The Romulan War_ Beneath the Raptor's Wing (Book 1) - Michael A. Martin [195]
“Any further contact with the enemy?” Archer asked as he came to a stop near Lieutenant Reed.
“Not since we took out that patrol four hours ago, Captain,” Malcolm said with an audible air of incredulity. “I honestly would have expected a lot more Romulan resistance this close to Berengaria. We’re less than an hour from crossing Berengaria’s magnetopause and entering the system, but the Romulans are still quiet. It’s almost as though they’re... distracted, or preoccupied.”
Archer didn’t believe that for a moment. “That’d be very convenient for us, wouldn’t it? It’s more likely that the patrol warned them that we’re coming.”
“The better to give us a very warm welcome,” Malcolm said with a nod. “Once they think they’ve lulled us into a false sense of security, that is.”
Archer was aware, of course, that Reed wasn’t all that easily lulled. The lieutenant’s tactical assessment buoyed Archer’s growing sense of confidence in the coming battle’s likely outcome. And having his back covered by the largest starfaring attack force Earth had ever assembled didn’t hurt either.
“Fleet readiness?” Archer asked.
“Fully locked and loaded for bear,” Malcolm said, obviously proud of all the hard work he’d done coordinating tactical preparations across the entire fleet over the past several days. The battle group consisted almost entirely of Daedalus-class vessels whose offensive and defensive capabilities had benefited greatly from Malcolm’s expertise, in addition to the rush hardware upgrades those vessels had already received.
“All MACO units report ready across the fleet, including landing equipment and ground matériel,” Malcolm continued. “And best of all, since Intrepid joined us, we now have a total complement of fourteen starships.”
Archer grinned. Starfleet had originally ordered Intrepid deployed elsewhere, but Captain Carlos Ramirez had started twisting arms at Starfleet Command to get those orders revised. The way Carlos told the tale, Admiral Gardner finally knuckled under to his request to join the Berengaria battle group shortly after being made aware that the flotilla as originally constituted was comprised of thirteen vessels; a small but influential plurality of spacegoing humans still seemed to take that numeric superstition far too seriously, going back nearly two centuries to the Apollo era.
Despite Archer’s escalating sense of confidence, he still felt a healthy distrust for any quiet that came immediately before an anticipated storm.
Berengaria VII
Archer arranged the flotilla into a one-hundred-klick-long linear formation in order to obscure the final, subluminal phase of the attack group’s approach to Berengaria’s mist-shrouded seventh planet. He appreciated the ironic justice of using one of the Romulans’ own tactics against them, having bet on the likelihood that they would be making as much use as they could of Berengaria’s preexisting warp-field detection grid.
He dared to believe that his combined stealth tactics had actually worked by the time the hindmost vessels in the formation reported their insertion into an extended orbit about the planet.
That, of course, was when a group of eight birds-of-prey came swooping up out of the cloud canopy, their weapons ports blazing in almost simultaneous fusillades of angry red disruptor fire.
“Evasive, Ensign Leydon,” Archer barked. “Malcolm, polarize the hull plating. Target the lead ship and bring every tube to bear. Hoshi, tell the fleet to execute Tactical Plan Alpha.”
As the bridge crew busied itself carrying out Archer’s orders, the battle seemed to unfold in dreamlike slow motion on the bridge’s central viewscreen. Hot blue phase cannon blasts and salvoes of photonic torpedoes lanced across the ever-dwindling distance between Enterprise and the nearest of the fiercely plumaged Romulan warships, while the Valley Forge and the Zefram Cochrane worked in tandem to engage another raptorlike