WildFire Book One

by David Mack

  When she accepted Gomez’s invitation to join her, Duffy, and Fabe for dinner tonight aboard Whiteflower Station, she had stood in front of the mirror in the quarters she shared with Dr. Lense and asked her reflection, “What are you doing?” As she and Stevens exited the briefing room in pensive silence, she still had absolutely no idea.

  Chapter

  4

  Gomez blinked, not sure she had heard P8 correctly. She considered the possibility that being sequestered in the science lab for over four hours, weighing their options, had caused her to begin having auditory hallucinations. “Towing cables?”

  P8 responded to Gomez’s dismissive question by switching the image on the science lab’s main viewer to a computer simulation of the atmosphere of Galvan VI. Blue streams represented fast-moving currents of frigid, supercompressed gas that plunged in vortices from the upper, colder regions of the atmosphere toward the planet’s superheated core. Reddish patterns indicated upswells of superheated, lower-density gas and fluid. Green and yellow patterns marked areas of intense electromagnetic disturbance.

  “The icospectrogram we received from Starfleet only goes down to around ten thousand kilometers,” P8 said. “That’s less than half the distance to the Orion, and the severity of ionic disturbances at that depth will disrupt our shields, phasers, transporters, and tractor beams. Assuming the Orion is incapacitated, a series of five-centimeter duranium towing cables is our best hope for pulling it out.”

  Gomez tapped her finger on the side of her half-full mug of Earl Grey tea, which had long since changed from steaming hot to room temperature. She shook her head. “I don’t know, Pattie. It just seems so…low-tech.”

  “Sometimes the best solution is the simplest one,” Stevens chimed in. “We have about two hours before we make orbit. We could replicate the cables with time to spare if we start now.”

  Gomez looked at the other specialists gathered in the lab. Ensign Nancy Conlon, a petite brunette human, and Lieutenant Ina Mar, the ship’s athletic, red-haired Bajoran senior ops officer, stood next to one another. Both women nodded slowly as they considered P8’s proposal. Gomez glanced at Duffy. He was nodding, as well. “I think she’s right,” Duffy said. “We don’t have time to recalibrate the tractor beams. Crazy as it sounds, this is the way to go.”

  “With our shields offline, we’ll have to reroute all shield generator output to the structural integrity field,” Stevens added. “Otherwise, the pressure in the lower atmosphere will squash us like a bug.” A split second later he winced and turned toward P8. “No offense.”

  “Just wait till I find a good analogy for a bag of meat,” the Nasat said.

  “All right,” Gomez said, cutting them off. “Fabian, start replicating the cables to P8’s specs. Pattie, go over the schematics for the Orion and plan where you want to anchor the tow lines. You and Fabian will handle the hookup with the new Work Bugs.”

  “Oh yippee,” Stevens said glumly, which prompted a tinkly laugh-equivalent from P8.

  Gomez turned to Duffy. “Kieran, you’ll try to restore auxiliary power—maybe we can fly Orion out instead of towing her. I’ll search for survivors while Corsi retrieves the Wildfire device and Soloman recovers the logs. Nancy, since we can’t transport to the Orion, I’ll need you to whip up some null-field generators to help us pilot the Work Bugs in that atmosphere. Mar, you’re in charge of rerouting da Vinci’s shield generators to the SIF.”

  Gomez noted with satisfaction that even once she stopped talking, she still held everyone’s full attention. “Everyone clear?” She was met by a chorus of acknowledgments. “All right, let’s get to work. Dismissed.”

  As the group broke up and moved toward the door, Gomez reached out and gently took hold of Duffy’s sleeve. He stopped and waited until the others had left. Stevens was the last person out, and he tossed a sympathetic glance Duffy’s way as the door shut with a soft, hydraulic hiss.

  “What’s going on?” Duffy said with a nonchalant half-grin.

  Gomez normally found Duffy’s ability to smile his way out of a tense situation charming. Now, suddenly, she found it maddening. “I was going to ask you the same thing. You were about to tell me something when we were back on Whiteflower. What was it?”

  Duffy wasn’t smiling anymore. “Now probably isn’t the time, Sonnie.” Gomez felt acid churning in her stomach. Something was wrong, and he was stalling.

  “Kieran, I can tell something’s on your mind.” She moved close to him, reached up and softly pressed her right palm against his cheek. She was always amazed at how warm his skin was. “You know you can talk to me. What do you want to tell me?”

  He reached up and took her hand in his, and slowly lowered it away from his face. Gomez steeled herself for the breakup speech she could see coming from light-years away.

  With his free hand he reached inside his uniform jacket and, still holding her hand, kneeled in front of her. Gomez watched numbly as his hand emerged from his jacket, an exquisitely crafted gold band, set with a diamond, held firmly between his thumb and forefinger. He handed it to her as he looked up. With great effort, she looked away from the diamond ring in her hand and back at him.

  “Sonya, I love you,” he said in the most sincere tone of voice she had ever heard him use. “I want us to share the rest of our lives together. And before you start lecturing me about Starfleet and duty, I want you to know I’ll resign if I have to, because I’ll pick you over Starfleet any day. So, to make a short question long, I’m asking for the honor and privilege of being your husband. Sonnie…will you marry me?”

  For several long seconds, Gomez was convinced her heart had stopped beating. She forced herself to breathe, but despite her best efforts she couldn’t think of a single word to say to Duffy, who was now looking very self-conscious and awkward down on one knee. Five seconds of silence stretched into ten, at which point Duffy stood up, his hopeful expression melting into one of desperation.

  “Sonnie, please say something.”

  Gomez closed her eyes and pressed her free hand to her forehead to stave off the fever she could feel forming.

  “Sonnie?”

  Gomez felt the strength in her legs ebbing. She sat down next to the center worktable and let out a heavy sigh. We’re on our way to recover a device of unspeakable destructive potential from the wreck of a ship on which one of my first friends at the Academy just died. Under the circumstances, I probably could’ve handled being dumped. But this—

  She opened her eyes as she heard the swish of the lab door opening. Duffy was halfway out the door before she called out to him. “Kieran!” He kept going without looking back, and the door slid shut behind him.

  Gomez stared at the closed door, then looked back at the sparkling diamond and noted its latinum setting. The fact that the stone was set in latinum meant the ring couldn’t have been replicated. It must have cost Kieran a fortune, she thought. He must be the sweetest man I’ve ever known…. So why don’t I know what my answer is?

  As she tucked the ring into her inside jacket pocket and made a mental note to return it to Duffy later, a fresh wave of acid provoked muted growls from her stomach.

  Chapter

  5

  McAllan stood up from the center seat on the bridge as Gold stepped out of the turbolift. “Captain on the bridge!” he said as he moved to his post at tactical.

  Gold nodded politely to McAllan and strode to his chair. He had resisted McAllan’s insistence on formality and protocol when the young lieutenant first came aboard a few years ago. After McAllan’s first year on the bridge, Gold had learned not to mind it so much. Lately, he’d grown accustomed to it and had started letting McAllan take the conn from time to time.

  “Report,” Gold said as he sat down.

  “We’re in standard orbit over Galvan VI, sir,” McAllan said. “Ensign Conlon has finished prepping the Work Bugs for deployment into the atmosphere. The away team is standing by.”

  “Good,” Gold said. “Ina, do we have a
lock on the Orion?”

  “Affirmative,” she said. “Active tachyon scans show her circling the planet’s equatorial region at a depth of approximately twenty-nine thousand kilometers. She appears to be derelict, sir, being pulled by a descending current.”

  “What’s the weather like down there?”

  “Atmospheric pressure is over forty-two thousand bars, temperature is approximately eleven hundred degrees Celsius,” Ina said. “Velocity of atmospheric currents varies from four thousand to seven thousand KPH. And it looks like Orion’s heading for some choppy weather—she’ll hit a region of severe thermal upswells in less than two hours. After that, her path intersects a vortex that’ll pull her down into a layer of liquid-metal hydrogen.”

  Gold turned his chair to face McAllan, who was studying a readout at his station. “Any sign of company?” Gold said.

  “No, sir,” McAllan said. “Long-range scans are clear, and we haven’t picked up any ships in orbit or in the atmosphere.”

  “Faulwell, any signal traffic I should know about?”

  “None,” Faulwell said from the communications station, where he’d been since they warped into the system. “We thought the Gorn might send a patrol to investigate the Orion’s mayday, but they don’t seem to have detected it—or us.”

  “Let’s keep it that way, if we can.” Gold studied the deceptively placid-looking, bluish gray sphere of Galvan VI on the main viewer. “Wong? Think you can handle that?”

  Songmin Wong, the da Vinci’s boyish-looking helm officer, turned and looked back at Gold. “No problem, sir. It’s well within our operating parameters.”

  “It was within the Orion’s parameters,” Gold noted grimly. “Plot an intercept course for the Orion, best possible speed.”

  “Aye, sir.”

  Gold took a slow, deep breath as he watched the shape of the gas giant grow larger on the main viewer and finally fill it completely. The planet’s subtle striations of color grew more distinct as the da Vinci plunged headlong toward the upper atmosphere. Then the viewer crackled with static and the ship lurched violently as it penetrated the upper cloud layer and began its descent into the semifluid darkness.

  “Time to intercept?”

  “Twenty-one minutes, sir,” Wong said.

  “Gold to Gomez. Prepare to deploy your away team.”

  “Aye, sir,” Gomez replied over the comm. Gold detected the rising howl of swift, powerful atmospheric currents buffeting his ship—and he felt his fingers tighten reflexively on the arms of his chair.

  * * *

  The da Vinci shuttle bay buzzed with activity as Conlon and four other engineers scrambled to make final tweaks to the null-field generators they’d just installed on the two yellow Work Bugs. The industrial-grade work vehicles were bulkier, more durable, and more powerful than the average Starfleet-issue Work Bees, but they were slower and would need all the protection possible.

  Gomez tried to ignore the muffled shrieks of high-velocity wind that were audible even through the da Vinci’s hull. She focused instead on checking the seals and readouts on Corsi’s environment suit. Several meters away, Stevens and Duffy were completing their own suit checks, and behind them, Soloman and P8 took turns verifying each other’s specially made environmental gear. Soloman’s was fitted for his short, slender body and larger-proportioned head. P8’s suit permitted full mobility with all of her eight limbs, and she could retract its arms if she needed to assume her curled-in, defensive posture.

  Gomez slapped her thickly gloved hand on Corsi’s shoulder. “You’re good to go,” she said. “Everybody ready?”

  Stevens gave Gomez a thumbs-up signal, and P8 and Soloman nodded. “All right,” Gomez said, “Corsi, you’re with me and Pattie. Kieran, Soloman, you’ll be flying with Fabian. Let’s go.” The two trios split up and clambered awkwardly into the Work Bugs.

  Inside Bug One, P8 settled comfortably behind the controls, her small size compensating for the added bulk of the pressure suit. She began powering up the Work Bug as Gomez sealed the hatch. Normally, the vehicles could seat three comfortably, but in full environment suits it was a tight fit, a situation that for Gomez only exacerbated the feeling of confinement she felt whenever she put on the clumsy gear. She settled into the vehicle’s rear seat as Stevens’s voice came over the comm. “Bug Two is all set, Commander.”

  “Acknowledged,” Gomez said. “Gomez to bridge. We’re ready to launch, Captain.” A powerful tremor shook the da Vinci and rattled both Work Bugs as a resounding boom of thunder echoed through the ship.

  “Stand by,” Gold said. “Three minutes to intercept.”

  Gomez felt the first bead of sweat trickle down her spine. Three minutes, she told herself. Three minutes sitting still in this suit, while the ship flies straight into a navigational nightmare that I’m about to face in this souped-up cargo pod. The claps of thunder and violent shaking became more intense and frequent. She closed her eyes, took a deep breath, and began counting backward from one hundred eighty.

  * * *

  It took every shred of willpower Duffy possessed to sit still. He almost wished he were piloting Bug Two instead of Stevens, but his friend was the one who had spent the past month learning to fly the heavy-duty utility craft.

  Despite the acoustic insulation of his environment suit and the Work Bug itself, Duffy could hear the unmistakable groaning of stressed metal as the da Vinci’s hull protested its descent into the crushing depths of the gas giant’s atmosphere.

  “Would you listen to that, Fabe? Sounds like we’re really putting da Vinci through her paces.”

  “Tell me about it,” Stevens said. “I haven’t heard anything like this since Captain Sisko took the Defiant into a gas giant to save a Karemma ship from the Jem’Hadar.”

  “Please,” Soloman said, “not that story again.”

  “He’s right, Fabe, it’s the only one you ever tell.”

  “This from the man who never seems to tire of the Tellarite story,” Stevens said. “Fine, I’ll change the subject. Did you ask her?”

  “Ask who what?” Soloman said, confused.

  “He was talking to me,” Duffy said. “And yes, I did.”

  “And?”

  “And nothing. She didn’t say a damn thing.”

  “Pardon me,” Soloman said. “Who and what are we talking about?”

  “No one,” Duffy said.

  “It’s nothing,” Stevens said.

  “You asked a question about nothing to an entity that does not exist and are surprised to have received no answer,” Soloman said, shaking his head in dismay. “And humans wonder why they have trouble communicating with one another.”

  Duffy stared in mute amusement at Soloman, wondering when the Bynar had found time to master the fine art of sarcasm.

  * * *

  The image on the da Vinci main viewer was little more than static punctuated at random intervals by flashes of lightning that whited-out the screen and revealed swirling eddies of various liquefied gases raging past the ship at thousands of kilometers per hour. A computer-generated grid of longitudinal and latitudinal markings was superimposed over the image, along with a reference point indicating the position of the Orion. That reference point was just above the artificial horizon line and quickly drawing near.

  Ina checked her console. “Sixty seconds to intercept.”

  A powerful impact knocked Gold forward, halfway out of his seat, and pinned Wong and Ina to their consoles. As Gold pulled himself back into the center seat, he noticed, out of the corner of his eye, McAllan scrambling back to his feet, trying to look like he’d never lost his balance. “Report,” Gold said.

  “Thermal upswell, sir,” Ina said. “Small, but enough to overload our inertial dampers.”

  “A lot of these we should expect?” Gold said.

  “Impossible to predict, sir,” Ina said. “Convective columns have been drifting, disappearing, and reappearing in a chaotic manner. But the Orion will be drifting into a region of
intense convection columns within ninety-six minutes.”

  “Let’s get this over with, then,” Gold said. “Wong, take us to within two kilometers of the Orion, then use thrusters to maintain minimum safe distance. The tide down here is fast and rough, so you need to leave room to compensate.”

  “Aye, sir,” Wong said. Gold watched the young ensign confidently guide the ship through the maelstrom, seemingly oblivious to the ominous roar of the atmosphere that they’d been unable to mask with acoustic dampening frequencies, despite numerous attempts.

  The Orion appeared on the da Vinci main viewer, hazy behind a bluish silver veil of swirling gases. The sight of it reminded Gold of a story he used to read to his son, Daniel, when he was a boy—The Flying Dutchman, a tale about a cursed sailing vessel. Looking now at the lifeless husk of the Orion on the viewer, Gold couldn’t help but recall the image of the battered, sea-torn Flying Dutchman emerging from a wall of fog.

  “Gold to away team. We’ve reached the intercept point. Launch when ready.”

  “Acknowledged,” Gomez said.

  Gold anxiously folded his arms as he watched the main viewer. Between the da Vinci and the Orion enormous bolts of green lightning sliced through the darkness, and he felt the da Vinci shudder as bolt after bolt struck its hull.

  The two Work Bugs appeared on the viewer, looking tiny and fragile as they awkwardly dodged the electrical discharges on their journey to the derelict starship. We jump from star to star with ease, Gold mused. Now, two kilometers looks longer than a light-year. Oy, gevalt.

  Gold sighed. There was nothing for him to do now but wait.

  Chapter

  6

  Stevens struggled with the sluggish controls to prevent the shearing currents from slamming Bug Two into Bug One. The null-field generators Conlon had installed were helping tremendously—in fact, without them, piloting the Work Bugs in this environment would be impossible—but they consumed enormous amounts of power, and each burst of emeraldcolored lightning disrupted the null field just long enough to tumble Bug Two like a rolling die, tossing Duffy and Soloman against one another and the back of Stevens’s seat. The inertial dampers were overloading with each lightning strike, and the cabin of Bug Two was thick with smoke and the odor of fried circuits.