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“I’m starting the sequence,” Jack said, typing furiously, rattled, terrified, but giddy, too.
The robot moved faster than Caine had expected. It perched like a predatory insect above the too-blue water.
It was hot in the room. The emergency generators didn’t keep the air-conditioning running and the temperature began rising almost instantly.
“How long?” Caine demanded.
“To extract it, make it relatively safe, transport it to the used-fuel cooling facility and—”
“We aren’t going to have time for all that,” Caine said. “Drake’s already shooting. We need to get out of here.”
“Caine, there’s no way to—” Jack began.
“Just grab the fuel rod. Yank it up out of that pool. I’ll take care of the rest,” Caine said.
“Caine, we have to follow procedure just to get the rod out of here. The only way out is through—”
Caine raised both hands. He focused on the convex dome over their heads, the containment vessel that would hold the radiation in if there was ever an accident.
He blasted the concrete with all his power. There was a wallop of sound that hurt Caine’s eardrums.
“What are you doing?” Jack cried.
“Caine!” Diana shouted.
The concrete would not give. Not at this distance. Not with nothing to use as a projectile.
Caine aimed his power at the forklift.
“Be ready, Jack,” Caine grated.
The forklift flew. Like an invisible god had kicked it. It hurtled in a straight line. So fast, it broke the sound barrier with a loud bang that was immediately swallowed up in the far louder crash of steel and iron blowing a hole through concrete.
“How strong you think that fuel rod is?” Caine asked.
“Are you insane?” Diana cried.
“Just in a hurry,” Caine said.
Drake squeezed the trigger.
A line of bullets chewed concrete just in front of Dekka.
Drake fought the recoil and raised the weapon just slightly, and the impacts advanced toward Dekka, who just stared at onrushing death.
Suddenly Drake was on his back. The gun, still in his hands, was blazing away at the ceiling.
A wheel bounced crazily around the room then fell onto a desk with a loud crash.
Drake let go of the trigger. He scrambled to his feet. He looked at the wheel, unable to make sense of it. How had a wheel gone flying through the air, through the hole?
Orc.
Drake ejected the magazine and racked in a replacement. He was bruised and shaken but not badly hurt. He crept back to the hole, cautious lest something else came flying in.
Dekka was no longer on the ground.
Orc was…
