9: The Attack
At least there was a hum, he could feel it under his hand. The Lydia’s core was intact.
"Yes, sir. Our core is operating at 83% of normal function -- "
Hornblower had not realized, until then, that he had been speaking aloud. That was why no one else had spoken, why he had heard no reports. He must have been rambling on in the darkness, talking to himself, and the embarrassment at his lapse would have driven him wild with self-loathing except the lights suddenly returned, and Hornblower saw another reason why there had been quiet: Clay was dead. Half his body was charred; what had been his left arm still smoked, and it was possible to see, through the blackening, the beginnings of a jaw and an ear.
Knyvett was on his knees next to the body, barely moving himself. This was Knyvett’s first tour, probably the first time he had seen death. Hornblower remembered the brightness intensity of the shower of sparks that accompanied the direct hit.
"Leave him, Mr. Knyvett." A few weeks earlier, the medical crew would have been automatically alerted. But they were already dead.
"Mr. Gerard," Hornblower rapped out. It was an excellent distraction from Clay. "What is the status of the enemy?"
Gerard, damn him, sounded calm. "Natividad holding at a distance of 5,000 klicks. No weapons powered, and they're dead in the water. They took some damage on the broadside from us, and - there are hull breaches in three of fourteen decks."
"Our engines?"
"Warp engines are gone, sir," Knyvett had, as ordered, returned to his seat. His voice began shaky, but became steadier as he on and settled to his duty. "Fire suppression systems activated and operating on decks 3 and 7. Left impulse at 38% -- no 20%. Sir, it’s failing rapidly, the right is completely offline.”
Damn, damn, damn. “Engineering, report!” Hornblower called over his comm.
Silence. Damn, damn, damn, damn. He’d have Galbraith’s hide if he was being cantankerous and re-routing the comm power to some other, theoretically more urgent priority.
“Sir, no one is answering in engineering.”
It took Hornblower a moment to realize that it was Bush that was speaking. Damn his own ears, too. They weren’t working properly; he only hoped that they hadn’t been damaged, and he turned to look at Bush, so as not to miss what she might say - she was furiously working at reconnecting wires and shunting pathways on the side of the command console. The white sleeve of her formal jacket was a vivid color.
Bush was covered in blood from finger tip to elbow.
“Sir, are you hurt?” she asked in a surprisingly flat tone of voice, blood falling down her face from a large gash across her forehead.
He looked where she was pointing and found, with a little surprise, that she was pointing to him. She wanted to know about his hand, for some reason, and the words seemed to stick in his mouth. He could feel her eyes on him; he knew that the others on the bridge must be looking at him if they weren’t entirely absorbed by their own work; but he could feel hers, quite clearly, on him.
“No,” he replied. “It’s yours.”
He was saved by the triumph of re-routing. “Gotcha,” Bush muttered. There was a burst of static.
“Engineering here, sir. Crewman Harrison, sir,” came a wavering voice half covered in static.
“Where’s Galbraith?” Bush demanded.
“Dead, Commander. I-I guess I’m in command down here now.”
“Your status, crewman,” Hornblower snapped.
“We’re trying to suppress fires in the engine ro-“
Harrison’s last word was cut off as the bridge seemed to be pulled out from under their feet, and Hornblower fell to the deck once more, Bush’s boots dangerously close to his head. Gerard was yelling something indistinguishable about the damage dealt to the Nativdad.
From the deck, Hornblower thought he heard himself bark commands at Gerard, order Knyvett to engage portside thrusters for evasive maneuvers. It was remarkably coolly done; surely, it could not have been him, and as he rose to his feet, Hornblower noted smoke on the bridge. The fire suppression systems were failing. The air stung in his eyes, both smoke and atmospheric contamination from leaking console lines or burning electronics. It was desperate.
“Harrison!” he shouted, as if that would make a difference if engineering had been destroyed. “Status!”
The voice was slightly garbled. “No chance of moving anytime soon, sir. That last broadside took out the impulse engines.”
“Sir, hull breach on decks 7 and 8, we’re venting atmosphere!” Knyvett yelled over the noise.
“Seal them off!” Hornblower shouted, noticing that his voice had cracked as it climbed an octave or two. There were crewmen that might be trapped on those decks; sealing them off meant certain, immediate death in the vacuum of space. But there was nothing he could do. The integrity of the ship and the lives of every other crewman depended on it, so Hornblower made the decision and did not think of it anymore.
The viewscreen was slowly coming back to life, its images clouded with static. Hornblower could see another arc of the storm buffeting the Natividad, pushing it further away from Gerard’s guns. Two photon torpedoes went wide of her ventral hull. Hornblower was suddenly reminded of a painting that Maria had hung in the living room, something she had chosen for its brightness of color rather than subject. He briefly wondered if he would be able to keep from screaming like the painting.
Hornblower squared his shoulders and wiped his hand on his jacket, his mind moving faster than the ailing computer systems around him. “Mr Gerard, continuing firing as the opportunity presents.” He turned to Bush, “Get down to engineering and establish some order. I want those nacelles stabilized.”
"Shall we wet the sails, sir?" she inquired.
It was an old trick for venting across the stern provide additional thrust at the expense of mobility. Sometimes, a broad stream of impulse vent would catch small solar winds for additional push.
"No. We'll tow with the shuttles, Mr. Bush. Have the Geertz and the Durkheim hoisted out. We'll take the fight to them."
There was approval in Bush's "Aye aye," and there was no sign of fear on her face as she turned to leave the deck, tapping her commbadge to relay orders. The door, though, wouldn’t cooperate. It was stuck, so she cursed at it, pulled it once or twice, and it finally opened to the smoke-free corridor beyond.
There was a small explosion somewhere near Gerard’s station, and it droned out whatever Bush was yelling behind him. When he turned his head to see the problem, he noticed a very flustered Lady Barbara standing in the corridor just beyond the bridge as she was pushed aside by an urgent Commander Bush. Looking slightly put out she made her way to the captain, careful of the debris littering the deck.
“Lady Barbara, what in hell are you doing on my bridge!” he demanded.
“I was trying to get back to my quarters when this-“
She stopped in shock as Hornblower started laughing, giggling even. Her eyebrows furrowed and she seemed to gather the full force of her anger to lash out at him. Hornblower was nearly hiccupping in his hysteria. She drew breath to answer and noticed that the captain’s face was covered with soot and strain, his formal uniform coat was torn in several places and the white fabric stained with blood. She bit her lip.
The high pitched giggling cut off suddenly as he pulled together the effort to address her grimly, “Deck 7 no longer has atmosphere, all you will find there now are the dead.”
“I see,” she said slowly.
“I suggest you make your way to the mess hall.”
The bridge shook anew.
“Forward shields down to 35%, sir!” Stahl yelled.
“Are we not returning fire Mr Gerard?” Hornblower roared, his throat raw from smoke and contaminated air. It was difficult, trying not to giggle again. Out of the corner of his eye he saw Lady Barbara flee the bridge as fast as her heeled boots would allow.
“…aptain…fires…” Hornblower could barely distinguish Bush’s voice through the static of the failing intercom. She must have made it to engineering. A few seconds more of static and it cut out altogether. Hornblower sighed deeply, eye fixed on the viewscreen and the listing Natividad.
It seemed as if hours passed as his crew dashed about around him, putting out fires and trying to repair what consoles were still functioning on the bridge. Gerard continued to shout out the results of his firing solutions, Stahl screamed out the erratic positions of both of the ships, now caught in the throws of the turbulent plasma storm. Inertial dampers were in danger of failing, Knyvett called out. Vaguely, he heard himself order auxiliary power to the dampening system but his voice seemed miles away. It would, however, do them no good to all die of impact wounds when the inertial dampers failed.
The Natividad was desperately trying to right itself, clearly its captain aware that the Lydia could easily hit her vulnerable ventral hull. Torpedoes and disrupters continued to emit from the Natividad’s multiple ports and canons, as if it were a dying animal in its death throws trying to claw its way out from under an attacker. Hornblower realized that if in the same situation, he would probably do the same thing.
“Sir! We have impulse engines back.”
“What?”
“Impulse engines at 5%!” Stahl yelled.
“Bring us in better range Mr Stahl, let’s finish this!” He felt the deck shudder as the impulse engines re-engaged. Hornblower suddenly realized that Bush and Harrison must have managed to rig something down in engineering to restore partial impulse power.
Gerard was opening phaser fire as Bush returned to the bridge, her chest heaving from the exertion of running up from engineering. “We should have impulse back up to 10% shortly, sir. If we don’t take another direct hit.”
“We’re safe from the storm for now Mr Bush.”
“Let’s hope another of these arms slams the Natividad, it could use another thrashing.”
Hornblower didn’t respond.
“The Geertz and the Durkheim are beginning to feel the effects of the storm, sir. Ensign T’lor is requesting permission to redock.”
Bush was studying the viewscreen and some numbers on the blinking console. “Spoonheads won’t be able to steer that tub clear of anything, looks like their thrusters are starting to fail. Klingons could never design-“
“Mr Bush I could do without the commentary,” Hornblower snapped.
She nodded sharply and moved away to help Stahl reconfigure the nav console. Phaser fire glanced off the Lydia’s port shields and the command rail vibrated slightly. Knyvett was dragging Clay’s and a young crewman’s body towards one of the turbolifts. The crewman was missing an arm and most of a leg. Hornblower found himself wishing that the crewman was dead, rather than have to live the rest of his life with replacement limbs.
Below the rail at the nav and tactical stations Gerard, Bush and Stahl were discussing the physics of the battle and the possibly death toll to be exacted. Hornblower shuddered as he heard the flat, cold-blooded tone with which they discussed the venting of decks 7 and 8, the explosions in engineering, the burning of the Natividad’s atmosphere. There was something in their demeanor, their years of service, that allowed them to use that language. It was something that Hornblower could never imitate and he cursed himself for his weakness. Weakness, again and again, precisely when his ship needed him.
“They’re firing without targeting computers, that last spread was a manual job,” Bush was saying as she roughly pulled a panel out of the op’s console and shoved it into the nav.
“No, they must have multiple targeting stations. Anyone with any mathematical ability could see those trajectories were program,” Stahl argued back as he kicked the panel closed. “Sensors show-“
“Sensors be damned, Lieutenant, use your eyes!” she shouted as she took Knyvett’s empty seat, visibly irritated with the navigational officer.
“Mr Stahl, how far would you say we are from the Natividad?” Hornblower asked calmly.
“Between 2,400 and 3,000 klicks, sir.”
The smoke on the bridge was beginning to clear a little, but it was still as thick as the fog in a Dickens holonovel, and the red alert lights gave it a hellish glow. The Natividad was again slammed by an arm of the storm, exposing its throat to the Lydia’s guns.
“Mr Gerard, concentrate fire on the aft plasma coils,” Hornblower ordered, his voice grim.
“Aye, sir,” Gerard said with a grin, his fingers moving fast on the console, his mouth twisted into an evil grin. “Targeting solution locked.”
“Fire.”
Two bright, gleaming photon torpedoes shot out from the bottom of the viewscreen, their trajectory clear and unobstructed.
“They’ll have to eject their warp core,” Bush remarked quietly.
The torpedoes slammed into the side of cruiser, rolling it over in space, the explosion lighting the gasses of the storm swirling around it.
Hornblower’s mind churned like the console under his hands. “Mr Stahl, pulls us back to safe distance.”
“Aye, aye.”
The Natividad was twisting in space as a chain of explosions tore through it. They weren’t ejecting their damaged warp core.
“Open a channel!” Hornblower ordered. “Commander,” he called. “Your warp core is going to explode! Eject your core and surrender!”
The viewscreen shifted from the battle to the Cardassian bridge. It was filled with flames, dead bodies slumped over consoles. The smoke and static were so thick that it was difficult to make out the face of the ship’s commander.
“Never!” the man shouted. He was about to scream something else when flames leapt up in front of his command chair and the feed abruptly cut off.
“Sir, the enemy ship-“
A tremendous explosion cut off whatever Stahl was going to say. The Natividad had burst into a hundred thousand million pieces, each moving with all the velocity that imploded antimatter could give it. Parts of the Natividad would litter this space for years, if not decades, until storms scattered them even farther.
“Survivors?” Hornblower said. It surprised him how cool his voice sounded.
Bush shook her head, “None, sir.” She stood and returned the chair to Knyvett.
“Course, sir?”
Hornblower barely heard Stahl’s request for a heading. In his exhaustion, he was mesmerized by the memory of one particular bit of debris from the Natividad; it was ovoid, but not perfectly so. He drew the tangents, calculated the velocities, and then plotted what its path would have been had the shields and the thick hull of the Lydia not stood in its way. It was a mechanical exercise; he could see, in his mind, the dotted line indicating its trajectory over his shoulder, a little between the edge of the command rail and the weapons console, at a speed high enough to take his head off. Thinking about the mathematic of it helped distract him from his headache and allowed him to provide Stahl with coordinates.
“Nicely done, sir” Bush said softly beside him.
It was soft enough that no one else would have been able to hear. He was about to chastise her with some overly curt snap. However, he allowed an equally soft, “Thank you, Mr Bush,” to escape his lips.
“Repair crews have been deployed, we’re pulling out of this storm. Should have long range communications back in a few hours.” Hornblower saw her hand angling for his lower arm, or maybe his shoulder. “Why don’t you try and get some rest sir-“
He roughly pulled his arm away, inwardly cursing her for trying to touch him in public, and instantly regretted his action when he saw the expression change on her face. Taking a kind tone, he said, “I should order you to get rest, Mr Bush, how long has it been since you slept?”
“About three days, sir.”
Hornblower realized that he had not slept in about the same time. “I’ll be in my ready room. Get your head and arm looked at, Commander.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Sir,” Stahl called, “We’re free of the plasma storm.”
Hornblower and Bush looked up at the fuzzy viewscreen - the Campranian coils, Hornblower guessed, damaged in the battle - and studied the expanse of empty space. There were stars, but distant.
“A calm, black space once again Mr Bush.”
“Black as the Earl of Hell’s riding boots, sir.”
Hornblower forced himself not to smile. He squared his shoulders and returned to a normal volume of speaking. “I shall be in my ready room, Commander. You have the bridge.”
As he left the bridge he could hear Bush behind him ordering Gerard to assemble a detail to gather the dead in a temporary morgue in cargo bay one. The lights flickered; it was the normal spectrum, not the auxiliary lights. Power was returning to normal, and the doors to his ready room even opened for him.
It took effort to move through them, and as they closed Hornblower thought he heard someone -- not Knyvett maybe the crewman whose station was near there -- whisper.
“Good old Horny.”
"Yes, sir. Our core is operating at 83% of normal function -- "
Hornblower had not realized, until then, that he had been speaking aloud. That was why no one else had spoken, why he had heard no reports. He must have been rambling on in the darkness, talking to himself, and the embarrassment at his lapse would have driven him wild with self-loathing except the lights suddenly returned, and Hornblower saw another reason why there had been quiet: Clay was dead. Half his body was charred; what had been his left arm still smoked, and it was possible to see, through the blackening, the beginnings of a jaw and an ear.
Knyvett was on his knees next to the body, barely moving himself. This was Knyvett’s first tour, probably the first time he had seen death. Hornblower remembered the brightness intensity of the shower of sparks that accompanied the direct hit.
"Leave him, Mr. Knyvett." A few weeks earlier, the medical crew would have been automatically alerted. But they were already dead.
"Mr. Gerard," Hornblower rapped out. It was an excellent distraction from Clay. "What is the status of the enemy?"
Gerard, damn him, sounded calm. "Natividad holding at a distance of 5,000 klicks. No weapons powered, and they're dead in the water. They took some damage on the broadside from us, and - there are hull breaches in three of fourteen decks."
"Our engines?"
"Warp engines are gone, sir," Knyvett had, as ordered, returned to his seat. His voice began shaky, but became steadier as he on and settled to his duty. "Fire suppression systems activated and operating on decks 3 and 7. Left impulse at 38% -- no 20%. Sir, it’s failing rapidly, the right is completely offline.”
Damn, damn, damn. “Engineering, report!” Hornblower called over his comm.
Silence. Damn, damn, damn, damn. He’d have Galbraith’s hide if he was being cantankerous and re-routing the comm power to some other, theoretically more urgent priority.
“Sir, no one is answering in engineering.”
It took Hornblower a moment to realize that it was Bush that was speaking. Damn his own ears, too. They weren’t working properly; he only hoped that they hadn’t been damaged, and he turned to look at Bush, so as not to miss what she might say - she was furiously working at reconnecting wires and shunting pathways on the side of the command console. The white sleeve of her formal jacket was a vivid color.
Bush was covered in blood from finger tip to elbow.
“Sir, are you hurt?” she asked in a surprisingly flat tone of voice, blood falling down her face from a large gash across her forehead.
He looked where she was pointing and found, with a little surprise, that she was pointing to him. She wanted to know about his hand, for some reason, and the words seemed to stick in his mouth. He could feel her eyes on him; he knew that the others on the bridge must be looking at him if they weren’t entirely absorbed by their own work; but he could feel hers, quite clearly, on him.
“No,” he replied. “It’s yours.”
He was saved by the triumph of re-routing. “Gotcha,” Bush muttered. There was a burst of static.
“Engineering here, sir. Crewman Harrison, sir,” came a wavering voice half covered in static.
“Where’s Galbraith?” Bush demanded.
“Dead, Commander. I-I guess I’m in command down here now.”
“Your status, crewman,” Hornblower snapped.
“We’re trying to suppress fires in the engine ro-“
Harrison’s last word was cut off as the bridge seemed to be pulled out from under their feet, and Hornblower fell to the deck once more, Bush’s boots dangerously close to his head. Gerard was yelling something indistinguishable about the damage dealt to the Nativdad.
From the deck, Hornblower thought he heard himself bark commands at Gerard, order Knyvett to engage portside thrusters for evasive maneuvers. It was remarkably coolly done; surely, it could not have been him, and as he rose to his feet, Hornblower noted smoke on the bridge. The fire suppression systems were failing. The air stung in his eyes, both smoke and atmospheric contamination from leaking console lines or burning electronics. It was desperate.
“Harrison!” he shouted, as if that would make a difference if engineering had been destroyed. “Status!”
The voice was slightly garbled. “No chance of moving anytime soon, sir. That last broadside took out the impulse engines.”
“Sir, hull breach on decks 7 and 8, we’re venting atmosphere!” Knyvett yelled over the noise.
“Seal them off!” Hornblower shouted, noticing that his voice had cracked as it climbed an octave or two. There were crewmen that might be trapped on those decks; sealing them off meant certain, immediate death in the vacuum of space. But there was nothing he could do. The integrity of the ship and the lives of every other crewman depended on it, so Hornblower made the decision and did not think of it anymore.
The viewscreen was slowly coming back to life, its images clouded with static. Hornblower could see another arc of the storm buffeting the Natividad, pushing it further away from Gerard’s guns. Two photon torpedoes went wide of her ventral hull. Hornblower was suddenly reminded of a painting that Maria had hung in the living room, something she had chosen for its brightness of color rather than subject. He briefly wondered if he would be able to keep from screaming like the painting.
Hornblower squared his shoulders and wiped his hand on his jacket, his mind moving faster than the ailing computer systems around him. “Mr Gerard, continuing firing as the opportunity presents.” He turned to Bush, “Get down to engineering and establish some order. I want those nacelles stabilized.”
"Shall we wet the sails, sir?" she inquired.
It was an old trick for venting across the stern provide additional thrust at the expense of mobility. Sometimes, a broad stream of impulse vent would catch small solar winds for additional push.
"No. We'll tow with the shuttles, Mr. Bush. Have the Geertz and the Durkheim hoisted out. We'll take the fight to them."
There was approval in Bush's "Aye aye," and there was no sign of fear on her face as she turned to leave the deck, tapping her commbadge to relay orders. The door, though, wouldn’t cooperate. It was stuck, so she cursed at it, pulled it once or twice, and it finally opened to the smoke-free corridor beyond.
There was a small explosion somewhere near Gerard’s station, and it droned out whatever Bush was yelling behind him. When he turned his head to see the problem, he noticed a very flustered Lady Barbara standing in the corridor just beyond the bridge as she was pushed aside by an urgent Commander Bush. Looking slightly put out she made her way to the captain, careful of the debris littering the deck.
“Lady Barbara, what in hell are you doing on my bridge!” he demanded.
“I was trying to get back to my quarters when this-“
She stopped in shock as Hornblower started laughing, giggling even. Her eyebrows furrowed and she seemed to gather the full force of her anger to lash out at him. Hornblower was nearly hiccupping in his hysteria. She drew breath to answer and noticed that the captain’s face was covered with soot and strain, his formal uniform coat was torn in several places and the white fabric stained with blood. She bit her lip.
The high pitched giggling cut off suddenly as he pulled together the effort to address her grimly, “Deck 7 no longer has atmosphere, all you will find there now are the dead.”
“I see,” she said slowly.
“I suggest you make your way to the mess hall.”
The bridge shook anew.
“Forward shields down to 35%, sir!” Stahl yelled.
“Are we not returning fire Mr Gerard?” Hornblower roared, his throat raw from smoke and contaminated air. It was difficult, trying not to giggle again. Out of the corner of his eye he saw Lady Barbara flee the bridge as fast as her heeled boots would allow.
“…aptain…fires…” Hornblower could barely distinguish Bush’s voice through the static of the failing intercom. She must have made it to engineering. A few seconds more of static and it cut out altogether. Hornblower sighed deeply, eye fixed on the viewscreen and the listing Natividad.
It seemed as if hours passed as his crew dashed about around him, putting out fires and trying to repair what consoles were still functioning on the bridge. Gerard continued to shout out the results of his firing solutions, Stahl screamed out the erratic positions of both of the ships, now caught in the throws of the turbulent plasma storm. Inertial dampers were in danger of failing, Knyvett called out. Vaguely, he heard himself order auxiliary power to the dampening system but his voice seemed miles away. It would, however, do them no good to all die of impact wounds when the inertial dampers failed.
The Natividad was desperately trying to right itself, clearly its captain aware that the Lydia could easily hit her vulnerable ventral hull. Torpedoes and disrupters continued to emit from the Natividad’s multiple ports and canons, as if it were a dying animal in its death throws trying to claw its way out from under an attacker. Hornblower realized that if in the same situation, he would probably do the same thing.
“Sir! We have impulse engines back.”
“What?”
“Impulse engines at 5%!” Stahl yelled.
“Bring us in better range Mr Stahl, let’s finish this!” He felt the deck shudder as the impulse engines re-engaged. Hornblower suddenly realized that Bush and Harrison must have managed to rig something down in engineering to restore partial impulse power.
Gerard was opening phaser fire as Bush returned to the bridge, her chest heaving from the exertion of running up from engineering. “We should have impulse back up to 10% shortly, sir. If we don’t take another direct hit.”
“We’re safe from the storm for now Mr Bush.”
“Let’s hope another of these arms slams the Natividad, it could use another thrashing.”
Hornblower didn’t respond.
“The Geertz and the Durkheim are beginning to feel the effects of the storm, sir. Ensign T’lor is requesting permission to redock.”
Bush was studying the viewscreen and some numbers on the blinking console. “Spoonheads won’t be able to steer that tub clear of anything, looks like their thrusters are starting to fail. Klingons could never design-“
“Mr Bush I could do without the commentary,” Hornblower snapped.
She nodded sharply and moved away to help Stahl reconfigure the nav console. Phaser fire glanced off the Lydia’s port shields and the command rail vibrated slightly. Knyvett was dragging Clay’s and a young crewman’s body towards one of the turbolifts. The crewman was missing an arm and most of a leg. Hornblower found himself wishing that the crewman was dead, rather than have to live the rest of his life with replacement limbs.
Below the rail at the nav and tactical stations Gerard, Bush and Stahl were discussing the physics of the battle and the possibly death toll to be exacted. Hornblower shuddered as he heard the flat, cold-blooded tone with which they discussed the venting of decks 7 and 8, the explosions in engineering, the burning of the Natividad’s atmosphere. There was something in their demeanor, their years of service, that allowed them to use that language. It was something that Hornblower could never imitate and he cursed himself for his weakness. Weakness, again and again, precisely when his ship needed him.
“They’re firing without targeting computers, that last spread was a manual job,” Bush was saying as she roughly pulled a panel out of the op’s console and shoved it into the nav.
“No, they must have multiple targeting stations. Anyone with any mathematical ability could see those trajectories were program,” Stahl argued back as he kicked the panel closed. “Sensors show-“
“Sensors be damned, Lieutenant, use your eyes!” she shouted as she took Knyvett’s empty seat, visibly irritated with the navigational officer.
“Mr Stahl, how far would you say we are from the Natividad?” Hornblower asked calmly.
“Between 2,400 and 3,000 klicks, sir.”
The smoke on the bridge was beginning to clear a little, but it was still as thick as the fog in a Dickens holonovel, and the red alert lights gave it a hellish glow. The Natividad was again slammed by an arm of the storm, exposing its throat to the Lydia’s guns.
“Mr Gerard, concentrate fire on the aft plasma coils,” Hornblower ordered, his voice grim.
“Aye, sir,” Gerard said with a grin, his fingers moving fast on the console, his mouth twisted into an evil grin. “Targeting solution locked.”
“Fire.”
Two bright, gleaming photon torpedoes shot out from the bottom of the viewscreen, their trajectory clear and unobstructed.
“They’ll have to eject their warp core,” Bush remarked quietly.
The torpedoes slammed into the side of cruiser, rolling it over in space, the explosion lighting the gasses of the storm swirling around it.
Hornblower’s mind churned like the console under his hands. “Mr Stahl, pulls us back to safe distance.”
“Aye, aye.”
The Natividad was twisting in space as a chain of explosions tore through it. They weren’t ejecting their damaged warp core.
“Open a channel!” Hornblower ordered. “Commander,” he called. “Your warp core is going to explode! Eject your core and surrender!”
The viewscreen shifted from the battle to the Cardassian bridge. It was filled with flames, dead bodies slumped over consoles. The smoke and static were so thick that it was difficult to make out the face of the ship’s commander.
“Never!” the man shouted. He was about to scream something else when flames leapt up in front of his command chair and the feed abruptly cut off.
“Sir, the enemy ship-“
A tremendous explosion cut off whatever Stahl was going to say. The Natividad had burst into a hundred thousand million pieces, each moving with all the velocity that imploded antimatter could give it. Parts of the Natividad would litter this space for years, if not decades, until storms scattered them even farther.
“Survivors?” Hornblower said. It surprised him how cool his voice sounded.
Bush shook her head, “None, sir.” She stood and returned the chair to Knyvett.
“Course, sir?”
Hornblower barely heard Stahl’s request for a heading. In his exhaustion, he was mesmerized by the memory of one particular bit of debris from the Natividad; it was ovoid, but not perfectly so. He drew the tangents, calculated the velocities, and then plotted what its path would have been had the shields and the thick hull of the Lydia not stood in its way. It was a mechanical exercise; he could see, in his mind, the dotted line indicating its trajectory over his shoulder, a little between the edge of the command rail and the weapons console, at a speed high enough to take his head off. Thinking about the mathematic of it helped distract him from his headache and allowed him to provide Stahl with coordinates.
“Nicely done, sir” Bush said softly beside him.
It was soft enough that no one else would have been able to hear. He was about to chastise her with some overly curt snap. However, he allowed an equally soft, “Thank you, Mr Bush,” to escape his lips.
“Repair crews have been deployed, we’re pulling out of this storm. Should have long range communications back in a few hours.” Hornblower saw her hand angling for his lower arm, or maybe his shoulder. “Why don’t you try and get some rest sir-“
He roughly pulled his arm away, inwardly cursing her for trying to touch him in public, and instantly regretted his action when he saw the expression change on her face. Taking a kind tone, he said, “I should order you to get rest, Mr Bush, how long has it been since you slept?”
“About three days, sir.”
Hornblower realized that he had not slept in about the same time. “I’ll be in my ready room. Get your head and arm looked at, Commander.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Sir,” Stahl called, “We’re free of the plasma storm.”
Hornblower and Bush looked up at the fuzzy viewscreen - the Campranian coils, Hornblower guessed, damaged in the battle - and studied the expanse of empty space. There were stars, but distant.
“A calm, black space once again Mr Bush.”
“Black as the Earl of Hell’s riding boots, sir.”
Hornblower forced himself not to smile. He squared his shoulders and returned to a normal volume of speaking. “I shall be in my ready room, Commander. You have the bridge.”
As he left the bridge he could hear Bush behind him ordering Gerard to assemble a detail to gather the dead in a temporary morgue in cargo bay one. The lights flickered; it was the normal spectrum, not the auxiliary lights. Power was returning to normal, and the doors to his ready room even opened for him.
It took effort to move through them, and as they closed Hornblower thought he heard someone -- not Knyvett maybe the crewman whose station was near there -- whisper.
“Good old Horny.”