Star Trek: Vanguard: Storming Heaven (41 page)

“Good shooting, Clark,” Nassir said. Then the image on the screen pinwheeled as zh’Firro steered the slowing scout vessel into another round of complicated evasive maneuvers.

The air in the bridge was thick with the sharp odor of burnt wiring and overheated circuits, and the normal low vibration imparted to the decks by the impulse engines had become a disconcerting clattering and banging, as if they were literally flying the ship apart, one hard turn at a time. Terrell headed aft to check Sorak’s targeting protocols and help the old Vulcan coordinate with Lieutenant Dastin, who was using the ship’s tractor beam to tow debris into enemy ships and drag enemy vessels in front of Vanguard’s still operational phaser batteries.

Theriault cried out, “The
Panama
’s breaking up!”

Turning on his heel, Terrell looked back in time to see the cargo transport splinter with fiery cracks, then break apart amidships before vanishing in a reddish-orange flash. Secretly, he was amazed they—and the
Sagittarius
—had lasted this long.
The only reason we’re not dead yet is that the Tholians are throwing everything they have at the station,
he reasoned.

Nassir sprang from his chair to stand over zh’Firro at the forward console. “Swing us around on a wider arc,” he said, leaning with one hand on the back of her chair. “We’ll need to cover the zones the
Panama
was—”

“Incoming!” Dastin cried.

Total darkness and a sound like the end of the world. Terrell felt himself hurled through the air, as if he’d leapt from a cliff. A blinding eruption and a thunderclap sent him hurtling back in the opposite direction as heat scorched his hair and shrapnel bit into his torso and limbs. He came to a halt when he struck something that he realized moments later must have been another person between him and a bulkhead. Darkness fell again, accompanied by a deep and muddy wash of indiscriminate sounds he couldn’t name.

He awoke in a daze to a faraway voice repeating, “Commander! Wake up!” The voice grew closer, louder, and sharper until he recognized it as Doctor Babitz’s. Struggling to push through the crushing ache in his skull, he blinked and saw the blond physician kneeling over him, her face lit by the glow of her medical tricorder. “The good news is, you don’t have a concussion. The bad news is, the rest of your body looks like it’s been through a blender.”

Behind her, Theriault watched over her shoulder and held a chemical emergency light stick whose green radiance made the bloody wounds on the left side of her face look black. “Sir, are you okay?” The science officer sounded frightened, but he couldn’t say if she feared for him, herself, the ship, or all of them at once.

“Help me stand up,” Terrell said.

“I don’t think that’s a good idea,” Babitz said.

“It’s an order.” Theriault grabbed his right arm, and Sorak took hold of his left. Together, the petite Martian and the elderly Vulcan hoisted Terrell upright and leaned him against the aft bulkhead. Looking around as his eyes adjusted to the darkness, he saw little at first except smoke hanging low and heavy over the bridge. The main viewscreen was gone, the forward bulkhead a charred mess. Then he saw the twisted, burnt remains of the helm console, and the two bodies lying on the deck beside it, both draped with blue emergency blankets: Nassir and zh’Firro were dead. He tried to swallow, only to find his mouth parched and tasting of ashes. “Damage report,” he croaked as he staggered to the command chair.

Babitz employed her most motherly voice. “Sir, you need to get to sickbay.”

“Later. We’re still in combat.” When he noticed the doctor’s challenging stare, he added with an extra measure of authoritativeness, “You’re dismissed, Doctor.”

The chief medical officer scowled as she walked away. “Fine,” she sniped, “but don’t come crying to me when you bleed to death.”

Terrell watched her go, then continued trudging to the command chair. “As I was saying: damage reports, people. Let me have ’em.”

“Lieutenant Dastin is rerouting helm control to the auxiliary panel,” Sorak said, directing Terrell’s attention toward port, where the Trill lieutenant was coaxing a damaged console back to life. “Until he does, we’re adrift. Shields and phasers are off line, and the tractor beam is down to one-quarter power.” A tremor that felt like the result of a glancing attack rocked the ship.

Terrell lowered himself with gingerly care into the center seat. “Communications?”

Theriault replied, “Master Chief’s working on them right now.”

“I’ve got helm control,” Dastin declared. “Impulse and warp drive both available.”

Pale emergency illumination flickered on around the bridge,
and a few seconds later the main bridge lights returned to life and gradually increased to half their normal levels. Ilucci’s gruff voice barked from the overhead speakers,
“Hey, bridge. Can you hear me now?”

“Affirmative, Master Chief,” Terrell said. “Report.”

“Short-range comms are up, and Captain Khatami wants a word with you.”

Apprehensive looks passed between Terrell and his three remaining bridge officers. “Patch her through, Master Chief.”

The next voice from the speaker was Khatami’s.

“Endeavour
to
Sagittarius.
Do you copy? Please respond.”

Thumbing open the reply circuit from the command chair, Terrell said, “We read you,
Endeavour
. Go ahead.”

Over the channel, he heard the sounds of battle filter through behind Khatami’s voice. The
Endeavour,
at least, was still in the fight.
“What’s your status?”

“No shields or weapons, but we’re still mobile.”

“Then you need to fall back. Break off and regroup with the convoy.”

“Captain, we can still—”

“That’s an order,
Sagittarius
. Regroup with the convoy.
Endeavour
out.”

The channel closed, leaving Terrell with no choice but to abandon the
Endeavour
and the
Buenos Aires
to the battle. As a soldier, it galled him to be forced into retreat, but he also knew the choice was not his to make—it was Khatami’s, and she’d made her decision very clear.

“Helm,” Terrell said, “set course for the civilian convoy. Maximum warp until we overtake them, then reduce speed to match them. Engage.”

“Aye, sir.” Dastin plotted the course and jumped the ship to warp.

“Lieutenant Sorak,” Terrell rasped. The Vulcan came to his side. “It seems Doctor Babitz was right. I
am
bleeding rather profusely. I need you to carry me to sickbay, please.”

“Aye, Captain,” Sorak replied, reminding Terrell that he was
no longer the first officer of the
Sagittarius
but its de facto commanding officer. The Vulcan hoisted Terrell forward and out of the chair, then draped Terrell’s right arm across his shoulders.

Teetering on the edge of consciousness as he was assisted off the bridge, the acting captain looked back at the shell-shocked Theriault and smiled.

“You have the conn, Number One.”

She smiled back as best she was able. “Aye, sir.”

Khatami had stopped asking for damage reports when they started coming in every few seconds on their own. The warp drive was down, along with the ventral shields and half the phaser banks. Disruptor blasts and plasma charges struck the ship every few seconds, making it impossible to cross the bridge without being thrown around like a rag doll. The
Endeavour
had become like a punch-drunk fighter: pummeled to within an inch of its life, the only thing that seemed to keep it going was the battle itself.

“
Sagittarius
made the jump to warp,” Klisiewicz confirmed.

McCormack waved away the tattered curtain of black smoke drifting between her and the navigator’s console. “The
Buenos Aires
is taking heavy damage!”

“On-screen!” Khatami leaned forward as the viewscreen switched to an angle that showed the
Miranda
-class frigate making wild maneuvers in a futile bid to escape a three-way Tholian crossfire. “Target the ship on their starboard flank and fire!”

“Phasers locked,” McCormack said. “Firing!” A scathing blue beam lanced upward from the
Endeavour
and destroyed one of the Tholian cruisers pestering the
Buenos Aires,
which veered clear of its remaining pursuers and swung wide to prepare for another attack run.

A bone-rattling crash as plasma charges slammed through
Endeavour
’s primary hull and plunged the bridge into darkness. Half a second later, the lights surged back, but several display screens above the aft duty stations showed only static. Thorsen
scrambled across the deck to an open panel beneath the affected consoles. “Hang on,” the baby-faced blond lieutenant shouted as he slithered inside the machinery. “I’ll have them back up in a few seconds!”

Commander Stano called out, “Brace for impact!”

The
Endeavour
pitched as if it had been struck by the hand of God.

Sparks flew, lights and consoles flickered, and bodies seemed to tumble around Khatami in slow motion, their erratic paths stuttered by the strobing light. When the ear-crushing rumble of the blast abated, Khatami heard Thorsen’s screams of pain. She turned to see Stano and Estrada pulling the tactical officer clear of the maintenance area beneath the panels, which were crackling with flames and belching toxic smoke. The explosion had peppered the young lieutenant’s face with a flurry of metal shards and scorched it with second-degree burns. Thorsen seemed to want to press his hands to his face but couldn’t bear the slightest touch, so all he could do was writhe and scream and bleed. Estrada retreated in horror from his comrade while Stano belted out, “Medkit! I need a medkit, now!”

Klisiewicz bolted from his seat, retrieved the first aid kit from the emergency locker by the turbolift, and ran it to Stano. The first officer pried open the case, pulled out a hypospray and an ampoule of medicine, and injected Thorsen via his carotid artery. Almost instantly, Thorsen ceased his agonized wails and drifted off into a deep and—Khatami hoped—dreamless slumber.

The captain looked at Stano. “How bad are we hit?”

“Pretty bad,” Stano said. “They just punched two holes clean through the saucer.”

“Load all torpedo bays, and tell
Buenos Aires
to do the same, we’ll need them as a wingman when we—”

“
Buenos Aires
is in trouble,” McCormack said, drawing Khatami’s attention back to the forward screen. The badly damaged frigate took several hits in rapid succession—some from disruptors, some from plasma charges—to its warp nacelles and main engineering section.

“Hector, hail them. Hurry!”

“Aye, Captain,” Estrada said, scrambling into action at the communications panel. Seconds later, he turned back toward Khatami. “I have Captain Jarvis on audio.”

“Put him on.” At a nod from Estrada, she continued. “Captain Jarvis, this is Captain Khatami. What’s your status?”

Over the white noise of distress, Captain Andrew Jarvis replied,
“We are officially
FUBAR
, Captain. We just lost shields, phasers, and warp drive.”

“Withdraw, Captain, we’ll cover you. Come about on bearing two eight—”

“Negative. We’ve still got torpedoes, and I plan to use them. Jarvis out.”

“Captain! Belay that!” When she heard no reply, she looked to Estrada.

He shook his head. “They’ve closed the channel.”

Stano pointed at the main viewscreen. “Look!”

The
Buenos Aires
made an abrupt course change and charged directly at the densest cluster of Tholian ships circling Vanguard. Moments later the frigate unleashed a steady torrent of photon torpedoes—and accelerated behind them.

“My God,” Stano blurted out, “they’re on a
ramming
trajectory!”

Khatami sprang from her chair. “Helm! Get us to the other side of Vanguard—
now
!”

The thrumming of the impulse engines escalated to a high-pitched droning as Neelakanta accelerated the ship to flank speed while guiding it through a dizzying bank-and-roll maneuver.

A brilliant cone of destruction blazed through the Tholian armada, which scattered along dozens of vectors. Phaser and torpedo fire from Vanguard tracked the ships as they were forced out of their holding pattern, and blasted them with ferocious zeal and intimidating accuracy.

Checking the sensor data on the main viewscreen, Khatami realized the battle had already claimed nearly sixty-five percent
of the ships in the Tholian armada. For a moment, she was torn between despair for the lives lost in the frigate’s suicide run and gloating for the havoc it had seemed to wreak upon the Tholian fleet. Then she remembered that with the loss of the frigate, the
Endeavour
was now the only ship left defending Vanguard. Their situation until that moment had been bad. It was about to become much worse.

“Look sharp, everyone,” Khatami said. “We’re about to get to the fun part.”

Fisher cut through one side of the jammed door to Phaser Control Delta with a phaser while his Andorian compatriot, Shor, pulled on the other side with all his considerable strength. As the phaser beam sliced past the midpoint of the door, the entire thing buckled and folded outward, and Shor pulled it off its slide track and hurled it aside. He rushed inside the smoky compartment without a moment’s hesitation and called to Fisher, “This way, Doctor!”

Fisher followed the Andorian
thaan
through the suffocating haze until they reached a trio of motionless personnel: two humans in their twenties, a man and a woman; and a male Tellarite. Fighting to breathe and blink away the tears drawn out by the acrid smoke, Fisher activated his medical tricorder and scanned the three junior officers. He pointed at the human man. “He’s dead.” Gesturing at the other two, he added, “I’ll grab her, you get him.”

Shor hefted the portly Tellarite over his shoulder with ease, while Fisher labored to lift the diminutive woman from her chair and carry her away from her sparking console. He was several paces behind Shor and envying the younger officer’s vigor as the bright, fuzzy shape of the open doorway became visible through the veil of bitter haze.