Lost Era 05_ Deny thy Father - Jeff Mariotte [103]
He tapped his combadge again. “Paul, can you hear me?”
There was no response. Maybe this was all moot, he knew. Still, he had to take the chance. “Paul, do you read me?” No answer.
That didn’t matter. He was closing fast and his best shot, maybe his only shot, was coming up. Leaving the ship’s control on autopilot for the moment, he turned to the transporter controls. Scanning for Paul, he was almost surprised when the transporter got a lock almost immediately. He was very near, then-otherwise the ion storm would have interfered. But he couldn’t transport Paul on board with the shields up, and lowering them during an ion storm, this close to the moon’s surface, was virtually suicidal.
It was also the only thing he could do. With Paul’s coordinates locked, he braced himself as best he could. “Shields down,” he said, following it with “Energize.”
As soon as the shields went down the shuttle was pounded by the storm, driving it into a downward spiral. Will fought for control, but the moon’s harsh surface spun sickeningly toward him. “Shields up,” he muttered, struggling to find voice with the g-force pulling at him. The deflector shields returned to full power, or as much as they had left to give after being bombarded by the storm, offering Will a modicum more control of the shuttle. But he was still dropping fast, spinning like a top.
So instead of trying to fight the spin, he decided to go with it. He turned into the spin, and pointed the nose down instead of attempting to pull up. For a moment, the surface was right there in front of him and he was certain he’d miscalculated. But in the next moment his maneuver paid off-he had turned completely away from the surface and was skimming above it upside down. His stomach lurched but he knew that he would live for at least a few more seconds. Now he pointed his nose down farther, except down was up. Once he was a safe distance off the surface he righted the shuttle. Getting out of Phoebe’s atmosphere and away from the storm was a relatively simple matter now. He blew out a sigh of relief, and then remembered why he had gone down there in the first place.
“That’s some nice flying,” Paul Rice said from behind him.
“Paul!”
“Now I suppose you’re going to expect me to slavishly devote my life to you or some such nonsense,” Paul said. He sat down in the chair next to Will’s, hardly looking the worse for his experience. “Well, you can forget about that.”
“I could beam you back down there,” Will warned with a smile.
“And miss your own medal ceremony?” Paul asked. “I can’t see it. Not you, Riker. Or should I say, golden boy?”
“Golden boy?” Will repeated. “We’ll both be lucky if we’re not expelled.”
“If I had died, you’d be expelled,” Paul ventured. “Since I didn’t, we’ll probably get by with a reprimand.”
“A reprimand? You broke their ship!”
“Wasn’t much of a ship,” Paul countered. “I think it was broken to begin with.”
“Well, yeah,” Will admitted. “It was. Good choice, Rice.”
“I was still winning, wasn’t I?” Paul asked. “Bum ship or no.”
“That’s true, you were ahead,” Will said. “I was going to pass you on the home stretch, though.”
Both cadets laughed then, and kept laughing most of the way back to the Flight Training Base.
“It was amazing, Will,” Felicia said when she saw him. She’d greeted him with a hug and a big kiss, which Will found pretty amazing in itself. “Ambassador Spock was brilliant, of course. And so nice!”
“You got to meet him?” Will asked her, full of envy. They were in her room, and she was beaming as if she had just now finished shaking the ambassador’s hand.
“Yes, at a reception afterward. He was warm and friendly