Ship of the Line - Diane Carey [87]
“And you’re its herald?” Bateson taunted. “I wouldn’t pick you to carry any flags. You’re too easy to beat.”
“Forget that, Bateson. I can no longer be shamed. I am doomed to dishonor. I accept that. My honor is nothing. I know now that not everyone gets honor. I have nothing to lose. My name is smashed. Only the name of Zaidan can be saved.”
Kozara stopped talking then, leaving the starship crew to stare at the screen, at the hovering Klingon fighter, and realize the complexity of their enemy’s motivations. Scary …
Riker looked at Bateson, but didn’t speak. The channel was still open. They would hear him if he said anything.
But Bateson didn’t look back at him. The captain instead was gazing at the ship out there. After several very long moments, he parted his lips.
“I’m sorry about your son, Kozara. I wouldn’t wish that on anyone. Your Klingon system of honor has destroyed him, not me or Starfleet. He shouldn’t be saddled with your failures. That’s not why I stood you down that day. But for my part in it, I am sorry it had to last so long for you. No one should—”
“Keep your pity. The time is past for that. I have changed in many ways. And so have you, in so much less time. And I thank you for one thing—you are so predictable now. In gratitude, I give you my gift for the sake of old times.”
“Morgan, he’s beaming something over!” Gabe Bush quickly said, staring into the science scopes.
Jumping up out of his chair, Bateson demanded, “Will the shields hold?”
“Not at this percentage, sir,” Data told him.
Bush gripped his controls. “It’s coming through!”
“Is it a boarding party? Guards, your sidearms.”
“Ready, sir!”
The three Security men came forward from their posts at the turbolift doors and stood with weapons at the ready in three positions on the upper deck. From here, they had clear shots at anyone on the bridge.
“Not a boarding party,” Bush gasped. “Not enough mass … I don’t know what—”
The whine of transporters cut him off. For critical seconds all they could do was stand and wait, and Riker instinctively backed up onto the upper deck and put his shoulder blades against one of the vertical pylons. If their readings were wrong and it was a boarding party, he wanted kicking room.
The squeal of the transport invaded the bridge and made the crew wince in anticipation. No one knew what to do, but everyone was poised to fight.
As Data stood up from his post and turned, a ringlike device materialized on the deck beside him, so unidentifiable that nobody did anything but stare at it for an important second.
Then it glowed white-hot and made an electrical snap.
Data’s mouth fell open and his eyes flared. His entire body went rigid, and almost as quickly collapsed to the deck in a heap.
“Positronic neutralizer!” Riker choked. “They took him out!”
Before anyone could say anything else, the whining of transport beams piled in on them again, this time by the half-dozen. All around the deck, five or six beams glowed. In each place, each beam deposited a dull gray cylinder.
When the beams faded, Riker kicked the nearest cylinder away—a silly move, because nothing could help them now.
As the bridge flashed with sudden pounding impact, the last thing Riker heard was his own warning shout, just before the sound of his own body dropping to the deck.
“Grenades!”
Part Three: A Harbor of Doubtful Neutrality
Last night at wheel watch I put a star in my port foreshroud and steered by it, and for a little help put what looked like a star cluster off the fores’l leach and steered also by that. Turned out not to be a cluster at all, but a comet. So I had a comet to steer her by.
D. Carey, personal log
0130 hours, May 2, 1997,
Revenue Cutter Californian
Parts of this book were written on board, during that voyage.
Chapter 19
Year 2266,