Rasputin’s will crashed magically into mine, but I pushed back with every ounce of skill I had learned from our earlier clash. It was only barely enough. The effort left me weak and trembling.

"Ah, you have grown stronger. Well, I have ways to deal with that. What did you hope to accomplish by coming here? To destroy me? That is impossible."

I steadied my breathing and ignored the trembling in my limbs from the brief brush of his willpower. "You don't look so tough."

The laugh that came out of the electric speaker on the control console was a dry rasp. "If you mean this husk, it's nothing. Even if you destroy it, I will only return again."

I don't know why I thought his words sounded like false bravado. With the low fidelity speaker and the twisted rasp that came through it, it was hard to read much into it, but I had a hunch.

"If that's true, you sure put a lot of effort into keeping this twisted husk..." I stopped shortly of calling it alive. “Going.”

“An old man's sentimentality, nothing more. Even this is not my original body. Though I've had it long enough, it almost feels that way. Replacing it will be inconvenient, nothing more."

The way he said it struck me as too casual. He was stalling. Either he needed time to boost his willpower and take me over, or else he was waiting for reinforcements. I didn't relish that thought after those last three.

I looked around the room rapidly, trying to decide where it would be most effective to attack him. The machinery was connected to his tank by wires and tubes and appeared to be keeping him alive, but destroying it might not be immediately fatal. I might be able to break the tank itself, but the glass looked thick and the few shots left in my puny revolver might not do the job.

I had lost my .45 and my submachine gun, so I was down to that revolver and a combat knife. The cables and tubes looked too thick to hack through with a combat knife. Stabbing into the glass was an iffy proposition. The knife might break it easily, or it might break itself. But what did that leave? Trying to open the tank and stab the body inside? If he was telling the truth, that wouldn't defeat him.

I looked closer and started studying the green swirls that flowed through the tank and around his body. There seemed to be a pattern, but I couldn’t quite decipher it.

I was just considering going back into the previous cart to look for my submachine gun when the car resounded like a gong and rocked crazily back and forth. Rasputin swore unintelligibly through the speaker, and the light in his tank dimmed noticeably. A moment later, it flared to full strength again.

"That confounded woman! You—" The door on the far end of the car opened, and the hulking shape worked its way through. It was another, even larger brute, too tall for the railway car hatch and wide enough it had to turn sideways to fit through. Once inside, it straightened to its full height, and its head brushed the ceiling.

"Now you will learn respect --" Rasputin was cut off as the whole room shook and the wall exploded inward.

The concussion knocked me back, staggering. A roar of rending metal and shattering glass filled the car. I ducked my head behind an arm to ward off the flying debris.

When I looked up, the car was transformed. Holes were torn in the left and right side, opposite Rasputin’s tank. The tank itself had been smashed open. Fluid poured onto the floor, and the emaciated body lay twisted in the puddle at the bottom. The control panels themselves were broken and shattered, and the speaking box was gone.

The green glow from the tank still surrounded the twisted body; it flared and dimmed repeatedly. Then, after a bright flare, it dimmed, and a bright glow expanded from the brute, centered on his neck and wrists. It swirled across his body, intensifying as the glow around Rasputin's own body dimmed to almost nothing. Then the brute waded into the wreckage of the tank.

This monster was bigger than the others and no doubt tougher. I drew my combat knife. Its blade looked puny next to the hulking monstrosity. It was rummaging through the tank wreckage, and a moment later, it straightened up, clutching an object the size of a gallon of milk. A green glow played across the objects surface, but it wasn’t glass. I had seen enough movies and played enough computer games to realize what this must be, and was dismayed to realize it wasn’t glass.

Rasputin's phylactery was made of steel.

There was an explosion outside the car, and the train trembled. From the sound, Rasputin's guns were firing back on Natasha. The first car on the train after the locomotive and tender had also had heavy caliber turrets.

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I backed away from the brute, and he let me go. As I reached behind me to open the door, the brute turned towards the far end of the car and walked away. I thought about shooting him in the back then, but I didn't think the little .32 caliber revolver was likely to do more than annoy him. I needed heavier weapons, and then I needed something powerful enough to destroy that phylactery. If only those communist rebels had been carrying a good supply of hand grenades. Second time since I’d boarded the train that I’d wanted one. Hand grenades are the party favors of the combat world. Never head to battle without a couple in your pockets.

I crossed the platform and opened the door of the car beyond to reveal the sprawled form of the last brute, dead in the middle of the car.

I searched for the submachine gun the brute had torn from my back and tossed across the train car. I found it and immediately swore. The action was smashed, the barrel bent, either from the brute's strength or from impact with the wall—it didn't matter.

I found my discarded canvas satchel and rummaged through it. The magic detector was bent and lifeless, destroyed from its own encounter with the wall. There was another submachine gun magazine there, now useless to me.

In a side pocket were more bullets for my revolver. I topped up the cylinder—for all the good it would do me. Then, at the bottom of the bag, in an inside pocket, I hit pay dirt—a lump I hadn't noticed before turned out to be a tin hip flask. I popped the lid and sniffed the contents. They had no smell. Water in a hip flask? I didn’t see any use for it, but, I tucked it into a pocket.

The train car bucked again, throwing me into the wall. We had been struck again, so violently I held my breath for a moment, expecting the train to derail, but somehow we stayed on the tracks.

I hadn't found a viable weapon, but I needed to go after Rasputin and take my chances before he found some means of escape.

The door to the opposite car was twisted at a crazy angle. This whole end had been warped and bent. A quick inspection showed me the way through was permanently blocked. The roof of Rasputin's car was now bent too close to this one for me to climb up to the roof; the gap between wasn’t large enough.

There still was no time to waste, so I jogged to the back of the brutes’ car and went out that door. From there, I climbed up between the cars and made it to the roof.

The world around the train was vastly altered. We had left Moscow and were traveling along the sides of a river surrounded by small sections of forest and farm fields. In the distance, I could see farmhouses with cheery lights burning in the windows. We were well outside of the Moscow deadzone now.

Cars ahead and behind me were smoking from torn, gaping holes. The cannon car at the back of the train was blasted open between the turrets and pouring smoke.

There was a deep boom, and the whistling roar of a shell passed overhead. I looked quickly around and spotted Natasha's walking fortress. It had gotten in front of us and was on the other side of the river, standing near a bridge. The track curved up ahead in a big sweeping bend that would take us straight to Natasha’s fortress.

The turret car near the front of the train roared and spit fire at the fortress. The shell scored on the side of Natasha's machine and exploded in a cloud of smoke. For a second, I thought my last ally had been defeated, but then the walking structure stepped out of the cloud of smoke, and its guns roared again.

The shell whistled past me, and I ducked low. There was a world-shattering explosion. The train car under me leapt like a startled deer. With a rending crash, the car just behind mine split in half. The remaining portion was derailed and dragging with a screech of metal and a clatter of wreckage on railroad ties.

The car below shuddered and swayed precariously. I started forward. I had to get off this car and into Rasputin's. If he was still alive, he was most likely in the gun car or further forward in the engine. If the back half of this train derailed, would the forward car stay on the track? I didn't know. But it was the only form of safety I could see.

Natasha's guns roared again, and the passage of the shell blasted me with wind. It had landed 100 meters beyond the train in a fountain of dirt and crops in some farmer's field.

The sun was nearly set, its light was an angry red stain across the horizon to the west. We were headed east into the dark. It was dark enough now it was getting hard to make out Natasha's fortress except when the cannons flashed.

The train guns fired again but missed. We were all around the bend now and headed for the bridge. The train car steadied for a moment, and I rushed forward, trying to make the far end. Then it bucked again, and I was almost thrown off. There was a crash from behind me, and the scraping sound of dragging train wreckage ceased. Apparently, the shattered car had broken free.

I reached the end of the brutes’ barracks car and looked down into the shattered wreckage of Rasputin's chamber. Have you ever seen a soda can or food tin used for target practice so often that you can't tell how many bullets have passed through it? The metal forms jagged shapes that dangle off the original tin in razor-edged flower petals.

Rasputin's train car looked like that. The doorframe was bent to the side, and the walls beyond were burst open in jagged curls. The interior was a twisted pile of debris, some of the walls bent down inside. The brute who had taken Rasputin’s phylactery was nowhere to be seen.

The cannons of the car beyond twisted to point towards Natasha's mech, but she was almost directly in front of us where they couldn't aim. Her cannons roared again, and I crouched low. The shell whipped past me, and the train car under my feet bucked. I reached down and managed to catch my fingers on the lip above the door at the end of the car and barely stayed on. The impact left my ears ringing and the floor under my feet vibrating.

I glanced back to see a tear long and straight down one side of the roof. The shell must have missed me by inches. Fuck that, I had to get out of here. It didn't look much safer in the wreckage below, but I took a flying leap and landed in the remains of Rasputin's car.

Suddenly, the train whistle blew, and I looked up. We were across the bridge, and Natasha's fortress loomed overhead.