The Last Girl on the Rails - Clash of the Iron Sovereigns

Grease from the primary sander valve hissed against the hot cylinder head with a sound like a skillet catching fire.

Bridget Foxworth didn’t reach for a wrench. Her single right hand hauled back on the main throttle quadrant with a sharp, three-notch jerk, her shoulder digging into the padded leather backrest as The Rust Bastion slammed across the crossover diamonds of Track 05 at sixty-five miles an hour.

Beneath their boots, the floorboards of Carriage 01 gave an ear-splitting, metallic screech that rattled the teeth in Tess’s jaw.

“Track four switch is jammed with slag!” Bridget yelled over the roar of the dimensional reactor, her teeth clamped around a spent wooden match. “We’re taking the high banking on five! Hold your damn balance!”

The train surged into the colosseum.

It was an impossible amphitheater of black basalt and polished white marble, two miles wide from railhead to railhead, open to a dizzying void sky where violet nebulae drifted like smoke over an iron furnace. Ten concentric tracks circled the sand-dusted arena floor, banked at a twenty-degree angle to handle high-speed transit.

Overhead, thousands of high-intensity carbon-arc searchlights mounted to the towering outer buttresses cut blinding white corridors through the drifting coal smoke.

And on every track, steel was screaming.

To their immediate left, roaring along Track 06 on a reverse trajectory, was the Yamato Dreadnought―a three-hundred-foot naval fortress mounted on twelve four-wheel bogies, its sides armored with sloped naval belt-plate salvaged from dry-docked cruisers. Its triplemounted pneumatic cannons were already firing, hurling four-hundred-pound solid steel penetrators into the flank of a German raider rig two lanes over with thunderous, earshattering CRACK-BOOMS that blew chunks of iron plate fifty feet into the air.

To the right, riding Track 04 at ninety miles an hour, was The Silver Falcon―a sleek, titanium-clad passenger locomotive that looked like an artillery shell with windows, spraying blinding violet arcs of electromagnetic static from its roof grids to fry the optical targeting sensors of anything that tried to close the gap.

“Look at the lead engine on lane one!” Arlo Finch shrieked from the base of the roof ladder.

The scrawny kid was holding a fresh crate of armor-piercing ballista bolts in both arms, his oversized canvas overalls spattered with black graphite grease, his rabbit-eyes bulging under his soot-caked forehead.

“That ain’t a locomotive, Chuckles!” Finch hollered, his voice cracking into a high, frantic squeak. “That’s a damn skyscraper on wheels!”

Rumbling down the lowest central lane, dominating the arena floor like an armored leviathan, was The Iron Juggernaut.

The flagship of Sector 01 was ten articulated cars long, painted in a matte charcoal primer that seemed to absorb the glare of the searchlights. Its lead engine was built around a colossal, wedge-shaped battering ram of eight-inch forged manganese steel, reinforced with four hydraulic recoil-pistons the size of telephone poles. Along its side skirts ran heavy, motorized scraper blades designed to shear the wheel flanges off rival trains during closequarters passing maneuvers.

Standing on the open-air command bridge above the Juggernaut’s boiler was its captain.

He was seven feet tall, broad as a draft horse, encased from boots to collar in a massive, pneumatic-assisted suit of dark grey exoskeleton plate. Bolted to his spine was an auxiliary steam boiler that hissed hot white vapor into the freezing air with every breath he took. In his massive, iron-gauntleted right hand, he held an eight-hundred-pound warhammer forged from three locomotive drive-axles welded around a solid block of tool steel, resting the twelve-foot haft across his shoulder as if it were a wooden cane.

Garrick Thorne the Second. Champion of Sector 01. The Warhammer Titan.

He spotted The Rust Bastion banking around the curve of Track 05.

The giant threw his head back, letting out a deep, booming laugh that carried over the roar of the engines through his external bullhorn:

“THE CHUCKLEBOX EXPRESS!” the Titan roared, raising the massive twelve-foot hammer toward the searchlights. “I HEAR YOU’VE GOT EIGHTY THOUSAND COINS AND A GREENHOUSE IN THE BELLY OF THAT BOXCAR! DROP YOUR AIR BRAKES AND UNCOUPLE YOUR TENDER, GIRL, OR I’LL PEEL YOUR SIDING OFF LIKE A SARDINE CAN!”

Tess Caldwell stood at the forward observation portal of Carriage 01, her right hand resting flat against the grip of The Crescent Cleaver, her left hand adjusting the brass collar of the Heart of Clear Sight welded to the periscope housing.

Her face was deadpan. No anger. No witty one-liners.

She looked through the prismatic lens, tracking the glowing red stress lines mapping across the Juggernaut’s forward bogies.

“Bridget,” Tess said, her voice taking on that quiet, rhythmic register that cut through the background roar. “He’s carrying three hundred tons of deadweight on a twenty-degree banking curve. When he cuts across the switch-frog on lane three to line up his ram, his right-side suspension is going to compress by six inches. Hold our line on lane five until he commits to the crossover. The second his lead wheels touch the diamond, drop three bags of track sand and cut forty degrees hard to the inside.”

“Sand’s loaded,” Bridget grunted, her single hand clamping down on the pneumatic sander valve. “Just make sure Ortiz puts a bolt through his steering knuckle before he rams our rear coupler.”

Up on the roof, the heavy dual-axis kinetic ballista turret swung forty-five degrees to the right with a smooth, hydraulic hum.

Gavin Ortiz had his visor flipped down, his leather-gloved hands locked around the twin directional controls, his left eye pressed against the brass optical sighting periscope.

“Arlo, feed the rack!” Gavin yelled down the hatch. “Five-round burst! Don’t let the feed-tray jam on the resin wraps!”

Finch shoved a five-round clip of four-foot, conch-tipped armor-piercing bolts into the automated hydraulic receiver with a frantic CLACK-CHUNK.

“Rack’s hot, Ortiz!” Finch screamed back, coughing on the soot. “Shoot that son of a bitch before he flattens my bunk!”

The Juggernaut made its move.

The ten-car behemoth threw a massive cloud of black coal smoke into the searchlights, its lead cowcatcher veering sharply across the Track 04 switch, heading straight toward The Rust Bastion’s mid-car seam at seventy miles an hour.

THWUMP-THWUMP-THWUMP-THWUMP-THWUMP.

The roof-mounted ballista discharged five times in two seconds.

Five heavy bolts of drop-forged high-carbon tool steel tore through the smoky air at supersonic speed.

The first three bolts struck the Juggernaut’s sloped front ram, sparking violently and deflecting into the sand. But the fourth and fifth bolts, guided by the precision of Gavin’s periscope, punched straight through the exposed hydraulic steering lines behind the right lead drive-wheel.

High-pressure hydraulic fluid sprayed across the Juggernaut’s cowcatcher in a violent, boiling jet, igniting against the wheel friction into a roaring sheet of orange flame.

The Juggernaut’s right-side drive-wheels locked solid.

The three-hundred-ton monster shrieked in mechanical protest, its massive iron nose veering three yards to the right, missing The Rust Bastion’s rear greenhouse by less than eighteen inches.

The sound died into the wet air, and the moment held.

The Juggernaut’s reinforced side-scraper scraped along The Rust Bastion’s newly welded void-plate skirts.

The kinetic impact was monstrous. Inside Carriage 01, three empty tins tumbled off the workbench, water sloshing across the deck, while the suspension springs groaned under the lateral load.

The fluid-gold alloy woven into the hull plates flared with blinding amber brilliance.

The liquid-metal lattice absorbed the multi-ton crushing shock, instantly locking into a diamond-hard crystalline grid that dispersed the kinetic energy across the entire sixty-foot chassis in a deep, musical chime.

The Juggernaut’s six-inch scraper blade shattered into three jagged chunks of mangled iron, tumbling into the drainage ditch with a shower of sparks.

Both trains slid through the curve, their wheels throwing white-hot friction sparks forty feet into the night air before coasting to a halt along the edge of the central arena dais.

The Juggernaut’s lead engine was dead, steam boiling out of its ruptured steering housing, its heavy drive-axle cracked half-through.

A pneumatic hatch on the Juggernaut’s command bridge hissed open.

Garrick Thorne the Second jumped twelve feet down onto the arena sand with a concussive THUD that kicked up a cloud of white quartz dust. His steam-powered exoskeleton hissed, venting hot exhaust from the spinal manifold, his twelve-foot hammer resting across his shoulder like a log.

“CHUCKLES!” the Titan bellowed, his voice shaking the basalt balustrades. “GET OUT OF

THE CAR! LET’S SEE IF YOUR BLADE CAN PUSH THROUGH FOUR HUNDRED POUNDS OF SECTOR ONE STEEL!”

Tess reached behind her right shoulder, unlatched the quick-draw travel harness, and drew The Crescent Cleaver with a sharp, ringing metallic hiss that echoed through the quiet carriage.

Beside her, Lady Elyse Brandt stepped to the door, her willow-thin rapier sheathed within her parasol, her dark eyes flashing with cold, lethal amusement.

“He is loud,” Elyse murmured, reaching into her canvas haversack and pulling out a small, dried cedar sprig.

“Loud men breathe heavy,” Tess said, kicking the pneumatic boarding hatch open. “Elyse, drown the arena. Let’s show this blacksmith what water does to iron.”