Ship of the Line - Diane Carey [69]
“Ten seconds to impact,” Sulu said.
On the screen, the pink rolling nosegay began to thin in the middle, becoming like a ring of smoke puffed from the lips of a cigar aficionado. Picard noticed it instantly and muttered, “It’s losing integrity. Sacrificing for its own speed.”
“Captain,” Sulu called then, “dissipating, sir!”
The navigator hopefully agreed, “It must have a range limit!”
Sulu divided his attention between the screen and his readouts. “Five … four … three … two … one … impact!”
The deadly pink blob filled the screen, and suddenly the ship was rocked hard. Luckily, they were already full astern and the impact drove them farther along their own path, so that helped absorb some of the force. Had they been heading forward, into the cloud—
Kirk and the female yeoman standing with him were pitched starboard into the rail, but already Kirk was assessing what had just happened.
A tenor of victory rang in his voice. “Limited range …”
Glossy light from the dissipating energy lay harshly upon his face. Now he knew something concrete about his enemy. Picard smiled at Kirk’s quiet appreciation. Kirk had begun the process of gathering bits of information about his enemy for which he would later become so famous.
“How are you going to use that knowledge?” Picard asked.
“I don’t know yet.” Kirk pushed off the rail and moved back to his command chair. After a glance around at his crew to make sure everyone was all right, he settled into the seat. “But it’s a lesson. If the phasers hadn’t overloaded, we’d have detonated it before it hit us, but also before we could see that it had limited range. Even out of our bad luck I learned something.”
“Phasers operational, Captain.” Spock shut the access trunk, got to his feet, and clicked into his sensor readouts. He bent forward and gazed into a small desktop monitor hood. “Intruder bearing … one-eleven mark fourteen.”
As Kirk sat in his command chair, the soft red lights from the ceiling casting a deceptively warm glow upon his shoulders and his sandy hair. “Back to his old course.”
“He may think we’re destroyed, Captain.”
“I wouldn’t make that assumption. I don’t think their captain will either.”
“So something’s changed,” Picard noted. “You’re thinking differently about him than you were before.”
“I underestimated him. Then he outmaneuvered me by doing something I’d have done. I won’t make that mistake again.”
Picard leaned back on the ship’s rail and smiled warmly. “You know, I can’t get over how soft your voice is at times. That’s simply not the image of you that we generally have. Legend has given you rather a Lord Nelsonish bearing, as if you were that way at every moment. You’re rather a quiet fellow in reality, aren’t you?”
Kirk shrugged. “If you’re always speaking up, you can’t hear yourself think.”
Picard stepped aside as another science-division officer of command rank appeared from the turbolift and came down to the captain’s side.
“Medical report, Captain,” the man said. “Damage caused a radiation leak on two decks, both under control. Casualties are minimal, but there are some serious burns.”
“Thank you, Doctor.” Kirk was obviously distracted and didn’t seem to give that another thought. The matter was being taken care of.
Doctor McCoy, of course. Leonard McCoy. Picard nodded at himself. He’d even met Doctor McCoy once, many years later than this particular moment. How charming it was to see him and Kirk together like this!
Yet—there was some kind of tension between them, Picard realized. The way they looked at each other. Or rather, the way McCoy looked at Kirk and the way Kirk wouldn’t look back. Kirk’s eyes were fixed again on the forward screen. It seemed he was determined not to be surprised again, as if he could see something faster than the ship’s long-range sensors could.
The Romulan ship was once again cloaked, and now the enemy knew there was definitely another ship out here.
“We’ll enter the Neutral Zone in one minute, sir,” the navigator spoke up.
“Do we violate the treaty, Captain?