The Expanse - J.M. Dillard [34]
Another ear-splitting explosion; Trip heard the Captain’s question, and out of frustration shouted, “Does it matter? He’s chasing us!”
Archer steadfastly ignored the engineer, and repeated, more intensely, to T’Pol, “What’s protecting his stern?”
“Minimal shielding,” she replied.
Archer forced himself to think, despite the constant barrage of deafening booms. At last, he turned to Mayweather.
“You think you can pull off an L-4 at this speed?”
It was a risky maneuver for a ship the Enterprise’s size, even if she was trickling slower than syrup in winter. The Captain wasn’t even sure that Mayweather would have heard of the “death-defying loop,” as it was also called, as if it were a circus act.
It may as well have been: It was as dangerous as a high-wire act, without the net. But if Archer trusted anyone to pull it off, it was Travis Mayweather. And at this particular moment, he didn’t have much choice: it was the L-4, or death at the hands of a crazed Klingon.
The helmsman’s expression actually brightened at the challenge. “I can try, sir.”
“Then look for the densest cloud formation you can find,” Archer instructed. Too bad the idea hadn’t come to him earlier; now, the clouds were beginning to peter out.
The Captain stepped over to a companel and activated the shipwide intercom. “Captain Archer to all hands ...” He paused, searching for precisely the right words, and finally settled for a passionate “Hang on!”
He glanced up at the viewscreen. Although they were currently sailing through an area of thinner vapor, a thick, ominously dark cluster of clouds lay dead ahead.
“That one looks good to me,” he told Mayweather, as he took his seat.
The helmsman seized the manual controls—the computer certainly wouldn’t have permitted such a risky maneuver—and navigated Enterprise straight into the clouds.
Inside the ship there was only a minimal sense of disorientation; life support and gravity systems kept the ride tolerable, even as the Captain was pushed back in his chair by the g-forces. But Archer could tell from the viewscreen that his vessel was beginning to head upward in an arc more extreme than any amusement-park roller coaster.
* * *
At the helm of the bird-of-prey, Duras stared at the viewscreen through eyes wide with mania. He had thrown his tactical officer aside with such fury that the crewman had struck his head forcefully against a bulkhead, and now lay sprawled on the deck.
His first officer remained at his post—clearly reluctant to obey his wild-eyed commander, but at the same time, apparently unwilling to be killed for disobeying an order.
And Duras was well beyond the point of being willing to kill one of his own crewman for disobeying him.
Archer directed his ship into a dark thicket of clouds, perhaps thinking this would discourage pursuit; no matter. Duras followed. He would continue to follow into the Expanse, and beyond, if need be, despite the fact that the High Council forbade all Klingon ships from entering the area because of its infamous dangers.
Through the clouds the bird-of-prey sailed; Enterprise was lost visually, swallowed up by the murky opacity. No matter. Soon, the Klingon ship emerged in an area of clearer space.
Confident in his madness, Duras glanced back up at the viewscreen—and immediately did a double take. In the distance were more scattered columns of clouds ... but no Enterprise.
“Where are they?” he demanded, aghast; his first officer did not reply, having lapsed into sullen silence some time earlier.
Impossible, Duras told himself. Insane or not, he still knew that ships did not simply disappear.
* * *
Archer clutched the arms of his command chair as Mayweather guided the Enterprise into a gigantic loop that, at one point, had her belly pointed in the direction the crew considered “up”; at that point, the ship was completely inverted, but Travis finished scribing the arc and brought her down so that she gracefully righted herself and came soaring out of the clouds—directly behind the bird-of-prey.
“Fire,” Archer said.
Lips compressed, gaze intent on his controls,