Star Trek: TNG Indstinguishable From Magic (19 page)

“Are not the specialists that Starfleet’s Corps of Engineers would send. They can get a ship running, or even improve it, but restore such an ancient vessel? No. Not in the time available.” Bok grinned nastily. “Allow me to congratulate you on the excellence of your work.”

Another Ferengi approached Bok. “Daimon, everything is aboard, except Sloe. The Starfleeters are being held in the mess for now.”

“Good. Escort Mister La Forge to join his comrades, and then tell Grak that he can undock.”

Rasmussen put a hand on the center seat that had been installed to replace the original, and tried to shove it back and forth, just to test that it was secure. Satisfied that it didn’t snap off from its mounting, he sat in it, shuffling around until he was comfortable. “Hm, I could get used to this.” He opened his mouth to give an instruction to the Breen at the helm, but then hesitated.

He had seen the news reports, and, in this century, viewed enough records and holoprograms about starship captains to last a lifetime, and he would have been a liar if he had told his prison psychiatrist that he had never tried to imagine what sitting in the center seat of a starship was like.

“All right,” he said to the Breen, “so I’m a liar.”

Rasmussen had tried to imagine what it was like, and thought he had succeeded, but now he realized he was wrong. He had never actually imagined what it was
really
like. It was both wonderful and thrilling, and scary, and, in the end, just a slightly uncomfortable chair. He shifted in it some more, knowing he would have to get a cushion to put at the base of his spine if he was going to sit here for extended periods over the next few days.

Bok stepped next to Rasmussen, who couldn’t resist giving him a high-five. There were a couple of distant thuds. “Is that Grak?” Rasmussen asked.

“Yes, he has undocked. We are free to move.”

“Excellent!” Rasmussen grinned to himself. “Helm,” he said at last, “lay in a course for star system Delta Five in the Gamma Zeta Alpha cluster.” The suited Breen fiddled with some switches and buttons, then sat still. It took Rasmussen a moment to realize that the course was laid in, and the pilot waiting for the next order. “Aren’t you supposed to, you know, say something like ‘Course laid in,’ or ‘Okay, what next?’ Or something like that?” The Breen didn’t reply, and in fact didn’t even turn around. Rasmussen found himself wondering if there was actually a living being under that armor.

Rasmussen sighed, rolling his eyes. “All right, warp factor four.” The Breen’s hand was already moving. “Let’s go.”

“There is more to commanding a ship and crew than just sitting in the center of the room, Ras-mew-son.” Bok chuckled to himself as he moved toward the communications station. He reached across the newly fabricated box-like console units and opened a channel. “Grak, this is Bok.”

“Grak here. Go ahead, Daimon.”

“We’re ready to get under way. Engage your cloak, and follow us, just in case.”

“Understood. Cloaking now. Out.”

La Forge was relieved to see that everyone who was seated in the mess was mostly unharmed, though there were a couple of black eyes and one broken nose in the room. He had wasted no time telling Reg Barclay and the other eight Starfleet personnel about who had handed over their prize.

“He seemed like such a nice guy, too,” Reg said.

“I’m sure Colonel Green was loved by his dog.” Geordi looked around the mess. It wasn’t cramped, however the galley equipment was something they hadn’t thought to restore. It hadn’t seemed necessary, since they had assumed that they could always just beam back to
Challenger
to eat, or at least use the replicators on board the
Thames
or
Clyde.

A deep vibration thrummed through the floor, and La Forge and Barclay swayed to one side for a moment under the pressure of acceleration before the inertial dampeners kicked in. “Well, we’re under way,” Reg said.

“And just when I got used to her.” Geordi sighed.

“Challenger?
She’s a fine ship—”

“No, Leah.”

“Oh. I, uh—I’m sorry, Commander.”

Geordi laughed mirthlessly. “Don’t worry about it, Reg.
Challenger is
a fine ship. Not as fine as the
Enterprise,
though.”

S
cotty watched as Leah Brahms slid into the ops seat. It had been her preferred place on the bridge since the project began, even though the
Challenger
was as much her baby as anyone else’s and so she merited one of the three center seats.

He knew she liked ops because its displays were a lot better than the tiny ones the center seats had in their armrests, and she liked to be able to monitor everything about the engines and power systems. If he was a hundred and twenty years younger, he reflected, she’d probably be his ideal woman.

Tyler Hunt dropped into the seat next to him.
“Intrepid
should be safe, at least. I wonder what this guy was after over there. What could they want with a two-hundred-year-old ship?”

“Good question,” Nog said from his position at tactical. “Could there be something aboard? Something valuable?”

“Like what?” Scotty asked. “Technology? Dinna be ridiculous, man. It’s two centuries out of date.”

“Classified material? Military secrets?”

Scotty shook his head. “Again, still two hundred years out o’ date. The only classified materials aboard would be their orders at the time, and mebbe some technical readouts that they’d have wanted to keep safe from others. A way to protect their systems against the Romulan telepresence weapon they had back then. But none of that would be worth a damn thing to anybody today.”

Hunt frowned. “A person, then? A life-form?”

“If that’s what they want, they’d have been better just
asking us. I’d have beamed them aboard and wished them the best of luck sponging the object of their search off the walls.”

“More likely they were after us than
Intrepid,
surely,” Leah said. “We’ve got a lot of experimental projects and systems on board. Valuable research in a lot of places.” That sounded about right to Scotty as well. Even in his own career he’d seen that much. Strife with the Klingons over dilithium-rich planets, with the Romulans over borders, and then there was the whole Genesis Device business. Always planets, technical advances, or something that would give one a hand up in those two things.

“Whoever he is,” Qat’qa said, “he’s pretty good, but he’s inexperienced. Fresh from training, I suppose.”

“Is that a problem?”

“Only for them.”

“If they are after us,” Nog pointed out, “we’re probably walking into a trap.”

“Don’t worry, lad,” Scotty said grimly. “This ship has a lot more power under the hood than that
Vor’cha
does.”

“He’s coming about,” Qat’qa reported.

“Strange that he doesna cloak.” Scotty said thoughtfully. He didn’t like the oddity, not one bit.

“He knows he has a fight on his hands, so why waste the energy?” Hunt suggested.

“Well, the gloves are off now.”

The former Klingon ship rolled over as it banked, and spat torpedoes and disruptor bolts. The shots went wide, as
Challenger
barrel-rolled off to the side.

Challenger
returned fire, the golden beams of her phasers flaring against the shields of her enemy.

Then the attacking ship did something unexpected.

Challenger
lurched, and Nog knew instinctively what had happened. He had felt it often enough aboard smaller ships during the Dominion War. “They’ve got us in a tractor beam.”

“Break us free, Kat!” Scotty growled.

Qat’qa’s hands flew across the smooth panel in front of her, and the bridge trembled slightly. Nog could feel himself gently pushed first one way and then the other. The ship rocked back and forth as Qat’qa pushed more power into the maneuvering thrusters and the inertial dampeners struggled to keep up. “Lateral thrusters are doing no good,” she snarled. She sounded offended, as if the thrusters were personally insulting her. “The tractor beam is too strong!”

Hunt braced himself against the edge of a science console and sat down to look at power readings that were scrolling up on the station’s main display. “She’s right. It’s the strongest tractor field I’ve seen outside of mining stations.”

Scotty cursed. “And what, apart from the obvious, have they got us by, Mister Hunt?”

“The forward port quarter of the secondary hull, aft of deflector control.”

“They’re arming more torpedoes!” Nog called.

“Kat!” Scotty prompted her. “Get us free.”

“You must break the tractor beam, sir! Unless . . .”

Nog looked up from his board. “Torpedo incoming, running true!”

Hunt moved forward, as if being closer could make Qat’qa’s job easier. He checked the controls she was using, and was surprised to see that she wasn’t pouring on throttle power, or steering. “What are you doing?”

“Initiating emergency saucer separation!” Qat’qa snapped. Scotty’s eyes widened, gleaming as he grasped her idea. “Go right ahead,” he ordered.

“Torpedoes still incoming,” Nog reported. “Five thousand kilometers . . . Two thousand . . .”

Scotty gripped the armrests of his seat, bracing his legs against the floor and hoping they didn’t cramp up on him. He could feel the physical tension of everyone grabbing hold of the nearest wall or console and bracing themselves.

The huge saucer lifted away from the curved neck of the
Challenger
’s stardrive section. For a moment, they were both encased in the same shield envelope. Then there was a flicker of power spilling out into the visible spectrum as the shield envelopes of each part of the ship sealed themselves, sparking against each other for an instant before the saucer rose away from the stardrive section.

A fraction of a second after that, three blazing torpedoes, their outer casings already shedding hard radiation in the run-up to detonation, skimmed under the saucer’s surface. There was only a ten-meter gap between the two sections of the
Challenger,
but it was enough to allow the torpedoes through.

They were well past the ship when they detonated.

“Nog,” Qat’qa said without looking around, “the power distribution center is on the ventral surface of that
petaQ.”

Nog smiled tightly. “Get me in position where I can target the lower surfaces and I should be able to knock out their shields.”

“You heard the man, lass,” Scotty agreed.

“Do not miss, Ferengi,” Qat’qa said grimly. She swept her hands across the flight console as if she was playing a concerto. Her deft touch rotated the
Challenger
ninety degrees around its
y
-axis, and then set the ship spinning around the
x
-axis as it rushed toward the swooping enemy ship.

Even with the inertial dampeners operating at peak efficiency, she could feel a tug on her back and a dizzying sensation. From the expression on Leah’s face to her left she could tell that everyone else on the bridge was feeling it too. She could also tell that none of them were enjoying it as much as she was, and resisted an urge to laugh with the joy of it.

Challenger
spun with the aft ends of her impulse units carving out tracks on a surface that existed only in Qat’qa’s imagination, like a figure skater pirouetting across the ice.

In no more than two or three seconds, the ventral surface of the Klingon-built ship would pass across the
Challenger
’s nose.

Nog was ready, and delighted that Qat’qa had given him exactly what he had asked for. He launched a spread of three torpedoes ahead of the enemy’s direction of travel. Then, in the couple of seconds before the torpedoes reached their point of impact, he began a phaser barrage.

The bright phaser beams flashed against their opponent’s ship’s shields for an instant, and then the torpedoes detonated. The Klingon ship slowed, shaken by the triple detonation. Her systems automatically strengthened the forward shields, to protect against radiation damage or a second wave of torpedoes.

The strength of the shields around the rest of the ship wavered, and dropped for a moment. Then the
Challenger
’s phaser beams were through the weakened shield, carving an intricate spiral tattoo across the ship’s ventral hull.

Metal glowed and melted, and power junctions exploded.

“This is one of Odo’s favorite tricks,” Nog said with a tight grin as his fingers danced across the tactical console.

All eyes turned to the main viewer, expecting to see phaser beams impale the other ship at its most vulnerable points. Instead, the ship started to drift. Nog chuckled from the tactical station. “Perfect!”

“You haven’t fired,” Hunt pointed out.

“I didn’t need to,” Nog said smugly. “I’ve transported their bridge crew directly to our brig through the gap in their forward shields. Odo’s favorite trick.”

Scotty began to laugh. “Well done!”

Hunt tapped his combadge. “Hunt to security team beta; post duty officers in the brig. We have prisoners to look after.”

“It won’t take long for the rest of their crew to realize what’s happened and get replacements to their stations,” Scotty pointed out. “Let’s make sure that doesna happen, Mister Nog.”

Nog was already on his way to the turbolift. “Security team alpha to transporter room one. Issue phaser rifles, and pick one up for me.”

Tyler Hunt followed him into the turbolift. “Security team delta to transporter room two. Rifles all round.” He looked at Nog. “I suggest you beam into the bridge, since you’ve already emptied it, and I’ll take a team to the engine room. It wouldn’t do if they’ve got an auxiliary or battle control center there.”

“I agree, sir.”

Nog was glad to see that the security team was already waiting for him on the transporter pad. An athletic-looking human male and female, a deceptively willowy Andorian, and a thick-set Benzite. All carried phaser rifles and wore hand phasers at their waists.

The Benzite handed Nog a rifle as he took his place.
“Chief Carolan,” he said to the elfin human woman at the transporter console, “if you could set the controls to activate the center pad three seconds from my mark, and the rest of us two seconds after that, I would be very grateful.”