“Yes. Isn’t that what’s called? It’s a steam train.”
Dirk shook his head adamantly. “That’s a crazy idea. They can only drive it so far before it gets too much unwanted attention. They’ve had to armor the whole train.”
She wouldn’t let the idea go. “But it’s possible, isn’t it?”
He looked at her skeptically. “We don’t even know where it is right now. It could be anywhere along the route.”
“Who operates it?”
“This Badlander Grant.”
“Do you know him?”
“I’ve never met him, but I hear he’s completely crackers. Spent too much time alone.”
“But Byron knows him, doesn’t he? He said he’d seen the Worm work.”
Dirk pursed his lips.
Opening up her comm window, she called Byron. In case their mission was unsuccessful, he and Rowan had been moving Badlander camps into an old network of bomb shelters they’d found.
“Halo!” he said, grinning when he saw her. He’d taken to calling her by that nickname more and more often.
“Byron.” She gave a little smile, though her stomach did flips at the sight of him. His long brown hair hung around his shoulders, his green eyes twinkling in his tawny face. She still hadn’t figured out what she was supposed to do with her feelings for him. “Do you remember that first night we met, when you kidnapped me and stole my car, then forced me to march through a river of fecal matter and break into a hostile megacity?”
“I’ll never forget it.” His grin widened.
“You mentioned something that night about The Big Worm.”
“I remember.”
“Is it still operational?”
“Sure is, and they’ve cleared an even longer track.”
“How long?”
“From a hundred or so miles east of where New Atlantic was, all the way to about two hundred miles shy of the west coast. Granted, it runs through some pretty desolate territory.”
“Could we, say, borrow the Big Worm? We found the launch vehicle and need to move it cross country.”
“You’d attract a lot of attention.”
“It’s our best chance.”
“A lot of hostile attention.”
“Yes.”
Byron cocked an eyebrow. “So you want to load this thing onto a steam train and drive it a thousand miles across the weather-ravaged, Death Rider-infested, PPC-airship-patrolled wastelands?”
“That’s about it.”
“I am so in.”
She laughed.
“Let me check with the engineer, Grant. See where he is right now, if he’d be up for this crazy adventure.”
“He would have bragging rights after.”
“Always important.”
“Tell him we need to get the A14 as far northwest as possible, to a safe place where Rivet can work on it. There’s a Rover satellite location there.”
“Give me a minute,” Byron told her. “And I’ll contact him.” He signed off.
“First step,” Dirk said, moving away, “is getting these loading doors opened.”
He retraced his steps through the museum entrance, the others following. Back at Gordon’s Lockheed Vega, they unloaded a portable UV charger and twenty heavy-lifting maglev sleds, transporting them all back to the museum.
The loading doors had been fitted with backup hand cranks in case of power outages, but hopefully the portable UV charger would provide enough power to get it open. They still had to blast through layers of windblown dirt that had accumulated over the loading doors, but didn’t want to do it until the last minute.
Unhooking the mobile UV charger, they laid it on a maglev and moved it to the Shuttle Crawler Transporter. After attaching it to the transporter’s massive bank of batteries, they programmed the maglev sled to hover beside it as it moved. They dragged a few displays out of the way to clear a path to the loading doors.
H124 climbed up into the controller booth of the Crawler and started it up. Lights blinked on the instrument panel, the battery meter flickering to life. She exhaled gratefully and inched the massive machine forward, out of the area where it had stood for so long. The treads groaned and creaked, breaking free after lying immobile. Angling it down the corridor toward the A14, she found it to be surprisingly maneuverable, able to turn even when stationary. The treads below rotated and trundled forward. She stopped in front of the A14.
Raven linked all the maglevs together, and maneuvered them beneath the body and wings of the A14. Then as one, the sleds lifted the craft. She could hear their whirring propellers working desperately to get lift, the tiny motors revving high. Then the A14 was aloft, slowly rising up. Raven steered it up, passing over H124 in the controller booth, and began to position it over the transport platform on top of the Crawler. The A14’s tires had gone flat long ago. He had just started to gently lower it when H124 heard the maglev rotors begin to wind down, their power depleting quickly.
They were still two feet above the Crawler when the humming of their rotors dropped to a barely perceptible thrum. Raven entered a command, and the maglevs slipped out from under the A14 just as the sleds gave out altogether. The A14 dropped the remaining two feet onto the Crawler, and the vibration shook H124 in her booth. The sleds fell to the floor, completely depleted.
Dirk climbed up the exterior of the Crawler and began strapping down the A14 with Gordon.
H124’s PRD beeped, and she opened the comm window to see Byron. “It’s all set,” he told her. “Here’s the coordinates where we’ll meet you.” Her map blinked, letting her know it had received the location. “See you tomorrow afternoon,” he said with a grin, and signed off.
For the rest of the evening and part of the next day, they hid underground, exploring the vast museum. H124 slept in the lunar display next to the Eagle lander. They’d placed the maglev copters outside to charge in the sun, and by the next morning, they were ready to go again.
Outside in the blistering heat, H124 helped Dirk transport more explosives over to the loading door area. Countless years of dirt and windblown debris had covered it, so they set up a few explosives and moved a safe distance away.
They lay down and covered their heads.
“Fire in the hole!” Gordon called out.
Dirt rained over H124, dusting her clothes.
They stood up, brushing themselves off, and approached the exposed door. Using small folding shovels, they uncovered what little dirt was left, completely clearing the opening. The aperture was definitely big enough to get the Crawler and A14 through. Now they just needed to feed power to the door’s mechanism to get it open.
They returned to the quiet cool of the museum, H124 taking a deep breath of the chilled air. It was musty and smelled mildewy, but it beat the brutal heat above.
H124 climbed back into the operator’s booth on the Crawler. With the A14 still secured on top, Raven gave H124 a thumbs-up. She turned the enormous transporter, aiming for the exterior doors. The progress was tortuously slow, inching forward across the floor of the museum. Her mind began to race, worrying that Death Riders or Badlanders might see the open doors above and come to check it out.
They turned on the power to the loading doors, and they wrenched open. Sunlight poured into the subterranean museum, illuminating displays