Black Light Express

by Philip Reeve

  “Call your security people,” she told Threnody. “Call Delius. I don’t think it’s a hoax.”

  Threnody stared at her a moment, then blinked a couple of times and started tearily explaining things all over again to her headset. Chandni went out onto the balcony. Cool night air, three moons stacked up over the mountains like stratocruisers waiting for a runway. On the many viaducts of the station city, trains were moving. Too many trains for this hour of the morning.

  “Empress,” she said, and as she turned something terrifyingly fast and loud came shrieking through the sky above her and slammed into Threnody’s suite on the floor above. Fire and debris came down around her as she dived into the room, but the room was tilting, as if it were trying to throw her back out onto the balcony — which had gone, smashed off the side of the palace by another balcony falling from above. Threnody was shouting something. Chandni swore steadily. Then she heard that shriek again, racing through the air, coming at enormous speed, and something grabbed her and plucked her off her feet and threw her. She screamed and barely noticed the floor hit her, and her scream was lost in a stunning flare of light, a storm of brutal noise.

  11

  One moment Threnody was talking on her headset link to a man on the palace security team, the next it was dark and she was lying awkwardly in a corner. It was really dark — she couldn’t see anything except a fading red smear, the after-image of some colossal flash. She couldn’t hear much at first either, but then her ears popped and there were far-off firecracker noises and a rustling cellophane sound much closer that she worked out was fire.

  So why was it dark? Why weren’t there flames? There must be flames — she could feel the heat of them on one side of her face, she could smell the burning — but she couldn’t see them, because she was blind.

  “Chandni?” she shouted. “Chandni Hansa?”

  No reply. Threnody pushed herself up onto all fours, wanting to run and not knowing which way. An explosion, she thought. She started crawling like a baby, away from the heat and crackle of the fire. The carpet under her hands felt crisp, like fried seaweed. A siren was blaring somewhere. She thought she could hear the little wingbeats of her hummingbird drones still circling her, but she couldn’t contact them, and when she reached up to where her headset had been she found that it was gone.

  “Chandni?” she shouted. “Help me!”

  A lot of loud bangs were happening, far off, but not far enough. Every time she heard one, memories of the Spindlebridge hit her like shrapnel. For a moment, she wondered if she was still on the Spindlebridge. Because such things couldn’t happen twice, could they? This must be all one great, ongoing catastrophe, and the strange interval in which she had become Empress and moved to the imperial palace had been just a hallucination brought on by the noise and the fire and the fear.

  Someone grabbed hold of her. She screamed, and couldn’t stop screaming, even when she recognized Chandni’s voice saying, “It’s all right, it’s all right…”

  “Where were you? I called for you…”

  “I was knocked out for a moment. It’s all right now.”

  “It’s not all right — I can’t see!”

  She struggled to break free, and Chandni hit her a single hard, stinging blow with the flat of her hand. That stilled Threnody long enough for Chandni to press something to her face. She felt terminals slip into place, audio behind her ear, visual against her temple. Chandni held her head steady with one hand while she fumbled with the headset.

  Suddenly Threnody could see again. Not through her eyes, which were still throwing up after-images and felt like they’d been grilled, but through the headset’s camera, which fed its images straight into her brain. She saw Chandni as a dim green ghost against swirls of deeper green smoke and bright blank patches that she guessed were flame.

  “We have to get out of here, because it’s on fire,” Chandni was saying, grabbing a bag from the corner, shaking bits of ceiling off it before she swung it onto her shoulder. Threnody looked down and saw Chandni take her hand. It was like watching a screen — something happening to someone else.

  “What happened?”

  “Missiles or something,” said Chandni, pulling her to her feet. “Prells, I’m guessing.”

  “They must be crazy! Railforce will crush them. This will mean the end of their family…”

  They moved together through the shattered room. Some of Threnody’s drones had survived the blast and went ahead in a V formation as Chandni pushed the door open and stepped out into the corridor. Where Kala Tanaka’s suite had been there was just a dizzy view past twisted girders to the city, where several big fires were burning. Lyssa Delius’s HQ on the top floors of the Railforce tower was blazing like a torch. Jagged, fast-moving flying things flicked through the smoke, the roar of engines rumbling after them only when they were out of sight.

  “But security said there was no danger of an attack,” said Threnody. “They told me everything was under control…”

  “They were wrong, then,” Chandni said, dragging her past the hole and out into a wider corridor that seemed undamaged. “There were delays on the O Link and the Spiral Line. The Prells must have been stopping traffic to get their wartrains through.”

  They went along the corridor. It was surprisingly quiet. Where were the rescue drones? Where were the guards? A flock of little origami birds, folded from gold and silver leaf, hung from the ceiling, fluttering wildly in the odd winds that were gusting through the palace. Voices echoed up a stairwell ahead, bellowing orders in Railforce battle code.

  “Oh, thank the Guardians!” said Threnody, hurrying to meet the squad of blue-armored troopers as they came up the stairs.

  Chandni hung back. She had been thinking. If she had been able to check the K-bahn timetable and tell that something bad was about to go down, why hadn’t the security people seen it coming? Why had they told Threnody not to worry?

  She hit the Empress from behind with a flying tackle that brought both of them crashing down on the hard floor. Threnody’s indignant yelp was drowned by the hard crack of a gun as the leading trooper raised his pistol and shot at her, the bullet slicing through empty air where her head had just been. At the same moment her hummingbird drones reacted to the threat, folding their wings against their bodies and transforming themselves into little missiles. They flew at the Railforce squad on tails of fire. There were small sonic booms, flares of light, wet bangs, and the heavy sound of bodies falling. When Chandni and Threnody raised their heads, they saw that parts of the corridor were on fire and that the Bluebodies were dead.

  “But they’re on our side…” Threnody said, in a tiny wondering voice that seemed to come from somewhere else entirely, like dialogue from a kid’s show overlaid on a bloodthirsty war story.

  Chandni stood up and went warily through the smoke to where the bodies lay. She took a gun from one of the dead men and pulled a medipak full of battlefield surgical supplies from another’s belt. As she came back to where Threnody cowered there was more shouting from downstairs, then a sudden quick burst of gunfire like demented hammering. Chandni helped Threnody up and started dragging her on along the corridor. “I don’t think the Prells would make a move like this unless they were sure they could win,” she said. “They probably have half of Railforce on their side. They must have friends in the K-bahn Timetable Authority too, to clear the way for their wartrains.”

  “But… then we can’t trust anyone!”

  “I never trusted anyone to start with.” Chandni thumbed open the doors of an elevator and pushed Threnody inside.

  “You’re not supposed to use elevators when there’s a fire…,” Threnody said.

  “There is a fire,” agreed the elevator. “Please use the stairs.”

  “Shut up,” said Chandni, to both of them.

  The elevator dropped for a time, then stopped. “Next time you are in a burnin
g building,” it said tartly, “please consider taking the stairs instead.”

  They stepped out on an administrative level. There was nobody around, just the tireless wailing of alarms. They hurried along wide service corridors where gilded chairs were stacked, through a door marked THIS DOOR NOT IN USE. They entered a maze of scruffy, silent offices that Empresses weren’t ever meant to see.

  “What about the Guardians?” asked Threnody. “They’ll stop it, won’t they? How could they let the Prells do this?”

  Chandni didn’t answer, but she didn’t need to. Threnody could figure it out for herself. The Guardians must have known what the Prells were planning, because the Guardians knew everything. If they let this happen, they must approve of it. It wasn’t just the Prells and their friends in Railforce who were out to get her. The gods themselves had turned against her.

  “What will we do?” she asked.

  Chandni looked her up and down. “Get out of that stupid party dress, for a start,” she said.

  Threnody obediently started to take off the ragged, stained ball gown. Chandni opened her bag and dumped out a small heap of clothes — good clothes, but ordinary: black and gray. “How did you have time to pack?” asked Threnody. But she continued before Chandni could think of an answer, saying, “I’m so glad you’re with me. Without you… thank you.”

  Chandni watched her dress, wondering if she should tell her that she had been planning to leave anyway. Wondering if she should tell her that she hadn’t been stunned by the explosions earlier. She’d stood there watching for what felt like ages while Threnody crawled blindly around in the burning room shouting for her, and she hadn’t said a thing. She’d been on her way to the door when something made her turn back and help. She still didn’t know why she had done it.

  In the bottom of a locker she found an ancient pair of shoes, near enough Threnody’s size. In a drawer she found some scissors, which she used to crop Threnody’s hair down to a black stubble even shorter than her own. Threnody, who was used to having other people decide what she should look like and then make it happen, said nothing; she just shut her eyes and stood there while the heavy blue tresses fell on the floor around her feet.

  Chandni worked in silence too. She was wondering how to break it to Threnody that this was where they parted. If she left on her own, she could vanish into the war-torn city, and maybe take advantage of whatever local chaos the Prell assault had bred. She certainly wasn’t going to risk getting caught with a fugitive Empress.

  But when she put the scissors down and Threnody blinked at her, trusting and somehow childlike, the same strange feeling that had made her help the Empress the first time took hold of her again. She resented it, but she could not ignore it.

  She kicked open the doors to an access stairway. Noises drifted down from floors above. Ceramic stairs descended into shadow.

  “Come on,” she said, stretching out her hand for Threnody to take.

  And they went down the stairs together, into the dark.

  12

  The Prell wartrains reached Grand Central in three waves. The first were assault trains, packing heavy weapons and towing lines of flatcars that launched swarms of drones and missiles as they emerged from the K-gates. Behind them came troop trains: carriage after carriage filled with infantry in the unfashionable purple battle armor of the Prell CoMa.

  Laria Prell arrived with the third wave, riding in the command car of her uncle’s train, the New Maps of Hell, as it came tearing through the K-gates from Frostfall, past stations full of stranded travelers and indignant passenger trains cowering on sidings. News of the attack was already out — the Prells had posted a press release in the data rafts of all the central worlds — but no word had come back yet from Grand Central of how the battle was going. So Laria was tense as they roared into the last gate. If things had gone badly, the New Maps of Hell might be under attack as soon as it emerged on the far side.

  Everything had happened so fast. Kobi Chen-Tulsi had triggered it, running away from Crab Castle the other night. Laria was secretly glad that he had gone — she had felt sorry for him, and she hadn’t wanted to marry him — but the family security people feared he might have sent some message to the Noons. Suddenly the plans that had been in slow, careful preparation for so many months were all being put into action.

  In the timeless blink of K-light between Kisinchand and Grand Central, Laria wondered what had become of Kobi. There was a rumor that the Mako brothers had gone after him when he fled, and another rumor that they had killed him, but Laria did not want to believe that one; the House of Prell were warriors, not murderers.

  The glow of the K-gate faded. No turning back now. Not that turning back had ever really been an option. They were in a tunnel, the slightly heavier gravity of Grand Central pulling Laria deeper into her seat. Sudden sunlight stabbed the narrow windows. She couldn’t see anything outside, but her headset fed her a drone’s-eye view of the city. It looked pretty normal from out here on the Chaim Nevek Viaduct. Until you realized that those ten or twelve black towers, all leaning at the same slight angle away from the prevailing wind, were towers of smoke. Combat hovercraft flying the Prell battle flag were pouring off a train on a neighboring line. Northward, part of the imperial palace had been engulfed by an upside-down cascade of golden flames.

  She looked at her uncle Elon, who was scowling in concentration as he listened to battle reports. After a moment his craggy face turned red and he slammed his fist down on the livewood armrest of his seat and shouted, “Yes! They were taken by surprise! Organized resistance has collapsed. Our ground troops are mopping up a few last pockets of Delius’s people…”

  “Already?” asked Laria, while the other officers in the carriage began cheering. “We’ve beaten Railforce, sir?”

  He was busy with his headset feed again and didn’t hear her question. But his bodyguards did. Shiv and Enki Mako were sitting nearby, out of uniform as usual and sprawled in their seats in that lazy way that Uncle Elon would never have tolerated from anybody else. They smiled at Laria, and Shiv said, “Railforce don’t give in that easily!”

  “But we weren’t fighting Railforce,” said his brother. “Not all of them. The marshals of the third and twelfth divisions are as unhappy as we are with the new Noon Empress. Their troops are fighting alongside ours.”

  The train was drawing into a station. People were shouting, “Victory!” But it didn’t feel like victory to Laria. She had been expecting a real battle, like the big murals of Galaghast on the wall of the schoolroom when she was little: blazing wartrains, burning drones. Of course, Galaghast had been a glorious defeat for the family, and she wanted to win, but winning because the enemy’s army turned out to have been on your side all along didn’t feel like victory. It felt more like politics. Or just plain cheating.

  More reports were coming in. As Laria stepped off the command car behind her uncle, Prell CoMa generals came hurrying up to salute and tell him that this or that objective had been secured. A few Railforce units loyal to the Noons were still making trouble near the senate gardens. An old Noon wartrain called the Hairy Panic was fighting a running battle with Prell locos on the viaducts of the Jauhexine Quarter, but they expected news of its surrender shortly.

  “What about Threnody Noon?” he asked.

  The commanders grew uncertain. One said, “We are still identifying bodies from the missile strike on her suite.”

  Another admitted, “Her private rooms were extensively damaged, but unfortunately it seems she may not have been in them at the time. It is possible that she is still at large.”

  Laria felt oddly relieved. Kobi Chen-Tulsi had cared about the Noon Empress; he had become a much nicer, more interesting person when he talked about her. Wherever he was, Kobi would be happy that she had escaped.

  Elon Prell, however, was not. He gave a sharp sniff that people who knew him recognized as a sign of dan
ger. “Find her,” he said.

  It was the first order he gave as Emperor of the Network.

  *

  The dinosaurs were nervous. Spooked by the smell of smoke on the breeze, and by the occasional sounds of gunfire still drifting from the city, the great sauropods stretched their necks high into the air and let out hooting cries.

  Threnody had explained that the creatures weren’t dangerous. This wide crescent of parkland north of the palace was not stocked with any carnivores, just big, decorative creatures like those brachiosaurs, gene-teched replicas of beasts that had once roamed Old Earth. But Chandni was wary of them anyway. They were massive. If they stampeded and she was in their way, well, it would be just her luck to escape the freezers and the Prell assault only to get herself trodden on by a dinosaur.

  Still, Chandni was glad to have the park. Prell scout drones were wheeling above the city. Here in the park, the dense foliage and the presence of so many animals might help to hide her and Threnody.

  They walked north all day, keeping to the trees as much as they could, lying in deep, shady places whenever drones came overhead. The smells of soil and growing things reminded Threnody of her family’s game reserves on Jangala, where she had gone with Kobi and Zen Starling on a disastrous hunting trip. Every time she thought of Kobi, she thought of Kobi dying, and it made her feel that all this walking was a waste of time, because if Kobi could die then she could die too. Sooner or later one of those drones would spot her, and the Prell soldiers would come and shoot her just as they had shot Kobi. But she didn’t want to be left behind, so each time Chandni Hansa started moving north again she got to her feet and followed doggedly, feet blistering inside her stolen shoes.