Free Star Trek: The Empty Chair by Diane Duane

asteroids in the display flickered dark, losing their computer overlays. Then another half. Then half those again. “Best solution,” Chekov said. “Take it or leave it.”
    “We can only try,”
Khiy’s voice came from
Bloodwing.
    “Go for it,” Sulu said.
    Bloodwing
came arcing up out of the plane of the asteroid field in a long, lazy curve that displayed her belly to the pursuing
Gauntlet
as if she were a big fat cat with legs splayed, waiting to have her tummy scratched. “Oh, Lord,” Jim said, half in terror that an ally should so expose herself; half in admiration, for no attacker worth his, her, or its salt could possibly refrain from such a target, so insolently displayed.
And what is Ael thinking about this?
he wondered. It was an issue better left alone at the moment.
    Gauntlet
dived after her. “This is even better than the fastball option,” Sulu said. “And it leaves us the option for slow-pitch afterward. Got your target, Khiy?”
    “Three of them.”
    “Choose your best one, and let’s jump together—so they don’t have a chance to warn each other.”
    “Counting back,”
said Khiy’s voice. On
Enterprise’
s tactical display, one asteroid’s wire-frame outline came alive, blazing red—picking it out from all the others but two, which pulsed darker, slower.
Enterprise
raced toward that asteroid, seemingly a small one, only a little bigger than many that
Esemar
had pulverized without noticing.
    “Angstroms four five five one point three six two eight nine eight, at this mass,” Spock said, glancing at Sulu. “Angle to the shields, along the longitudinal axis, fourteen degrees six minutes for
Esemar.”
    Sulu didn’t speak, just nodded. From
Bloodwing,
Khiy said,
“Close approximation for
Gauntlet,
sixteen degrees twelve point one minutes.”
    Jim held on hard to the arms of his command seat.
    Esemar
was swelling in the rear view that Sulu had running on the main screen. She filled nearly all of that view window, and the sweat broke out on the back of Jim’s neck. He could just hear disruptor conduits going hot.
    In tactical,
Bloodwing
rolled once more, exposing her ventral side, and without warning let off a full spread of photon torpedoes at
Gauntlet
while also reaching out with a tractor beam for another of the wire-framed rocks ahead. Whether anyone on board
Gauntlet
realized what was happening with that tractor, there was no time and no way to tell, for she put on a burst of speed, trying to angle up and away from the torpedo spread, firing as she went—and so went exactly where Khiy had plainly intended her to go. The tractor arced up over
Bloodwing’
s belly, swinging the asteroid up against
Gauntlet’
s shields at that sixteen-degree angle as she passed—
    Bloodwing
rolled again and threw herself up and to port, firing her phasers at the asteroid as she let it go. Behind her, as the asteroid struck them,
Gauntlet’
s shields flared and failed—and the asteroid, crackling with sudden surface fires and the violet glitter of destabilizing dilithium ore, plunged past where the shields had been and into
Gauntlet
itself, smashing into her starboard nacelle and shearing it away.
    Shields down, bleeding silvery air and glowing plasma from the stump of the nacelle,
Gauntlet
plunged through the roil and tatter of dust from the asteroid impact. Out of the darkness, a swarm of the smallships came streaking in to surround her.
Gauntlet
fired at them, but with not much more effect than someone firing at a swarm of bees with a rifle. In the big screen, Jim stared at
Esemar,
still coming fast as
Bloodwing
swung back toward her and
Enterprise.
Without warning,
Chape
broke away, leaving only
Esemar
and
Llendan
in pursuit.
    Uh-oh. Quick now, before they can figure it out. “Now,
Mr. Sulu!” Jim said.
    As
Bloodwing
dove at her,
Enterprise
swung up and to port.
Bloodwing
dove starboard and down.
Esemar,
shooting along behind them, veered ever so slightly toward
Bloodwing,
and began to fire