Chapter 24

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Kryptman sat motionlessly and looked at the pale faces of the psychonauts. Olga seemed to have calmed down a little, at least she was no longer crying in unconsciousness, and Demetrius, on the contrary, was shivering like a freezing man. The novice's face twitched frequently as if every facial muscle had been electrified.

Fidus aimed at Demetrius's forehead with his pistol, then put the weapon away, but not too far away, so that it was close at hand. The sounds of gunfire and explosions had died down, and the train was rolling forward, which was more or less reassuring. He was very thirsty, the thirst was drying out his throat. Fidus only now remembered that he had taken his last sip barely in the morning, and now the time must be nearing midnight. He should ask Driver for some...

As if in response to the inquisitor's thoughts, the disheveled driver stuck his red face into the hatch again.

"Hey, Bertha is calling for you," he said curtly, and his silver dangles rattled against the metal frame.

"I'm busy," snapped Fidus, not taking his eyes off the psychonauts.

"Very much so!" Driver clarified.

"I'm busy," Kryptman repeated.

"Ah," the redskin mumbled in a single syllable. "Well, Ok."

He disappeared, fiddled noisily in his compartment, then slid back in, holding out a speaker on a long leg with a triple wire, apparently part of a plug-in headset for intra-train communication. Kryptman bit his lip, silently cursing the idiots who can't do anything themselves. The speaker yelled in a distinctive and perfectly recognizable voice: "Aren't you crazy, you convict face?! Should I kill you for sabotage or put you in the furnace for heat?!"

"Do you know what would happen if Brother Demetrius came back a converted man?" The inquisitor gritted his teeth.

"Do you know what would happen if a train full of heretics caught up with us?" The Mentor shouted back and finished in an almost calm voice. "We're being chased by the '64'. So feet in the ass and run to the staff wagon!"

"Got it." the inquisitor gritted his teeth again. "I will."

"And take those glasses that the pinion gave the little one. We need them badly."

The driver nodded, signaling "My task is done," and hid back. Fidus bit the knuckles of his left hand painfully, trying to put his thoughts together and improvise some kind of strategy. The strategy refused to be improvised.

"Hey," Kryptman pounded on the iron bulkhead with the hilt of his gun.

"What?"

"What's the biggest gun you have?" Fidus asked.

"Uh... What?" The tank driver didn't understand.

"I'm going out. Someone has to keep watch," Kryptman clarified. "If they come back as human beings, you can comfort and encourage them. And if they don't..."

The Driver gulped and shook his head.

"Gotcha. Both of them?"

"Yes."

"I'm not going to shoot them," said the Driver. "I'll use a frag grenade. It'll work reliably in this cramped space. And there's not much damage to the vehicle."

"At your discretion," muttered the Inquisitor, pulling himself up to the turret hatch. He didn't want to fiddle with the sliding panel.

"So, what's wrong there," the inquisitor wasted no time in foreplay when he went up to the command post. The blood on his boots and the sight of the dead on the first floor of the staff wagon did not add to his eloquence or friendliness.

"The Emperor's shit...!" he let out at the sight of the headless iron figure seated in the commandant's chair. He hesitated, remembering to whom he was speaking.

"That's what I said," the Priest confirmed. "And then the severed head spoke."

"Mechanicums," summed up the inquisitor, looking at the wrinkled head of Wakrufmann, which lay in the middle of the lightmap.

"Humans," the head said. The synthesizer malfunctioned, and the priestess's voice was drowned in hoarse and grinding noises, but it was relatively audible.

"Is it so hard to accept the fact that we are evolutionarily more advanced?" asked the metal head of the techno-priestess.

"Well, it's hard to accept that you can stick your brains in your belly," the Priest muttered, doing an aquila. "It's all wrong..."

"Well," the inquisitor clapped his hands together. "Let's get to the point. Because we have a psychonaut in the difficult dive. And I have no idea what could appear with him or instead of him."

"Glasses for starters," the headless figure held out her hand, without the former grace, apparently guided by sound.

"Take it."

"Thanks."

From behind Jennifer's shoulder rose a servo skull, which took the glasses with its little paws, put them on its own 'face,' wrapped the handles back and tied the temples together with thin wire. Then flew up to Wakrufmann and grasped the segmented fragment of the neck tightly. A second skull with a toolbox flew up, a sparkle of micro-welding flashed, a rustle of sticky tape.

"Is this some kind of ritual?" Fidus asked.

"This is technology. My optical devices don't work. I use Olga's glasses instead, they will give me back my sight."

"I thought you could see through your technique."

"Yes, but the damage is quite significant. I have to create a palliative."

Skull finished the job. Jennifer got out of her chair and took a few steps, turning her whole body around at the same time. The iron body combined with the real skull over her shoulders looked surreal.

"Nekron is a bit like that," Fidus muttered.

"Who?" Bertha didn't understand.

"Well, it's just a fairy tale," Kriptman came to his senses. "It's old and it's scary."

Jennifer took hold of the skull and shook it, apparently checking to see if it was attached. From the outside, it looked as if the hero of a scary fairy tale was pulling his own head off. The Priest crossed his fingers in the aquila again.

"I'm on the locomotive," Jennifer reported, making sure the scheme was working. "The stoker servitors have stopped, and the furnace should be running. Listen to the head."

The techno-priestess went downstairs, treading a little unsteadily, from metal toe to heel, as if she were unsure of the support under her feet.

"What's the problem?" Kryptman asked, turning, this time, to the battered head. The metal skull was cracked, and through the hole, they could see tiny parts, wires, and something flashing like LEDs.

Answering the inquisitor's question, Wakrufmann remotely turned on a lightmap, a large table in the middle of the headquarters. The white tabletop lit up like a television screen, with ripples of interference, and schematic maps of the region flashed on the rectangle, one after the other.

"I have updated data from the closed and protected network," the dead head rumbled. "They're not complete, but they'll be useful anyway."

The Priest and Bertha looked at each other.

"Radial-64 has nothing to fire on us anymore," Wakrufmann continued. "The train was also under decommissioning, and they used the missiles. But that's not much consolation, because..."

Fidus raised a puzzled eyebrow at the word 'decommissioning' but decided not to waste the time.

A second skull hovered over the map, gingerly moving the talking head to the edge of the table, the metal creaking against the glass. Jennifer seemed to find what she was looking for; the flipping of the maps slowed, then stopped. The scale jumped.

"Route."

Illustrating Jennifer's words, the skull poked his iron paw at the map.

"The terminal we left. At the moment it has been destroyed."

A metal finger squeaked across the glass, drawing a line.

"The next settlement and train station, the terminus on this route. It coincides with the epicenter of the malicious influence."

"So now we're rushing into the jaws of the demon," Kryptman said.

"Technically, yes, we are. If we maintain the same speed, we will arrive there in fifty-seven minutes. At the moment, Radial-12 is here."

Another tap of the paw on the map.

"And here is our persecutor."

"Well..." Kryptman leaned over the lightmap, adjusting to the unfamiliar format. However, everything turned out to be quite clear. "Some sort of abnormal network. Two parallel tracks, half a kilometer apart, instead of the usual double track?"

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"Part of the experimental network," Jennifer replied. "This used to be a testing ground for super-heavy vehicles and armored trains. Very good ground, low seasonal temperature fluctuations, minimal displacement of the bed, and track substructure."

"I see," Kryptman leaned even lower, placing his palms on the wooden rim of the lightmap. "And this, respectively, is a branch and a lever?"

"Yes."

"Then we do have a problem," Fidus agreed softly. "What's the speed?"

"The 'Sixty-four' does a hundred and eighty-five kilometers per hour," the priestess reported. "We're no more than a hundred and twenty. He'll overtake us and turn at the arrow, taking our track. We're outnumbered three to one there. And it's probably not people anymore."

"I guess there's no point in braking," said Fidus, wrinkling his high forehead. "Then he'll go over the branch and block us in. And you can't outrun him in turn?"

"If we unhook some of the wagons. If I blow all the fuses and block lines six-fifteen, six-twenty, and five-third. Then we might be able to get up to two hundred and five kilometers per hour and maintain that speed for about nine minutes."

"And then?"

"Burnout of the firebox. Or a boiler explosion."

"Is that enough to get through first?"

"Possibly. The shape of this propulsor is not optimal, there is no fairing, the frontal air resistance is difficult to predict. I have no way to calculate it accurately."

"So do it!" Bertha exclaimed.

"I'm not asking your permission," Jennifer's head informed me. "I'm calculating. When I'm done, we'll get started. Send your big servitor to me; it will take all his strength here to load the furnace with the right amount of coal."

"But it's not enough," Fidus said, turning more to himself than to his companions. "Not enough..."

He tapped his fingernail on the glass, illuminated from below by the projector lamps.

"Even if we succeed, the 'Radial-64' will be behind us, but it will catch up anyway. And we'll lose the locomotive anyway. So boarding is inevitable... The only question is which side it will come from."

Fidus drummed his palms on the edge. "Or maybe to hell the train?" he asked. "Let's stop the train and go to the tundra. We'll fill the Chimera up to the brim with promethium, enough to keep the engine warm for twenty-four hours. We'll also take the battery stoves. It'll be crowded, but we'll sit in the distance until it's over."

Kryptman looked at the commandant and the commissioner, who in turn looked at the novice inquisitor. While Fidus looked puzzled, Bertha and the Priest's eyes were clearly pity mixed with a touch of contempt.

"Wipe your piss, you fucking volunteer," Bertha grumbled through her lip. "Pissing puppy."

"Even if we were planning something like that," the monk said a little softer. "It's impossible. The wagon is too high, 'Chimera' can't be unloaded without a special ramp, and it was taken from us along with the arsenal wagon."

"Even if we were planning ..." echoed Fidus. "What are you planning?"

"What do you mean?" With the same sincere incomprehension, the monk responded. "By the Emperor's grace we have escaped the blows of the ungodly, our train is running and headed in the right direction. His goodness has kept us sane, kept us safe from the temptations and madness of heresy. What more do you want, fiery writings on the wall - 'go and do your duty, my children'? Sure, we'll go to town and tear the ass of evil there."

The Priest was silent for a second and then added with a sigh: "As it comes out."

Kryptman had many clever words to say about the fact that service to the Emperor requires thoroughness and prudence. That the best servant of His is not the one who tears up his 'polundru' and throws himself to certain death (although no one knows exactly what the legendary garment actually looked like), but the one who gets results.

But...

But Kryptman looked into the equally glassy pupils of the Commissar and the Commandant of 'Radial-12', realizing that it was useless. That the squads had a completely different understanding of responsibility, mixed with the Ecclesiarchy's grim fanaticism, so they were more likely to shoot him for cowardice. Of course, if it comes to a fight, it is not clear whose will win. Inquisitorial training isn't like showing Gretchin a naked bone. But here's the trouble - a successful fight will force to kill everyone in the end, and this is the action of a real traitor and heretic.

Kryptman inhaled deeply, exhaled slowly, hoping that from the outside it looked like pious reflection. And he said: "I see. So we have an industrial-administrative junction ahead, from where the evil is dispersing. Behind the stern, the armored train is catching up. There's nowhere to turn, we can only run straight ahead, to the epicenter..."

"Mistress Mechanicum," he addressed the head.

"Yes. I'm listening."

The train rocked, the metal rattled, and the locomotive began to pick up speed little by little.

"A closed network..." Fidus remembered. "And you're not just simple 'cog', are you? A special agent who came especially for her? Or part of a general agency deployed to Beacon for some operation?"

"There is much sorrow in much knowledge, Inquisitor Kryptman," Jennifer replied without pause. "It is enough that now our goals are the same."

"We can get help from your... colleagues?"

"They will try, but the situation is too unpredictable and dynamic, and we have a lot of losses. At this point, we must assume that help will not follow."

Jennifer's head fell silent, squeaking the speaker like an old radio, then added: "Then its actual manifestation will be a pleasant surprise."

"Well, that's so fucking lucky," Bertha said exhaustively.

The Priest exhaled as he looked at Fidus.

"We're purificators," the shepherd said softly. "And we need someone with military experience. Or... Inquisitorial. Do you have any useful thoughts on how we could cut the Grox ears of heretics? Without cannons and missiles, with their superiority in numbers?"

Kryptman froze again for a few moments, tapping his palms nervously, then stared at Bertha.

"Lady Commandant," he mouthed, showing that he respects the chain of command. "Let me ask you about the disposition, how many cars are on the train at the moment?"

"Nine, counting the artillery and missile sites," the mentor-commandant said angrily but quickly.

"And our wagon is now the third from the head..." Fidus stretched out thoughtfully. "Then..."

He firmly stumped the black lines of the map against the white background with the palm of his hand.

"Then we won't unhook anything, these cars will be needed. We need to get through the fork first. And I want a list of what ammunition's left on board. All the ammunition."

"Do you have an idea?" The Priest looked at the inquisitor questioningly.

"There is knowledge of what an old inquisitor did in a similar situation," said Fidus. "But here we will need some miracle."

"Luct started loading the furnace, nineteen minutes to ramp up so as not to kill the furnace," Jennifer's head came back to life. "Then about eight or nine minutes we'll go to top speed with the fuses blown. And after that, another nine minutes on afterburner, unless something explodes first. Kriptman, are you sure we shouldn't unhook the extra wagons? It's tens of tons of weight and a loss of speed."

"Yes, I'm sure. The locomotive won't blow up the track?" Fidus asked.

"No, the energy will go to the sides and up. But the force of the explosion will be very high, at least the first wagon will be swept away. At the critical moment, we will have to unhook the train, otherwise, we could be overturned."

"Well, may Omnissiah have mercy on technology," Bertha summarized "And the people will do the human thing. The Emperor is with us. The Emperor protects!"

"Or at least give us the strength to do what we have to do," the Priest added.

"The Banner," Bertha remembered. "The Banner!"

"Exactly!" The Priest seemed about to slap himself on the forehead in a rage at his own forgetfulness.

One of the servitors was standing on the 'watch.' He holding the lever, operating the spreading furnace doors. Lüct took a full shovel of coal with measured movements, and the servitor opened the doors in front of it, closing them as soon as it was thrown in. The cast-iron flaps 'clapped', that is, clanked like artillery bolts. Great precision was required to ensure that a minimum of cold air entered the furnace, stealing precious heat. Two more servitors stood at the ready with a 'cutter' - a crowbar to break up the slag - and a scraper to rake up the same slag. For some reason, the one with the scraper could not find asbestos gloves, and the hot metal burned his parched flesh, and the steam yard reeked of burnt meat. The icy wind came up against the wall, but the locomotive could not care less, the steel beast roared like a real beast, clanking the flywheels.

Jennifer opened the siphon, listening to the characteristic roar of the safety valve, releasing excessive steam pressure - a measure prohibited by operation, but, under the circumstances, permissible. The arrows on the pressure gauges drew up to the yellow marks and went into the red zone.

One hundred and twenty-six kilometers per hour, an outstanding achievement in other circumstances. But this is not enough.

Jennifer looked to her left, to where the enemy armored train was crossing. The 'Sixty-fourth' was not visible to the human eye, but the mechanical goggles gave quite a usable image. The ten-wagon train was rushing along, smeared with unholy signs from the wheels to the vent caps on the roofs. The smear was so thick, it looked as if it had been painted over for days. Tiny figures, scurrying about like monkeys, indicated that the personnel was preparing for boarding, galloping about the train like primates with suction cups for fingers. Above the locomotive hovered a banner, a huge rag with torn edges and glowing figures that seemed to have a life of their own, glowing and moving in a bizarre dance. Strict analysis showed that 'Twelfth' was not in time for the fork first, not fast enough.

Luct threw another batch of charcoal, and Jennifer ordered him to stop.

"Get a sledgehammer."

The servitor silently obeyed, frozen, awaiting instructions. Wakrufmann did another quick analysis, calculating the layout of the propulsion system, and then she knelt down, prostrate on the platform, feeling the icy cold and the sizzling heat at the same time. The vibration of the huge machine and the howl of the wind. The coded whispering of the servitors is made up of the simplest commands. And on top of it all reigned the grim lump of steam engine spirit. The memory of long years and many events, forever imprinted in the metal, the essence of the machine. The true Spirit of the Machine. It was to this spirit that Jennifer turned, crying out for help. Apologizing for the ordeal she was about to subject the majestic creature to. Promising dignified deeds, as in the old days of the locomotive's fighting youth.

You were born in fire, for death's sake, and you will die in the fire, surrounded by your enemies who perish ingloriously. So help me prepare a proper burial for you! - she whispered in binary code, addressing the heart of the beast.

And the response was not long in coming. Mute assent spread through the cold air, penetrated Jennifer's metallic body, rumbled through the darkness, promising suffering and pain to the malevolent heretics who dared to encroach on what Omnissia deemed his own. The steam monster seemed to straighten its limbs, stretch the joints, and respond with silent consent, full of sullen joy, like an old wolfhound ready to die with its teeth clenched on the throat of a wolf. The fiery heart of the cauldron pounded in a measured and terrifying rhythm, pounding out the innermost things: I served and will serve again...

We will unite in service... Wackruffmann reverently continued.

To bring oblivion to His enemies, the non-human and non-machine finished in unison.

Jennifer rose to her feet, imperiously ordered the servitor: "Hit!"

And Luct raised his hammer over the first valve.

"I see evil, but I don't let it into my heart," the Priest muttered, twisting the muff. His eyes, however, turned toward the sixty-fourth overtaking. There was something immeasurably alluring in the huge banner that flew over the heretical train, the brilliant play of colors, the enchanting dance of the figures. The enemy was on a parallel course, blowing snow like fountains of foamy water.

"Fuck the evil," repeated the monk, with a struggle to act with his disobedient fingers. Here, on the roof of the staff wagon, it was incredibly cold. The fierce wind was rushing in, tearing with cold claws, literally tearing shreds of frostbitten skin from his face. But shepherd did not give up.

"Hold it there," the Priest ordered, and the Wretched Man obeyed, awkwardly moving his hands in thick mittens. It wasn't that cold outside, but the wind and the speed of a hundred and fifty kilometers already had a crushing effect.

A steam locomotive howled very low, with an eerie wail, and from the roof, they could see that its chimney was red-hot and yellow. A stream of grayish-white smoke rose from it in a vertical candle, illuminated by crimson light. Along with the smoke, a fiery stream of sparks spewed out of the locomotive's womb, which followed the train like a plume of fire, not wanting to go out in the wind.

"Done," the Priest whispered, more to himself than to the Wretched Man, straightening up wearily, almost dropping the crescent wrench. The assistant jerked the wire loop, loosening the ties, and the red cloth with the white Squad insignia flapped over the flagpole, unfurling.

The Priest gazed reverently at the holy symbols, drawn strictly from a sketch that Clarence himself had hand-drawn in the old days. There was nothing but pure delight left in the shepherd's soul. The Priest looked around, and when he saw the Wretched Man, he read the same sense of sincere, unadulterated joy in his comrade's eyes.

And now we need to make it work for Kryptman. And then the former brethren who had become heretics would be in for a big surprise. The locomotive siren roared again, and no longer sparks but real flames burst from the high chimney. The Priest looked without fear at the enemy's banner, so ridiculous and absurd in comparison to the austere simplicity of St. Clarence's standard

"Let's go, brother," he said to the Wretched Man. His frozen lips were barely moving, but he understood and nodded.

"There are truly great things waiting for us."

With blinding clarity, the Priest realized that he must be seeing the sunset of the Sanitary Epidemiological Squad. The last great deed, at which the ministry and the very life of the not-so-young shepherd of men would end. And so the faithful servant of the Emperor has only to make efforts to make that act truly the greatest of all.

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