CHAPTER 36

Addy stared, dubiously, at her bag. Everything you need, Taylor had said. Somehow she doubted that, unless it also had a few concussion grenades and a full suit of body armor.

As if it were a dangerous animal she was attempting to pet, Addy opened the bag and surveyed the contents. Ballistic safety goggles, a breather mask, a pair of heavy gloves, and a cowl of abrasion-resistant fabric with a small control patch.

Peeling off her jacket left her in the snug dark purple jumpsuit she’d worn underneath, tight against her skin, and made from the same material as the cowl. Can’t have clothing flapping around at several hundred kilometers per hour. She grabbed the small pocket breather mask from her bag and sealed it to her nose and mouth. It would filter out most of the dust and sand swirling around, even if its filters weren’t really rated for long-term use.

Not like I want to hang out up top anyway.

With the cowl affixed onto the seals at the collar of her jumpsuit, breathing mask on, and the goggles and gloves in place, not a square millimeter of her would be exposed to the elements. Which is good because I don’t particularly want my skin to be sandblasted clean off. Her breath came loud in her own head, and she could feel the sweat starting to bead on her forehead.

She slapped the control patch on the back of her forearm and then touched the activation control.

The fine hairs on her body tingled as the electrostatic current ran through the material of the jumpsuit and cowl and what had up until a moment ago been a flexible, pliable material, now hardened into an armored shell that would withstand anything short of a shotgun blast at point-blank range.

I don’t know how the hell Gwen found this – especially in my size – but I owe her a drink. Actually, make that a whole bottle.

Embedded in the wall, a series of grooves formed an access ladder. At the top was a heavy door with a locking wheel and an electronic pad which, as she watched, blinked from red to green. Across the hatch, in large red stenciled letters, a sign admonished EMERGENCY USE ONLY.

I’m really going to do this, huh. She swallowed and wished she could wipe her sweaty palms against her trousers, but she’d already slid them into the gloves. As best she could with the bulky hand wear, she climbed upward. The train car was only maybe three meters tall, so it wasn’t like it was an arduous ascent. There was a vertically mounted grab bar near the ladder’s top which she gripped with one hand while turning the locking lever with the other.

It gave slowly, hissing as the seal was broken. With the lock undone, she reached over and hit the open control on the access panel.

Air roared in through the opening as the hatch lowered and retracted out of the way, and a cloud of sand and dust whipped in at speeds that nearly yanked Addy from her perch on the ladder. She clung to the grab bar with both hands, trying to grip the ladder’s slots with her toes. The sound was deafening, so she reached over to her sleeve and activated her earbud’s noise-canceling capabilities. A curtain of silence descended, though she could still feel the air buffeting her.

With a deep lungful of air enabled by the breather, she climbed up towards the access hatch and poked her head out.

The force of the wind nearly lifted her out of the train car, and she felt her neck wrench to compensate. The scenery sped by at a tremendous rate and particulates ricocheted off her goggles and the suit like being peppered with gunfire from tiny elves.

This is insane. This is an insane plan. But the good news about insane plans, as Brody was fond of pointing out, was that nobody ever saw them coming.

There was no safety harness up top, because nobody was supposed to be going out there while the train was in motion.

But the team had planned for this contingency, and having the right gear was the better part of valor. Technically, the gloves Addy had donned were designed for use in the vacuum of space, not on top of a moving train, but oh well, close enough.

Most importantly they may just keep me from killing myself.

Carefully, she maneuvered herself out of the hatch, pressing her chest flat to the car’s roof and crawling like a baby. The wind shook her like a piece of flimsy, and she felt it start to tug her towards the vortex created by the train’s speed. Even through her earbuds’ sound dampening, a persistent whir buzzed in her ears as the train screamed through the landscape.

Raising her right hand, she tapped her middle finger and thumb together twice in rapid succession and a sudden warmth rushed through the glove; with a snap, it adhered to the train’s roof like it had been glued. A series of lights on the back winked green, indicating that the gravglove’s inverse repulsors were online; as she watched, the leftmost turned amber, reflecting the remaining charge. Without the massive battery pack of a spacesuit behind it, the repulsors would burn through their onboard power in a hurry.

So I better get moving. She powered up the second glove and began her long crawl along the top of the train car.

Even calling it a crawl was being generous: she’d seen babies move faster. Wind whipped around her, trying to shove her from behind, but she kept her attention on the train beneath her, making each movement slow and steady while fighting the urge to get the hell off this thing as fast as possible.

That’s a quick way to end up part of the landscape. Her breathing came hot and heavy in her mask and she wondered whether, in that eventuality, anybody would even find her body amongst the vast scrub and sands of the desert wastes. Swallowing down her fear, she forced herself to focus on the train car in front of her.

The swirling sand and dust played havoc with her comms; she spared her sleeve a glance at one point and saw the red slashed circle indicating a lack of signal. If Taylor or any of the rest of the team was trying to reach her, she’d have no idea. Not that there was anything she could do about it from up here anyway. Her job was getting down into the next car – everything else was window-dressing.

The muscles in her arms and legs started to strain from the exertion as she continued working her way across, and she tried to concentrate on breathing slowly and regularly, even as her heart pounded against the metal of the train’s roof. A few times she had to navigate around bumps and bulges of machinery, and each time it took more than a minute for her to navigate the turns, making sure that she wasn’t going to slip off.

The bank caught her by surprise. It was gradual at first, the train starting to lean to one side as it took a long curve; she felt herself start to slide toward the right edge, and for a moment thought she’d just been caught by a particularly strong crosswind.

Then, suddenly, the whole train keeled over maybe ten degrees, and her feet scrabbled against the top of a car that was no longer parallel with the ground. Her legs swung towards the inside edge of the turn and then were violently sucked over by the winds, flailing towards the rear of the train; her arms, anchored by the gravgloves, screamed in protest, the only things keeping her from being sucked into the train’s vortex.

Shit!

The indicator lights on the gloves blinked furiously amber as the repulsors ramped up to maximum adhesion. Addy desperately worked her core muscles, trying to bring her legs back to the train, but the wind flapped them around like fish on the line.

And then the tilt was over, almost as fast as it had begun, and her legs swung down and smacked into the side of the car; her stomach hit the edge, knocking the wind out of her, and she wheezed into the breath mask as she clutched desperately to the roof. Kicking her feet, she braced them against the side of the train and scrambled back up.

The whooshing sound of Addy’s breath rang in her ears. It took her a solid thirty seconds to quiet her heartbeat from “force itself right out of her chest” back down to “just crawling across a speeding train like it’s a normal day”.

The indicators on her gloves had stopped blinking, but half of them were solidly glowing amber now; the added strain had depleted the power far faster than she’d hoped.

Christ, I hope nobody was looking out the window. Any of the Coire Ansic goons below who’d chosen that moment to glance outside would probably have seen Addy’s feet kicking wildly from above. Though none of them would probably be in a hurry to volunteer going topside.

Still, it meant she might have trouble waiting for her when she came back through the access hatch. What’s the alternative? Do I live up here now?

The second half of the trip was, at least, uneventful by comparison, without any further turns to risk throwing her off balance. She was so intent on not falling off that she almost went right by the access hatch.

This one was secured only with a keypad lock and it already blazed green, indicating that Taylor had released it remotely.

Addy hesitated before touching the control. There was a non-zero chance that she’d be welcomed with open arms bearing an assortment of weaponry. I guess I’ll deal with that shitshow when I come to it.

Taking a breath, she reached out and popped the hatch.

But the compartment beneath proved, to her relief, empty. Addy dropped down into the blissfully less windy space and slapped the control to close the hatch behind her.

The blessed silence was deafening after the roar outside and she peeled off her breath mask, sucking in a lungful of fresh – by comparison anyway – air. Both the mask and her goggles were streaked with dirt and sand, and when she lifted a hand to wipe the sweat from her brow, it came away a dark, gritty brown.

The compartment was essentially identical to the one from which she’d gone topside. Addy glanced back at the door leading into the Coire Ansic’s private coach. This connecting space was still technically part of that car, so she’d have to head further to the rear to find the uncoupling controls. On the opposite side of the compartment, another door led to the storage car that had sent them on this whole job to begin with.

Addy toggled her comm. “Checkpoint Charlie.”

There was a double-click of acknowledgment. A moment later, the panel next to the car door flickered green as Taylor worked her magic and the door slid aside.

The storage car was dark, but rows of lights flicked on as Addy stepped in, illuminating several pallets stacked high with rugged cases of black plastic.

Addy let out a low whistle. Are all those full of cash? Whatever business the Coire Ansic was engaged in, it had clearly proved extremely profitable. No wonder Xi wanted to take them down a peg – if they were raking this in just from doing business on a single planet, there was no doubt they could mount a decent opposition for Xi’s organization if they decided to expand.

Or, in other words, this galaxy isn’t big enough for the both of them.

She crossed to one of the pallets and flipped up the latches on the top box. Best to verify everything before calling it in; it’d be pretty embarrassing if this turned out to just be some sort of decoy car.

Lifting the lid, her breath caught as she saw rows of carefully slotted-in currency chips. And that was just the top tray – she lifted it up and did a quick appraisal. There was room in the case for a half dozen of these, easy.

She pulled one out to check the denomination and did an instant double take. What the fuck? Just to make sure she wasn’t seeing things, she set the top tray aside and picked a couple more chips at random. Then she arbitrarily chose another case and checked it too.

Swallowing, she toggled her comm. “We’ve hit jackpot,” she said slowly.

“Copy,” came back Taylor’s clipped tones. “Let’s move to –”

“There’s just one thing,” said Addy, her mouth dry. “It’s not Illyrican marks.”

There was a pause on the line, and then Taylor’s voice returned, more sharply. “What are you saying?”

Addy looked at the credit chip in her hand, stamped with a tiny seal showing a series of intersecting ovals around a four-pointed star. “There must be a half a billion in here… and it’s all in Commonwealth credits.”