Stars Beneath My Feet

by D L Frizzell

  Hathan-Fen glared at the door, which now seemed to be bent more than it was earlier. “I’ll never understand why the Council let him out of prison.”

  “Why don’t you shoot him?” I said half-seriously. “Or let me. We’ll both be happier, not to mention safer.”

  “Don’t tempt me,” she said. “We need him, Alex. He brought us information about the T’Neth. Information that Norio confirmed. Redland’s the reason we found this train. Without him, we’d be riding with the caravan for the next three months.”

  “Good thing you didn’t go with them,” I said dryly. “Listen, Redland doesn’t do anything without some kind of underlying scheme. You shouldn’t trust him.”

  “He has always had an interest in Kate,” Norio said, “That has not changed, so I suspect that is the one thing we can rely on. For that, he is on our side.”

  “No, he’s on his own side,” I argued. “We just happen to be useful to him right now. If he ever thinks we’re not useful, he’ll shove us off a cliff.”

  “Alex is right,” Hathan-Fen said. “Redland’s a sonofabitch.”

  “I do not disagree,” Norio replied. “I simply believe he is as useful to us as we are to him.”

  “For now,” Hathan-Fen said.

  “For now,” I agreed.

  “Listen. I know that you all have issues with Marshal Redland,” Norio told us. “I can say nothing that will convince you he has changed. I myself am convinced that he is the same person he has always been. However, I suggest you delay any retaliation until we conclude our mission.”

  “I hate to agree with that, but you’re right,” Hathan-Fen told Norio, “We need Redland.”

  “I don’t see it that way,” I said.

  “All cards on the table here,” Hathan-Fen said, looking at me. “We don’t trust Redland, but we don’t trust you either, Alex. The part that chafes my ass is that we need both of you, and we need you to get along.”

  “I don’t trust anybody,” I replied coldly.

  “You do not trust even me?” Norio asked.

  Norio’s habit of answering questions with a question could really infuriate me sometimes. Worse, he had this propensity to speak in obscure metaphors and riddles.

  “I’ll tell you what,” I answered. “You tell me the truth when I ask for it. And, in the interest of keeping the peace, I’ll play nice. I’ll also let you know if I learn anything else from Kate. And I’ll keep her out of trouble.”

  “That’s all?” Hathan-Fen asked, clearly wanting more.

  “I’ve never been able to keep myself out of trouble,” I smirked.

  Hathan-Fen glared at me. “Don’t get cute. I’m telling you that you are just as suspect as that hairy bastard Redland. To have any chance of survival whatsoever, I need to know, without a shadow of a doubt, that you will be a team player.”

  “I will keep myself under control,” I promised. For now, I thought.

  “Thank you,” she said. “I’ll take those shackles off of you. Don’t make me regret it.”

  I brought my arms forward and handed her the now-unlocked shackles. “No need,” I said. “I picked ‘em already.”

  Chapter Fifteen

  Hathan-Fen gave my weapons back, giving me a stern warning against screwing up their plans, but still wouldn’t say what they were. I guess full cooperation was a little too much to ask at the moment. I thanked her anyway and left the compartment to see what the rest of the train looked like.

  The train was a long, metal cylinder designed to levitate through the magnetic fields of a T’Neth tunnel. No, calling the train a cylinder wasn’t exactly accurate, because that makes it sound like a continuous hull. There was no structural backbone that I could tell. In truth, it was a collection of oddly-shaped plates, each about a meter across, connected by hinges that flexed and vibrated against the powerful forces created by the tunnel. The train’s cross-section was circular, about two and a half meters wide. I had enough headroom so that I didn’t have to stoop, but just barely. I moved along a passageway that ran along the right side of the train. The floor and ceiling were narrow, but roomier in the middle where the hull curved out. That’s not to say it was easy to navigate. Shock absorbers stretched across the corridor, one for each hull plate. They angled downward or upwards in a complicated lattice, depending on the orientation of the plate. The shock absorbers squeaked as the train bounced along, and some looked to be in desperate need of oiling. If one of these were to fail, I thought, the train might collapse like a cardboard box. Not a very comforting idea. I took a few steps and felt the floor give under my weight. I’d crossed rope bridges that were sturdier than this. Considering our speed, I was surprised the train hadn’t disintegrated already.

  I moved along the corridor, climbing over and under the shock absorbers like monkey bars on a children’s playground, examining the contents of the compartments that occupied the left side of the hull.

  The first compartment was loaded with climbing equipment; ropes, pitons, and metal D-rings. Packed on top of those were duffels of cold-weather gear. I did a quick tally in my head and wondered why we were carrying enough gear for an army, but had no room for the army itself. I also noticed my Longarm and my field pack were resting on top of the militia equipment.

  The second and third compartments held rifles, pistols, swords, and crates of ammunition, just as over-packed as the first compartment. If Hathan-Fen was expecting a fight, she was badly underestimating the T’Neth. Conventional weapons rarely worked against a skilled pair of T’Neth warriors. If anything, it would only make them mad. The militia had to know this, so I was clearly missing some vital information. First things first, though. I continued making my way down the corridor.

  As I reached the middle of the train, I heard two familiar voices – Brady and Traore – having a conversation. I squeezed myself into the neighboring compartment to listen.

  “The Jolly Arrow,” Brady said.

  “No. Arrows are rigid,” Traore replied.

  “The Jolly Molly.”

  “Now you’re not even trying.”

  “It rhymes. If you’re so smart, Derrick, you think of something.”

  “Okay,” Traore paused. “The Shaky Snake.”

  “It’s got to have Jolly in the name, or it doesn’t count.”

  “I got nothing.”

  “Oh, wait!” Brady exclaimed. “The Jolly Worm.”

  “Ha!” Traore laughed. “It works because we’re underground.”

  I ducked under the next set of cross members and stood in front of them. “Hey, guys,” I said.

  “Alex!” They both said in unison. They were sitting across from one another in their compartment, knees bumping together. Each held a handful of cards over a mess of poker chips that rattled on a flimsy fold-down table.

  “Glad to see you found a way on board,” Traore said. “We were afraid you weren’t going to make it.”

  “Yeah,” Brady added.

  “All it cost me was a knot on the back of my head,” I said.

  “Redland’s only condition to bringing you on board,” Traore noted. “You had to be unconscious.” He noticed the weapons on my belt. “You goin’ after him?”

  “No,” I said. “I just want to find out what’s going on.”

  “Join the club,” Brady said. “All we were told after we left Celestial City was that there were spies running around. Just like old times, eh?”

  “Not quite,” I said.

  They both looked at me knowingly. “Nobody would blame you if you wanted to settle your score with him,” Brady said, “but now isn’t the time to do it.”

  “Hathan-Fen already gave me the lecture,” I said, holding up my hand to stop them. “Don’t worry. I’m not the grudge type.”

  “Then you’re a better man than me,” Brady said. “Listen, I’ve harbored ill will a few times, and I know the signs. You’ve got guns in your eyes, Alex.”

  “I doubt you know the things I know,” I retorted, maybe a little
too harshly. I eased up before continuing. “Don’t worry. I’m not going to do anything unless he makes it necessary.” And I sure hope he does make it necessary, I thought to myself.

  “It’ll all work out in the end,” Traore reassured me.

  I don’t believe anything works itself out, but I nodded to play along. As I turned to climb to the next compartment, Brady tugged my sleeve.

  “One question,” he said. “The Jolly Worm. Yes or no?”

  “I like it,” I said, and moved on. Everybody’s jolly here, I thought. One big happy family.

  The last five compartments were packed with unmarked crates. I paused to look at one crate where a corner had broken off. A cylinder inside was marked with a label – Epoxy - Faraday compliant - 50kg. I had always been under the impression that epoxy was hard to come by, but lately I’d seen it everywhere. It was another mystery that would have to wait. The main thing on my mind was the large pair of boots protruding from a hole in the bulkhead at the far of the corridor.

  Redland had wedged himself into a crawlway underneath a sap motor that chugged feverishly in its mounts. He shimmied further inside as he hammered against something, cursing vehemently with every metallic impact.

  “It ain’t budgin’!” his muffled voice sounded through the hole. “I told you to retract the damn things!”

  “I tried, sir,” a voice called from a half-open door at the end of the corridor. A scraggly man leaned out, his leathery face an indicator of a long life in the sun. The man looked familiar, though I couldn’t decide where I might have seen him before. What stood out most were his eyes; they were so swollen and bloodshot that I’d be surprised if he weren’t blind. Yet, after he rubbed sweat and grime off his face with a necker, he did a double-take when he saw me. “You must be the extra passenger,” he said.

  “Yes,” I said. I looked past his shoulder and saw a cockpit identical to the one at the other end of the train, except that it had an intact console with two seats built in. Kate sat on one of them, watching the tunnel recede into the distance with the illumination of another spotlight.

  Redland wriggled out of the hatch and looked up at me, noticing first that I had my pistol belt on, and second to see that my hands were empty. He turned to the man. “Try it again.”

  The man turned back into the cockpit and ratcheted a lever back and forth. He returned a moment later. “It didn’t work.”

  “Then it ain’t fixable,” Redland shot back. “What’s our distance?”

  The man read a pair of meters on the cockpit console. “Two hundred kilometers. Speed is still six-fifty.”

  Redland kicked the hull like a mule and pulled himself to a standing position. Since there was little room to navigate in the corridor, especially for two taller-than-average men, he wound up toe to toe with me. I could smell his breath over the sap fumes – that damned jerky he always ate.

  “This train will not slow down enough by air resistance alone,” the man warned, speaking with a peculiar singsong accent. “We’ll still be going over three hundred kph when we reach the station.”

  Redland glared at him. “Unless you wanna be smashed flat at the end of the line, I suggest you think of a way to extend those goddamn struts!” He turned to me. “You here to help or what?”

  I managed to control my instinct to pump Redland’s midsection full of bullets. To the scraggly man, I said, “You the driver?”

  The man nodded. “My name is Rannuk Ofsalle. Yes, I’m the driver. Do you have any experience with trains?”

  “Only a little,” I said, keeping my eyes on Redland.

  “Fix it,” Redland growled at both of us, and contorted himself into the corridor without touching me once. As he crammed his way down the narrow corridor, I could hear him grumbling under his breath. “Never a doctor when you need one. Never an engineer, either. Fuckin’ punk luck.”

  I waited for Redland to get several compartments away before turning back to Ofsalle. “How do you normally stop the train?”

  “This vehicle has a half dozen skids we push against the tunnel wall for braking,” Ofsalle explained. “They aren’t working because we hit a fracture in the tunnel. It bent a few of the struts, so we can’t extend them now.”

  “That’s when the train jumped,” I said.

  “Yes,” Rannuk said. “We ran the tunnel at one-tenth speed a few days ago to check for damage after the magnetic quake. We didn’t see anything that concerned us at the time.” He smiled feebly. “Minor cracks apparently have an exaggerated effect at full speed.”

  “I think that’s to be expected,” I said. “Aren’t you an engineer?”

  “No,” he replied. “I’m a doctor.”

  “Right,” I said. I put on my not-worried-at-all face and examined the sap motor. It was small and leaky, producing the haze that had spread throughout the train. “What if we drag something behind the train to slow us down?” I glanced once down the corridor when I heard Redland swear again and saw that he was having difficulty squeezing through a tight spot between a pair of shock absorbers. I imagined him as the object being dragged.

  “No good,” Ofsalle said. “Except for a pair of small tubes that recycle the air, the hull is sealed. If we open the hatch, the vehicle will destabilize. We will lose consciousness and the train will rattle itself to pieces…not necessarily in that order.”

  “How did you meet Marshal Redland?” I asked.

  “Does it matter?” he replied.

  “It might,” I said.

  He looked at his pocket watch and asked the same question a different way. “Will it matter if we all die?”

  “No,” I said.

  “The longer it takes to think of a solution to our problem, the more extreme it will need to be,” Ofsalle said. “Please keep that in mind.”

  “Point taken,” I said. “You told us we’re slowing because of wind resistance. Do you have a way to contact the station?” I imagined that sealing the tunnel might create enough back pressure in the tunnel to slow us down faster.

  “The station is unmanned,” Ofsalle said. “There’s no way to increase pressure in the tunnel if that’s what you’re after.”

  “What about extending just a few of the skids?” I said. “At least that would help.”

  “Good idea,” he replied, “but they can’t be operated independently. At any rate, we’re nearing the point where we couldn’t use them, anyway.”

  “What got the train moving at this speed in the first place?” I said. “It looks symmetrical at both ends. Can you just reverse whatever you did before?”

  “The train is like a bullet being shot from a gun, except that it uses magnetic accelerators instead of gunpowder,” Ofsalle said. “It’s a more gradual acceleration, of course, but we haven’t figured out how to reverse the process.”

  “You got the train working, though,” I said. “You must have some engineering training.”

  “No,” he replied. “I just read a lot of books.”

  Chapter Sixteen

  It took longer than I’d hoped, but Ofsalle and I came up with a plan. Not a good plan, but one that would stop the train, hopefully without dying. Okay, it was entirely my plan. He simply couldn’t protest his way out of it.

  I made my way down the corridor through the shock absorbers to Brady and Traore, who were still playing cards. “Do these compartments have seat restraints?” I asked.

  “No,” Traore said.

  “Then we’d better get as much padding out of the supply duffels as we can,” I told them. “Use rope to tie yourselves in. We’ve only got a few minutes, so hurry.”

  “Oh, hell,” Traore said. “You’re doing something crazy, aren’t you?”

  “It’s perfectly sane,” I said. “Doing nothing would be crazy.”

  “It’s crazy,” Brady lamented. They both stood and climbed after me through the corridor.

  Redland, Norio, and Hathan-Fen sat in the front cockpit of the train arguing about something when I interrupted them. “We
need to move everybody into the passenger compartments right now.”

  “Why?” Hathan-Fen said.

  “Move quickly,” I said, and turned to help Traore and Brady empty padded jackets from the duffel bags.

  “Answer the question,” Redland growled. He tried to look nonchalant by leaning against the doorframe, but I noticed how his duster had pulled clear of his body and exposed his pistol.

  “Are you really going to turn this into a standoff?” I asked. “Fine. You can stay right where you are,” I said, entirely hoping that he would. “The rest of you need to pack yourselves into the passenger compartments with these.” I tossed a parka to Hathan-Fen.

  Redland glowered at me and pulled his duster shut. “We’ll talk later,” he growled, his tone suggested that talking was the last thing on his mind.

  We moved the padded items into the passenger compartments quickly. I directed everyone to pair up in the seats with their backs toward the front of the train. It took longer than it should have, on account that the train wasn’t designed with freedom of movement in mind. As we squeezed around one another, we eventually settled into a process where gear was passed rearward until enough space opened up for someone to move into a compartment, and then everybody shifted forward. I kept a mental stopwatch going in my head, and we managed to free up enough space in the amount of time I had allotted. Barely.

  As it had turned out, by mere luck of placement, Hathan-Fen and Redland stood together next to the last open compartment. She had been too busy to notice that fact until everyone else had filled the other seats.

  “Hell no,” she shouted at me down the corridor. “I will not sit with Marshal Redland!”

  “We are out of time, Major,” I replied from my spot near the rear cockpit. I could have pointed out that there were no other seats left, but I’m pretty sure she already had that figured out.

  “If Redland touches me, I’m going to kick both your asses,” she warned loudly.

  Redland leaned over one of the shock absorbers by their compartment and spit beef jerky juice onto the floor.