He straight-armed the shrieking gunner away from the triggers, slapped up the safeties and turned to thunder down on his faithful.
“Illusions!” he proclaimed. “Deceptions! Flim-flammery to dupe us from the real enemy! We are infiltrated, our enemy is within, in this sacred place, on our own sanctum, and in here.” He touched finger to head. Devastation Harx frowned, touched finger to forehead again. He shook something that was not lingering battle gas out of his head, swivelled his eyes upward to the main bulk of the cathedral hanging above. His mouth opened, a quiet ah went out of him.
“Did you feel that?” he asked his cowed, stoned disciples. “Did you feel that? Some…thing went out of me. Some…thing touched me.” His eyes went wide. “No! They have it! Bastards!” He raised his cane. “With me, people! They must not get away with this! We shall recapture St. Catherine.” He leaped from the gun platform and was borne out of the turret on a surge of ululating, drug-berserked believers.
Ben’s Town to Annency; Annency to Perdition Junction; Perdition Junction to Laurel Hill. Woolamagong. Serendip. Acacia Heights. Atomic Avenue. The nameboards blurred past, waiting passengers stepped back, then stepped forward to stare after the vision of blue and silver and steam that had thundered past them, drawing all their newspapers into a rattling dance in its wake. Class 88 Catherine of Tharsis broke all records for the Grand Valley mainline. The fusion djinns howled inside their tokamak bottles, the drive rods shuddered and jumped in their housings, every loose scrap of metal and under-tightened bolt rattled and hummed as the Ares Express came through. Scruffy little commuter shuttles, ill-bred schoolgirl specials, slow local stoppers bustled out of the path of the furious monster on to branch lines. Thousand car freighters and Intercity Limiteds were herded and held on sidings; even the transplanetary expresses found themselves inexcusably held at orange as the Insane Train ran every signal and flaunted every speed restriction. Central Track Control sent command after command, all ignored as Grandfather Bedzo, with a saliva-y smile, opened up the throttles and poured in the steam. In the panoramic Central Dispatching Room of the half-kilometre-high glass nail of Central’s control tower, despatchers in the ankle-length beige duster coats of Great Southern Traction debated throwing the runaway on to a long run of branch line. They ran the figures on their wrapround Track Display Visors, thought again. At its current speed, the intruder would tear through the points like a child ripping open a birthday present. A four-hundred-and-eighty-kilometre-per-hour derailment and subsequent tokamak explosion would take a ten-kilometre square section of the planet’s most densely utilised rail network out of commission for a time measured by half-lives.
Let them get where they are going in so all-fired a hurry, was the conclusion. Re-route, hold and divert and pray the Angel of Trains they don’t meet anything coming in the opposite direction. We’ll get them in the courts later.
Then, amazement in the tower of glass. The Runaway Train was slowing. Senior Signallers summoned Track Regulation Officers Grade II to confirm the information on their visors. They ran to their Dispatch Assistants levels 2 and 3 and returned with the reports from the Signal Attendants: yes, out there in the green fields of Canton Thrench, Catherine of Tharsis was coming to a halt.
“What is happening, why are we slowing?” Child’a’grace chirped as, through her boot soles, she felt the subtle shift of weight that meant that her train was losing speed. Bedzo’s face was tight with either concentration or constipation as he applied and released the brakes. The rising screech of hot brake shoe filled the driving bridge.
“What is going on?”
“Something on the track ahead,” Romereaux said, frowning, trying to read traffic information from the data-sphere.
“Another train?” Child’a’grace asked.
Catherine of Tharsis had slowed to a undignified commuter-train lope and still Bedzo applied the brakes.
“Doesn’t look like it,” Romereaux said. “Looks more like, lots of little things.”
“Little things?”
“I can’t get any detail on this effort,”
The great train had slowed to walking pace. Psalli called from the window.
“I see them, I see them!”
Her tone brought Romereaux straight to the curving glass.
“Full halt!” he yelled. Bedzo complied with a thought. Everyone on the bridge staggered as brakes bit hard, steam billowed, drive shafts flailed and kicked into reverse. Wheels screeched on steel rail, then all was quiet. Catherine of Tharsis stood panting gently on the Grand Valley up line. Facing it across a hundred empty metres was an army of robots. They were twice the height of a man and twice as broad, had four metal legs and four metal arms all of which ended in stabbing, slashing or snipping weapons. They had beaked metal insect-heads with complex metal mandibles that opened and closed and chewed in a horrid way. They glowed golden in the Grand Valley sun, their eye clusters glittered. They said, we are painless and tireless and relentless and merciless and perfectly professional about what we do. Every one of the watching faces pressed to the observation glass up on the bridge could see that very clearly.
“What the hell are those?” asked young Thwayte Engineer in a very adult voice.
“Those are a thing I and all of I’se people hoped never never to see,” Child’a’grace said gently. “Those are moon-warriors, fallen to earth. Their presence can mean only one thing: our world is under attack. We are at war, they have come to defend us.”
On which cue the entire phalanx, fifty by fifty, took a ground-shaking step forward.
“I’m not so sure about the defend bit,” said Anhinga nervously.
A metallic click, audible through the armoured glass. Like the Skandavas in the collaged caves of Attaganda, each of the machines cocked its four arms. Blades flashed in readiness.
“And where is Taal exactly?” Psalli asked.
“Exactly on the far side of them,” Romereaux said.
“Full reverse!” Child’a’grace suddenly commanded, swirling away from the window to Bedzo’s side. The old patriarch grinned toothlessly. At long last, his beloved train was his again. Let the man who still has a drop of juice in him get his hand on the drive rod, not that arrogant, prudish stick of a son of his. No Engineer in his heart.
“Ha ha!” Bedzo said and, with a pulse of his mind, the tokamaks blazed and the boiler seethed, the cranks pumped and the wheels turned and, with gathering speed, Catherine of Tharsis backed away from the army blockade.
In their high glass tower, the Beige Controllers read the new reports from Thrench Regional and decided it might just be best to call it a day and all go home.
Out in the green fields, Harx’s occupation force noticed a change in their parameters and clicked into advance mode. A thousand metal hooves churned up the summer grazing. Bedzo put a clear two kilometres between the train and the advancing troopers, then stopped. The big train waited.
“Now!” Child’a’grace shouted, and everyone in the cab saw the years and chapatti dust fall from her and she was again the Child of Grace, the bright, vivacious, dotty and energetic woman who had sold her freedom for marriage to a train. “Full steam ahead!”
“Wa!” Bedzo shouted. Hydrogen raved into helium. Every piston exploded superheated steam. The abused drive shafts kicked again, the journel bearings shrieked. The wheels spun as tons of sand was poured on to the track, found purchase, bit. Three thousand tons of Class 88 fusion hauler leaped forward like a speed-dog from a trap, wreathed in steam like a Shandastria geyser elemental. At the sight of their target stopping, the robot soldiers had broken into a heavy trot. Now as it bore down on them, whistles shrieking, they stopped, tried to turn, scatter, flee. Too late, too slow. Catherine of Tharsis bowled them over like pins. Amputated limbs; gnashing, severed insect-heads were strewn hither and yon. A rain of blades embedded themselves in the soft green turf.