Natalie said, “Urk,” and gripped the edge of the conference table as the Halo did an abrupt right-angle turn and rocketed up a wide boulevard between skyscrapers. I couldn’t be sure, but I thought it might be Boston.

The Halo did another right-angle turn, just as something flashed by and impacted a building. A fireball blossomed from the side of the structure just as it disappeared to the rear.

“Jesus,” Nat muttered. “They just bombed a building. There are going to be huge fatalities.”

“I am sorry, Nat. If I can get a few seconds more separation, I can try for a straight sprint. But right now, the moment we move into open air, we will be destroyed.”

“Should we just let them?” Nat asked. “Are our lives worth more than dozens or hundreds of people?”

Patrick almost snarled back, “If we give up, it’s all for nothing, Nat. The Loranna will win. That’ll be hundreds of millions, if not billions of deaths.”

“I agree with Patrick,” Sheldon said. “Which is a sentence I never would have expected to utter. I am willing to give my life, but not waste it.”

“Sheldon, any solutions with a good probability?” I asked.

“Nothing comes to mind. At the moment, I am simply attempting to stay ahead.”

“What about going FTL?” Patrick suggested.

“That is simply a quicker form of death.”

I frowned for a moment, then said, “Uh, Sheldon, you said the weapon would come out of the wormhole as soon as we open it, right?”

“That is correct.”

“Even if we weren’t right in front of the wormhole?”

“The device is nuclear in nature, Jack. Close is more than good enough to annihilate us.”

“What if the wormhole was facing our pursuer? Can you do that? Open the wormhole pointing in a different direction?”

There was almost a full second of silence. Finally, Sheldon spoke. “That is a truly nasty, duplicitous, underhanded trick. Jack, I salute you. This will take a big bite out of my reserves, so we’ll only have one shot. I will also have to risk that sprint now, in order to get us some distance. One moment … ”

For the first time since we’d found Sheldon, the ship made a detectable noise. A rising hum, reminiscent of the original Enterprise being pushed too hard, began to build up through the structure, then ended with a pop. There was a flash from the rear view, and an explosion that I would swear could easily pass for a nuclear blast. A monster cloud blossomed in a sphere, then quickly morphed into a torus, then a mushroom shape.

“Oh, holy shit,” Nat breathed. “Were we close to anything?”

“Five miles up, Natalie. The good news is we’re too far for any immediate damage to anyone on the ground, except perhaps some radiation exposure. The better news, if I understand the overall situation, is that the explosion was visible over most of the eastern seaboard.”