At Galactic Central

by Kate MacLeod

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 tra
in 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.

  21

  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?”