“Either that or the Klingons are jamming us,” Terrell said.
Shaking his head to dismiss the notion, Quinn started punching in numbers to manually calculate the jump to warp speed. “No way. If they were, I’d know.”
His ship lurched to a sudden halt. Inertia pinned him against the main console. Pushing back, he glanced out the cockpit and saw nothing at first. Then he half stood from his seat, turned, and craned his neck to peer out the top of the cockpit’s all-encircling canopy. Above and behind the Rocinante, barely visible as a speck against the stars, was the outline of a Klingon warship emitting two golden beams—one locked on to his ship and the other holding the Sagittarius.
The ship-to-ship channel beeped for Quinn’s attention. He opened it. A gruff voice crackled over the comm. “Attention, unidentified vessel. This is the Klingon battle cruiser Zin’za. Power down your engines and prepare to be boarded.”
Quinn frowned and shifted the main impulse drive to standby. He looked at Terrell and frowned. “To paraphrase the immortal words of General George Custer: Crap.”
“The Klingons have locked a tractor beam onto the Rocinante,” Sorak reported from his jury-rigged console.
Captain Nassir hung his head with disappointment. He had hoped that the capture of his own vessel might distract the Klingons long enough to permit the small tramp freighter to escape. Apparently, the Klingons had made important strides in sensor-jamming, enough to catch Mr. Quinn unaware.
The bridge portal slid open with a soft hiss. Razka entered with an open satchel slung across his torso and resting at his left hip. As soon as he was inside the door, he handed a phaser and a spare power cell to Sorak, who accepted them and checked the weapon’s settings. “The top-deck crew is armed and ready to repel boarders, Captain,” Razka said.
“Very good, Chief,” Nassir said, nodding his thanks as Razka handed him a phaser. As the Saurian scout continued around the bridge handing out weapons, Nassir asked McLellan, “Status of the Klingon ship?”
McLellan checked her console. “Still reeling us in, sir,” she said, pocketing the phaser that Razka handed to her. “Their shields are still up.”
“Not that it matters,” Nassir said. “We overloaded our phasers fending off the Shedai.” A hopeful thought occurred to him. “Any chance the Rocinante’s armed?”
The slender brunette shook her head. “No, sir.”
Xiong received his phaser as zh’Firro set hers on her lap. Having finished dispersing sidearms to the crew, Razka closed his satchel and drew a fearsome-looking knife from a sheath on his belt. He tested its gleaming edge with one delicate, bulbous green fingertip. “Ready to give the Klingons a warm welcome, Captain.”
Nassir checked his own phaser and verified that it was set for heavy stun. The use of a higher, potentially lethal setting was unnecessary and, in the close confines of such a small vessel, most likely foolish. One missed shot at full power might fatally compromise the hull. He hoped that the Klingons would realize that when they came aboard and adjust their disruptors accordingly. Then he hoped that Klingon disruptors had a setting other than “fry everything.”
He swallowed hard. The dryness in his throat was painful, and nervousness stirred up the acid in his gut. Never too old to be scared, the middle-aged Deltan mused. He tightened his grip on his phaser and prepared to face the inevitable.
Everyone else on the bridge except Xiong seemed calm about the imminent arrival of the boarding party. The young A&A officer trembled, and his hands shook so badly that he could barely be trusted to aim his phaser. “Are we really taking on a Klingon boarding party?”
“Of course we are, Ming,” Nassir said. “This situation calls for a stupid and utterly futile gesture to be done on somebody’s part, and I think we’re just the crew to do it.”
The captain held a straight face and enjoyed Xiong’s stunned, slackened expression for a few seconds. Then the younger man surrendered to the moment and laughed low and ruefully at their predicament.
Good, Nassir thought. Better to go out in high spirits.
Sorak turned from his console and stood up, phaser in hand. “The Klingons have lowered their shields and begun scanning us and the Rocinante for transport.”
“Here we go,” Nassir said, standing up to steel his nerves for the coming fray. He watched the image of the Zin’za on the main viewer—and flinched with surprise as a volley of charged plasma shots struck it amidships, battering its secondary hull and peppering its warp nacelles and impulse drive. Instantly dealt a savage blow, the ship’s bow pitched downward as the vessel rolled to port.
“Stations!” Nassir snapped, pushing himself back into his chair. “Sorak! Report!”
“Weapons fire from the Tholian ship,” the Vulcan said. “Heavy damage to the Klingons’ impulse drive, shields, life support, and weapons.”
McLellan cut in, “Tractor beams disengaged, sir! We’re free to navigate!”
“Sayna,” Nassir said, and before he could finish the sentence zh’Firro had already accelerated the Sagittarius to full impulse away from the Klingons. The captain looked back at McLellan. “The Rocinante?”
“Free and breaking away,” she said. “The Tholians are pursuing the Zin’za.”
Nassir eyed the swiftly changing situation on the main viewer. “Will the Klingons fight it out?”
“Negative, sir,” McLellan said. “They’re breaking orbit.”
“Confirmed,” Sorak added. “The Zin’za is powering up its warp nacelles for—” On the main viewer the Zin’za vanished to warp speed in a colorful blur. From behind it, the Tholian warship was cruising toward the Sagittarius.
Now to find out if we’re next on the Tholians’ hit list, Nassir worried. “McLellan, hail the Tholians, request a parley. Sorak, contact the Rocinante, tell them to make a run for it.” He thumbed open a comm channel to the top deck. “Master Chief? ETA to a working warp drive?”
“Almost fixed, Skipper,” Ilucci said. “Two more minutes.”
McLellan removed a Feinberger transceiver from her ear and reported, “The Tholians don’t answer our hails, Captain.”
The hulking, triple-wedge-shaped hull of the Tholian battleship filled the entire frame of the main viewer. It was all but on top of the Sagittarius. Nassir threw a perplexed look over his shoulder at Sorak, who reviewed his console’s readouts.
“No sign of weapons lock by the Tholians,” Sorak said. “No indication that they are scanning us in any manner.” The ship vanished into the top frame of the viewscreen, leaving only stars and the curve of Jinoteur IV. A moment later, Sorak added, “The Tholian ship has jumped to warp, sir.”
McLellan silenced a beeping signal on her console. “It’s the Rocinante, sir. They’re asking if we’re all right.”
“Tell them we’re fine,” Nassir said, heaving a sigh of relief. Around the bridge, hunched shoulders relaxed, held breaths were exhaled, and exhaustion long denied took hold.
Then Xiong went and ruined the moment. “Captain,” he said, the worry in his tone instantly setting the rest of the crew back on edge. “We’re picking up some really wild readings throughout the Jinoteur system.” Flipping some toggle switches next to the sensor hood, he continued, “Major gravimetric fluctuations, disruptions of subspace and regular space-time. It looks like a subspatial compression with a diameter of—”
“Sum it up, Ming.”
Xiong stood and looked Nassir in the eye. “A wrinkle in space-time is crushing this star system. We need to go to warp in the next sixty seconds, or we’re all dead.”
“Bridy Mac,” Nassir said, “if the Rocinante has warp speed, tell them to go. I mean it this time. Sayna, lay in a course, maximum warp.” Thumbing open the top-deck channel, he finished, “Master Chief, it’s now or never.”