It was always a problem, what to do with old trains. You couldn’t just scrap them when they became outmoded. Trains were at least as self-aware as people. So you kept them running for as long as possible, upgrading and reconfiguring, rehousing old brains in shiny new bodies. And if there was really no way they could be kept on the rails — if they were hopelessly antiquated or eccentric, or if they were designed for war and there were no wars going on — then you stored them. There were facilities all over the Network where old trains dreamed away their retirement in slow-state sleep, or surfed sections of the Datasea designed to please them: virtual tracks and railway playgrounds, strange chatrooms where the ancient locos could discuss their adventures and grumble about the fancy newfangled models that had replaced them.
The caretaker led Chandni and Threnody down a bit more corridor and peered into a lock beside a door. The lock scanned his retina and the door slid open. For a few seconds there was darkness on the other side, then lights sensed they were needed and came flickering on all across a high roof. They were inside the hill, Threnody realized. The building outside was just a kind of porch. The real facility was this cavernous hangar, its floor covered with rails. On every set of rails at least one train was sleeping. There were de-fanged wartrains with gaping holes in their armor where weapons had been removed, and locos whose whole hulls had been stripped off, baring doughnut-shaped reaction chambers and the boxy housings of their brains. Others looked whole, though most were connected to webs of cabling and ducts that trailed down from the shadows overhead.
“What are you looking for?” asked Threnody, as Chandni forced the poor caretaker ahead of her across the rails, staring at each of the silent trains in turn.
“Something that’ll get us off Grand Central fast, without attracting too much attention.”
Threnody patted the prow of a towering black thing, all sleek armor plate and lidded weapon hatches. “What about this one?”
The caretaker shook his head. “Oh no, Lady Noon, you don’t want that one. That is an unstable train.”
The loco seemed to sense Threnody’s touch. It sort of purred deep down inside itself, and two red lights glowed like fiery eyes up among the complications of its armor.
“It looks fast,” she said.
“It is,” said Chandni, “but we’re not in that much of a hurry, and it’s not exactly inconspicuous.” She went on across the hangar, forcing the old man ahead of her. “What else do you have hidden in here? Come on, the sooner we find something, the sooner we’ll be on our way.”
Threnody looked up at the black loco. She could feel it watching her. The name on its flank was Ghost Wolf.
Chandni had stopped in front of a shabby little Foss 500. It was the sort of train that usually hauled freight — the sort of train nobody looked twice at. “I have some old ammunition cars over on track nine,” the caretaker was saying eagerly. “Give me ten minutes; I’ll soon have it hitched up and fueled.”
The Foss was waking up. “I am pleased to be back in service,” it said. “I am the Courageous Snipe. Where shall we be going?”
“Anywhere,” said Chandni. “The timetables will be all over the place. If anyone complains, you can tell them you’re carrying urgent supplies for the Prell CoMa.”
“Gate two hundred and sixty-five,” said Threnody. “It’s not far from here.”
Chandni looked back at her. “Where does it go?”
“It leads to Toubit,” said Threnody. “At Toubit we could get onto the old Dog Star Line.” The Dog Star zigzagged through the Network’s heart, linking dead stations and dead worlds. “We could use it like Raven did, and maybe get to Sundarban before the Prells do.”
“The Dog Star Line?” Chandni shook her head. “It’ll be blocked off. No, we’ll head for Gosinchand or one of those worlds, get on the Spiderlight Line or the Eastern Doubt. Nobody will think to look for us out there.”
“We should go to Sundarban,” insisted Threnody. “It’s my family’s homeworld. They’ll be organizing a fight-back against this Prell takeover. When they hear how you rescued me, you’ll be rewarded.”
“I’m not doing this for a reward,” said Chandni.
The huge doors at the front of the train store opened with surprising speed, rattling up into the roof like window blinds. The setting sun streamed in so brightly that it dazzled Threnody for a moment. People came running into the facility, their helmet-amplified voices shouting things about surrendering and getting down on the floor. She recognized the purple combat armor of Prell Corporate Marines.
She started to raise her hands, feeling almost relieved that she did not have to run anymore.
What happened next — what started it — she was never sure. Maybe the Prell CoMa were just eager for a chance to shoot someone. At any rate, Chandni shouted something, the old man went running forward, also shouting, there was a stutter of gunfire, bullets pecked at his clothes, and he stumbled and fell. Chandni was running across the tracks, firing her pistol. The Prell troopers scattered into cover. Behind the hard thump of guns and their echoes there was a pretty chinkling sound as spent cartridges hit the rails. A shadow heaved itself across the sunset. Something big was entering the train store. A brutal-looking armored loco with Prell banners fluttering on its nose. As Chandni reached her, Threnody saw its guns swing around to point at her. Then a black wall slid across her view.
The Ghost Wolf had rolled forward, putting itself between the Prells and their prey.
“Get aboard,” it said, in a big, hard voice. A narrow doorway opened in its armored hide.
Something burst on the far side of it, sending a sheet of flame up into the gantries overhead. Chandni thrust Threnody toward the black train. She scrambled up the steps, through the doorway, with the whole loco shaking as more shots from the Prell train slammed into it.
Someone in the Prell squad must have had their wits about them, because the facility doors were starting to close again. The Ghost Wolf gave a contemptuous-sounding snort and shouldered its way out, shearing through the ceramic like a blade through wet cardboard. In its cramped little cabin Threnody clung to seat backs and door pillars, flung from side to side as it went rattling over points outside the facility.
“Where are we going?” asked the train. “The Prells have already sent messages to their forces in the city. I’m picking up two more of their wartrains leaving the central platforms.”
“Gate two-six-five,” shouted Chandni.
“But you said—” Threnody began.
“Two-six-five is the only gate we can hope to reach before those wartrains cut us off.”
Physics tugged them sideways as the Ghost Wolf went too fast around a curve of the track. “There are drones patrolling at gate two-six-five,” it said, with what sounded like dark amusement.
“Can you handle them, train?” asked Chandni.
“Got nothing to handle them with,” said the train, sulkily. “I’m decommissioned. The only reason I’ve got fuel is ’cause I stole it from other stored trains. All my weapons have been removed.”
“Can those drones pierce your armor?”
“I doubt it. Let’s find out, shall we?”
A fiery surf broke over it as a missile hit. The cabin rang like a huge bell, then rang again, the screens glitching for a moment the second time.
“Nah,” said the Ghost Wolf. “They’re rubbish.”
*
Gate two-six-five was under a wooded hill in a quiet northern suburb of the station city. The Prells had not sent a wartrain to guard it, since it led nowhere but Toubit. A small squad of drones was on sentry duty there instead. The ugly, stubby-winged machines circled like sullen bees above the tunnel mouth where the line vanished into the hillside. A few children from the district came to watch them for a while, but they were not very interesting drones, so they soon began to drift away. The war had seemed exciting when it started, but now everyone was saying it was already over. There would be school again tomorrow.
So there were only three children left when the black loco came tearing up the line. They heard it coming and ran to the trackside fences, twining grubby fingers through the chain-linked wire. The train was moving faster than any train they’d ever seen. It was moving so fast that when they described it to their friends the next day they would not be believed. The Prell drones fired actual missiles at it, but the black wartrain did not want to stop, and the missiles didn’t seem to do much harm; they just started a few fires on the surface of its black armor, which only made it look even cooler.
As the train came past the place where the children were standing, a drone swung itself in to try a close shot, and the train, as if it knew it had an audience, flipped open the hatch cover on one of its weapon bays. The bay was empty, but the edge of the hatch cover was as good as a blade at that speed: it sliced the drone in half. One half went tumbling away in the train’s slipstream while the other spun upward, making that whiffling, chirruping sound doomed drones always made in games. The children looked up, round-eyed, as it spun helplessly into another drone, and both slid sideways across the sky and hit the cliffs above the tunnel mouth with a very satisfying explosion. A few rather big rocks came tumbling down, rebounding from the black train’s armor. As it went into the tunnel mouth, the cliff face above it seemed to shrug and sag. Trees up there began to glide downhill, upright and dignified at first, then tilting and tumbling as the ground beneath them broke up and collapsed in rubble across the tracks.
Bits of debris from the wrecked drones pattered through the leaves of the trackside trees. The children scampered to collect the fragments. They clutched the hot shards in their hands and watched in awe as the dust settled. More trains were coming — Prell wartrains — that slowed, and stopped, and sent out fresh drones to buzz furiously above the blocked line.