One minute later a wrecked tank engine pulled into the station, steam leaking from a ruptured cooling valve at the back. The cabin hatch was welded over with a patch but the cargo doors opened when they drew level with Kadiatu.
She looked up at the indicator hologram.
'STRAIGHT TO HELL'.
'Been there,' said Kadiatu as she climbed aboard, 'done that.'
Acturus Terminal (Stunnel Terminus)
The scariest thing was that Blondie could see right through the side of the black train. Through its semi-transparent bulkhead he could make out the shadowy form of dozens of cake monsters curled up on tiers inside.
Old Sam's cut-off hadn't worked, the Central Line gateway had stayed open and the black train had come screaming into the station. No one had a chance to ask Old Sam what had gone wrong because the train had ploughed into the barricades. Blondie didn't see it, but he thought Lambada and Credit Card might have jumped clear in time.
Almost before it stopped the train started to derez, patches of transparency racing across the hull like oil slicks over water. Inside the train the cake monsters were squirming, struggling to get free of the rapidly disintegrating train.
Blondie saw Johny Ray's sweaty face in his mind's eye, freezing up under the violet skies of Mars. Not me, thought Blondie, I ain't no Johny Ray, I'm not the grunt that can't. He snapped the pulse rifle around and emptied a clip into the side of the train.
The bullets ripped through the degenerating hull and exploded amongst the squirming cake monsters, bright flashes throwing up gouts of red and blue.
As if opening fire was a signal Blondie heard the snap of Old Sam's drones as they detached themselves from the ceiling and the drill sound as they opened up with their miniguns. The roof of the black train was swallowed up in a ripple of yellow explosions, the whole top tier of cake monsters underneath simply disintegrating.
Black greasy smoke boiled upwards and spread across the ceiling. Blondie stopped firing and fumbled for his respirator with his left hand, trying to get it settled over his mouth.
The first shot came out of the smoke and slammed into his chest, knocking him on to his back. The second shot ripped the air over his head. He fired wildly back, the recoil hurting his arms and pushing him along the floor. A wave of grey smoke was rolling over him and through it Blondie could see shadows stalking towards him.
He stayed on his back and changed the rifle clip just in time to shoot a cake monster in the chest as it loomed over him. Then another one running in from his left. Blondie wanted to get up, didn't want to be caught on his back but the cake monsters kept on coming. His world was narrowing down to a one-metre circle of visibility, the shudder of the rifle in his hands and the shapes that came out of the smoke.
A dull roar made Blondie look upwards. Above him an explosion created a bubble of flame in the smoke. He could see half a drone silhouetted by the light. The burning drone seemed to grow larger at an astonishing rate. There was a prickling heat sensation on the exposed skin of his face.
Blondie threw himself to the side, rolling away as the twisted wreck crashed into the floor. A severed manipulator arm gouged a groove just in front of his face and shrapnel clattered off the armour on his back. He felt something take the skin off the back of his left hand.
That was one of Old Sam's, thought Blondie. They shot down one of Old Sam's drones. What are these things?
He realized that he'd lost the pulse rifle and climbed to his knees to look for it but it was useless. The station was completely filled with smoke. To his right the burning drone was a flickering glow; occasionally shadows would flick in front of it. He could hear shots and bangs around him but nothing seemed that close.
Ahead he saw a spinning bronze disk shining through the smoke: the Stunnel gateway. Crouching low to avoid stray bullets Blondie worked his way towards it. That's what they were supposed to be defending.
He came across the X by accident, stumbling over something soft hidden in the smoke. It was formed out of two strips of fluorescent yellow gaffa tape stuck to the floor. It was right in front of the gateway and about five metres out.
Blondie wondered what it was for.
Central Line
The Doctor had a sinking feeling that Kadiatu might be right. At least about the mechanics of freesurfing and the inadvisability of riding a board alone.
The mental discipline wasn't hard, he adapted an old Gallifreyan flying mantra. The trick was in anticipating the gateways, riding the energy wave front as the board broke through the interface. It wasn't that different from sea surfing. The Doctor wished he'd paid attention when he'd been on that Australian beach.
The problem was that the Doctor had just realized what the second person on a freesurfing board did. They ran a contra-mantra to set up feedback harmonies at the emerging tunnel gateway. In short, the second person handled the brakes.
The Doctor estimated that he'd been doing sixty kilometres per hour at the last station. Gaining five kilometres an hour with every stretch of tunnel.
He hoped there was something soft at Acturus Terminal for him to run into, but he wasn't overly optimistic.
The Doctor wasn't happy with his performance so far. Outmanoeuvred, out-thought, shot at, abused and insulted by an enemy which was largely ignoring him. Getting drunk in a dockside taverna in Greece hadn't exactly been a brainwave either.
Too many distractions, he thought, too much introspection and much too much ouzo.
What was on the other side of the gateway?
Life didn't need to think, life was just a coherent pattern in the environment, any environment. The Doctor could imagine an environment that was formed entirely out of interstitial pathways connected to nodes. An infinity of interconnected junctions like the hardwiring of a neural network. Life could evolve there, because life made up its own rules as it went along and never knew when to stop.
It would have to be in another dimension where the rules were different. There was a long complex formula for determining just how far off base reality a dimension was but the Doctor didn't need to do it. The dimension would have to be a very long way off indeed.
The human race had gone and poked their finger right into the hornet's nest. Meddling with forces that they had no understanding of, as per usual. They had punched a gateway by mistake from one dimension to another.
And now the Doctor was here again, to rectify that mistake and swat the hornet.
Providing there was something soft for him to collide with at Acturus Terminal.
The hitchhiker was waiting in the next tunnel. The Doctor felt its ghost-like presence in the shifting harmonies of the interstitial webs that surrounded him.
It couldn't communicate in any normal sense but its desires were plain to the Doctor. It wanted to go where he was going.
'Climb aboard,' he said. 'Always room for one more.'
There was a painful sense of pressure behind his eyes and he hoped that it was purely psychosomatic. He hit the penultimate station at two hundred kilometres an hour, the wind ripped at his clothes.
'There were eight in the bed,' the Doctor sang to himself, 'and the little one said, "Roll over, roll over." So they all rolled over and one fell out ...'
The Doctor went into the last tunnel.
Acturus Terminal (Stunnel Terminus)
Mariko kept Naran close to her where she could keep an eye on him. She had been feeling strangely dislocated since they'd hit the station. Inside the bright dojo other mind the shoji doors had been slamming shut one by one. The bright colours behind them fading to a dull grey. Mariko didn't think she had long left, but that was OK, she'd had fun while it lasted.
The plan had been simple and straightforward so far. Smash the black train through the barricades, kill everybody in the station. The first had been easy, the second was proving more difficult. The enemy had been better equipped than anticipated and they'd used up a lot of
razyedka
in the initial assault.
They also had reinforcements in the galleria; two-thirds of Mariko's force were engaged in keeping them out of the station. Her personal
krewe
were trying to mop up the enemy in front of the Stunnel gateway. In the thick smoke the
razvedka
had to rely on their sense of smell to find them.
A shoji that had always stayed shut and displayed no symbol finally opened. The final knowledge flooded into Mariko's consciousness.
Ah, thought Mariko, so that's the plan.
It would have been easier, thought Benny as she listened to the gunfire, just to poison everyone. She'd suggested it as a course of action but
it
didn't think like that. That level of subtlety seemed, like the threat of the Doctor, beneath its comprehension.
She'd pulled the veil and headdress off as soon as she'd closed the canteen's shutters, glad to get out of the restricting black clothes. She sat down on the kitchen floor, putting the solid width of the counter between her and any stray bullets. It wouldn't do to be taken out by accident.
She checked her watch, an unnecessary action given the way the plan was ticking away in her head. In any case the symbols on its face had lost their meaning to her.
It was time to get moving.
Benny crawled through the connecting door and into the storage bay. A double line of food lockers were racked against both walls. She stood up and banged on the locker nearest the door.
'Rise and shine,' she said. 'Up and at 'em.'
The locker door swung open to reveal two
razvedka
curled up inside. One of them craned its neck to look at her.
'Already?' it asked. 'I was dreaming.'
'Everything is a dream,' said Benny. 'I thought you knew that.'
'There's dreams,' said the
razvedka,
'and there's dreams.'
'Get up,' said Benny, 'or we'll be late.'
The Stunnel gateway shone like a sun, burning a corridor through the smoke. Mariko, with Naran at her shoulder, walked towards the light.
There was still fighting to either side. Mariko's mind received impressions of the combat. To her right a terrible figure in armour who moved like the wind and struck like thunder. The
razvedka
that fought him were filled with admiration, even as they died. To the left, two of the enemy defended a tangle of broken metal beating off repeated attacks by
2krewe's
soldiers.
Only one of the enemy was left defending the gateway.
A man in dented half-armour, blond hair backlit by the intense bronze light of the gateway. He held a long piece of twisted metal in both hands. Mariko could see blood drip down his wrists and on to the floor by his feet.
When she was close enough to see his face she smiled.
The man flinched at the sight and raised his stick. Mariko thought she recognized the look in his eyes. Behind her she felt Naran's body coiling up in readiness.
'Morituri te selutant,"
she said. Those about to die salute you. She was disappointed to see no trace of recognition on his face. Instead his features seemed to fill up with a stupid kind of determination. There was nothing heroic in his expression, no semblance of valour or noble resolution. No sense of history.
It was just a human being with a stick and a dumb refusal to get out the way.
Naran leapt at him, six-centimetre claws springing from his fingers. The blond man swung his stick, knocking away Naran's first swing, jumping back to avoid the second.
'Get on with it, Naran,' shouted Mariko, 'We haven't got all day.'
Naran stepped in under the man's reach and smashed the stick from his hands. His left hand swung in to rip the man's face off but the man managed to grab the wrist.
'He's good material,' said Mariko. 'See if you can salvage.'
Naran's prehensile tongue struck out at the man's face, fingertips snapping. The man had to fend it off with his remaining free hand, leaving his torso exposed. Naran stiffened his fingers and plunged his hand into the man's chest. It sank through armour and flesh, all the way up to the wrist.
Blondie heard himself scream as the hand sank into his chest.
Automatically he brought up his own hands to tear at the wrist; he could feel the seam at the site of the penetration. There was no pain but the sensation of violation threatened to overwhelm his mind. He looked up and found himself looking into a pair of sad brown eyes.
He tried to ask the creature why he was doing this but his voice was no longer his own. There was still no pain, even as he felt fingers wrap around his beating heart, only a sensation of warmth that began to spread from his chest.
The world began to fade around Blondie; his vision faded until nothing was left except those eyes, so deep and full of an ancient sadness. The warmth spreading through his body made him drowsy. He began to think that dying wasn't so bad, it was more like drifting off to sleep. His hands fell back to hang loosely by his sides.
The eyes expanded until all the world was a rich brown shot through with silver. Sound faded, the gunfire rushing away to become as insignificant as fireworks.
Come with us,
said the silver streaks.
Put down your troubles and we will fill you up with certainty.
He let the warmth engulf him.
A rose bloomed amongst the rich brown fields, its petals as black as midnight, its thorns the colour of African gold, as sharp as razors.
The taste of gunpowder on his lips.
The petals opened to reveal Kadiatu standing in the heart of the rose as if she had grown from the same stem. Sunlight flowed across her naked body, making swirls of amber on her skin. He saw her breath colour through parted lips.
The streaks of silver became angry and formed into sharp steel needles. The brown fields twisted until they became a cone shaped vortex, the colour changing to the sickly pink of diseased gums. The needles spun in the vortex until they became grey blurs and contracted around the rose. Blondie saw that they would rip Kadiatu to pieces.