Synthesis - James Swallow [127]
Troi held out her hand. “That won’t happen,” she said. “Your origins may have been… unusual…”
“But you’re part of this crew,” Riker added. “And we protect our own.”
She turned to face him, and there was challenge in her tone. “Are you going to make it an order, Captain?”
“Would it matter if I did?”
“No.” The avatar glanced up at the screen, to RaHavreii and beyond. “Xin? Torvig? What should I do?” The defiance that had been there a moment ago was gone, replaced by apprehension.
The Choblik ensign came a step closer to the imaging pickup. “The right thing,” he told her.
No one spoke as the hologram looked away, looked to the deck and the strange, glowing robes around her. With a rush of color, the diaphanous clothes re-formed and became a Starfleet uniform.
A beep from Ensign Panyarachun’s console drew her attention. “The emitter program is ready. Wow, that was fast.”
“I interfaced with White-Blue for several picoseconds,” said the avatar. “He assisted me.”
On the main screen, Ra-Havreii looked down at his own panel. “Confirmed. I have the pulse-wave program here. Ready to initiate on your command, sir.”
Ranul’s hand tightened on the lip of the tactical station. This was it, the moment of truth.
Riker looked the avatar squarely in the eye. “Do it.”
She sighed. “Commencing shutdown. Pulse will initiate in thirty seconds.”
All across the bridge—and, by extension, all across the decks of the starship—screens and consoles began to deactivate, every display flashing off, to be replaced by a single identical banner bearing the words STANDBY MODE.
Ranul’s station was the last to go, and he watched the multifunction panes wink out one by one. This had better work.
“Twenty seconds to full shutdown and pulse,” Torvig called from the screen. “If no one minds, I’m going to deactivate myself as well. Just to be on the safe side.”
“Fifteen seconds.” The hologram managed a weak smile. “See you all soon.”
She closed her eyes and was gone.
FOURTEEN
“There’s too many of them!” snarled Jaq as the crewman threw himself back into cover behind a support stanchion. The Napean was breathing hard, and his ridged forehead was livid with fresh burn scarring. He’d flat-out refused to fall back and insisted on pressing ahead with Vale and the rest of the unit, with only a hypospray of Masiform D to help him along.
And he had a point. The drones had surged up from the deck below and spilled out into the corridors. The machines moved like a single entity—and that’s what they are, Vale thought bitterly, each mechanism an extension of a Sentry mind.
“It’s like fighting smoke,” said Dennisar, in cover close by, drumming his fingers on the frame of the deykon-pulse emitter as he counted down the seconds to recharge. “The machines are getting the measure of us.”
Vale popped up from behind the overturned bench they were hiding behind and fired a spread into the line of gold spheres advancing slowly toward them. Hard lines of antiproton energy lashed back, ripping ugly gashes in the walls and ceiling. The corridor was gloomy, lit only by the weak glow of emergency lighting close to the floor and the stark pulses of destructive energy being thrown back and forth between the attackers and the defenders.
At her side, Crewman N’keytar made a rasping noise under her breath, something that was the Vok’sha equivalent of a swear word. The emitter on the pale woman’s phaser was a dull red from where she’d been constantly firing. “Unless we can get internal forcefields back up, there’s no way we’ll be able to hold these remotes at bay.”
“Until that happens,” Vale replied, “we fire until we’re dry.”
“And then what?” said Blay without looking up from the sights atop his gun.
“We start throwing our boots,” Dennisar said with grim humor.
“That won’t hurt them, not unless they have olfactory sensors,” replied the Bajoran, but his laconic tone shifted in midsentence as the spheres suddenly picked up speed. “They’re rushing us!”
“Stay to your quadrants!” Vale shouted, and as