Shattered Skies. Alice Henderson

      The Death Riders pursued, running and pounding on the sides of the train with staffs and spears. Others tried to leap onto the train from vehicles, but couldn’t find purchase. A few fired guns point-blank into the armored sides. She heard bullets pinging off the metal. Their combustible engines roared alongside the train.

      H124 and Byron raced through the door, running toward the engine control booth. They reached it just behind Raven.

      Grant stood in the booth, his face sweaty, his eyes wide. “They’ve built a barricade on the tracks. Some hulking metal wreck of a thing. We can’t get through.”

      “So what do we do?” Byron asked.

      “We have to go back. We have no choice.”

      “Won’t they just follow us?” H124 asked.

      Grant’s face had completely drained of blood, and he looked gaunt through his layer of sweat. She thought of the time she and the others been taken by them, fighting in the arena, barely escaping with their lives.

      “This took some planning,” Grant said through gritted teeth. “They knew the route. There are tons of disused tracks up here. But they knew we’d be using this one.”

      Raven looked nervously out of the window toward the back of the train. “What if they want us to go back? What if they’ve set up a larger war party farther back along the track?”

      H124 grabbed a pair of diginocs off the control board and looked out at the obstruction. Grant was right—it was huge. Some sort of amalgamated, welded monstrosity, a joining of two or more semi-trucks with mounted spikes. It would take an airship to blow that thing off the tracks.

      She paused then, thinking of the explosives they had. “Wait a minute.” She ran back to the cargo car. Digging through a box, she pulled out the remaining explosives from blasting their way into the museum. They didn’t have any remotely detonating explosives left, but they had plenty of self-igniting ones. If she used enough of them…

      But she’d have to travel the distance between the train and the obstruction, and she’d have to be fast. No way she could do it on foot. Her eyes moved around the room, settling on the maglev sleds. They’d recharged their power cores on the platform next to the A14, then stored them away down here.

      Just then the door whooshed open to the cargo car. Byron stood framed there with Raven. “What is it?”

      She held up one of the explosives. “I’ve got an idea.” She grabbed a maglev, unfurling its transparent surface sheet and calibrating the four copters beneath it. Then she paired it with her PRD. “How fast can these things go?”

      Raven stepped forward. “Fast.”

      Byron moved past her, uncurling a second maglev. “I like where you’re going with this.”

      “Wait a minute,” Raven said, holding up a hand. “You’re not thinking of…riding that thing?”

      “We used it to top the shield wall in Murder City.”

      “That was a little different. It doesn’t even have handles.”

      She started stuffing explosives into a munitions satchel, then strapped it across her body. “Keep backing up the train, distracting them, luring them along with you.” She just hoped a group of them hadn’t waited at the barricade.

      She ran to the front of the train. Grant frantically looked out of the windows. Most of the Death Riders were keeping pace with the train. There were a few on foot that had been left behind, but all of the buggies and jeeps bounced alongside the locomotive, Death Riders screaming with the thrill of pursuit.

      Except for the few stragglers on foot, the track to the obstruction was clear. “As soon as you see the explosion,” she told Grant, “start coming back this way.” She glanced up. “Is there a top hatch?”

      He nodded, pointing above his head. “You want me to open it?”

      Byron ran up, a satchel full of explosives slung over his shoulder. She looked to him and he nodded.

      “Open it.”

      Grant threw a lever on the control console, and the hatch clicked and slid to one side. She climbed onto the maglev and steered it up through the hatch. Behind her, Byron did the same. On top of the train, the wind blasted her back, throwing strands of her hair into her eyes. She lowered her center of gravity, crouching on the maglev, and ordered it to take off at top speed toward the barricade. She startled at how fast it jolted ahead, and had to grip the edges of the thin sheet to keep from tumbling off. It flew over the front of the train, speeding down the tracks, the wind streaming into her eyes.

      The few Death Riders on foot shouted and roared, pointing her out, taking off back toward the blocked track.

      She glanced over her shoulder, seeing Byron grinning, holding on to the maglev at a half crouch, raising his fist at one of the Death Riders. He shouted something at one of them, but the wind carried away his words.

      She approached the obstruction and dug into the munitions bag, pulling out one of the tubular explosives. It had a self-igniting cap, so she struck it, sending a spark to the fuse. As she flew over the pile of debris, she let it drop. It clinked onto the mass of joined metal and seconds later a blinding flash of fire and light shook the mound. But it wasn’t nearly enough. Only a small part of the front blew off. They’d have to drop a number of the explosives at once in a coordinated attack. As she swung around the back side of the obstruction, she saw that two Death Riders had remained at the pile of debris. One pointed a nasty-looking weapon at her, a long gleaming tube with a barbed spear loaded into it. He raised it and she banked away, almost coming off the sled. It wasn’t built for something like this.

      She opened up a comm window to Byron. “We have to drop the explosives at the same time!”

      On her vid screen, he gritted his teeth as his maglev veered to one side, narrowly missing a shot from one of the Death Riders. The gleaming barbed spear flew out, attached to a rope, narrowly missing Byron as he careened by. Instantly the Death Rider began reeling the spear back. He shoved it into the weapon and readied to aim again.

      She flew down the far side of the tracks, beyond the barricade. She couldn’t see any Death Riders this far down the tracks. They hadn’t expected them to make it past the obstruction. She hovered above the tracks about five hundred yards away, and Byron pulled up beside her. Her hands hurt from gripping the maglev sled, and she flexed her fingers.

      “Exactly how long are these fuses?” she asked.

      Byron pulled one out of his pack and eyed it. “About fifteen seconds, I’d say.”

      “Think we can light them all at once? This has to be perfect.”

      He unslung his satchel and set it down in front of himself on the maglev, slinging his legs on either side of the sled. Stacking the explosives neatly together, he practiced the action of setting them all off by leaning on them with his hands and arms.

      She did the same, arranging them in a straight line inside the satchel.

      Ahead of them, the two Death Riders with the spear guns lifted their weapons, readying to defend the barricade.

      She pulled up a counter on her PRD. “Ready?”

      “As ever,” he said, grinning way too much.

      “Okay.” She positioned her hands and arms, making contact with the tops of each explosive while keeping them in the weapons bag. Byron did the same.

      “Okay. Light ’em!” She pressed down just as he did. She heard the spark and hiss of the fuses igniting. They raced forward, speeding toward the barricade. The two Death Riders took aim, firing both spears. One sailed between them, but the other one glanced Byron. She saw him flinch and cry out, but he kept going. They sailed over the Death Riders’ heads and dropped the explosives onto the obstruction. The Death Riders on foot had almost caught back up to the debris pile, and they lifted their guns as they flew past.