Star Trek: Voyager: Endgame

computer spoke. “Ship approach, mark four-two.”
    “Now what?” Janeway punched the controls. “Identify!”
    But the computer never got a chance. Two gull-winged cruisers decloaked in near space and opened fire.
    Klingons!



CHAPTER 7

    T HE K LINGONS ROARED IN BLAZING . N O TALK , NO THREATS , NO deals.
    “Deploy armor!” Janeway shouted over the scratch of disruptor fire.
    “Unable to comply. Ablative generator is off-line.”
    Boom
—the shuttle rocked again.
    “Evasive pattern beta-six!”
    The autonav system flared to life and the roller-coaster ride began. Janeway would've been thrown to her knees if she hadn't known which direction the shuttle would veer first.
    “Open a channel to the
Rhode Island!”
    The comm bleeped, and a picture of Harry Kim appeared on the comm monitor. Before he had a chance to ask why she had hailed him, Janeway said, “Harry, I'm under attack. How fast can you get back here?”
    “Two minutes, tops. Full about!”
    “Acknowledged. I can hold on for two minutes. Evasive pattern alpha-z!”
    The shuttle took a nosedive. Two Klingon disruptor streams crossed in space and mutually detonated, rocking Janeway with ambient energy, but otherwise missing her. She made a bet with herself and duplicated the move on the starboard vector.
    Sure enough, the Klingons tried again to triangulate on her and ended up blasting each other's disruptor streams. The shuttle rattled, but burst through clean. The computer didn't even report any damage.
    Twice more in a row, for nearly a whole minute, she was able to cause the Klingons to completely waste their shots before they realized what she was doing. Once they almost raked each other wing to wing. After the near-collision, they paused firing for a few moments, trying to get her into their scopes without boxing each other in.
    She took those moments to tap the comm system.
    “Well, Korath, when you hold a grudge, you really hold it high, don't you?”
    “Surrender, cheat!”
    “I didn't cheat you,” she said. “I gambled and won, that's all. I'm sure you know the type of game we're in together. Sometimes we have to play through, or no one wins.”
    Stall, stall . . .
    “You stole my device!”
    “I'm no thief. All I did was bruise your pride. You have your payment in full. You would never have attained the position you have now if not for my influence. Your price was a high one for a Starfleet officer. It cost me a piece of my reputation.”
    “I have reputation to protect as well, Janeway. You and your alien science make a threat to my people. As a member of the High Council, it is my—”
    “Oh, you've got to be kidding,” she drawled. “I've heard of tortured logic before, but spare me this shadow of nobility! You're on the High Council, so you have to protect your people against me, who put you there? You missed your calling, Korath. You should've become a song-and-dance man.”
    “Klingons do not dance.”
    As long as he was talking, he wasn't shooting. The other ship made a few shots as Janeway's shuttle swerved and plunged, but without Korath's lead ship giving it a fighting pattern, the second vessel had no cue to take. He obviously wasn't a skilled battle leader, or he wouldn't have been so easily distracted.
    The shuttle was smaller than either of the two Klingon ships, and far more maneuverable in a tight area. Janeway disengaged the autonav and took the pilot controls herself with one hand, while with the other hand she recalibrated the generator and found power for the temporal deflector. She piloted a spiral pattern, stressful enough for the narrow-bodied shuttle, almost impossible for the Klingons.
    Whoever was in charge of the second Klingon ship was smarter or maybe just more experienced than Korath. The second ship anticipated her next two moves and opened fire. When she came out of her spiral, she ran straight through the disruptor stream.
    Deadly energy crackled across the shuttle's hull amidships and across the port flank. Only by turning up on her quarter at the last instant did Janeway protect the precious device affixed to the shuttle's upper hull. Sparks erupted inside the cockpit, both before and behind Janeway. She was suddenly working in a sea of smoke and heat. The controls began breaking down under her fingers; the shuttle began to shake uncontrollably.
    “Stabilize, stabilize,” she mumbled, but nothing worked. The shuttle couldn't regain steadiness.
    “This is the
Starship Rhode Island.