Tucker led her through a maze of hallways, ever further from the hangar deck, going down every flight of stairs they passed until at last the final passage ended in an open doorway.
And beyond that open doorway was an immense natural cavern. Turning around, Scout could see the back wall of the compound rising all the way up to the ceiling far above.
The cavern must be put to some use, fully lit as it was. A variety of wheeled vehicles were stored here, although she saw no tire tracks in the sandy cavern floor. If there was a way out that could be driven through, it didn’t look like the rebels were using it.
“How did you get all of this here?” Scout asked.
“Train,” Tucker said. “Runs from Jakart, past our old compound, past here, and all the way to the next mountain where the gun is.”
“The gun is in a different mountain?” Scout asked, panic biting at the edges of her voice.
“Relax, we’re catching a ride most of the way,” he told her. “It’s just through here.”
Scout paused to let her dogs find a corner, then whistled for them to follow her across the echoing cavern to a smaller but equally well-lit cave beyond.
It was a natural formation, but not entirely. Scout could see places where the natural cave wanted to be narrower, but someone had chiseled out the rock so that the cave never got narrower or shorter than was necessary to get the largest of those vehicles through it.
Gert and Shadow raced up to walk on either side of her, leashes trailing in the sand behind them, leaving little furrows like snake trails.
“You got everything Ken was sending you?” Scout asked.
“Yeah, it finished a couple of minutes ago,” Tucker said. “Here we are.”
The cave ended on a concrete platform swept clear of sand. Beyond the platform was an enormous cave, all rounded edges like a worm’s tunnel. Scout stepped up to the edge of the platform and saw several sets of train tracks a couple of meters below her.
“You said there was a ride?” she said.
“Over here,” Tucker said, leading her to a narrow staircase that ran down to the gravel beside the nearest set of tracks. The staircase was too steep for the dogs and Scout carried Shadow down and set him on the ground before returning to lift Gert up.
“Sure I can’t help?” Tucker called up as Scout staggered under the big black dog’s considerable weight. She didn’t bother to answer, just focused on getting one foot after another planted until she was at the bottom of the stairs again.
She set Gert down and picked up both the leashes, then looked up to find where Tucker had gone.
He was in a vehicle like a single train car left on its own in a separate short line of track.
“Don’t you need an engine to pull this?” Scout asked. She didn’t have a lot of experience with trains, but she did have some experience with really old Amatheon tech, and this train car looked as old as the rover she had traveled in before she had met Tucker.
That rover had dated back to the first landing on Amatheon. This train couldn’t be much newer.
“It works just fine, I’ve tried it out before,” Tucker said.
“Tried it out?” Scout repeated. Tucker grabbed a handrail and pulled himself up, then worked the mechanism to slide the door open. It took a bit of doing; age had settled the frame into a position that clearly preferred that door to remain closed. “I thought you’d been to this gun before.”
“Why would you think that?” Tucker asked, extending a hand to help her up. She ignored it, hoisting first Shadow and then Gert up into the train car, then clambering up after under her own strength.
“I don’t know,” she finally said grumpily. “I got that impression.”
“I know how to get there. That’s good enough,” Tucker said, sliding the door shut with a grunt and turning his attention to the standing console at the front of the car. He looked over all the instruments, then turned a knob.
There was a shriek, and a jerk that sent Scout sprawling on top of her frightened dogs.
And then they were moving. Slowly at first, but ever quicker.
They soon left the light of the train platform behind. The instruments glowed softly, filling the front of the train car with an eerie green light, but all around them was impenetrable darkness.
A darkness filled with rocks, some of which might have shifted, might be blocking the rails.
Might be ready to fall from above.
“How far is it?” Scout asked, desperate to take her mind off of her irrational fears.
“Next mountain over. Should take a few minutes,” he said, moving away from the console to sit on the floor next to her. The dogs moved around the car, snuffling in all the corners, eager to find the source of every single smell.
“So, how many places have you been since I saw you last?” Tucker asked.
“Tons,” Scout said, patting down her own sides. She wanted to take an inventory, to have every tool and its location fresh in her memory. But without her jacket, belt, and pants, she had no tools.
It was like being naked. That, and staring out into the dark and knowing that if she just had her glasses, she’d be able to see danger before they crashed into it.
“I watched your ship lift off into the sky,” he said. “I had a splitting headache and had just gotten reamed at by Malcolm even worse than Ken did just now. But still, that sight of you rising up into the stars in that silver spaceship—it brought me peace. Not that I didn’t wish I could have gone with you. I wish that could have worked out.”
“It was never the plan,” Scout said, annoyed.
“It got really close to being the plan,” he said, but before she could snap at him, he changed his tone. “I know I messed that up. I can’t take that back.”
“You can never take that back,” Scout said.
“I know,” Tucker said. “You might not think it, but being stuck here with front-row seats to Malcolm’s descent into madness, knowing you were out there seeing all that the galaxy has to offer . . . that was really hard. I’m not saying it was punishment for what I did, but if it were, it would have been a just one.”
Scout wanted to let the matter drop, and he seemed to have nothing more to say. Then, to her surprise, she found herself saying, “I didn’t see all that the galaxy has to offer.”
“Really,” Tucker said.
“I was on Amatheon Orbiter 1 and nearly died, and I saw one of my friends get thrown as close to death’s door as it’s possible to come back from. Then I sat on the moon for days waiting to get picked up. Then it was the Months’ ship—you’ve been there. Then Schneeheim, covered with mountains and snow, which might have been pretty if a bunch of assassins weren’t trying to kill me the entire time. Of course, I did meet Daisy there. Then Galactic Central. I guess that was cool too.”
“And when this is all over, you’ll be going back?”
“I can’t think that far into the future,” Scout said. A voice in the back of her mind asked her why she wasn’t thinking about it, but she shoved it away. “Oh! And I was on a tribunal enforcer ship. Those are transparent, like glass. When you’re on one of those it just looks like you’re floating in space.”
“Crazy,” Tucker said.
Then the train started to slow down.
“Is there light up ahead?” Scout asked, squinting into the darkness in front of the train car. But she saw nothing. “Tell me you brought a light.”
“For a trip through a cave? Why would I think of that?” Tucker said. She turned to glare at him but saw him holding up a bag that he wore slung across his body. “Light, food, water, and various sundries.”
“Like tools for getting inside the gun?” Scout asked.
“They just finished the last bit of assembly this morning,” he said. “They didn’t bring any of the tools back down. Whatever we’ll need, it will be there.”
“Where, though?” Scout asked, looking out through the front of the car again. Cool cave air was stirring through her hair, making her father’s bush hat tremble and the brim flap.
The train lurched to a halt. Scout kept herself steady by grasping the console with both hands, but the dogs were sent tumbling again.
Then they started to rise up into the air.
“What’s going on?” Scout asked.
“Must be some kind of elevator,” Tucker said. The cave walls around them were suddenly illuminated by a silvery glow from above. He stuck his head out a window to look up, but Scout pulled him back inside before a rocky outcropping could have a go at decapitating him.
“What if there’s a guard?” Scout asked. “Do you have a weapon?”
“Not on me,” Tucker said. “It’s fine. No one is here. I double-checked the crew rosters.”
“When?” Scout asked. For that matter, when had he acquired the bag?
“When you were talking to Joelle back in the communication room,” Tucker said. “Wow, you really don’t notice me most of the time, do you?”
Scout rolled her eyes. Then the roof of the train reached the narrowest point in the cave ceiling and momentarily blocked off all of the light.
And then they were in it, the sudden brilliance of it dazzling Scout’s eyes again. Man, she wished she had her glasses.
“I guess I don’t have to ask where it is,” Scout said as she blinked, then stared, blinked, then stared.
The space they were in was hundreds of times the size of the cavern behind the compound below. It was just a little hard to judge that or to appreciate its immensity when a huge steel cylinder dominated the space. It would take twelve train cars linked together to measure its circumference, and most of that looked to be buried in the rock.
How could such a thing be built within a span of years shorter than her lifetime? As far up as she could see, the barrel continued on, all of the way up to the dim patch of sunlight that was no more than a shining dot at the very end of the shaft.
“Where do we go now?” Scout asked.
Tucker tapped his wrist communicator and started looking at Ken’s notes. “This way,” he said, jumping down from the train car and heading to a staircase rudely cut into the stone of the tunnel floor.
“OK guys, you’re staying here,” Scout told her dogs, looping the leashes through the door handle. “I can’t have you wandering around in here. It’s too big; I might never find you again.”
She couldn’t add, even to them, that she was afraid when they left, it was going to be in a hurry.
Scout jogged to the bottom of the staircase, then started climbing after Tucker. She caught up with him with the ease that only comes from daily climbs up much steeper slopes.
“What are we looking for?” Scout asked.
Tucker held up the screen of his wrist communicator. The jumble of white lines on a black background told her nothing.
“Tucker.”
“Access hatch,” he said, needing to draw a breath between each word. “Should be. About here.”
Scout decided he was probably right when the staircase ended in a flat platform flush with the side of the gun barrel. Boxes of tools, half of them sitting open, were scattered around the far side of the platform.
Tucker stopped at the top of the stairs, hands on knees as he waited for his wind to return. Scout brushed past him to get a better look at the gun barrel.
“How are you not dying?” Tucker asked.
“What do you mean?” Scout asked, spotting the releases to remove the access panel. It was almost as big across as the span of her arms, and heavy. She managed to only half drop it on the platform in front of her feet with an echoing clang.
“You just ran up here, all that way,” he said, looking back over his shoulder. Scout glanced down and saw the train car a lot farther below than she expected.
“Adrenaline?” she guessed. “This is it. Check it with Ken’s notes and schematics. Let’s get this done.”
Tucker nodded and stumbled forward. Scout stepped back, looking over the toolboxes and noting where things were. Whatever Tucker needed to get this done, she didn’t want to have to make him wait while she dug for it.
“This isn’t good,” Tucker said, a mumble so low she almost didn’t catch it.
“What?” Scout asked, eyes still scanning tools.
“This really isn’t good,” Tucker said. “Actually, this might be insane.”
“What are you talking about?” Scout asked, turning to give him her full attention.
“I don’t know what schematics they used to put this all together, but there’s no way it was the same ones Ken has been studying. Look at this. Nothing matches.”
Scout seized his wrist, looking over every line with all of the attention to detail she could muster.
Then she looked at the chaos of cables and wires inside the side of the gun barrel.
Her stomach sank and kept sinking as if it were trying to return to the train car without her.
For once, Tucker was being absolutely truthful. There was no way the schematics they had were correct.
Which meant neither of them knew where to start with disabling this gun.