Ship of the Line - Diane Carey [21]
Stunned, Andy Welch slumped back in his chair. “I got nothin’ …”
Bush glanced at the captain; then they both looked at the forward screen and watched the massive creamy shape freight-training down upon them.
“Brace for impact!” Bush shouted. “Everybody, brace for impact!”
He held his breath and wanted to go to his knees. Agonizing. Impending collision and no way to move, no guidance, no thrust—lie here and take death like officers.
The enormous oblong ship with something like lowlying nacelles and a sheen of dove-gray hull boomed at them, filling up the entire forward screen until he thought he was going mad with the size of it, close enough to touch. In this moment of final terror he actually reached out a hand, perhaps in defense, perhaps in relinquishment—he would never know.
He would be able to contemplate that, for at the last moment the big ship suddenly tipped upward on a wing and surged hard off, angling directly over the cutter’s topknot and scratching by on the grace of what must have been raw inches. Inches!
“Ahh—ouch!” Ed Perry gasped, apparently amazed that the cutter’s skin hadn’t been shorn off.
“Holy J!” Bush shouted, actually bending his knees as if to duck. “They got my back teeth clean with that pass!”
Mopping a cold sweat, Bateson wallowed back into his command chair, kneading the chair’s arm. “I can’t believe they missed us!”
“They decompressed their loading bay,” Mike Dennis reported breathlessly. “At the last second, they blew their whole bay, including several cargo containers.”
“Hope nobody was back there when they did,” Bush uttered, shivering visibly. “Look at the size of it! Gotta be seven hundred meters!”
“Even bigger than the Excelsior design.” Morgan Bateson remained seated, apparently gathering his wits, for several seconds. He stared and stared upward at the shadowy underside of the unknown giant.
“Mike, check out his emissions ratios,” Bush suggested. “John, analyze the structural materials.”
“Aye, sir,” Dennis and Wolfe said at the same time.
The captain was already into analysis mode. “Is that Starfleet design? At least in rudiments … but looks like its been puffed up and stretched out. Primary hull, conduit neck, lower hull, nacelles … can anybody read the I.D.?”
“Not from this angle,” Dennis said. “Sensors aren’t working well enough. But the emissions ratios check out as Starfleet standard matter/antimatter enrichment, with some modifications I don’t recognize.”
“I’m detecting some new materials,” Wolfe countered. “Reading some composites the computer doesn’t recognize.”
Bush leaned toward the forward screen, as if that would help. “Can it be a top-secret development?”
“It would have to be,” the captain said. “How did they know we were in trouble? The probe isn’t broadcasting yet.”
“Six more minutes,” Perry supplied.
Pivoting in his chair on the upper deck, Wizz Dayton said, “Captain, that ship’s hailing us.”
Arranging himself a little in his chair, Bateson made a facial shrug and said, “Answer it.”
Wizz worked his board, and through the clearing haze on the bridge the main screen shifted from a view of that big ship to a view of a huge, wide, bright room of some kind with lots of lounge chairs and people sitting in most of the chairs. In the middle of the room were three chairs and three people, one a woman.
Humans, at least.
The captain drew a slow breath, then did his thing. “This is Captain Morgan Bateson of the U.S.S. Bozeman. Can we render assistance?”
As he watched, Bush experienced a wash of relief when it in fact wasn’t Klingons who appeared on the screen with a ship more than twice as big. Kozara hadn’t somehow switched ships.
The screen now centered on a rather stately bald gentleman of medium build, wearing a black suit, standing at the center of the auditoriumlike room’s gold carpet. That gentleman was obviously the oldest of anyone there, and judging by his posture and position, he was also the most senior of rank.
“Captain Jean-Luc Picard of the Federation Starship Enterprise. We were just going to ask you the