Three - Michael Jan Friedman [31]
“We need to get to the controls,” Vigo said as he came around the shuttle and dumped the intruder on the ground.
“That means getting inside,” the Vobilite noted.
“No problem,” said Sebring, hunkering down and resetting his borrowed weapon. “I haven’t yet met the shuttle hull that can stand up to a good dose of phaser fire.”
Fortunately, Sebring and Runj were able to use the craft for cover while they worked. But Vigo remained [89] standing, so a casual observer might think the guard was still out there.
As Vigo watched, his colleagues unleashed a seething red barrage at the center of the hatch door. Little by little, the door’s duranium skin blackened and rippled.
Suddenly, the Pandrilite heard shouting from across the landing area. Looking back over his shoulder, he saw a trio of angry Pandrilites running toward them.
Sebring and Runj heard them too. But the weapons officers didn’t give any thought to defending themselves. They left that to Vigo and kept working on the hatch door—even when a couple of phaser beams sizzled past the shuttle, missing it by inches on either side.
No longer compelled to impersonate the unconscious guard, Vigo fired back. One of his phaser bursts found an intruder and sent him sprawling, but that only made the other two fan out to make it harder for him.
And a moment later, two more of them came out of the installation, their phasers blazing. The weapons officers were caught in a swiftly developing crossfire, beams of directed energy stabbing the night like fiery needles.
“Come on,” growled Sebring, his face crimson with reflected phaser light as he and Runj dug their way into the shuttle. “Just a little more.”
Vigo managed to pick off the intruder on his right flank, but it gave the one on his left a clear shot at Runj and Sebring. The Stargazer officer moved around the Vobilite to screen him, to buy him a little more time.
But he was a fraction of a second too late. One of the enemy’s beams slammed into Runj and laid him out flat.
[90] Vigo returned the intruder’s fire but missed, his energy burst vanishing into the darkness beyond the landing field. And before he could take aim again, a beam from another direction nearly took his head off.
“There!” said Sebring, his voice full of triumph. Indeed, Vigo could see through a charred, blistered hole into the shuttle’s interior. “We’re through! Now if I can just—”
But before the human could finish, he was bludgeoned by a bloodred beam. As he fell forward against the shuttle, Vigo fired back. Then he turned and peered through the opening his colleagues had made.
It was big enough, he estimated, for him to slip his hand through and reach the instrument panel. Runj and Sebring might not have been able to do it, but he could.
Squeezing off another blast at the enemy to his left, Vigo sent him scurrying and secured a moment’s respite. He used it to peek inside and get a look at the craft’s controls.
As he had expected, they weren’t any different from what one might have seen in a Stargazer shuttle. And if that were so, he knew exactly what to do.
By that time, the intruder on his left was taking aim at him. Fortunately, Vigo was quicker. He nailed the Pandrilite square in the chest.
But he didn’t watch the intruder go flying backward into the darkness. He was too busy thrusting his left arm into the hole in the shuttle’s hull.
It went in up to his shoulder before his fingers touched the control panel. By feel alone, he groped his way to what he hoped was the right set of studs. Then he began pressing them in just the right order.
[91] At the same time, another intruder moved into view past the edge of the shuttle. With the phaser in his right hand, the weapons officer sent a crimson beam slicing through the night—while with his left hand, he continued his manipulation of the control panel.
Another second, he thought. Just another second ...
A blast of phaser fire glanced off the skin of the shuttle, blinding him. But it didn’t keep him from doing