Blind Bird's Flight

[Joe Manning 0]

The Zoalus IV horizon drifted slowly down the viewscreen as Sal pulled the nose of the Bird of Prey upward. The ship continued to tremble as the impulse engine, controlled manually by Shane and Nickles, strained against the planet's gravity and the friction of the atmosphere. The chill of the ship's fading life support was being fought off by the heat bleeding through the hull. The crew would need to worry that they might cook alive inside the Klingon ship, if not for the danger of the engines failing and the ship falling to the surface after its failed attempt to break orbit. And that was not even the primary concern.

 

Another torpedo streaked past the viewscreen. The shots from above were getting closer. Qob's cloaking drive masked both the ship and the burn of its ascent, but the engine trail was distinct enough to reveal the ship's presence and its general location. As Qob pitched upward, the trail would match the ship's position even more closely. The guesswork precision of the unknown assailant above would become more accurate. Qob might have been blasted out of the sky before its engines had the chance to fail.

 

Despite the emptiness of his bourbon flask, Joe found himself handling his imminent death well. It seemed that with each ill-fated mission, his acceptance of his coming demise was more and more firm. Brushing with death repeatedly could have that effect. Knowing how much closer each passing day brought a natural death was equally desensitizing. As Joe gripped the armrests of his chair -- more to stabilize his body than to ease tension -- he found that his chief emotion was pity for his pilot, struggling against all hope to save the crew. Sal was too young to die.

 

Sal gripped the yoke of Qob as the atmosphere pounded against their efforts. The ground was inevitably getting closer and Sal was forced to think on his feet. Any action that he took now would have to be driven by pure instinct. There was simply no time for any chain of command. The last thing on his mind was death, as it should be with any well trained pilot in any man’s service.

 

He thought about skipping stones as a child, off the surface of a lake and imagined that the current situation was similar. With the correct velocity and pitch combination, even the force of gravity could be averted. The atmosphere of Zoalus IV was much denser than Mars, denser than Earth by a factor of 12%. It had made their breathing on the surface slightly labored as he recalled. This was now an advantage of which Sal used.

 

Joe coughed, perhaps not loudly enough to be heard. He felt liquid in his throat and a faint coppery tinge on his tongue. At least his death would be quick.

 

Then, so gradually that it could barely be noticed, yet so quickly that it caught Joe by surprise, Qob slipped out of the atmosphere and broke free of the planet's gravitational pull. Only the stars were visible on the viewscreen then. Only the impulse engine died, Qob escaping as the old movie scripts always dictated -- just in time. The ship was now being hurtled by its own momentum through the welcoming infinite void.

 

The torpedoes stopped falling. Joe's rage started growing.

 

"Good work, Sal." Joe said, and he was as sincere as could be. He rubbed his lower lip with the back of his hand; it was dry. His ODRI arm still raised, he tapped the device's comm control. "Engineering, we made it out in one piece. Nicely done. Assuming you can't get our sensors back online, I want to move on to directional thrusts. We'll need to collect some good old-fashioned visual data, from the front viewer up here and the nearest viewports down there."

 

Sal took a brief moment to acknowledge his captain’s relief, “That’s what you pay me for, sir.” He chuckled but wasn’t being smug. Sal often let his comic demure lead in tense situation.

 

The bright Zoalus sun poured onto the bridge. The billowing clouds against the light green-blue sky indicated that it was a pleasant day below. This picture soon changed as Qob entered the cloud bank and rose above it. The sky slowly became darker and darker as they slipped higher until finally it turned back to the inky black of normal space. Now, they were no longer fighting against the heavy blanket and there was a slight and often unfelt release. Sal felt it though. He also knew that the boys down in engineering felt it too.

 

Back in the Engineering hull, the small access hatch to the impulse engines slid open to allow Shane to stomp out on his way to Main Engineering. With his good hand, he wiped some of the sweat and grime out of his scowling eyes and tapped the comm activation key on his ODRI. As they had broken orbit, the impulse reaction chamber shielding had begun to fail without proper automated monitoring and Shane had been forced to cut off all the engine systems manually. The close call had left him even more irritated then before. That red-eyed engineer had better not show up around the cyborg again, if he wanted to keep his face intact. "Manuverin' thrusters will be back on in a few minutes. I can try to get ya partial short range sensors, but no promises."

 

The tension had eased on the bridge and Sal wondered if the same was true below. They had averted only one danger though, Sal thought to himself. He still had little to no visibility with the exterior sensors off line, no maneuvering control with the thrusters on the blink and he could tell that Qob was in a dead lateral spin as the fixed star pattern slowly rotated. There was nothing he could do right now to resolve this.

 

For the moment, it had seemed that the missiles had also been avoided but there was no real way of knowing the truth of this. Their view was simply too limited. They still had no control of the ship's attitude. Applying any impulse thrust at this point would merely increase the velocity of their spin. Sal was thankful that the engineers below at least realized this.

 

Their hands were tied. It was all up to Shane to slowly get the other systems up and running one at a time. Sal could sort of perceive this work progress as his board lit here and there but it was erratic and often blinked and flickered on and back off. He didn't dare touch anything presently.

 

 

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The two ships were locked in place on Qob's front viewer as the Bird of Prey glided on a perfect straight line toward a point directly between them, such was the precision of Sal's maneuvering with thrusters alone. The Gular science ship was tucked under the saucer of the considerably larger Constellation class vessel, looking as exposed and vulnerable as it had when the raiders launched their failed hijacking attempt. The two ships were still, a comfortable gap between them providing ample room for Qob to slip in.

 

It had taken almost a minute of spinning around in place, trying to locate either the Capricorn, the Verbistul, or signs that either ship had been destroyed. Maxwell had executed a takeover, that much was clear; Lazarus' escape could not have been pulled off without control of Capricorn's transporters, and Gular science ships were not armed with torpedoes. But what had been happening since? Was Capricorn's crew resisting? Was Verbistul's crew being kept in the dark? Were the Verbistul crew on Capricorn controlling the transporters and torpedoes, or was Grotte's tampering still being exploited? Qob's blindness was the most frustrating symptom of her computer's mangled state.

 

"Shane," Joe spoke into his ODRI. "I want you to try to restore enough control of the sensors that we can intercept communications. If we manage to grab any audio, I want it piped either up here to the Bridge speakers or to my ODRI. Looks like it's about ten minutes before we're in position.

 

"Work on the disruptors too if you can spare the time."

 

He would not even give priority to life support. With such a small crew complement there was time enough for that. Weapons could be needed at a moment's notice.

 

After a few minutes the bridge's audio suddenly sounded with Shane's deep growl, "I've got enough sensor control for short range audio reception, I'll pipe it through in a sec. Automated targetin' systems for the disruptors are a no go if we want the keep what control we have left. Doesn't mean the Qob still ain't got a nasty bite. I've managed to activate the manual targetin' system in the ol' targetin' scope above your head, Cap'n, just lower it with the switch on your chair. Hope you're a good shot."