by David Mack
She heard footsteps approaching quickly. Someone running. She strained to focus, squinted to see who was rushing toward her in the smoky half-light. As the running figure grew closer, the cadence of his steps, the shifting weight and balance of his body as he moved, even the measure and timbre of his breathing were comfortingly familiar to her. Fabe.
Stevens sat beside Corsi and gently grasped her left hand in both of his. He wore a bittersweet smile that conveyed both relief and lingering fear. “Hey,” he said in a soft voice. His eyes were bloodshot—likely from exhaustion as much as from smoke and fumes inside the ship, Corsi guessed. She mimicked his crooked smile and grasped his hands as tightly as she could.
“Hey, yourself,” she said in a brittle voice.
Several seconds passed as they clasped hands in silence. There were so many things she wanted to say to him, but she couldn’t find the right words. He lifted her hand to his lips and kissed her palm with a tenderness she was ashamed to admit frightened her.
“That’s what I wanted to say,” she said. She touched his cheek with her fingertips.
He reached down and stroked her sweat-soaked blond hair along her temple, followed it behind her ear. “I hope you get the chance,” he said, looking away. Corsi suddenly became aware she was lying at one end of a short row of da Vinci personnel who were sleeping in the corridor behind the bridge. She heard no throb of engines, no muted hum of life-support systems. And Fabe was clearly afraid, more so than she’d ever seen him.
“It’s bad?” she said. He nodded. “How many—” She hesitated to ask. She wasn’t sure she wanted to hear the answer. “How many of the crew—”
“More than half,” he said, his voice breaking. She felt the weight of the tragedy suddenly hitting him. He swallowed hard and continued. “We lost almost all the engineers and a lot of security guards. Four bridge officers, too—McAllan, Kowal, Deo, and Bain.” He was shaking. She sensed the tremors of his body radiating through his arm into her hand. “I don’t know if we’re gonna make it out,” he said. Now she was frightened, too.
“Fabe?” she said. “Are you—?”
“Captain’s all right,” Stevens said, pulling himself together. He took a deep breath and steadied himself. “Lost a hand, but he’ll make it. He’s on the bridge with Gomez.”
“Are you all right?”
Stevens pondered her question. He shook his head and squeezed her hand. “No, not really,” he said. “But I have to get back down to the hangar. As usual, we’re down to one of Duffy and Gomez’s last-ditch, long-shot plans.”
Corsi smiled coyly at him as he let go of her hand and stood up. “I feel better already,” she said.
“Yeah?” he said, and let out a soft, bemused chuckle. “I don’t.” He began to turn away, stopped, and pivoted back toward her. “I’ll see you on the other side of a million-to-one shot,” he said. She nodded in small motions.
“Count on it,” she said. He nodded to her, the edges of his mouth curling into a hesitant smile, then he strode quickly away, vanishing into the smoky shadows at the end of the corridor. Corsi watched his every step, keenly aware she might never see him again—that in fact, it was likely she wouldn’t.
No one had ever accused Corsi of being an optimist. As she lay paralyzed and waiting in the darkness for her fate, she hoped it wasn’t too late for her to change.
Chapter
6
Ina hunched closely over the ops console. Gold and Gomez both hovered close behind her shoulders. The captain and first officer scrutinized the Bajoran woman’s every move as she monitored the probe Duffy and Stevens had modified and launched a few minutes earlier. The display on her console had been set to parse the echoes of the probe’s tachyon “pings,” a crude but effective means of pinpointing the location of the wreckage of the starship Orion.
The extremely limited, pale-blue glow from the bridge’s few working monitors and consoles now provided its only illumination. The handful of chemical flares Hawkins had lit here had been moved down to main engineering, where lighting was most desperately needed.
A series of indeterminate static splotches on the monitor resolved into the familiar configuration of a Federation starship’s engineering hull. “I think I’ve got it,” Ina said. She enhanced the scan resolution and enlarged the image for detail. “Approximately one hundred nine kilometers below our present depth, sixty-eight-point-three kilometers ahead of us in the equatorial jet stream.”
P8 Blue poked her head in from beneath Gomez’s elbow and looked over the scan results. “Engineering hull looks intact along its center line,” the Nasat structural engineer said, then made a few thoughtful-sounding clicking noises. “However, the rate of deformation indicates the remainder of the Orion’s hull will buckle in less than an hour.”
Gold glanced over to Wong, who sat listening to the conversation. “Wong, can you get us to the Orion on thrusters alone?” Gold said, as Duffy and Stevens hurried onto the bridge through the aft corridor entrance.
Wong worked at the helm console for a few seconds, then answered, “Aye, sir. It’ll take about thirty minutes.”
“Lay in a course and engage,” Gold said.
As Wong began entering coordinates into the helm control, a second signal began to appear on Ina’s monitor. Gomez and P8 noticed it as well. Duffy and Stevens both pushed in and stared down over the shoulders of the much-shorter Gomez.
“Sir,” Ina said, “we have a second signal.”
“More wreckage?” Gold said, turning back toward Ina and her standing-room-only crowd of onlookers. Ina studied the data from the probe and answered even as she was still finishing her mental analysis of the raw numbers.
“Negative, sir,” she said. “Its depth is approximately nineteen thousand kilometers below our current position, and it’s emitting a powerful energy signal.”
Duffy edged past Gomez for a closer look at the data on Ina’s console. His eyes widened and his nostrils flared slightly as he drew a sharp breath. He straightened his posture and looked toward Gold.
“Sir, that’s a protomatter-based energy signature. It’s the Wildfire device.”
“Oy, gevalt,” Gold said. “It’s at ignition depth?”
“Aye, sir,” Duffy said. He looked at Ina for permission as he pointed to her console. “May I?” Ina nodded. Duffy entered a fast series of commands, then studied the data that flooded across the left margin of the display. Ina recoiled as the towheaded second officer laughed darkly and shook his head. “Yup, it’s armed, all right,” he said. “Eighty-seven minutes to detonation, and counting.”
“Okay,” Gold said. “Thirty minutes to reach the Orion. Gomez, how long to salvage the Orion’s warp core, install it on da Vinci, and restore main power?”
“No one’s ever done a warp-core replacement in less than six hours,” Gomez said. “But since we’re going to lose the integrity field in one hundred and four minutes when the phaser generators burn out, I’ll say we can do it within an hour of reaching the Orion.” She looked at the data from the Wildfire device on Ina’s monitor. “Assuming we don’t get vaporized.”
“If you can salvage the core,” Duffy said to Gomez, “I can buy you the time you need.”
Gomez nodded. “Sounds like a plan,” she said.
“All right, then,” Gold said. “This is your show, Commander. Take what you need—just leave me two warm bodies to run the bridge, and tell me when we have main power.”
“Aye, sir,” Gomez said. “I’ll need Ina and Wong, so I’ll have Faulwell and Abramowitz relieve them after we lock in our course to the Orion.” Gomez turned toward the young helmsman. “Songmin, plot a course from the Orion’s position back to orbit, leave it ready to go on a single command, then report to Work Bug Two.”
Wong nodded his acknowledgment, and Gomez moved quickly toward the aft corridor. “Fabian,” she said, “round up anyone else who can work and bring them down to main engineering on the double.” Gomez strode off the bridge, projecting con
fidence that Ina suspected was a bit too optimistic to be believed. P8 and Stevens both followed Gomez out, but Ina noticed that Duffy remained behind. She saw Duffy step close to the captain, and overheard him speaking to Gold in a low voice.
“I need to talk with you, Captain—in private,” Duffy said in a quiet but urgent tone. Gold held his cipher-like expression as he gestured to Duffy to follow him into the ready room. Ina watched them as they stepped quickly off the bridge, leaving her and Wong to exchange silent looks of bewildered concern.
* * *
Gold and Duffy stood facing each other in the ready room, barely able to see one another. Only a small fraction of the weak lighting from the bridge consoles spilled in through the open door, but the crew had been adjusting to the steadily decreasing illumination aboard the ship. When Gold pondered the extent of the damage to his ship, he was almost thankful for the darkness.
“What’s on your mind, Duffy?” he said. “Don’t like our chances?”
“Honestly, sir, I don’t,” Duffy said. “But that’s not what concerns me.”
“Quickly, Duffy.”
“Sir, did Commander Gomez brief you about Soloman’s encounter with the energy phenomenon?”
Gold blinked and felt a flush of concern. Gomez had said nothing of a second direct encounter; she had limited her reports to ship’s status and casualty lists. “I don’t recall that she did,” Gold said in a careful tone.
“Sir, Soloman reported that it had a logic to it—a unique intelligence. It might’ve been a probe, but he said it felt more organic, like an AI. And sir—it could’ve let him die when it breached the hull, but it didn’t. I think…” Duffy paused, but Gold anticipated the next statement formulating in the younger man’s mind. “Sir, I suspect it might have been trying to establish contact. I can’t prove anything yet, but I think it might be—well, a life-form.”
Gold groaned. He had suspected something similar before the accidental collision with the Orion, while reviewing sensor data with McAllan. “That’s a whole new can of worms,” Gold said, shaking his head.
“Sir, we have roughly eighty-four minutes until detonation. Regardless of whether we succeed in salvaging the Orion’s warp core, we have to stop the warhead.”
“We can’t shut it down from here, Duffy.”
“I’m aware of that, sir.”
“Are you proposing going after it?”
“Yes, sir, I am. We—”
“Damn it, Duffy, you’re a propulsion specialist. I need you here to help Gomez get that warp core online.”
“With all due respect, sir, I don’t think the da Vinci’s going to make it. And frankly, this is more important.”
Gold was growing irritated. “Duffy, if you think you’re going to throw the Prime Directive at me at a time like this—”
“Sir,” Duffy said sharply, “if this ‘intelligent light’ or whatever it is lives here, we might wipe out a species—hell, a civilization—if we ignite this planet into a star. We’re supposed to seek out new life, sir, not vaporize it. This is a Starfleet mess. It’s our responsibility to fix it.”
Gold struggled to breathe and calm himself. “I share your concern, Duffy, but the device is nineteen thousand kilometers deeper into the atmosphere than we are.” Gold shot a quizzical look at Duffy. “How do you propose to reach it without being turned into borscht?”
“I’m still working on that, sir,” Duffy said a little sheepishly. “I’ll need to borrow P8 and Conlon to work out the details.” Gold rubbed his chin, which was rough with stubble and slick with sweat. The overpowering heat radiating through the fractured outer hull now dominated every crevice of the tiny ship. Gold glowered at Duffy from beneath a furrowed brow silvered with age.
“You have ten minutes, Duffy. Ten minutes to show me a plan—any plan—for stopping that warhead.”
* * *
Duffy was fairly certain the plan he was proposing was one of the worst, most half-baked, ill-considered schemes he had devised in all his years in Starfleet. However, as one of his Academy professors had been fond of saying, “A so-so plan right now is better than a perfect plan an hour too late.” And considering that he, Pattie, and Conlon had formed the plan—and pulled together all the essential components to show to Captain Gold—in exactly nine minutes and forty-four seconds, he couldn’t help but feel a limited swell of pride at the achievement.
“This is moronic,” Gold said without a trace of humor, his voice echoing off the bare walls of the auxiliary shuttle bay.
“It’s the best chance we have, sir,” Duffy said. “I can disarm the warhead in less than ten minutes once I reach it. The trick, of course, is reaching it.”
Gold walked around the other side of the enhanced pressure suit, whose backside now was festooned with so many peripheral attachments that it looked less like a pressure suit and more like a tiny spacecraft. Surrounded by a ring of four chemical flares on the deck at its feet, it was cast in sinister, vertical streaks of purple light and ink-black shadow.
The suit—one of the four used during the boarding of the Orion—already had a built-in null-field generator. Now, in addition, it was saddled with a shuttle-pod’s integrity-field coil that had been twisted to half-encircle the suit’s torso; a sarium krellide power cell salvaged from spare shuttle parts; and a narrow-band guidance circuit cobbled together from damaged sensor components. The whole assemblage had been fused to a plasma-thruster harness torn from a spare Work Bug chassis.
“This thing’ll run out of power before you get halfway there,” Gold said as he massaged the stump of his left forearm.
Conlon stepped forward before Duffy could speak.
“Actually, sir, the suit is programmed to maintain minimal levels of support during his descent, to conserve power,” Conlon said. “Once he reaches the probe, the integrity field will shift to full power to keep him safe while he works.”
“Who’ll be keeping an eye on you, Duffy?” Gold said, his voice betraying his lingering doubts.
This time P8 jumped in to answer the captain. “Duffy’s vitals will be relayed to the science station on the bridge, where Dr. Lense can monitor his bio readings.”
Gold lifted a suspicious eyebrow at Conlon and P8.
“This question is for Duffy—and only Duffy,” Gold said. He jabbed a thumb toward the ungainly conglomeration of parts the trio had assembled. “Can you fly this thing?”
“Not to sound like a Ferengi used-starship salesman,” Duffy said, “but it actually flies itself. The plasma thrusters are linked to an autoguidance circuit programmed to home in on the Wildfire device’s energy signature. It’ll take me right to it. I’m pretty much just along for the ride.”
Gold narrowed his eyes at Duffy. “You did all this in ten minutes?”
Duffy shrugged and swapped knowing grins with P8 and Conlon. “We had to cut a few corners,” Duffy said.
Gold tapped the device and studied it for a moment. He glanced at P8 and Conlon. “Dismissed.”
Conlon and P8 stepped quickly out of the shuttle bay, leaving the captain and second officer alone with what Duffy had dubbed “the mother of all pressure suits.” Duffy watched Gold fold his hands behind his back—until the slender, white-haired commanding officer remembered he had only one hand. Gold self-consciously let his arms fall still at his sides as he looked at Duffy.
“The thruster system,” Gold said. “Your work?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Did Blue or Conlon check your numbers?”
“There wasn’t time.”
Gold nodded. Duffy watched him carefully.
“How soon can you be ready to launch?” Gold said.
“Ten minutes,” Duffy said.
“So, you launch at D-minus sixty-three minutes. How long to reach the warhead?”
“Thirty minutes. Less, if I’m lucky.”
“Thirty minutes to reach the warhead,” Gold said, fixing Duffy with a penetrating stare. “You know how many minutes this contraption will
last as well as I do—don’t you, Duffy?”
Duffy swallowed. He should have known better than to think Gold wouldn’t notice when the numbers didn’t add up. “Yes, sir. I’d say it has roughly forty minutes of power before its integrity field fails. Best we could do.”
“A one-way ticket,” Gold said.
“Yes, sir.”
Gold sighed heavily. “I’d rather send Corsi if I could,” he said. Duffy nodded.
“She’s still partially paralyzed,” Duffy said. “And she has other injuries. She wouldn’t live through the dive. Hell, I might not live through it.”
“I know,” Gold said quietly. “I know.”
Several leaden moments passed while Duffy waited for Gold to speak his mind.
“Are you ready to do this?” Gold said at last.
Duffy thought of Sonya, then forced himself to forget her just as quickly. “No, sir, I’m not. But I have to go.” Duffy looked Gold in the eye. “With your permission, sir.”
Gold nodded. Duffy coughed, deliberately, to prevent himself from getting choked up with paralyzing sentiment. “If I could ask one thing, sir,” he said.
“Of course.”
“Don’t tell Sonya,” Duffy said. “She has enough on her mind right now, without this.”
Gold nodded and shook Duffy’s hand.
“Good luck, Kieran,” Gold said. “Godspeed.”
Duffy nodded his farewell and smiled sadly.
“And the same to you, sir.”
Chapter
7
Duffy had never been particularly claustrophobic, but now that he was sealed inside the enormous, jury-rigged pressure suit, he felt severely cramped. The hasty modifications had required the new components be allowed to intrude into the suit’s interior. Inertial damping coils jabbed into his lower back; the guidance circuit pressed against his chest. Furthermore, with the entire suit except for his arms secured to the plasma thruster chassis, he had almost no freedom of movement—just enough to reach the Wildfire device and, hopefully, deactivate it.