Ghost Ship - Diane Carey [90]
“It’s here, sir! Our grace period just ran out.”
It had, in spades. When Picard and Wesley spun from the lift and charged onto the bridge, it was no longer dark. Red alert lights bled from every wall, but the main lights hadn’t come up. The forward viewer wavered and crackled with the enhanced blue-red false-color image of the entity at its most awful. The port monitors, starboard, aft-every monitor showed this pulsing threat in a great broken circle of electrical light around the bridge.
The bridge crew stared at the monitors, swiveling from one to the other as though looking for a doorway that hadn’t been guarded, a single route that would provide escape from the prison, but they knew they were looking at the thing’s backup tactic, the one to be used when all else failed.
Picard paused in the upper ramp. “Is it in the machinery?”
Riker whirled past Troi on the lower deck and stepped toward him. “No, sir, it’s surrounding us. Contracting approximately twelve thousand miles per minute.”
“It hasn’t found us, then?”
“It’s using this new pattern to find us. It knows we’re here somewhere within a specific radius, and it’s surrounded the whole area, gas giant, asteroids, and all. It’s closing in on us. Obviously, it’s a lot bigger than we first perceived.”
“Size now?”
Worf straightened up at Picard’s right. “Roughly three-point-one AUs in diameter, sir, and contracting.”
“My God,” Picard snarled. He understood the picture now; they were inside a gigantic fist-and it was closing on them. “Worf, estimation. Can we fire on it?”
A terrible scowl came over Worf’s already fierce features. He hated his own answer as he said, “Not while it’s in this form, sir. It dissipates energy in direct proportion to its surface area. We couldn’t pump enough energy into it fast enough to overload it.”
Picard rounded on the tactical station and stood beside Tasha Yar. “Then we’re going to have to force it to compact again. Where’s that gas giant?”
Yar shook herself and bent over her console. “Bearing point-seven-nine mark three-four, sir.”
“Head toward it.”
Riker came aft on the lower deck and asked, “Your plan, sir?”
“We’re going to hide behind a tree, Mr. Riker,” the captain said, moving down the ramp with his hand tracing the shape of the bridge horseshoe. The strange light across the monitors cast a bloody purple glow on his face. “It won’t be able to absorb all the energy inside a level-ten gas giant a half million miles across. It’s going to have to decide to come around one way or the other. When it does, there’ll be a standoff.”
Riker turned immediately and said, “Geordi, point-five-zero sublight to the gas giant, tight orbit.”
“Point-five-zero, aye,” Geordi repeated, avoiding a glance at the Ops position, where Wesley had slipped into Data’s seat.
Picard kept his voice steady. “Prepare an emergency warning dispatch to Starfleet, single-pulse and high-warp. If we don’t make it, I want to be sure the Federation’s ready for this. Shields at maximum,” he added, holding a hand up to shade his eyes from the sizzling screens.
“Shields up,” Yar said shakily. “Maximum energy available for defensive-” She stopped, glaring at her readouts, and almost instantly had to gasp, “Sir, it’s moving in!”
“Keep tight to the gas giant. Tighter, LaForge!”
“Trying, sir … “
Across the Enterprise’s shields crashed the punishing force of the phenomenon. It knew where the starship was, but discovered it had found two things-a starship, and a massive planet that was virtually a ball of twisting energy. No matter how it contracted, no matter how it closed its fist, the planet confounded every effort to devour the starship. Every time the thing tried to contract upon its quarry, it was driven back by the energy put out by the gas giant. Spasms of electrical energy pounded the ship and flooded through the gas giant’s churning atmosphere. The ship defied the attack, shimmying with every pulse of energy that flogged the shields, draining them moment by moment.
“Outer skin heating up, Captain,” Yar reported. “We’re entering the atmosphere.