Trainhop

“We’re clear!” Zal says as they spot the flare over the ridge.

“Movin’ out!” Krev takes the wagon down to the end of the straightaway and just around the curve to see a pillar of smoke rising from the tower up on the mountainside.

“Nice work, Razh.” Looking up at the tower with their spyglass, they see Razha and Nadia beneath it, waving to them, before they rush off into the woods to find their way back down.

The drakes come to a stop and Zal and Annia immediately get to work cutting the ropes holding the heavy barrel in place. Kalen drops the loading ramps from the back and they carefully roll the bomb down to the ground. They look up at the tracks, sitting upon a pile of gravel. They always took these little support hills for granted, until now having to push a huge explosive barrel up to the top of one.

They hear gunshots from the west, a great many of them.

Krev stands next to them and puts his hands on the bomb. “Let’s get to it, no time to lose.”

It takes the help of all five of them, Krev and Zal and Annia and Kalen and Filla, to roll the massive thing up the gravel and onto the tracks. Just as planned, they are standing right where two rail lines meet at a switch. This crucial intersection branches off toward many of the highest volume power plants in Kogaku, and behind them is a bottleneck, one road connecting them to the biggest and most active discordium mines and refineries in all of Zintaia.

As the others turn the barrel upright at the switch point, with its detonator facing up, Annia runs back down to the wagon and starts unspooling electrical wire.

“Hurry!” Zal says.

Annia returns with two ends of wire and climbs up onto the barrel to fasten them to the connectors on the detonator mechanism. It jumps down onto the tracks, and spells out with its fingers, “B-O-O-M.”

“Let’s go,” Zal slides down the gravel hill and walks back to the wagon.

As they all climb into the cart, they can hear the dissonant metal rumbling of a train in the distance. Annia sits in the front of the cart by its wire spool, where a switch links the detonator to a battery.

“Take us out to a safe distance,” Zal says.

“How far is that?” Krev says.

They look to Annia for an answer.

“Far!” it signs.

“Once they are moving, Filla speaks, “Wait, y’all.”

“What’s wrong?” Zal says.

“So if the train doesn’t stop in time and it gets derailed, we’ll just dump a million Mass of black death all over the valley and into the river, right?” Filla says.

“That’s the last thing we wanna do,” Krev says.

“But there’s plenty of space for them to stop,” Zal says.

“If they do stop,” Filla says.

“Why would they not when they see the explosion?” Kalen says.

“You’re making a big assumption that this driver is gonna be acting rationally, and not panicking,” Filla says. “Take it from a coward.”

“She has a good point,” Kalen says. “This isn’t a sent or a soldier, it’s just some engineer, they aren’t trained for this.”

“Okay, then, I’ll make sure it stops!” Zal stands up, trying to keep their balance in a moving cart. “Krev! Can you spare me a drake?”

“Without the bomb, ol’ Twilight can handle this cart. Here.” He stops the drakes and jumps down to unfasten Lightning’s harness.

Zal jumps out from the cart and goes up to pet the blue-scaled reptile’s head. She looks over and flicks her forked tongue in their face. “C’mon Lightning, let’s see how fast you really are.”

“Pick you up in a minute,” Krev says, driving Twilight and the cart forward as the sound of the train grows louder.

“Good luck!” Annia signs.

“Luck of Arris with you,” Kalen says.

“Careful, Zal!” Filla says.

Zal waves as they run off, and they climb onto Lightning’s back and take her reins. They hold on tight with their legs, riding without a proper saddle, and take the drake further from the bomb, to wait near the others. The cart comes to a stop, and the rumble of metal and the roar of the engine grow louder and louder.

Zal turns Lightning around and looks behind them, waiting. Then they see it, coming around the curve. The great black machine comes barreling down the tracks, white smoke trailing behind its engine as the reactor consumes discordium fuel. Behind it, a line of heavy cars, filled to the brim with smooth black crystals, stretches down the tracks far out of sight.

Once it appears, Kalen unfurls the black and grey banner of the K.R.A. and waves it above her head. The next thing Zal sees is a flash of light. They jerk their head around to see a fireball engulfing the tracks ahead, as a thunderous boom floods the valley and seems to shake even the great steel behemoth barreling toward them.

Zal takes Lightning to a full run alongside the train. Lightning’s claws grip the gravel pile as Zal guides her up right behind the engine. She really can keep up with a train. They wait for the ear piercing screech of emergency brakes, but instead they see the engineer leap from the engine and roll down the gravel hill.

“Fucking Hel!” They kick the drake into an even faster sprint, hoping she can take it. Up alongside the engine, Zal stands up on Lightning’s back, balancing carefully as the gravel flies by beneath them. They jump onto the runaway train, catching an iron handrail with one hand.

They pull themself up and into the driver’s compartment. They slam one hand into the engine kill switch and with the other they grasp the brake lever and pull it back, leaning on it with all their weight. The shriek of grinding metal pierces the air, it’s an agonizing sound to Zal but they stay focused. Sparks are flying from the rails as the wheels slide across them toward the fiery wall ahead. But they aren’t slowing down enough.

Locking the brake lever in place, they swing around the doorway and run down the narrow walkway to the back of the engine. They jump across the gap to the second car, and find what they’re looking for, a secondary emergency brake handle on the front of the car--all Kogakuan train cars would have one. They pull the lever back with all their strength, inviting a new dissonant shriek of grinding steel as the brakes’ cries merge together in a sensory cacophony.

What more could they do? The engine hasn’t fully powered down yet, that takes a minute. At least they might stop the cars full of black death from derailing, though. They reach down and slide open the latch connecting the cars. Without the pull of the dying engine, the train begins to slow and it falls back a few Length, but then suddenly halts its separation. A thick steel chain still holds the cars together, a fail-safe Zal had overlooked.

Zal leans out over the side of the railing and sees the fire, less than five hundred Length away now. They draw their gun and take aim at the chain. “Separate damn you!” They pull the trigger, blowing the chain apart.

There is nothing more they can do. They jump from the train. Hitting the gravel like landing on solid stone, they roll downhill, pummeled by thousands of tiny rocks before they come to a stop in the ditch at the bottom. They pull themself up to one knee to take a look ahead.

The engine’s locked wheels scrape across the metal all the way up to the breach in the tracks. It hits the end of the line and barrels on, plowing into the gravel between the divergent tracks ahead and stirring up a huge cloud of dust. The last they see of it, it falls on its side and catches fire.

The rest of the train grinds on behind, crawling under the last of its momentum. It reaches the broken track at a turtle’s pace, and its front wheels slip from the end of the rails, where it comes to a rest, upright and intact.

Zal stands up, their left arm in horrible pain. They turn around to look back. Lightning got clear of the tracks--she’s running frantically by the woods. Their comrades are coming up to them in the cart.

Then a flash of light. A rush of air. Falling.

END