Hell's Heart by John Jackson Miller Page B

offensive systems while under cloak had been part of the standard Klingon bird-of-prey design for years. Whoever was firing clearly wasn’t worried about that—and nothing about their systems provided any kind of tip-off as to where they were. Chang had been undone by ionized exhaust from its impulse engines; La Forge hadn’t found anything like that yet. As with Shinzon’s Scimitar , neither tachyons nor antiprotons told where an attacker would be before it fired.
    Then again, La Forge thought, maybe we’re looking at this the wrong way. Perhaps the key wasn’tto be found in where the shots were coming from—but rather, in what the shots were aimed at?
    Another barrage struck. “I think it’s nine contacts,” Elfiki said.
    La Forge didn’t hear her. He was onto some theorizing of his own. As yet, no deaths had been reported as a result of the barrages; the cloaked vessels’ strikes had seemed random, possibly not intent on providing anything more than a distraction for the boarders. But La Forge now suspected they were not random—and stepped quickly back behind the captain’s chair to a master systems display on the aft wall. It only took him a second to confirm his suspicions.
    â€œThey’ve been targeting the subspace emitter pads on the hull,” he announced, heading back to the center seat. There were two dozen of the emitters, mounted on different sections of the ship, used for channeling transporter matter streams. “That’s why it’s seemed so random—they’ve been targeting a distributed system instead of a centralized one. It’s another part of their attack on our transporter systems.”
    â€œThat’s what the boarders are after,” Konya said. He had scrambled security to every transporter room, but was still waiting to get word of one taken intact. “They just disable a room and leave.”
    â€œBut they couldn’t expect to put them all out of commission,” La Forge said. “That’s what the external attack’s about.” The whole scheme, no doubt, was about keeping Enterprise from assisting those on Gamaral. There were as-yet-undamaged emitter pads that could only be approached from Enterprise ’s aft; at least one of their attackers would be gunning for those eventually. The ship was a smaller target from behind and that meant La Forge had a relatively small arc to probe with fire.
    â€œTactical, give me aft phasers and torpedoes. Randomized spread. We’re going fishing!”

Thirteen
    A s Valandris expected, resistance had stiffened as her ship’s site-to-site transporter delivered her and Tharas from one Enterprise transporter room to the next. They were one team of several, but they had made short work of their primary and secondary targets and were working on the tertiary now.
    As with the Orions, the Federation had been surprised by their transporter technology. Like everything else used on their mission, it had been a gift from the Fallen Lord, who in his wisdom had seen the power it would grant them. And he had also told them how and where to strike Enterprise , from inside and outside, so as to render the ship unable to aid those on Gamaral for a few minutes. That was all the time they needed.
    But the Fallen Lord had also demanded that the Federation casualties be kept to a minimum. That had made no sense to Valandris, but while her leader’s ways were often inscrutable, she had not found a reason to doubt him. Tharas had slipped earlier, incinerating an attacker in self-defense, but she had not killed so far.
    Not that the Starfleeters weren’t offering up temptations. Phaser fire blazed in anew from outside the doorway. There was little cover to be found in a Starfleet transporter room, and while Valandris’s armor had dispersed the energy from the shots she’d taken, it wouldn’t protect her from a barrage. Valandris fired her disruptor