Ship of the Line - Diane Carey [17]
“Attention, all hands,” Bush rasped through his smoke-raw throat. “Prepare to abandon ship. Now, boys, that’s not a command to abandon ship, but just prepare for it. Off watch, get the lifepods warmed up and running, check fuel and survival stocks. All hands, know which pod you’re assigned to. Stick close to your posts until further notice. Bridge out.” Swinging around to a technical ensign who was hurriedly closing the electrical trunk he’d been patching together, Bush snapped, “Ensign Nolan, take George Hill to a pod.”
“Aye, sir!” The ensign scrambled along the deck without really getting to his feet and scooped George Hill’s squashy “head” and tentacles into his arms. The eighty-pound decapus obligingly climbed onto the ensign’s shoulder, coiled around his arm, his neck, his elbow, and one thigh, and turned dusty gray to match the utility suit, even getting a white ring around its “head” to match the suit’s collar. Thus encumbered, the ensign stumbled for the turbolift.
“Gabe!”
“Sir?”
“I’ve got it!” Bateson slid out of his chair and prowled the helm. “I’ve got it. Andy, keep dodging. Gabe, listen to this. Mike, John, Eduardo, you too. I want to launch a hardshell probe into a sensor blind of some kind. A recorder marker at its highest sublight, but with a delayed broadcast timer of, say, half an hour. Once it’s a half hour away, it’ll send a distress beacon. We’ll have to send it without Kozara’s knowing, or he’ll chase it down and kill it. It has to be silent for thirty minutes. That means we have to stay alive that long and distract him from scanning the area.”
“And once it’s gone,” Bush picked up, “even if we’re destroyed, Starfleet’ll be warned and be able to protect Starbase 12.”
Snapping his fingers, Bateson crowed. “I like the way you think! Pack it with subspace broadcast on a delay. I want it to stay silent for half an hour, then scream its little ass off. Gabe, Andy, you keep us moving and distract Kozara for thirty minutes. That’s all I want, boys. If we live thirty minutes, I’ll die happy.”
Bush drew a breath, nodded, and mourned, “And I’ll die unmarried.”
Chapter 5
“Hardshell launched! God help us he doesn’t see it go.”
Gabriel Bush crossed his fingers, toes, most of his chest hair, and the tail of every fish he’d ever netted as he watched the tiny dot of the comm probe gloss off into space. Was the sensor blind wide enough? Had the cutter stayed on opposite sides of this big planet long enough, yet not so long that the Klingon could get here too soon? Would the probe be fast enough to get out of the solar system, and yet silent enough to remain undetected?
Hang on, Ruby, we’ll have that wedding day yet …
“Let’s veer out of the sensor blind and try to look innocent,” Captain Bateson said.
The sensor blind was small indeed, simply a funnel-shaped piece of space starting small and widening into the far reaches. Into that little wedge they’d launched their hardshell comm probe.
Now Andy Welch leaned into his controls and the cutter veered off, hoping the feint in another direction would distract the Klingon. Also, Bush was hoping that Kozara’s crew weren’t efficient enough to pay attention to outlying space while they had prey at their fingertips. Bateson had always said Klingons were like that, and now the cutter’s crew was betting on that assessment.
How far away was another Starfleet ship? The comm hardshell would go like mad for half an hour, then start screaming for help from anyone who could hear it.
“All we have to do now,” Captain Bateson said, “is distract Kozara for twenty-three more minutes. As long as we’re alive, he can’t move on even if he knows the probe went. After twenty-three minutes, if he kills us he still won’t have time to make it to the starbase before the Enterprise or somebody heads him off. You know how the merchant fleet is in these outskirts—they’ll move in and stand Kozara down themselves if they know to do it.