Star Trek: Dreadnought! by Diane Carey

Author:Diane Carey [Carey, Diane]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fiction, Science Fiction, General
ISBN: 9780743419802
Google: SXf8m8rCuAoC
Amazon: B000FC0NPK
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
Published: 2000-09-22T04:00:00+00:00

Chapter Eight

ON PROXIMA WE had twelve-gilled sharks with leopard-mottled skins so iridescent they rippled in the water like mother-of-pearl. All the lakes and oceans on Proxima glowed green in the light of our opal sun, and those sharks, echoes of the megalons from Earth’s prehistory, roamed our brackish waters in peace and silence. Along their streamlined bodies skimmed remorae, delicate suction fish endlessly vacuuming their hosts’ skin, taking nourishment and returning freedom from parasites.

I had no such favors for Pompeii. But the remorae provided me with a plan. The instant Wooden Shoe cleared the destroyer’s hull, I vectored back along the skin of the ship that moments ago had been our prison, and steered a deathly close course along the hull. Behind us, Scanner hadn’t expected such a sudden hairpin turn and lost me for a moment, but soon reappeared in my aft viewer.

“Stay with me, Scanner, tightly.”

“I got the idea now,” squawked the com.

There wasn’t time to respond. Pompeii’s grey-white hull spread before me, much bigger than I’d expected, yet curved enough to make steering dangerous as I maneuvered at breakneck speed along the engineering hull. Star Fleet code lettering, each letter taller than our entire ship, rolled away beneath us, dizzying me. I blinked dribbling sweat out of my eyes and leaned into my task. Viewports blinked by us, faster and faster. I increased speed.

“Piper!”

Sarda’s warning magnified my error. A nacelle strut loomed before us. I cranked the sled hard over, just missing the main wall of the nacelle. Bamp—our aft fin grated on exterior fibercoil.

“Too close,” I rasped. I fought for control of the rocking sled. Sarda soon gave up trying to help and gripped his arm rests in helpless tension. Polliwog swayed and bobbed, careening after us despite the transsonic velocity and the smack we’d taken.

Now Pompeii’s hull plates blurred into a single curving grey landscape marked only by flashes of space lights and utility ports. Our engines shrieked as I forced Wooden Shoe into impossible twists along the underside of engineering, skimming the sensor dish in a concave arch and surfacing directly on the starboard phaser pod. Without even taking a breath or reducing speed I punched our photon sling control and fired two blue bulbs straight into their weapon pod.

Sparks and light spattered all around us, but we were gone. Wooden Shoe shuddered into a somersault, belly-up, and pivoted backward in a mutation of the Ringgold’s Pirouette I’d learned from Kirk. The retroflexion pushed us up against our safety harnesses. Polliwog writhed into a swerve behind us. Somehow Scanner found us through the ion smoke now billowing from the destroyer’s phaser pod. Ignoring the piloting computer, I steered Wooden Shoe straight out into space, staying inside the cone of space made safe by my destroying that phaser port. By the time Rittenhouse found us and recalibrated another phaser, we’d be out of range. (I hoped.)

“Engage full power,” I said, my voice cracking. “Drop the solar wings. We can draw energy from that binary system at zero-mark-seven-four.

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