Ship of the Line - Diane Carey [18]
“He’s gaining, sir,” Dennis announced.
Bush fitted together what was happening and decided to leave things as they were. Dennis was keeping tabs on the Klingon, Wolfe was monitoring the science station, Perry was keeping the engineering patched together, Welch steered for all he was worth, down in the lower decks Ham Hamilton and Mitch Trumbull were being Perry’s hands, and Bush himself was firing back at the Klingon.
Firing. What a wish. Popping, more like. Spitting. Teasing. Against the shields of a full-sized warship, geared entirely for battle and absolutely nothing else, the cutter was only marking time, perhaps obscuring the Klingon’s view now and then with a shot, but not much else. And the cutter was taking hits despite Welch’s efforts to waggle around planets and between asteroids. This large solar system no longer seemed so large—not at these speeds.
Another spasm pierced the shields and came down through the innards of the ship like a rupturing blister. The crew was hit with waves of energy looking for a place to dissipate. For a handful of seconds Bush was riveted to his seat, frozen, unable to speak or do more than move one hand as the other hand sizzled against the weapons controls. Too far—too far from the starboard quarter weapons array firing button—he saw the red button blinking ready ready ready.
Just beyond his finger … just past his reach, and the jolt of the strike was still holding him down as if he were caught in a thunderbolt.
Ready ready ready ready ready—
The cutter veered hard under him. He felt the movement, and another second or two of the terrible seizure still kept him down. Then, abruptly, the ship tipped up on a wing so sharply that the artificial gravity slipped and Bush was thrown to the deck. On aching legs he scrambled up far enough to throw an arm over the weapons console and cram the heel of his hand into the red button.
The whine of phasers broke again from the aft hull, and judging from Mike Dennis’s whoop of victory, scored a hit on the Klingon.
Not a destructive hit, but enough to gain a critical second or two, perhaps to get out of the line of fire again.
“He’s pretty mad,” the captain grunted, coughing on a stream of smoke from the port side. “He didn’t expect us to be here. We wrecked his shining—”
The cutter jolted suddenly, and the captain and Bush both stumbled. Welch came an inch out of his seat. “Guidance is slipping!”
“What?” Bateson bolted toward him and was met at the helm by Bush.
“Why would it slip?” Bush asked—what a question!
The helmsman shook his sweaty head. “I don’t know, I don’t know! It’s internal, though, that’s for sure.”
On the upper deck, Ed Perry rotated like a planet. “That can’t be an accident!”
Bateson skewered him with a glare. “Can it be damage?”
“Maybe. But I wouldn’t bet on that.”
Straightening against the protests of his aching back and legs, Bush looked at the captain meaningfully. “End of the chase. He’ll chew us to scrap.”
“Look for a hiding place, Andy,” Bateson ordered. “We can’t keep this up. What’s around?”
Before them, the forward screen shuddered and swung as if it were hanging free, but that was only the movement of the ship around them, and all who remained on their feet were only doing so by hanging on hard to the consoles.
Andy Welch’s jaw was actually dripping sweat now. “All these planets, three asteroid belts, all too thin, and over there is some kind of … cloud. Doesn’t look like anything that would hide us.”
“Cloud? Let’s see it. Mag it.”
“Full mag,” Dennis called from beneath a terrible crackle as something burned over his head.
On the screen, through waves of acrid smoke and dust, a planet’s edge dissolved and was replaced by a hazy globular mass that didn’t look like anything but heat distortion. In fact, they could see another planet right through it. The smoke and dust inside the bridge here were far thicker.
“Is it energy?” Bateson asked. “Is that a nebula?”
“I don’t think it’s a nebula,” Dennis responded. “Some kind of energy. I’m getting some funny