Burning Dreams by Margaret Wander Bonanno

Author:Margaret Wander Bonanno
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Pocket Books/Star Trek
Published: 2006-12-26T16:00:00+00:00

12

U.S.S. Aldrin

Pike crawled through the smoke to the vicinity of the captain’s chair, grabbed an armrest and pulled himself upright, fumbling for the intercraft. “Engineering…damage report!” he shouted past the whooping of the red alert. “Comm, turn off that klaxon! I don’t think anyone needs to be reminded we’re on red alert.”

From engineering came the sounds of voices overlapping, orders being shouted and confirmed, a feedback echo from the red alert klaxon sounding belowdecks as well. Comm was abandoned; Flowers had been injured by a small explosion at her station during the initial attack. Pike pulled himself toward the comm station against the wonky gravity, and quashed the klaxon.

“Engineering?” he repeated, deciding he was better off staying at comm. Even in Kamnach’s absence, it didn’t feel right for him to be sitting in the captain’s chair. “Pike to engineering…what’s going on down there?”

Finally a hoarse voice he didn’t recognize managed to stop coughing long enough to say, “Warp engines off-line, life support compromised, sir. Shields down to thirty-five percent. We’ve had to seal off decks twelve and thirteen to contain the fire.”

Pike started to speak, coughed, started again. “Casualties?”

“Three dead, eight injured, four in the vicinity of the hull breach still unaccounted for.”

Charlie! he thought, but suppressed the thought immediately. Nothing he could do from where he was, anyway.

“Chewy? How soon before…”

“Sir…Lieutenant Chua’s dead.”

Pike sat back in the chair, momentarily stunned. The chief engineer’s cheerful face flashed through his mind. Chua and the others had died on his watch. The others, possibly including Charlie, and if Flowers’s injuries were severe…This was the burden of command, the thing he’d dreaded most. No time for dread now; he had to get the ship back online and away from the border before more Vestian vessels found them and finished the job.

Around him the skeleton of a bridge crew had contained the circuitry fires at the bridge stations. Wesley made the rounds with a fire extinguisher, but the smoke lingered in the air, a dirty yellow haze. With life support laboring on backup controls, the smoke refused to dissipate.

“Wesley, belay that and get back to your station. Plot us a course out of here,” Pike said sharply.

Wesley, still not sure if he should be obeying the first officer or starting a counter-mutiny, did as he was told.

Pike assumed as much, and went on talking to engineering. “Shields and life support first, weapons later. We need to breathe before we can fight. Pike out.”

Tell me I’m dreaming! he thought with the tiny little corner of his brain that wasn’t ticking with procedures, regulations, and the sinking feeling that if they got out of this alive and returned home, he and those who had sided with him were facing court-martial. Tell me I’ll wake up and none of this will be happening!

But it was no dream. They’d met and fought one Vestian vessel, destroying it. A second battle had nearly destroyed them, though not before Pike had relieved Captain Kamnach of command and confined him to

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