STAR TREK - SCE - 24 - Wildfire Bk 2

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Contents

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

About the Author

Coming Next Month: Star Trek™: S.C.E. #25

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

COMING SOON:

#25:Home Fires by Dayton Ward & Kevin Dilmore

#26:Age of Unreason by Scott Ciencin

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: 0-7434-5679-3

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

Captain’s Log, Stardate 53781.1.

First Officer Sonya Gomez recording: Theda Vinci’s salvage of the Federation Starship Orion—which

was crippled by an unknown phenomenon in the atmosphere of Galvan VI—has taken a tragic turn.

Our first attempt to recover the ship’s top-secret cargo—a protomatter-fueled warhead called Wildfire

that can ignite gas giant planets into dwarf stars—was aborted after Security Chief Corsi was critically

injured during an encounter with a peculiar, luminescent energy field of unknown origin.

A second attempt to recover the device by Second Officer Duffy was also aborted. When Duffy and P8

Blue’s transport became trapped in an atmospheric anomaly during their return toda Vinci,Captain Gold

ordered us to move closer and intercept them. During the recovery attempt, a thermal event catapulted

the Orioninto a collision with the da Vinci.

Theda Vincihas sustained massive damage, and the crew has suffered several casualties. We’re still

assessing the damage and counting the dead. Without main power, we can’t escape the atmosphere,

which will crush us in less than an hour when our structural integrity field collapses. But even if we avert

that imminent threat, another looms close behind it: the Wildfire device, now armed and loose in the

atmosphere, is counting down to detonation in approximately three hours.

* * *

Gomez saved her log entry and turned off the tricorder. From behind her, she heard the snap of Ina Mar

cracking another chemical flare to life, adding its pale violet glimmer to the dim glow of other flares the

red-haired Bajoran woman had scattered around the smoke-filled bridge. Gomez brushed a lock of her

long, dark curly hair from her forehead, then gingerly touched the gash on her forehead with her

fingertips. The wound was still sticky with half-dried blood.

The emergency lights had not come back on, which meant even auxiliary power was gone. The only

thing keeping the ship’s structural integrity field from collapsing under the pressure of the gas giant’s

atmosphere was a very small number of industrial-grade sarium krellide batteries with what were now

certain to be very abbreviated life spans.

The bridge was eerily quiet. There was no throb of engines, no hum of life-support systems, none of the

muted vibrations through the deck that became routine elements of the environment when one lived

aboard a starship. Now that the ship had sunk below the meteorologically active levels of the planet’s

atmosphere, the cacophony of thunder and thermal swells that had buffeted the ship for hours before the

accident were conspicuously absent.

The groaning of the hull had also diminished significantly; Gomez grimly concluded that most of the outer

compartments and lower decks had imploded after the collision with theOrion, and the habitable areas of

the ship were now likely limited to the central areas and uppermost decks. Fortunately, that included the

bridge which, though damaged, was still mostly intact. Gomez surveyed her surroundings; it stank of

charred wiring, chemical flame retardant, and blood. Vance Hawkins from security was extinguishing the

last of the small fires inside the shattered aft console displays; Ina was lighting another chemical

glow-stick; Songmin Wong, the conn officer, exited through the bridge’s aft door to the corridor outside,

where the crew had set up a makeshift triage area.

Dr. Lense knelt in the center of the bridge, next to the unconscious Captain Gold. The white-haired

captain’s left hand and wrist were pinned under a heavy mass of fallen ceiling support beams; the small

mountain of metal would have killed him had the ship’s tactical officer, Lieutenant David McAllan, not

leapt forward and sacrificed his own life to push the captain most of the way clear. Lense glanced at the

display of her medical tricorder and shook her head as she reached into her shoulder bag for a laser

scalpel. With quiet precision she activated the beam, and a faint odor of searing flesh crept into Gomez’s

nostrils as Lense began amputating the captain’s left hand just above the wrist. She cut quickly through

muscle and bone, the beam cauterizing the flesh as it went. She clicked off the scalpel and put it back into

her shoulder bag.

“Commander?” Lense said to Gomez, nodding toward Gold. Gomez helped her lift the captain from the

deck; he seemed surprisingly light. They carried him out to the corridor, where Nurse Wetzel and

medical technician John Copper tended to five patients, who sat on the floor. The light from Wetzel’s and

Copper’s palm beacons slashed back and forth in the darkness as the pair moved from one patient to

another.

The two women gently placed the captain between the gamma-shift helm officer, Robin Rusconi, who

was awake and grimacing as she bore her pain in silence, and gamma-shift tactical officer Joanne

Piotrowski, who was unconscious. Lense took a dermal regenerator from her shoulder bag and slowly

repaired the jagged wound on Gomez’s forehead. Gomez stood still and let Lense work. Gomez

watched Wetzel and Copper position a handful of violet glow-sticks Ina had just brought them, trying to

maximize their area of illumination. She looked back at Lense as the doctor finished and put away the

regenerator.

“Do we have a head count, Doctor?”

Lense nodded and watched Wetzel and Copper as she answered. “Four confirmed dead: McAllan,

Eddy, Lipinski, and Drew. Another eighteen missing and presumed dead—most of them in the

engineering section and damage-control teams.” She gestured to the five patients in the corridor. “We

have five seriously injured: Gold, Corsi, Piotrowski, Rusconi, and Shabalala. The rest of us I’d call

‘walking wounded.’”

“How soon can you have them back on their feet?” Gomez said, gesturing toward the wounded. Lense

shook her head.

“Without a sickbay? No time soon.” Lense held out her medical tricorder and flipped through several

screens of data while interpreting it for Gomez.

“Shabalala has third-degree burns over almost half his body,” she said, referring to the beta-shift tactical

officer. “Rusconi has a shattered femur and fibula, a broken knee, and a fractured pelvis. Piotrowski has

a serious skull fracture and concussion, a broken clavicle, and multiple internal injuries. She’s lost a lot of

blood, and she’s still hemorrhaging. Lucky for her she has the same blood type as Wetzel. We’ll start

transfusing her in a few minutes, then I’ll begin surgery.”

Gomez frowned. “Gold and Corsi?”

“Gold’s in shock. Corsi’s still comatose, but stable.”

Gomez nodded. “Keep me posted, Doctor.” On the edge of her vision, she caught the flicker of a new

beam of light emanating from around the corner at the end of the corridor. The shaft of light bobbed with

the walking motion of whoever was carrying it, revealing by degrees the curling ribbons of acrid smoke

that snaked lazily through the corridors. A long shadow was cast ahead of the beam, its shape

amorphous but growing more distinct as its owner neared the corner.

A moment later, Gomez was relieved to see the familiar, diminutive eight-limbed shape of P8 Blue, theda

Vinci ’s Nasat engineer. P8 was walking upright and appeared unharmed. The palm beacon silhouetting

P8’s body was still behind the corner. Then P8 stepped forward, and Lt. Commander Kieran Duffy

entered the corridor behind her. He swung his beam across the row of seated patients, then onto Gomez.

“Everybody hurt?” Duffy asked. “Anyone all right?” Gomez usually appreciated Duffy’s sarcastic humor,

but this time his instinct to deflect tragedy with a flip remark annoyed her. She said nothing as he and P8

walked over to her.

“Sorry we’re late,” the tall, fair-haired engineer said quietly as he settled in next to Gomez. “Traffic was

a—”

“Round up everyone who can walk and join me on the bridge immediately,” Gomez interrupted. She

turned and strode purposefully back to the bridge.

From behind her, she heard Duffy’s quiet reply: “Yes, ma’am.”

* * *

Duffy and Stevens, both free of their bulky environment suits and back in regular uniform, stood together

at the aft end of the bridge, leaning against the railing and looking over the pile of broken metal that was

now hard not to think of as McAllan’s burial mound. Gomez paced over a short open patch of deck in

front of the mound, reversing direction after every third or fourth step, being careful always to turn in the

direction that kept her from making eye contact with Duffy. Her every motion was watched by eleven of

the fourteen remaining, assembled active members of theda Vinci crew, besides herself. Only Lense,

Wetzel, and Copper were absent, busy preparing for surgery on Piotrowski.

“Where, exactly, are we?” Gomez said to Wong. The once-boyish-looking Asian man cradled his

crudely bandaged left hand as he sat in front of his scorched, shattered helm console. Gomez noted that

Wong seemed to have aged in the past few hours. The look in his eyes had changed, had become hard

and distant.

“We’re about fifty-nine thousand kilometers deep in the atmosphere,” Wong said, “drifting around the

planet’s equator, suspended in a layer of superheated liquid-metal hydrogen. The structural integrity field

is the only thing keeping our hull from melting. Once the SIF runs out of power, it’s anyone’s guess

whether we’ll burn up or be crushed first.”

Gomez turned toward Ina, who was seated at what was left of her regular post at ops. “Engineering

damage report?”

Ina checked her tricorder. “The warp core’s been ejected, leaving us without main power or warp

propulsion. The impulse system’s ruptured, and all fusion cores went into auto-shutdown as a fail-safe.

Auxiliary power failed when the strain of maintaining the structural integrity field overloaded the EPS taps.

Right now, we’re running on half emergency battery power, and most of that’s going to the integrity field,

which’ll collapse in less than an hour.”

“What about escape options?” Gomez said, turning toward Stevens. “Can we abandon ship? Or send a

distress signal and hang on until a rescue team arrives?”

“Afraid not, Commander,” Stevens said. “Subspace transmitters are gone, and both our shuttles were

destroyed by a hull implosion—not that they’d survive long this deep in the atmosphere. Life support’s

offline, and we’re down to four hours of breathable air. Most of the escape pods and a lot of the spare

environment suits were lost when the outer compartments imploded. And, even if we could get a signal

out, the nearest rescue’s at least eighteen hours away. We’ll either be out of power or out of air long

before then.”

Gomez rubbed the stinging sensation from her eyes with the palms of her hands. “What about the main

computer?”

Soloman cocked his head slightly. “Tricorder scans indicate the computer core is still intact, but without

power we will not be able to bring it back online.”

“Could you power it up with one of those portable kits?” Duffy said. “Like the one you brought aboard

theOrion? ”

“Yes,” Soloman said. “But I do not think I can reach the access hatch to the core.”

“Most of the corridors on that deck are either flooded or have imploded,” P8 said.

Gomez nodded, and turned to Conlon. “Conlon, we need to buy ourselves some time,” Gomez said to

the young woman. “Three more hours, to be precise. Is there any way for you to bring auxiliary power

back online for just three more hours?”

Conlon looked petrified by the question. “By myself? Commander, the whole engineering staff is gone,

except for me. How am I supposed to—”

Gomez cut her off. “Nancy. We need power to keep the structural integrity field operating for the next

three hours while we look for a way out of the atmosphere. I don’t care how you do it, but find a way,

and do it before the reserve batteries run out in—” Gomez checked her tricorder’s chronometer

“—about forty-five minutes. Just buy me two more hours after that.”

“Why only two hours?” Carol Abramowitz asked.

Hawkins turned to the short, slender cultural specialist and answered plainly. “Because that’s when we

estimate the Wildfire device will detonate, igniting this gas giant into a small star. If we’re not gone by

then, we’re dead no matter what.”

Bart Faulwell, the ship’s middle-aged cryptographer, sighed heavily and shook his head. “I’m so glad

you asked that, Carol. Really, I am.”

“I know we’re down to a skeleton crew,” Gomez said, trying to sound reassuring as she looked around

the bridge at the desperate faces surrounding her. “But we need to restore power to the SIF in the next

forty minutes. Once that’s done, we’ll focus on escaping the atmosphere.” She turned quickly from one

person to the next as she fired off orders in a tone that brooked no questions.

“Duffy, Stevens, you’re with me. We’ll reroute any independent power sources we can find to the

emergency batteries.

“Robins, Hawkins, find a safe route to the main computer core for Soloman. Check all emergency

bulkheads along the way, make certain they’re holding.

“Conlon, Pattie, look for a way to purge main engineering, the impulse core, or any other compartment

from which you can reroute primary and auxiliary power.

“Faulwell, Abramowitz, search all secure areas of the ship for extra environment suits, drinkable water,

rations, first-aid kits, light sources, tools, tricorders, anything that might be even remotely useful.

“Soloman, Ina, Wong, stay here and try to restore bridge operations.

“Everyone report back here in exactly twenty minutes. And do your best to come bearing good news.”

Chapter

Faulwell and Abramowitz struggled for breath as they forced the sliding door half-open and peeked into

Lense and Corsi’s quarters. The air in the ship was quickly growing hot and stale without the life-support

system to counter the heat radiating through the hull from Galvan VI’s searing atmosphere.

Faulwell slipped inside the room first, leaving behind in the corridor a makeshift sack he had fashioned

by knotting together bedsheets taken from Lipinski and Eddy’s shared quarters. The sack was now

almost filled with salvaged first-aid kits and small pieces of standard-issue equipment collected from

throughout the ship.

Abramowitz followed Faulwell into Lense and Corsi’s dark, tiny room, the beam from her palm beacon

set wide and casting an enormous, sharp shadow of Faulwell on the far wall.

Faulwell quickly riffled through Lense’s side of the room, in a routine at which he was quickly becoming

too proficient for his own comfort. He looked over his shoulder and noticed that Abramowitz seemed to

be procrastinating, dwelling too long on the small knickknacks that had fallen from a shelf and landed in a

random arrangement on Lt. Commander Corsi’s bunk.

“Carol?” Faulwell said. “You okay?” Abramowitz nodded. “Then we need to hurry,” he said. “Check

under her bunk—maybe she keeps a spare phaser rifle.”

Abramowitz crouched, pulled open the drawers below Corsi’s bunk, and started to toss aside articles of

civilian clothing. Faulwell finished his own search, which had yielded a spare medical tricorder and a

first-aid kit—both of which Lense kept conveniently under her pillow—and turned to see Abramowitz

lifting from Corsi’s drawer a rectangular wooden case with a clear top. Inside the case was an antique

axe. It had a broad, squarish, spike-backed steel head, its red paint heavily scuffed. The head was

affixed to a meter-long, gently curved wooden handle whose rough grain and faded flecks of yellow paint

betrayed its antiquity. The base of the handle was sheathed in thick, black rubber. The head of the axe

rested on a triangle of folded, dark-blue fabric decorated with white stars.

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 theda 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…aconnection with any of the others, and I don’t know why.”

“Maybe it’s thedrad 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. Iget along with Pattie and the others, but I don’t…I don’t have anyfamily 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, justonce. ”

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’venever 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

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ContentsChapter1Chapter2Chapter3Chapter4Chapter5Chapter6Chapter7Chapter8Chapter9Chapter10AbouttheAuthorComingNextMonth:StarTrek™:S.C.E.#25OthereBooksintheStarTrek™:StarfleetCorpsofEngineersseriesfromPocketBooks:#1:TheBellyoftheBeastbyDeanWesleySmith#2:FatalErrorbyKeithR.A.DeCandido#3:HardCrashbyChri...

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