Immortal Coil by Jeffrey Lang

Author:Jeffrey Lang
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Science-Fiction:Star Trek
ISBN: 9780743448468
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Published: 2002-04-14T10:00:00+00:00

Chapter Sixteen

THE ENTERPRISE LISTED TO PORT and Deanna Troi felt her stomach yaw to starboard. Not a direct hit, but close. And then, incongruously, she reminded herself, For every action, an equal and opposite reaction.

“Inertial dampeners—compensate,” she called to environmental, then felt the AG fluctuate beneath her.

“Incoming!” Commander Heyes called from tactical. She had just turned over the bridge to Troi when the enemy vessel had risen suddenly from the planet’s arctic region and opened fire. The impact had sent Tellisar, Troi’s tactical officer, over the front of his console, unconscious, possibly dead. Heyes had scrambled from the turbolift doors to the weapons station while the deck seesawed under her feet and managed to fire off a volley of torpedoes.

Troi clutched at the arms of the command chair while around her, bodies hit the deck as the ship rolled to starboard.

“Shields down to eighty percent, Commander,” Heyes called. “Power is stable.”

“Attack pattern alpha one nine,” Troi ordered. “Commence fire.”

“Phasers firing.”

Lances of orange light tracked across the void, then vanished. Troi’s forehead knotted uncertainly as she turned to Heyes. “Did we hit them?”

Reflected light danced across Heyes’s face as she initiated a complex sensor sweep. “I’m not finding anything,” she said, and it didn’t require Troi’s empathic abilities to sense her confusion. “No ship, no debris, no energy signature, nothing.” Frustrated, she recalibrated the sensors and reran the search.

Troi gave her room to work. “Stations, report.”

Around the bridge, the station heads called off their status. Engineering and environmental systems were functioning at acceptable levels, and the helm was responding. Medics came onto the bridge, bundled Tellisar onto a stretcher and removed him. Troi saw that he was, in fact, breathing and felt regret that she hadn’t at least tried to determine his condition, but then chastised herself: that wasn’t part of her role when she was commanding the bridge.

“Could it have been a cloaking device?” Troi asked, turning toward tactical.

“I don’t think so,” Heyes said, checking her readings for the third time. “We know what to look for with a cloak. There’s no distortion, no graviton concentration, no energy spike—” Then, suddenly, she cried out, “Hard to starboard!”

Troi spun back toward the screen just in time to see the starfield flicker and ripple. The attacking ship seemed to slide out from under the skin of space, its hull shimmering like liquid, then suddenly crystallizing as it emerged completely. A wave of energy pulsed from its prow, twisting and distorting the edge of space/time.

The Enterprise rocked. Primary systems shut down and Troi felt the strange flicker and hum through the soles of her feet that meant the artificial gravity was on the verge of failing. “Primaries are offline,” Tolman, the engineering officer, announced. “Secondary systems are unavailable. Switching to batteries.” Work lights around the bridge flickered on and air recyclers struggled to clear the smoke.

“Route power to shields,” Troi ordered. “Helm, can we move?”

“Barely, Commander. Thrusters only.”

“Use them,” Troi said. “Try to keep moving.” She turned to look at Heyes, who must

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