WildFire Book One Read online

  The deafening roar of wind had become so omnipresent that Stevens was learning to tune it out, treating it as white noise. Ahead of the Work Bug, the lightning offered him irregular, strobing images of the Orion looming closer, but he chose to rely on the outline of the ship, complete with flight readouts and range to target, provided by the computer in the form of a heads-up display superimposed over the cockpit windshield. The two Work Bugs were now within less than a hundred meters of the Orion. He keyed the comm to Bug One.

  “Commander, we’re close enough to start a visual survey.”

  “Acknowledged,” Gomez answered. “We’ll take the dorsal hull, you take ventral.”

  The two Work Bugs separated. Bug One maneuvered to survey the Orion from above, while Stevens slowly guided Bug Two beneath the Steamrunner-class starship, which was nearly twice the size of the Saber-class da Vinci.

  “Activating filters,” Stevens said as he keyed a switch. Like a wash of color, a tint swept across Bug Two’s windshield, neutralizing much of the haze and distortion that blocked their view. Suddenly, the Orion became clearly visible, dominating the view outside the cockpit. Duffy inched forward past Soloman to get a view of the crippled vessel, and craned his neck sharply to look up at its underside.

  “Damn,” Duffy muttered. He pointed upward. “Fabe, look at that.” Stevens glanced where Duffy was pointing. The Orion’s secondary hull was blasted away in large sections, the framework beneath it twisted and bent inward. Duffy activated the scanners as Stevens keyed the comm.

  “We’re seeing some heavy damage on the ventral secondary hull,” Stevens said. “Looks like concussive damage from atmospheric shock waves.”

  “Readings are consistent with antimatter detonations,” Duffy said. “Could’ve been photon or quantum torpedoes.”

  “Dorsal hull is intact,” Gomez replied. “We’re not reading any life signs in the primary hull. Do you have any in the engineering section?”

  “Negative,” Duffy said. “And it looks like she’s partially flooded. Internal pressure is reading just over two hundred bars.”

  “That’s not too bad,” P8 said over the open channel. “It means Orion still has some hull integrity.”

  “It’s time to go in,” Gomez said. “We’ll dock Bug One at the forward ventral hatch. Fabian, dock Bug Two at the starboard dorsal hatch. Once we’re in, you and Pattie will continue your survey, figure out where to attach the tow lines.”

  “Acknowledged,” Stevens said as he swiveled Bug Two around and began moving it toward Orion’s starboard docking hatch. Duffy and Soloman secured their helmets in place. Duffy grabbed a portable tool kit. Soloman picked up a slender case containing an emergency data-recovery terminal. Stevens fastened his own helmet into place, looked over his shoulder at the pair, and grinned. “Get ready for a little bump,” he said.

  Bug Two slammed hard against the Orion. The impact knocked Duffy and Soloman hard against the bulkhead and sent them toppling to the deck. The clang of the magnetic docking seal finding its mark rang out like a bell inside Bug Two. It was followed by the grinding of docking seals securing themselves. Duffy and Soloman got back on their feet as the airlock on the other side of the hatch depressurized with a muffled hiss.

  “Nice flying, Fabe,” Duffy deadpanned.

  “You know the rule, Duff,” Stevens said. “Any landing you can walk away from….”

  Duffy shook his head and opened the hatch. “I think we need to raise our standards.”

  “I concur,” Soloman said as he followed Duffy into the airlock and sealed the hatch behind them.

  * * *

  Gomez paused, her magnetic boots yanking her foot back onto the deck. She strained to see through the souplike, semiliquid atmosphere that had flooded the corridors of the Orion. Her palm beacon was set to maximum intensity, but it was unable to penetrate more than a few meters into the murk ahead of her.

  Considering the carnage that filled the corridors of the Orion, Gomez decided that was probably for the best.

  Temperatures inside the ship had been hot enough to sear the flesh off most of the dead, leaving behind skeletons in scorched rags or—in many sections of the ship—pulverized piles of bone and little else. As Gomez pushed forward she felt a rib cage disintegrate, crushed underfoot by her heavy magboots.

  The miniaturized null-field generators Conlon had built into the away team’s environment suits alleviated much of the pressure they were experiencing inside the ship, but Gomez’s muscles were already growing fatigued from pushing through the dense mixture of partially liquefied gases, as well as the added strain of fighting against the planet’s intense gravity. The Orion was slowly rolling on its Z-axis as it drifted, and rather than walk on the ceilings or walls, the away team had resorted to magnetic boots. Unfortunately, the planet pulling in one direction and the boots pulling in another made for very slow progress in the flooded passageways.

  Her tricorder scanned a twenty-meter radius around her position and relayed its data to a display projected on the inside of her helmet visor. The mean temperature inside the ship had climbed to nearly one hundred thirty degrees Celsius—a mere fraction of the temperature outside the vessel, but more than hot enough to have long since killed any humanoid life-forms on board.

  Gomez reminded herself that anything was possible—there might be a shielded area deep inside the ship where survivors held out hope of rescue—and continued her search, even as her hopes of finding anyone alive decreased with each scan.

  * * *

  Soloman emerged from the interior pressure lock that led to the Orion’s main computer core and breathed a sigh of relief. The multiple redundant fail-safes that were a standard element of Starfleet ship design had proved their value once again: even though all the compartments surrounding the main core had been flooded with semiliquid gases, the core itself had remained undamaged, its structural integrity uncompromised.

  His tricorder indicated the core was offline, without main or auxiliary power. Its last remaining backups—small emergency batteries built into the core assembly itself—had activated and were keeping the core operating at a minimal level. Soloman opened the case containing the data-recovery terminal and patched into the Orion main computer core. Within seconds the core powered up with a majestic hum and established a link with the small but robust portable unit. Soloman initiated the recovery of the Orion’s logs—all of them, from sensor logs to personal and official logs from every member of the crew—and activated his comm.

  “Soloman to Commander Gomez,” he said, his delicate, high-pitched voice echoing inside his helmet. “I’ve reached the main computer core and started the recovery of the ship’s logs.”

  “Good work,” Gomez said, the strain in her voice belying her exhaustion. “Notify me as soon as you’re finished.”

  “Acknowledged.” Soloman closed the channel and stood patiently, staring up at the ceiling of the lower core chamber some fifty feet above his head. He knew, based on the rate of data transfer possible between the portable unit and the main core, that this operation would take at least twenty-eight minutes. He also knew, from his review of the core’s design schematics, that the core was structurally stable, that he was standing in one of the safest areas of the ship. But he still wished he were leaving this ship now instead of later.

  * * *

  Duffy wished he were in the da Vinci mess hall wolfing down a triple-decker roast beef sandwich with his usual quinine water. Somewhere between decks eighteen and nineteen his stomach had reminded him that, in the flurry of activity that had followed the da Vinci’s new orders, he had forgotten to eat lunch—and dinner.

  He had already written off the Orion’s impulse engines as a lost cause. The main fusion reactor had been breached and caused a cascade failure of the entire impulse system. Half the compartment had been destroyed by the initial blast, and the rest had been exposed to atmosphere.

  Now he was slogging his way through the main engineering compartment, his palm
beacon barely cutting through the dark shroud of liquefied gases. He was surrounded by the scorched-black skeletons of the Orion’s engineering crew, many of whom appeared to have died while trying to don pressure suits.

  Why didn’t she answer me?

  Duffy shook his head. Stop that. Don’t think about Sonnie. Think about the warp reactor. At least warp reactors make sense.

  Duffy felt his way to the railing that circled the warp core, and followed it to the dilithium crystal chamber. He scanned it, and was pleased to find the crystals inside were undamaged. Then he scanned the interior of the core and wondered why it had been purged. It was structurally sound, and its auxiliary systems were intact, but it had been deactivated. Correction, he thought. At least warp reactors usually make sense.

  He found the access hatch to the lowest level of the ship. He descended slowly, the planet’s gravity pinning him against the ladder as his magboots struggled to gain purchase on the rungs. He reached the bottom deck of the Orion and opened the emergency bulkhead to the antimatter pod storage compartment.

  He surveyed the massive room, which was now little more than a series of empty pod frames and twisted duranium hull plating. He looked away as a flash of lightning forked past outside the ripped-open hull, and held on to the door frame as a clap of thunder knocked him backward. He caught his breath, closed the bulkhead, and keyed his comm.

  “Duffy to Gomez.”

  “Go ahead.”

  “I have a new theory on what tore open the belly of the Orion. All her antimatter pods have been ejected.”

  “They lost containment and tried to eject the pods—”

  “—but the ejection system was made for zero-G vacuum and the pods failed to reach safe distance before they exploded. Man, what a mess.”

  “So, no chance of restoring power?”

  “Negative. Once her batteries go, her integrity field’ll collapse and this’ll become the biggest hunk of duranium origami you ever saw.”

  “Okay, come back up and start working your way forward to help me finish scanning for survivors. We’ll meet back at the starboard hatch on deck three.”

  “See you there. Duffy out.”

  Duffy trudged back toward the access ladder. He remembered how arduous the climb down had been, and he looked back up the ladder to his destination, seventeen decks away.

  Damn, Sonnie…the things I do to keep a date with you. With aching shoulders and a growling stomach, he started climbing.

  Chapter

  7

  Corsi felt her way through the Orion’s forward torpedo room, inching toward the launcher assembly, where her tricorder indicated the Wildfire device rested on a loading rail. She searched the area with her palm beacon, struggling to discern the narrow, conical shape of the device from the wreckage of the collapsed ceilings and flooring. Then the beam of her palm beacon fell upon the tip of the device, which lay half-buried in a tangle of optical fibers.

  Corsi tried to pull the fibers off the device. They resisted, caught fast on something underneath—a protrusion from the warhead casing, she surmised—and she tugged harder. Like kelp tearing away from the hull of a sunken ship, the cables came free, and she tossed them aside. As the trailing ends of the cables passed behind her, she saw that they had been tangled up in the corpse of one of the Orion’s crew, the skeleton of a male Andorian, whom she guessed was probably Lieutenant ch’Kelavar, the Orion’s second officer.

  She scanned the Wildfire device and saw her tricorder was receiving no readings from it whatsoever—and remembered that the device was heavily shielded. She slowly ran her hand along its surface, feeling for its control panel. A few seconds later, she discovered the slight indentation in the device’s casing and pressed down. The surface of the device suddenly was wrapped in a shimmering, holographic cocoon, and through her helmet visor she could barely hear the standard, feminine Starfleet computer voice, heavily distorted by the dense, semiliquid gases that filled the compartment. The image of a standard interface panel formed on the outside of the device’s holographic shell. “Verify security clearance.”

  Gold’s orders had been to give the device’s top-secret access codes to as few people as possible; for this away mission he had entrusted them only to Corsi. Corsi entered the project’s specific code sequence, followed by her personal authorization.

  “Verified.”

  The hologram changed again; now it displayed vast amounts of data, including the device’s current depth in the atmosphere, its target depth, its countdown preset and its operational status—which, Corsi grimly noted, clearly indicated it was armed. She keyed her comm.

  “Corsi to Gomez. I’ve located the device.”

  “Status?”

  “Active. If it drops to its target depth, it’ll start its countdown automatically.”

  “How long until—” The comm crackled with static, swallowing Gomez’s reply. Corsi tapped the side of her helmet, mostly out of frustration. The static persisted, with a few stray words slipping through intermittently: “—device…return to—” Then Corsi’s comm spat out a long burst of static.

  “Commander? Your signal is breaking up. Please repeat. Commander, do you copy? Commander, do you—”

  The static turned to silence, and Corsi paused as the room quickly grew darker. Her palm beacon dimmed rapidly, as did the small indicator lights on her pressure suit. She reflexively looked to her tricorder, only to find it had lost power, as well. Within seconds, the compartment was swallowed by darkness, and the only sound she could hear was her own breathing, ragged and loud inside her helmet.

  She knew she was respirating too quickly. Remain calm, she thought. She concentrated on controlling each breath, keeping her lungs’ ebb and flow slow and even. Probably just an ionic disturbance in the atmosphere. It’ll pass in a few seconds, just stay calm.

  Slowly, a violet glow of light returned and suffused the cramped compartment. There, no problem, just a simple—

  She looked down and saw her palm beacon and tricorder were both still without power. Then she noticed her shadow stretching slowly across the Wildfire device. The light was coming from behind her, and it was getting brighter.

  With great caution, she turned toward the light.

  * * *

  Stevens reached the aft end of the Orion’s secondary hull, looked up at the underside of the starboard nacelle, and shook his head in disappointment as he keyed the comm. “Starboard nacelle’s got multiple fractures where it meets the engineering section,” he said. “Any luck on port side?”

  “Negative,” P8 Blue said. “Massive damage along the entire port nacelle assembly. I do not think this will work.”

  “Want to do one more sweep forward before we—”

  “Gomez to Work Bugs. We’ve lost contact with Corsi. Can you confirm all channels clear?”

  Stevens tried not to think of worst-case scenarios while he checked his Work Bug’s comm relay circuits. Because the Orion’s main computers were offline, the away team’s communications were boosted through the Work Bugs’ onboard systems.

  “Bug Two, all channels clear.”

  “Work Bug One, all channels clear.”

  “All right. I need visual confirmation that the forward torpedo compartment is still intact.”

  “On our way,” Stevens said.

  “Acknowledged,” P8 Blue said. “Reversing heading now.”

  Stevens could just barely see Work Bug One, up above the Orion, as he rotated Work Bug Two for the return trip along the Orion’s underside. As he completed his rotation maneuver, he saw an incandescent, narrow double helix of energy that emerged from the deepest layers of the atmosphere and extended upward, disappearing into the underside of the Orion’s saucer section.

  “Pattie, do you see that?”

  “Affirmative.”

  “Stevens, report,” Gomez ordered.

  “Some kind of energy beam, Commander. Coming up from the planet and penetrating the ship’s saucer.”

  “I a
m unable to lock scanners onto the phenomenon,” P8 Blue added, “but it appears to be entering the Orion ’s hull directly beneath the forward torpedo compartment.”

  “Gomez to all away team personnel. Corsi might be in trouble. Who’s closest to the forward torpedo compartment?”

  “This is Duffy. I’m on deck five, section twelve. I can reach her in two minutes.”

  “I’ll meet you there,” Gomez said through the increasing static on the comm. “Everyone else, get to the emergency rendezvous point. Stevens, tell the da Vinci we might need to abort.”

  “Acknowledged.” Stevens stared at the shimmering ribbon of light piercing the Orion’s hull, thought of Domenica Corsi being on the receiving end of it, and again tried not to imagine the worst as he activated his Work Bug’s emergency channel. “Stevens to da Vinci, priority one.”

  * * *

  Corsi stared in awe as the lattice of light emerged from the floor, creeping upward like a vine ascending an invisible wall. Each tendril was made of small beams of energy, some only a few centimeters long while others stretched vertically for more than a meter. Every beam was either parallel or perpendicular to another beam, and they built upon each other, new tendrils of light appearing through the floor, pushing the ones above upward, like a twisting ladder. It extended through the bulkheads on either side of the torpedo room, and was several meters deep from Corsi’s point of view—which meant it was blocking her only avenue of escape.

  The structure stopped moving upward and began growing outward, toward Corsi. She backed away from it, but after a few steps she had no more room to retreat. The wall of light pushed in and enveloped her.

  She convulsed violently as an electrical shock coursed through her nervous system. Her fingers curled into a rictus, and a metallic taste filled her mouth as her teeth clenched with enough force to crack their enamel. Her face twisted into an excruciating, death’s head grin.