by Guy Haley
Otto scrambled toward the Stelsco, its doors folding up and backwards in greeting. He clambered into the pilot's station, buried deep in the thing's nose, and spread his adjutant throughout its systems, bringing it all online.
He threw the Stelsco's wheel units into reverse, burning rubber to match the train's speed. He disengaged the clamps, and it flew backwards, hitting the ground with an impact that made his teeth clack. The car fishtailed madly as it sped backwards alongside the train, skidding along the slope of the embankment where the line crossed a bog. He slammed the right side wheels off, spinning the car round. The train appeared to leap forward like a stag pursued by a hound as the car ground to an immediate halt. The barracks car whipped past, and he saw Lehmann struggling hand-to-hand with two Cossacks atop it.
He looked through Lehmann's eyes. Stop playing with them now, Lehmann, we're getting out of here.
Affirmative, thought Lehmann back.
The electric crack of a stun pistol discharging came to Otto via Lehmann. A Cossack tumbled from the roof, his sabre clattering to the deck. It looked like they weren't going to be able to do this without killing some of the good guys.
Ballast sprayed as the Stelsco's wheels found traction on the embankment and hurtled forward, Otto heading for Chures' and Valdaire's last known location.
Otto ran the Stelsco up to 174kph, marginally faster than the train. Sparse woodland blurred by. He let the machine's onboard systems take over the driving while he scanned the train's windows for Valdaire and Chures. Most of the carriages showed signs of conflict: cracked windows or sprays of blood.
There. He could see two Cossacks pointing their guns down at something. It looked like a prone man and a crouching woman. Chures and Valdaire?
Next to them stood something monstrous, a bloated mass of man and machine, frozen, arm outstretched.
"Kaplinski?" he said, amplifying all his visual feeds to get a better look at it. He couldn't see its face. He checked his iHUD; the links were still there from the old days, and if Kaplinski could use it, so could he. It took a moment for him to hook in. It was him.
Kaplinski was no longer human, he wasn't even Ky-tech any more. His body writhed with inconceivable technology, alive with power for which Otto could see no source. He tried to look out of Kaplinski's eyes, but something had him frozen solid, jamming up his iHUD and adjutant. Not for the first time, Otto was glad Valdaire was on his side.
There was a flicker in Otto's iHUD. Kaplinski's adjutant was rebooting, fighting off whatever Valdaire had attacked him with.
"Valdaire! Down!" he yelled via radio, not knowing if it was still jammed.
Something sinewy and sharp leapt out from Kaplinski's outstretched hand, spearing the Cossacks one after the other and retreating back into his body. The Cossacks fell. Kaplinski reached out to the figure on the floor.
Otto swung the Stelsco turret round. The twin-machine guns opened fire. The hardened glass of the train's exterior windows held for a moment before imploding under the rain of bullets. Kaplinski half turned, and Otto's amplified vision caught sight of his face; nothing but rage and hate there. So much for k52's great and noble project.
Kaplinski disappeared sideways as the bullets shredded his side and hurled him into a compartment. The side of the train disintegrated, leaving a gaping hole ringed with flaps of hardened carbon plastic and metal wobbling in the train's slipstream.
"Klein? Chures is down!" Valdaire spoke over the radio, airwaves cleared by the Stelsco's sophisticated comms suite, clearing aside the train's jammer. She stood and looked out the window.
"You're going to have to jump."
"I can't make it."
Otto tried to bring the car in closer. The railway was running over a level area, but still its embankment made it impossible for the Stelsco to keep close with anything approaching stability. The car ran up and down the slope, holding position for a second or so and then skittering sideways down the embankment. Valdaire crouched by the hole, arm out, the other supporting Chures.
Then Otto said, "Wait."
Lehmann was running up the train, head low, hands spread before him ready to catch himself should he fall, long rifle slung on his back. He jumped down into the gap between the carriages. Lehmann hacked his way through the flexible corridor linking the carriages with his combat knife.
Lehmann, get Chures and Valdaire off the train. Watch out for Kaplinski, something's happened to him, he thought out.
I had to kill two of them, Otto, he replied. I'm sorry. There was no other way.
Verdammt, thought Otto. Never mind, get off the damn train and watch out for Kaplinski.
Pistol grasped in both hands, Lehmann walked cautiously round the smashed compartment where Kaplinski lay.
"What the hell have they done to him?" said Lehmann, speaking on the radio now.
Otto saw the modified cyborg through Lehmann's feed. Kaplinski lay in a tangle of shattered plastic slicked with gore. His swollen form filled the compartment, feet sticking out into the corridor, torn flesh crawling with movement. Kaplinski stirred. Lehmann raised his pistol and fired twelve times, each round a heavy calibre explosive bullet, designed with military-grade autonomous machine units and cyborgs in mind.
Kaplinski stilled.
"I can't get through his thorax armour or his skull," said Lehmann.
"He's still alive. Healthtech activity is off the chart. He'll be up and fighting soon. Get out of there now, Lehmann, you can't take him," said Otto.
"Affirmative," said Lehmann. He kept his eyes on Kaplinski as he skirted the wreckage in the corridor. One of Kaplinski's feet shuddered and drew swiftly into the compartment.
"Lehmann!"
Lehmann bent to Chures, looking over him with Ky-tech eyes. "Chures isn't looking good, Otto."
"Just get them out of there." Otto watched via his IR as Kaplinski's massive bulk moved.
Shots rang out. Autonomous eye cams swivelled on the Stelsco, zooming in on the source of noise. Cossacks aboard the next carriage. More were working their way back, cautious for the moment.
They'd got out of the barracks carriage then. An alarm pinged on the Stelsco's sophisticated sensor suite – energy emissions from the flatbed, airbikes powering up.
Otto swept the Stelsco turret round, blasting with limited bursts around the windows the Cossacks shot from. They drew back.
"Lehmann! Now!" Kaplinski was pulling himself up onto his hands and knees. Blinding whiteness played around his form, massive energy consumption. What the hell was he drawing on?
Lehmann stood. Valdaire hanging onto him like a child to its father, arms round his neck, legs wrapped round his waist. Under his other arm he held the limp form of Chures.
Lehmann indicated via MT that he was ready, his face set in concentration.
Otto opened the two left doors of the Stelsco, leaving the entire side of the vehicle open to the elements. He had the rearmost door fold back and reconfigure, forming an armour plate protecting them to the rear.
On the count of three, thought out Otto. One. Two. Three.
He swung the drive wheel to the left hard. The Stelsco's folded back door caught on the train, shaking the car and ripping a chunk of shattered carbons from the carriage side.
Lehmann leapt, twisting and balling himself up as he came. He slammed into a comms station, taking the impact on his back, keeping it from Chures and Valdaire. The Stelsco swerved as he hit. Otto wrestled it back under control and shut the doors. Gunfire rattled off the vehicle's armour. Otto heard the low whump of EMP discharge and felt a residual surge in his systems, but the vehicle's faraday armour took care of most of it.
He pulled away from the train, the Stelsco bouncing madly as it left the embankment. Lehmann and the others, unsecured, slammed backward and forward, Lehmann doing his best to protect Chures and Valdaire as he slid across the cabin floor.
The vehicle skidded to one side as something big hit.
"Kaplinski," growled Otto.
Kaplinski straddled the vehicle's nose, his face shredded, two insane eyes staring from his ruined face, his grin a death's-head rictus of bloodied teeth in shiny black bone, his lips stripped from his skull. The fingers of one hand were firmly wrapped around one of the Stelsco's forward sensor pods. The other formed into a fist. Roaring in pain and rage, the cyborg pounded at the Stelsco's armoured windscreen.
On the fourth hit, cracks appeared.
A pair of airbikes roared overhead. Twin lines of bullet impacts perforated the earth and passed over Kaplinski, knocking bits of flesh from him. He did not flinch, but continued to methodically smash his way into the Stelsco.
Otto brought the turret forward, right to the front of the roof. He brought it to its lowest elevation. Its eye cams were so close to Kaplinski the cyborg filled the view on Otto's iHUD.
"Goodbye, Kaplinski," he said.
The guns opened up. At such close range, they would have pulverised a mountain. Kaplinski danced upon the Stelsco's rounded front, one arm up in front of his face. He came off the bonnet and bounced onto the ground. Otto was not sure if he jumped or fell.
In the rearview cameras, Otto saw Kaplinski stagger to his feet. A bright lance of energy, emanating from the train, hit him square in the back, and he fell. Otto lost sight of him.
The Stelsco hurtled across abandoned fields. The Cossacks had got into the air, and their airbikes raced overhead; it would not be long before others from the border patrols joined them, the only military units allowed in the DMZ. Lehmann and Valdaire wrestled Chures into a chair. Valdaire stumbled onto Lehmann, and he pushed her into another seat and strapped her in. Otto jinked as missiles streaked from airbike farings, the Stelsco's defensive arsenal taking some out, others sending plumes of dirt and fire into the sky as they impacted the ground.
The treeline; he had to get into the forest. He swung the car hard onto an overgrown dirt track, the armoured vehicle's wide wheels overhanging both sides. A missile got through its countermeasures, destroying the middle left wheel. The car jettisoned the damaged unit, the Stelsco bucking as it went under the back wheels and was tossed high into the air. Water fountained as the car plunged down and up, surging through a small river, the small bridge that had once crossed it long gone.
In seconds, they were in the trees, racing along a forestry road. Otto engaged the machine's camouflage lamellae, and the scales that comprised it rippled and changed, depicting the road under it and forest around it. The Cossacks' shots grew less accurate.
"I'm going for the lake!" he bellowed. "Hang on!"
He turned off the road into an area recently felled. The Stelsco bounced madly as he forced it over tree stumps and gouges. A trio of auto-foresters blurred past, backs stacked high with logs. The car bumped over a series of concrete foundation blocks, remains of an old suburb, and then was into an area where the rotting remnants of houses still stood. The Stelsco burst through house after house, dragging rotting memories out into overgrown streets as it went. They crossed a road pockmarked with shell holes, past the rusting wrecks of ancient groundcars, and went down a narrow lane lined by the wild back gardens of two streets. Crumbling fencing exploded under the Stelsco's fat tyres. Otto swerved to avoid an overturned truck, Weeds growing thickly between long-forgotten possessions turned to mush on the road. More forest. A horrible grinding came from the front right wheel unit, a major malfunction, but salvageable. Otto told the machine to withdraw the unit and repair it.
With two wheels out of action, their speed reduced as the car's near-I struggled to keep it stable.
They went up and over the remains of the P-419 highway into the southern industrial zones. Concrete giants loomed, the remains of ancient refineries.
"We're getting close," he said.
Bullets rattled off the car roof as the airbikes locked onto them once more. Five of them wove back and forth above them, strafing. Warning lights blinked red in Otto's iHUD and on consoles round the compartment as subsidiary systems died, some sacrificed by the Stelsco to keep its priority gear running.
"Let me take them out!" shouted Lehmann.
"No more collateral damage!" replied Otto.
He wove through dry sump pools, their beds stained bright with toxic chemical deposits. The vast Bratsk aluminium refinery opened up in front of him like a belated apology, rust and weeds and yesterday's poisons.
"Nearly there!"
Tumbledown warehouses clustered round the refinery dock. The hulks of rusting barges slumped at their berths, cargoes forever undelivered. Otto hit the dockside at high speed. The engines whined as wheels spun wildly, free of the ground's friction. They bounced hard as they hit the cracked mud at the bottom.
"The river!" shouted Lehmann, and pointed through the cracked windscreen. Ahead, glinting silver, a series of loops surrounded by deep mud, cutting across the bottom of the empty Bratskoye reservoir. Once held back by one of the world's largest hydroelectric dams, it had been blown by what the Russian government had blandly termed "rogue nationalist elements" after the Secret War and the subsequent Sinosiberian purchase. The ensuing flood had taken out the other four dams on the Angara river, leaving wrecked infrastructure and flattened towns to the Chinese.
Now the noxious mud, thick with mercury from the town's aluminium and chemical processing past, was open to the skies, and the unbounded river formed the true border between the Russian Federation and the People's Republic of China, slap in the middle of the 75-kilometre-wide demilitarised zone.
A clunk sounded from the Stelsco as it redeployed its repaired wheel unit, and it became easier to control. The ghostly remains of the city whipped past far on their left, and receded as they travelled across the mudflats. Otto made good use of the shipwrecks dotting the plain, and for a few precious moments the airbikes lost them. Otto accelerated. One of the airbikes picked up his dust plume, and suddenly all five swooped in, hammering away with missiles and guns.
The Stelsco lurched as it hit the sticky mud round the river, skidded, then spun through 180 degrees as it hit the water. Its fat wheels and flotation units kept it on top of the water, the wheels stopped spinning and water jets took over. Otto disengaged the left jet and slewed the vehicle across the water as he grappled to bring the Stelsco back under control. Bullets followed their plume of spray, then abruptly stopped.
"They're retreating," said Lehmann. Eye cam screens showed the airbikes splitting in the air and falling back, as if they'd seen an invisible wall.
"Welcome to China," said Otto.
The Stelsco's wheels re-engaged as they hit the other bank. It struggled to haul them up out of the river. Otto eased back as they found their way back onto the dry.
"Everyone OK?" he asked. He looked back. Lehmann was as impassive as he always was when he was in mission mode. Valdaire was shaken up, and was anxiously checking over Chures.
Otto set the car to autodrive and went back. The VIA man was sprawled in his seat, deathly pale and barely conscious.
"Chures," he said. "Chures! Where's the damn medical pack in this vehicle?" Otto asked Lehmann.
Lehmann shook his head. It won't do any good, he thought out to Otto. Kaplinski has shattered all his ribs, he's got massive internal bleeding. He might have a chance if we got him into a proper hospital, but out here… His MT cut out as his thoughts trailed away.
"Hang in there, Chures," said Otto. "We'll get you help."
Chures smiled weakly. His breathing was weak and pink bubbles frothed at the corner of his lips.
Valdaire looked at Otto. "We could always neurally pattern him. I'm sure we could effect a quick download through his uplinks. It'll hurt, but it's better than the alternative."
Chures pushed weakly at her arm. "No…" His words came in brief pants, as his increasingly laboured breath would allow. "Don't… make… me… into… one of… them."
"Let him alone," said Otto. He remembered another time, and another person saying those words. This time he'd listen.
"It's the only way," said V
aldaire, "I've got to do it, I can do it," and she began to throw open storage bins in the Stelsco. "I can get an emergency neural pattern, I can. If only…"
Otto grabbed her arm. "He said no."
Chures gasped and he passed out. His skin was white, his lips ashen.
An alarm trilled. "Veev! I'm under assault, help me, Veev!"
Valdaire's mouth dropped open. "I forgot to shut Chloe off!" She pawed at buttons until the trilling of her life companion ceased.
"Too late now," said Otto, and nodded at the windscreen. Against the grey sky bright points of light glowed, blowtorch flames in the air. They grew larger. Each burned from a jetpack attached to a heavily armoured human figure. "Dragon Fire soldiers," he said.
"The Chinese are coming," said Lehmann.