Section 31_ Rogue - Andy Mangels [8]
Blaylock was unsurprised to see the ominous, double-bladed shape of a Romulan warbird rippling into existence on the viewer. I hate being right all the time, she thought mirthlessly.
The Slayton had to be well within the range of the decloaking warship’s weapons. The Romulan vessel was more than twice the Slayton’s size, and her disruptor ports glowed with menace. And the Slayton was dead in space.
But Blaylock told herself that the warbird’s captain wouldn’t harbor any hostile intent. With so little really known about the Geminus Gulf, why would the Romulans want to risk starting a war over it?
Then the warbird fired.
The Slayton lurched again, and the lights failed once more. Blaylock wondered how long it would take for the warp core to lose antimatter containment. And just what it was the Romulans knew about this place that she didn’t.
The bridge flared into cerulean brilliance a moment later, followed immediately by more blackness. This time, the dark was absolute and eternal.
The Archimedes continued its descent through Chiaros IV’s storm-tossed Dayside atmosphere. Zweller ignored the low conversational murmurs passing between the department heads and concentrated on his piloting chores. Though the inertial dampers succeeded in canceling out most of the turbulence, Zweller could still feel the deck shimmying slightly beneath his boots. And the structural integrity field was being taxed far more than usual.
Adjusting the viewer to compensate for the ball of white-hot plasma that now completely surrounded the shuttle’s hull, Zweller quietly admired the savage beauty of the landscape quickly scrolling by below. It was a place of immiscible contrasts, irresistible forces in perpetual stalemate. It was a place he could understand.
As the Archimedes entered the nightward terminator, Zweller reduced the craft’s velocity, lowering the hull temperature and making the plasma fires gutter out. He brought the shuttle down toward a range of cheerless brown mountains and arced into a northeasterly heading. In seconds, the craft cleared the peaks, and the relentlessly baked Dayside gave way to a fog-shrouded valley. Auroral flashes arced repeatedly across the sky, leaping the planet’s everlasting twilight belt, momentarily linking day with night. The vapor dispersed as the ground grew nearer and unveiled a quiltwork of hardscrabble farmland and narrow roads. Small settlements and isolated dwellings hove into view and just as quickly passed away. A great cityscape glittered in the haze, barely perceptible on the northern horizon. It appeared to fade toward a tumble of dry hills and barren escarpments that extended into the planet’s dark side as far as Zweller could see. Lights twinkled across the city’s remote nightward periphery.
“Looks like we’ve found the planet’s single worthwhile piece of real estate,” Gomp said with a porcine chortle.
Finishing a long countdown in his head, Zweller thought: It’s time.
An alarm light suddenly flashed on Zweller’s console, and a klaxon brayed a warning. The tactical display at Zweller’s left side came to life.
“What is it?” Roget said, sounding cautious, though not particularly alarmed.
“I think we’re about to have some company,” said Zweller.
“A Chiarosan honor guard?” Hearn ventured.
Zweller felt his jaw clenching involuntarily. “I… I don’t think so.”
“Shields up!” Roget shouted. “Red alert!”
Something struck the shuttle at that moment, making the hull reverberate like an enormous bell. The engineer and the doctor fell into a heap atop Liz Kurlan. Tim Tuohy, the head of planetary studies, helped Gomp get his hooves beneath him. Everyone scrambled back into their seats and activated the crash harnesses.
The shuttle rocked again, more violently than before, as though punched by a giant. His harness kept Zweller from being spilled from his seat. Though partly obscured by static, the tactical display showed a fast-approaching trio of small, aggressively contoured vessels. They appeared to be fighter craft