Miracle Workers (SCE Books 5-8) - Keith R. A. DeCandido_. [et al.] [13]
“Commander Duffy!”
It was Lieutenant David McAllan. More so than the words themselves, the sound of alarm coming from the da Vinci’s typically reserved tactical officer caught the entire bridge crew off guard and made Duffy jerk his head in the direction of the tactical station.
“You need to see this,” McAllan said, his face not turning from his console viewer. As Duffy started in that direction, he was followed not only by Stevens but also by Domenica Corsi, whom Duffy knew was just waiting for any sign of trouble. Duffy hoped this would end up disappointing her.
Looking up from his console, the tactical officer’s face was pale as he said, “It’s the Tholians, Commander. Long-range sensors have just picked up six ships heading this way at maximum warp, and . . .”
“And what, Lieutenant?” Duffy looked down at the console’s tactical viewer, which depicted six solid blips, representations of Tholian ships, flying in a hexagonal configuration. Amid the configuration was something that Duffy had a hard time discerning from the viewer.
“Sensors read it as pure energy,” McAllan reported. “It’s fluctuating slightly in intensity, but keeping pace with the Tholian ships.”
Judging from the readings, Duffy saw that the energy output was intense, incorporating the power of a dozen photon torpedo explosions in a stable field or cloud. . . .
Or a web
. Stevens elbowed his way past Duffy to get a look for himself, tapping a few commands on the console’s smooth surface and pausing to read the streams of data now scrolling next to the tactical image. He laughed in spite of his assessment of it all.
“Now that’s pretty clever!” Stevens looked back up at Duffy, his smile evident but quickly fading. “Clever strictly from a tactical point of view, I mean. Sorry, Duff.”
Duffy decided not to dampen Stevens’s enthusiasm. It was just that kind of appreciation for the enemy that would motivate the tactical expert to calculate the appropriate defense against them. “Fabian, is that what I think it is?”
“It is, if you think it’s an energy field capable of frying the systems of several starships at once.” Stevens studied the tactical viewer once more and nodded. “Those ships are generating a net of power that’s a thousand meters in diameter, Duff. Think of it as a massive butterfly net, and guess who the butterfly is.”
Duffy weighed his options for the da Vinci: Hold the ship’s position and become ensnared in the Tholians’ deadly web, or retreat and lose their fix on the interspatial rift, as well as their away team, for good.
“How much time do we have, Fabian?”
Stevens’s expression was grave as he consulted his console one last time. “If they maintain their speed, the Tholians will be here in about an hour.”
CHAPTER
5
“Captain’s log: stardate 5683.9. My engineer and science officer have spent the past twelve hours examining the alien object recovered from the destroyed Klingon colony on Traelus II. They theorize that, when combined with other similar devices we found deployed at equidistant positions around the colony’s perimeter, it generated an energy field enshrouding the entire settlement. Residual energy traces recorded by the landing party indicate the field was lethal to any living being within its sphere of influence. Judging by the condition of the Klingon bodies we found, it wasn’t a particularly pleasant way to die, either.”
David Gold could almost feel his blood chill as he once again regarded the image of Thomas Blair, the late captain of the Defiant. Unlike the log entries they had reviewed earlier, the Blair in this excerpt didn’t possess the haunted, exhausted expression that would dominate his features in those later recordings.
Then again, Gold mused soberly, he didn’t know he was going to die at this point.
“Well,” he said, “this would certainly go a long way toward explaining why the Tholians were so upset