Star Trek by Dave Stern

Author:Dave Stern
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Pocket Books/Star Trek

Eleven

A SYSTEMS CHECK. A quick tutorial for Royce and his silent partner—Vonn—in the Suliban sensor displays. A quick tutorial for him as well—mission details once they were inside the prison.

And all at once their hour of prep time was up. They launched.

Royce had the seat to his left, where Hoshi had been. Vonn was off to his right, and slightly behind him. He reminded Trip of Mayweather. Absolutely unflappable. His expression never changed, like no matter what happened next it would be nothing he hadn’t seen before. He radiated a sense of calm.

Trip tried to draw on it as he followed Irgun and Lessander through the Belt, and the asteroids that whizzed by them with alarming regularity.

“Shouldn’t we take this at about half-speed?”

“Easy, Tucker.” Royce had figured out the Suliban sensor display—he had a rough grid of the space surrounding them up on screen. “We’ve been running simulations through this part of the Belt for months now. Just stay close, and you’ll be fine.”

A rock twice the cell-ship’s size suddenly whizzed by a hundred meters to starboard.

Irgun and Lessander stayed on course. Trip resisted the temptation to pull hard aft, and stayed with them.

Which he was glad of a second later, when an even bigger asteroid shot past on their right.

He was sweating already. It wasn’t just nerves, either. They were all in containment suits—virtually identical to Enterprise’s EVA suits, except the air circulation in these was beyond lousy. Trip was dreading having to put the helmet on—it would probably feel like a sauna.

Redesign, he thought. The second we get back to Eclipse.

We, he realized. He was thinking of himself as part of the Guild—part of their war.

He was also thinking about Trant. Doctor Trant. Neesa.

“Tucker.”

That was Royce who’d spoken.

“Yeah?”

“You with us?”

“I’m here.”

“You didn’t look it just then.”

“Thinking, that’s all.”

“Stay sharp. This is the hard part right here. The Ribbon.”

Trip was about to ask him what The Ribbon was, when all at once Irgun, and then Lessander, dived, at an almost ninety-degree angle.

Trip’s stomach went out from under him as he banked the cell-ship to follow.

The next five minutes were among the most nauseating of his life.

A series of sharp turns, dips, and dives that reminded Trip of nothing so much as a roller-coaster ride—more specifically, the Twister, an old wooden roller coaster in Walters County he used to go on, over and over again, until they closed the fair for the night.

Back then, of course, his stomach was a lot stronger.

“The Ribbon,” he said, when they’d finally stopped all the perambulations.

“The Ribbon.” Royce nodded. “That’s the densest part of the entire Belt back there—the hardest part to navigate without getting slammed into the next system. Big reason why Sadir put the prison on Vox 4. Not many people can get through that.” He turned sideways and smiled. “Not without getting sick, anyway. Congratulations.”

Trip nodded.

“Although I haven’t seen anyone turn quite that shade of green before.”

Vonn laughed. The first sound Trip had ever heard him make.

“I’m glad you found that funny,” Trip told him.

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