WildFire Book Two Read online

  At the bottom of the case, on the glass, there was a small brass plaque bearing an inscription:

  A firefighter performs

  only one act of bravery in his life,

  and that’s when he takes the oath.

  Everything he does after that

  is merely in the line of duty.

  In Memoriam—September 11, 2001

  “Looks like a family heirloom,” Faulwell said.

  Abramowitz looked up at Faulwell. “Corsi would want this. We should bring it to her.”

  “I don’t think it’s what Gomez had in—”

  “Fine, I’ll carry it,” she said sharply. She stood, cradled the cumbersome box in her arms, and walked toward the door.

  “Carol, we’re gonna make it out of this,” he said, unsure whether he sounded convincing.

  She stopped and rested the end of the box gently on the floor, her back to him.

  “What if we don’t?” she said. The angry tone of her question caught him off guard. She turned back to face him. “If you die out here, what will Anthony do?”

  He recoiled for a moment, then cocked his head slightly, chuckled, and took his best guess. “I figure he’ll throw a party.”

  “A party?”

  “Mm-hmm. Invite all our friends, serve my favorite lasagna. Play my favorite Chopin nocturnes. Probably try to eulogize me as some kind of Starfleet hero instead of the—” He paused. “Instead of the glorified academic I am.” He looked at Abramowitz’s face and realized he had been mistaken—she wasn’t angry, she was afraid. Her sardonic façade was crumbling as he watched. Her eyes were wet, her voice quaking with emotion too long kept under lock and key.

  “There’s no one to throw a party for me, Bart.”

  “Carol? Are you—”

  “I’ve been on the da Vinci for almost three years, Bart, and you’re the only one I’m really friends with. I just haven’t been able to make a…a connection with any of the others, and I don’t know why.”

  “Maybe it’s the drad music,” he said with a smile, hoping humor could steer her out of her downward spiral.

  “Bart, I’m serious. I don’t want to be alone anymore.”

  “What’re you talking about? You’re not alone, you’re—”

  “Oh, c’mon, Bart. I get along with Pattie and the others, but I don’t…I don’t have any family besides you. At least, not anybody who would make the effort to throw a party in my honor. And if we both die here…” Abramowitz wiped the tears from one eye with a rough swipe of her palm, then from the other with the back of her hand. “There won’t be anyone back home who’ll be interested in making up kind lies about me.” She took a breath, choked down the beginning breath of a sob. Faulwell felt his own emotions stir in empathy, as if she were radiating her sorrow to him in waves. “I feel alone in the world, Bart. I don’t want to die alone. I don’t want to die without falling in love, just once.”

  Her revelation stunned him. He’d always seen her as his not-too-personal confidant, fellow gossipmonger, and sarcastic conversational foil. He’d never considered she might be hiding something like this. She was quick, sharp, a paragon of control; twenty-four hours ago he would have denied she could even form tears. “You’ve never been in love?” he said, trying to sound sympathetic. She glared at him. He guessed she had taken his words the wrong way. She turned away from him.

  She picked up the case containing the axe and squeezed through the half-open door, back to the corridor. Still clutching the medical tricorder and first aid kit, he followed her out, hoping the next bunk he searched might contain the comforting words he suddenly couldn’t find.

  * * *

  Elizabeth Lense was reluctant to perform invasive surgery while seated on an unsterile blanket in a smoky corridor, but she knew that Ensign Piotrowski would certainly die if she didn’t take the risk. Copper knelt on the other side of the patient, holding a palm beacon above her torso, the beam aimed directly down and focused to provide maximum illumination.

  In medical school, Lense had heard a centuries-old Earth saying about surgeons: “Sometimes wrong; never in doubt.” She reminded herself that surgery never came with guarantees, no matter how advanced the technology. No physician’s knowledge or skill are ever perfect; even with the simplest procedure, it can’t be assumed the patient will come through improved—or even alive. The key was to know this and cut anyway.

  She activated the laser scalpel, ignored the sickly sweet odor of burning flesh and fatty tissue as she deftly made a long inverted-Y incision below Piotrowski’s sternum, and reached down and exposed the interior of the abdominal cavity.

  Lense suppressed her response to the adrenaline rush she experienced as she felt Piotrowski’s blood warming her hands through the sterile surgical gloves. She marveled at the raw physicality, the carnal beauty of this type of hands-on surgical technique. It had been a long time since she’d had to cut open a living patient by hand—not since her time on the Lexington during the Dominion War. Emergency field surgery was a required course at Starfleet Medical School, but almost no one specialized in it. Lense wondered whether that was because Starfleet doctors were too arrogant to think any situation could ever be so dire as to warrant performing surgery anywhere but in a state-of-the-art operating theater, or because someone in Starfleet was afraid surgeons might once again learn to enjoy wielding the calculated violence of a scalpel.

  “Cardiac regulator,” she said, her voice steady and authoritative. Copper hesitated as he eyed the array of medical instruments laid out on the sterile cover in front of him, then picked up the long, needlelike device and handed it to Lense. She took it quickly and, in a smooth, measured motion, pushed it inside Piotrowski’s torso.

  Lense concentrated on the subtle tactile cues she sensed as she pushed the device deeper. She felt it travel easily through a pocket of fatty tissue, catch slightly on the denser muscles beneath, then tremble with a subtle change in resistance as it pierced the wall of the thoracic aorta. She keyed the device’s main switch, and it threaded itself forward into the heart, stabilizing Piotrowski’s pulse and blood pressure.

  “Clamp.”

  Copper handed her the instrument, and she set to work securing the inferior vena cava so she could repair damage to the vein. She cast a brief glance at Wetzel, who was lying still next to Piotrowski. All of Wetzel’s vitals were normal, and the transfusion was running smoothly.

  Lense visually inspected Piotrowski’s intestinal wall for perforations. She was certain it was undamaged but decided it would be best to get a second opinion. “Copper, run a scan and make sure the lower colon is intact.”

  Copper checked the readout of his medical tricorder, which hummed with an almost musical oscillation as he scanned Piotrowski. “All clear, Doctor.” Lense nodded. There was still much work to do repairing the pancreas and the ruptured left kidney, but she had no doubt she would save Piotrowski.

  She just hoped she wasn’t wrong.

  * * *

  Gomez held the dimming, crooked chemical flare at arm’s length in front of her as she navigated the pitch dark corridor by a combination of memory, instinct, and hearing. Ahead of her she heard the muffled sounds of someone swearing from behind a bulkhead and the clang of a metallic object being struck repeatedly against something hard. Both sounds grew louder as she continued forward.

  She stopped as she reached the origin of both sounds, which continued unabated. “How’s it going, Kieran?” she said.

  The swearing and clanging ceased. “Never better,” Duffy said, his voice muffled behind the bulkhead. “You?”

  “Can’t complain,” Gomez said. “Nancy and Pattie found a working extractor in cargo bay two. They expect to have main engineering cleared in less than an hour.” She paused as Duffy tumbled out of a ragged gap in the wall, his uniform catching on every protruding edge. “Will the da Vinci still be here in an hour?” she said, offering him her hand. She helped him to his feet. He stood bathed in the magenta light of her dyin
g flare.

  “Good question,” Duffy said. “Fabe thinks we can boost the auxiliary system with the backup phaser generators, if we can override their security lockouts.”

  “How long will that take?”

  “A few seconds—once the main computer is back online. The command lines are intact, but right now there’s no way to reach the generators directly. The computer’s the only way.”

  Gomez frowned, then sighed. “Any other ideas?”

  “None that’ll work. Have Hawk and Robins checked in?”

  “Not yet,” Gomez said. “I’ll have them brief Soloman on the best route to the core. Find Fabian and go help get engineering ready.”

  “You got it,” Duffy said as he picked up his tools. Gomez started to move toward the forward ladder to Deck Two, then stopped as Duffy added, “I am glad for one thing, Sonnie.” She stopped, turned, and looked back at him. He continued, “Time like this, I’m glad you’re in command.”

  Gomez nearly laughed. “Yeah?” She shook her head. “I’m not.” She walked away, slowly shaking her head in disbelief. It was then she noticed that the hand she’d used to help Duffy was now coated in some kind of grease. She wiped it off across the front of her already filthy uniform jacket, and felt the bump of the diamond ring he had given her only hours earlier still tucked safely in the jacket’s inside pocket.

  She reached in, took out the ring, and turned back. She wondered what she’d say to Duffy as she gave it back to him, wondered how she would explain that she shouldn’t have accepted it at all…at least, not yet.

  Duffy was already disappearing around the far corner, on his way to find Stevens. Gomez considered calling out to him, then thought better of it. This wasn’t the right time.

  Less than thirty minutes ago I was clutching this ring like it was my last hope, she thought. Now I can hardly wait to give it back. She put the ring back into her jacket’s inside pocket and shook her head. I hate irony.

  Chapter

  3

  Soloman stood next to Gomez in the deck one corridor and studied the schematic on the first officer’s tricorder display, flipping through it one screen at a time. “You’ll have to cut through this bulkhead into the Jeffries tube here,” Gomez said.

  Hawkins and Robins had detailed a circuitous route, through maintenance crawlspaces and narrow gaps between various systems that were tightly packed together inside the da Vinci’s primary hull, to a Jeffries tube that would enable Soloman to reach the main computer core. Soloman eyed the still-smoldering opening that Hawkins and Robins had just cut from the wall with their phasers. “I am not sure I can fit between the comm relay junction and the secondary EPS conduit,” the slightly built Bynar computer expert said. Gomez gestured to the narrow space depicted on the schematic.

  “Hawkins and Robins think the relay shifted when the outer hull buckled on the other side of it,” she said. “You should have enough room to get by, even in a pressure suit.”

  Soloman imagined himself being sucked out a narrow opening in the hull and crushed in the blistering depths of Galvan VI’s liquid-metal lower atmosphere. “If the hull has ruptured there, it might present an impassable hazard.”

  “The atmosphere at this depth is less active than it was where we boarded the Orion,” Gomez said reassuringly. “With the null-field generator already installed on your suit, you shouldn’t have any trouble reaching the main computer core.”

  Soloman was not reassured. He picked up the portable kit he had carried aboard the Orion to reboot its core. “After I restore power to the core, what is my first priority?”

  “Reroute backup phaser-generator power to the structural integrity field,” Gomez said. “That’ll give us enough time to work out a plan for getting back into orbit.”

  “What is my secondary priority?”

  “Sensors and navigational control.”

  “Understood.” Soloman stepped through the phaser-cut portal and squeezed into the narrow crawlspace, pulling in his portable data-recovery terminal behind him. With his other hand, he activated his suit’s helmet beacon. The narrow beam revealed an awkward and claustrophobically tight space he would have to traverse to reach Jeffries tube One-Bravo. As he lowered himself down and reached for a handhold, he heard behind him the gentle thud of the hastily cut bulkhead plate being put back into place, followed a few moments later by the high-pitched screech of it being phaser-welded shut.

  * * *

  Lense finished closing the incision in Piotrowski’s abdomen and permitted herself a sigh of relief that the young ensign’s vital signs all appeared stable. She turned off the dermal regenerator and handed it back to Copper.

  “Can you take care of disconnecting the transfusion?” she asked him.

  He nodded. “Yes, Doctor,” he said.

  Lense stood and pulled off the blood-caked surgical gloves. She dropped them into a waste-collection canister she’d set off to one side of the corridor and moved to check on the condition of the beta-shift tactical officer, Anthony Shabalala.

  As she passed Corsi, a rectangular shape caught her eye.

  She glanced over to see that while she had been busy operating on Piotrowski, someone had retrieved Corsi’s family-heirloom firefighter’s axe and tucked it under the left arm of the tall, blond woman, who remained comatose. The image of Corsi lying supine with her axe under her arm reminded Lense of a drawing she had once seen of a dead Viking warrior resting on a bier with his weapon at his side.

  Kneeling next to Corsi, Lense reached out, and felt with her fingertip for Corsi’s jugular. She closed her eyes and concentrated on sensing the weak pulse. It was faint but steady.

  Lense opened her eyes and gently stroked a stray lock of hair from Corsi’s forehead, then silently moved on to tend to Shabalala.

  * * *

  Ensign Songmin Wong tried again to close his left hand around the sonic driver. His wounded appendage refused to obey. He winced as needlelike stabs of pain jolted up his arm, and he shifted the tool to his right hand.

  He was fairly certain his helm console could be repaired. The power supply capacitor had overloaded, causing half of the console’s surface to explode outward. He had already replaced the capacitor; now all he needed was a new surface panel.

  With his right hand operating the sonic screwdriver, he used his left to hold steady an interface panel he was cautiously removing from the port-side auxiliary engineering station. This console had been spared the fate of several of other key stations on the bridge; if he could attach it to the primary conn circuit, the da Vinci would be ready to fly within the hour.

  While he worked, he listened to Gomez and Ina talking Soloman through his long climb-crawl to the ship’s main computer. Wong was glad he wasn’t the Bynar right now.

  “I’ve reached the comm relay junction,” Soloman said, his voice small and hollow-sounding through Gomez’s combadge. Until the ship’s main computer was back online, the crew was limited to direct combadge-to-combadge transmissions.

  “Is it passable?” Gomez said. The first officer stood at the aft end of the bridge, behind the tactical station, her arms folded and her brow wrinkled with concentration.

  “Affirmative,” Soloman said. “Hawkins and Robins were correct. The secondary EPS conduit has broken free and shifted point-nine-eight meters to port, away from the relay.”

  “Is the hull behind the relay intact?” Ina said.

  There was a long delay before Soloman replied. “Negative,” he said. “I am seeing a break approximately seven meters long fore-to-aft, and three meters wide port-to-starboard. The structural integrity field is preventing atmospheric intrusion, but the field appears to be weakening rapidly at this location.”

  “Move quickly, Soloman,” Gomez said, her voice sharp with concern. Wong caught the worried looks that flashed between the first officer and Ina. “Get to the Jeffries tube and start cutting through now.”

  Wong detached the engineering console and carefully slipped his left forearm under
neath it, taking care not to put pressure on his wounded hand.

  “Commander, I have reached the Jeffries tube and—” Soloman’s comm signal was overwhelmed momentarily by static. “—now. Estimate entry to Jeff—” Another burst of white noise drowned out the Bynar’s transmission, this time for several seconds. Gomez tapped her combadge anxiously.

  “Soloman? Soloman, please respond.”

  Wong paused in his work as the scratching drone of audio interference dragged on. Then, Soloman’s voice broke through just long enough for him to utter words that gave Wong a sick feeling in his stomach.

  “Commander, something is happening….”

  * * *

  Soloman tethered his safety line to one of the Jeffries tube’s exterior structural supports.

  “Commander, I have reached the Jeffries tube and am preparing to cut through now. Estimate entry to Jeffries tube in approximately ninety-five seconds.”

  Soloman drew his phaser and steadied his arm to make a circular cut, on an angle, through the curved side of the Jeffries tube. He paused as his helmet beacon dimmed. He started to check its connections, and froze when its beam was suddenly extinguished. He keyed his comm. “Commander, something is happening. I am unsure what—” His suit’s heads-up display blinked out, and he became aware of the sudden, terrible silence that enveloped him. Then he felt his weight increase to an excruciating degree, pinning him down against a series of pipes and assorted device casings.

  Trapped against the machinery in the da Vinci’s outer skin, Soloman stared upward at the hull rupture. The integrity field covering the tear in the hull began to flicker erratically. Soloman concluded his odds of surviving a hull implosion and atmospheric breach were negligible.

  The integrity field fizzled and blinked out. The atmosphere rushed in, a flood-crush of liquid-metal hydrogen under so much pressure that it was as hot as the surface of a star. Soloman was thankful that his end would, at least, be swift.