Ishtar Rising (Book 2) - Michael A. Martin [13]
“Sir?” Shabalala said, dragging Gold harshly back into the here and now. “The Kwolek’s hull—”
Coming to a decision, Gold interrupted the tactical officer. “Steady. Extend our shields and structural integrity field to cover the Kwolek, and use our tractor beam to help them maintain their position relative to the shield nodes they’re feeding power into. And use the deflector dish to back the Kwolek up with as much power as they can safely take.”
“Aye, sir,” Shabalala said, and set about entering commands into the tactical station with impressive speed.
Let’s just hope we can hold the shuttle together long enough to finish up whatever Gomez and Soloman have started.
“Thank you, David,” Saadya said from the viewer, his image rolling and twisting before it broke up entirely. The atmospheric turbulence was obviously growing ever more intense. Not a good sign, Gold ruminated. This plan has got to work.
He suddenly realized that he had no concrete idea of what success would actually look like. After all, not only had no one ever attempted a project quite like Saadya’s, nobody had ever tried to force such a thing into an abrupt about-face right in the middle of the proceedings. Literally anything could happen now.
And my crew is still stuck out there, above it and below it.
The pressure, Soloman thought as he cradled his head between his long-fingered hands. His cranium felt as though it had tripled in size. The figures on his screen no longer held any meaning whatsoever. He was beginning to see double, and had begun to wonder if he was dying.
Ground Station Vesper shook again. The lights failed, to be replaced moments later by the dim red illumination of the emergency backups. Someone screamed during the momentary darkness. Soloman thought it was one of the Bynars, bereft of even the cold comfort of the computer system. Soloman’s own console appeared to be dead, even though the emergency power was functioning.
Soloman closed his eyes, desperately wishing for the ordeal to end, one way or another. The calculations were done, transmitted, and received, and there was no way to refine them further. Even if he could, he wasn’t certain how many of the atmospheric probes—the source of the preponderance of the climate and force-field data—were still functioning, given the high-altitude ionization being caused by the volcanic surges. The force-field network would either behave as he had asked it to behave, or else it would wander further into the unpredictable provinces of mathematical chaos.
And kill everyone on the planet, probably including the shuttle crew as well.
The pressure. The people up on the shuttle should have all the data they need. It’s up to them now to relieve the pressure.
Chapter
6
No pressure, Soloman, Stevens thought, recalling one of the last intelligible words he’d heard the little Bynar utter before the storm-tossed atmosphere cut off communication between the Kwolek and Ground Station Vesper.
He hoped he hadn’t misplaced his faith in Soloman’s ability to improvise. Maybe the Bynar’s facility with numbers was only an asset in situations that required one to go by the numbers.
This certainly wasn’t one of those instances.
The sound of rending, shearing metal jolted Stevens out of his reverie.
“I told you this vessel couldn’t stand up to this sort of punishment for long.”
“Shut up, Tev,” Gomez and Corsi said in a synchronized harmony that would have put a cadre of Borg drones to shame. Pattie’s tinkling laughter was barely audible over the roar of the wind.
“Excuse me?” the Tellarite said, a now-familiar dudgeon inflecting his voice.
There was a loud bang, as though something had struck the hull. An alarm Klaxon sounded, and the readouts on Stevens’s console suddenly changed. Numerous amber and orange warning lights suddenly shifted to a far friendlier green hue.
Stevens watched a grin spread slowly across Corsi’s features like a Venusian sunrise. “The da Vinci has just arrived. And they’re supplying all the power we’ll need to finish this.”
“How can you tell—” Stevens interrupted