Glancing into the scratched aluminium mirror behind the bar, I catch Peg’s gaze and jerk my head, before making my way outside.
There, I almost run into a shabby figure, with a pipe in their mouth.
‘Silas!’
For a second, he stares in confusion, before his eyes widen. ‘Ten!’ He grabs me in a hug. ‘My god, we had almost given up.’
‘Careful,’ I say, pulling him out of sight around the corner. ‘Folk are meant to think I have the rot.’
* * *
Falco and Peg soon appear, holding an open tin of peaches and a bottle of benzene. With them are two other G’hals, both weary and travel-stained.
‘Gotta hand it to you, Doc.’ Falco smirks. ‘That’s some disguise.’ She motions the G’hals forwards. ‘Rat you know, and this is Bui. They’ve been running a protection racket at Las Cruces. We managed to get them on the tangle.’
They nod at me. I remember Rat from Falco’s bar; she’s hard to miss, a muscular woman with bright red hair and sun-pinked face tattooed with stars and swirls, covering up the three dots, one at her temple. Bui by contrast is small and slight. She eyes me suspiciously, wiping at her cheeks with the end of the dyed scarf she wears over her hair.
‘The General?’ I ask.
Silas sighs. ‘That thing was already on the tracks when we arrived. We’ve been watching, but if Gabi is here, she must already be on board.’
‘She has to be,’ Peg says. ‘Soldiers out there are Air Fleet. Never seen them out here, before. Someone high up is behind this.’
It comes back to me; Commander Aline’s face on the screen as she coolly ordered the General’s termination, the General’s expression as she looked her superior officer in the eye and blew out the camera, as if it were her brains. The back of my neck prickles.
Bui frowns. ‘If those soldiers are so flash, why isn’t the kid already dead?’
‘She is a General,’ I point out. ‘Maybe they don’t have the clearance level to do it. Either way, we need to get her off that thing.’
Falco says nothing. Thoughtfully, she fishes a slice of peach from the tin and eats it. ‘What’s in it for us?’
‘How about the fact rescuing the child is the right thing to do?’ Silas demands.
‘You haven’t been on Factus long enough, flyboy. If you had, you’d realise that everything has a price.’
I sigh, bone-weary. ‘I have nothing to pay you with, Mala.’
But Falco smiles slyly, her eye narrowed at the rail tracks, where the Iron Slug waits.
‘How many Air Line shipments would you say we’ve waylaid over the years, Peg?’ she asks.
The G’hal shrugs. ‘Fair few.’
‘And how much is top-class Accord tech going for on the market these days?’
Rat grins, showing bright blue fibreglass teeth. ‘Heard on the tangle that businesses on Delos are desperate for components.’
‘Bet that Slug has all the latest modules and boards. If it were to somehow become decoupled…’
‘What about the security?’ Silas asks, serious. ‘Those Air Fleet grunts are no joke.’
‘Only as good as their fancy peashooters,’ Bui says, flicking some dirt from her rifle.
Falco takes a long swig of benzene. ‘G’hals,’ she says. ‘Saddle up.’
* * *
Beams of light streak my face, grit-laden air buffets through the thin gap that serves as a window in the side of the carriage. A prime spot this, away from the stink of the passenger cars. So far no one has dared asked me to move, cringing away from my bandaged face. Even the soldiers did not want to look too closely at me while boarding, not after I started to cough on them; they let me pass with a disgusted flick of the hand.
I take a scrappy piece of paper from my pocket and peer out of the window. A squat weather-eaten boulder is sliding past. Toad rock, Falco has scrawled on the hand-drawn map. Just past it, hatched in ink, is what I’m looking for. Shade’s Gulch. According to Falco it’s a long, narrow canyon, deep and shadowed enough to hide any activity from the satellites that might be tracking the Air Line from above.
My shoulder gives a sullen throb. I reach into the Marshal’s coat for the small canister of oxygen Falco was able to score in Drax, and fill my lungs with a few deep breaths. I follow it up with two beads at once. I’m in a bad way, my shoulder burning and head aching, my whole body battered and sore.
It will have to be enough. As the rock slides out of view, I reach for the pistol hidden in my pocket. This is it. I close my eyes, knowing that somewhere, beyond the terraform, in the cells of my blood, they are waiting. I step forwards and shove open the wagon door.
Desert air blasts my face, sending the bandages flapping.
‘Hey,’ the shotgunner yells as I step out. ‘You can’t—’
I grasp his padded armour and spin, throwing him from the train. He’s whisked away with a shriek, the shotgun clattering from his grip. The wound in my shoulder tugs as I seize the gun and arm it.
A second later the Air Line plunges into cold, ochre shadow. We’re in the canyon.
Ahead of me, a guard carriage rattles and sways and after it, last of all, comes the Iron Slug.
The noise of the train echoes against the canyon walls, rebounding so that the world seems full of beating wings. But beneath that noise is another sound, a many-throated growl that grows louder until, with a roar, two G’hal mares burst over the ridge of the canyon, skidding down a steep path to race behind the train. The riders scream a battle cry.
I answer it, amphetamine smacking through my blood, making me forget the pain. Rat and Bui draw level with the guard wagon, screaming insults, pelting the sides with rocks and bags of the foul paste they mixed up back in Drax: grit and excrement and glue that explodes on the wagon’s sides and coats the external
