Somnus V - Chapter 23

Kat stood at the train station, a metal box full of parts in her hand. A pace to her right, Whippoorwill was sulking. Her hair was dyed chestnut, and rather than her usual cheap t-shirt and jeans, she was wearing heavy blue overalls, just like Kat.

 “Most people’s girlfriends take them to fancy restaurants or ballroom dancing when they go on dates,” Whip said, the fake face granted to her by Mirage barely moving as she spoke. Kat winced. It was hard to sync mouths with words when someone spoke. Actually matching facial expressions was all but impossible at her current level.

 “Would you even want to go ballroom dancing?” Kat asked, her hearing picking up the whining thrum of the rapidly approaching maglev. “Plus, I’ve seen how uncomfortable you get when we go to restaurants. I don’t think either of us appreciate having all of those eyes on us when we buy out a whole floor to appease Heather.”

 “Maybe I would enjoy it,” Whip said grumpily. “I haven’t tried ballroom dancing yet. For all I know, I’d love it.”

 “This is about your hair isn’t it?” Kat asked. When Whippoorwill didn’t reply, she continued. “I told you that I’m sorry about that. It’s just that pink is too noticeable and it’s really hard to layer Mirage over something with as many individual parts as hair and have it look real.”

 “You’re going to help me dye it back,” Whippoorwill replied. “To the exact right shade too. That could take a dozen tries.”

 Kat didn’t even try to fight, she reached up, putting her spare hand on Whippoorwill’s shoulder as the maglev train whirred to a stop in front of them.

 “Of course,” she relented. “I think your hair is cute when it’s pink.”

 Whippoorwill blushed underneath the Mirage, and Kat felt a rush of warmth in her chest. Whip put on a big show of being upset and cranky all the time, but Kat knew better. That was just Whippoorwill’s way of showing affection. A frustrating and annoying love language to be sure, but it only made it more fun to tease her.

 “Not that you don’t look cute with brown hair and work overalls,” Kat continued, winking at Whip. “Want to make out in the bathroom before we start the actual mission? We can make a little game out of it. Pretend to be strangers that met up on the platform or something.”

 This time Whippoorwill didn’t blush. She turned bright red. Even if she was capable of responding, the rain doors opened too quickly revealing a slightly overweight middle aged man with heavy bags under his eyes. He looked them up and down and grunted.

 “You two the mechanics?” Kat wasn’t sure if the question sounded more bored or tired. “The electronics and brakes have been on the fritz for days. It took the higher ups a while to find a short notice crew that could do repairs while we were underway.”

 “That’s us,” Kat replied, slapping the top of her tool case with her spare hand. “Tell me, what are we looking at?”

 “I don’t know,” the man said with an exhausted sigh. “I can handle the general maintenance but I’m not a specialist. All I know is that the system is broken. Makes stops jerky as a junkie on a five day binge.”

 “Well,” He cocked his head to the side. “What are you waiting for, an invitation from the chief engineer himself? Get on the train. We’ve only got one car we’re detaching here, and then it’s off to the East Coast. Higher ups will have my head if we delay the schedule just because the three of us are sitting around jawing.”

 The man turned and started walking back into the train, making room for the two of them as he began walking toward the vehicle’s rear.

 “Name’s Harris by the way,” he said with a grunt. “Maintenance tech first class Harris Samson. Whatever that’s supposed to mean. Best I can tell, all the promotion has gotten me is less sleep and more headaches.”

 “Karen,” Kat offered, not bothering to reach out for a handshake. Harris wasn’t even looking back at her, “and my friend Whitney is the electronics specialist.”

 Harris grunted. Apparently, the man didn’t even have the energy left to form full words. They walked together in silence for a couple of minutes, passing through a couple cargo cars and a sleeping cabin for train staff. Finally, they reached the rear car of the train just as it whirred into motion. Above them the lights flickered uncertainly and dimmed, drawing another unhappy sigh from Harris.

 “Here we are,” He said, motioning toward a wall covered in machinery. “The rear breaking mechanism and electronic suite. Hopefully the two of you can figure out what’s wrong with it all before we reach New York. If not, you should be ready for a rough stop.”

 “Anyway,” Harris replied, turning to look at them one last time with bleary eyes. “I’ve been barely managing three hours of sleep a night with how everything has been going wrong. I’ll leave the two of you to your work. I’m going to try to take a nap. Let me know if you aren’t going to get the brakes done on time. I’d like a heads up that I have to strap myself in if possible.”

 Kat set down her tool kit, pulling out something called an electrosocketer. Heather had forced her to memorize some of the tool’s specifications just in case the two of them were questioned, but beyond the basics, she didn’t have a clue how to use the thing.

 Instead, she leaned forward, fiddling with some of the machinery as Whippoorwill unspooled a cable from the back of her head, taking a cross legged seat as she logged in to the system. Kat glanced up at the flickering lights, mentally going over her map of the train as she pretended to fiddle with what looked like the brake mechanism.

 Four of the five cars had isotopes in them, all bound for the ports of Newest Jersey where they would be loaded onto ships for transport to VodCom. As soon as they hit Britannia, the crates of rare isotopes were as good as gone, and that wouldn’t be any fun at all.

 Silently she counted down, feeling a bit ridiculous as she pretended to work. On average, it took the train about five minutes to clear St. Louis city limits. They couldn’t make their move until then, but the two of them would have a narrow window to act once the train cleared the city. After all, it wasn’t like the two of them were going to carry all of the cargo out on their own. They needed to be in range for backup to arrive, and even the fastest cars were like tortoises next to the high speed maglev.

 Finally, Whippoorwill opened her eyes. A second later, Kat had her Mirage follow suit.

 “We’re clear to separate,” Whip’s voice was a little distant, her mind still buried under layers of data and electronic interference.

 Kat opened up her toolbox, rustling around a bit before she grabbed a pair of face masks and handguns. She tossed a mask to Whip before digging back in for a second and finding her knife.

 Whippoorwill looked back at her, and Kat nodded. The two of them slipped the masks on, causing a ripple in their Mirages but otherwise not actually changing their appearances as the illusion layered itself over the fabric.

 “Buckle in,” Whippoorwill said. “Five seconds to separation.”

 Kat quickly slipped her knife into its sheath and snagged the two guns as she sat down. She reached up with her left hand, grabbing hold of some kind of handle on the machine bank. Evidently it was for activating some vital piece of equipment, but Kat put it to more vital use.

 The lights flickered around them. Someone not paying attention might have mistaken it for a power fluctuation.

 Then, the rear seven cars of the train separated a fraction of a second before the magnets that kept them aloft on the maglev tracks simply shut off.

 The entire train screamed, tortured metal bending and shearing as the cars plowed into the rail line with enough force to rip through the tracks. Kat’s toolbox shot forward, hitting the far wall with enough force to dent the steel cabin as it shattered.

 She held on for dear life, increasing both Whippoorwill and her personal gravity to try and stop them from being thrown around like a leaf in a hurricane. Kat jerked forward, the handle almost yanking her arm out of its socket.

 The joint held, but barely. Kat felt agony blossom from her shoulder as the train ground to a halt. She winced in pain, bouncing up to her feet as she began to mumble the words to Cure Wounds II.

 A second later, the golden glow silenced her screaming nerve endings, and she turned back to see Whippoorwill standing up as she disengaged her hook up from the now smoking computer bank. Kat flipped over one of the guns in her hand, presenting it grip first to Whippoorwill.

 With a twitch of will, Kat dismissed both of their Mirages, revealing the featureless masks that they were wearing underneath.

 “Ready?” Kat asked, nodding at Whippoorwill. Her girlfriend nodded back.

 “Then call for extraction,” She said, turning her attention back to the door to the sleeping cabin. “I’ll eliminate train security by the time they arrive.”

 Kat nodded, thumbing the selector on her pistol to fragmentation. The gun wasn’t as good as the fancier stuff they had back in the lab that was all stallesp hybrid tech. That would give the game away a little too easily. Instead, she was using a high end civilian model that GroCorp sold for exorbitant prices. It didn’t have any of the magnetic coils that made pulsar derivatives so deadly, but the gunpowder had been replaced by a high tech composite that packed a lot more power.

 More importantly, the new explosive was used in the bullets themselves, providing a much more interesting alternative to hollow points. After all, who didn’t want to literally blow their target up from inside with miniature bombs? Less fun were the penetrating rounds that used the same explosive to ram a thin spike of metal through their target’s body armor. Each magazine carried twelve of both, letting the shooter toggle between their ammunition of choice.

 She took a deep breath as she approached the door. In the next car over Kat could hear workers and guards shouting to each other, still too disoriented and injured from the crash to realize that something was happening.

 Kat mumbled the words to Arcane Armor, waiting until she felt the familiar tingle from the spell settling into her clothing before she reached for the door. Gravity Plane appeared in front of her, mixing with Kat’s domain to shunt anything approaching her from the front to the right or left, hopefully with enough force to deflect a bullet.

 For a second, Kat’s hand rested on the electronic keypad that Harris had used to get in and out of the room. She felt a little bad for the man. He’d just been doing his job. Getting caught up in all of this was hardly fair to him.

 Still, there wasn’t a whole lot that was fair about the world.

 Kat’s finger pressed the green ‘open door’ button. It responded with a shriek of tortured metal, the door’s motors struggle to pull the warped and bent chunk of steel back into its housing.

 Every head in the room had turned to look at the doorway, eyes widening when they saw Kat’s masked form standing there. Someone shouted.

 The element of surprise long gone, Kat tossed a Dazzle into the room, blinding the confused guards for a fraction of a second as she opened fire. Only two of the guards were wearing armor, thin kevlar with plating in the arms, legs, and knees to protect them from falls or scrapes. None of them were prepared for the volley of bullets that filled their car.

 Her first shot caught a tall, skinny man in the chest. The t-shirt and shorts he had been sleeping in didn’t even slow the bullet down. His sternum exploded, leaving a hole the size of a large man’s fist.

 Before Kat’s first target could begin to fall, she was firing again. She snapped a shot at a woman in a reinforced shirt, not bothering to register her target’s shoulder exploding as she began tracking another target.

A man dove into a bunk bed, fumbling for something blindly for something under a pillow. Kat put a pair of bullets into his back, putting the man down before he could draw a weapon of his own. Near the other end of the car, a woman in full light armor reeled into the open, one hand rubbing at her face and eyes while the other struggled to unclasp the holster at her hip.

Kat didn’t give her a chance. Her first snapshot was a bit high, the explosive bullet denting the wall above her target’s right shoulder. The second caught the woman square in the chest, sending the security officer tumbling backwards.

She ducked back behind the door a half second before return fire clanked against the heavy steel of the cabin wall. Inside the train car, the security guards were still shouting, but the situation seemed to be much more under control as the surprise of the crash and Kat’s sudden attack was beginning to wear off.

“Whitney!” Kat yelled, peeking around the corner to fire another pair of shots at a man that was pulling a locker of some sort from the wall to use as cover. Neither shot hit, but her target abandoned his task, diving to the ground.

Kat darted back under cover. One bullet whined past, deflected slightly by her Gravity Plane, while the rest pounded into the heavy steel that separated her car from the sleeper carriage.

Whippoorwill opened fire from a prone position. None of the defenders had noticed the Whip. Between the train crash and the flurry of bullets from Kat, it was hard for them to make sense of what was happening right under their noses, let alone what was happening on the floor in the other room.

Unlike Kat, Whippoorwill had a knack for shooting. Two shots finished off two men. The first detonated deep in a guard’s throat, killing him instantly. The second hit a man in the chest, wounding him grievously even as it knocked him from his feet.

Before the remaining handful of defenders could make sense of the second attack, Kat leaned back out into the open, thumbing her handgun’s selector to armor piercing rounds in order to increase the size of her magazine.

She rained bullets down on the room. The armor piercing rounds didn’t ricochet, instead driving needles of ultra compact steel into the walls of the cabin, but it was enough to drive the guards back under cover.

Whippoorwill popped up into a low crouch, sprinting past Kat and throwing herself behind one of the equipment lockers in the next room. Kat fired three final shots, emptying the armor piercing half of her magazine before ducking back under cover.

The gun was hot to the touch in her hand and, despite herself, Kat’s heart was racing. She smiled behind her mask. Inside the room, Whip fired a pair of shots, drawing a scream from her target as she took another guard down.

Someone started yelling for backup, and Kat honed in on the sound like a bloodhound, Stepping into the open and popping two fragmentation rounds into the guard crouching behind one of the bunks.

Then, the room was silent except for the creak of bent metal as the car settled into position. Kat’s eyes flickered around the room. Two of the guards were still breathing, but they were both bleeding heavily and neither seemed to be conscious.

She couldn’t find Harris. Part of Kat hoped that the man hadn’t been on the final cars of the train when they executed their attack. He hadn’t deserved

No one answered the final guard’s plea for help. Thanks to Whippoorwill, no one had heard it. She’d cut communication lines long before turning off the maglev’s suspension, and the plan called for her to spoof the electronics on the rest of the train. As far as the conductor was concerned, the rear section was still there. In all likelihood it would take fifteen minutes to an hour before anyone figured out that the cargo cars were gone.

Kat stepped into the room, sweeping the beds and equipment lockers with her gun while her hearing tried to pick up even the faintest sounds of life. She fired a quick shot into both of the unconscious guards before ejecting her magazine and slotting a new one into place with a loud click.

 “Clear,” she called out, reaching down to grab and stow the magazine. The two of them were already leaving a bit more evidence than she’d like for investigators, but that wasn’t any reason to hand out free identifying information.

“Baker says they’re about four minutes out,” Whippoorwill replied. “We should get into the next car and start identifying the crates we need. From the time the 3445 arrives we’ll have about twenty five minutes. That’s not a lot to unload the train and set the incendiary charges, so we’ll need-”

The door to the cargo cars opened, revealing Harris. There were still bags under his eyes, but a cruel glint had replaced their former sleepiness.

“Erinyes,” he snarled, drawing a gun with inhuman speed.

Kat fired first. As fast as Harris was, she was faster and her gun was already in hand. Her pistol bucked twice as she shot a pair of bullets before her opponent’s weapon managed to clear his hip.

Both of them hit a wall of ice that appeared out of thin air between them, shattering dinner plate sized holes into the wall of frozen water.

Then, the ice barrier disappeared, revealing an untouched Harris pointing his gun directly at her head. He pulled the trigger and time seemed to grind to a halt.

Seventeen in reaction meant that Kat could see the bullet, barely. It was like watching a baseball pitcher launch a fastball, giving her only a thin sliver of a heartbeat to react.

She angled her head to the side, watching the bullet curve to the right under the force of Gravity Plane and her Domain just enough to kiss her cheek, cutting through her mask but barely missing the skin underneath.

Behind her, Whip screamed, firing a pair of bullets just past Kat. One missed, deflected by the same gravity that had just saved Kat’s life. The second hit Harris in the gut, shredding the man’s work overalls and sending him staggering backward.

Kat dropped a Dazzle on him before he could regain his footing, firing three shots into his torso, easily knocking him onto his back.

 She took a step forward, gun still trained on Harris. He groaned, rolling over onto his side. Kat fired two more shots only for a dome of ice to appear around him. It shattered after the first bullet, but the second only hit the metal, carpeted floor of the train car.

 Harris was already on his feet, half concealed behind a large metal cylinder filled with what appeared to be heavy hydrogen. Her gun tracked toward the man, but she didn’t fire yet. Kat spent a lot of time at the range but that didn’t mean she was a sharp shooter, and getting in a gunfight with someone hiding behind a high pressure storage tank full of explosives wasn’t exactly on her list of favorite activities.

 “What do you say Erinyes,” Harris called out. His voice was different. Feminine. “This would be a lot more fun if we both threw down our guns. I know you like to play with knives. I would be happy to indulge you.”

 “I could just crush you with gravity magic from here,” Kat said back, her piston not even wavering. “Just surrender. You’re wounded and outnumbered. I’m only here for the cargo.”

 “I’m only wounded emotionally,” Harris replied, stepping out into the open, his gun in his left hand pointed directly at the hydrogen tank. “Here I thought we had some sort of connection, and you say you’re only interested in your precious cargo. Well, Erinyes, you might not be here for me, but I’m certainly here for you.”

 Belatedly, Kat realized that Kat’s overalls were covering some sort of purple ceramic plating that peaked through the holes Whip and her had blown in it. The armor itself had scratches and blemishes from the explosions, but there didn’t appear to be any real damage.

 He reached up, hooking his fingers into a seam in his skin right around where his neck met his collarbone. With one quick tug, he yanked upward, ripping off a rubbery prosthetic face and tossing it to the side casually.

 Kat’s heart thumped in her chest as she took in a very familiar feminine face, topped with a mop of blue hair.

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