Steamscape (6 page)

The sagebrush scratched against Jing’s metal leg as he knelt in front of the tracks. He couldn’t feel it.

His fingers, however, could sense the slightest vibrations across the sandy surface. He didn’t even need to touch the track to know the train would soon be in view.

He fingered the hose leading away from his prosthesis and into the Pitchstone’s escape dinghy. “Time to hurry.” He pulled out the welding torch’s head from his leg.

Drina nodded and dropped more coal into the box. “We were lucky to get ahead.” She reached down into the dinghy and retrieved a hatchet. She’d swapped out her skirt for her old uniform trousers and had braided her hair into a crown on top of her head.

With barely a footprint left behind her, she walked to the nearest telegraph and telephone pole in a line of thousands that followed the railway, where the words effortlessly streamed across the vast desert. The entire wooden pole shuddered at the hatchet’s bite. Drina struck again.

Jing attached the fuel tube from the dinghy to the welding torch from his leg.

The hatchet hammered and, after awhile, Drina kicked the shredding wood over. The pole sagged forward on a broken back toward the tracks, tethered by the wires.

“Drina!”

“I know,” she called back, marching intently to the next pole.

On the horizon, a pillar of smoke was beginning to come into focus. Jing laid a hand on the track and felt the vibrations travel up his fingers and his arm.

With a thundering crack, Drina dropped the second pole. The first pole crashed down onto the steel rails. Jing lit the torch and knelt over the telegraph and telephone wires and the tracks.

Sweat beads immediately crowded his forehead. He straightened the wires to the track and welded them into place along a good foot-long section, with them still attached to their poles.

He slammed the torch against the sand to extinguish it and limped away from the track. With his free hand, he wiped his forehead. “Should cause trouble.”

Drina frowned. “But not derail it. Just enough to make them to stop.”

He grinned. “Probably. I know if I were the engineer of that thing what I would do.” He knelt back down to replace the tools inside their casing.

“You’d speed up, expecting a trap.”

“Hey now.” He stood up and shaded his eyes at the oncoming steam engine. “Just be safe, Cylinder.”

***

“Kill the crypter!”

Solindra stared at the sancta. Someone knocked it out of her hand. Others grabbed at her skirt and ripped at her hair. Fingernails dug deep and yanked back layers of skin.

The shouts became so solid that her ears simply shut down. She tried to push back toward Theo, but too many hands pulled her the other way. Helpless, she was dragged like a fish caught in a riptide.

Daylight suddenly brightened the room from above. Gunfire outshouted the screams of the captives.

Solindra froze, her heart stopping for a second as the woman trying to pull her arm out of its socket died. Hot blood splashed her face from the gunshot wound. The woman’s body sagged and collapsed.

The vessel craned her neck. Codic soldiers had popped open a hatch on the roof. More rifle barrels poked through the portal and more gunshots resounded.

Solindra covered her head and ducked. More people went down, some clutching arms and legs. Others were gone before they fell.

Theo slid sideways and tucked the cipher medallion in between his gloved fingers, avoiding looking at it again. He gasped as a ricochet bounced off the back of his leather jacket.

The gunmen stepped back and other soldiers leaned in over the hatch.

One of them slid on massive thermal gloves, and then tossed a handful of burning coal down into the boxcar from the boilerbox.

“Fire!” Theo covered his face with his hands, heaving for air.

Solindra slammed her hand over her nose. She still could not hear anything. She could smell it, though. The smells of burning clothes and hair instantly overwhelmed her.

The train shuddered beneath their feet, and she bobbled for balance. “We’re braking!”

Theo grabbed her shoulders. He shoved the sancta into her hand. “Get the door open!”

She cupped the medallion in both hands. “I can’t! There’s no steam!”

“What?” He turned his back to the hatch and spun in front of Solindra just as the soldiers tossed more coal and it bounced off his back.

Her boot slipped on an ember. “I think this thing only works on steam!”

Theo cursed under his breath. The train shuddered again. His eyes flashed back up to the open hatch. The soldiers were pointing to the front of the train and shading their eyes against the desert sun.

The train’s whistle screamed in sharp bleats. In response, the soldiers shouldered their rifles and moved out of sight.

Theo shoved several moaning people out of his way and pushed Solindra ahead of him. He interlocked his fingers on his knee. “Go!”

Solindra stared at him and then looked up. “But…”

“Now!” He eyed the Steampower soldiers marching forward, shoving bystanders aside.

She placed her boot into his gloves and then she was flying up toward daylight. Her knuckles banged against the hatch’s edge, but managed to grip the sides. Theo pushed; she pulled. Suddenly, she was up and through the hatch. She crashed down onto the train’s roof and rolled to the side.

The train was sliding forward on momentum alone now. At the front of the car, the Codic soldiers were gripping onto whatever they could while staring and pointing at something ahead. Her head was too low to see what, and she didn’t have time to worry about anything else – those guards could turn around at any moment.

She rolled back to the hatch and threw down her hand.

Theo jumped. His leather gloves slipped against her sleeve. He started to slide back down, but his hand clenched around her wrist.

Solindra grimaced, but didn’t complain. She let Theo climb up her arm until he could grip the edges of the hatch.

He kicked a prisoner that had grabbed at his boot in the face, and pulled himself through.

Wheels squealed against the tracks beneath the car, shooting out sparks.

“Down!” one of the Codic soldiers hollered to his fellows.

Theo glanced up past them just in time to see the first telegraph pole shoot up past the locomotive’s engine, spraying sand as the train pulled it out of the ground.

“Get down!” Solindra covered her face with her hands and dropped.

The train’s motion ripped more poles out of the ground like a tornado in a grain field. The poles, still tethered by the wires, were helpless against the engine’s power.

Theo flinched and flattened himself just in time to see the wire flash in the sunlight as it passed inches above his nose. He felt a brief, striking wind with its passage.

He rolled his head back to see the flying wire finish cutting through the neck of a prisoner just pushing his way up through the open hatch. A thin trail of blood opened up along his trachea, and then the head rolled forward.

The man’s disembodied head blinked at Theo, then its eyes widened in horror and recognition before going finally still.

The train finally jerked to a halt.

Solindra squeezed out a laugh through her dry lips. She immediately slapped a hand over her mouth. She was in shock, but she couldn’t stop laughing.

The Codic soldiers spun at the sounds behind them. Two of them started raising their rifles.

“Come on!” Solindra grabbed at Theo’s arm and swung over the edge of the boxcar.

Theo was already moving. Sparks from bullets pinged past him as he fell. Both of them crashed down onto the sandy soil below in a heap. He tried to snort out the sandy grains that flew into his nostrils.

Solindra bounced to her feet and beat a fist against the padlock on the bar across the boxcar’s door. “Help me with this!”

“What?” Theo leaned back, trying to see the soldiers on the top of the car. “They were going to kill you, crypter!”

“I am
not
–”

More shots kicked up sandy dust at their feet. Solindra and Theo slammed their chests against the boxcar, squeezing out of the line of fire, at least until the soldiers moved directly overhead.

Theo growled. He glanced at the tracks. They could crawl under there and that would last until one of the soldiers climbed down. He craned his neck out toward the vast wasteland.

He shook his head. That option would only make them into target practice.

That vicious, survivalist corner of his mind started to caress his shoulders. Do what she wants. Let them out. His left hand found the lock picks in the hidden pocket along his sleeve. Let the soldiers have too many targets.

Another bullet bounced off the sand next to his feet. Theo dropped his hand away from the picks. He wouldn’t have time anyway.

Solindra clawed at the bar beside him. “Come on, come on!”

More gunshots retorted, but no extra craters opened at their feet. Theo, with his back still against the boxcar, looked up. He couldn’t see anything, but the acrid smell of gunpowder drifted down from above.

A feral roar rolled down from the top of the car. “The prisoners! They’re escaping like we did.” He grabbed her arm. “Run!”

“Cylinder!”

Solindra and Theo whirled. The young man stared. A woman, wearing trousers, had just appeared like a ghost. Thick, long black hair curled in a crowning braid around her bronze face.

“Drina!” Solindra broke into a smile.

“Where…?” The question died on Theo’s lips.

“Get down!” Drina pressed down on Solindra’s shoulder. “How did you escape?”

A Codic soldier crashed down from the boxcar roof. His skull cracked open on the car as he rebounded off the metal. Above, the shouts of the escaping prisoners roared louder.

“Like that,” Solindra replied. They saw the flashing shadows as the escapees leapt onto the next car of prisoners, pushing back against the few remaining soldiers. The guards fired their guns, but they were too few to stop the tide of prisoners.

Drina put a hand on Solindra’s back and pointed toward the emergency dinghy. “Run!”

Theo wiped the sweat from his forehead and jumped after them. The dark-haired woman paralyzed him with a look. He froze, unable to move. It was such a look of controlled, even calm, hunger. He gulped and felt like a fly caught in a web, just watching the approaching spider, unable to do anything but squirm deeper into the net. His mouth dried.

Then she turned away from him and ran after Solindra. The Killing Train erupted with more people as the first escapees fished up the prisoners from the next car’s top-hatch.

Theo lurched into motion. He weaved around a falling Steampower soldier. The boxcar roofs swelled with sudden overcrowding and shouts louder than thunder peals.

He charged straight toward the dinghy, gaining on Solindra.

***

Ahead in the dinghy, Jing easily picked out Solindra’s fiery hair. He breathed out in relief, but kept his eyes trained on the front of the train, down the shaft of his steam rifle. The weapon’s hose was plugged into the dinghy’s boilerbox, and it was better suited for night shooting, since it had no loud retort or revealing flash.

It fired bundles of long, thick needles at once, each dart equipped with fins to stabilize its flight.

He squeezed the trigger.

The two Codic soldiers standing on the boxcar nearest to the engine never turned since there was no thunder from a rifle.

A spread of heavy needles slammed into their backs, driving deep into the bones and lungs.

Jing lifted the barrel up when he saw Solindra and Drina nearing. “Come on!”

Drina chased the girl like a mother hen. Behind them followed a brown-haired young man that looked familiar. He lowered the barrel and idly moved the gun in the boy’s direction.

Solindra clambered over the edge of the airship. She beat her hands against its side. “Come on, let’s go!” She waved at Theo and Drina.

Jing swung the rifle into Theo’s face. “You can join back up with the rest of them, boy.”

“He saved my life!” Solindra leaned over the dinghy’s railing.

“After he put it in danger in Valhasse,” Drina said quietly. “I recognize him now.”

“He comes with us!” Solindra swung a leg back over the railing.

“Uh, please?” Theo slowly raised both his hands, staring cross-eyed at the steam rifle.

“No!” Jing and Drina snapped in unison.

Theo glanced over his shoulder at the locomotive, and the last block of Codic soldiers mounting a rotating gun. The metal bulk could fire nonstop as long as someone kept turning the hand crank and someone else kept feeding bullets into its guts.

The Killing Train would complete its mission right here if they had enough ammunition for that thing. The tide of people flowed away from the soldiers as they started to crank out its unending firepower.

“I can get you out of Eliponesia!” Theo grabbed the sides of the airboat. “You’re trying to run, right?”