Section 31_ Rogue - Andy Mangels [57]
He paused for a moment to let his words sink in, then resumed his plea. “I understand why you aren’t taking a large security contingent along; there’s no room in the shuttle, especially if you hope to bring our people back. But there is room for an excellent pilot and navigator. You’re familiar with my record, sir. You know that I’m one of the best pilots serving on the Enterprise. So I think it’s in everyone’s best interest for you to have me come along.”
Picard sat in silence for a long moment, his eyes boring into Hawk’s. The lieutenant’s heart raced as he forced himself not to break the captain’s basilisk gaze. He hoped he hadn’t pushed him too hard.
Finally, Picard spoke, a slight smile tugging at the corners of his mouth. “We’ll be under way in twenty minutes or less, Mr. Hawk. I’d suggest you get your best driving gloves on. Dismissed.”
Hawk grinned, and rose to exit. “Thank you, sir.”
As he moved out onto the bridge, Hawk’s heart beat strongly in his chest. One way or another, he was now on a collision course with Zweller, Section 31, and possibly every secret the Geminus Gulf held.
He couldn’t be sure whether his racing circulation came from trepidation or exhilaration.
Probably both.
Chapter Eight
The shuttlecraft Kepler descended swiftly through the turbulent Dayside atmosphere, its passage creating plumes of superheated plasma that clutched at the hull like the fingers of some angry god. The cockpit rattled and jerked. Picard stole a backward glance at the admiral, who was sitting beside Crusher in the crew cabin. He could only imagine the hell she had endured, having first lost Tabor and then having discovered the ambassador’s possible malfeasance on Chiaros IV. He noticed then that her skin had taken on an almost greenish tinge; space-sickness, adding insult to injury.
“Will someone please explain again just why the Federation is so interested in this place?” Crusher said as she scanned the admiral with a medical tricorder.
Batanides smiled weakly. “I could tell you. But then I’d have to kill you.”
“Excuse me?” Crusher said, looking startled as she deactivated the tricorder.
“Sorry, Doctor. A very old intelligence operative’s joke.” The cabin shuddered again, and the motion appeared to intensify the admiral’s nausea. “I just had an even better idea, Doctor: Why don’t you kill me?”
Smiling, Crusher touched a hypospray to Batanides’s neck. “You’ll start feeling better in a minute or so, Admiral.”
Lieutenant Hawk occupied the control station to Picard’s right. “The plasma discharges are still affecting the inertial damping system, Captain,” he said.
“Continue compensating manually, Lieutenant.”
“Aye, sir.” Hawk’s fingers moved nimbly, almost too quickly for the eye to follow. Picard was reminded for a moment of Data’s ultrafast motions at the ops console.
“Ship’s status, Mr. Hawk?” Picard said.
Hawk continued manipulating the controls as he spoke: “As predicted, sir, our sensors are at less than half efficiency, thanks to these atmospheric effects. And even our enhanced subspace transmitter can’t make contact with anything as small as a combadge, if any of the survivors still have one. Shields won’t function at all in the lower atmospheric layers, but the phasers are operational. The transporter is on-line, but I wouldn’t recommend trying to exceed a two-kilometer radius with it.”
“Grand,” Picard said wryly. He was grimly aware that without shields, a single hostile phaser blast could finish them all in the space of a heartbeat. Fortunately, that problem cut both ways; most of the rebel compound would be accessible via the Kepler’s transporter, even if the base’s detention-area forcefields were to remain intact.
Though the sensor display was still obscured, the forward viewer showed the planet’s rapidly approaching terminator. Seconds later, a nightward mountain range rolled past and a shroud of darkness enveloped the little ship. To avoid detection, Hawk