The Madman's Clock

Chapter 16

CHAPTER 16

The ship began to lurch back and forth, and I gripped a support beam tightly. The lights began to flicker, until they finally shut off. I held still, wondering what would come next. Would the hull breach? I doubted the Edra engineer had an EVA suit in his bag of tricks. Thankfully, the lights came back on after a moment, followed by a klaxon out in the passageway behind us as we moved away from the lift shaft.

Esaal consulted a small device on his wrist. "The reactor overload will reach critical levels in just under five minutes. The fires will ignite in the forward sections several minutes after that."

"How do you know all that?" David asked from the rear.

"This is exactly how it occurred before, Sergeant Forres," Amra explained.

"Hold on," I said, turning to the Edra techie. "I thought that killing the yeoman stopped all of that. You said that stopping the core initiation on the bridge changed the course of events."

Amra nodded. "There are several theories regarding temporal manipulation. One of them suggested that our interference, including Captain Mallory's killing of the human interface, was simply part of the original event. I would suggest that this is what we are seeing."

"Do you now understand why we banned this technology, Captain Mallory?" Esaal asked. "Even people such as Engineer Amra, who worked with the core technology on our world, do not fully comprehend the physics involved. When this is over, I believe your firsthand account of the events here will help to dissuade your government from ever trying this again."

I nodded, but internally my heart began to beat even faster than the stim was pushing it. If the events of the accident were occurring in spite of my actions, that meant that I was going to die. I kept my mouth shut, but David caught my eye. He knew what I was thinking.

"We must deal with Captain Paetkau, before she can do further damage," Esaal explained.

"David, open it," I ordered.

David pushed past us, and keyed open the door into the chamber. Hot air rushed in on us, along with a deep pulsing sound that rattled us. We all took an involuntary step backward.

"The core is still operating at full power," Amra yelled over the deep pulse, his English unsure and halting. "I must shut it down immediately."

Esaal and I stepped out onto the catwalk. The chamber was filled with engineers, all of them scrambling around the massive spherical core. Everyone was shouting, as they tried to figure out what was wrong with the core. On the upper catwalk, where we were, there were at least eight engineers that I could see. There were probably more on the other side of the massive spherical core, out of sight. At least as many were on the decks below us.

As soon as we stepped into view, someone spotted us. A young crewman was the first to see us, and his eyes went wide. He screamed as he ran in the other direction.

"Edra!" he yelled, pointing toward us.

Almost instantly, plasma blasts tore through the deck at my feet. I dove forward, out of the way. Esaal followed. David and Amra pulled back, taking cover in the decon chamber. The blasts whipped past me, striking the bulkheads. Oddly, they didn't do any damage. The bulkheads seemed to absorb the plasma bursts.

The engineers working on the core scattered, one of them trampling over us in sheer panic. The deck just behind me erupted.

"Move, move!" I barked, pushing myself off the deck.

Esaal was right beside me, pushing through the engineers as they ran in all directions. He wasn't firing, even though his weapon could shred these people in an instant. He used his thin form and long arms to push them aside, while I screamed at them.