The Continuing Story of Deep Space 2: Page 13
Davis felt a slight tingling sensation, and found himself lying face-up on the transporterpad of what appeared to be a runabout. For some reason his head had suddenly begun hurting, and his eyes were having trouble locking on to anything for any length of time.
As he started to rise, the craft lurched to port, but he managed to keep his footing, and move to stand behind the pilot's chair.
"Hello: they call me Luke Davis, thanks for the rescue!", he said, as his eyes began seeing things in focus again . . .
"Well they call me Major Jan. Do you happen to know anything usefull about that ship out there ?--We don't have much in the way of fire power, and our shields are at 40%.", the
individual at the main console responded.
The ship shook violantly, and he amended his statement: "Make that 32%."
"I know enough to put her out of action: got any torps ?"
"Nope: no launchers."
"Ah: quite unfortunate.", Davis responded, walking to a workstation and sitting down.
"There are things we can do with these phasers, but--".
Davis was cut off by a minor explosion, and the loss of gravity.
"There go the shields; I suggest we hall our sixes out of here, while the engines still work.", Major Jan said as he moved towards the rear of the craft, and a console that still worked.
"You may have a point there.", Luke said, picking him self off of the deck for the third time in one day.
As the phasers locked on for what would have been the final shot for the nearly helpless runabout, their target flashed to warp 8.5. Seconds later, the Pennsylvania accellerated to warp 9 to over take, but the runabout went to maximum speed, which was slightly too fast for the larger ship.
Commander Arthur had already seen his XO tactics before. The DS2 computer had identified the Starship as the USS Pennsylvania, Intrepid Class. Arthur didn't need any communication with the major to know what he was doing. To get that starship in firing range of DS2, in which case there would be a better position to talk about terms. The marine major was not the only one who had recognised the maneuvers of the Pennsylvania as Maquis maneuvers. His commanding officer wasn't exactly blind.
"Nadine, when is the Pennsylvania in firing range ?"
"Six minutes, fifteen seconds sir."
At that moment chief enginner Louis contacted ops to report that the transporters were on line again. He did not have any clue of how it had happened. Jan Roel and he were trying to get the phaser subprocessor off line. They were still working on it.
"Why are the transporters on line ?", whispered the commander only heard by himself. His thoughts continued the line. "Everything on this station seems to be fixed from the moment we have arrived here." What could we do with transporters ? Jan had a luxorious time to dock on the station before the Pennsylvania could get him."
"ETA runabout Alpha in four minutes, Pennsylvania in firing range in five minutes."
Nadines voice was the only sound in the silent operations center. That brought a few memories back. The commander of Deep Space 2 was once a marine captain who was the only one who could retaliate on the enemy. Jan was down, heavily hurt and Nadine taking care of him. The sand pit they were in didn't have a lot of cover ... the memory faded away.
"Alpha in docking position in one minute. Starship in firing range in two minutes and thirty seconds.", reported Nadine and she added: "Sir, I suggest that we take out the starship before it can shoot at us."
"Nadine", commander Arthur jumped forward, "when is that starship in transporter range ?"
"Sir ?" A moment of surprise. "About now sir..."