“No. But anything they left down here might have deteriorated and produced those kinds of dangers,” Jason said. “Which is why I wish Kira wasn’t insisting on walking beside me.”
“You knew what you were getting,” Kira told him. “Ready when you are.” She and Jason started down the passage side by side, the others coming along a little ways behind. Jason moved slowly down the slope of the passage, searching the walls, the floor and the ceiling for any sign of trouble. Kira had feared the floor would be slick under her boots, but it offered good purchase.
The passageway ran at least a hundred lances before opening up into a large room with two other passages leading off from it.
In the center of the room, on a pedestal about half a lance high and a lance across, sat a box about the same size as a pig, gleaming with metal and other surfaces that Kira couldn’t identify.
Jason approached the pedestal with small, careful steps, bending to read something on the side of the box. “Beta Field Generator. Model Five. Series Three. Caution.” He stepped back, breathing deeply. “I’ve never been this close to something this dangerous before.”
“Does it look like the ones from your games?” Kira asked, keeping her pistol up and canted toward the other two passages.
“No. Not at all. That’s not surprising. Those deliberately avoided showing real stuff about the design of weapons of mass destruction. The games always had an easy-to-spot access panel on the weapons. But I can’t see an access panel on this one.”
Queen Sien had entered with the others. “Is this the weapon set to go off if the facility is forced? Can you disarm it?”
“It must be the one intended to blow up the facility,” Jason said. “See those two green lights? I think that means it’s active. It definitely means it’s got power going to it. The power supply is probably routed through the pedestal. But… I’ve got no idea how to get at the inside of this thing. It might be set to go off if tampered with!”
“We can’t just leave it there,” Mari said. “Any ideas, people?”
Master Mechanic Lukas had been silent, staying back and observing everything. Now he walked completely around the pedestal, looking at the box from all sides. “Jason, is there any explosive in this thing?”
“Explosive? No. I’m certain of that. It’s all electronics designed to create the beta field.”
“No detonator?”
“No,” Jason said. “I mean, some of the electronics might be dangerous to touch.”
“Capacitors? Electronics like that?”
“Sort of.”
Alli shook her head. “Lukas, are you thinking what I think you’re thinking?”
“Probably,” Lukas said.
“What are you both thinking?” Mari asked.
Lukas pursed his lips, nodding toward the box. “I’m thinking that if this is a box full of electronics, every component of which is important to the device functioning properly, then if our Mages make half of this box go away, we can rip out and break everything in the other half. The same sort of tactic that disabled the equipment the people on that ship from Urth tried to use against us.”
Kira heard a choking sound beside her. She looked at Jason, who seemed to be having trouble breathing.
“That’s—" Jason tried to inhale. "That’s—"
Kira slapped her palm against his back. “Breathe.”
Calu shook his head. “Jason seems a little bothered by your idea, Lukas.”
Finally getting his breath back, Jason shook his head rapidly. “Um, no. No. I don’t think we should do that. Like I said, even messing with the case might cause it to go off.”
“Jason, we’re not talking about opening it,” Alli pointed out. “We’re talking about making half of the entire blasted thing temporarily disappear. How could it work if we did that?”
“Alli’s right,” Mari said. “We don’t know beta field generators, but we do know electronics. Nothing is made with half of the stuff redundant and not required to function.”
“But—”
Lukas pointed to the device that Jason still held. “That thing Doctor Sino gave you. If Mage Alain made half of it vanish, would it work?”
“No,” Jason said. “But the Invictus Drive. Remember? Kira made part of that go away, and the drive still worked.”
“I thought you said that broke the drive,” Kira said. “Because breaking the drive was the only thing that could cause the internal matrix to reset.”
Jason stared at her, then reluctantly nodded. “That’s right. The drive wouldn’t work to save data while that part was missing.”
“Jason,” Mari said, “we’re engineers. Engineers designed this thing. We may not know the technology they used, but we know how they thought when they were designing it.”
Dav nodded. “Those engineers were thinking Wow, this is going to be really cool when it goes off. But also how to design it most efficiently.”
Jason turned a pleading gaze on Kira. “What do you think?”
It startled her to realize that he trusted her judgment more than that of the others here. Trusted her despite everything that had happened. “I think Lukas and Alli are right. Can you think of anything on Urth, any device you used, that would work if half of it went away?”
He paused, thinking, before shaking his head again. “No.”
“Is there a power supply inside there?” Mari asked.
“Maybe. It might have an independent power supply of some kind. A backup. Some kind of chargeable battery. That might not still be working, though.”
“A power source that’s fractured might still explode if something important is missing,” Alli said. “But that would help break anything else in there.”
Mari looked at Queen Sien. “Your Majesty, this is your call. We’re in your kingdom, and that’s one of your cities above us.”
“Jason,” Sien said. “As long as this device works, it remains a threat that could go off at any time. Is that correct?”
“Yes,” Jason said.
Sien gazed at Lukas and Alli, then at Dav, Calu, Kira, and finally Mari. “If it is the judgment of the Mechanics present that this is the safest means to dispose of the threat posed by this object, then I say proceed.”
Mari gave orders again, a role she fell into naturally after so much experience. “Let’s minimize the chances of anyone getting hurt. Dav, how many pairs of heavy gloves do we have? Three? Alli, you put on one, Dav, you take the second. I’ll put on the third.”
“I’ll put on the third,” Lukas said. “You’re the supervisor, Mari. That means you stand back and supervise.”
Mari gave him a lowered brow but didn’t try to argue the point. “Alain, you and Asha go to the other side of that box and walk as far from it as you can and still be comfortable that you can make half of it go away. Do we have enough Mage power for that?”
“Yes,” Kira said along with Alain and Asha. She flinched. “Sorry.”
“You’ll have to hide your Mage senses in public a little better than that,” her mother said. “Alain, Asha, when the Mage spell takes effect, Alli, Dav, and Lukas will move around to that side as fast as possible and start yanking out or breaking anything they can get at.”
“Suggestion, honored Master Mechanic,” Alli said. “There might be something in there that we can’t break by hand or hand tools.” She nodded toward Kira.
“Good idea. Kira, ready your weapon. When the rest are done, I want you to put bullets into anything that still looks intact. Everybody else stay out of the line of fire behind that thing in case any of her shots penetrate the casing and go out the other side.”
“What should Jason and I do?” Calu asked.
“You two know more than the rest of us about how this thing might work. Watch for anything you think might be particularly critical or dangerous to make contact with. If you see something like that, call out and I’ll decide what to do. And if something badly shocks one of the three putting their hands in there, use HBR on us.”
Mari’s eyes went to Kira and then Alain. “You two also do what you can if that happens, but nobody dies trying to bring someone else back to life. Understand?”
“Why did you include Kira when you said that?” Calu said.
“Never mind. Let’s get ready.”
Kira held her pistol ready, the barrel aimed upward, while Alain and Asha walked past the other side of the beta field generator, getting about three lances away before stopping and turning to face it.
Jason stood beside Kira, muttering barely loud enough for her to hear. “In games you go in and you use micro tools to delicately manipulate tiny parts of complex circuits, doing everything just right and in the right order. And you guys are going to just break things.”
“Every engineer knows sometimes you just gotta break things,” Kira whispered back to him. She felt her father preparing a spell. “Stand by,” she said, loudly enough for the other Mechanics to hear.
Her heart was pounding, wondering if the next thing to happen would be a bright white light that signaled oblivion.
From the angle she was watching, Kira could see part of the box vanish as she felt her father complete the spell.
She ran around to face the affected side of the beta field generator, keeping her pistol pointed upward as Alli, Dav, and Lukas dashed to the now open box. Kira caught a brief glimpse of small, shiny, boxlike objects fastened into arrays, of flat and round things whose surfaces glittered as if jewels were scattered on them, and of what looked like bundles of wires snaking through the other items. What had apparently been a spherical array of components in the center of the device was now a partial sphere, lights flashing on the remaining intact parts.
Then her view was blocked as hands in heavy gloves reached in, grabbing the wire bundles first and yanking them loose. Alli made a fist and punched at some of the other components, knocking some out of alignment and breaking a few free to dangle from bent rails. The neat partial sphere of components got ripped out, dropped to the floor, and stomped on.
“I cannot hold it much longer,” Alain warned, his voice Mage-calm.
“Get back!” Mari ordered Alli, Dav, and Lukas. “Kira! Empty your magazine into that thing!”
Kira didn’t try to aim precisely, simply pulling the trigger as she fired into the components remaining, seeing holes appear in them, worried about ricochets but the remaining innards of the beta field generator absorbing enough of the force that no bullets came flying back out. The outer shell was tough enough that no shots pierced it from the inside. The moment the slide stayed back on her weapon to indicate she’d fired the last shot in her magazine, she raised the barrel of her pistol and called out. “That’s it!”
The rest of the beta field generator reappeared.
Kira waited, seeing the others doing the same, all tense as if they could leap into action and do something if the worst happened.
But nothing did.
“I guess it worked,” Calu said.
“Let’s do the other half to be sure,” Mari said. “Same drill. Asha, you do the spell this time. Kira, do you have another magazine?”
“Duh,” Kira said, reloading. “Aunt Alli taught me this stuff, remember? Do you think I’d do anything with you or with her and not have a lot of extra ammunition with me?”
“Maybe one of us should have taught you not to answer a question with duh,” her mother said.
“I tried,” Alli said. “Are we going to do this?”
This time when half of the beta field generator vanished there was a popping sound, and small fragments of something burst outward. But Asha maintained her focus on the spell long enough for the Mechanics to finish smashing and shooting the insides.
Asha staggered as the spell failed. “There is little power remaining near here,” she said as Dav went to help her.
Alli pulled off her gloves. “We shouldn’t need it. That sucker is broke.”
Jason shook his head, laughing. “Mage talents save the day again. I wish I’d been able to use those in my games.”
“Which passage do we check first?” Calu asked.
“That one,” Sien said, pointing to the smaller one on the left.
Once again Kira joined Jason as they entered the passage, searching for trouble. She could see the end of this passage, a few hundred lances ahead, but it wasn’t until they’d gotten closer that she spotted another passage jutting off to the left. A sealed door blocked access to it.
As they approached that passage, a high-pitched whistle sounded.
“What the blazes is that?” Alli demanded, looking around.
“The detector that Doctor Sino sent,” Jason said, gazing at the device. “Radiation.” He swung the device slowly before him, watching it all the while. “It’s coming from the other side of that door.”
“Can we get any closer?” Mari asked. “Enough to see what’s in there?”
“Yeah. It says the intensity is low enough here that exposure for a short time shouldn’t be dangerous.” Jason walked forward slowly, his eyes fixed on the device, until he stood outside the sealed door. “Oh, man. It says we shouldn’t spend more than a couple of minutes here.”
“Is that one of the panel things?” Kira asked, pointing beside the door.
“Yeah. Let’s activate it and… Camera! Maybe we can see what’s inside.”
Images appeared on the panel, as if she were viewing them directly. Kira called out to the others. “There’s a heavy door of some kind at the end of the passage behind this door. Maybe a hundred lances away. It looks damaged, like… like something partially blew it out. And short of that, maybe eighty lances down the passage, there are other really wide passages on each side… no, those are rooms. Big rooms. I can see stuff in the parts of the rooms visible through the openings. It’s equipment. Both of those rooms look a bit like the original equipment room in the librarians’ tower. Lots of stuff in racks and shelves.”
The device in Jason’s hand wailed again, higher-pitched and louder. “Back!” he cried. “Everybody back!”
Jason touched something that made the panel go dark again, urging Kira ahead of him as everyone retreated all the way to the room holding the broken beta field generator. “This thing says there’s a lot of radiation in there,” Jason told the others. “Hard stuff. We do not want to open that door. The air itself on the other side is probably lethal.”
“How did that happen?” Lukas asked. “Any ideas?”
Jason squinted in thought. “Like Kira said, that second door we saw inside was damaged, like something had exploded on the other side of it. I was paying a lot of attention to Doc Sino’s device, though. Kira, did you see anything on the door?”
“Ummm… danger… ” She tried to remember what else. “Something like a circle, but with, uh, sixths of it cut out. Like one sixth there, one sixth missing, one sixth there, and so on.”
“What color was it?”
“Like black on yellow, I think.”
Jason nodded, looking grim. “That’s the universal radiation warning sign. They did make nuclear weapons. Or refined the materials to make nuclear weapons. Some of that must have suffered failures.”
“I thought nuclear weapons did immense amounts of damage,” Calu said.
“They do. But the nuclear material in them can, uh, sort of blow itself apart if safeguards fail. I think it’s called a sub-critical explosion. Not a nuclear explosion, but enough to breach that door and scatter material.”
“How dangerous is it?” Dav asked.
“According to Doctor Sino’s device, anyone who goes into the hallway will receive a lethal dose before they reach that other door.”
“They’d die before they even reach the end of the hall?”
“Uh, yes and no,” Jason said. “They’d get a lethal dose. So they’d be dead at that point but they wouldn’t be dead yet.”
“Mostly dead?” Kira asked.
“Worse than mostly dead. They’d feel sick for maybe a day, then they’d feel fine for another
day or so. That’s called being a Walking Ghost, because everything inside that person is shutting down and dying. After that they die. No way to save them.”
“Like poisoning,” Calu said.
“Yes,” Jason said. “It’s called radiation poisoning. One hundred percent lethality guaranteed. Unless that Mage stuff can make a difference.”
Kira looked to her father, who frowned. “I would not want to attempt to heal everything inside someone. Even healing a few parts is an immense effort.”
“So we can’t get at that room,” Kira said. “What about the rooms to either side? There’s a lot of stuff in them. Technology from the great ship.”
Jason shook his head. “Those rooms are open. Anything in them has been exposed to the radiation. Everything will be hot.”
“Hot?” Mari asked.
“Dangerously radioactive.”
“One last thumb in our eye from the crew of that ship!” Dav said with disgust. “They saved that equipment for themselves, but because they built those other weapons and stored things carelessly, it’s all useless to us even if it still works.”
“What if we sent a troll in?” Alli asked. “Could a troll at least get something out? I mean, it’d die, but… ”
“That something would be dangerous,” Jason said. “That gear is not just surrounded by radioactivity. By now it’s radioactive, too. And like I said, opening the door would release the air inside. We don’t want to do that.”
“Is there any way to make it safe?” Mari asked.
“Wait a few million years. Maybe longer. Personally, I’d stuff that open passage leading to the first door as full of fill as I could to keep in the radiation and keep any adventurers out. Rocks with lead in them. Stuff like that.”
“One of the tech manuals,” Calu said, “has information about building protective suits for situations like this. Maybe we can make something that will at least allow someone to look in that room at the end and tell us if any weapons are still intact and need to be disarmed.”
“That’s going to take a while, if that protective stuff is what I remember seeing,” Lukas commented. “We still need to develop the means to construct some of the technology involved. And of course there’s nothing in those manuals about those weapons. Those idiots in the original crew managed to destroy everything.”