Fire On High (21 page)

The ionized gas roiled below and then Beth snagged Christiano by the wrist.

"Don't let go!" he screamed.
"Don't let go! Don't let
me go!"

The tentacle yanked downward and Beth's grasp slipped as she was jolted before she was able to get a firm grip on the catwalk railing. She snagged Christiano's hand, holding on with every bit of willpower she had, as she was hauled halfway forward and her ankles wrapped desperately around the lower strut of
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the railing. Now she had no support at all, forming a human bridge between the catwalk and Christiano.

There was no way on Earth she could possibly get the leverage to haul Christiano back up.

Not that it mattered.

For with that abrupt yank downward, Christiano's lower body was yanked down into the warp core.

Ironically, Beth's endeavors to help him transformed what would have been a quick death into an agonizing one. Had he simply fallen in, he would have been vaporized instantly. As it was, the lower half of his body was immediately incinerated, but the upper half—including a piercing and terrifying death scream—had time to register what was happening while it was happening.

There is no more horrifying sensation than knowing that one is already dead and there is nothing one can do about it.

Without Christiano to anchor her, Beth simply hung there, held only by the locked position of her ankles. She was stunned, her mind unable to accept what she had just witnessed, and then her entire body simply shut down and her legs went limp. Beth began a headfirst dive toward instant death.

And a taloned hand reached down from above and snagged her ankle.

On the catwalk overhead, Burgoyne 172 held on for all s/he was worth. S/he was only slightly out of breath despite the fact that s/he had scaled the emergency ladder along the reactor core shaft, up ten decks, in just under sixty seconds flat. S/he paused a moment to gather hirself and then pulled Beth up and out of harm's way.

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And the tentacle writhed up toward them.

"Pressure port seals!" shouted Burgoyne at the top of hir lungs. "Bring engine up to seventy-five percent capacity and keep it there!" And the emergency systems kicked in, slamming the pressure ports into place, sealing
off access to the injectors.

The tentacle immediately dissipated, but not without giving off a massive blast of heat that Burgoyne feared, for just a moment, was capable of incinerating them where they stood. But after a few moments had passed, Burgoyne was happy to realize that they were still there and still in one piece.

S/he held a trembling Beth tight against hirself, displaying considerable agility as s/he made hir way down the ladders toward the main engineering room.

Every one of hir people was gathered down there, looking shaken and confused. They were staring at the warp core with undisguised fear, for although the danger seemed momentarily to have passed, it was still all too present and all too real.

Trapped within the confines of a cargo container, Si Cwan fought desperately to shove away the lethargy that was seizing his mind. The drug injected into his system was a powerful one, but whatever it was, it had apparently been set to effect human physiology. Thai-Ionian physiology, on the other hand, was made of sterner stuff.

It was not easy for him by any means. It was everything he could do to fight it off. His overpower-ing temptation was to sleep, to just give in to the darkness that threatened to envelop him. But he kept muttering, "No," over and over to himself, forcing
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himself to focus, to ignore the temptation to give up.

He began to pound on the lid of the container. It seemed solid, and the ringing of the noise he generated as he struck it seemed so loud that he thought it was going to split his head wide open. But he did not cease, did not give in, would not give up. "Won't . . .

get away," he murmured. "Won't get away, won't get away." It became his mantra as he repeatedly pounded on the lid, over and over, determined not to lose. He felt the lid begin to loosen, bit by bit. Once more he started to tire but he knew that if he surrendered the momentum now, he would never attain it again. With both his fists he smashed upward, sending the lid flying up and off, and he started to clamber out of the container . . .

Just as the shuttlecraft blasted open the bay doors.

The vacuum of space howled around him while he was still hauling his numbed lower body out of the container. Instantly he let out much of the breath from his chest, because he knew that if he inhaled deeply, as was his reflex, the air would explode out of his lungs in a rather forceful fashion. The powerful suction hauled him out of the container and he skidded across the floor. Only seconds lay between him and ejection into the depths of space.

He pushed up with his powerful arms, angling himself in a desperate move, and slammed into the warp nacelle of the shuttlecraft. Urgently he wrapped his arms around the nacelle, braced his slow-to-function legs against the support strut, and hung on with all the strength he could muster.

The shuttlecraft lifted clear of the floor, and it was then that he realized that seeking salvation from
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death in space by clutching on to a vessel about to head into that very same void was probably not the best strategy he had ever developed. Unfortunately, by the look of things, he wasn't going to be around long enough to formulate any more.

"Damn the man!" snarled Morgan.
"God
damn the man!"

All she had to do was hit the forward thruster, and the shuttlecraft would be out and away. She would be clear of the
Excalibur,
gone to the safety of space and away from her imprisonment, and by the time they realized what had happened she would be long gone.

Granted, they'd probably be able to follow her, but she had places she could get to, resources she could tap. Coolly she ranked her odds at about 70/30 in favor of making a clean getaway, and those were odds that she would happily take.

But it was going to be at the cost of a man's life; a man who had wanted nothing more but to try and patch things up between her and her daughter and obey the captain's dictates that she was not to leave the ship. Was her freedom worth killing Si Cwan for?

Hell yes!
Morgan's mind screamed at her.
You
don't owe him anything! Punch it and let's go!
But even as her mind celebrated her freedom, she powered up the reverse thrust. The shuttle backed up under her careful guidance, slowly and carefully bringing Si Cwan toward the door that led to the Operations control booth. She knew that if she could get him to that point, and if he could just hold on until she did, he could worm his way through the door and to safety.

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And the drug in Si Cwan's system picked that moment to release its full potency.

Si Cwan suddenly felt his arms and legs go completely limp. He retained consciousness, but commands from his brain to his limbs simply didn't go through. He slid
off the nacelle and didn't even have the opportunity to thud to the floor as the suction of deep space picked him up and hauled him toward the void. And there was absolutely nothing that Morgan could do about it.

So it was with complete astonishment that she saw Si Cwan slam to a halt just as he was about to plunge into space. An invisible barrier had sprung into existence, and Si Cwan slid off it and fell to the ground, looking somewhat stunned.

Up in the Ops control booth, Lieutenant j.g. Michael Houle had come to when he heard the phasers blast open the doors. Forcing himself to full consciousness, he had desperately tried to reroute the malfunctioning systems for the purpose of activating the forcefield, which was the normal backup when the bay doors were open. With seconds to spare, Houle had managed to bring the systems back on line and turn on the forcefield.

Instantly the suction of space's vacuum had been thwarted, although Si Cwan still looked somewhat amazed to discover that he was, in fact, alive.

Morgan, however, was left with a problem. If she tried to open fire on the forcefield, she might or might not be able to punch through it. But if she did, she'd be faced with the same problem she had before: Si Cwan, who in this case was lying in stupefied confusion, still trying to sort out what had happened, was
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now smack in the way. Her hasty exit meant his untimely death.

She had already faced that decision once, and she knew what it was going to be.

With the frustrated grunt of one who knows she has lost, Morgan settled the shuttlecraft back down into its place. Then she opened up the side hatch and stepped out to see if Si Cwan was all right.

What she discovered instead was half a dozen security men with phasers drawn and leveled at her.

"Hi, boys," she said with a cheerfulness she didn't feel.

A medical team had been dispatched immediately to Engineering. Aside from some minor radiation and heat burns as a result of the strange, energy plasma tentacle that had extended from the heart of the warp core, the single greatest injured party seemed to be Beth. She sat in one corner of Engineering, trembling uncontrollably, her arms drawn close together and her legs drawn up in an almost fetal position. Dr. Karen Kurdziel was administering a sedative to her as Burgoyne stood nearby, looking on and feeling more helpless than s/he had ever felt before.

"There you go," Kurdziel said. "Now come on, relax. Just relax." And slowly she forced open Beth's arms, which were still frozen in a sort of rictus.

Something wet and fleshy plopped to the floor, causing several crewmen who were nearby to jump back, startled and repulsed. It was Christiano's right hand. Even to the end, Beth had not let go of it.

She'd been clutching it even beyond the point where
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she was aware that she was doing it. Then the sedative fully kicked in, and she slumped over. Moments later an antigrav gurney had carried her away.

Burgoyne watched it go, and then Calhoun was at hir side, a hand resting on hir shoulder. "Nice save of Ensign Beth, Chief," Calhoun said.

"Not nice enough to save Christiano as well, though."

"You did the best you could." He raised his voice to address the other members of Engineering. "All right, people. I know this was a rough one. And I know our neighbor there"—and he indicated the warp core within which something completely unknown seemed to be lurking—"is somewhat disconcerting. But Lieutenant Soleta assures me that we can keep it under control for the time being, so we shouldn't have to evacuate the ship. I'm asking you now to be the professionals I know you are, and carry on your duties with the efficiency that I've come to expect from you as the crew of the
Excalibur."

There were still nervous stares, and fearful glances at the core, but slowly the Engineering staff went back to their assigned posts. Calhoun, meantime, immediately went with Burgoyne to hir office, Soleta accompanying the two of them. The moment they had seclusion, Calhoun said flatly, "You're not going to tell me I misspoke, are you, Lieutenant? You
can
control the thing."

"Yes, I believe so, at least for the time being. We can supercool the matter-antimatter mix, basically slow down the thing's metabolism, whatever that may be. It will still receive energy from the ship's engines, so it won't have another fit. But it'll be
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sluggish and, with any luck, unable to cause any damage."

"Did you have any idea that it would retaliate in the way that it did when we cut the energy consump-tion?"

"No, sir," said Soleta flatly. "But I should have allowed for that possibility. The responsibility is mine and I accept full consequences for the outcome."

"Now wait a minute," Burgoyne contradicted her.

"This is my engine room, the final decision mine. If not for me—"

"This was a scientific mishap, Chief. Mine was the oversight that might have prevented—"

"Shut up," Calhoun said sharply, silencing both of them. "It doesn't matter whose fault it is. The responsibility is mine . . . and always is. And that's all.

Besides, all the placed blame in the world doesn't bring back a single life. Are we clear on that?" When they nodded silently, he said, "All right. What the hell have we got in there, anyway?"

"In simplest terms," said Soleta, "something planted by the energy creature that we encountered during the destruction of Thallon. Possibly an off-spring of the creature itself. I've compared the energy resonance of the bird-like energy creature we encountered with the entity that's in the warp core. There are variances, but sufficient similarities to indicate that there is some sort of relation. It is my belief that it is presently in the natal stages. But once it 'hatches,' its birth will very likely destroy the ship. And as it continues to grow, the effect it will continue to have on us is unpredictable."

"When does it hatch?"

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"Unknown. It could be days, months, perhaps years. Its progenitor, if such it is, took centuries.

There is simply no way to tell at this time."

"All right. And how do we get it out of our engine?"

"We don't know that either."

"Great. What
do
we know?"

"That we're screwed?" suggested Burgoyne.

Calhoun looked tiredly at Burgoyne. "Yes, Chief. I think we figured that one out all on our own."

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