They didn’t meet any. The ship had only a skeleton crew; seemed they’dsaved most of their troops to protect the Shaw. It took some time to fight their way to the bridge regardless, given the need to check every corner and flush out people trying to ambush them. Wayne thought every crew member on board had been mustered to try to stop them.
When, half an hour or more later, Wax finally Pushed down the reinforced door to the bridge, they found a disturbing sight. Four people— three women and a fellow—dead on the floor from self-inflicted gunshots. All wore officers’ uniforms. They’dkilled themselves rather than fall into custody.
“You know,” Wayne said, shouldering his rifle, “I thought the weird ones would all be in the Roughs, you know? City folk, they were supposed to be educated. And… and refined. And not bleedin’zealots.”
Wax checked the bodies to be sure, then stepped up to the ship’s front controls. They were a confusing mess of levers, along with a giant ship’s wheel that appeared to have been locked in place. The ship was still moving at full speed through the mists, andrusts.Wayne thought he could see the glow of Elendel on the horizon. They were getting close.
Wax stopped at the controls, then cursed softly.
“What?” Wayne said.
“It’s wired to the same system,” Wax said. “Harmony? Can you confirm?”
Yes, unfortunately,the god said.With you to give me sight, I can see that it’s wired into the bomb.
“If we undo the locks on the controls, it blows,” Wax said. “I should have foreseen this. We wasted time coming up here.”
“But—” Wayne said.
“It makes a brutal sense,” Wax said. “They guided the ship here, then locked the course down before killing themselves. The thing will explode the moment it stops—as soon as it hits land. We’re not on a traditional ship. This is arocket,like the one they built to fly to Elendel. Self-propelled. Needing no controls. Set to detonate the second it hits.”
“Mate,” Wayne said, pointing out the front windows. “I see lights.”
You have approximately twenty minutes,Harmony said softly,at current speed.
“We have to risk trying to defuse the bomb,” Wax said, rushing out onto the deck.
Wayne scrambled to follow, tripping on bodies. “Wait! You said that if we tried, we’dalmostcertainlyblow the thing!”
“Do you have a better idea?”
“Maybe,” Wayne said, halting beside the railing—mists coursing past like a river in the sky.
Wax froze, turning back to him.
Did Wayne have a better idea?
Actually… actually hedid.He looked out at the ocean and realized something. This ship here… well, this was a lot like a lone mesa. It fit way better than the Shaw had. Yes, a solitary mesa in the middle of flat lands…
And it needed to gobble up the hero.
“You said that this bomb,” Wayne said, “it blows up big if detonated proper. But one part of it is ettmetal, right?”
“Harmonium,” Wax said. “Yes. And?”
“And that stuff is so unstable, it blows up ifwatertouches it. Except in asmallerexplosion? One that won’t level cities and such?”
“It’s still bad,” Wax said. “But not catastrophic. But if we fiddle with one of the devices by pouring water into it to detonate the ettmetal, the others will simply go off.”
“Unless,” Wayne said, “we were using a speed bubble. See, there’s that device on the wall, right? And if we fiddle with one of the bombs, it’s going to detonate the other ones?”
“Right,” Wax said.
“So, what if we put up a speed bubble that leavesoutthe device on the wall? We could work on one of the barrels, detonating the harmonium in it so therealexplosion can’t happen. We set that explosion off, then kickthatbarrel out of the speed bubble. It’ll send a warning to the other two barrels, but that signal will have to pass along the wires outside the speed bubble, to reach the box on the wall. So the signal will be frozen in time and can’t come back! We could work on the other barrels during that time.”
“Wayne,” he said, “do you have any idea how quickly electricity moves? Even assuming you could do something incredible—like speed up time by a factor of a thousand—that wouldn’t be nearly fast enough to outrun an electrical signal.”
Oh.