Wildfire (Book 1 of 2) by David Mack

Author:David Mack [Mack, David]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Amazon: B000FC0WV0
Publisher: Pocket Books
Published: 2012-07-13T17:35:16+00:00

§ § §

What happened? Where am I?

Duffy reached toward his face, tried to rub his eyes— only to find the faceplate of his Starfleet pressure suit in the way.

Pressure suit. I’m in a… I’m on the floor.

Duffy felt the tremendous pressure of the semifluid hydrogen that filled the ship crushing down on him. He lay on his back, legs splayed apart, rumpled like dirty laundry over the wreckage on the deck. He licked his lips, which were dry, cracked, and bleeding. The sharp sting of saliva in the tender wounds helped him edge closer to consciousness.

He keyed the switch for his palm beacon. The beam sliced through the haze as he began to notice a terrible, erratic throbbing that felt like either a headache or his heart pounding its way out of his chest.

The beacon’s intense bluish beam fell upon a metal bar fused to what looked like a modified photon torpedo casing. The bar was probably close to two meters long, but it was twisted— melted?— into an S-shape. Above and beyond the misshapen metal bar, large sections of the bulkhead were blasted apart, glowing white-hot and smoldering.

Not a headache… not my heart. That’s… thunder. That’s thunder.

Crackling noise filled Duffy’s ears, which were ringing and felt like they were packed with wax. The sound was just a faraway scratch of electronic spatters at first, then he was able to discern words. “Duffy, do… read…— bort… Please resp— … Blue to Duff—”

His confusion began to clear, and clarity returned in waves. The Orion. I’m on the… I’m retrieving the device. Wildfire device. It’s armed… I… I need to get up.

He keyed his comm and increased the gain on the transceiver. “Duffy to Blue. I’m okay, I think.”

P8 responded through the yowling, high-frequency signal disruptions, which were quickly growing worse. “Get back to the Bug. Gold’s orders are to abort. We have four minutes to get back to the da Vinci.”

Duffy looked up at the metal bar, conjoined to the Wildfire device’s outer casing at the molecular level, and was suddenly grateful he hadn’t become part of that impromptu sculpture. He grabbed onto a piece of bulkhead jutting out from the wall and pulled himself to his feet. “Get ready to fly,” Duffy said. “I’m on my way.”

“Be careful, sir,” P8 said.

Duffy fought to overcome an attack of vertigo as he lifted his foot over a lightning-cut, half-molten gap in the wall that was now the only exit from the compartment. “A bit late for that,” Duffy said.

Setting his magboots to minimum grip, he broke into a clumsy walk-jog through the rolling, mangled, smoking corridors of the Orion. He hoped Pattie and the Work Bug would both still be there when he arrived.

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