Stevens struggled with the sluggish controls to prevent the shearing currents from slamming Bug Two into Bug One. The null-field generators Conlon had installed were helping tremendously—in fact, without them, piloting the Work Bugs in this environment would be impossible—but they consumed enormous amounts of power, and each burst of emeraldcolored lightning disrupted the null field just long enough to tumble Bug Two like a rolling die, tossing Duffy and Soloman against one another and the back of Stevens’s seat. The inertial dampers were overloading with each lightning strike, and the cabin of Bug Two was thick with smoke and the odor of fried circuits.

The deafening roar of wind had become so omnipresent that Stevens was learning to tune it out, treating it as white noise. Ahead of the Work Bug, the lightning offered him irregular, strobing images of the Orion looming closer, but he chose to rely on the outline of the ship, complete with flight readouts and range to target, provided by the computer in the form of a heads-up display superimposed over the cockpit windshield. The two Work Bugs were now within less than a hundred meters of the Orion. He keyed the comm to Bug One.

“Commander, we’re close enough to start a visual survey.”

“Acknowledged,” Gomez answered. “We’ll take the dorsal hull, you take ventral.”

The two Work Bugs separated. Bug One maneuvered to survey the Orion from above, while Stevens slowly guided Bug Two beneath the Steamrunner-class starship, which was nearly twice the size of the Saber-class da Vinci.

“Activating filters,” Stevens said as he keyed a switch. Like a wash of color, a tint swept across Bug Two’s windshield, neutralizing much of the haze and distortion that blocked their view. Suddenly, the Orion became clearly visible, dominating the view outside the cockpit. Duffy inched forward past Soloman to get a view of the crippled vessel, and craned his neck sharply to look up at its underside.

“Damn,” Duffy muttered. He pointed upward. “Fabe, look at that.” Stevens glanced where Duffy was pointing. The Orion’s secondary hull was blasted away in large sections, the framework beneath it twisted and bent inward. Duffy activated the scanners as Stevens keyed the comm.

“We’re seeing some heavy damage on the ventral secondary hull,” Stevens said. “Looks like concussive damage from atmospheric shock waves.”

“Readings are consistent with antimatter detonations,” Duffy said. “Could’ve been photon or quantum torpedoes.”

“Dorsal hull is intact,” Gomez replied. “We’re not reading any life signs in the primary hull. Do you have any in the engineering section?”

“Negative,” Duffy said. “And it looks like she’s partially flooded. Internal pressure is reading just over two hundred bars.”

“That’s not too bad,” P8 said over the open channel. “It means Orion still has some hull integrity.”

“It’s time to go in,” Gomez said. “We’ll dock Bug One at the forward ventral hatch. Fabian, dock Bug Two at the starboard dorsal hatch. Once we’re in, you and Pattie will continue your survey, figure out where to attach the tow lines.”

“Acknowledged,” Stevens said as he swiveled Bug Two around and began moving it toward Orion’s starboard docking hatch. Duffy and Soloman secured their helmets in place. Duffy grabbed a portable tool kit. Soloman picked up a slender case containing an emergency data-recovery terminal. Stevens fastened his own helmet into place, looked over his shoulder at the pair, and grinned. “Get ready for a little bump,” he said.

Bug Two slammed hard against the Orion. The impact knocked Duffy and Soloman hard against the bulkhead and sent them toppling to the deck. The clang of the magnetic docking seal finding its mark rang out like a bell inside Bug Two. It was followed by the grinding of docking seals securing themselves. Duffy and Soloman got back on their feet as the airlock on the other side of the hatch depressurized with a muffled hiss.

“Nice flying, Fabe,” Duffy deadpanned.

“You know the rule, Duff,” Stevens said. “Any landing you can walk away from….”

Duffy shook his head and opened the hatch. “I think we need to raise our standards.”

“I concur,” Soloman said as he followed Duffy into the airlock and sealed the hatch behind them.

*  *  *

Gomez paused, her magnetic boots yanking her foot back onto the deck. She strained to see through the souplike, semiliquid atmosphere that had flooded the corridors of the Orion. Her palm beacon was set to maximum intensity, but it was unable to penetrate more than a few meters into the murk ahead of her.

Considering the carnage that filled the corridors of the Orion, Gomez decided that was probably for the best.

Temperatures inside the ship had been hot enough to sear the flesh off most of the dead, leaving behind skeletons in scorched rags or—in many sections of the ship—pulverized piles of bone and little else. As Gomez pushed forward she felt a rib cage disintegrate, crushed underfoot by her heavy magboots.

The miniaturized null-field generators Conlon had built into the away team’s environment suits alleviated much of the pressure they were experiencing inside the ship, but Gomez’s muscles were already growing fatigued from pushing through the dense mixture of partially liquefied gases, as well as the added strain of fighting against the planet’s intense gravity. The Orion was slowly rolling on its Z-axis as it drifted, and rather than walk on the ceilings or walls, the away team had resorted to magnetic boots. Unfortunately, the planet pulling in one direction and the boots pulling in another made for very slow progress in the flooded passageways.

Her tricorder scanned a twenty-meter radius around her position and relayed its data to a display projected on the inside of her helmet visor. The mean temperature inside the ship had climbed to nearly one hundred thirty degrees Celsius—a mere fraction of the temperature outside the vessel, but more than hot enough to have long since killed any humanoid life-forms on board.

Gomez reminded herself that anything was possible—there might be a shielded area deep inside the ship where survivors held out hope of rescue—and continued her search, even as her hopes of finding anyone alive decreased with each scan.

*  *  *

Soloman emerged from the interior pressure lock that led to the Orion’s main computer core and breathed a sigh of relief. The multiple redundant fail-safes that were a standard element of Starfleet ship design had proved their value once again: even though all the compartments surrounding the main core had been flooded with semiliquid gases, the core itself had remained undamaged, its structural integrity uncompromised.

His tricorder indicated the core was offline, without main or auxiliary power. Its last remaining backups—small emergency batteries built into the core assembly itself—had activated and were keeping the core operating at a minimal level. Soloman opened the case containing the data-recovery terminal and patched into the Orion main computer core. Within seconds the core powered up with a majestic hum and established a link with the small but robust portable unit. Soloman initiated the recovery of the Orion’s logs—all of them, from sensor logs to personal and official logs from every member of the crew—and activated his comm.

“Soloman to Commander Gomez,” he said, his delicate, high-pitched voice echoing inside his helmet. “I’ve reached the main computer core and started the recovery of the ship’s logs.”

“Good work,” Gomez said, the strain in her voice belying her exhaustion. “Notify me as soon as you’re finished.”

“Acknowledged.” Soloman closed the channel and stood patiently, staring up at the ceiling of the lower core chamber some fifty feet above his head. He knew, based on the rate of data transfer possible between the portable unit and the main core, that this operation would take at least twenty-eight minutes. He also knew, from his review of the core’s design schematics, that the core was structurally stable, that he was standing in one of the safest areas of the ship. But he still wished he were leaving this ship now instead of later.

*  *  *

Duffy wished he were in the da Vinci mess hall wolfing down a triple-decker roast beef sandwich with his usual quinine water. Somewhere between decks eighteen and nineteen his stomach had reminded him that, in the flurry of activity that had followed the da Vinci’s new orders, he had forgotten to eat lunch—and dinner.

He had already written off the Orion’s impulse engines as a lost cause. The main fusion reactor had been breached and caused a cascade failure of the entire impulse system. Half the compartment had been destroyed by the initial blast, and the rest had been exposed to atmosphere.

Now he was slogging his way through the main engineering compartment, his palm beacon barely cutting through the dark shroud of liquefied gases. He was surrounded by the scorched-black skeletons of the Orion’s engineering crew, many of whom appeared to have died while trying to don pressure suits.

Why didn’t she answer me?

Duffy shook his head. Stop that. Don’t think about Sonnie. Think about the warp reactor. At least warp reactors make sense.

Duffy felt his way to the railing that circled the warp core, and followed it to the dilithium crystal chamber. He scanned it, and was pleased to find the crystals inside were undamaged. Then he scanned the interior of the core and wondered why it had been purged. It was structurally sound, and its auxiliary systems were intact, but it had been deactivated. Correction, he thought. At least warp reactors usually make sense.

He found the access hatch to the lowest level of the ship. He descended slowly, the planet’s gravity pinning him against the ladder as his magboots struggled to gain purchase on the rungs. He reached the bottom deck of the Orion and opened the emergency bulkhead to the antimatter pod storage compartment.

He surveyed the massive room, which was now little more than a series of empty pod frames and twisted duranium hull plating. He looked away as a flash of lightning forked past outside the ripped-open hull, and held on to the door frame as a clap of thunder knocked him backward. He caught his breath, closed the bulkhead, and keyed his comm.

“Duffy to Gomez.”

“Go ahead.”

“I have a new theory on what tore open the belly of the Orion. All her antimatter pods have been ejected.”

“They lost containment and tried to eject the pods—”

“—but the ejection system was made for zero-G vacuum and the pods failed to reach safe distance before they exploded. Man, what a mess.”

“So, no chance of restoring power?”

“Negative. Once her batteries go, her integrity field’ll collapse and this’ll become the biggest hunk of duranium origami you ever saw.”

“Okay, come back up and start working your way forward to help me finish scanning for survivors. We’ll meet back at the starboard hatch on deck three.”

“See you there. Duffy out.”

Duffy trudged back toward the access ladder. He remembered how arduous the climb down had been, and he looked back up the ladder to his destination, seventeen decks away.

Damn, Sonnie…the things I do to keep a date with you. With aching shoulders and a growling stomach, he started climbing.