Gulliver's Fugitives - Keith Sharee [82]
He heard the whine of the one-eye’s gun behind him. His legs stumbled as he tried to will himself down the corridor.
Shikibu’s expression didn’t change as the arrow flew from the bow. It was the perfect release. She had not actively decided to let the arrow go, nor had her gloved hand lost its grip. Rather, the shot had “fallen” at the moment when all conditions were perfect, when the interaction of string, bow, hand, eye, muscle, target, and universe made release necessary. The shot happened as spontaneously as a drop of water rolls off a leaf.
The tritanium arrow flew past Wesley with a tearing sound. It smashed into the precise middle of the one-eye’s lens, fracturing through the glass lens-elements, and deeper, through the microchips and wave generators. It stopped with its point protruding out of the metal back of the one-eye.
The one-eye halted and began to spin wildly on its axis like an insect in convulsions. It made pressure-hissing and metal-screeching sounds. Arcs of energy shot out randomly from its antennae.
Then abruptly it stopped and fell to the deck, dead.
The four humans stared at it, three still stunned from the effects of its partner, the fourth silent as she lowered her bow and then nocked another arrow on the string, ready if another intruder might arrive.
Wesley finally gathered enough of his wits to touch his communicator.
“Crusher to La Forge.”
“La Forge here.”
“Geordi, the machine works. We just destroyed a one-eye with it. Recommend that as soon as Ensign Taylor finishes assembling another, we keep the two together to work in tandem, one charging while the other fires.”
“Wesley, your voice is a little slurred. You okay?”
“Yeah… . Could you log that Shikibu just saved the lives of myself and two other crewpersons?”
“Noted—and your contribution as well, Wes. We’ll have another Cyclops-buster up there within five minutes. Hold your position until then, if you can. La Forge out.”
Wesley felt his body recovering.
He went over to Shikibu to say thanks, but her expression made him freeze up.
She looked at him almost as though she didn’t recognize him, as though she were seeing him for the first time. She studied his face curiously. Wesley felt awkward.
“Um … well anyway, thanks,” he said.
He cleared his throat and returned his attention to his machine. It was charged and ready to go.
He didn’t see the quiet little smile that appeared for a fleeting moment on Shikibu’s face.
Geordi was losing his battle with the disabled warp engines. He couldn’t get any more power out of them. The ship was already dropping, and the rate of drop was accelerating. Within a few minutes, the Enterprise would enter Rampart’s upper atmosphere, and Geordi would have to lower the ship’s shields to power it back out—in which case the Rampartian ships would blow the Enterprise into fragments.
Even now the hostile ships were following the Enterprise as it gathered speed in its fall, their weapons primed and ready to fire, with guidance systems locked onto key points along the Enterprise’s hull.
Geordi had several of his engineering crew working beside him, riding the mix with imperfectly repaired controls. But he needed someone with the touch delicate enough to make crucial repairs on certain equipment even while it was being operated. He knew of only one person who could do that.
“La Forge to Ensign Taylor.”
“Taylor here.”
“Is the other Cyclops-buster finished?”
“Finished just now, sir.”
“Could you come over here?”
Within a minute she was beside Geordi, her fingers repairing and adjusting the console while he rode the mix.
He saw she needed a hand with a data chip and he reached over to help. His sleeve brushed over an exposed relay and triggered a spark. The spark arced through the air to the sensor-pads on her fingers. She shouted and fell away from the console.
“Chops!”
Geordi called someone else over to ride the mix while he bent over her.
“I can’t see,” she said. She was crying. He’d never seen her cry.
“I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” he kept repeating. He cursed himself bitterly—it was his own fault,