The Expanse - J.M. Dillard [32]
A peculiar madness had overtaken him: he had given up eating, sleeping, given up all pursuits except the thought of Archer. He’d heard of warriors developing such obsessions; there were tales in his culture’s oral history of the misfortunes that had befallen soldiers whose lust for the kill burned too hotly, leading to carelessness. But Duras could no longer help himself. The human haunted his waking dreams; there were times, on the bridge—for Duras would no longer leave it, even to rest the prescribed number of hours—when he thought he sensed Archer standing just behind him, felt the warmth of the human’s breath upon his neck.
He would propel himself from his chair and whirl about, ready to strike, to let loose a crippling blow, a battle cry ... only to see empty air. Then he would feel his crewmen’s gaze upon him, and turn back to see them eyeing him with candid expressions of doubt.
They were eyeing him now, as he rose from his chair to stand no more than an arm’s breadth from the screen, wishing he could reach through the vacuum of space with his bare fist and seize the Enterprise, crush it to powder.
He was mad, Duras knew; Archer possessed his mind and soul like an ancestral ghost. But he did not care.
At the realization that two-thirds of the disruptor fire had missed its target, he gave his tactical officer a wildly vicious glance.
The stare prompted an immediate explanation from the frustrated crewman. “The targeting scanners won’t lock on!”
“Then get closer,” Duras said so that his first officer would hear and comply.
If he had to ram the Earth ship from the sky using his own vessel, he would. He had come too far, and nothing would stop him now. ...
Enterprise shook continuously as the Klingon vessels coordinated their attack. Archer did his best to hang on. Three against one: it wasn’t looking good, even with fancy torpedoes and new hull plating, but the Captain wasn’t about to give up.
If the time traveler had been telling the truth, then Enterprise had a good chance of making it safely into the Expanse—which meant that there had to be a way to lose the Klingons.
Archer just had to think of one.
Besides, he’d be damned before he’d let Duras win.
His voice vibrating, Trip yelled, “I thought you said Klingons wouldn’t go into the Expanse!”
“We’re not in the Expanse yet!” Archer yelled back. He leaned forward and called to Mayweather, “Hold your course, go to full impulse!”
Trips voice was filled with concern for his engines. “I wouldn’t recommend that, Captain! The intake manifolds are having a tough enough time as it is!”
Archer registered the complaint and mentally filed it away, but did not reply. The condition of the intake manifolds were not a top priority: remaining alive was. His tone steady, he told the helmsman, “You heard me, Travis.”
A tense silence ensued—interminably long seconds passed, and then Mayweather reported, “They’re keeping up with us, sir.”
A fresh blast boomed in Archer’s ears; his brain scarcely had the chance to interpret the signal before a second blast followed.
“We’re being hailed,” Hoshi called.
“Put it up,” Archer said.
After a heartbeat, an image coalesced on the viewscreen: that of Duras, looking unkempt and haggard, eyes wild, his face looming so large that Archer could see chips and cracks on the points of his sharpened teeth.
“Surrender,” Duras said, in a voice that combined a hiss with a growl, “or be destroyed!”
Archer looked at him with unalloyed hatred; he thought of Kolos, the wise old advocate who had defended him from Duras’s lies—and for his efforts, was sent to the hostile environs of the Rura Penthe penal colony. Because of Duras, Kolos—one of the most honorable men Archer had ever known, Klingon or not—might well be dead. At best, he was suffering incredible torment each waking hour.
“Go to Hell,” he told Duras, with deep satisfaction; he’d been longing to express the sentiment to