Star Trek_ A Choice of Catastrophes - Michael Schuster [96]
“Yes, sir.”
Seconds later, the phaser beam from the Hofstadter lit the fighter up white-hot.
“Break off!” shouted Jaeger, but Spock was already doing it. As the Hofstadter veered, the fighter exploded, rocking the shuttle. Scotty felt the deck lurch beneath him.
“Fighter destroyed.” Spock checked his controls.
The last fighter was closing in on Emalra’ehn. “Fire, lad!” shouted Scott.
“Power’s too low! I have to wait for it to recharge.”
Damn. If only he was out there—he knew a few tricks, but they were too complicated to explain to Emalra’ehn. “Hang on, lad. We’re coming.”
Spock brought the Hofstadter’s phaser to bear on the last fighter, but it was getting perilously close to Emalra’ehn. Without weapons, there was nothing Columbus could do.
Suddenly, the other shuttle split off. “Maybe if we ram it—” began Kologwe.
Spock cut her off. “Unwise. Try to envelop the satellite in your shields.”
“Fire now, Cron,” said Scotty. The microreactor was up to twenty-five percent, enough for several seconds’ firing.
Emalra’ehn muttered something. Scotty couldn’t make it out. “Repeat that, Petty Officer.”
“What if I dumped all that energy out one of the projectors at once, instead of in a sustained beam?”
“It couldna take it,” said Scotty. “You’d blow up for sure.”
“I thought so.”
“Well, then fire!”
The Columbus was trying to match the sat’s speed, but its engines were near burnout. Emalra’ehn did nothing as the fighter gained ground.
“What are you—” Understanding dawned. “Oh no, laddie.”
Spock had figured it out, too. “Fire, Petty Officer. That is a direct order.”
“Ten seconds,” came Jaeger’s voice. The engines of both shuttles were on the verge of overloading.
“Sorry, Mister Spock. I’m—”
“Just do it, laddie! Dinna be suicidal!”
A split-second pause. “Aye, sir. Firing.”
Scotty breathed a sigh of relief.
The beam stabbed out from the satellite, joining Hofstadter’s phasers. It wasn’t enough. Spock cut the engines, and moments later, the Columbus was dead too. The fighter was right on top of the satellite.
The explosion threw Scotty violently across the shuttle before his head hit something, and everything went black.
Giotto hated waiting. The aliens had not given up, pausing only during the blastoff sequence. Now they were using some device to cut through the door—a kind of plasma cutter, judging from the way it sliced through the metal. He wondered if he could take out an entire assault squad.
Chekov was awake now. He was seated with his back against the wall, silent. He was trying to process, looking first at Giotto, then at the unconscious Farrezzi, then, finally, at the door.
Giotto’s communicator sounded. “Giotto here.”
“Kirk here. We’re on our way to you.”
“Chekov and I are trapped in a sealed room, with a lot of angry Farrezzi outside. Any sign of Yüksel?”
“Unfortunately not. Right now we’ve got to stop this ship from going to warp. I’ll be there as soon as I can.”
“Good luck, Captain.”
“Same to you, Commander. Kirk out.”
“We”? Had Kirk said, “We’re on our way”?
Back to waiting. Perhaps the key to keeping Chekov from revisiting the horrors he’d lived through was to engage him in conversation. “So, Ensign, do you still think I’m your father?” Not the best opening.
Chekov was still glassy-eyed, not focusing on any object longer than a few blinks. “No, sir. I am sorry about that,” he said, his voice as distant as his gaze and completely emotionless.
“It’s fine, Pavel. Can you tell me something about your father? What does he do?”
“Do, sir?”
Damn, his mind was slow now. “I mean, what is his job? I assume he’s still working?”
Chekov shook his head slowly. “No, sir. He retired.”
“Ah? What did he do before, then?”
“He was a teacher, sir.”
“Oh. Did he like his job?”
“Um… I suppose he must have, at first. Later, he complained more and more… about the children. They didn’t know how to behave anymore, he kept saying.”
“Sounds to me like he’d become disillusioned.”
“Maybe, sir,” Chekov said.
“There must’ve been something about it that kept him going.