Hagedorn frowned. He didn’t like the idea that his comrade might be hobbling home. After all, they didn’t know how many enemy ships might be guarding the command center. Even if they were successful in their mission, they might wind up with half the Romulan fleet on their tails.
But he couldn’t call off the mission because of one crotchety nacelle. “Acknowledged,” he told Reulbach.
Then he set his sights on the viewscreen again, and in particular on the pale blue star in the center of it—which wasn’t really a star at all. He didn’t have to consult Tavarez to know that it would take them nearly eight hours to reach it at impulse speeds.
Eight hours, Hagedorn thought. For the first seven and three quarters of them, he and his wing would likely not be detected by the Romulans. After all, the enemy didn’t have any reason to expect them there. But once they came in scan range of the command center . . .
That, he knew, would be a different story entirely.
As he sped toward the blue world fixed at maximum magnification on his viewscreen, Jake Stiles used the controls embedded in his armrest to establish a comm link with his brother.
“Stiles here,” said Aaron, his voice clear and free of static.
“Stiles here, too,” Jake responded.
His brother chuckled over the link. “I was wondering when I’d hear from you, Anaconda. Feeling lonely?”
“Only for the moment,” said Jake. “Before long, I bet, we’ll have a few Romulans for company.”
“I know what you’re going to ask,” Aaron told him. “And don’t worry. I’ll take down twice my share of birdies. That way they won’t have to dig a hole for you back home.”
“Funny,” Jake responded. “I was just going to tell you the same thing. I guess they’re right about great minds thinking alike.”
“I guess so,” said his brother. “Except no one ever told me I had a great mind. And now that I think about it, I doubt they ever told you that either.”
“All right,” Jake conceded. “So maybe mediocre minds think alike, too. And this one is thinking what a shame it’d be to go home alone.”
Aaron grunted. “I hear you. Especially with the war effectively over, if this little gambit works the way it’s supposed to. So I guess we’ll just have to keep on bucking the family curse.”
“I guess so,” Jake agreed.
Silence for a moment. “Stiles out,” said his brother.
“That makes two of us,” Jake told him.
“Captain Stiles,” said his navigator, a sturdy blond woman named Rasmussen. “Scanners are picking up an enemy squadron.” She pressed a series of buttons to extract more data. “Looks like eleven ships. Heading three-one-four mark six.”
Eleven of them, Stiles reflected. They had hoped not to encounter so many, especially this far out. And there were likely to be a lot more of them hanging back closer to the command center.
But this was Earth Command’s best wing. One way or another, the captain told himself, they would get the job done.
He looked back over his shoulder at Lavagetto, his communications officer. “Transmit our readings to the other ships, Lieutenant. Then request orders from Captain Hagedorn.”
“Aye, sir,” said the comm officer.
Stiles eyed the viewscreen. “When can we get a visual?”
“In about thirty seconds, sir,” Rasmussen replied.
“This is Hagedorn,” their wing commander broke in, his voice ringing from one end of the Christopher’s bridge to the other. “Assume bull’s-eye formation and go to full impulse.”
Stiles pressed his comm stud. “Acknowledged,” he told Hagedorn. He turned to Myerson, his helmsman. “You heard the man, Lieutenant.”
“Full impulse, sir,” said Myerson.
“The Romulans have picked us up,” Rasmussen reported crisply. “They’re heading right for us, sir.”
The captain’s teeth ground together. He always felt much better when he could actually see the enemy. “How about that visual?” he asked his navigator, trying to mask his discomfort.
Rasmussen worked at her controls. “Coming right up, sir.”
A moment later, the ghostly blue disc of Cheron gave way to a squadron of eleven Romulan warships. They were traveling in a honeycomb formation, a typical birdie approach.
But they wouldn’t be flying that formation for long, Jake Stiles mused. Not after he and his pals had blown a hole through it.
“Laser range in three minutes and twenty seconds,” reported Chang, the Anaconda’ s veteran weapons officer.
Stiles eyed the enemy warships. “Raise shields.”
“Aye, sir,” came Chang’s reply.
The Romulans seemed to loom larger with each passing moment. The captain felt his mouth go dry as dust. But then, he thought, it always seemed to do that before a battle.
“Two minutes,” the weapons officer announced.
Stiles nodded. “Target lasers.”
“Targeting,” said Chang.
In his brother’s ship, the captain told himself, Aaron would be doing the same things—receiving the same information and giving the same orders to his crew. And in a dark, secluded part of his mind, he would be thinking about the family curse.
It was hard not to.
“One minute,” the weapons officer reported.
Hagedorn’s voice came crackling over their comm link.
“Maintain formation,” he told them, so there wouldn’t be any mistake.
“We’re with you,” Jake Stiles assured him.
“Forty-five seconds,” Chang announced. “All systems operating at maximum efficiency, sir.”
The captain considered the viewscreen again. There was no break in the Romulans’ formation. Obviously, they still didn’t believe the Earthmen were planning to barrel right through them.
“Thirty seconds,” said the weapons officer.
The captain felt a bead of perspiration tracing a trail down the side of his face. “Fire on my mark,” he told Chang.
“Aye, sir,” came the reply. “Twenty seconds . . .”
Good luck, he told his brother silently.
“Fifteen,” said the weapons officer. “Ten. Five...”
On the viewscreen, the Romulans’ weapons ports belched beams of cold blue flame. Stiles’s ship shuddered and bucked under the impact of the assault. But her shields held.
Then it was the Earthman’s turn. Glaring at the swiftly approaching enemy, he yelled, “Fire!”
The Romulans were rocked by a dozen direct laser hits. However, none of them was forced out of line.
A second time, Stiles’s vessel took the brunt of the enemy’s barrage. And a second time, he returned it with equal fury. Then they were on top of the Romulans. It looked as if they would have to rotate to find a gap in the birdies’wall, if they were to survive.
But at the last possible second, the Romulans lost their nerve. Breaking formation, they peeled off in half a dozen different directions. Inwardly, Stiles cheered Hagedorn’s resolve. A less confident commander would have blinked and made easy targets of them.
As it was, he had made easy targets of the enemy.
“Target and fire!” the captain barked.
With Chang working his controls, the Anaconda stabbed a Romulan’s bird-bedecked belly with a pair of sizzling blue laser beams. And before the enemy could come out of her loop, the Earth vessel skewered her again.
“Their shields are buckling, sir!” Rasmussen called out.
“Stay with her!” Stiles insisted.
Myerson clung fiercely to the Romulan’s tail; Chang ripped at her hindquarters with blue bursts of laser fire. Before long, one of the birdie’s nacelles fizzled and went dark, and a moment later the other nacelle lost power as well.
The Romulan was dead in space, unable to move. But the captain knew she could still be dangerous. Once before, he had seen a crippled birdie reach out with her lasers and rake an unsuspecting Christopher.
But not this time. Stile
s leaned forward in his seat. “Target and launch!” he snapped.
The weapons officer bent to his work again with grim efficiency. But instead of another laser barrage, he unleashed a black-and-gold missile at the enemy ship.
As the Earth captain looked on, the projectile penetrated one of the Romulan’s empty nacelles. For a heartbeat, nothing happened. Then the enemy vessel shook itself to pieces in a blaze of atomic fire.
“Romulan off the starboard bow!” Rasmussen called out.
“Get it on the screen!” Stiles ordered.
The navigator had barely accomplished her task when the Romulan rolled under a spectacular laser volley. A moment later, Stiles saw the source of it, as McTigue’s Christopher came twisting into view.
The captain made a mental note to thank the woman when he got the chance. But in the meantime, he could best express his gratitude by adding some firepower to McTigue’s attack.
“Mr. Chang!” he cried out. “Target and fire!”
Stiles’s lasers sent the Romulan rolling even harder, creating a web of destructive energy that spread outward from the point of impact. Then McTigue hit the enemy again, showing no mercy.
The Romulan tried to get off some shots of her own, but she was too beleaguered to target properly. Finally, with her shields torn up, she was easy prey for Stiles.
“Mr. Chang,” he said, “target and launch!”
The Christopher’s missile sped through space like a well-thrown dart. When it reached its objective, the enemy spasmed and came apart in a blinding white rush of energy.
But Stiles and his crew weren’t done yet. There were still as many as nine Romulans carving up the void, their laser sights trained on the Anaconda or one of her wingmates.
“Romulan to port!” Rasmussen shouted suddenly.
“Evade!” the captain told his helmsman.
Under the navigator’s expert guidance, the enemy vessel slid into sight on their forward viewscreen. Stiles almost wished it hadn’t. The Romulan was right on top of them, ready to release a close-range laser barrage—and he knew there wasn’t anything they could do about it.
“Brace yourselves!” he roared.
The viewscreen blanched suddenly, causing him to blink and turn away. Then came the impact—a bone-rattling blow that tore Stiles halfway out of his seat and made a geyser of sparks out of an unoccupied aft console. But when it was over, the Anaconda was still in one piece.
Someone moved to the damaged console with a fire extinguisher while the captain glowered at the forward screen. Fortunately, it still afforded him a good view of their adversary.
“Shields down seventy-five percent!” Rasmussen told him.
“Mr. Myerson,” Stiles growled, “get that birdie off our tail! Mr. Chang—target and fire at will!”
But before they could obey either of those orders, the Romulan veered to starboard and began to put distance between herself and the Earth ship. For the merest fraction of a second, the captain was caught off-balance. Then he turned to his officers.
“Belay that last set of orders!” he told them. “Effect pursuit, Mr. Myerson! Don’t let that Romulan get away!”
“Aye, sir!” the helmsman responded, moving to tax the ship’s impulse engines to their fullest.
Suddenly, the enemy tacked sharply to port—and a moment later, Stiles saw why. Two of the other Christophers were approaching from the opposite direction, one of them less than a kilometer ahead of the other.
He recognized the vessels by their markings. Reulbach’s ship was the one in front, of course. And the one behind it, looking as good as it had ever looked in its life, was his brother Aaron’s.
The captain didn’t know how the rest of the battle was going, but he liked the signs he was getting. After all, he had seen a Romulan turn tail in the middle of an engagement. And though her retreat had become a three-on-one, none of the other birdies were coming to her rescue.
Best of all, his brother was still alive and well. Good portents indeed, Jake Stiles told himself.
But he had barely completed the thought when he saw something that wasn’t good at all. As Reulbach and Aaron homed in on the enemy, Reulbach’s ship began to rotate for no apparent reason.
What the devil’s going on? Stiles wondered, a chill cooling the small of his back.
Then Reulbach’s port nacelle exploded in a flare of white-hot plasma. And before the captain knew it, before he could even contemplate a rescue, the rest of the ship blew up as well.
“My God,” Stiles muttered. And it wasn’t just Uri Reulbach whose death had emblazoned itself on his eyes.
Because Aaron’s vessel was right behind Reulbach’s—so close to it that the younger Stiles couldn’t avoid the Christopher’s explosion. So close that Aaron couldn’t help running into the expanding plasma cloud, which could do to deflectors and titanium hulls what acid did to tissue paper.
Unable to take his eyes from the viewscreen, Jake Stiles shook his head. No, he thought numbly, it can’t be. Not my brother. Not this way, caught in the blast from a lousy nacelle.
Then he saw something emerge from the burgeoning plasma cloud—something that looked a lot like the nose of Aaron’s ship. As Stiles leaned forward in his seat, spellbound, he saw the rest of his brother’s vessel slide out of the cloud as well.
He studied the Christopher with eyes that didn’t dare believe. But as hard as he looked, as intensely as he scrutinized her, he couldn’t find anything wrong with her. Against all odds, Aaron’s ship had come through hell unscathed.
“Sir!” Rasmussen called out. “Romulan behind us!”
Stiles stiffened at the news. When no one came to the other birdie’s rescue, he had allowed himself to relax—to imagine the enemy was falling back. Obviously, he had jumped to the wrong conclusion.
The Romulan in question slid onto his viewscreen. It was close—even closer than the other birdie had been. So nerve-shatteringly close that Stiles could barely see anything else.
“Helm,” he thundered, “evasive maneuvers! Weapons—target and fire!”
The enemy fell off his screen again as Myerson pulled them into a gut-wrenching loop. The captain felt his jaw clench as he waited for information from his navigator.
“They’re hanging with us!” Rasmussen exclaimed. “Range—half a kilometer! Bearing two-four-two—”
But before she could finish her report, Stiles felt his head snap back like a whip. As he fell forward again, he realized that something had slammed them from behind—and slammed them hard.
Chang turned in his seat. He didn’t look happy. “Sir,” he said, “the shields are gone.”
There was a silence afterward that seemed to drag on for hours, but couldn’t really have lasted even a second. It was a silence that absorbed all hope, all possibility of survival.
Then the Romulans bludgeoned them again.
Stiles felt the deck jerk savagely beneath his feet—once, twice, and a third time, touching off explosion after explosion all around him. Somehow he managed to hold on to his seat. But his bridge gradually became the substance of nightmare—a field of fire and sparking consoles and thick, black plumes of smoke.
As they cleared for a moment, he saw Myerson. The man was slumped in his chair, his control panel aflame.
The captain started forward, imagining he could help Myerson—until the crewman slithered to the deck and his head lolled in Stiles’s direction. Then he saw Myerson’s blackened husk of a face and the sickeningly liquid eyes that stared out of it and he knew his helmsman was beyond help.
The captain looked around with smoke-stung eyes. He couldn’t find any sign of Chang or Rasmussen . . . or Lavagetto either, for that matter. He didn’t know where they had gone or if they were dead or alive.
But he knew one thing. He had to get them out of this mess—at least until the other Christophers could free themselves and come to his aid. And if Myerson’s controls were slagged, he would have to reroute helm control to Rasmussen’s navigation con
sole.
Making his way through the smoky miasma, Stiles found the right console and slid in behind it. Fortunately, it hadn’t suffered any serious damage—only a few scorchmarks on its left side. He pulled on the switches that would establish a link to the Anaconda’ s helm.
Nothing happened.
The captain cursed, his voice cutting through the sputter and sizzle of his dying ship. The console was all right, it seemed, but the ship’s helm function had been thrown offline. He wouldn’t be able to take control of it from the bridge or anywhere else until repairs were made.
And there was no time for that. No time at all, he thought.
As if to confirm his conclusion, something exploded in his face and sent him flying. He had a vague impression of coming down again, but he wasn’t sure how or where or even why. He only knew that he was in the grip of a terrible, searing pain.
Fighting it, Stiles managed to lift his head and open his eyes. He couldn’t see anything except thick, dark waves of smoke. They were moving slowly but certainly, reaching out to claim him like some infernal surf.
And there was nothing he could do about it.
Nothing.
As the pain throbbed deeper within him, his head fell back to the deck. And unexpectedly, despite his torment, he began to laugh.
All this time, he had been worried that the family curse would strike his brother. And in the end, whom had it claimed? Which Stiles had it added to the funeral pyre?
Him.
* * *
Hiro Matsura eyed his forward viewscreen, where a Romulan vessel was pounding the daylights out of one of his disabled wingmates.
“Target and fire!” he told his weapons officer—for what seemed like the hundredth time that day.
Twin laser beams shot through space and sent the Romulan reeling. But still she maintained her attack on the Christopher.
“Their shields are down fifty-five percent!” his navigator announced.
“Fire again!” the captain ordered.
His lasers dealt the Romulan another blow—but it didn’t stop her from blasting away at the Earth ship, burning away even her serial number. Matsura felt his teeth grind together.
“Their shields are down eighty percent!” his navigator amended.
Starfleet Year One Page 4
