Ian McDonald - Ares Express

“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.

“There’s one on our port fairing!” Psalli shouted, peering out of a shunting oriole. “He’s climbing up!”

Grandfather Bedzo rolled and farted under the coronet of his cyberhat. A twitch of the corner of his mouth, a blast of steam from the overheat release valve sent it spinning half a hundred metres. The old man rocked and laughed as the mutineers put the rout beneath their wheels.

“I see her, I see her!” Miriamme Traction called from the forward observation balcony, Sweetness’s former vantage. “She’s waving a flare!” But even before Child’a’grace could call full stop, Bedzo was already applying the brakes. These striplings today understood nothing, respected nothing. Understood nothing because they respected nothing. Had no pride. Bedzo Trine Cirrus Minor Asiim Engineer 10th had been Engineer of Engineers. He would bring his train in so sweet, so smooth, the old lady would not even have to walk to the steps.

“I don’t know where you popped up from, but you’re going right back again,” Sweetness said to Serpio, centimetre by centimetre climbing her legs. She clubbed him hard with the St. Catherine pyx. He cried out, lifted his hands to his bleeding head, fell heavily to the ground.

“To think, I gave up a perfectly good stainless steel kitchen for you,” Sweetness said, leaping nimbly over Serpio and sprinting for the other, unbarred door. But he was already on his feet, after her. God, he might be a Waymender, but he was fast. He dived for Sweetness, was knocked sideways with a crunching oof as Pharaoh came barrelling in in a sliding tackle that would have had any soccer player red carded. The two men rolled over and over in a tangle of attempted blows. Sweetness reflected casually, and inappropriately, how alike they looked.

“Out!” Pharaoh shouted. “Down and out!”

“You mean?” Sweetness winced as Pharaoh took an elbow in the ribs.

“The aperture, go on, go! Jump! I’ll catch up.”

They fell to it again. Sweetness hit the door catch, pelted down the short curving corridor and almost knocked down a very tall, very big woman dressed in purple cycle gear. Big muscles too. Sweetness jumped back. The big woman blocked her escape. She smiled, beckoned with her hand, give, here.

“Uh uh,” Sweetness said and pulled out her beanie gun. Sianne Dandeever grinned like a skull and took a step forward.

“This will hurt, you know,” Sweetness said, and shot her point blank. Sianne Dandeever’s hand moved like a snake striking. She caught the bean bag in midair. She tossed it, caught it in her palm, smiled. Then she dived and brought Sweetness, beanie gun, canister and all down in a crunching tackle.

“Get off me, you big fat lesbian dyke!” Sweetness shouted and looked for something to bite but the big woman’s big hands were forcing her fingers open. Then she heard a noise like wind-rotor blades slicing air, a soft-edge whistling, glimpsed, past the big body crushing the wind out of her, something back-flipping fast down the corridor. The willy-willy demon whirled past, something caught Harx’s lieutenant a hefty whack on the back of the head, sending the big woman sprawling.

Skerry rolled out of her tumbling sequence as Sianne Dandeever shook the impact of grip-soled left foot out of her head and came up slugging. A savatte kick under the jaw sent her straight down again. Skerry cuffed her wrist to ankle with plastic wire grips.

Sweetness scrambled up, backed away, beanie gun levelled.

“I’ll have that,” Skerry said, advancing toward Sweetness.

“You will not.”

“Look, I’ve had a difficult day. Just hand it over.”

“Get away.”

“I’m the government.”

“You would say that.”

“Don’t make me take it off you. I can. I will.”

Sweetness shook her head. Skerry saw her finger twitch on the firing stud of the beanie-gun.

“I think I should tell you, I’d not just catch that, I’d throw it right back at you as well.”

“Oh yeah?” Sweetness said, swinging the beanie-gun a millimetre and firing at the pressure-seal emergency door switch she could see and she knew Skerry could not. Skerry caught a fistful of air as the metal semicircles slammed together in her face.

“Balls!” she muttered. She called up Seskinore. “The girl’s got the thing and she’s making a run for it. There’s still a chance.”

The bloody show must bloody go on.

“Please deposit three million dollars for the next ten minutes of personalised weather,” the computer voice at Grand Valley Regional Weather said without the least flicker of irony. Weill lifted the telephone receiver away from his ear, looked at Seskinore.

Seskinore, listening on the monitor, shook his head and cut his throat with a terminating finger. Weill hung up without a word. Together, they watched the apocalypse dissolve into the early afternoon sunlight. Pursued, pursuer and pursuer-of-pursuer were now so far away down the long tunnel of Grand Valley only the airborne cathedral was visible, a wobbling orange oval. Rather like a flying dog-biscuit, Weill thought inconsequentially.