STAR TREK - SCE - 31 - Ishtar Rising Bk 2

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Contents

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

About the Authors

COMING NEXT MONTH: Star Trek™: S.C.E. #32

Other eBooks in the Star Trek™:

Starfleet Corps of Engineers series from

Pocket Books:

#1:The Belly of the Beast by Dean Wesley Smith

#2:Fatal Error by Keith R.A. DeCandido

#3:Hard Crash by Christie Golden

#4:Interphase Book 1 by Dayton Ward & Kevin Dilmore

#5:Interphase Book 2 by Dayton Ward & Kevin Dilmore

#6:Cold Fusion by Keith R.A. DeCandido

#7:Invincible Book 1 by David Mack & Keith R.A. DeCandido

#8:Invincible Book 2 by David Mack & Keith R.A. DeCandido

#9:The Riddled Post by Aaron Rosenberg

#10:Gateways Epilogue:Here There Be Monsters by Keith R.A. DeCandido

#11:Ambush by Dave Galanter & Greg Brodeur

#12:Some Assembly Required by Scott Ciencin & Dan Jolley

#13:No Surrender by Jeff Mariotte

#14:Caveat Emptor by Ian Edginton & Mike Collins

#15:Past Life by Robert Greenberger

#16:Oaths by Glenn Hauman

#17:Foundations Book 1 by Dayton Ward & Kevin Dilmore

#18:Foundations Book 2 by Dayton Ward & Kevin Dilmore

#19:Foundations Book 3 by Dayton Ward & Kevin Dilmore

#20:Enigma Ship by J. Steven York & Christina F. York

#21:War Stories Book 1 by Keith R.A. DeCandido

#22:War Stories Book 2 by Keith R.A. DeCandido

#23:Wildfire Book 1 by David Mack

#24:Wildfire Book 2 by David Mack

#25:Home Fires by Dayton Ward & Kevin Dilmore

#26:Age of Unreason by Scott Ciencin

#27:Balance of Nature by Heather Jarman

#28:Breakdowns by Keith R.A. DeCandido

#29:Aftermath by Christopher L. Bennett

#30:Ishtar Rising Book 1 by Michael A. Martin & Andy Mangels

#31:Ishtar Rising Book 2 by Michael A. Martin & Andy Mangels

Coming Soon:

#32:Buying Time by Robert Greenberger

#33:Collective Hindsight Book 1 by Aaron Rosenberg

#34:Collective Hindsight Book 2 by Aaron Rosenberg

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are products of the author’s

imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or

dead, is entirely coincidental.

AnOriginal Publication of POCKET BOOKS

POCKET BOOKS, a division of Simon &

Schuster, Inc.

1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY

10020

STAR TREK is a Registered Trademark of

Paramount Pictures.

This book is published by Pocket Books, a division of Simon & Schuster, Inc., under exclusive license

from Paramount Pictures.

For information address Pocket Books, 1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020

ISBN: 0-7434-7606-9

First Pocket Books Ebooks Edition August 2003

POCKET and colophon are registered trademarks of Simon & Schuster, Inc.

Visit us on the World Wide Web:

http://www.SimonSays.com/st

http://www.startrek.com

Chapter

Stardate 53798.2—First Officer’s Log, Commander Sonya Gomez. Theda Vinci’s mission to aid in

Project Ishtar, the Venus Terraforming Project, has taken a turn for the worse. While the initial phase of

“blowing off” Venus’s turbulent atmosphere with specially designed force fields was successful, an

unforeseen consequence has been a series of volcanic upheavals that are threatening the ground stations

on the surface—not to mention the viability of Project Ishtar. For now, our primary concern is evacuating

the personnel in Aphrodite Station, which is the ground station in the most immediate danger. I am

leading an away team in a shuttlecraft to begin that evac.

As Domenica Corsi and Fabian Stevens piloted ShuttlecraftKwolek toward Venus, Commander Sonya

Gomez sat just behind the cockpit, studying the readouts on the small display in front of her.This is going

to be close, she thought, her entire body knotted with the tension that only an urgent engineering crisis

could create.

She swiveled in her chair and looked back at P8 Blue, who was sitting in the specially constructed

slope-backed chair near another small bank of instruments.

“How are those numbers holding up, Pattie?”

“It’s going to be a rough ride, but we should be able to make it through the force fields with minimal loss

of structural integrity,” she said.

Seated beside Pattie, Lieutenant Commander Tev lifted his gaze from a tactical display and spoke

toward the cockpit. “Commander Corsi, make sure you approach the force-field boundary at exactly the

calculated angle. Miss it by the smallest margin and you could bounce us off the field lines and back into

space.”

“Or it could be even worse,” Pattie said, clattering her mandibles for a moment and making a strange

sound that Gomez translated as her version ofsplat! “To coin a phrase, we might be squashed like a bug.”

Gomez smiled at the self-deprecating humor, but Corsi only grunted in response, obviously concentrating

on her flying. A little humor certainly didn’t hurt, given the unrelenting grimness of their current situation.

One of the project’s technicians had provided them with the vibrational frequencies of the force fields, so

that they could penetrate them and try to get down to Aphrodite Station before the approaching lava flow

destroyed it.If that hasn’t happened already, Gomez thought. Recent sensor readings had revealed that

the lava was moving toward the ground station far more quickly than had originally been apparent. And

theKwolek ’s passage through the topologically complex, interlacing force-field network was bound to

be tricky, even with the vibrational frequency data. And once down, they might have only seconds to

effect any sort of rescue, most likely a hastily improvised one.

“Aphrodite Station, this is ShuttlecraftKwolek. Please respond.” Gomez keyed several panels on the

touchscreen, modulating back and forth across the gamut of usable frequencies, but all that came through

was a crackle of static. There wasn’t even an amplitude spike to imply that anyone might be trying to

respond.This rescue mission might be completely in vain. But there’s no way of knowing that for certain

except by making the attempt.

“Sensors still show nothing,” P8 said. “But I’m reading some very strong subsurface rumbles, with shear

waves, compression waves, and crust motions I’ve never seen before.”

Great,Gomez thought. “What do you make of it?”

“I think the lava inundation could accelerate even further,” P8 said. “We’re running out of time.”

“Doing my best,” Corsi said through clenched teeth. The forward windows revealed only noxious yellow

and brown gases that confounded any sense of direction. If one tried to measure theKwolek ’s motion by

the available visual cues, the shuttle might as well have been standing still.

Judging from the feel of the inertial dampers in the deck plating, Gomez knew that Corsi had slowed the

shuttle considerably in the last few seconds. Tev checked a panel and announced, “Three hundred meters

to outer force-field boundary. Two hundred fifty. One seventy-five. Seventy-five. Fifty. Twenty-five.”

The atmosphere outside the forward windows had grown so dense, thanks to Project Ishtar’s force

fields, that they had the look of a solid wall. Gomez reflexively checked her shoulder harness as Corsi

and Stevens flew theKwolek toward that apparently impregnable barrier at a steeply decelerating rate.

“Make sure our shield frequencies still match Project Ishtar’s,” Gomez said.

“Checking,” Pattie said, tapping at her console with multiple extremities. “We still have a positive

match.”

“Confirmed,” said Tev. “But we still don’t know exactly how passing through multiply interleaved force

fields will affect the shield-frequency compatibility.”

“That’s easy for you to say,” grumbled Corsi, turning to glance at Tev.

“Eyes on the road, Dom,” Stevens said.

“Force-field boundary now ten meters from ventral hull,” Pattie said, then continued counting down

quickly. “Now!”

For a moment, theKwolek was suspended in the air, like a fly caught in amber, and then it was pushed

downward with tremendous force. Gomez grabbed the edge of her console even as her body slammed

upward against the harness. The shuttle’s engines and inertial dampers both let out a sharp whine before

the ship wobbled, then finally steadied and quieted.

“Nowthat was a ride,” Stevens said with a grin.

“Did the fields close up all right behind us?” Gomez asked.

“Yes,” P8 replied. “That jolt we felt was from the superpressurized gases that followed us through the

aperture for a nanosecond or so.”

The viewscreens were clearer now, though the air was tinted a dingy goldenrod hue, as though saturated

with pollen. Gomez tried the communicator again. “Aphrodite Station, this is ShuttlecraftKwolek. Please

respond.” As before, nothing issued from the console speakers except a burst of background static.

Gomez smacked her palm against her leg in frustration.

“We’re getting low enough to see something,” Stevens said, pointing forward.

“That doesn’t look good,” said Corsi, unnecessarily.

As they descended further, the forward windows presented a relatively unobstructed view of Ground

Station Aphrodite—or rather, what was left of it. The roughly disk-shaped, twenty-meter-diameter

facility had been built on a small mesa-like bluff. Part of that bluff had crumbled, and had taken a

substantial section of the station’s external pressure dome with it.

And surrounding the partially shattered mesa was an almost blindingly bright, white-hot magma sea.

“There’s no way anything could still be alive down there,” said Tev matter-of-factly.

“We don’t know that yet,” said Gomez. “We have to find out for sure. Take us in closer, Domenica.”

“That lava flow is getting closer, too,” P8 said. “It’s almost reached the facility’s main level.”

“The sensors are still being confused by the ionized atmosphere,” Tev said. “So unless the survivors get

outside, a transporter lock’s out of the question.”

Gomez nodded grimly. “Then we’re going to have to get them out some other way.”

“They can’t go out in this soup without being immolated,” Stevens said. “Even the best environmental

suit wouldn’t last more than a few seconds out there.”

Corsi glanced at Gomez. “Even if we could get them outside in EV suits, where am I supposed to land

this beast? The roof’s too unstable. It’s barely able to hold up its own weight, let alone ours.”

Gomez studied the partially collapsed roof, which was glowing a dull red in the places where the

Venusian atmosphere had begun to melt it. A structure that looked a lot like a water tank sat precariously

on the roof’s far edge. Was there some way to make use of that?

“I think I know what to do,” P8 said, rising from her chair. Gomez noticed that the Nasat also seemed to

be examining the station’s roof very carefully. “AndI’m the only one who can do it.”

“What do you have in mind?” Gomez wanted to know.

Pattie’s gaze grew intense. “First, I’ll need some of our construction tools….”

Chapter

As the shuttle hovered scarcely more than three meters above the station’s damaged roof, the air below

it shimmered for a moment. The transporter beam dissipated with agonizing sluggishness, finally leaving

P8 Blue standing on the roof, her hard carapace exposed to the worst Venus had to offer. Strapped to

her back was a large duranium locker that contained—she hoped—everything she needed to rescue

whomever she found here.

In addition to the oppressive, caustic air—which, fortunately, Project Ishtar’s force fields had thinned

just enough for her to survive, at least temporarily—P8 could feel the intense heat from the magma that

was surrounding the building. But she knew that as bad as it was for her, it would be far worse for

anyone who lacked the advantage of her carapace. The natural membranes covering her eyes allowed

her to see where she was going, and she wouldn’t need oxygen for quite some time. She ran to the edge

of the roof, then scuttled over the side, her eight hands having to work harder than she expected to

maintain a grip on the structure’s smooth polyduranium alloy.

As she came perilously close to the ground—and to the rising tide of detritus-speckled lava—she found

the airlock’s hatch controls. It was a bit tricky entering the code from an upside-down orientation, but

she managed, then crawled into the airlock as the door hissed open. Once inside she punched a button

on a keypad, feeling greatly relieved once the hatch closed smoothly behind her.

The airlock’s fans had only begun pumping out the Venusian air, enabling the Nasat to speak.

Fortunately, the tympanic membrane with which her body produced sound did not require her to exhale

any of her precious oxygen. Tapping her combadge, P8 said, “I’ve entered the outer airlock. Can you

read me?”

A moment of silence passed, then another, and finally a crackling voice came through. It was Gomez.

“—es we re—you—”

“Your signal is weak, but at least we can communicate.” She saw the green light that indicated the outer

airlock’s atmosphere was now breathable, as well as the air beyond the inner lock. She realized that at

least some of the internal bulkheads must have closed in time to prevent a complete environmental

compromise, like that suffered by Ground Station Hesperus. There might be survivors here after all. But

with the Venusian atmosphere now cooking many of the station’s interior spaces as well as the external

ablative shielding, it was only a matter of time before the interior bulkheads succumbed to the inevitable.

Just like theda Vincihull did at Galvan VI.

The ground rumbled, reminding P8 of the rising tide of lava outside, a danger that threatened to render

all other hazards moot.

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摘要：

ContentsChapter1Chapter2Chapter3Chapter4Chapter5Chapter6Chapter7AbouttheAuthorsCOMINGNEXTMONTH:StarTrek™:S.C.E.#32OthereBooksintheStarTrek™:StarfleetCorpsofEngineersseriesfromPocketBooks:#1:TheBellyoftheBeastbyDeanWesleySmith#2:FatalErrorbyKeithR.A.DeCandido#3:HardCrashbyChristieGolden#4:InterphaseB...

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