Progenitor - Michael Jan Friedman [83]
Wu glanced at Gerda. “Give me a tractor lock.”
The navigator carried out the order. “Got it,” she said a few moments later.
The second officer frowned. This was it. If Jiterica had succeeded, they would know it soon enough. “Reverse engines and proceed at one-quarter-impulse. Let’s get them out of there.”
“Reversing engines,” Idun told her.
“Come on,” Wu breathed, staring at the screen as if that could make a difference. “Give us a hand.”
“I’m reading engine activity in the Belladonna,” Kastiigan announced from his science station. He looked up. “They appear to be operating at rated power.”
Wu nodded. Jiterica had done it. She had gotten the impulse drive ready in time. But would it be enough?
She felt a shudder in the deckplates. The Stargazer was straining to carry out her part of the bargain. But if the research ship was emerging from her trap, Wu couldn’t tell from the image on the viewscreen.
Needing to see what was going on, she got up and joined Kastiigan. “Progress?” she asked hopefully.
“None to speak of,” he said, intent on his monitors.
Wu bit her lip. The longer this went on, straining both their engines and the Belladonna’s, the less likely they were to pull the research ship out of there.
“All available power to the engines!” she snapped. “Shields, life support . . . everything but the tractor feed!”
The lights dimmed on the bridge and she felt another tremor run through the deck. Then she turned to Kastiigan’s monitors, which seemed brighter in the relative darkness, defying them to tell her that her order hadn’t helped.
In fact, it had. More of the research ship had crept out of the sinkhole. But she still wasn’t free. Wu needed to do more for her.
“We need more power,” she said out loud.
But there wasn’t any more power. They had already tapped all their vessel’s resources. Or had they?
They were still pumping incredible amounts of energy into their tractor beam—enough to maintain its integrity in this titanic tug-of-war across a hundred kilometers of graviton-riddled space.
They didn’t dare compromise the strength of the beam. But if they cut down its length, even by thirty kilometers, and shuttled that suddenly-available power to the engines . . .
“Take us in closer,” Wu told her helm officer. “Within seventy kilometers of the accretion bridge.”
Idun looked at her. “Aye, Commander.”
And she brought them in closer.
Of course, there was a problem with Wu’s idea—a flaw of which she was well aware. At some point, the sinkhole would begin to exert a pull on the Stargazer again as well. Then they would be trying to drag two ships at the same time—the scientists’ and their own.
Wu could only hope that flaw wouldn’t become a fatal one.
“Seventy kilometers,” Idun told her. She studied her instruments and frowned. “We’re being drawn in.”
Wu’s heart sank. “What about the Belladonna?” she asked Kastiigan, too discouraged to look for herself.
A pause. “She’s moving,” the science officer replied, a note of surprise in his voice. “Yes . . .she is definitely moving.”
But so was Wu’s ship—and in the wrong direction. If she allowed that go on much longer, the Belladonn a wouldn’t be the only victim of the rift. The Stargazer would be sucked in along with her.
The only prudent course of action was to deactivate the tractor beam and retreat while they still could. After all, Wu had the lives of her crew to consider. But she couldn’t do it. Not with all those scientists depending on them, clinging to the slender thread of hope only Wu and her officers could offer them.
And it wasn’t just the Belladonna’s crew she was thinking about. Jiterica had trusted her, risked her life at Wu’s request.
How could Wu fail to return the favor? Pull, she urged the Stargazer, intent on the yellow blip that represented the research ship on Kastiigan’s monitor.
Pull with everything you’ve got.
And as if her invocation had given the Belladonna the courage she needed, the vessel surged free of her prison, a flying thing too long denied