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MAX HANLEY DIDN’T NEED HALI’S FRANTIC CRY TO tell him a series of explosions had struck the Golden Dawn He could see the bursts of white water erupting in sequence along the cruise ship’s side on the Oregon’s main monitor It looked like she’d been struck by torpedoes, but he knew that was impossible The radar scopes were clear, and sonar would have detected the launches
As the sht ca enough for a person to walk through, and seawater was cascading into the breach at a staggering rate With four identical punctures along her waterline, there were tooto save the ship, especially without power going to her bilge pumps He estimated that she would founder in less than an hour
Max tapped his coet your butt back in the whirlybird and get over to the Dawn A series of scuttling charges just went off, and our people are in trouble”
“Copy that,” Gomez Adams replied instantly “Do you want me to land over there?”
“Negative Hover on standby and await further orders” Max changed channels “Oregon to Cabrillo Come in, Juan” Static filled the Op Center Hali fine-tuned the transceiver, searching in vain for the Chairnal, but he couldn’t find it “Julia, are you there? Eddie?”
“I’m here,” a voice suddenly boomed over the loudspeakers It was Mark Murphy He was still in the Golden Daheelhouse and had better reception “What just happened? It sounded like explosions”
“It was,” Max replied “So to sink the ship, and, fro to succeed”
“I’ve barely started on the downloads”
“Pack it in, son Gohtail it out of there as soon as you can”
“What about Juan and the others?” Murph asked
“Have you been able to reach them on the radio?”
“No Juan cut out about twenty ine room”
Hanley suppressed a curse That was about the worst location to be when the explosives went off “What about Eddie and Hux?”
“They fell off the net a couple , Max, the radios in these suits are getting upgraded as soon as we’re back”
“We’ll worry about that when the ti the exact sae relayed to thefast Her lowest row of portholes was less than three feet froht list to starboard If he sent Murph out to search for the rest of the teaood chance the weapons specialist would beco pretty evenly now, but he knew the ship could lurch doard at any second He would just have to trust that the others would make their oay out