Lost Era 05_ Deny thy Father - Jeff Mariotte [102]
Will had been first out of the bay, but not by much. He thought he was coaxing every available ounce of speed from the shuttle, but somehow Paul found more and pulled ahead. Will had stayed close behind, though, as they neared Phoebe. Circling the moon and whipping back would require the most careful flying-she was large enough to have a faint gravitational pull, and the trick was to get in close enough to make a narrow turn without getting so close it bogged you down. Paul was, Will thought, going in closer than was necessary or wise. He’d been tempted to follow suit, but then had noticed his instrument panels reacting violently and had pulled back.
This is trouble, Will thought. Unless he misread his instruments, Paul was caught in an ion storm near the moon’s surface. That was when Will decided that he was not, in fact, having any fun at all. He tapped his combadge. “Paul! Are you all right?”
What he heard back was static, and then Paul’s voice, fragmented and breaking up. “… trouble… storm is making… can’t pull…”
Paul’s ship disappeared from his viewscreen then, though he could still follow its progress on his instrument panel. It seemed to be diving toward Phoebe’s surface. “Paul, get out of there!”
He heard only static in reply.
“Emergency, Starfleet Academy Flight Range,” Will called out, “this is shuttle-hell, I don’t know what shuttle I have. Do you read me?”
“We have you,” a voice answered. “Where’s the other one?”
“You need to make an emergency transport,” Will insisted. “He’s going down on Phoebe.”
“We can’t even see him, Cadet,” the voice reported. “We can’t get a lock. There seems to be some interference.”
“It’s an ion storm,” Will told the voice. “That’s why he’s lost control of his shuttle.”
“He lost control because he tried to fly a shuttle that was in for repairs into an ion storm,” the voice said. “We’ll send an emergency evac team out after him, but we can’t transport him off there with the storm going on.”
Damn it! Will thought. He’d known better than to let Paul egg him into this stupid game, and now it had all gone sour, as he’d somehow known it would. He made a quick decision and hoped it was the right one. “He’ll never live long enough on the surface for your team to get there,” Will said. “I’m going in to pick him up.”
“Negative, Cadet,” the voice instructed. “Don’t try that. Just wait for us.”
“Riker out,” Will said, and broke off communication. “Computer,” he said out loud, as much for his own benefit as for the computer’s, “we’re going in.”
“Inadvisable,” the computer argued. “Atmospheric conditions are too severe.”
“Nevertheless,” Will explained. “We’re doing it. Shields at full power.”
The computer is obviously smarter than I am, Will thought. It knew this was a fool’s errand. But it complied with his commands, and he started the pitched descent toward Phoebe’s icy surface. As the shuttle entered the ion storm, Will felt it buffeted about in spite of the presence of the shields, and he knew that without the shields he’d be a dead man for sure. Of course, it’s early yet, he thought.
But something happened as he piloted the small craft down, through the battering of the storm and the entry into Phoebe’s thin atmosphere. Where flying had been mechanical for Will, something at which he was skilled but which he had to think through, now, suddenly, he was doing it all almost unconsciously. His hands made the right moves across the control pad, manipulating the pitch and yaw of the ship as it dropped closer and closer to the surface, controlling the direction and speed, following the locator beacon that Paul had, at least, managed to deploy. He did it all smoothly and without hesitation, as if he’d been flying all his life, and even when he realized what he was doing he was able to keep doing it. Concern for Paul had taken the self-consciousness out of piloting the ship and the abilities that had become ingrained through hours and hours of practice and training had taken over.
Phoebe grew enormous in the viewscreen,