by David Mack
“Try me,” Gold said.
McAllan tapped a few commands into his console and showed the captain a series of reports generated by probes sent into Galvan VI. “The S.C.E. surveyed this planet sixteen times over three years to prepare for the Wildfire test. None of the probes encountered anything like the energy-dampening field that crippled the Orion.” McAllan presented a few more screens of information. “They scanned the planet’s thermal layers down to nearly forty-five thousand kilometers. The S.C.E. computer-modeled most of the rest.”
Gomez studied the thermal-imaging scans, then shook her head. “Looks like they got it wrong. These convection patterns shouldn’t be possible in a planet this size.”
“That’s what the Wildfire project leader said.” McAllan called up a written status report. “That’s why the S.C.E. retrofitted Orion with a specialized active tachyon scanning system. Their orders were to map the planet core, feed the data to the device, and send it on its merry way.”
Gold could already see where McAllan was headed. “You think there’s a connection between the scans of the planet’s core and the attack on the Orion?”
“There was no sign of this phenomenon before Orion shot those tachyon pulses down there,” McAllan said. “It appears to be localized around the Orion, and it seems to be drawn to the Wildfire device—which just happens to be the one thing that might completely obliterate this planet. If you ask me, Captain, I’d say this looks like self-defense.”
Gold nodded. “You may be right,” he said. “In which case, the sooner we get the device out of the atmosphere the bett—”
The da Vinci heaved violently upward, then rolled quickly to port as the ship’s inertial dampeners reset themselves. The impact knocked Gomez halfway over the railing that circled the upper deck of the bridge. McAllan landed hard on the floor, along with Gold and most of the rest of the bridge crew. Ina and Wong clung to their consoles as Gold struggled back to his feet.
“Report!” Gold shouted over the howling din.
“Thermal upswell, sir,” Wong said. “We took a direct hit.”
“Damage report,” Gold said as he stumbled across the pitching deck and landed with a grunt against his chair.
Ina scanned the alerts quickly appearing on her console. “Plasma leaks in starboard warp nacelle…shield generator three overloaded…ventral-side hull damage near the aft impulse reactor.”
“Casualties?”
“Minor injuries in engineering—scrapes and burns.”
Breathing a cautious sigh of relief, Gold said, “Wong, keep an eye out for those upswells.”
“Aye, sir,” the young helmsman said.
Gold squinted at the main viewer, as if that would help him pierce the curtain of static flurrying across it. He could feel it in his fingertips and in the soles of his feet—his ship, trembling beneath him, its every shudder an echo of the violence surrounding it in this nightmarish place.
Every instinct Gold possessed told him to abandon the Orion and take his ship back to the placid vacuum of space. But he had his orders, and he thought of Duffy and Blue, whom he had sent into that maelstrom. He wasn’t leaving until they were safely back on the da Vinci.
A nova-bright flash of light flared on the main viewer. Gold lifted a hand to shield his eyes, and the rest of the bridge crew followed suit. A second later, the flare dimmed.
“Magnify,” Gold ordered.
Ina adjusted the main viewer, which still showed only overlapping lines of zigzagging interference. Within seconds details returned, and Gold’s mouth felt painfully dry as he saw the glowing, smoldering gash that a bolt of lightning had just sliced across the Orion’s forward hull.
He glanced over his shoulder at Gomez, who was staring anxiously at the main viewer, then looked at McAllan.
“That’s it,” Gold said to McAllan. “Get them out of there.”
* * *
What happened? Where am I?
Duffy reached toward his face, tried to rub his eyes—only to find the faceplate of his Starfleet pressure suit in the way.
Pressure suit. I’m in a…I’m on the floor.
Duffy felt the tremendous pressure of the semifluid hydrogen that filled the ship crushing down on him. He lay on his back, legs splayed apart, rumpled like dirty laundry over the wreckage on the deck. He licked his lips, which were dry, cracked, and bleeding. The sharp sting of saliva in the tender wounds helped him edge closer to consciousness.
He keyed the switch for his palm beacon. The beam sliced through the haze as he began to notice a terrible, erratic throbbing that felt like either a headache or his heart pounding its way out of his chest.
The beacon’s intense, bluish beam fell upon a metal bar fused to what looked like a modified photon torpedo casing. The bar was probably close to two meters long, but it was twisted—melted?—into an Sshape. Above and beyond the misshapen metal bar, large sections of the bulkhead were blasted apart, glowing white-hot and smoldering.
Not a headache…not my heart. That’s…thunder. That’s thunder.
A crackling noise filled Duffy’s ears, which were ringing and felt like they were packed with wax. The sound was just a faraway scratch of electronic spatters at first, then he was able to discern words. “Duffy, do…read…—bort…Please resp—…Blue to Duff—”
His confusion began to clear, and clarity returned in waves. The Orion. I’m on the…I’m retrieving the device. Wildfire device. It’s armed…I…I need to get up.
He keyed his comm and increased the gain on the transceiver. “Duffy to Blue. I’m okay, I think.”
P8 responded through the yowling, high-frequency signal disruptions, which were quickly growing worse. “Get back to the Bug. Gold’s orders are to abort. We have four minutes to get back to da Vinci. ”
Duffy looked up at the metal bar, conjoined to the Wildfire device’s outer casing at the molecular level, and was suddenly grateful he hadn’t become part of that impromptu sculpture. He grabbed onto a piece of bulkhead jutting out from the wall and pulled himself to his feet. “Get ready to fly,” Duffy said. “I’m on my way.”
“Be careful, sir,” P8 said.
Duffy fought to overcome an attack of vertigo as he lifted his foot over a lightning-cut, half-molten gap in the wall that was now the only exit from the compartment. “A bit late for that, Blue,” Duffy said.
Setting his magboots to minimum grip, he broke into a clumsy walk-jog through the rolling, mangled, smoking corridors of the Orion. He hoped Pattie and the Work Bug would both still be there when he arrived.
* * *
“More power to stabilizers!” Gold shouted. “Keep her steady, Wong!”
At the helm, the young ensign struggled to comply, but the turbulence around the tiny starship had grown more violent. Another blast of superheated, superdense gas erupted beneath the ship, which listed sharply to starboard. The roar of the storm outside the vessel had become overpowering, and the bridge lights flickered erratically.
Gomez looked up from the damage reports that were flooding in from engineering and glanced at the main viewscreen. The small, vulnerable-looking Work Bug was fighting its way through the fiery maelstrom, back to the da Vinci, but the constantly shifting currents tumbled the tiny craft end over end, spinning it in all directions, trapping it halfway between the two starships. Come on, Gomez thought as she watched the Work Bug struggle forward. Another half-kilometer, you can make it.
A massive, spinning pillar of liquid-metal hydrogen—fresh from the planet’s core—formed between two enormous cloud layers and grabbed the Work Bug, pulling it in quickly shrinking circles toward what Gomez realized would be almost certain destruction. She thought of Kieran, trapped inside the small craft, and felt a chill wash through her as she watched Bug One accelerate toward its doom.
“Wong,” Gold said, “Take us in fast. Angle the shuttle bay doors toward the Bug and try to disrupt that twister.”
The conn officer set the da Vinci on a course directly into the swir
ling column of scorching, liquid-metal hydrogen.
“McAllan,” Gold said as the spinning wall of semifluid fire grew large on the main viewer, “tell them the cavalry’s coming.”
* * *
The view outside the Work Bug’s cockpit window was a blurry wash of moving colors, and Duffy—pinned to the port bulkhead by the centrifugal force of their inward spiral—felt extremely dizzy. He gasped for breath after his second round of painful dry heaves, and was suddenly very glad he had missed two meals in a row today. He was barely able to hear P8 over the deafening cacophony of thunder crashing in an unbroken chorus around the craft. He tapped in front of his ear, which P8 understood meant he wanted her to repeat herself. She spoke slowly, with overly perfect diction.
“The da Vinci is coming to get us,” she said, fighting to regain helm control. Duffy, with great effort, nodded once. He could no longer turn his head far enough to see what she was doing at the controls; all he could do was relax and remain stuck against the inner hull of the Work Bug, waiting either for death or a Starfleet-issued miracle. There isn’t a damn thing I can do now, he thought. This could all be over in a few seconds…. I might never see Sonnie again.
Duffy was hurled from the port bulkhead. He slammed hard into the starboard airlock door before rolling ass-over-elbows toward the front of the Work Bug. Before he could ask P8 what was happening, a jarring collision knocked him backward, then upward—which was now downward—onto the Work Bug’s ceiling, and he heard a sound that on any other day would have made him cringe, but right now was sweeter than a Trill lullaby: the high-pitched scrape of duranium on duranium. Duffy rolled onto his stomach, blinked, and realized P8 had made a textbook-perfect, upside-down, backward-facing crash-landing in the da Vinci shuttle bay.
“Good landing,” Duffy said without a hint of irony.
“Thank you,” P8 said.
Duffy reached up to help P8 out of her pilot’s seat harness. Outside the cockpit windshield, beyond the shuttle bay entrance’s crackling, overtaxed protective force field, he could barely see the shape of the Orion, ringed by lightning, roughly a kilometer away. He keyed his comm circuit and was about to hail the bridge when the Orion suddenly was silhouetted by an incandescent flash from a huge, explosive thermal upswell. Duffy squinted hard and lifted his arm to block the glare.
P8 let out a panicked string of high-frequency clicks.
Duffy lowered his arm to see the Orion flying like a targ out of Gre’thor, directly toward the da Vinci.
* * *
It all happened in three-point-five seconds.
Everyone on the da Vinci bridge saw the flash on the main viewer, the eruption directly behind the Orion that sent the Steamrunner-class starship speeding toward them.
McAllan reacted first. “Collision alarm!” he shouted, sounding the shipwide alert klaxon as he did so.
“Evasive!” Gold ordered. To Gold, the moment seemed trapped in amber. Wong entered commands at the helm, but he seemed to move in slow motion, as did the Orion, rolling toward them through the swirling mists like a blazing wheel.
“Brace for impact!” Gold ordered. The burning husk of the Orion filled the main viewer. Gold grabbed the arms of his chair and focused on the rising whine of the da Vinci’s impulse engines, which strained against the planet’s crushing gravity and dense, smothering atmosphere.
The image on the main viewer shifted, but not quickly enough. Gold felt it before it happened. This is what it feels like when your luck runs out, he thought.
The Orion smashed like a hammer into the da Vinci.
Chapter
10
The moment of impact was the most terrible thing Gold had ever heard; he could swear the da Vinci howled in pain as the Orion’s primary hull rammed into its underside. The tremor from the collision flung him from his seat, and the echoing boom sent a stabbing pain through his eardrums. The rest of the bridge crew seemed to be tumbling in slow motion through the air, caught in the strobing flicker of the malfunctioning main viewscreen and stuttering overhead lights.
He hit the deck hard, on his back, his breath knocked out of him. Fighting to inhale, he pulled himself back toward his chair. To his right he saw Gomez, clinging to the railing and shouting orders over the sound and fury of explosions and alarm klaxons. “Damage report!” she said, sleeving a broad smear of blood from her forehead to reveal a jagged cut that immediately resumed bleeding.
“Comms are down,” Ina said, her voice betraying the first signs of panic. “Sensors are offline, we’re losing pow—”
Another explosion rocked the da Vinci. Gold felt the deck heave and lurch, and he knew another thermal upswell had pummeled his ship. He fell hard against his seat as the bridge lights flickered out, and the only illumination came from the exploding science console to his left.
Then he saw McAllan moving through the air toward him.
At first Gold thought an explosion had tossed McAllan forward, but then he realized the tactical officer was intentionally vaulting over his console, directly at him, one arm outstretched. McAllan’s hand slammed into Gold’s shoulder, knocking the captain off his feet. As Gold fell he saw the bridge ceiling’s central support hub—which was located directly above the captain’s chair—collapsing down in a heap of twisted duranium. Gold, still unable to breathe, lay paralyzed as the wreckage crushed his tactical officer—and his own left hand.
At first, Gold felt nothing from his hand, which he knew must have been pulverized. Then agonizing pain shot up his arm. He would have screamed, but his lungs continued to resist his attempts at breathing.
The bridge was in chaos, filling with panicked voices and billowing smoke, but to Gold, who was rapidly growing weaker, it all seemed light-years away—unreal, like a bad dream or a holodeck illusion.
He summoned a mental image of his wife, Rachel. She had always said his impatience would be the death of him. Guess you were right, sweetheart, he thought, as consciousness slipped from his grasp. Forgive me.
* * *
The impact of the Orion’s collision with the da Vinci had knocked Work Bug One onto its starboard side, placing its hatch on the floor. As the shuttle bay began to collapse around it, Duffy decided that having only one exit hatch from the utility craft definitely qualified as a design flaw.
The view beyond the force field was spinning wildly, which he realized meant the da Vinci was out of control. They had to get out of the shuttle bay now. “Fire starboard thrusters!” Duffy said as the shuttle bay’s force field began to collapse.
“The navigational thrusters aren’t designed to—”
“That’s an order!”
P8 keyed the thrusters as a second jolt pummeled the da Vinci, lifting the Work Bug half a meter off the deck. The combined force of the impact and the thrusters rolled the small craft wildly toward the side wall of the shuttle bay. Duffy tumbled inside the rear of the vehicle like a specimen in a centrifuge, cursing as he banged roughly off every solid surface. The Work Bug struck the wall with a hollow thud and came to a stop resting right side up.
Duffy shouldered open the battered hatch and looked back to make certain P8 was with him. Taking advantage of her specially designed EVA gear, she curled herself into a ball and rolled quickly across the floor to the aft-corridor exit. She forced the sliding door open while Duffy sprinted to the shuttle bay’s auxiliary control panel. He tapped at the sparking console for a few seconds, trying to reinforce the collapsing force field or close the outer shuttle bay doors, but the system was in near-total failure. He gave up and followed P8 out of the shuttle bay.
The shuttle bay force field collapsed as Duffy reached for the exit’s manual closing lever. The rushing wall of superdense, semiliquid gases pushed a shock wave of compressed air ahead of it that knocked Duffy backward, away from the lever, and lifted the abandoned Work Bug and tossed it forward like a toy in a tornado. P8 grasped the lever and yanked it with four arms. The door slid closed as the corridor rang with the sound of the Work Bug str
iking the shuttle bay’s aft wall.
* * *
Chief Engineer Jil Barnak shielded his face with his arms as he dodged through the flames that were spreading rapidly through main engineering. He checked the antimatter containment field and was relieved to find it intact, which, he mused cynically, made it unique among the ship’s systems at the moment.
The warp core had gone offline at the moment of impact. Main power had failed almost instantly. Consoles all throughout main engineering had exploded and were now belching columns of acrid black smoke. But his engineers were still at their posts.
“Orthak!” Barnak shouted over the blaring alarms. “Get your flippers over here and shut down the EPS taps, we’re venting plasma! O’Leary, transfer impulse power to the—”
A second explosion rocked the ship, knocking the gray-haired Atrean chief engineer off his feet. The smoke was now too heavy to see through, and Barnak choked and coughed as it burned his lungs. He reached for a breathing mask and drew in a few desperately needed breaths of clean air. He turned to finish his order to O’Leary, only to discover the man was now dead, a jagged piece of shrapnel wedged in the back of his skull.
Then Barnak saw the fracture in the matter-anti-matter reaction assembly.
The other engineers—those who were still standing—were shouting overlapping damage reports and asking Barnak for his orders, but he had stopped listening. He had to make a critical decision in the next five seconds. He had two options.
He could attempt an emergency shutdown of the warp core, and hope the contents of the reaction assembly could be expelled before that ten-centimeter-long fracture exploded. Purging the core could take up to eleven seconds, and it might take days to repair the fracture. But if he gambled wrong, if the fracture ruptured before he purged the antimatter from the reaction assembly, the resulting explosion would vaporize the da Vinci.
He could eject the warp core, guaranteeing the short-term safety of the ship, but leaving them without warp power until they could be towed back to a starbase. The actual ejection of the core would take only a fraction of a second—but evacuating main engineering with the turbolifts offline would take more than thirty seconds. Barnak was certain the reaction assembly wouldn’t last thirty seconds. It might not last ten.
