of the flush.”
Riker glanced self-consciously at Picard, who was watching him, and acknowledged, “Whatever works. And whenever you’re ready. Riker out.”
Now they would make a noise. They would flip a coin in the dark warehouse and hope its tiny ring could be heard but not found.
Up from the bowels of the engineering section, deep within the core matter/antimatter reactors that made a starship what it was, came a surge of raw power. Even that tiny surge, that ten percent, could be felt.
Then there was a change on the screen. The crackling infrared diffraction image of their pursuer suddenly paused in its search across the bottom of the viewscreen, and made a deliberate turn in their direction.
“It’s coming after us,” Yar reported. She gripped the edge of her panel, refusing to look up at the screen. Instead she watched the two target points, starship and hostile, close toward one another. Her voice quavered. “Direct line.”
“Point-three-zero sublight, helm,” Riker said, gripping the headrest of LaForge’s chair, “heading, two-two-four mark one-five.”
“Aye, sir.”
“Faster, LaForge.”
“Aye, sir, executing.”
“Lieutenant, is it following?” the captain asked, not turning.
Yar nodded, even though he wasn’t watching her. “Aye, sir. It is.”
“Speed?”
“Point-four sublight.”
“All right … ” Picard didn’t sit down in the command chair despite his movement toward it. “Let’s cast the pearls and see if the swine follows. Lieutenant LaForge, increase to fifty percent sublight.”
“Point-five, aye.”
The beheaded stardrive section,