Doc flicked on the device. It hummed to life, then began clicking like a castanet. The scientist nodded in satisfaction.
“Processed uranium, all right. Just as I expected, our mechanical adversaries didn’t bother with radiation shielding.” He put the counter aside. “And why should they? The damnable automatons have no fear of cancer or genetic mutation.”
Such things didn’t worry Molly, either. Kids weren’t in her future, and she didn’t expect to survive long enough for cancer to be a problem.
“Better get my red armband for this,” Sitka muttered. Breaking into the storage compartment helped distract her as well. “Earned it this time.”
“Tell you what,” Molly promised, “we get out of this, you can have mine.”
The girl’s freckled face lifted a little.
Doc moved to a thin metal lid that was mounted to the wall next to the vault. Some sort of maintenance panel, presumably. Even unmanned, artificially intelligent trains needed tune-ups sometimes.
“Screwdriver,” Doc demanded of his assistant. Sitka produced one from a fanny pack around her waist, then peered intently as the Doc went to work trying to pry the lid open. “Can’t believe it’s come to this. My esteemed parents never raised me to be a train robber or safecracker. I was a systems designer, for chrissakes, a white-collar worker. Not the Sundance Kid.”
Sitka emitted a long-suffering sigh. “Speaking in tongues again.”
Grunting, he bore down on the locked panel. A hinge snapped and the lid popped open. A computer interface panel was exposed. Doc stepped back and took a bow, like a stage magician who had just pulled a rabbit out of a hat.
“Eureka!”
“Careful!” Molly warned. “It might be booby-trapped.”
“Nonsense!” he exclaimed. “Skynet surely never expected anyone to get this fa—”
A taser fired from the control panel, stabbing Doc in the throat. A thin insulated wire connected the dart to the wall. The old man went into convulsions as a massive electrical shock jolted his system. He collapsed onto the hard steel floor, twitching spasmodically.
Fuck! Molly cursed. Why didn’t he listen to me?
“Doc!” Sitka lunged forward.
Molly grabbed onto her waist, holding her back.
“Wait!” The high-voltage charge was still coursing through Doc’s body. “Don’t touch him, or you’ll be electrocuted, too!”
Snatching a hunting knife from her belt, Molly sliced through the thin cable, breaking the circuit. Doc stopped thrashing, but didn’t get up. She dropped to her knees beside him and yanked the dart from his neck. A tiny drop of blood glistened on its pointed tip.
Molly hurled it away.
“Doc! Are you okay?” She clutched his hand, which was cold and clammy to the touch. His pulse felt weak. Foam bubbled at the corners of his mouth. The smell of burnt hair filled her nostrils. “It’s me, Molly. Talk to me!”
He didn’t look good—it was as if he was having a stroke or something. His eyes were unfocussed. The color drained from his already haggard face. He stared past her, a shaking finger pointed feebly at the open gap in the ceiling.
“I can see it,” he whispered. “The world... just like it used to be....”
Sitka looked up. There was nothing there but torn steel and shimmering sky.
“Can you see it?” His voice rattled in his throat. Molly felt his pulse slipping away. Maybe the jolt had been too much for his fragile constitution. Bloodshot eyes gazed backwards in time. “Such a glorious world... like before....”
His voice trailed off.
His hand dropped limply to the floor.
Molly let go of his wrist. She stood up and stepped away from the body.
A single sob escaped Sitka’s lips.
“Is he...?”
“Gone,” Molly said.
The girl choked back tears.
“Crazy old man,” she said hoarsely, anger denying her feelings. “Should’ve been more careful.”
That’s it, Molly realized. Operation Ravenwing was over. Skynet could come get its damn uranium if it wanted it. We took out a train and a bridge at least. That’ll have to be enough.
She didn’t want to think about how much those “victories” had cost them.
Stepping away from Doc’s body, she approached the cleft. The screams and gunfire had moved away from them, although she thought she could still hear fighting in the distance. She risked a peek out of the gap. The remaining Snowminators were nowhere in sight. Maybe they had abandoned the humans in the railcar to seek out easier prey. The bodies of their earlier victims had been left to rot. Molly hoped there would be a chance to bury them later.
Crimson stains defiled the snow and slush.
“Okay,” she told Sitka. It was possible a snow-machine was lurking just out of sight, but they had to chance it. If they were lucky, maybe they could slip away unnoticed. “Let’s go.”
“No.” Sitka shook her head defiantly. “Not done yet.” She approached the disarmed control panel with a determined look on her face. “Can still do this. Doc taught me how.”
Molly wasn’t sure about that. Sure, the old man had spent hours filling the precocious teen’s head with arcane technical info, but Molly doubted the apprentice was anywhere up to the master’s level yet. It didn’t seem worth the risk—any chance they had might be slipping away.
“Forget that. We’ve done enough.” She called to the girl from the exit. “You heard me. Move it.”
Sitka didn’t budge.
Instead she opened up her backpack and took out a heavy-duty combat laptop—the only one they had—and a wad of electrical clips and cables. She squinted at the exposed panel. No new tasers jolted her—the machinery had already shot its load. She peeled off the interface screen to reveal a tangle of wires and clips. Busy fingers applied clips and hackwires to the car’s neural ganglia.
Did she actually know what she was doing? Molly considered ordering Sitka out at gunpoint, but wasn’t sure even that would deter the girl, who appeared bound and determined to finish what Doc had started. So she came up behind her, peering over the teen’s shoulder at the incomprehensible—to her—links and relays.
“Can you do this?”
“Think so.” Concentration scrunched up Sitka’s face, already thrown into shadow by the weird red lights. The tip of her tongue protruded from the corner of her mouth. Linking the control panel to her laptop, she punched its keys. Binary code filled its screen, scrolling past way faster than Molly could follow. It seemed to make sense to Sitka, though. Maybe the old man really had taught her everything he’d known. The teen froze a bit of code on the screen. Her eyes lit up.
“Got you!”
She pushed a button. Hydraulics whooshed loudly behind the interior walls of the railcar. The ponderous vault door slid to one side. An avalanche of powdered uranium spilled onto the floor of the vestibule.
The discarded Geiger counter went nuts.
Sitka beamed triumphantly.
“Way skookum!”
Despite its name, the “yellowcake” was actually brownish-black in color. According to Doc, the nickname was leftover from the early days of uranium mining, when the chemicals used to process the raw ore had turned the results yellow. The coarse powder filled the long cylindrical storage compartment that stretched into semi-darkness beyond the doorway. There was enough uranium in just this one car to power dozens of nuclear reactors—or Terminators.
Sitka dumped out her book bag and started shoveling the yellowcake into the pack with her bare hands. The radioactive powder was surprisingly light. Molly scooped up a few handfuls herself, then reconsidered. With their team scattered, and the Snowminators on the prowl, they weren’t going to be able to carry off enough ore to make a real difference. Better just to blow the whole load to kingdom come instead. She remembered all the oil they had cost Skynet back at the pipeline. This was the same kind of situation.