The Valiant - Michael Jan Friedman [95]
Now they were shooting for double or nothing.
Captains log, supplemental. Rather than wait for the enemy vessels to come to us, I have decided to go on the offensive and meet them head-on. I hope Jomars phaser enhancement is everything he claims, or we will find ourselves with a great many regrets.
In the dusky scarlet illumination of a red alert, Picard eyed the pair of Nuyyad vessels on his viewscreen.
Range? he asked.
Twenty-two billion kilometers, said Gerda, and closing.
At warp seven, the Stargazer would cover fifty percent of that distance in the next minute and meet the enemy halfway. It didnt leave them much time to gird themselves for battle.
The second officer turned to Vigo. Power up phasers and photon torpedoes, he said.
Aye, sir, Vigo responded.
Picard looked to Gerda again. Raise shields.
Raising shields, she confirmed.
The commander took a deep breath and watched the Nuyyad ships loom larger on the screen. For the time being, they were content to fly parallel courses, though that would no doubt change in the next few seconds.
As if on cue, the enemy vessels peeled off in different directions, aiming to catch the Federation ship in a crossfire. Picard thought for a moment and turned to his helm officer.
Go after the one to starboard, he commanded.
Aye, sir, said Idun.
Abruptly, the Stargazer veered to the right, keeping one of the Nuyyad ships in sight while momentarily ignoring the other. It was the maneuver that had been recommended by all Picards tactics instructors at the Academybut not as a long-term solution.
It would buy him a few seconds, at best. But if luck was on his side, that would be all the time he needed.
Lock on target, he told Vigo.
Targeting, came the reply.
Phaser range, said Gerda.
Fire! snapped Picard.
Twin phaser beams lanced through space and skewered the enemy ship. At normal strength, the commander would have expected them to weaken the diamond-shapes shields, perhaps even shake up the Nuyyad inside.
The crimson beams didnt do that. They did a lot more .
Instead of softening the enemys defenses, they seared right through them and penetrated the Nuyyads hull. Before Picard could give Vigo the order to fire again, his adversary suffered a vicious, blinding explosion amidships. With the second officer looking on in morbid fascination, the Nuyyad succumbed to a second explosion and then a third, and finally came apart hi a white-hot burst of debris.
Enemy vessel to port, Gerda reported.
Bring us about, Picard told Idun.
As they swung hard to port, the viewscreen found their other antagonist. But at the same time, a string of vidrion bundles came slicing from the vessels cannons, filling the screen with their fury.
The second officer braced himself, but the impact wasnt as bad as he had expected. Their vidrion-reinforced shields were holding up wellhe could tell even without asking Gerda for the details.
Target and fire! he told Vigo.
A moment later, their phaser banks erupted againgutting the enemy ship as they had gutted the other one, and with much the same results. The Nuyyad was ripped to shreds in a chain of spectacular explosions, one right after the other. The last of them left nothing in its wake but a languidly expanding wave of space junk.
Suddenly, the Stargazer was alone in the void, registering nothing on her forward viewscreen but the light of distant stars. Picard expelled a breath he hadnt known he was holding.
Ben Zoma appeared beside him. Apparently, he said, Jomar knew what he was talking about.
Apparently so, the second officer replied.
But there was still the question they had brought up when Captain Ruhalter was still aliveas to whether the plasma conduits could tolerate the kind of stress Jomars enhancement would place on them. With that in mind, Picard asked Vigo to run a diagnostic.
After a moment, the weapons officer made his report. The stress appears to have been considerable, sir. But the conduits held. Theres no sign of damage