Metafire

Angela realized this was the only reasonable course of action. "I concur. Jane, I concur. We must destroy the tug. We can't establish a guilty party. I know I did not kill the millions, but I can't prove Stan, George, or Sporkin did either."

They spent the rest of the evening and the next day working on a system for destroying the tug. None of them knew that Erisa was on board. Tugs, like other space vessels, had no special protection against an attack. They resolved, however, that a physical attack on the tug was impractical. There was no projectile they could emit. Ramming would do unknown damage to both vessels involved. Instead, it was decided to pretend to agree with the FBI demands. It was decided to attack after the tug attached to Metafire and to board and then to overpower the people in the tug.

The possibility of such an attack had also occurred to Jill. Once it was obvious that Angela was not disarming the bomb prior to the arrival of the tug, Jill figured that Angela may have run into trouble. They would not try to stop the tug, since the tug was armed and might then be employed for attack. She mentioned this to Ferguson and to the Major. They relayed their concern to Scooter, Jack, and Erisa. Erisa contacted Jane through the confidential Internet messages, but Jane indicated that the only problem was that Angela wanted to maintain control until her daughter Jane had escaped and was safe.