Scout looked up at the opening at the top of the mountain, just a pinpoint of sunlight growing dimmer by the moment. It was probably just sunset, but the sight was too close to being a metaphor for everything for Scout’s liking.
“Nothing makes sense,” Tucker muttered mostly to himself. He scrolled through zoomed-in schematic after zoomed-in schematic, each overlaid with scrawls Scout took to be Ken’s notes. “Nothing looks like anything. How is that even possible?”
Scout stuck her hands inside the open panel and tried gently pushing aside a neatly bundled mass of cables, but getting a better look didn’t make anything clearer.
“We should call Ken,” Scout said.
“We can’t call Ken,” Tucker said. “Mitch will be standing right next to him watching him closely. It’s not like we established a code that would let him tell us what to do while pretending to talk about something else.”
Scout frowned but nodded. He was right. Tucker scrolled through more images while muttering under his breath.
“We should call Daisy,” Scout said. “I don’t have a communicator, but she’s on a computer. Can you reach her?”
“Maybe,” Tucker said, swiping away the useless images and tapping at the screen. He sent a message, and they both waited, watching the flashing light in the corner of his wrist screen.
Then text started to fill the screen. THIS IS JOELLE. RECEIVED. WILL GET TO DAISY. SB.
“SB?” Scout said to Tucker.
“Stand by,” Tucker said.
Again they waited. Scout rubbed at her arms. It was colder in the cave than she had appreciated while running up the steps, but now that she was still, the sweat on her skin was chilling her.
Tucker’s wrist communicator beeped, the sound abruptly cut off when he tapped the screen. “Talk to me,” he said.
“I’m here with Daisy,” Joelle said, clearly pitching her voice low. “What’s the situation.”
“The schematics are no good,” Tucker said. “They must have made drastic changes to the design in the last stages. We’re looking at the schematics that Scout stole from the governor—” he ignored Scout’s slight yelp of protest, “but they must have made modifications since this point. Can you check if they’re in the computer system?”
“We don’t have time to search all of the records,” Joelle said. “They’re certainly in the encrypted files. Tucker, they’re preparing to fire right now.”
“Can you shoot video?” Scout asked. “Show Daisy what we’re looking at?”
“Good idea,” said Joelle. Tucker raised his wrist and aimed the top edge of the screen into the open panel.
“Do you see it?” he asked.
“Yes,” Daisy said. “The rejiggering was probably deliberate to prevent just what you’re trying to do.”
“But components are still components,” Scout said. “Can’t you figure out where they moved the part we needed to take out?”
“It’s more than that,” Daisy said. “It’s likely booby-trapped as well.”
Scout, who had been lifting the bundle of cables aside so that Daisy and Joelle could get a better look, snatched her hands back out of the panel.
“Wouldn’t a booby trap just destroy what they’re trying to protect?” Tucker asked.
“Not if it’s something only harmful to humans. Like poison gas or something,” Daisy said.
“That doesn’t sound like something Malcolm would have done,” Tucker said. “It sounds so . . . without honor.”
“I’m inclined to agree,” Joelle said, “but what about the people who are really calling the shots? Do we know what they are capable of?”
“Probably exactly this,” Tucker sighed.
“What can we do?” Scout asked, desperation starting to creep in the edges of her voice.
She really wished she had Warrior with her. The AI could look inside the panel, find anything hidden away, and tell her how to disarm it.
Tell her how to disable the gun.
But she wasn’t there. She was up in space somewhere. Forgotten in a box, or put to other use by the Months.
Or maybe they had erased her very existence. That was certainly within their power.
But the fact was, she was gone, and Scout was on her own.
Well, on her own with Tucker. Who seemed less able to find a step forward than she did.
“You’ve got to figure something out,” Joelle said. “I have to get back out there. The stations and satellites are converging. They will be at optimal configuration in minutes. Do something!”
“But what?” Tucker asked. He had passed from frustration to anger. “What can we do, Joelle? What?”
“You’re going to have to think of something,” Joelle said. “Because if you don’t, those people up in space won’t be the only ones dead. Do you understand the energy that this gun emits when it fires? Not just up into space. There’s a reason no one is in that cave with you. If you don’t stop that gun from firing in the next two minutes, you and Scout and the dogs are going to be nothing more than silhouettes burned into the stone. You will be vaporized. You have to think of something!”
Then the line went dead.
“Great,” Tucker grumbled, looking around at the boxes of tools, then up the length of the gun. “Have you got any explosives on you?”
“The Months took all my stuff,” Scout said.
“At least you got your hat back,” he said.
“It was my father’s hat,” she said absentmindedly as she examined the panel door itself. Sometimes panels contained helpful diagrams of their contents. This one didn’t.
“Then I’m doubly glad you got it back,” he said.
“Stop trying to piss me off,” Scout said, dumping the closest of the toolboxes over and examining the scattered contents. Beneath the tools was nothing but safety equipment.
“How am I pissing you off? Just by talking?”
“You shouldn’t have been wearing my father’s hat like it was yours,” she said, picking up some of the safety gear. The hard hat was useless. But there was also a breathing mask.
“It was the easiest way to carry it to you,” Tucker said. “I didn’t think it meant anything. What are you doing?”
Scout had put on the breathing mask, then a pair of thick safety glasses, and was tugging on a pair of extremely thick gloves that went up past her elbows.
“Get down to the dogs,” she said to Tucker, her voice muffled by the mask.
“What are you thinking, Scout?” he asked suspiciously.
“If Daisy is right and this is booby-trapped, only one of us should be standing here. Get down to the dogs,” Scout said more firmly.
“This is crazy,” Tucker said.
“It’s all we have to try,” Scout said.
“Then let me do it,” Tucker said. “You get to the dogs, and I’ll do . . . whatever it is you think you’re doing.”
“I’m already wearing everything,” Scout said. Then a low hum filled the cave around them, growing in intensity until the rocks around them were vibrating, making the metal supports of the platform under them sing.
“There’s no more time!” Scout said as a bluish glow began to spread across the surface of the gunmetal.
Tucker reached out a hand to touch it, then retracted it with a yelp of pain when it zapped him with a flash of light. Scout smelled the faint scent of burned flesh.
“Run!” Scout yelled, then picked up the largest of the hammers scattered over the platform.
Tucker backed up, ran out of platform, and stumbled back down the first few steps of the staircase, but he didn’t leave.
“Do it now!” he shouted at her as the hum built to an intensity that made both of Scout’s ears ache. The ache was fast becoming acute pain. It felt like her eardrums were going to burst from the pressure in the air around her.
Scout gave a yell that vibrated oddly through the breathing mask, making her sound like a desperate robot.
Then she reached inside the panel with her gloved hands, grabbing and tearing at anything she could reach. She knew she wasn’t getting anything crucial, just miscellaneous cables and wires that probably had redundancies built into the system. The blue energy that danced over the gun glowed intensely around her hands, and her gloves started to smoke.
But the moment she had the main board clear, she stepped back, hefting the hammer. She didn’t know what function this tool normally served, with its handle longer than her forearm and its massive head. But it served nicely for her current purpose.
She swung as hard as she could, pivoting through her hips and bringing all of the muscles of her legs into propelling the swing.
It hit the motherboard with a very satisfying smash. Then Scout’s entire world was one intense blast of light like she was inside the heart of a star.