The red dot on the leather dashboard wasn't burning. It was just sitting there. A tiny, unblinking eye.
But Jason knew what it meant.
"Altitude!" Jason screamed, grabbing the yoke. "Get us behind the mountain!"
"We can't dive!" Hughes shrieked, fighting the controls. "The frame is stressed! If we drop too fast, the wings shear off!"
"If we don't drop, we vaporize!" Jason roared.
He pointed through the shattered windshield at the massive, snow-capped peak looming ahead. Pikes Peak. The sentinel of the Rockies.
"Get in the shadow!" Jason ordered. "Break the line of sight!"
T-Minus Five Seconds, the robotic voice droned over the radio. Target Lock Confirmed.
Jason looked up through the skylight.
High in the violet sky, a new star flared. It wasn't a laser beam. Lasers required too much power for 1920s tech, even for Gates.
This was something simpler. Something crueler.
"Kinetic Bombardment," Jason whispered. "Project Thor."
A twenty-foot rod of solid tungsten, dropped from sub-orbit. No explosives. No radiation. Just gravity, mass, and terminal velocity. It would hit with the force of a tactical nuclear weapon.
"DIVE!" Jason slammed the emergency vent release.
WHOOSH.
Helium vented from the upper cells. The Icarus dropped like a stone.
The stomach-churning sensation of freefall hit the crew. O'Malley was thrown against the ceiling. Sarah grabbed the navigation table, her knuckles white.
The mountain rushed up to meet them. Granite and snow filled the view.
Two... One...
They slipped behind the ridge of the mountain.
Shadow.
For a heartbeat, there was silence. The engine noise faded. The wind whistled through the vents.
Then the sun exploded on the other side of the peak.
It wasn't sound at first. It was light. A blinding, pure white flash that outlined the mountain in stark relief. The snow on the ridge instantly turned to steam.
Then the ground turned to liquid.
The mountain didn't just shake; it rippled. A wave of granite rose up like water.
BOOM.
The sound hit them.
It wasn't a noise. It was a physical blow. The shockwave cresting the peak hammered the Icarus with the force of a hurricane.
The aluminum frame screamed. Rivets popped like gunfire, pinging around the cockpit.
The windshield shattered.
"Masks!" Jason yelled as the freezing air blasted into the bridge.
The ship was tossed sideways. They were spinning. The horizon was a blur of blue sky and white snow.
"Controls unresponsive!" Hughes yelled. "We've lost the rudder!"
They were falling. A controlled crash had turned into a death spiral.
"Brace for impact!" Jason grabbed Sarah and pulled her into the crash harness.
The pine trees rushed up.
CRACK-CRUNCH-SNAP.
The gondola plowed through the canopy of the forest. Trees sheared off, slamming against the hull. The screech of tearing metal was deafening.
The ship slammed into a snowbank.
The impact threw Jason forward against the harness straps. The world went black for a second, then snapped back into focus.
Silence.
Steam hissed from the broken coolant lines. The reactor emergency klaxon was wailing, a dull, dying sound.
Jason unbuckled his straps. He fell to the tilted deck.
"Sound off!" Jason rasped. "Who's alive?"
"Here," O'Malley groaned from under a pile of maps.
"I'm okay," Sarah said, checking Einstein. The old physicist was shaken, clutching his violin case, but unharmed.
"Reactor scrammed," Oppenheimer called from the engineering bay. "Core is cooling. But we're dead in the water. No power. No heat."
Jason kicked the jammed door open. He stumbled out into the snow.
The air was thin and freezing. They were at ten thousand feet.
He looked back at the mountain.
A mushroom cloud of dust and pulverized rock was rising from the other side of Pikes Peak. Gates had tried to erase them from existence.
"He missed," O'Malley said, climbing out, shivering in the cold.
"He didn't miss," Jason said, looking at the devastation. "We hid."
Jason checked his Geiger counter. It was dead.
He checked his radio. Static.
He looked at his mechanical watch. The second hand was frozen.
"That's odd," Jason muttered. "The EMP from the impact should have fried electronics, but not a mainspring."
He looked around the valley.
It was silent. Too silent. No birds. No wind.
But there was a sound. A low, deep hum. Like a massive transformer humming underground.
The hair on Jason's arms stood up.
"Do you feel that?" Sarah asked, rubbing her arms. "The static?"
Jason looked at the trees. The pine needles were glowing faintly at the tips. St. Elmo's Fire.
"We're in a field," Jason realized. "An electromagnetic field."
He scanned the ridge line.
There.
Standing atop a rocky outcropping, a mile away, was a tower.
It was a skeleton of steel, topped with a massive copper donut. Purple arcs of electricity crackled around it, silent and rhythmic.
It wasn't Gates's sleek, digital technology. It was raw, industrial, and beautiful.
"Alternating Current," Jason whispered. "High voltage. High frequency."
"Who built a radio tower in the middle of nowhere?" O'Malley asked.
"That's not a radio tower," Jason said, a smile creeping onto his face. "That's a Faraday Cage. A shield."
He pointed at the sky.
"Gates can't see us. His sensors rely on radio waves and radar. That tower is scrambling everything in this valley."
"Who lives there?" Sarah asked.
Jason looked at the tower, pulsing with the heartbeat of the universe.
"Only one man smart enough to hide from God," Jason said.
He started walking through the snow.
"Grab the supplies. We're going to see the Wizard."
They trudged through the deep snow. The air smelled of ozone—sharp and metallic.
As they got closer to the tower, the humming grew louder. It vibrated in their teeth.
They reached a clearing at the base of the ridge.
A perimeter fence made of copper poles blocked the path. There was no wire between the poles. Just air.
A deer stepped out of the woods, spooked by the crash. It ran toward the fence line.
It passed between the poles.
ZAP.
There was no sound of burning. Just a flash of white light.
The deer was gone. Vaporized. A pile of gray ash settled on the snow.
"Holy mother," O'Malley whispered, stopping dead in his tracks.
"Scalar energy," Einstein said, stepping forward. His eyes were wide with wonder. "Standing waves. He solved the death ray problem."
A loudspeaker crackled to life on one of the poles.
"Turn back," a voice boomed.
It wasn't the robotic voice of Gates. It was human. Arrogant. Cultured. And very tired.
"I do not accept visitors," the voice said. "Especially ones who fall from the sky smelling of oil and ignorance."
Jason stepped up to the line of ash.
"We're enemies of Gates!" Jason shouted. "We crashed! We need help!"
"Gates is a boring mechanic," the voice dismissed. "And you are the fool who gave him the wrench."
"I'm Jason Underwood!"
"I know who you are, Mr. Prentice," the voice sneered. "The man who accelerated the war. You gave the monkeys machine guns and expected them to write Shakespeare."
"I tried to save the world!" Jason yelled.
"You broke it," the voice countered. "Gates is the infection. But you lowered the immune system."
The purple lightning on the tower intensified.
"Leave. Or cross the line and become dust. I am indifferent."
Jason looked at the freezing crew. He looked at the dead ship.
He needed leverage. He needed to appeal to the man's ego.
"I have Albert Einstein with me!" Jason shouted.
Silence.
The humming stopped.
"The physicist?" the voice asked, skeptical.
"Yes! And he wants to see your math!"
A long pause.
The purple arcs on the tower faded. The copper poles hummed down to a low thrum.
"Bring the German," the voice said. "Leave the guns."
The invisible wall deactivated.
Jason let out a breath he didn't know he was holding.
"Let's go," Jason said. "Before he changes his mind."
They walked past the pile of ash, up the ridge toward the tower that crackled with the power of a captured storm.