Pantheon - Michael Jan Friedman [218]
That left only one target. The second officer considered its mighty sprawl of diamond-shaped plates on the viewscreen.
It hadn’t fired a single shot. Maybe I was wrong about its firepower, Picard thought. Maybe it’s a sitting duck after all.
“Aim for its center,” he decided. “Fire when ready, Lieutenant.”
“Aye, sir,” said Vigo, his long, blue fingers skittering over the lower portion of his control panel.
But the supply depot struck first.
It sent out a stream of vidrion bundles that far surpassed anything the Nuyyad’s ships had thrown at them. Seizing the captain’s chair for support, the commander rode out one bone-jarring impact after the other.
“Status?” he called out, as Idun did her best to make them a more difficult target.
“Shields down twenty-six percent,” Gerda responded crisply. “No hull breaches, no casualties.”
“Sir!” said Vigo, his voice taut with urgency.
Picard turned to him. “Lieutenant?”
The Pandrilite looked stricken. “Sir, phasers are off-line!”
The second officer felt the blood rush from his face. Without the amplified phaser power Jomar had given them, they were all but toothless.
And the depot still hung defiantly in space, ready to serve as the key to a Nuyyad invasion of the Federation…
Nineteen
Another pale-green flight of vidrion packets blossomed on Picard’s viewscreen, seeking to bludgeon his ship out of space.
Idun gave it the slip with a twisting pattern that tested the limits of the inertial dampers. However, she couldn’t keep it up indefinitely. The installation’s gunners were too accurate, their weapons too powerful.
And there was no telling how many more enemy vessels were on their way, eager to finish what the depot’s vidrion cannons had started.
To this point, Picard had relied on the talents of the Magnians and a Kelvan to get him past the rough spots. Now he was on his own. If he was going to prevail, he was going to have to rely on himself.
But what could he do? The depot was significantly better armed than they were, better equipped…
Then he remembered something one of his professors had taught him back at the Academy, when he and his classmates were studying shield theory. The larger and more complicated an object’s shape, the more difficult it is to protect effectively.
The depot was very large, very complicated. Its armor had to have some chinks in it. All the second officer had to do was find them.
“Mr. Vigo,” he said, approaching the weapons console, “analyze the installation’s shield structure. See if you can find a weak point.”
He peered over the Pandrilite’s shoulder as he called up a sensor-driven picture of the enemy’s shields. Together, they pored over it, knowing that they might absorb a vidrion barrage at any moment.
“Here,” said Vigo, pointing to a spot between two of the massive diamond shapes that encircled the depot. “There’s a lower graviton concentration at each of these junctures. If we can get close enough, we might be able to penetrate one with a few well-placed photon torpedoes.”
Picard agreed. “We will get close enough,” he assured the weapons officer. Then he turned to Idun. “Aim for a juncture between two of the diamond shapes. We need to hit it with a torpedo barrage.”
His helm officer did as she was instructed. Like a hawk stooping to take a field mouse, the Stargazer darted for the depot’s weak spot.
The Nuyyad gunners must have seen them coming. But unlike a ship, the installation wasn’t mobile. It couldn’t evade their attack. All it could do was punish its enemy with all the firepower at its disposal.
Picard felt the bridge shiver as the first volley rammed into them. The viewscreen went dead for a second, then flickered back to life.
“Shields down forty-two percent,” Gerda called out.
The second volley hit them even harder, rattling the second officer’s teeth. An unmanned console went up in sparks and filled the air with the acrid smell of smoke.
“Shields down sixty-four percent,” the navigator barked.
The third volley