Ship of the Line - Diane Carey [19]
“How we doing on time?”
“Nineteen minutes left, sir,” John Wolfe declared.
With an internal groan, Bush leaned forward a little on Welch’s chair back—nineteen endless minutes.
His stomach twisted. With guidance malfunctioning … what could make that happen? It had been working fine just before this encounter, so what could have gone wrong? Had something been shaken loose by one of the hits?
No, there was nothing in that system to shake loose. He was grasping at answers for his own comfort, and failing.
He looked over Welch’s head at Bateson. “Let’s go in.”
“I think so too,” Bateson said. “Tell me why you do.”
Shrugging one shoulder, Bush said, “If it disrupts us, maybe it’ll disrupt him too.”
Bateson gave a quick nod. “Let’s go in. Time for some naviguessing. Gabe, give it a try.”
“Alter course, one-one-four-zero, Andy.” Bush put his hand on Welch’s shuddering arm and was gratified when the shudder faded some and the helmsman leaned into his recalibrations. “You’ll have to do it manually and eyeball your course.”
“I … know.” Poor Welch.
“Full impulse,” Bush decided.
Was that right? Did the captain want to reserve any power? No—that wouldn’t work. Bush glanced at Bateson, but the captain was looking at the screen. Right, full speed. On any straight course, the Klingon ship could come up out of an arch and shoot right down its nose at them. Speed and a tighter arch would be all that could help the cutter now. The speed they had.
Without guidance working well, the arch was another matter.
“Hold on, everybody,” the captain said. “Mike, John, help the helm. Ed, crack on all the speed you can. Andy, pilot with the thrusters if you have to. Everybody else just hang on. Hang on.”
On the side screens, the Klingon ship with its greasy-green hull shone in the light of this system’s star, cast slightly yellowish as it passed out of the haze of the planet just left behind by the Bozeman. The warship dragged a tail of the haze along behind as it veered in an upward arch that couldn’t quite match the tightness of the cutter’s arch. The Klingon kept its disruptors griping angrily now that there was nothing between the two ships. Bush’s teeth were set on edge with every scratch and glance, but the enemy didn’t land a direct hit. Good thing, at this proximity, because one hit—
Bush gripped the helm chair harder. On the forward screen, those disruptor javelins shot by, leaving a cymbal-ring to jar the cutter’s shields and vibrate through the ship.
The “cloud” was hardly that at all. It barely registered on the eye, and only the enhancement on the helm screen allowed Bush to really understand they were heading toward more than a mirage. Something was there, all right—if only it held some kind of energy that might choke the Klingon’s weapons for a few more minutes, long enough for the hardshell to get far enough away. As for the Bozeman …
Suicide mission. Bateson had called it right.
Ruby’s funny face and chipmunk cheeks popped up in Bush’s mind. How teasing and quirkish she’d look in the bridal veil—poor girl, she’d wanted so much to be radiant. He had intended to tell her she was, and that someday they would have children just as radiant as she, cheeks and all.
Even if the cloud helped, there would only be a few more minutes. He damned himself for not coming up with ideas. He was dependable, but not creative, competent but uninspired. At moments like this, he wanted to go get a Vulcan for his captain.
“Entering the cloud,” John Wolfe reported, and tapped at his sparking console. “It’s some kind of localized distortion.”
There was no sensation of entering anything, no bump or swish, no jolt, not even much of a change on the main screen. Perhaps there was nothing here at all, and it was just a mirage or some kind of sensor wash. It wasn’t as if they could open a window and stick a hand out.
“We’re in,” Wolfe said. “It’s in flux … we’re losing power.”
Welch gulped, “Captain, I’m losing thrust! Speed’s reducing!”
On the upper deck, Perry shook his head. “Damn it! Pulse flow’s impeded. Must’ve been one of those