Wildfire (Book 2 of 2) by David Mack

Author:David Mack [Mack, David]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Amazon: B000FC0WVA
Publisher: Pocket Books/Star Trek
Published: 2012-07-13T17:35:03+00:00

§ § §

Gold’s announcement was still echoing off the barren walls of main engineering as Gomez looked up from the dilithium crystal articulation frame.

Fourteen minutes? she thought. Is he kidding me?

Stevens, Pattie, and Robins had made it back several minutes ago. Gomez had detailed Stevens to hook up the antimatter injector assembly; Pattie was directing the rest of the nonengineers in reconnecting the electro-plasma system to the reactor. Conlon would be finished with the deuterium injector in a few minutes, then would go below to help Stevens. Soloman was promising core control functions in three minutes.

Even with all that done, there would still remain the delicate and potentially disastrous task of manually calibrating and controlling the matter/antimatter reaction process to restart the core. Gomez was ready to do it herself— she was an expert in warp drive engineering— but she would feel a lot better once Duffy was back aboard to help her fine-tune it. He was a propulsion expert, and this was his specialty.

She wiped the sweat from her palm down the side of her jacket and tapped her combadge. “Gomez to Duffy. What’s your return ETA? We could really use a hand up here.”

Gomez looked up and noticed Conlon was climbing down from the deuterium injector. Good. She’s ahead of schedule. A few seconds later she was still waiting for a reply from Duffy. She was about to tap her combadge again when she heard his voice crackle weakly over the comm.

“I’m sorry, Sonnie.”

Gomez felt the panic rise in her like a wave.

“Kieran? What’re you—”

“I love you, Sonnie… I’m sorry.” Duffy’s final iteration of I’m sorry was drowned out by a rasp of static.

“Kieran?” Gomez’s voice rose in pitch and volume with her fear. “Kieran!”

Gomez was numb. Her breath caught in her throat. She thought of Duffy, alone, swallowed by searing darkness, crushed, vaporized… She slumped against the side of the warp core. Her jaw trembled and her knees felt ready to fold and deliver her to gravity’s mercy.

No… Oh, God, no… A sick shudder racked her body. Her throat tightened to hold in a cry of rage and grief. Through the blurred lenses of her tear-filled eyes she noticed that all other activity in main engineering had ground to a halt.

Can’t fall apart, she told herself. If you’re weak these people die. Get up. Get up!

She banished her grief with an angry growl and blinked hard to clear her vision. She sealed the dilithium crystal chamber and glared at Conlon, who seemed to recoil from Gomez, as if grief were contagious. “If you’re done up top, go help Stevens,” Gomez said.

Conlon rushed to the hatch that led to the engineering sublevels.

“Let’s go, people,” Gomez said, loud enough to be heard a deck away. “We have twelve minutes to restore main power, and I don’t plan to be late.”

Gomez moved toward the impulse power relay, grabbing up tools along the way. She thought of Duffy, dying alone, and wished she was with him. She paused to look at

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