Railsea (34 page)

There was a collective gasp. “Mocker-Jack the mole,” Sham said. “& we ain’t going after it anymore. It’s coming after us.”

“I
T WAS NEVER
going to let us go,” the captain said. “We had the hubris to think we were hunting it.
We
were never hunting it.” She did not sound mad. “Now the gloves are off. The boot is on the other foot.” She smiled. “Mocker-Jack is my philosophy. & I am its.”

“Sirocco,” Sham said. He fiddled with the mechanism & watched Daybe move again. “Signals like this, do they work both ways?”

“Ah,” Sirocco said slowly. She nodded thoughtfully. “Could be. Could be made to.”

“You see Daybe,” Sham said. He wiggled the receiver & the bat bobbed.

“It ain’t tuned to him,” Caldera said. “It’s a different frequency. How come it shows him?”

“Salvage,” Sirocco said. “It’s always a bit iffy. There’s bound to be bleed. Especially when, like right now, that thing you’re holding must be kicking out a lot of power. Ain’t it, Captain? When did you learn to reverse its field?” Sirocco said.

“Sham,” said Vurinam. “D’you think you could please tell the rest of us what the bloody hell you lot are on about?”

“She
flipped the signal
,” Sham said. “This …” He shook the receiver. “It ain’t
finding
Mocker-Jack anymore. It’s
pulling
. The moldywarpe’s finding
it
.”

The crew stared. “Turn the bloody thing off, then!” Vurinam squawked. Sirocco took it from Sham & hurriedly fiddled.

“How’d you even learn to do this, Captain?” she said.

“You salvors,” Naphi said. “You’ll tell a person anything with the right blandishments. If you can show off about it.”

“Why do you think she stuck with us?” Mbenday said, frantically pulling at his own hair. “She wasn’t going to let us take the
Medes
. She needs a moletrain.”

“Can we outpace it?” Sham said. “The mole?” Mbenday read the screen, carefully.

“Yes,” he said.

“No,” said the captain.

“No,” said Mbenday. “I don’t know.”

“I don’t know if I can reverse this,” Sirocco said.

“Much too late. Do you really think,” the captain said, “that Mocker-Jack can’t sniff us now? Can’t feel us? That it doesn’t know the signature of our wheels? It’s coming.
This is what we’ve wanted
.”

“No, Captain,” Sham shouted. “This is what
you’ve
wanted. The rest of us been wanting
other, bloody, things
!”

“It’s really coming quite fast,” Mbenday whispered, staring at the display. “I mean, it’s a few hours away at most. It’s really coming at
quite a clip
.” He swallowed.

“Wait,” Sham said slowly. “Sirocco, leave it on.”

“What?” said Vurinam. “Are you crazy?”

“Mocker-Jack’s going to find us anyway now. At least this way we know where it is.”

They stood, on the deck, staring, unsure where they were going, what there was to say. Sham hunted an idea. It teased him. “We’re so close,” he said. He pointed in the direction of the dark edge he’d seen approaching.

“Ahoy!” To their star’d flank, two Bajjer scouts approached swinging lanterns in semaphore. They came closer, shouting in every language they knew. They yelled with bullhorns, struggling to make themselves heard & understood.

“What is it?” Sham loudhailered back. “We’re sort of in the middle of something.”

“Is reason is why angels go over there,” one shouted, & pointed east the way they’d come.

“Looking for the mole, yeah?” yelled back Sham.

“No! What? Mole what? Is more.”

“More what?”

“More trains.”

“Pirates?” Sham shouted, & the Bajjer wagged their fingers no.

“Navy,” they bellowed. “Manihiki navy is coming.”

T
HE RAILSEA SHRUGGED OFF THE NIGHT, & UNCOVERED
the ruins of many ancient trains. What graveyard was this? A macabre scene of failed ventures.

Coupled to the back of the
Medes
, where the captain still stood—what point was there to incarcerating her when all she did was stare, in the direction of her incoming philosophy?—the
Pinschon
rode the rails on its own stubby wheels. It could not have kept up by tunnelling at this speed. Beyond it, coming for them, the navy was now a visible cloud. Exhaust, fumes, the dust of travel.

“They were never going to let us go,” Caldera said. She turned her charts, looked at them from all angles. “We’re close. To something. I can see where my mum & dad were going, & I can see … I think it looks like we’re heading for somewhere they were trying to
avoid …
”

“Something got these trains,” Dero said. “Look at them all.”

“We have to think,” Sham said. “We have to think this through.”

They did not have time to investigate, to weave & switch between discarded train shells. But as they emerged from that shatterscape, Dero pointed. A way beyond the thickest thickets of wreck-matter, flipped upside down by some strange catastrophe, balanced on its roof on a makeshift flatbed truck with its wheels still to the rails, was a weirdly battered carriage. Its skyward-pointing floor was tarpaulined, its front buckled into an ugly wedge. Dero & Caldera both gasped. Sirocco eyed the carriage appraisingly.

It had been, Sham realized, part of their parents’ train, part of the first Shroake exploration. “What happened to it?” Sham said.

“They purged them, sometimes,” Dero said. “They taught us that. But that looks …”

“I don’t know what that looks like,” Caldera said.

“Look.” Sirocco pointed to where the navy were becoming visible. “They’re going faster’n us.”

“It’s that same one again,” Dero whispered. “Found us better’n anyone else. It’s like they were here before us.”

“Some of them,” Sham said carefully, thinking of Juddamore’s pictures, “might’ve had information. About where you were going.”

Through the best of the
Medes
’s scopes, Sham could still see only malicious smudges. Sirocco passed him her own salvaged-up mechanism, nu-salvage & arche-salvage combined. He put his eyes to that & jumped with the bright up-closeness of the quarry. That great navy wartrain, skewering the sky with guns.

“Reeth,” he whispered. Who was it, he wondered, which pirate snatched from railsea death had remembered the pictures
well enough to give Reeth clues? Juddamore? Elfrish was gone. Robalson was horribly gone.

The rails grew sparser. The
Medes
& its companions raced towards a line of rock, a crag-curtain broken by slits as if peered-through by some impatient actor. “We have to box really bloody clever,” Sham said. “Really, bloody, clever.”

The last Bajjer windcarts began to pull away. There were not enough lines to either side of the
Medes
, now, for them to keep up. “Wait,” Sham shouted across to them. In the rudiments of their language, more than he thought he’d picked up, he begged them not to go. “Come aboard! We’re close!”

“To what?” someone shouted back.

There were arguments on some cars. They lurched line to line in disputation. Sham watched agog as a Bajjer warrior shook her fist at her fellows, turned & leapt magnificently from her cart, across yards of railsea, to slam into the
Medes
’s side & grab & grip its rail & pull herself aboard as her vehicle veered away. A few brave others did the same, those who were in this for the end. They jumped rapidly increasing gaps.

“Quick!” Sham shouted. But a nearby trainsman mistimed his bound. He leapt & his fingers slipped without purchase on the moler’s flank. A gasp, a scream, a thudding & he was dashed horribly into railside rocks.

Everyone stared aghast. Even the captain looked up in shock. The Bajjer carts receded. It was too late now for any more. None of the warriors still readying themselves to join that fight could do anything but look up at Sham, from already distant rails, & raise hands in inadequate farewell.

They became specks. Sham hoped they had seen his own hand raised, in response & thanks.

“C
ALDERA HAS
—” Dero started to say.

“Go there,” Caldera said. She showed Sham a place on her chart. Pointed at it. She looked at him intently.
“There.”

“—an idea,” her brother finished.

Sham wasted not a second. Did not demand clarification. Did not question Caldera Shroake. Just yelled at the switchers, who in turn switched as he demanded without quibbling or enquiry, on these last scattered yards of points, veering a mile or more into a little snarl of lines, a route near mounds & mounts.

You could see the wartrain easily now without fancy salvage business. “Get us over
there
,” hissed Caldera. She gave more directions & the
Medes
shuddered.

A getterbird overflew them to investigate the navy, but as it approached, with an abrupt gush of fire a missile roared skyward from the guntrain. The angel exploded in a great flaming yelp, scattering debris.

“Oh my bloody Stonefaces!” Vurinam yelled. “They’re
insane
! They’re firing on
Heaven
.”

“They’re going to catch us,” Fremlo said. “There’s no way they’re not.”

There were but two trains, now, in the whole landscape, for all the gnarled derelicts in rust. The wartrain was close enough to see its trainsfolks’ sneers. Molers took positions at their harpoons, as if this might make any bloody difference when the Manihiki warriors reached them.

The
Medes
careered for the end of the detour in the tangle, by caves & hillocks, towards something Caldera had
understood & which, in the chaos, Sham had not clocked they were approaching.

With a soundless & utterly important shift, they rushed suddenly past a last set of wrecks, a final knoll & tunnel, out of the railsea & onto the last, solitary, solo rail.

“L
OOK,
”
BREATHED
S
HAM
. He was there. He was tearing through the picture at which he had stared so many times, his crewmates & friends alongside him.

“I’m looking,” Caldera said.

“
Look
at it!” The navy would have Sham soon, but this moment was his.

“You saw the ruins,” Caldera said. “The wrecks.” He kept his eyes on that one rail. “Sham. What do you think did that? My parents saw this, but they turned back, remember? Why d’you think I took us just where my parents didn’t go?”

Good question. Good enough to work through Sham’s distraction. He turned to face her. He looked back at Reeth’s train, roaring after them, following them onto the last line. “In about fifteen seconds,” Caldera whispered, “you’re going to know the answer.”

Sham narrowed his eyes. “There was something that …” Twelve seconds.

“Something that kept people out,” Sirocco said. Eight. Seven.

“Something that still does,” said Fremlo. “Something …”

“… something big,” Sham said.

Three.

Two.

One.

Sound came out of the pit they’d passed.

“Go fast,” Caldera said. The noise grew loud. “Really, go fast.” It seemed to be everywhere. Everyone on deck was turning to see what made so terrible a sound. Such a bass grinding. Such whining of metal. Officers turned, too, on the deck of the wartrain. A hill shook.

“I think we got close enough,” Dero said. Loose stones jumped. A curtain of vines at the hole-entrance trembled. The sky was filled with blaring. & from out of the pit, riding the rails, something came.

An angel. Like no thing they had ever seen.

Everyone made noises of terror.

From under the ground, a train of spiked & spiny metal. It spat steam, dribbled fire. Grey smoke rose from a dorsal ridge of chimneys. How many parts were there to it? Who could count its ways? It slipped by segment into the light. Like a convoy of thorned towers.

How
old
was this bad thing? The birds flew shrieking. Daybe huddled in Sham’s arms. The angel pressed down hard & made its appalling noise. Its front was a wedge-shaped blade. With a blast like low thunder, it came.

It ate up yards. It came so fast. Its weapons glowed. The crew stared like worshippers.

“Welcome,” Sham breathed, “to the outposts of Heaven.”

“That,” Caldera whispered, “is what keeps people from the edge of the world.”

“But,” Dero said, “it ain’t used to facing two of us at once.”

The angel howled onto the one true line behind the Manihiki wartrain. They were all, from rear to front—angel,
navy & molers—committed to this single rail. All they could do was go fast.

“Will you
move
!” That was Captain Naphi. Staring over the
Pinschon
& the hulking wartrain at the world’s-end protector. She was shouting, however, at her crew. They knew it; they obeyed. They managed to make the
Medes
accelerate.

The angel closed impossibly fast. It closed on Reeth’s train. Sham could see him, staring at it. Closer. Close. Closed.

Say what you like about those Manihiki officers, they were brave & bolshy souls. They fired & fired. Sent bullets, missiles, lobbed bombs at the incoming angel. It ignored them. Ground through the explosions. It reached the rear carriage.