Munira found she could live with that, if he could.
It was on a morning toward the end of their sixth week that things took an unexpected turn.
Munira was in one of the wild patches that had once been a backyard, checking a tree for ripe fruit, when an alarm went off. It was the first time since they’d arrived that the island’s defensive system had come back to life. Munira dropped what she was doing and raced to the bunker. She found Faraday standing on the mound above it, peering through rusted binoculars toward the sea.
“What is it? What’s going on?”
“See for yourself.” He handed her the binoculars
She adjusted the view and brought things into focus. It was clear now what had triggered the island into red alert. There were ships on the horizon. About a dozen of them.
“Unregistered vessel, please identify.”
It was the first communication the Nimbus flotilla had had since passing out of the Thunderhead’s sphere of influence the previous day. It was morning, and Director Hilliard was taking tea with Loriana. The director nearly dumped what was left of hers when the message came over the bridge loudspeaker amid a burst of awful static.
“Should I get some of the other agents?” Loriana asked.
“Yes,” said the director. “Get Qian and Solano. But skip Sykora – I could do without his negativity right now.”
“Unregistered vessel, please identify.”
The director leaned toward the microphone on the communication console. “This is fishing vessel Lanikai Lady out of Honolulu, registration WDJ98584, currently under private charter.”
The last thing that Loriana heard before the door closed behind her was the voice on the other end saying “Authorization unrecognized. Access denied.”
Well, even with resistance from whoever it was, Loriana couldn’t help but feel that this was a positive development.
Munira and Faraday scrambled to do something – anything – that could take down the defense system. In all the weeks they’d been here, they had been unable to locate its control center – which probably meant it was behind the impenetrable steel door.
All this time, the silent titanium turret had stood nestled in the shrubs of the island’s highest point, like a chess piece forgotten in the corner of the board. It was just an inert object these past weeks, but now a panel had opened, and a heavy gun barrel protruded. It was easy to forget how deadly the thing was when it was nothing but an immobile, windowless tower – and a squat one at that, barely four meters high. Now it had awakened, and the air filled with a building electronic whine as it powered up.
The first blast came before they reached it, a white laser pulse that hit one of the ships on the horizon. Black smoke billowed silently in the distance.
Then the turret began to charge again.
“Maybe we can cut its power…” suggested Munira as they reached it.
Faraday shook his head. “We don’t even know how it’s powered. Could be geothermal, could be nuclear. Whatever it is, it’s been viable for hundreds of years, which means shutting it down won’t be a simple matter.”
“There are other ways to shut off a machine,” Munira said.
Twenty seconds after the first blast, the turret swiveled ever so slightly. Now the barrel pointed a few degrees to the left. It fired again. Another plume of dark smoke. Another delayed report from the sea.
There was an access ladder that ran up the back of the tower. Munira had climbed it several times over the past few weeks to get a better view of the islands of the atoll. Maybe now that its armored face was open and playing peekaboo with the incoming fleet, it could be disabled.
A third blast. Another direct hit. Another twenty seconds to recharge.
“We’ll wedge something in the neck of the turret!” Faraday suggested.
Munira began climbing the turret tower while, below, Faraday dug around at the base until he came up with a pointed stone and tossed it to her.
“Jam this in so it can’t swivel. Even if it only affects it a tenth of a degree, at this distance it will be enough for its shots to miss their mark.”
But when Munira reached the turret, she found that it swiveled on a hairline that wouldn’t admit a grain of sand, much less a stone wedge. Munira felt a powerful surge of static as the gun fired again.
She climbed to the very top of the turret, hoping her weight might throw the mechanism off balance, but no such luck. Blast after blast, nothing she did made a difference. Faraday shouted suggestions, but none of them helped.
Finally, she climbed out onto the barrel itself, shimmying her way toward the muzzle, hoping that she could somehow wrestle it a few millimeters out of alignment.
Now the muzzle was just in front of her. She reached forward to grasp it, feeling its opening, smooth and clean as the day it was manufactured. It angered her. Why had humankind put its effort into defying corrosion and the ravages of time for a device of destruction? It was obscene that this thing still functioned.
“Munira! Watch out!”
She pulled her hand back from the muzzle just in time. She felt the blast in the marrow of her bones and in the roots of her teeth. The barrel to which she clung got hotter with the blast.
And then she had an idea. Perhaps this primitive war technology could be defeated with even more primitive sabotage.
“A coconut!” said Munira. “Throw me a coconut! No – throw me a bunch of them.”
If there was anything that there was an abundance of on this island it was coconuts. The first one Faraday threw was too big to fit into the mouth of the muzzle.
“Smaller!” she told him. “Hurry.”
Faraday tossed up three smaller ones. His aim was perfect, and she caught all three, just as the cannon got off another blast. The horizon was now dotted with at least a dozen pillars of smoke.
Focusing, she began to count. She had twenty seconds. She shimmied out farther onto the barrel and pushed the first coconut into the muzzle. It slid down the smooth shaft a little too easily. The second one was harder to stuff in, though. Good! It needed to be. Finally, with the recharging whine hitting a crescendo, she rammed the last one down the gullet of the barrel, forcing it in. It was just large enough to plug it completely. Then, at the last second, she jumped.
This time there was no delay between explosion and sound. The ends of her hair singed. Shrapnel shredded the palm leaves around her. She hit the ground, and Faraday dove on top of her to protect her. Another explosion, along with heat that she thought would ignite their flesh … but then it faded, resolving into twangs of dying metal and the acrid smell of burning insulation. When they looked back, the turret was gone, and the tower was nothing but red-hot wreckage.
“Well done,” said Faraday. “Well done.”
But Munira knew they hadn’t been fast enough, and all they would find washing up on their shores would be the dead.
Loriana was in a stairwell when the blast came and ripped a hole in the ship, knocking her to the deck.
“May I have your attention, please…” said the ship’s automated voice, with far less conviction than the moment called for. “Please make your way to the nearest safety pod and abandon ship at your earliest possible convenience. Thank you.”
The ship began to keel to starboard as Loriana raced back up to the wheelhouse, hoping she’d be able to grasp the situation more clearly from up there.