• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

Well, that’s all about to change, you motherless escoria.

“The ship profiles might look familiar,” el-Rashad said. “But my scans show these vessels to be far smaller than any Romulan ships anybody has ever encountered previously. I’d guess these to be one- or two-man ship-to-ship fighter craft.”

“I wonder if this is how they’ve been beating the warp-field detection grid,” Fletcher said. “By sending in swarms of vessels too small to set off the alarms.”

“Maybe, Commander,” el-Rashad said with a shrug. “But I find it hard to believe that a Vulcan-designed warp-field sensor would be that easy to fool.”

“We can sort all that out later,” Hernandez said impatiently. “They haven’t seen us yet, so let’s take advantage of that. Thayer, ready the forward phase cannons, and lock and load all torpedo tubes.”

“Aye, Captain,” Thayer said as she threw herself into the task.

Hernandez bared her teeth in a long pent-up display of aggression that left her feeling surprised at herself. “Let’s give these sneaky bastards a taste of their own medicine.”

The battle was fierce and at moments nearly blinding, but it was also agreeably brief. As Hernandez had hoped, Columbia’s sudden out-of-nowhere appearance had rattled the Romulan squadron just enough to allow Columbia’s relentless phase-cannon fire and torpedo launches to destroy about half of the Romulan force while it was still reeling and trying to regroup following the NX-class vessel’s surprise entrance into their midst. Two of the vessels had collided, all but vaporizing each other in their scramble to get clear of the far larger and less agile Columbia.

Five more of the small Romulan fighter craft went down over the next several minutes in exchanges of fire that cost Columbia two of her forward torpedo launchers and a phase-cannon array. The two remaining Romulan fighters had chosen the better part of valor by fleeing Columbia’s immediate vicinity.

But instead of taking the outbound trajectory one might expect of a fleeing vessel, the two small birds-of-prey had placed themselves on steep subluminal descent courses into Altair’s powerful gravity well, with each craft taking its own individual but decidedly “downhill” trajectory.

“They’re on separate headings for Altair VI, Captain,” el-Rashad reported. “Full impulse.”

“Pursue, Reiko,” Hernandez said. “Go in and out of warp as needed to pass ’em and come about. I think our stomachs can take it.”

“I’ll try to be gentle, Captain,” the helmswoman said with a sideways grin. A few heartbeats later, Hernandez felt her innards shuddering in protest as Columbia shot forward, straddling the superluminal line as she gained relentlessly on her quarry.

“The Romulans must be counting on eluding the warp-field detectors all the way down,” Fletcher said.

Hernandez nodded toward her exec, whom she thought looked a little green because of Columbia’s small but noticeable velocity oscillations. “And they’re gambling that we can’t fly precisely enough at warp inside the system to avoid overshooting them before they reach the planet.”

“Bad call on their part,” Fletcher said, her jawline taut with resolve and more than a little apparent anger at the Romulans’ brazenness.

“Subspace scans show both the Heinlein and the Kon-Tiki scrambling up from Altair VI to intercept the incoming bogeys,” Thayer said, her expression a study in intensity. Her eyes never broke contact with the tactical console’s dynamic displays.

“Heinlein reports engaging one of the bogeys,” Valerian reported from the comm station, her right hand holding her earpiece in place as she listened to developments that could only be followed in real time via the subspace bands, given the light-minute or so that still separated Columbia from the unfolding battle.

On the main viewer, the artificially polarized white light of Altair turned blue, while the background stars elongated into glowing cerulean spears. When Akagi dropped Columbia out of warp moments later, restoring the universe to its normal palette of shapes and colors,