Star Trek: The Empty Chair by Diane Duane Page B

stricken ship.
“Captain,”
Ael said,
“I would say we have a problem here.”
    “You would say right,” Jim said, not taking his eyes off tactical. “Sulu—”
    “Coming about, Captain.”
    But not for more than a second, as
Kartadza
swung around, abandoning
Bloodwing
and coming after
Enterprise
instead. Once more Sulu headed nadirward, for the belt, but only a few seconds later
Melikaphkaz
was arrowing straight at
Enterprise,
cutting her off. Sulu had to veer away, twisting, to avoid collision, and
Enterprise’
s hull groaned from stem to stern as he did it. As the Klingon fired at them from behind, and the ship shuddered with the impacts, Sulu dove back down again, but once again
Melikaphkaz
got between them and the belt, and once again Sulu had to veer away.
    Jim let out a bitter breath. The burning clouds in the asteroid belt and the peculiar spectral readings coming from them had told the Klingons perfectly well what had happened in the belt. They were not going to allow any ship to take refuge there.
They’re going to make us fight in the open, cut us to pieces.
    In the tactical display,
Bloodwing
was describing another long arc that would bring her back toward
Enterprise.
She started firing at
Kartadza,
but without effect—the range was too great. Jim watched her come, wondering how much longer they had.
Kartadza
was swelling in the screen’s view aft. “Shields,” he said to Spock.
    “Down to thirty percent, Captain.”
    Spock did not have to say,
We cannot take any more of this.
Jim heard it quite clearly in his tone, and swallowed.
    It only remains to see how many of them we can take with us.
“Mr. Sulu,” Jim said.
    “Enterprise,” Courhig’s voice came suddenly. “Bloodwing—
we have incoming.”
    More Klingons,
Jim thought.
All right, this is it.
    It was always strange, how being about to die made you feel more alive. None of that nonsense about your life passing before your eyes. The last breathing seconds of life
now
were too intense and dear to waste on retrospectives. Jim sat up straight in the center seat, took in what was happening on the tactical display. “Let’s sell ourselves dearly, Mr. Sulu,” he said. “
Kartadza
first.”
    Sulu spared him just a glance. “Aye aye, sir,” he said, and turned back to his console, then said, suddenly, “Warp ingress, Captain!”
    Chekov added, “
Massive
vessel, Captain.” He actually sounded a little shaken. “Decelerating hard.”
    “Onscreen!”
    The view changed. Jim looked out into the darkness—and stared.
    He had never seen anything quite like it. Big ships, yes, and tremendous habitats and facilities like
Mascrar
and the starbase at Hamal. But this was something else entirely. It was a triple-hulled design, all three of the huge backswept, cylindrical hulls mounted in parallel, at hundred-and-twenty degree angles, in a mighty central framework. Each main hull had to be at least three kilometers long. If
Mascrar
had been a city, this was more like a county, or even a very small country. And a well-armed one, as a swarm of smaller vessels came bursting away from it, bright small sparks shooting toward the ships that had been arcing in toward
Enterprise
and
Bloodwing—
and were now already beginning, entirely understandably, to veer away.
    “Uhura, hail that vessel!” Jim said. “Find out what it’s called.”
    “The cavalry?” Sulu said under his breath.
    Jim was half inclined to agree. Uhura was speaking softly to her console. “Captain,” she said after a moment, “they ID themselves as the Free Rihannsu vessel
Tyrava.”
    “Greet them,” Jim said, “and tell them we’d be glad to talk to them when things quiet down.”
    “They acknowledge,” Uhura said.
    Jim nodded and watched the ship flash past. Away behind them, as Sulu spun
Enterprise
in yaw on her central axis to bring her best weapons to bear, the five Klingon vessels still able to move took one look at
Tyrava,
flipped themselves, and fled.
    Not fast