FanFic - DP/UF - Crossroads [16]
MegaZone
---------------------------------------------------------------SIXTEEN
"War is hell."
--General William Tecumseh Sherman
"Fuck me." Admiral MegaZone saw the beam rip a hole rip
through the Dyson Sphere and almost destroy the Arizona. "Jesus, we
have to get out there. Asrial, time to door?"
"Fifteen seconds."
The turbolift door opened, and out strode ReRob, still in his
radsuit. "Reflex Cannon Mark Two. This I gotta see."
"Take a seat, Rob. Enjoy." Rob went over to the bridge
Engineering console and set up shop.
The tactical commander on board the Vanguard had been studying
the Phoenix. He noted that, as it was about the only ship in its
class, it had been tangling with fighters ever since the combat began.
And it had racked up an impressive number of kills. This was getting
expensive. The Buma issued an order.
Some of the hot white light emanating from the Ikazuchi
Vanguard diverted from its regular targets to attack the Phoenix.
Across the main screen of the Phoenix, lasers hammered away at
her shields. Deedlit spun the bird hard to down starboard.
Kevin almost attacked his console, punching in commands.
"Meph, that last barrage was from portside aft Ikazuchi. I have her
pinged." Whenever that ship would show up on the screen now, it would
show a computerized identification halo.
"Thanks, Bitch. Satori, evade pinged Ikazuchi and go in for a
run if you can."
"Aye." The Phoenix, as she was wont to do, spun madly evading
fire attempts. But her hunter was relying on the simple law of
averages. They spun around to the other side of the Ikazuchi, getting
to the side of the ship where the batteries were busy pummeling the
Kansas and thus leaving the original arc of fire. "Cheryl, ready the
wing torps--vectoring in! Five, four..."
The gunner's orders were to fire upon the Kansas, and he was
doing this with startling efficiency. The ship they had chased
halfway across the galaxy flew into his arc of fire. That did not
change his orders. Then it began to aim towards his ship. That did
change his orders.
Across the starboard side of the Vanguard, twenty other
gunners came to the same decision.
"...three..."
Wham! The bridge exploded in a thousand points of light.
Kevin scanned his panel and turned to the command chair.
"Meph, forward deflectors are..." Meph's head had become thoroughly
entangled in the tactical holotank. Cheryl slumped across her wrecked
gunnery console, dead.
Deedlit saw Cheryl's position and aborted the run, wrapping
around the Kansas. She had no choice but to trap the bird in the
crossfire between the two dreadnoughts. She turned her head,
surveying the damage. She saw her captain mutilated and Kevin sitting
there in pure shock. She tried to break him out of it: "Tefft!
Damage report!"
Kevin got back to his senses, at least temporarily. "Lost
forward deflectors, hit to warp core. Estimate three minutes to
catastrophic failure!"
"Dump the--" and Deedlit stopped herself. The warp core to
the Phoenix was not dumpable; the nacelle was the main body of the
ship, and the intermix chamber and fuel tankage all hardmounted.
Evacuation procedure was to transport to the Daedalus, which the
Phoenix was meant to tow. But the Daedalus was back on Musashi, as
they needed to make their mad dash here to UP. The bridge, unpowered,
was ejectable from her station, but that would leave it in the
crossfire. She decided she would wait a few seconds.
"Captain!" Saavik shouted. Gryphon turned; he could trust the
fire control and evasion to Rick and Max for the moment.
"What is it, Commander?"
"I have a contact bearing four four three mark one six.
Exposed warp core emissions, very bad damage."
"On screen."
The Phoenix appeared on the viewer, drifting without power.
Her warp nacelle was shattered, the coils visible in three or four
places. Sensor information drifted over the viewer, superimposed.
Concordia's computer gave her two minutes to live, perhaps less, until
the magnetic field integrity on the antimatter fuel supply and
intermix chamber collapsed. Already, subspace interference from the
chaotic energy states on board the small vessel was making sensor scan
difficult.
"Vanessa, get me a hailing frequency. Phoenix, this is
Concordia, do you read? What is your situation?"
The Concordia ate static; Phoenix's comm system had been
destroyed some time ago.
The deck shook slightly underneath Gryphon; his vessel was
coming under fire from the Vanguard itself. "Helm," he ordered, "put
us between that Ikazuchi and the Phoenix. Our shields can handle
their firepower for a while, correct?"
"Correct, sir, but I wouldn't push them after the beating they
took from Dreadnaught," Finney advised.
"Your advice is noted. Can you use phaser batteries to cut
the warp assembly free from the rest of the ship?"
"I might, sir, if I had a couple of minutes--but I don't. We
wouldn't be able to clear the warp core's explosion radius, in any
event."
Gryphon weighed the risk to his ship against the lives on that
vessel, some of whom--most of whom--were his friends, and came to a
decision.
"Jamie, can we handle that Ikazuchi's firepower for twenty
seconds without shields?"
"Beam them over, Captain?"
"It's the only chance they've got."
Finney scanned her monitors and replied, "Aye, sir, I think
so. Armor structure is fairly nominal--but it'll be tight."
"It'll have to do." He slammed a hand onto his intercom.
"Transporter room, this is the Captain. Tie across to Commander
Saavik's panel and lock onto damaged vessel's lifesigns, all speed, at
my mark." He looked at the screen; the Phoenix, by the computer's
reckoning, had thirty seconds remaining. "Mr. Finney, lower the
shields. Transporter room, mark!" He tabbed another control as the
vessel's spaceframe shuddered with a laser barrage. "Sickbay, I need
emergency units in main transporter room stat! I'm on my way.
Saavik, take the conn." He got up and ran into the turbolift.
Deedlit's finger hovered over the ejection switch just a
moment too long; a last broadside from Vanguard destroyed the
batteries and shut down all ship's power. A final explosion ripped
through the bridge just as she jumped to her feet. She felt a sharp
pain in her side and began to stumble as a sudden cold dislocation
swept over her. Everything turned blue.
Gryphon pounded through the door to the transporter room right
behind Dr. Selar and the medics. On the platform were three bloodied
forms in the final stages of materialization; on the other side of the
platform, another pattern was struggling to materialize, the field
fluctuating wildly, indeterminate. The transporter technician was
stabbing madly at her controls, trying to stabilize the signal,
sweating and cursing as the red emergency light began to wink faster
and faster and the pattern on the platform became less and less
determinate--
--and then it was gone, flickering out of existence like a
mirage.
"No!" the chief shouted, slamming a fist down on her panel.
"Damn it, no! I had her, she was right there--"
Gryphon scanned the platform. Kevin was there, the least
injured, obviously in emotional shock and physical pain. His left arm
seemed to be broken. One of the medics took him aside and began
treating his wound. Cheryl was slumped on another pad, looking very
poorly off; Selar ran a medscanner over her, then gave terse orders to
two of the medics that she be taken to intensive care stat. The
tightness in Gryphon's chest eased just a tad; she was apparently
still alive. One less death in the madness.
The third figure on the platform was Meph, Basic Nastiness'
majordomo. Gryphon hadn't really known him, and now it looked as
though he would never get a chance, since most of the man's head was
missing. When Selar glanced at him, Gryphon could almost swear he saw
a pained look cross the Vulcan's face, just for a moment.
With a sudden cold shock it hit him that the missing person,
the pattern that the chief had lost, had been Deedlit Mandeville. He
keyed his communicator, knowing full well that, save for Rob, the
people that were accounted for were the vessel's entire crew; his
trained professionalism blew through his emotions like a gale wind for
a moment's work.
"Bridge! Jamie, get those shields up!"
"The shields are already up, Captain," Saavik's voice
answered. "They were raised as soon as transporter function ceased.
Any longer and we risked losing pressure to M and N decks."
"Good work, Commander."
"Captain, may I inquire of the status--"
"I'll be up shortly. Gryphon out." He flipped the
communicator off over Saavik's unspoken protest, and turned to the
chief, who was by this time beside herself with rage at her own
self-perceived incompetence.
"I'm sorry, Captain, I tried--there was so much subspace
interference, the signal was so weak--I blew it, sir, I cost Commander
Satori her life. I'll resign imm--"
"No, that won't be necessary, Chief," Gryphon said in a tired
voice. He felt old. "It was a tough job, and you performed
exceptionally. The subspace interference was so strong you
shouldn't've been able to transport any of them across...be glad we
saved the ones we did." He turned to Selar and had a quick conference
with her, then returned to the bridge.
On the bridge of the Wandering Child a few seconds earlier,
ReRob had gasped, his head snapping up and his eyes focusing at
infinity for a brief instant. Rather than announcing, "Degauss," as
he usually did after such a nervous twitch (he was accustomed to them;
medical personnel had never been able to figure out a cause), he
whispered, "Deedlit?"
"Rob?" Zoner asked, noticing his friend's discomfort. "What's
wrong?"
Rob shook his head, trying to come back to himself. "Uh,
nothing. I don't know. I guess nothing." Inside, he knew, something
was wrong, something had happened. What, though?
But they were clearing the doors. There was no time for that
now.