Pantheon - Michael Jan Friedman [132]
“We thought about that. I did. Jack did too—you could tell by the expression on his face, by the feverish look in his eyes. He was just as scared as I was. But he didn’t panic. He just kept at it, slicing away with his phaser rifle. Talking with the captain every now and then, putting on a show of confidence despite the emptiness he felt in his gut.
“Getting into the transfer tunnel was the worst part. The worst. We could imagine all the energy jumping around inside. Lightning in a bottle. And yet we were pouring on all that phaser fire—like lighting a giant fuse. It was crazy. We knew that, I was telling myself that, but we kept firing at the tunnel as if we were too stupid to accept it.
“Suddenly, we were in. We were in and we hadn’t blown up. Jack told the bridge and everyone was happy. I was happy too. I was giggling like a madman.” A muffled groan. “I think I lost it then. I used up all my nerve getting into the transfer tunnel. After that I had nothing left—nothing. I fired away, I did what I was supposed to, but it wasn’t me that was doing it. It was somebody else’s arms holding the rifle, somebody else’s eyes staring into that mess of tangled metal and circuitry and hellfire. And after a while, that someone didn’t have the brass to stick around.”
He raised his head, looked at her. If Crusher had thought his eyes were tortured before, she knew now that that had been nothing—compared to this.
“At one point Jack was grabbing my arm. He tried saying something to me, but our communicators were dead—silenced by all the energy running wild around us. And even if they’d been working, I don’t think I would have heard him. I was too rattled by then. Too intent on just getting out of there, getting back inside the ship. Getting safe. I let go of my rifle and started back for the hatch. And I screamed—I think—for him to do the same thing.
“He didn’t. He stayed out there, cutting at the assembly—trying to do it by himself. More than halfway to the hatch, I looked back and saw him.” Joseph’s brows came together into a twisted knot. “I’ll never forget it. There he was, blasting away like he couldn’t stop.” Pug’s eyes went wide. “And the energy leak from the nacelle was getting worse. It looked like something alive, something fierce—like the bloody Angel of Death or something. But he’d done some damage. It looked as if he was close to severing the nacelle entirely. Maybe with a little help from me, he would have.
“Suddenly, without warning, the energy leak began accelerating—growing like crazy. It was obvious that something was going to blow. But Jack didn’t budge. He kept firing his rifle, even though you couldn’t even see the phaser beam anymore for all the radiation pounding at him. He must have known how near he was to accomplishing his mission. And while he was trying to blast away the last of the assembly, I started moving again toward the hatch—even more out-of-my-head frantic than before. As fast as I was going, I should have gotten tangled up in my grapples. Somehow, I didn’t.”
Joseph bent his head again, ran his fingers through his closely cropped hair. “Then I saw the captain coming from the other direction, and I realized what I’d done. And I knew what the others would say about me—how I chickened out, how I lost my nerve. I couldn’t stand the thought of that, I couldn’t. So I just went limp, just pretended I was unconscious. It was all I could think of.
“I didn’t expect him to drag me back. I thought he’d go after Jack—after his friend. But I was closer, I was a sure thing. A part of me wanted to tell him I didn’t need his help, that he should have gone after the other guy to talk some sense into him. But then he would have known I was a coward, and he would have told everyone else. So I stayed quiet.
“When the energy pocket exploded, we were sheltered from the impact. All I saw of the blast was the radiation from it, and then the nacelle, or what was left of it, spiraling off into space. And I knew Jack was gone.