“Simple geometry. As we hit the apex of the turn, the angle will bring us closer to them.”
“Fuck my luck.”
“Succinctly put. Hang on. This is going to get bumpy.”
It did indeed get bumpy, so much so that Mal had to cling onto the headrest of the driving seat in order to keep her balance. The screeching was deafening. Several times it seemed as though the train was going to tear free of the track. She could feel it twisting against itself, inner torque juddering mightily through it.
And then, halfway through the turn, as Reston had predicted, the Serpents opened fire. Their train was just hitting the bend. They had a chance and they didn’t squander it.
Bolts arced across from their train to the one Mal and Reston were in. The Serpents had time to loose off only one shot apiece, four shots in all.
All four came close, strafing, blitzing, simultaneously, blindingly.
One made contact.
Fortunately, the bolt struck the end of the train, nowhere near the drive mechanism — the power cells and neg-mass exciter — which was located in the middle, beneath the passengers’ feet. Damage was done, but not instantaneously catastrophic damage. The train’s tail end exploded outwards, shards of metal caroming and ricocheting back along the track. Mal was thrown to the floor. She got up to find the train didn’t have a back any more, just a jagged gap that looked as though a shark had chewed a whole section of bodywork off. The rearmost bank of seats was bent up at a crazy angle. Smoke trailed behind them.
But they were still going. The train was making terrible noises, a ragged-edged keen of protest, but it was still moving forwards and didn’t appear to have lost much in the way of momentum. Coming out of the curve, Reston nudged the throttle back up to 7, and the train jerkily responded. He tried 8, and the noises worsened but there was a further hike in speed nonetheless.
They entered another straight section.
“Do you have any idea where we’re going?” Mal said, shouting to make herself heard above the train’s caterwauling.
“Does it matter, as long as it’s away from Tlanextic?”
“I mean, do you have a plan? Or are we just going to tour round Tenochtitlan for the rest of the day until we get bored?”
“South,” said Reston. “We head south. The harbour end of the island. Steal a boat there and make for shore.”
“That’s it?”
“I’m open to other suggestions, inspector.”
She had none.
They hurtled on, the ruined, screeching train drawing curious looks from everyone it passed by. A junction loomed, and a light on the control console flashed and a buzzer beeped.
“It’s asking if we want to switch direction,” Mal said.
“The points are set for straight ahead, but left looks southbound to me. Let’s take it.” Reston jabbed the button beside the light. A segment of the track slid ponderously leftward, and the train, complaining, transferred onto the new course. “Hope that was right decision.”
Tlanextic’s train also made the interchange, much more smoothly, and Mal could see that it was gaining on theirs, incrementally but remorselessly. She could see on the Serpent Warriors’ faces — Tlanextic’s in particular — a growing sense of triumph. They were holding fire with their l-guns, but only because they were waiting for the moment when her and Reston’s train became an unmissable, point-blank target. It wouldn’t be long now.
She had to slow the Serpents down somehow, if possible stop them altogether.
The displaced bank of seats gave her an idea. She made her way along the train to them.
“What are you doing?” Reston wanted to know.
“Trying to help. Just keep driving.”
The seats had been wrenched almost completely free from their mounting. Only a couple of screws still moored them in place. One of the screws was sheared nearly all the way through and Mal was able to snap it with a good, hard kick. The other, however, was more or less intact. She didn’t have a screwdriver on her but she did have her trusty macuahitl. She inserted the edge of the blade under the screw’s head and began levering. She squatted down and gave it all she’d got, heaving on the sword handle, using every ounce of strength in her shoulders and thighs. It seemed that the screw would never budge. Her muscles would give, or her macuahitl would, before it did.
Then there was an abrupt sharp creak of progress. The screw squeezed up a few millimetres from its socket, and the seats jiggled that little bit more freely. Encouraged, Mal redoubled her efforts.
“Get a move on, Vaughn,” Reston said. He could see what she was up to but also how close the Serpents were getting. “Put your back into it.”
“Could you…” Mal gasped through clenched teeth, “kindly… just do your thing… and leave me… the fuck alone… to do mine?”
At last, with a sudden grinding surrender, the screw came out. The bank of seats stood rattling loose on the floor of the train.
Mal had been intending to pick up the seats and lob them at the train behind with as much accuracy as she could manage. At the very least the sight of a bank of seats hurtling towards him would cause the driver to apply the brakes, and if she got lucky the thing might get jammed between train and rail, forcing the Serpents to halt, maybe even causing a crash.
Just then, however, one of the Serpents chose to fire an exploratory shot, to see if the fugitives’ train was near enough yet. It wasn’t. The bolt fell short. But only by a foot or so. A few more seconds and even that slender margin of safety would be eroded.
There wasn’t time for anything elegant. Mal settled for booting the seats off the back of the train.
They cartwheeled down the track towards the oncoming Serpents. Tlanextic yelled out a warning and everybody ducked. The seats failed to become wedged beneath the train; instead, they collided with the windshield, which shattered in a sparkling shower of glass shards that sprayed over the five Serpents and the driver. The seats then spun on past the train, landing behind and careering off, a mangle of tubular steel and plastic padding, through the windows of an adjacent tower.
“Nice try,” Reston commented.
“Worth a shot,” Mal said, as the driver of the other train popped his head up again and so did the Serpent Warriors, all of them shaking glass fragments out of their clothes.
“Uh-oh,” Reston then said.
“Oh, what now?”
“Look.”
“Bugger.”
Dead ahead, there was a third train. It was trundling along at a leisurely pace, empty apart from a driver who seemed in no hurry to get anywhere and was blissfully unaware of the two trains barrelling up from behind. He was just idling along from platform to platform like a cabbie cruising for his next fare.
“Does this thing have a horn?” Reston said.
“Racket we’re making, it’s a wonder he hasn’t heard us already,” said Mal. “Oi!” she shouted at the top of her lungs. “Dickhead! Shift yourself! Unless you want to get rammed.”
The driver in front turned and his eyes went saucer wide. He scrabbled to push the throttle forward, and his train started to speed up.
Their train was still zeroing in on his, though, and fast. Reston didn’t dare ease off, not with the Serpents breathing down their necks. A shunt was unavoidable.
“Brace yourself,” he told Mal.
Their train rear-ended the one in front. At that point, Newtonian physics took over. The front train, boosted from behind, jetted forward at even greater speed. The driver let out a squawk of terror, clinging to his control console for dear life.
Mal and Reston’s train, meanwhile, its nose now a crumpled mess, was brought almost to a standstill by the impact. The Serpent train continued rocketing towards it as rapidly as ever. The driver of the latter hit the brakes, but there wasn’t enough time.
