SCE 24 - Wildfire 2 (c) by Star Trek

Author:Star Trek [Star Trek]
Language: deu
Format: epub
Tags: \Star Trek
Publisher: Pocket Books
Published: 2011-01-02T07:59:50.981000+00:00

* * *

Gold stood between Abramowitz, who sat at the ops console, and Faulwell, who sat at conn. To his left, Dr. Lense occupied the science station Gomez had repaired. Lense monitored every minute fluctuation in Duffy’s bio readings, alert for any sign that the second officer might be in more trouble than he could handle.

A moot point now, Gold thought. He caught himself about to second-guess his decision to let Duffy go, then shook it off. No time now for regrets.

Gomez had drafted Ina and Wong—along with most of the rest of the crew who were able to walk—to assist in the salvage of the Orion’s warp core. Knowing that someone needed to remain at conn and ops on the bridge, Gomez had made a coldly logical assessment of which two crewmembers’ skills were least suited to the salvage and recovery mission.

Right now, Gomez’s logic is the only thing cold aboard this ship, Gold thought. He was unsure which was more suffocating—the heat, or the sharply rising CO>2 content in the ship’s few remaining habitable spaces. Faulwell, Abramowitz, and Lense all drooped languidly at their consoles, slowly losing their individual struggles against heat stroke and dehydration.

“Conn,” Gold said in a level tone of voice that projected perfect equanimity. “Time to Orion intercept.”

Faulwell checked his display. “Four minutes, sir.”

Gold nodded. “Abramowitz, how are we doing for power?”

Abramowitz worked at her console for a moment, then looked over her shoulder at Gold. “Backup phaser generators are starting to fail. Battery reserves are draining rapidly. The computer estimates ninety-one minutes to integrity field failure.”

“Time to Wildfire device detonation?”

“Fifty-eight minutes.”

“Steady as she goes,” Gold said and moved toward Dr. Lense. He attempted to palm the sweat off his face and neck, then gave up and surrendered to his own perspiration.

He watched the numbers parade across Lense’s screen.

“How’s he doing?” Gold asked. Lense shrugged and frowned.

“Too soon to tell,” she said. “He’s only four minutes out. It won’t start to get really bad for him for another three or four minutes.”

Gold swallowed the urge to tell her that for Duffy, it was already far worse than she could possibly know.

Gomez’s voice crackled over the stuttering comm. “Captain, we’re ready to deploy for salvage on your order.”

“Acknowledged. We’ll intercept the Orion in just under four minutes. Stand by.”

Gold returned to the narrow space between Abramowitz and Faulwell. The possibilities of the coming hour seemed to stretch out before him, like time extended on the event horizon of a black hole. Twenty-five minutes from now, the Orion’s warp core would be recovered and aboard the da Vinci, or it would be lost into the atmosphere. An hour from now, the Wildfire device would detonate, igniting Galvan VI into a small star and vaporizing the da Vinci, or it would be disarmed and left floating derelict and abandoned in a fiery liquid-metal sea…with Duffy by its side, sharing its fate.

The twisted shape of the Orion’s secondary hull remained concealed by the superdense metallic hydrogen in which it

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