Pathways - Jeri Taylor [133]
In general, he treated the women on the Maquis ship as sexual objects, a behavior that effectively irritated them. With the men he adopted a confrontational attitude, which gained him no popularity but insured that no one could get close enough to hurt him.
But when it came to Chakotay, things were more complicated. Tom found that he wanted this captain’s approval, yet he hated that neediness in himself, hated the childlike stirrings it created, and so he constantly sabotaged the relationship. He was flip and disrespectful; smart-mouthed retorts slipped out before he could stop them. Chakotay responded in the beginning with patience and courtesy, but that only confused Tom, and he felt pushed to further disparagement.
Finally they fell into a strained, silent relationship, Tom being careful to do his job as best he could so as not to be banished completely, but unable to surmount the craggy barriers he had erected between them. Chakotay, for his part, seemed to ignore Tom, devoting himself instead to their primary purpose: deviling the Cardassians.
“Evasive action!”
Chakotay’s shout was accurate but unnecessary; Tom had already entered a pattern into the controls as soon as he’d spotted the Cardassian attack vessels leaving the orbit of Dorvan, one of the planets in the demilitarized zone. There were two of them, heavily armed, and they were a lot more maneuverable than the three-decade-old Antaresclass ship he was piloting. Chakotay had warned him that the Maquis had to get ships as they could, and up-to-date technology was a luxury they rarely had. That was fine by Tom, who was familiar with the Antares ships, and who could coax every bit of performance from them that they could deliver, and sometimes more.
Now was a time when he needed more, or his career with the Maquis would be short-lived. They, for that matter, would be short-lived, dying in a fiery explosion in the dangerous space of the demilitarized zone.
“They’re powering weapons!” This from Torres, who was on the bridge. The first barrage of shots from the fighters struck them squarely, in spite of Tom’s maneuvers. The impact was considerable, and knocked them around the small bridge.
“Shields at eighty-four percent,” shouted Torres, just before they took another volley, and Chakotay called out, “Returning fire!”
Their phaser volley hit a glancing blow to one of the fighters but missed the other entirely. Tom made an instant decision.
“I’m taking the controls off line. I can do this better if I do it manually.” He didn’t wait for Chakotay to respond, but quickly keyed the console and began to maneuver the ship without controls.
He was able to maneuver more deftly that way—at least, he was convinced he could—and he worked not only to evade the two ships but to give Chakotay good firing positions. “Firing,” yelled Chakotay, and sent off a volley that caught one of the Cardassian ships in its weapons system.
It exploded in a cascade of light and matter, and Tom had to handle the Liberty nimbly in order to avoid being hit by the debris. Without making a conscious decision, he maneuvered the ship directly toward the other enemy vessel.
Chakotay launched one of their precious photon torpedoes, which scored a direct hit on one of its warp nacelles.
Ship number two was reduced to flaming fragments, but not before they fired off a death rattle. The Liberty was jolted by a massive hit, Tom felt his eardrums vibrate painfully from percussive impact, and then, somehow, he was on the deck of the bridge as chaos erupted around him.
Tom picked himself up and struggled back to his post. Acrid smoke filled the compartment and stung his eyes and throat, and he heard the sizzle and pop of a console in its death throes. Through the haze he could see Chakotay moving toward a dark shape on the deck, bending over it in concern. Torres, he realized, and hoped she wasn’t badly injured. She’d already cheated death once, on a planetoid in the Badlands they had visited, and would need the lives of a cat if she stayed much longer with