Star Trek_ Generations - J M. Dillard [60]
Separation complete, Data said at last. Ten seconds to warp-core breach.
Troi fingered her controls. Engaging impulse engines …
On the viewscreen, the image of the battle section began slowly to recede. Riker continued his silent count-down, bracing in his chair for the explosion he knew was coming.
Despite his anticipation, he flinched at the bright blaze of light as the battle section erupted. The ship shuddered; but they were all right, Riker realized with a surge of relief. The shields had held …
And then the deck lurched forward, throwing Riker from his chair. He flailed, striking the back of Trois chair with his shoulder, and wound up on all fours. He tried to push himself up to a standing position, and was immediately thrown to his knees again. With difficulty, he crawled back to his chair, trying to interpret the strange sensation. The ship felt wrong. She was shuddering, rollingnot the way she did under fire. It almost felt like … free fall.
He caught the arm of his chair and hoisted himself up.
Report!
He turned in time to see Troi grasp the console and pull herself back into her chair. She stared down at the helm, and a look of utter alarm spread over her features. Helm controls are off-line!
A sudden terrible certainty seized him, made him glance up at the viewscreen. Riker was a man well suited to command, a man who had never buckled under pressure, never allowed himself an instants hesitation in the deadliest of situations. Yet the sight on the screen left him speechless with horror.
Troi followed his stricken gaze and saw it, too; the surface of Veridian III, hurtling toward them with impossible swiftness.
No one on the bridge uttered a sound at the sight; no one except Data, whose spontaneous, heartfelt utterance spoke for them all.
Oh, shit …
As he crawled through the Jeffries tube with Farrells shadowy form in front of him, Geordi began to feel his heartbeat and breathing return to a normal rhythm.
Theyd made it to the saucer; it was beginning to look like they might live after all. But he did not slow. Evacuation procedures required that they head for the most protected area of the ship and prepare for the shock wave from the warp-core explosion.
It all depended on how much distance they managed to put between themselves and the battle section. Geordi tried to remember how long it had been since they had evacuated engineering. Three minutes? Four?
He had his answer as the tube vibrated beneath him and pitched to the right, causing him and everyone inside it to fall onto their sides and slide. It lasted a split second, no more.
Thank God, Geordi almost said, thinking it was overthat they had made it through the worst of it.
But before he could get the words out of his mouth, the ship lurched againin a strange, accelerating movement that did not ease, only shuddered, harder and harder.
What the hell …? In the dimness, Farrells profile turned toward him.
He knew at once, with sickening, heart-stopping certainty, what had happened: The blast had slammed the ship into the nearby planets orbit. There was a chance, if the Klingons attack hadnt damaged the lateral thrusters, that parts of the saucer might survive the impact. Even so, many would die, and there was no way to predict who those might be.
Time is running out, Mr. La Forge …
Wails and panicked murmurs rippled through the tube as those inside froze in horror; a child began to shriek. Geordi summoned the mental image of Picard at his most authoritarian, then thundered, Keep going!
Slowly, the dark figures in front of him began moving again. Within seconds, he was grasping Farrells hand and emerging from the tube into the brightly lit corridor. The ship was rocking, vibrating so hard by this time that he had trouble keeping his balance; it felt like standing on the holodeck