by Jamie Sawyer
In convoy, the Jackals, Pariah and the prisoners scrambled up the side of the train.
“Always with the fucking roof,” I said, shaking my head.
“Quit griping. I got your fish out.”
How did the Voice know about Pariah? P was a black op, and very few personnel in Science Division and Military Intelligence were aware of its creation. As soon as we got to a place, a time, when I wasn’t being shot at, stabbed or threatened with mortal injury, I had some serious questions for the Voice. As it was, everything had to wait. Being given instruction was far easier than having to sort this mess out for myself.
“You looked like you were enjoying that back in the lab,” the Voice said.
“Is that an accusation?”
“Not at all. It’s just nice to see you enjoying your work.”
“You can see us then?”
“Sometimes.”
“You want to explain that to me?”
“We have limited control of the train’s security cameras,” the Voice said, sounding a little irascible. “Enough to tell you there’s a shitload of Directorate commandos on that transport, and that you really should just get on with this instead of asking so many questions.”
“We’re ready for them.”
“They aren’t the enemy. Not anymore.”
I laughed, and realised that it had been a long time since I’d heard myself do that. “From where I’m standing, the Directorate are very much the enemy.”
“Yeah, well, things have changed.”
“How do you know all of this?”
“We were able to override the security protocols from orbit.”
That wasn’t quite what I meant, but the answer revealed enough. “Marvellous.”
“Things might be bad down there now, but they’re going to get much worse.”
The train was subject to regular and repeated explosions, although the conflict seemed focused on the rear carriages. The Directorate were having a hard time suppressing the prison revolt—there must’ve been hundreds of prisoners being transported via the train network—and a whole fleet of ramshackle civilian vehicles was racing alongside the tracks. A dozen or so buggies and trucks, I guessed, moving at maximum speed to keep pace.
“What are they doing?”
“Those prisoners want off-world, just like you,” the Voice answered. “That train is the only option.”
“They’re pretty desperate,” I said.
As the buggies drew parallel with the train, bodies leapt from open crew cabins and clutched for the flank. Several failed to make it, and were either smashed against the hull or crushed under the wheels of their own vehicles. Of the handful that did—miraculously—manage to board the train, most were cut down by Directorate gunfire. There were now dozens of Directorate commandos on the train’s hull, just visible through the dust, focusing their attentions on the incoming threat. Tracers illuminated the area surrounding the train tracks as the Directorate and the prisoners exchanged fire.
“No sign of Kwan,” Feng yelled at me, above the noise, looking back down the train.
“Maybe the Krell got him,” Lopez said.
“We can only hope,” Feng added. He sounded surprisingly bitter. It was unusual for him.
“Heads down!” the Voice ordered.
I reacted fast, and went prone. The others copied.
An engine roar filled the air, loud enough that it made my teeth rattle, the bones of my jaw vibrate. A dark shape descended from the clouds and fell in alongside the train.
“What the hell …?” Lopez asked, her voice trailing off.
It was a Raven-class gunship, instantly recognisable from the profile.
“Please tell me that’s for us,” I said to the Voice.
“You wish. No, that’s Directorate heavy support.”
The gunship carried four gun-pods on its belly. Each appeared to have a life of its own, twitching as they independently tracked ground targets. The gunship weaved left, right. It was so close that I could even see the crew inside the battle-scarred cockpit, the Korean unit badges on the nose.
I braced. Expecting to be blown off the roof by those gun-pods at any moment …
But the flyer dipped low, almost recklessly so, and fell back. I allowed myself the luxury of breathing and felt a spike of relief run through me.
“That was close,” Lopez said.
I watched as the multiple guns on the ship’s belly sprayed the prisoner convoy with gunfire. There were explosions, the snarl of engines as vehicles took evasive action. Meanwhile, the Raven dodged a volley of RPGs and small-arms fire. The prisoners must’ve plundered an armoury …
“You need to get inside the train again,” the Voice remarked. “You’ve reached your destination, and it isn’t safe out there anymore.”
I relayed that to my team. “Move up, people. We’re going back inside.”
“Got it,” Novak said. “Next carriage. Hatch is in roof.”
We’d reached the very nose of the train. This was it. I crawled alongside Novak. The Jackals readied a collection of makeshift and stolen weapons, pistols and PDWs taken from the Directorate casualties back in the lab carriage. I checked the ammo load on the PDW I’d slung over my back. The readouts on the weapon were all green.
I nodded at Feng. “Keep Zero behind you and make sure she’s safe. The rest of you, kill anything that looks Directorate.”
“Go! Go! Go!”
I popped the hatch and was first in, stolen weapon panning the cabin’s interior.
There were crew in here, a dozen or so personnel poised over command consoles resembling those of a starship bridge. While they wore Directorate colours and carried weapons, they obviously weren’t military, and we caught them by surprise. Perhaps they hadn’t expected the fight to reach them quite so quickly, or maybe the Voice had somehow interfered with their access to the security feeds. I wasn’t going to question good fortune.
“Stand down!” I shouted. “Everyone be cool—”
They didn’t listen. The nearest—a man with a young face and a shaven scalp—grappled with a pistol at his belt and stood from his console. He barked orders at the others.
Pariah vaulted over the console before I had a chance to react.
It speared the crewman with a claw, right through the chest. He wore no armour, and the new, improved Pariah had no difficulty in lifting the body. The man yelped. His pistol fell from dead hands.
Another crewman took a potshot at Pariah. The slug bounced off the alien’s head, and it whirled around to face the new threat.
That was all the encouragement the Jackals needed. We let loose.
Feng capped who I took to be the driver before he’d even left his chair. Novak took another man who looked to be running for the security shutdown—a sealed red button on the wall. He used his shiv to stab the crewman, grunting and swearing in Russian as he repeated the action again and again. The rest of the crew were mopped up with gunfire, and the cabin was suddenly empty and quiet. No casualties, no injuries. Not Alliance, at least. Nice and neat.
“We’re clear,” I said. “Does everyone feel better now?”
Pariah turned to me sharply, and I was struck again by how big it had become. The creature barely fit inside the cabin. Not just bigger, but more aggressive, more dangerous. This wasn’t the same alien we had known. The grafted bio-armour that most Krell wore had become thicker, reinforced, and the xeno’s musculature strained beneath it.
“That was satisfying.” It bristled. “We remember what the not-Alliance did to us.”
Exactly what had the Directorate done? I’d heard that some Krell Collectives exhibited a sort of stress-reaction, being capable of rapidly evolving certain warrior castes when necessary. I’d never heard of an individual bio-form undergoing a spontaneous change, but maybe that was what had happened here. It would certainly explain the rapid shift in the xeno’s biology.
“The Directorate will pay for everything,” I promised.
&n
bsp; “Just do not go mistaking Feng for one of them …” Novak said, wiping his shiv against the edge of the nearest console.
Lopez aimed her pistol at the bloodied corpse at Novak’s feet.
“You sure that one’s dead?” she asked.
Then, before the Russian could answer, she fired at the body. Stared down at it, lip curled in a twisted grimace.
“Well, I am now,” Novak muttered.
Lopez nodded. “Let’s not take chances.” She looked up at Pariah. “The fish isn’t the only one who wants blood for what happened in the prison.”
The Voice coughed at the other end of the connection. As a result of the vocal distortion, the noise came out like an electronic warble.
“You do know that you’re on the clock here, right?”
“Of course,” I said. “Close the hatch, Lopez. Seal us in.”
“Copy that,” she said.
“Get to work,” the Voice commanded. “You need control of the train.”
I dragged the corpse from the driver’s console. The body was still hooked to the terminal, the Directorate equivalent of data-ports running into the man’s neck, with jacks tethering him to the station. I unplugged those and made space at the console. The desk was lit with red warning icons.
“Zero, come look at this,” I said.
Zero cracked her knuckles and took up the station.
“Might as well make myself useful,” she said. “Let’s see what we can see …”
Novak glanced at the controls. “Is not Standard,” he grunted. “You speak Chino?”
“I don’t,” said Zero, typing some commands on the main keyboard. “But some of the commands are a typical arrangement.”
“Feng, get over here,” I said. “Translate this shit.”
He settled into the seat beside Zero. “Actually, Novak, most of this is in Uni-Kor, not Chino.”
Novak sucked his teeth. “So?”
Zero and Feng got to it. They worked fast, and a surveillance feed from the outside of the train appeared on the main console. Buggies loaded with prisoners were on both sides of the tracks now, and like enormous black birds, two Raven gunships dipped in and out of the confusion, spraying the attackers with gunfire.
The terrain was shifting too. The skeletal structures out in the desert were closer to the tracks on each side. We were in a more built-up area. Archaic-looking chimney stacks rose out of the industrial wastes, belching thick black smoke clouds across the horizon. As the train plummeted onwards through the poisoned landscape, we entered a fog-bank that was so dense it temporarily blinded the sensors. A heartbeat later, and we were back out.
A Krell bio-ship sailed into view.
One of the Directorate Ravens banked sharply—too sharply—to avoid plasma fire from the Krell ship.
I felt a prickle over my skin, aware of what was coming next.
At high speed, the Raven slammed into one of the derricks beside the tracks. It exploded, and spectacularly, showering the Krell, the Directorate, the prisoners and the train with burning debris. It was several carriages back, but enough of the bird hit us to cause a violent shiver down the train. The Jackals collectively flinched, me included.
“The Kindred are succeeding,” Pariah said. “An ark-ship of the Long Tooth waits in orbit. This is only the start.”
Long Tooth: one of several Krell Collectives. Science Division had given the various shoals names, and they hadn’t been very imaginative about it. Long Tooth was not a Collective I knew much about, but I guess I knew enough: the Collective was now infected with the plague that was twisting the Krell into something else …
“Get us control of the train,” I ordered Feng, with fresh determination.
“Can you do that?” Zero asked Feng.
“I … I think so,” he said. He didn’t sound very sure, but we didn’t have much of a choice.
We hit another smog-bank. This one was so thick that the Directorate and Krell forces were only visible by tracer-and laser-fire, flashes of light on the camera-feeds.
A face appeared on the main terminal.
Kwan.
“There are fugitives on this train,” he said. The address appeared to be train-wide, not directed just to the driver cabin. “They will be found. All prisoners will be recaptured. Those who resist will be terminated. Security forces are inbound, and moving up this train. Make no mistake—”
“Cancel that feed,” I said. “It’s not doing us any good.”
“Affirmative,” said Zero.
“What can he do?” Novak asked. “His men have other things to worry about.”
It sure looked like the Directorate were being overpowered. The Krell were making the most of the destruction of the Raven, flooding the train.
“But it proves that he’s still alive,” I said morosely.
“Which is the worst news I’ve heard all day,” Lopez added.
“… and we’re done,” Feng declared. Green symbols danced across the control board.
“What next, Voice?”
“Activate the route planner. And work faster: there are multiple hostiles closing on your location.”
“Call up the route planner,” I said to Feng. “Now.”
“Copy that.”
A schematic appeared on the terminal screen. Like the branches of a tree, train tracks spread across the wastes, offering dozens of different routes.
“Select Route Sixteen.”
I relayed the order. Feng did as requested.
Another smog-bank. The train shook again, very hard now. Pariah began that weird alien clicking at the back of its throat, a noise that I took to be disapproval.
“We’ve got new course directions,” Feng said.
“Where’s it taking us?” asked Lopez.
“Does it matter?” Novak grumbled. “Must be better than here.”
“I’d like to know where I’m going to die,” Lopez said.
A laugh rumbled up from Novak’s stomach. He sat awkwardly at one of the crew stations, his bulk so big that it barely fit at the terminal.
“Is because you are Senator, yes? Because you like to be in control.”
Lopez frowned. “It’s not that at all, Novak, and I can’t believe that you’re still going with the senator thing after all this time.”
“Maybe we should change name to ‘shooter,’ yes?” Novak suggested.
“Not funny,” Lopez said, cradling the pistol in her hands.
“Tell her no one is going to die,” the Voice remarked.
“Then where are we going?” I said, sympathising with Lopez’s comment.
“Jiog Port,” said the Voice. “You’re only a few klicks out.”
“What about the Krell and the Directorate on the train?”
“You’re going to leave them behind. Disconnect the carriages.”
“You want us to do what?” I asked in disbelief, a finger to my ear, holding the bead in place. I thought that I’d misheard the order. “Feng is doing what he can, but—”
“You have no time left. The Krell are everywhere. Disengage the rear carriages.”
I swallowed, nodded. “Feng, Voice wants you to disengage the rear carriages.”
We emerged from the smog-bank, suddenly back in a region of light. Ahead, rising through the smoke and fog was a tower-like structure: black, ill-maintained, crumbling into the desert. Its outline was blurred by the poisoned atmosphere. This must be Jiog Port. Anti-air batteries chattered away at the sky around the base of the structure. Was this the last bastion for Directorate—and human—forces on the planet?
“You need to time this just right,” said the Voice.
Feng was poised over the controls, Zero at his side. I could sense their anxiety, the stress showing on both their faces. Feng licked his lips, a fine mist of sweat forming on his forehead.
“Next bank,” the Voice said.
The Jackals were silent. Still.
This cloud was particularly thick with particulate from whatever pollutio
n plagued the surface of Jiog.
“Go,” the Voice ordered.
Feng worked fast. Fingers jabbing at the console.
An alarm sounded.
“What was that?” Lopez enquired. “Did it work?”
“I—I don’t know,” Feng said, still trying.
“You’re doing good, Chu,” Zero said. “You’re doing good.”
The train roared through the smog but there was a sudden flash of illumination behind us. So bright that it lit the particulate in the air, it caused the entire scene outside to become a milky blur.
“Directorate gunship,” the Voice said. “Another one just went down.”
Feng nodded, worked wordlessly. More sweat on his brow. A schematic of the train appeared on his monitor, crawling with dozens of warning markers. He checked off each carriage in turn, overrode alert boxes that popped up on the holo-screen.
One of those carriages contained what was left of my sims. I seriously baulked at that, because I couldn’t remember the last time I’d been without a stock of simulant bodies. Even when I’d been in the prison complex, the sims had been there. They had been my armour, my protection, despite Kwan using them against me.
The train was still inside the smog-bank …
“Hurry,” I said.
“I’m trying!” Feng objected.
“I mean it.”
The smog began to thin.
“Now,” the Voice yelled. “Now!”
The deck vibrated. Something clunked behind us.
Feng sighed. “It’s done.”
The train suddenly gained speed. The cabin shuddered. Readings on the control panel showed that we were being pushed into the red.
The smog-bank abruptly cleared, and the train’s sensors came back online.
Yes.
The other train carriages had disengaged, were rapidly losing speed. Meanwhile, the control cabin had shifted to another track. The Voice’s plan became obvious to me. Inside the sensor-blind of the smog-bank, we were hidden, had effectively managed to change course without being seen by the Directorate or the Krell. The rest of the train trailed behind, still in the dense smog.
“Shit,” Lopez sighed, shaking her head. “Have we actually lost them?”
“I think so,” I said. “I hope so.”