Toxicity (51 page)

But the train was powered from
the front, and despite losing three sets of rear wheels and a twenty-foot
stretch of compartment, the train carried on, pushed and
accelerated
down
the tunnel by the force of the E3 blast. It was the train’s momentum which
saved it. If it hadn’t already been in motion when the weapon struck it, it
would have been slammed and crushed into oblivion...

Vasta disappeared in the wreckage
and noise.

Jenny groaned, opened her eyes,
and patted herself down in a sudden panic, checking for lost limbs or massive
wounds. She rolled herself off a groaning Zanzibar, who opened one dark eye and
regarded her balefully.

“Yeah, you’re okay, lady. Because
you used old Zanzibar, here, as a bloody cushion!”

“Sorry, Zanz.” She helped the
large man up. He stretched himself, and checked all his joints were working.
Then he rolled his neck, with a rattling succession of
cracks.

“Ouch. That hurt.”

He peered suddenly out of the
rear of the train, and then strode forward as Jenny helped up a complaining
Meat Cleaver and a curiously focussed, narrow-eyed, teeth-clenched Nanny. She
cocked her D4 shotgun and scowled out of the open, wind-whistling rear of the
train.

“What a mess,” said Zanzibar,
holding onto a sharp edge of torn, tortured alloy and leaning slightly into the
train’s vacated exhaust. He glanced back at what remained of the train. “We
were lucky not to get pulped!”

“Yeah,” grinned Jenny, uneasily. “I
think Vasta wanted us turned into sushi!”

“Well, the bitch missed.”

The remainder of the group spent
several minutes composing themselves, and made a point of not mentioning Bull’s
sudden demise. There was no way he had survived the blast from Vasta. He was
dead as a butchered pig on a chopping block.

Zanzibar returned to the front of
the train, and using bolt-cutters from his backpack, broke into the pilot
cabin. It was unmanned, but Zanz checked the controls, his eyes roving over the
digital map.

“Found anything?” said Jenny,
peering over his shoulder.

Zanzibar shifted out of the way. “Yeah.
Check the map. You’ll see there’s about twenty stops between here and the
Factory Hub; and what we
really don’t want
is other people trying to get
on the train. And possibly alerting Greenstar that we’re on our way. What I
suggest is...” - and his finger traced another network, in faded brown, on the
scanner - “there.”

“What is it?”

“Emergency tunnels. We jump our
wounded ship, here, and head in on foot. That way, there’s no easy way for them
to see us coming. Last thing we need is arriving with all our guns bristling to
find a battalion of Greenstar bastards waiting for us. Capiche?”

“Okay. You suggest getting a bit
closer? Then we can pull the emergency stop...”

“No. No emergency stop.” Zanzibar’s
eyes were hooded and serious. “We’ll have to jump this one.”

Jenny nodded, and the remainder
of her squad stood at the back of the damaged train as Zanzibar went back to the
cockpit and, with a squeal of tearing steel, wrenched the train’s underground
map from its bracket. He jogged back to Jenny, swaying in rhythm with the
jostling train, and grinned at her.

She stood, hair whipping around
her face, and pushed her SMKK onto her back. This was going to hurt, she knew
it. But then, everything of worth in life required one to suffer just a little
bit of pain. Right?

“We good?” said Zanzibar, and
Nanny, Meat Cleaver and Jenny all nodded.

“Let’s do it,” said Jenny, and
she leapt...

The world spun in a chaos.
Surprisingly, it did not hurt. Not at the beginning, anyway. Curled in a ball,
the whole world became a spinning, bouncing craziness, filled with black and
red and bright flashes. Jenny had leapt at an angle, missing the rails, but
just as she came to a halt, her boots thumped the wall of the tunnel and she
lay for a moment, her body shocked into immobility, her brain rushing to catch
up with the fact she’d jumped from the blasted rear of a fast-moving train...

The sudden deafening noise
retreated in corrugated echoes, and Jenny could only hear her own fast
breathing. Then the pain hit her, and despite her body-armour, it felt like she’d
done ten rounds with a supercruiser heavyweight. Pain drummed down on her body,
beat her from every angle. The world was suddenly a cold, dark place that
smelled of burnt steel and old engine oil. She lay for a while, wondering what
the fuck hit her, and then she remembered - and remembered Vasta with that damn
E3 Accelerator. She rolled onto her side, and heard the sounds of Zanzibar and
the others coming back to life. She reached out, touched the old blackened
wall, and slowly dragged herself to her feet. She ached in places she didn’t
know existed. She gritted her teeth, thought about her father, thought about
his vision, and decided it was time to man up.

“Okay. Zanzibar, Meat, Nanny. You
all okay?”

Coughing and muttered curses met
her query. Zanz flicked on the light on his SMKK, and a narrow beam illuminated
the track. It was old, filled with dirt, but the rails were polished bright
silver. Often used.

“You got that scanner?” snapped
Jenny.

“This way.” And Zanzibar
led
the way, all four ECO terrorists jogging, weapons at the ready, alone with
their private thoughts. Thoughts of Sick Note, Flizz and Bull all meeting a
nasty, violent end. Thoughts that this, in all reality, was their last mission.
But if they could help bring down the Greenstar Factory Hub; well, that was a
fitting note on which to leave this mortal realm.

They ran. Jenny’s bruised and
battered muscles groaned at her. Meat Cleaver ran beside her, panting, a little
out of shape.

“You need to lay off the beer, my
friend.”

“I don’t think that’ll be a
problem in the future, do you?” he said, grinning in the darkness.

“Maybe not,” she conceded.

“Up here. Another klick, then we
can get off this main track before another train comes along and crushes us
into fish paste.”

“Such a way with words,” said
Nanny, voice more of a growl, shotgun in her hairy fists.

Zanzibar shrugged, and winced in
pain. The jump from the battered train had hurt him, Jenny could see. Hurt him
bad.

They ran on, through gloom which
smelled of oil and metal and a seeping, invading stench. Like sewers; like
toxic waste.

After a kilometre, Zanzibar
signalled, and they found a narrow vertical space in the tunnel wall through
which to crawl. It was perhaps thirty feet thick, narrow, and filled with
cobwebs and bugs. They squeezed through, moaning, and standing on the other
side, they found themselves in a disused tunnel. Zanzibar’s flashlight
illuminated ancient rusting track, and up ahead, several huge pieces of old
timber lying across the rails.

“What is this place?” said Meat
Cleaver.

Jenny shrugged. “Probably their
original underground line. Then, in the name of progress and updating, they
built a new, dirtier, shittier one for larger, dirtier, shittier trains.” She
smiled. “Whatever. At least this track is unused.”

As if on cue, a train flashed
past the gap through which they’d just squeezed. A hot wind rushed across the
squad, and Jenny closed her eyes for a moment, breathing in hot stinking air.
It was like somebody rushing across her grave. It was a digital haunting, a
vision of the future. A vision of a private Hell.

“Come on.”

“We’re going to die down here,”
muttered Zanzibar, his eyes still staring at the gap, even though the train had
gone. They’d been a minute from being crushed and pulped. It wasn’t a pleasant
thought.

“I can live with that, as long as
we take those Greenstar bastards with us,” said Jenny, and set off, her own
SMKK flashlight leading the way.

~ * ~

THEY’D
BEEN TRAVELLING for a couple of hours, and time itself had lost its meaning.
But they heard voices. Shouting. A muffled stomping of boots. Zanzibar held up
a fist and they halted, killing their lights. They stood there, amidst broken
lumps of wood and concrete, amongst rat droppings and cobwebs and old pools of
oil, and listened...

More voices. All muffled. They
sounded harsh and alien. Then, gradually, the voices faded and were gone.

“Trouble, you think?” said
Zanzibar.

“Yes. I reckon that was our
friend Vasta, attempting to hunt us down. Probably jumped up a few stops, found
the empty train, then back-tracked down the tunnels, searching for us.”

“Do you think they’ll realise
what we’re doing?” said Zanz.

Jenny gave a curt nod. “Just a
matter of time. So let’s get on. Let’s get this done.”

They travelled for another hour,
jogging on, faces streaked with dirt and sweat. Again Zanzibar called a halt.
Flashlights bounced around the walls. Again, they heard a distant shout. This
time, there was no muffling.

“They’re behind us,” said Jenny,
softly.

Zanzibar nodded, and the squad
increased their efforts, following the old line on the scanner in Zanzibar’s
hands.

“We’re getting close,” he said,
after a few minutes. “This track emerges into what I presume is a deserted
station; it’s built pretty close to the new Greenstar Factory station, as far
as I can see. There must be some form of access. If not, we’ll have to create
one. We’ve got enough damn bombs.”

Jenny gave a nod, and they
carried on, labouring now, limbs weary, minds growing sour. Jenny could see so
many flaws in their plan, so many opportunities for them to be discovered, for
them to be killed, she could no longer bring herself to turn them over in her
head. What if Vasta had simply called ahead? What if Renazzi Lode and a
thousand soldiers were waiting? Of course, they would be. Lode had said it
herself.
Come to the Greenstar Hub. We want to watch you die.
But a part
of Jenny still hoped they’d found a backdoor - then all they needed was some
central control centre, or support struts, or access to fuel dumps - and BANG!
Goodbye Greenstar Factory. After all, Zanzibar carried enough HighJ in his “special
pack” to send a city skywards.

“Shit. Shit, shit, shit and shit.”

“What is it, Jen?”

“This fucking place. Our fucking
plan. We’re just too dumb to be doing this. What are our chances of success?
Fucking minimal, is what. We’ve steamed ahead with an arsenal of weapons and
not really thought this through. Even if we approach through the station, they’ll
know we’re coming from that direction. Come on. Follow me.”

She led the way, and in a few minutes
they emerged into the old, deserted underground station. They halted, waving
their weapons about the station, then hoisted themselves up onto a
fire-blackened, dusty platform. They searched the three small buildings they
found there, each one empty except for overturned, rusting chairs, a smashed
desk and some old cabinets full of mouldy paperwork.

They stepped back out, onto the
platform, boots thudding hollowly. “What now?” said Zanzibar.

Jenny pointed with her SMKK.
Above one of the buildings was a ventilation shaft. “Get me up on that roof,”
she said, and Zanzibar hoisted her up. Her fingers found a grip, and she hauled
her legs over the edge; then, she reached down and pulled her three squad
members up behind her.

Using her combat knife, Jenny prised
off the grille. Behind it lay a dark shaft, containing piping and optic cables.
She grinned back at Zanzibar. “Let’s do some exploring.”

One by one they climbed into the
shaft, and Zanz pulled the grille back into place behind them. Then, stowing away
weapons and moving on all fours as quietly as they could, they headed - east,
by Jenny’s reckoning - into the heart of the Greenstar Factory.