Dreadnought! Page 12

  “I was just trying to be logical.”

  “Please avoid such attempts in the future.”

  “I’ll try to stick to intuition.”

  “It does seem more within your grasp.”

  “I’ll remember.”

  He started to say something else, but at that instant the hum of power running through the ship drooped away, taking all the lights and the force field’s blue frame with it. We were in total, disconcerting darkness, very suddenly.

  “What … a power failure? Is someone firing on us?”

  Sarda answered only with a shuffle of hurried movement in the blackness. A swish of air rolled at me before I realized what he was trying to do. “Sarda! Don’t—” I grabbed for him through the blinding darkness, but only caught the cuff of his pant leg as he shot by me. A second later I would’ve been doing the same thing, but the idea of his taking the first risk turned my stomach. I inhaled to yell again just as the power flickered on—the blue field came on first, and all I saw was a bizarre glowing silhouette of Sarda as the beam caught him on his way out—off and on again, full strength. The hum came back. The force field sizzled around Sarda’s body for agonizing seconds, then spat him out into the corridor since enough of his mass was on that side of the repellent screen, and slammed him like a rag doll into the opposite wall. He crumpled.

  “Sarda!” Only the sight of what the field had done to him kept me from running right into it. “Sarda!”

  Slowly, too slowly, he began to move, plainly struggling with every muscle that would still work. I ached from the hard concentration on his face as he forced his legs beneath him and crawled up the wall to a standing position. He leaned heavily against the bulkhead, breathing hard, concentrating even harder. Seconds crept by. I called his name again. He pushed away from the far wall and came within an inch of falling back into the blue field before swaying to the control panel outside our cell. The effort to remember the pattern for shutting down the force field showed in his face, but in an instant the field died back and I caught Sarda as he slumped down.

  “That was really stupid,” I said. “Wish I’d thought of it. Are you all right?”

  “Will be … fine … was necessary …”

  “Hold onto me. Come on. I’ve got to get you out of here before they figure out what happened.”

  “Have no idea …” He paused and strained to speak clearly. “… what caused the power failure.”

  “Neither do I, but it’s a fair guess somebody around here is out to do us a favor. Lean on me. Just pretend you’re moss on a rock.”

  “There is no …”

  “No moss on Vulcan. Use your imagination.”

  I grasped his upper arm and slipped my other hand around him, glad he wasn’t fighting my help. The fact that he leaned quite heavily against me was helpful but worrisome. He must really be hurting.

  We threaded our way through the bowels of Pompeii, the cramped corridors making it difficult for us to hide from passing crewpeople and taking precious time when we did duck into some niche or antechamber to wait out a dangerous encounter. Sarda tried to mobilize himself and I gradually helped him less and less, for his sake, offering only a hand for steadiness and resisting the temptation to steer him along. The difficult part was keeping my solicitous gazes to a minimum. We had to get back to the docking bay, to the Arco sled, and get off this ship.

  A simple enough goal. Until it got complicated. We started around a corner, only to have me slam Sarda backward again. A crowd of people were filing into the briefing room where Rittenhouse had originally put us. I held Sarda against the wall—more out of nerves than need—and peeked around the bulkhead strut.

  Captains. Three I didn’t know. With their aides. Rittenhouse … Kirk! After him came Spock … Mr. Scott … Dr. McCoy … here on Pompeii? Why? Those three captains must be Leedson, Nash, and Tutakai. So Rittenhouse’s clique of soiled starships had arrived. My heart dropped to my boots.

  “I’ve got to find out what’s said in that meeting! Sarda … how are you making it?”

  “Recovering. However, I would not recommend full encounter with a restraining field for daily consumption.”

  “Let’s find engineering. We’ve got to tap in on that session somehow. I wish to hell Scanner was here.”

  * * *

  The engineering deck was only seconds away. Pompeii was neither as spacious nor as comfortable as Enterprise, which made consolidation of area necessary. Sarda steadied himself perforce and we walked handily into the Intraship Monitoring Section, past a handful of engineers and tecnicians.

  “Hi,” I greeted when they looked at us. “We’re supposed to check on that power failure. Anybody got any ideas? I’d hate to go back above and tell them I didn’t even know where to start looking. You know how security chiefs are.”

  They muttered at each other for a few horrible seconds, then one of them waved a Cogan wrench toward an access stairway and the electronic panel it led to. “Try up there,” he suggested with an invisible shrug.

  “Thanks. I owe you a brandy.”

  “Make it Denevan and you’ve got a deal.”

  I worried about Sarda as he followed me up the access ladder, but didn’t help him for fear of tipping the crewmen off that something was up. When we reached the control panel he leaned on it and closed his eyes briefly, soon straightening to his usual posture. He said nothing about the look I was giving him.

  I narrowed my eyes on the panel of colored buttons and switches. “There’s a visual access screen over there. Do you know any way to home in on that meeting?”

  “I know many reasons why we should not be able to do it, but little about overriding them,” he said. “However, I do have an alternative. Open the communicator.”

  I did what he said, and moved aside while he tampered with the codes and signals in a manner I didn’t recognize. All I knew for sure was that those weren’t intraship signals. “What are you doing?”

  “We should get a response in a few seconds.”

  “What response? Who were you contacting?”

  He had faith in his own arrangements and let them be his answer. Our mutual eye contact was broken as two pillars of shimmering bands of light whistled out of nothing onto our platform. Surprise kept me even from glancing down to the main deck to see if anybody else noticed, but evidently the other engineers had dispersed and weren’t around to see the forms materialize.

  “Scanner! Merete!”

  “Howdy.”

  “I can’t believe it!”

  Merete smiled. “After things settled down on Enterprise, we just waited in the transporter room for your signal like Sarda asked us to.”

  “Sarda …”

  A Vulcan non-shrug met me when I turned to him.

  “I presupposed we might require help. While it would’ve been illogical to tell a senior officer of our plans to leave Enterprise, it would also have been illogical to tell no one at all. You might say I was employing an old human tactic.”

  I shook my head in awe and plowed through my confusion. “Scanner, there’s a meeting going on one deck over us on the aft starboard side. Do you know enough about sensors to tune in on them without their knowing it?”

  “Sure can give it the old Academy slap shot.” He stepped past me and Sarda, pausing to land Sarda a loud, unexpected Tennessee clap on the back and a barroom squeeze around the shoulders. “Say, Points, how y’all doin’”

  Merete and I stared, holding our breath, watching Scanner’s emotions surge through Sarda’s unguarded mental connections. Sarda endured the contact as dispassionately as possible, unable to help an annoyed glance ceilingward and a slight grimace. I couldn’t believe Scanner didn’t know it was rude to touch a Vulcan socially. The look on his face said he figured a little country tactility couldn’t hurt the universe any, for Vulcans or anyone else.

  Sarda didn’t exactly agree. But he didn’t react either. Scanner patted the stiff Vulcan shoulder and said, “Bin havin’ yourself some kin
da adventure, eh? Well, let’s see what’s goin’ on.” He sat down at the controls and put to work all his hopes of someday being assigned to a ship’s sensory. Evidently it was no hollow ambition. He knew what he was doing.

  I moved to Sarda, keeping down a grin at his thoroughly peeved expression. “You okay?”

  He gathered himself and sighed, “He is … rabidly emotional.”

  “I think I got somethin’, Piper,” Scanner called. “This your meeting?”

  On the viewscreen appeared a swarm of Fleet uniforms of a few varying styles. The four of us crowded around and watched.

  “There …” I pointed. “See where Captain Kirk and the others are talking to Rittenhouse and Tutakai? Can you narrow in on their conversation?”

  “Give it a try …”

  The screen flickered, focused in on somebody’s shoulder, then an ear, then backed off to encompass the group of Enterprise officers at the near end of the room. Behind them a yeoman was pouring coffee.

  “Looks more like a high-echelon tea party than a tactical conference,” Merete noticed.

  “At least they have not yet convened,” was Sarda’s observation.

  I leaned nearer. “Tune in the sound, Scanner.”

  He tuned in the audio just in time to catch Rittenhouse addressing Kirk.

  “Captain, pardon my asking, but what is your ship’s surgeon doing here?”

  Mr. Spock unexpectedly butted in with, “I have frequently asked the same question.”

  I grinned at Sarda. “So Vulcans don’t joke, huh?”

  He cleared his throat slightly. “Obviously Mr. Spock is being truthful.”

  “Obviously.”

  Kirk glanced at his ship’s doctor then and pretended not to be amused. “Dr. McCoy has full security clearance, Vice-Admiral, and I value his judgement. He has always accompanied me, and has Mr. Spock, when I feel the need for a balance of opinions.”

  I swore I saw McCoy stick his tongue out at Spock. “Scanner, keep the screen clear.”

  “I’m doin’ m’best. If I make the signal any stronger, their computer’ll pick it up as a call and answer it.”

  “What are they waiting for?” Merete wondered. “Why don’t they convene?”

  “They are. Look—there’s Boma coming in.”

  Boma came around to the front of the room, closer to our view of Kirk’s party. Kirk had moved away from his own men and was talking to Rittenhouse. The rest of the Enterprise contingent turned and seemed very surprised once they noticed Boma. I didn’t know him, but they evidently did.

  “Boma!” Scott exclaimed.

  The coal eyes gave him a glare of shadowed indignance. “Doctor Boma now, Mr. Scott.” He then looked at Mr. Spock, his gaze becoming harder, but even more restrained.

  “What are you doing here?” Dr. McCoy asked.

  “Investing in what’s left of my future.”

  Spock spoke up boldly. “I am pleased to hear of your success as a civilian astrophysicist, Doctor.”

  “I had no choice but to succeed as a civilian, Mr. Spock,” Boma said. “Court-martial is extremely final.”

  “I knew it,” I blurted. “I knew he was fighting with Fleet countermoves!”

  “Shhh,” Merete cut me off.

  “… necessary,” Mr. Scott was saying in that sage, rolling accent of his. “Order has to be maintained, after all. Mr. Spock was entitled to make decisions that were right for his own command techniques at the time.”

  “I realize your actions were proper regulation course, Mr. Scott. I’ve learned to live with the outcome, but I still believe rank privilege did us more harm than good.”

  “You are apparently still ruled by your sentiments, Dr. Boma,” Spock said coolly. “I submit your considerable talents have been better applied in the public sector than in the methodical stratification of Star Fleet.”

  “You made sure I didn’t have that choice to make.”

  Dr. McCoy stepped in without the slightest hesitation. “Spock didn’t bring charges against you, Boma. The gross insubordination complaint wasn’t registered in his log at all, or have you forgotten that?”

  “Believe me, Doctor, I haven’t forgotten a single detail about the incident that destroyed my future in the Service. All you mean is that I have Mr. Scott to thank for my dismissal.”

  “And I’d take the same action again,” Scott said. “Spock was your commanding officer. You disagreed with his method and took that as an excuse to be abusive.”

  “I wasn’t the only one,” Boma phrased straight at McCoy, with an underlying meaning they both understood.

  “The doctor had that prerogative,” Scott specified. “You didn’t.”

  “Gentlemen,” Spock’s strong voice plugged the pump. “Such discussion is profitless. The past is past. Dr. Boma has obviously turned his setbacks into successes, and Star Fleet is now calling upon him in a professional capacity. He deserves—”

  “I don’t need any help defending myself, Spock,” Boma snapped, “least of all from any of you. If you’ll excuse me, I have a job to do.”

  He went away, out of our screen, and the equal and opposite reaction was Kirk moving in. “Trouble?”

  McCoy leaned toward him and poked a finger in the direction Boma had gone. “Remember the time a bunch of us got trapped on Taurus II in the Galileo?”

  “Too well. Why, Bones?”

  “Remember the court-martial Scotty pushed for afterward? That’s the fella.”

  Kirk sent a long glance in Boma’s direction. “Isn’t that interesting …”

  “Sir?” Scott prodded.

  “I’m not sure, Scotty. Don’t pin me down yet. But it is curious to find him here, in this particular situation. Spock?”

  “Yes … curious indeed….”

  Scott suddenly looked Boma’s way, his sharp eyes gleaming darkly. “Aye—”

  “Jim, that’s a pretty long reach, isn’t it?” Dr. McCoy complained.

  “Is it, Bones? We’ll see.”

  “Gentlemen,” Rittenhouse called, breaking up our little party and making Scanner fade back the viewer and struggle to refocus on the broader field. Rittenhouse gestured the others to sit down at the conference table, then addressed them. “You’ve all been briefed about our delicate situation with the dreadnought Star Empire. In order for us to efficiently and effectively disable the dreadnought without destroying it, we must act as a unit. Naturally we’ll do all we can to keep from harming the occupants, but we must disable them at any cost, and we have an equal responsibility to the wholeness of the galaxy to preserve the ship itself. Star Empire is a prototype, produced at great expense, and Federation officials believe it holds the key to ultimate peacekeeping along disputed zones. We must preserve that ship, gentlemen.”

  “Even if it means sacrificing the people on board her,” Dr. McCoy finished for him. The doctor had a full clip of nerve, I had to give him that.

  Rittenhouse performed marvelously, skillfully, and I could see how he managed to lure so many intelligent, ambitious people into trusting him. “We’ll avoid that unappealing alternative, of course, Doctor, but if the options before us are exhausted, I assure you I will give that order. These are dangerous people. With every moment that passes they’re learning more and more about the dreadnought’s capabilities and how to use them against us. As implementor and overseer of the dreadnought project, I can tell you that ship is more than capable of disabling and even destroying all five of our ships. Underestimation on our parts would be a fatal error, and I don’t intend to sacrifice valuable commanders to a handful of reactionaries. I’ve invited one of the dreadnought’s designers here to explain the ship’s primary stress points, targets which will disable the ship, but also preserve it. Dr. Boma? The table is yours.”

  “Thank you, sir. Gentlemen, if you’ll please look at your monitors, the computer will follow my description with appropriate diagrams. The outer hull shell is made of quantobirilium, a material developed by myself. Quantobirilium is a com
posite alloy, extremely durable, and capable of dissipating energy to all parts of the ship for a limited time. A direct phaser blast would fail to dislodge its molecular cohesion for several seconds, even with shields completely down. It can endure extended phaser fire before it weakens and ruptures. The effect is similar to hitting a rubber wall with a hammer. The energy dissipates rather than shattering the structure. It buys time for the crew to reestablish shield power, maneuver to fire, or other tactics.”

  “How can we disable a ship like that, even if we do break through the shields?” Commander Scott asked. “Does that beast have any weak points?”

  Bubbling with aloof pride, Boma flatly said, “No. It only has places that are less invulnerable than others.”

  Mr. Scott frowned. I read “you’ll have t’prove it to me” on his face, but he sat back again.

  Boma went on. “It has basically the same vulnerable points that a conventional ship has: the nacelle struts, and on the underbelly near the weapons pods. As you can see, the structural skeleton is especially bulky, with extra-heavy supports in a honeycomb pattern, which is, of course, the strongest per-unit design known to our science. Each square unit of strut will support seventy-eight percent more stress than conventional design. Its greatest weakness is the hullmounted optics of the image projector, which can be easily knocked out. But the ship itself, gentlemen,” he said, puffing up, “can take a pounding that would reduce any one of your starships to powder.”

  “My mother’s underdrawers!” Scanner derided.

  I looked at Sarda, both of us remembering his statement about one ship’s inability to carry out an aggression. We were hanging in space across from one such ship. “That’s why Rittenhouse called in his three starships. It’ll take combined attack to disable that dinosaur.”

  Rittenhouse moved his barrel-thick body to the head of the conference table. “It’s time for us to make a move, gentlemen. They have a master ship, but we have numbers. Paul Burch is a bureaucrat, not an engineer, and certainly not a commander of starships. We will now take a singular, collective action.”

  “Ultimatum?” Sarda wondered.