"Halt! Stand back! Do not arrest the girl, she's here to prevent a great atrocity from taking place!"
"Yes," jeered Penny, "an even worse atrocity than those tweed pantaloons of yours, but that can't be helped now! Get out of our way!"
Penny whistled through the station like a kettle-based steam-propelled device, racing up to where the lumbering engine stood, hissing and heaving on its great steel wheels. Everybody was going loco-motive, as it was certainly not a situation to lie motionless in. At least Penny was on the right tracks and getting to the point. What she was not expecting was for the thorny figure of Thornfinger to spring down on her from the top of a small, decorative boxtree shrub beside the railway sidings. He managed to get his claw-like grip around her neck and began to squeeze tightly, restricting her airway.
"NO! You mustn't stop the bang! People cannot be allowed to destroy my natural habitat!" Thornfinger howled.
Penny choked and went blue, almost passing out, until Professor Diligence came behind them and took up Thornfinger in his fearsome pneumatic hand.
"Unhand her, you leafy brute!" intoned Diligence, gripping the creature by the collar, dangling him high above the cold stone floor, feet flailing.
"No! No! NO! We cannot allow it!" spluttered Thornfinger.
At this point, a swarm of furious sparrows swept in under the open archway, zooming beneath the parapet and pecking at all in their path.
"We must find a way of averting this calamitous catastrophe!" uttered the Professor, ducking away from the frenetic beaks, and in one case, an angry duck.
"Well, if you hadn't been so hasty in getting this shady enterprise going and destroying the nearby wilderness in the process, this would never have happened!" hissed Penny.
"Oh, it's all very well being smart now, isn't it?" replied the Professor.
"We don't have time for this bickering! That thing's going to blow any moment!"
While they argued, Thornfinger seized his opportunity, and the Professor by one of his fleshy parts, sinking his sharp teeth in. The Professor yelped and released the creature from his grip, who then sprang free and darted away to a safe point. He clambered up one of the steel pillars and out of reach to view the ensuing melee that lay beneath.
"Stop wailing you wibbling weed! We have to do something!" bawled Penny.
"Oh, fine! Don't wet yourself!"
"What was that?"
"Nothing, I was just being facetious!"
"Facetious?! Wait… like as in "faeces", yes! And getting wet… that gives me a very flimsy and probably ill-thought out idea!"
"How do you mean?"
"I don't have time to explain the details, just go with me. Professor, you're the architect of this modern monstrosity, aren't you?"
"Well, hold on, if you put it like that…"
"Shut up, there's no time to argue!"
The Professor nodded, indignantly.
"You must then be aware of where the largest sewerage outlet pipes are in the area. Come on, think man! Are there any that are big enough to fit a train into?"
"Are you seriously thinking of redirecting this train along an underground sewerage line?"
"That's the general idea, yes. Thanks for elucidating everyone. So, Prof… is it possible?!"
"Well, there is one sewerage pipeline that I helped to install that runs from near here all the way to the River Sehmat - that should do the trick! But the entire track would need to be redirected somehow!"
"Couldn't you use your pneumatic arms to wrench the tracks into place?"
"Possibly, but it would require being ahead of the train, as well as having someone to guide it out of harm's way directly into the mouth of the sewer with very little chance of return. I'm not that fast, and we don't have that much time, this thing's fit to bursting, and is going to blow at any moment!"
The engine was indeed heaving and huffing under the strain of the inferno that was about to engulf it, and the entire station.
While they were conflabing, your humblest of authors observed that Thornfinger was readying himself for another attack. Without a second thought or moment to lose, I heaved myself out of my chair, stepped purposefully over to where Queen Vitriolica was now standing, wrenched the bottle of bubbly that she was intending to perform the naming ceremony of the train with out of her hands, strode over to where Thornfinger had slid down from his roosting place, and gave him a stiff bop on the back of the head before he had a chance to cause any more damage. He jiggered around in a circle and then fell to the floor.
"I pronounce this critter closed!" I jibed, wittily, and walked away wiping my hands. I know that authors shouldn't really get involved in their own stories, but I couldn't help it with this damnable fiend at play.
Penny surveyed the setting for any last minute possibilities of assistance. The nearby water pump contained just enough water to subdue the fire from wiping out the whole structure in a blinding conflagration. She flipped herself over to the large silo and upturned it just at the right angle (which is much preferable to an obtuse angle) to pour the contents into the funnel of the waiting train. It sizzled, satisfactorily, but was not completely extinguished, so the danger was not quite over yet.
"Punch a hole in the sides, Professor!" she screamed.
"But there's nobody to guide it, and how will I get to the track join in time?"
"I'll drive! I'm the only person who knows how, apart from the driver, but he's having a cup of tea, and I'm sure you'll find a way to get there somehow. You're a man, after all, you should honour us ladies and be there to insist for us to go first."
"Well I never! The very cheek of it!"
"Shut up and do it! Now!"
The Professor was momentarily stunned by Penny's upbraiding, brassy attitude, but shook himself to his senses and got down to brass tacks. He knew that he was in for a rough ride, but not as rough as the one that Penny was going to take - that was a one way death trip ticket to doom for certain! She was one brave filly; that was for sure. He punctured the side of the engine with his pneumatic fist, sending a hiss of steam into the air and the train rocketing forwards.
The Professor spotted a small pump-action hand-operated rail cart that the railway workers used to get from point to point while going about their daily concerns. He hauled himself onto it and pumped with his pneumatic hands like there was no tomorrow. If he didn't get to the track point in time, there would be no tomorrow for the people here, himself included.
The cart whooshed along the rails, screeching and spraying sparks in every direction. The Professor could see the position up ahead where the Southern Sewerage Outfall began, and put his head down to reach it with the utmost of purpose and perspicacity. He glanced behind him to see the train roaring along the tracks behind him at an increasingly intensifying velocity.
Atop the steam train, Penny Luddfear was holding the reins, grasping them with a ferocious fury, ready to send it raging into the jaws of hell, or Odnnol at least, which was near enough. She straddled the rumbling vessel as it reverberated towards its inexorable end point, leaning back in the saddle and squealing with exhilaration.
"Come on, come on! I'll ride you all the way, you strapping contraption!"
Up ahead she spotted the Professor, pumping industriously, as he should be. What she or I or anyone didn't see in time was that Thornfinger himself had clung onto the side, and was rapidly approaching her from behind. A flicker in her peripheral vision made her glance to the side just as Thornfinger was almost upon her, giving her enough time to edge away from his swiping claws, which would've knocked her off her perch, or at least sliced into her soft, milky skin with ease.
"Must stop the developments! It does us no good!" croaked Thornfinger.
"You can't stop this, but we can redirect it! I'm not against you, I just don't want to see people getting hurt!"
"What about my friends getting hurt?! You will destroy all of us for your little slice of so-called progress!" countered the forest creature.
&nb
sp; "No! It's not like that! This technology can improve things for people, and for nature. We can make it better for all if we work in harmony!" reasoned Penny, a true steam punk.
Thornfinger looked at Penny, then the engine, and then the Professor up ahead.
"He's not going to make it in time, is he?" he croaked.
"Not on his own, no."
Thornfinger looked again, winced, and then leapt from the train's tank, whizzing through the air, onto the front of the rail cart, where he reached up and helped the Professor to assiduously waggle the handle. They reached the stop off point, leaping from the cart, then managed to both wrench the tracks out of their fastenings with all of their combined might, redirecting it straight into the gaping mouth of the enormous sewerage pipe.
The train whistled by, screaming with power and reckless abandon (or was that Penny?) as it sank into the dark oblivion. For a moment, there was near silence. Only the birds chirped, some might say a song of celebration, of sorts, but the Professor and Thornfinger looked dejected, deflated and dismayed.
"Is she... gone?" asked Thornfinger, gruffly.
The Professor gazed into the inky hollow, a forlorn expression on his worn face.
"I think so. She was a brave girl. A brave, but very stupid girl. She saved us all."
"Hey you big brigands! Help me down!" came a voice from above. The Professor looked up.
"Penny! What are you doing there?!"
"Just hanging around, of course! Give me a hand, won't you?"
Thornfinger hopped onto the Professor's shoulders and eased Penny down from the railway signal point.
"Nice of your boys to leave me something to hang on to! Phew, that was an exhilarating ride!"
The group beamed at one another contentedly.
"So it looks as if we're all safe and nobody got hurt, very much," smiled Diligence.
He looked around again, but Thornfinger had gone, disappeared like a leaf on the wind back to his thorny thicket, where he would sit and watch, making sure that the Professor and Penny kept their promise that technology should help nature, not destroy it.
"Professor?" enquired Penny.
"Yes, Penny," replied the Professor.
"You are completely certain that this outlet ends up going into the River Sehmat where it won't cause too much damage, aren't you?"
"Hmm? Well, of course, the mainline leads down to the river, certainly, although..."
"Yes?"
"Oh. I forgot about the offshoot that ends up in the sewageworks just near to the uptown high class establishments in Notgnisnek..."
In the distance there was a muted explosion and faint screams, mainly of disgust as something splattered against the surrounding walls.
"Oh well, at least we all survived another day in Odnnol."
"Haha! Yes. I do hope they don't send me the cleaning bill!"
"It's better that we weren't completely wiped out, after all!"
They both laughed, uneasily, at their near-death experience and strolled into the snuset down the shimmering tracks together.
Afterword
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Bad Moon E-Zine #2 - Blue Moon Page 5