"He's gonna do what?!?"
"You heard me, Max," said Lee Carter. "We think Kelly's planning on blowing up the Galaxy." The two women were striding briskly through the corridors of the Sentinel, dodging the innumerable repair crews, making their way to the hangar deck.
"That's not possible!" protested Max.
"You may be right, but I sure don't want to risk it, do you?" Max grunted at that, seeing Carter's point. "Besides, even if he fails to blow up the whole Galaxy, he'll at least manage to set the Briar Patch on fire, and if that goes, so does Supply Base 901."
"Not to mention the Ba'ku," added Max darkly.
"Yeah...."
For the next few seconds as that realization sank in, the only sounds were from the ship around them and their own footfalls on the deck, but finally, Max broke the silence. "But c'mon, the whole Galaxy...?"
Carter halted in the middle of the corridor and turned toward Max. "You know that computer virus that crippled the Arizona?"
"What about it?"
"The Sentinel's science officer thinks it's Iconian."
Max felt her blood turn cold. "Iconian!"
"I see you've heard of them," said Carter ruefully. She resumed her stride, and after a moment Max hurried to catch up. Carter continued her explanation. "The Iconian civilization died out over 200,000 years ago, but their super-technology is still out there--" Carter waved her hand vaguely around, indicating she meant outer space "--just waiting to be found. Well, it looks like Kelly found some."
Max picked up the train of logic. "So, since Kelly's has Iconian computer weaponry, he might also have found other Iconian artifacts. Something that lets him ignite nebular gasses."
"Right."
"So he might actually be able to pull it off...," said Max, thunderstruck. "It's... monstrous!"
The two women slowed to a halt again, this time in front of the double doors to the hangar deck. Carter pressed the access control on the wall beside the door and the panels slid open revealing a Type-10 shuttle prepped and ready for launch.
Max's eyebrow went up. She looked at Carter and asked, "So what's our mission?"
Carter strode onto hangar deck with Max in tow. She said, "The Sentinel is going after Kelly and the Arizona. The comm system is still down however, so we can't warn anyone about what's about to happen. Our mission is to fly at top speed back to SB901 and get help."
Max smiled. "Call the cavalry."
The Sentinel's hangar deck doors opened, disgorging a small silver sliver. Two seconds later, the starship stretched away into the relativistic distance and disappeared in a warp flash, hot in pursuit of the monster who'd quickly become the Galaxy's worst terrorist. Two seconds after that, the smaller ship elongated in a different direction and disappeared as well, heading for SB901.