Page 146 of Clive Cussler's Quantum Tempest

“Sound the alarm, Rodrigo. Abandon ship.”

The taciturn officer nodded. “Aye, Captain.”

The automated voice, light, and signal alarms lit up as Stokes raced out of the CIC and headed for the lab.

?

Aboard theOregon

“Fuzhoulisting hard,” Gomez called out from his drone station. “Baktungoing slowly down by the bow.”

“Goose it harder, Max—emergency power,” Juan said. “We gotta get there before we lose that AGI.”

Cabrillo was running a brutal interior monologue, railing against his too-smart-by-half decision to use theBaktunto take out theFuzhouto keep the Chinese from capturing Project Q.

Overholt said theOregoncouldn’t fire on the Chinese vessel, but didn’t say anything about theBaktundoing the dirty deed. In a court martial, a judge and jury would call that a distinction without a difference and likely keelhaul him. But as far as Cabrillo was concerned, he had held to both the letter of the law and the spirit of the mission.

What Juan hadn’t counted on was theFuzhoustriking back. Murph had cut loose with every weapons system on board theBaktunsimultaneously, but some dying Chinese gunner put enough well-placed rounds downrange to seal theBaktun’s impending fate.

With any luck, theOregonwould arrive in time to insert a boardingparty, snatch up any Project Q hard drives, organoid material, and personnel they could lay their hands on, and get off with enough technology to advance America’s own AGI program.

Cabrillo prayed that Dr.Bose was still alive. She would be the key to unlocking everything and piecing it all back together. But there was no telling if she had survived theFuzhou’s fatal hits. Cabrillo consoled himself with the knowledge that even if he didn’t get there in time, at least the Chinese wouldn’t get their hands on Project Q, either.

“Missile detected!” Murphy called out from the weapons station. Linda had gladly given up her seat to him when Juan waved him back over to it.

“Hypersonic speed—Mach 10.3!” Stone called out.

“Another Eagle Strike?” Cabrillo asked. “How did we miss it?”

“Negative,” Stone said as he rechecked his readings. “Wrong trajectory.”

“Then what is it?”

“It’s that Nork Fire Star ICBM they launched earlier this morning.”

TheOregon’s top secret status and Overholt’s pull gave the spy ship automatic access to all of the nation’s highly sensitive intelligence including the alert posted that morning by a U.S. Space Force satellite. It had detected and identified the Hwasong-17 Fire Star’s unique infrared engine signature moments after it had launched.

“Where’s the Fire Star designated impact area?” Cabrillo asked.

“It was supposed to be eighteen hundred miles from here,” Eric said.

“And now?”

“It’s heading in our direction.”

Cabrillo knew the Fire Star was a highly maneuverable, precision-guided missile capable of hitting a target even as small as the five-hundred-ninety-footOregon.

“Talk to me, Wepps.”

Murphy’s fingers sped across his keyboard.

“By my calculations, it looks like it’s targeting…theBaktun.”

Cabrillo could hardly hide his shock.

“Why would the Norks want to sink theBaktun?”

“Maybe it’s not the Norks,” Eric said.