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“Can’t close. Switches broken.”
“Then we can’t stop the rocket launch,” Hali said. “Not even if the Chairman gets out of the citadel.”
“Put me in touch with Juan,” Max said. “We have to let him know.”
* * *
—
In the citadel, they’d been trying to open the doors for minutes now and had made no progress. Eddie was trying to activate the manual controls that had been disabled from the bridge. Juan had his knife jammed into the crease between the fire doors that had come together at the main entrance. His efforts to pry them apart hadn’t produced even an inch of movement.
He called out to Raven, who was working on the door the mercenaries had used.
“Any luck up there?”
“Nothing so far,” she said, her voice straining as she attempted to wrench the door open. “It’s hard to get much leverage when your rib is digging into your lungs.” But she kept at it.
Juan looked at his watch. Eight minutes before midnight.
“Juan, I’ve got an update for you,” Max said in his earpiece.
“Go ahead.”
“We’ve heard from Eric.”
“I’m glad to hear he’s alive.”
“So is Linc, but they’re both paralyzed. Eric says the cargo bay doors can’t be closed again. The switches were sabotaged.”
“Is Polk still on the ship?” Juan asked.
“Linda hasn’t reported anyone leaving.”
“And Sylvia?”
“We’ve lost contact with her. Can you get out of the citadel?”
“It’s not looking good on that front.”
“Then we’re in a bit of a pickle, aren’t we?” Max said.
“Seems like it.”
Juan considered their options. Disabling the rockets wasn’t going to happen, and now they couldn’t even contain them on the ship.
The backup plan to get the antidote off the ship and have the Oregon destroy the Centaurus once they were safely away wasn’t in the cards, either.
He couldn’t have MacD and Linda board the ship. If they came onto the Centaurus, they could be killed by Polk or prevented from getting back to the Gator. Then there would be no way to stop the rockets and their payload of Enervum from devastating Sydney.
That left only one choice. Eddie brought up what Juan was thinking.
“How long do you think it will take for the Centaurus to sink?” Eddie asked.
“The rail gun shells travel at seven times the speed of sound. With that kind of kinetic energy against an unarmored ship, the rounds will probably rip through the side and down through the keel. With four or five well-placed shots, I bet she’d go down in five minutes or less.”
Eddie nodded slowly and looked at his watch. “Seven minu
tes to go.”
