Fire On High (20 page)

"You're supposed to be running the port test at the
antimatter
reactant injector. Not the MRI, the AMRI.

You're at the wrong end of the M-ARA."

Christiano looked rather chagrined. It was bad enough being in the wrong place, but having made the screw up with Beth present and knowing about it . . .

well, that was more than he would have liked. "Sorry, Chief. I'll get right on it."

"See that you do! Burgoyne out."

* * *

Star Trek New Frontier

Burgoyne shook hir head in annoyance as s/he monitored the readouts. Soleta was next to hir and asked, "Problem?"

"Crewman's in the wrong place. At least," s/he said, frowning, "I think he is. Frustrating thing is, I hope it wasn't my screwup. I might have accidentally assigned him to the wrong place. Just had a lot on my mind lately, I guess."

"Do you wish to discuss it?" asked Soleta.

"No. No, I don't think so."

"Good," Soleta said firmly. "Because I do not believe I wish to hear—"

Then her eyes widened. "Burgoyne!" she said as the readings began to spike.

"I see it!" replied Burgoyne. Hir heart was pounding against hir rib cage as hir mind fought to understand what s/he was seeing. "Look at that!

Something's driving the energy readings back up again! But that's impossible! Nothing can override the flow from the power transfer conduits! It's got twenty seven fail-safes!"

"Apparently that's one less than it needed," Soleta told hir sharply. "The engines are powering up, the matter-antimatter feed is coming back on line."

"Blast and damn!" shouted Burgoyne even as s/he hit hir commbadge. S/he looked up at the ten stories of the M-ARA as s/he called, "Burgoyne to Beth!

Burgoyne to Christiano! Get the hell out of there!

We're removing the containment patch and replacing the pressure ports! Get clear in case something else goes wrong!"

That was when Burgoyne heard the screams.

Alarmed shouts coming from throughout the engine
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room, reacting to something that did not seem as if it could possibly exist.

And then s/he saw it.

In the heart of the matter-antimatter core, it began to take form. The ionized gas within moved about it, and whether it was feeding off it or whether the gas was actually constituting its body, s/he couldn't even begin to guess.

It didn't have eyes or any discernible feature. It seemed almost embryonic, as if it were trying to decide what shape it was going to take. Burgoyne could almost imagine that s/he heard some sort of distant roaring, although that was flat-out impossible.

But then again, so was this.

"Soleta to bridge!" Soleta was shouting over her commbadge. "There is some sort of being in the M-ARA! Repeat, some sort of creature, possibly sentient, definitely hungry!"

"On my way!" came Calhoun's voice.

And then the alarms began to go off, systems shutting down and starting up again all over the ship.

Burgoyne wasn't sure where to look first, and then s/he looked up and s/he saw something truly horrifying. Something that made the situation seem like the death throes of Thallon all over again, except this time it was the helpless
Excalibur
that found herself squarely in the middle of the situation.

Something was punching its way up through the top of the matter reactant injector. Although the magnetic patch was still in place, some
thing—
a talon, a claw, a tentacle, a roiling combination of all that and more—

stretched through it and upward, toward the terrified forms of Ensigns Beth and Christiano.

* * *

Star Trek New Frontier

Lieutenant j.g. Michael Houle never knew what hit him.

Houle, a tall, handsome, and freshly promoted flight deck officer at shuttlebay two, at that moment was trying to figure out why all the systems were going insane in front of him. One indicator said that the bay doors were open, another said they were closed, a third said that the annular force field that prevented depressurization of the bay had come on, another said no. It was as if the entire array had gone nuts, as if something was blowing out energy all over the ship and creating havoc with the systems.

He heard a footfall behind him and turned to see if it was someone who was going to explain to him what was going on. He didn't even have time to fully register that a fist was coming his way before it struck him cleanly on the chin. Houle's head snapped around and he sagged to the floor without having managed to say a single word.

Morgan stepped past him, shaking out her hand to remove the tingling from her fist. "Never hit bone on bone," she scolded herself. "I simply must remember that."

From the Ops booth, she looked down over the shuttlecraft available to her. There was not quite the assortment available as there was in the main shuttlebay; on the other hand, she knew it was considerably less guarded and more open to attack. Besides, she didn't need much. Then she spotted the ideal vehicle for her needs.

"A type six," she said briskly. "Will give me warp two for thirty-six hours, warp one-point-two for two days if I'm moving at full bore. Excellent."

Her intention had been to reroute the bay door
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commands so that she could activate them from the interior of the shuttle, but she quickly found herself falling victim to the systems blackouts that were devastating the rest of the ship. Clearly the unexpected distraction of the systems problems was a double-edged sword. It had caused enough confusion to allow her to slip by the security guards, but it was now impeding her intended means of egress.

"All right," she said to no one. "Not a problem. I have a backup plan."

Quickly she exited the Ops deck and headed down to the shuttlecraft that she had selected. She emerged from the stairway to the Ops level, ran several feet—

and stopped.

Si Cwan was blocking her way, standing between her and the shuttlecraft.

"You left right in the middle of our drinks, Morgan," he chided her. "You struck me as a woman of better breeding than that.

"One side, Ambassador, or I'll strike you in a worse way than that," she said. Slowly she walked toward him, her arms swinging in leisurely fashion. "This is none of your concern."

"Yes, so you believe. Unfortunately for you, I do not." He did not appear the least bit concerned about her advance. There seemed little reason for him to be.

He was a head taller than she, with broad shoulders and muscular build. And he was someone who had proven himself any number of times in battle; indeed, he had even managed to fight the formidable Zak Kebron himself to a standstill. "Do not try it, Morgan. The outcome will not be pleasant for you."

"Yes, so
you
believe," she tossed back at him.

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"Trust me, Si Cwan, you do not want to get between me and the shuttle."

"I already am, and trusting you seems to be the root of our problem, doesn't it?"

"It would seem so."

And then, with no further preamble, Morgan launched herself at Si Cwan.

He admired her form. She moved quickly, confidently, and although she didn't have nearly the reach that Si Cwan did, she more than made up for it with speed and aggressiveness. But Si Cwan's confidence never wavered. He sidestepped as she came at him with that graceful economy of movement he always displayed, and he swung his leg in a roundhouse kick that was designed to catch her squarely in the back and knock her to the ground.

But then Morgan made a sudden movement with her hand, something so subtle that he almost didn't spot it. When he did, it was too late. His leg was already in motion, and then Morgan had out the spray hypo that she had grabbed off the medtech and secreted up her sleeve. She jammed it squarely into his inner thigh and it hissed its contents into him.

"You . . . !"
Si Cwan managed to get out, and then the world twisted around him. He sank to his knees, desperately trying to fight off whatever it was that she had pumped into his system. There appeared to be three of her in front of him and he made a desperate lunge toward the one in the middle. One would have thought it was the logical choice, but his hand went right through her and then the one on the right slammed a fierce kick into the side of his head.

And still Si Cwan would not go down. Instead he
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crawled on his hands and knees, trying to go after her even as she opened the door of the shuttle. "Oh, for God's sake," she said in irritation. Displaying amazing strength considering her size, she grabbed Si Cwan by the back of his tunic and yanked him toward a freight container that was anchored to the floor. It was exactly what she needed as she yanked it open and saw that it was empty. She hauled him up and shoved him into the container, snapping the lock shut on top.

"You won't suffocate," she said. "I'll let them know you're in here after I'm safely gone. Trust me, this is for your own good, although you probably can't hear me or else don't believe. But as you said, trust has always been part of our problem, hasn't it?"

Si Cwan couldn't manage any sort of articulate response, which wasn't all that much of a problem since she wasn't listening to him. With the ambassador safely stowed, she headed back for the shuttle and climbed in.

Quickly she fired it up, bringing the engines on line with practiced ease. She had to hurry the systems check, but she was confident in Starfleet compulsion to keep everything in top working order.

For the briefest of moments she regretted taking off on Robin yet again. But she would just have to understand. "You're a big girl now, Robin," Morgan said, "and you can certainly live without your mom-my. Heaven knows you've done it for long enough."

The bay doors remained sealed, but Morgan did not see that as being a problem for much longer. As the engines roared to life, Morgan brought the phaser array on line. Standard equipment for the shuttle did not include any weaponry, but Morgan had quickly spotted this one rigged with a type IV phaser array.

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Clearly this was a shuttle reserved for special opera-tions. Well, she had just such an operation in mind.

She targeted the bay doors and opened fire. The phasers blasted outward, pounding into the doors and easily smashing through them, sending large pieces of the triple-layered duranium doors tumbling into space.

She prepared to lift off, but something ricocheted off the front of the shuttle, tumbling away. It caught her attention and she realized that it was the top of a freight container. Then she heard something else, something much fainter, bump against the lower section of the ship. She might not have heard it at all, for the vacuum of space and the roar of the engines was almost deafening, but the moment she saw the piece from the container spiraling away into space, she had known with hideous certainty what was going to be next. A quick exterior scan confirmed it for her.

"I don't believe it," she said.

Si Cwan was clutching the right warp nacelle of the shuttle, and he had mere seconds to live before the howling vacuum of space dragged him to his death.

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X.

THE TENTACLE (for that was the shape that it had assumed at that moment) stretched up out of the matter-antimatter core. The magnetic seal reconfig-ured around the tentacle, preventing any of the intense radiation and heat—hot enough to blast a gaping hole straight through the side of the
Excalibur—
from escaping.

"You go this way, I'll go that way!" screamed Christiano as it snaked upward. But Beth was paralyzed, staring down at the tentacle in undiluted horror. No textbook had ever prepared her for this, no tall tale or fable of an expedition had ever mentioned something akin to a Lovecraftian monster taking refuge inside of the warp core. It was like nothing anyone had ever seen, a horrific thing composed of energy plasma, glowing and shifting, undulating hide-174

Star Trek New Frontier

ously, and she could swear that it was letting loose with some sort of ungodly howling that was ripped from the primordial origins of humanity.

"Go!"
Christiano shouted again, and he shoved her, and this time she started to move. Christiano bolted in the other direction and then the tentacle snaked out and wrapped around Christiano's leg. Christiano barely had time to let out a cry of terror and then he was yanked clear off the catwalk. The tentacle started to retract, hauling Christiano down toward the magnetic seal and, inevitably, toward the warp core itself.

Through the clear containment of the core, Beth could see the being within writhing about, upset, confused, furious, trying to come to terms with its very existence in an environment that defied the ability of anything to live within it.

Christiano howled Beth's name, and Beth had no time at all to make a snap decision. She lunged off the catwalk, snagging the lower half of the rail with one hand and stretching her other hand to the utmost just as the tentacle descended past her with a frantic Christiano writhing in its grasp. The containment patch yawned wide beneath them, not letting the radiation out, but not stopping anyone from going in.