Ship of the Line - Diane Carey [83]
“I thought it’d be five years, not five minutes!” Shaking his head, Morgan Bateson drew a long breath and blew it out through pursed lips. “Boy … there are times when I really hate to be right.”
Chapter 18
“Are we still hidden?”
“Yes, the cloud is obscuring us for now.” Gaylon answered Zaidan’s question with reserve. He did not like speaking to his son.
The whole crew was nervous, knowing what a chronic failure Kozara had been. And now they were going up against the Federation’s newest, most powerful ship.
Zaidan eyed the controls Gaylon was working, and clearly understood nothing on the board. “What if he sees us?”
“He already knows we are here. He probably will be unable to take aim with this cloud around us.”
“When will we come out of the cloud?”
“At your father’s bidding.”
“What if the sabotage is a lie? What if they have compensations? Are their weapons bigger than ours? What if … what if our information is wrong? What if he can see through the cloud with his sensors?”
“Then we will be destroyed.” Gaylon pushed off his console and looked at Zaidan. “Now you begin to see how much can go wrong. We can be as ferocious and tough as we wish and it might change nothing. If fate turns against us, we will be destroyed.”
“Then why do you follow my father?”
“Because he is our commander. If there is failure, it will never come because we failed to follow or he failed to lead. His shame is ours. We are a crew with nothing to lose. Is that not why you also are here?”
Zaidan squared his shoulders defiantly. “I come here with you because I want this one chance to get out from under my father’s shame. I want a chance at honor.”
“Yes, I know.” Gaylon leaned forward and lowered his voice. He did not want Kozara to hear. “But we know something important which you have never learned, Klingon boy. ‘Honor’ may be ‘luck.’ What if yours is bad? How do you fault a man for that? Your father is no coward. As we go in to destroy the man who turned our luck sour, remember that. It was not Bateson who took away our honor. It was the Klingon way that only sees winning as a victory.”
“Scotty, we’ve got to have those shields!”
“Coming, sir. Got roughly fifty percent and building.”
“I’ll take it. Red alert.”
“Red alert, aye.”
With that order, everything changed. Systems that had lain idle now glowed to life. Emergency lights on the deck shone a soft pink, and would be red if the main lights were cut off.
Suddenly Andy Welch thrust to his feet at the helm and shouted, “Look!”
All eyes turned to the main screen. Out of the churning pot of nebula gasses and dust, the tip of a constructed mass appeared—a point. No Starfleet ship had a pointed bow.
Instantly the rest of the mystery solved itself. An olive-colored head burst out of the cloud, followed by a truncated neck, and battle-moded wings in a threatening arch.
There it was. A Klingon ship where a Starfleet ship was supposed to be. A Klingon ship on this side of the border.
“Andy,” Bateson said evenly, “sit down, take a deep breath, and come about and engage the enemy.”
“Captain!” Riker stepped into the command arena. “We have to withdraw and call for backup! He’s got something on us or he wouldn’t try this. Without some kind of edge, it would be crazy. He’s got to have an edge.”
“Kozara’s crazy. Most Klingons are.”
“No, he’s not, sir, or the Empire would never have given him a fighter and let him come here. That ship can’t catch us if we don’t want it to.”
“I’m not going to run. I set him up and he fell for it, and we’re going to take him down.”
Riker stared at him blankly for a moment. “So you were baiting the Klingons. This ‘powered down war game’ was a lure to pull them across the border.”
“That’s right, and they fell for it, and we’re not leaving without springing the trap. Data, put our strongest shields to him. Phasers ready … fire!”
The ship thrummed with power, but not enough power. A ship geared for war games couldn’t be brought up to full power in a matter of seconds.
On the screen, Kozara’s ship angled into the phaser streak and took the