What the hell?
This could be our chance?
"I'm not privy to the plan to murder on such a mass scale. Everything we had done before was based on creating a new America. One that we lost so many decades ago. You have to stop this madness!" he rambled rather quickly and then slipped a knife underneath the zip tie, cutting her right hand free.
"Why are you doing this?" Kira rose as he cut her left hand free. She rubbed at the scratches on her wrists that were healing in real time. The swelling in her face reduced, and the cuts began to close.
"I told you. I'm not a mass murderer. Elle has stepped over a boundary that I can't." Scotty focused only on cutting Kira's bonds loose.
"You know she is fucking nuts!"
"No, she isn't. She is the most brilliant woman I've ever met. Probably the most brilliant human that ever lived, but with that great intellect, she has become so logical that she has forgotten the emotional aspects of being human on an individual scale. She only thinks in the grand schema nowadays." Scotty looked nervously over his shoulder. "Her big picture is brilliant but is getting too costly. And I have family in Luna. She could have at least warned me."
Aha, it isn't selfless. He has someone he cares about in harm's way, Allison thought.
Typical. But he must actually care for them to risk his neck for us.
"She will have you killed."
"Not if you do this right." He cut her last zip tie and then put the knife in her hand. "Stay put. Dr. Ross will be back any second. Make it look like he let you loose." Scotty turned for the door. "Stop this ship from killing all those people."
"Thank you. I will." Kira rubbed at the healing hole behind her ear and could feel the soft spot where the bone was beginning to fill in. She palmed the open knife in her left hand and squirmed back into place as if she were still tied down. "Now get the hell out of here."
"Good luck," he told her as he left.
Wasn't expecting that.
Hope it isn't a trap.
Me too. But don't look a gift horse in the mouth.
The door slid open, and Kira could hear the doctor's shoes squeaking against the floor. She lay still as if she were catatonic with her eyes open wide and not blinking. With the pain subsiding in her head, she could focus and control herself better now.
Wait . . . wait . . .
The doctor leaned over to check her with a diagnostic tool, and he looked into her pupils with his flashlight. When he did, Kira grabbed the back of his hair with her right hand and jabbed the knife into his temple with the left. The blade slid into his head all the way to the hilt. Kira twisted the blade, scrambling his brains around, withdrew it, and then stabbed him again, repeating the process. She tossed him to the floor and rolled out of the examining stirrups over on top of him. The deck plating was cold against her bare feet.
She quickly pulled his pants and shirt off and slipped them on. They were too big, but she managed to pull the slip fastener at the waist tight enough to hold, and she rolled the bottoms tight around her ankles. The shirt was still loose, so she tied it in a knot at her side. She hefted the knife in her left hand and backed up against the doorjamb, punching the open switch. The door hissed open. She looked around the doorway into an empty hall. It was clear.
Great. Now where to from here?
We need to stop this ship from getting to the Moon.
Engine Room?
Good a place as any to start with.
"All hands, all hands, prepare for QMT jump in ten . . ."
Chapter 17
October 31, 2388 AD
Sol System
Oort Cloud
Saturday, 7:31 AM, Earth Eastern Standard Time
"Captain Walker!"
"Go Nav." Sharon watched the purple and white flashes of the hyperspace conduit swirl in front of her ship. The Blair was approaching the Oort Cloud Seppy facility, and from the latest communication from the Madira, it wouldn't be a second too early.
"Conduit collapsing in twenty seconds, ma'am."
"Roger that, Nav." Sharon tugged at her seatbelt again to make sure it was good and tight. It was. "XO!"
"Aye, Captain?"
"All the forward SIFs at max and prepare for impacts."
"Aye, Captain. Forward SIFs at max." Commander Brasher tapped at her controls, and Sharon caught a glimpse of her XO tugging subconsciously at her own seatbelt.
"Nav. You got that secondary jaunt plan calculated?"
"Aye, CO."
Okay, Marley, sound it off, the captain told her AIC.
Yes, ma'am.
"All hands, all hands, prepare for emergence from hyperspace conduit. Man all battlestations and prepare for incoming. Normal space in nine, eight, seven, six, five, four . . ."
The purple and white flashes of Cerenkov radiation swirled away like water in the bottom of a toilet bowl and then scattered off in all directions, vanishing. The U.S.S. Anthony Blair materialized in normal space at maximum normal space velocity only a thousand kilometers from the moon planetoid. The giant supercarrier loomed toward the mass driver suspected location as relayed by the STO of the Madira. The surface had been scratched up by what appeared to be DEG fire, but there was no sign of any direct hits or of the Madira for that matter.
"STO, I want full sensors on those coordinates looking for that mass driver tube," Fullback ordered.
"Roger that, Captain." Lieutenant Commander Zeke Caldwell toggled through mountains of sensor data being DTMed to him from the ship's CDC and from his own systems. There was nothing useful, yet. But as the ship's science and technical officer, it was his job to figure it out.
"Where is the Madira?" Commander Brasher asked.
"I've got a hyperspace conduit opening up about ten thousand kilometers away, XO. That is probably them," the STO replied.
"CO Madira? This is CO Blair. You copy?" Fullback said over the command-net channel.
"CO, CDC!"
"Go, CDC."
"Captain, we've got massive electromagnetic signatures building up over the Seppy facility. I think there's a teleportation occurring."
"STO concurs with those readings, Captain. And the Madira just came out of hyperspace right beneath it!"
"Roger that, CDC. Roger that, STO. Madira! Do you copy?"
"CO Blair. CO Madira. Good of y'all to join us, Fullback. Watch out for the mass driver; it will be recharged in three minutes and twelve seconds. I'm having my STO synch up our clock to you. Be advised that we are dead in the water. Aux prop is at least five to ten minutes out, and we just did our last jaunt for a while, I'm told." Captain Jefferson's voice sounded a bit strained over the net. Sharon needed to give him some good news, but right now that wasn't about to happen.
"Wally, in case you haven't noticed, there is a QMT disturbance forming less than ten kilometers above you. Is there anything we can do to help?"
"Yes. Knock out that damned mass driver, and then get your ass down here."
"Roger that, Madira. Good luck, Wally. Blair, out."
"Gunnery Officer Blake, do you have a target yet?"
"Nothing specific, Captain."
"Captain! I've got a reading on the power source for the driver. There is signigicant buildup about a kilometer deep in the crust of that thing."