The Toll (Arc of a Scythe #3) - Neal Shusterman Page 0,20

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