If only Otto's own healthtech were so swift.
Sakaday grinned, startling white teeth revealed by lips already losing their swelling. He tossed his knife from hand to hand and crouched. 'But I will be the last.'
Behind Sakaday the Stelsco lit up, flexing on gimballed wheel units as it awoke, the grumble and whine of hardware coming online hidden by the train's clatter. Command permissions flooded Otto's mentaug, handing control to his adjutant, running fast even on old hardware, the beauty of modern aware 'ware, adapting itself to what it found. Otto fused his mind to the machine's. He ran the turret on its roof rail to the front of the Stelsco and tracked it down.
'No, you won't.' Otto selected the upper third of Sakaday's body as a target through the turret eye cams, the reticule system rendered in flat orange in his iHUD.
Remote fire online, confirm target? said the Stelsco's mind in a rush of machine speak.
Sakaday! Kaplinski's warning was a ludicrous drone over the MT.
Confirm, commanded Otto. Otto lifted his hand to protect his eyes as the Stelsco's turret opened fire.
Sakaday was laughing as twin heavy machine guns shredded his right arm, shoulder, head and neck into mince. Bits of him splattered the flatbed like thrown paint. The rest of him was untouched, Otto having targeted those areas that would prevent him from being hit by stray rounds. Sakaday's skull held for a moment before shattering under the pounding bullets. His augmented bones twisted to plastic scrap, leaving a gory mannequin tottering on top of a pair of undamaged legs. For a moment the corpse swayed, impossibly upright.
Sakaday's long knife fell to the floor and stuck quivering in the metal.
His body toppled from the flatbed, snatched away by the rushing landscape.
Kaplinski roared in anger as Chures' bullets slammed into his face. For a second, Chures thought he might have done the cyborg damage, but his head came round and fixed him with a bloody stare. The righthand side of his face was shredded down to black bone, one eye pulped to jelly and fibrous machine parts. His gun ran dry, and he shot out the smoking magazine, reaching smoothly for a fresh one and slamming it home.
'That the best you got, you fucking little dago?' said Kaplinski.
' Madre de Dios,' said Chures, and there was grim acceptance in there. This was not a man he could beat. This was not a man.
Kaplinski's ragged flesh writhed, strips of flesh reached over to one another and pulled tight. Wounds sealed themselves like lips. The cyborg shut his eyes, his distended body pulsed, and he gasped with something akin to pleasure. When he opened his eyes again, both were whole.
Kaplinski forced himself down the corridor, wiping ocular humours and blood from his face. He dragged his swollen bulk through the passage, grasping at doorways, tearing metal and shattering glass to pull himself forward.
'I told Klein that I had been cured by k52,' roared the cyborg as he came on.
Chures put bullets into the cyborg until his gun clicked empty again.
'I didn't tell him what else he has done for me.' Kaplinski loomed over the VIA agent. Chures had read the cyborg's file; he was supposed to be around 1.9m, but he was at least half a metre over that. Impossible.
'Valdaire,' he said, his voice quiet. The train and its racket receded. He remembered another rhythmic noise: hard rain on tattered tents and shelters of sun-bleached plastic. Puerto Penasco. He remembered the man and his sister. He fought only for her to die. No matter what he did, the strong would always destroy the weak. He could only put himself in the way for a while.
He prayed that he had done enough.
'Run,' he said.
Valdaire turned to flee as Kaplinski slammed Chures in the chest with the flat of his palm. The Colombian flew backwards, limbs tangling on her heels, bringing her down. She struggled round. Chures' breath was shallow. Blood leaked from his nostrils. She'd lost her gun, but it would have been no use against the altered Ky-tech. Kaplinski stood over her, malformed and diabolical, features twisted in a mask of pleasure and fury.
'Klein killed one of mine, now I take two of his. Only fair.'
Chloe, she still had Chloe. Her hand hidden under Chures' unconscious body, she surreptitiously keyed her on.
A giant hand descended toward her, encircled her chest and plucked her from the floor. He held her up before his face, nostrils flaring like those of a mad horse.
'How do you want to die, Fraulein?'
'Veronique? Veev? Are we there yet? Why have you activated me? Veev!'
Kaplinski's eyes locked with Valdaire's. He sneered. 'Oh, Fraulein, what can that little thing do to me?'
The door to the rear of the carriage opened. Two Cossacks shouldered their way through. They shouted, opening fire. Another came forward, a bulky tube on his back. It launched a small guided missile. It embedded itself in Kaplinski's flesh. A huge discharge of energy arced through it, following the trail of ionised air from gun to projectile. Valdaire nearly blacked out, her teeth jamming together as her muscles locked. Kaplinski seemed unaffected, and swiped the missile from his side.
'I don't have time for this,' growled the ex-Ky-tech. He squeezed Valdaire in his fist as bullets thwacked into his skin. They were pushed out by his runaway healthtech, the wounds they caused sealing instantly.
'Chloe!' screamed Valdaire. There was barely enough air in her crushed chest to get the words out. She couldn't breathe. For the first time in a long time she found herself praying again that the energy surge from the Cossack's maxi-taser had not destroyed her friend. She remembered the last occasion, in the church of St Germaine in Sakassou, her kneeling before damp plaster effigies. Was her life already flashing before her? For a moment she sat there in the past, in the damp coolness of the church, hoping it would be alright and that the shouting and screams outside wouldn't find their way into the church, and then a rib creaked and she was back in the present, confronted with another horror. Blackness limned the edge of her awareness. 'Kitty Claw! Kitty Claw!' she gasped.
Valdaire had no idea if the programme, one she'd designed to shut off intrusive AIs, would work on the cyborg's built-in software. All of them carried an advanced near-I adjutant, a military version of a helper valet. Without the adjutant, the efficiency of their systems was severely compromised. She hoped to God that Kitty Claw would engage it and shut it down.
It did better than she'd hoped. Kaplinski locked rigid. She gasped and wriggled, trying to prise herself free of Kaplinski's grip.
The Cossacks came forward and tugged at the cyborg's fingers, eventually managing to free Valdaire. She fell to the floor, gasping. The Cossacks levelled their guns at her.
She waved them away. 'My friend,' she said, pulling Chures into her arms, 'please, help him.'
Otto scrambled toward the Stelsco, its doors folding up and backwards in greeting. He clambered into the pilot's station, buried deep in the thing's nose, and spread his adjutant throughout its systems, bringing it all online.
He threw the Stelsco's wheel units into reverse, burning rubber to match the train's speed. He disengaged the clamps, and it flew backwards, hitting the ground with an impact that made his teeth clack. The car fishtailed madly as it sped backwards alongside the train, skidding along the slope of the embankment where the line crossed a bog. He slammed the right side wheels off, spinning the car round. The train appeared to leap forward like a stag pursued by a hound as the car ground to an immediate halt. The barracks car whipped past, and he saw Lehmann struggling hand-to-hand with two Cossacks atop it.
He looked through Lehmann's eyes. Stop playing with them now, Lehmann, we're getting out of here.
Affirmative, thought Lehmann back.
The electric crack of a stun pistol discharging came to Otto via Lehmann. A Cossack tumbled from the roof, his sabre clattering to the deck. It looked like they weren't going to be able to do this without killing some of the good guys.
Ballast sprayed as the Stelsco's wheels found traction on the embankment and hurtled forward, Otto heading for Chures' and Valdaire's last known location.
Otto ran the Stelsco up to 174kph, marginally faster than the train. Sparse woodland blurred by. He let the machine's onboard systems take over the driving while he scanned the train's windows for Valdaire and Chures. Most of the carriages showed signs of conflict: cracked windows or sprays of blood.
There. He could see two Cossacks pointing their guns down at something. It looked like a prone man and a
