Omega point

CHAPTER 13

Otto took the unconscious Cossack technician into his arms gently and put him into his seat. There was not enough space in the operations cabin to lay him down, and no matter how he arranged the man's limbs he would not sit properly, so he left him there slumped like a drunk in his chair. Untidy, thought Otto. It offended his German sense of neatness. He checked the Cossack's pulse; unenhanced humans were so fragile. He felt a kick of relief at the sluggish throb his Ky-tech eyes showed him.

"Valdaire's run it right, no alarm," said Lehmann.

Otto glanced around at the screens in the car, two stations, full surveillance capability. The Cossacks could lock the whole train down from here. No signs of any disturbance. The operations cabin buzzed with electrical activity, all of it unaware of the Ky-techs' presence. "Five minutes before the next scheduled walk-through," said Otto. "These Cossacks do not take many chances."

"Up and out," said Lehmann. "Can't we just kick our way in?"

"Valdaire can't crack the locks to the barrack car without alerting the squad inside. We're not quite done with being quiet. We go in through the door, they get to pick us off one at a time. This way, we get the drop on them."

"Otto, Lehmann, the guards have made their passes to the ends of the train and are coming back." Valdaire spoke through their earpieces, comms channel bonded to the train's in-service entertainment systems, hidden within it. "You've got less than five. I can keep the security offline and repeating for a while longer, but you need to move now. We'll be crossing the AI Pale soon; if I do not deactivate Chloe, she'll be noticed and destroyed by the Chinese."

"That lady scares me," said Lehmann. "Give me a gun and an honest fight, not the sneak of InfoWar."

"What did you do with yours?" asked Otto.

"I locked him in the toilet," said Lehmann, jerking his thumb over his shoulder. "He'll live. Shall I boost you, sir?" Lehmann gave a lazy salute and raised his eyes up to the skylight.

Lehmann laced his fingers together and Otto stepped into them. "On three," he said. "One, two, three!"

Lehmman thrust Otto up. Otto slammed his palms flat into the skylight, popping it out of its housing. He emerged into the rush of wind to see the panel flipping over and over down the lazy curve of the train. It bounced, and disappeared into the trees.

Otto turned his head into the wind, eyeballed the sentry gun in front of him. The machine's barrels swept past his face, panning round, looking for threats. It was operational; it just didn't see him. Lehmann was right about Valdaire.

He hauled himself onto the swaying roof of the train. It had accelerated once it had passed the ruined town, and now it approached the centre of the demilitarised zone it was running close to 170kph. Otto moved carefully onto the roof, keeping an eye on the parapet on the barracks van behind the operations centre; less a carriage and more a fortress on wheels. There was always one man on duty up there, pacing round, no matter the weather. Otto had seconds before he returned.

The roof was slick with moisture, the air cold, the wind snatching it from his lungs. He leant back into the skylight and hauled the bag containing Lehmann's long rifle, then Lehmann himself, up onto the roof. Together they worked their way along the top of the train to the front of the barracks van. That it was heavily armoured went in their favour; the windows were small and thick, and no one was looking out of them.

"Two minutes," said Valdaire into their ears as the two cyborgs worked their way up the carriage. Lehmann pulled himself over the parapet. Otto watched through Lehmann's eyes as he stalked up behind the Cossack sentry and knocked him unconscious. Otto scanned the train roof for signs of detection. Seeing none, he followed onto the upper deck of the barracks van and went round the opposite side of the carriage to Lehmann.

"One minute," said Valdaire. "Come on, guys, the patrol is due back in the operations cabin any second now."

As one, Otto and Lehmann punched their augmented fists through the sides of the armoured wagon. Faint shouts could be heard from within. An alarm sounded as Otto and Lehmann tossed in a pair of grenades each. Wisps of gas rose up from the holes they'd made, followed by the crack of EMP. The lights in the cabin went out, the alarm in there cutting out also. The shouting became coughs.

Otto ran to the door leading to the roof. A Cossack was coming through the hatch, carbine ready. Otto slammed him with his forearm, sending him back into two others following behind. He yanked the door shut, mangling its mechanism with his hands. They dripped blood onto the deck

A couple of rounds came through the holes they'd made.

"Just in time, Klein," said Valdaire. "Only two of the men in there got their breathing units on; they're trapped. You've taken out a total of seventeen so far. That leaves another eleven still on the train. Chures has collared two and disarmed them." As she spoke, information downloaded into his mind, showing him the locations of the remaining Cossacks.

"Chures has two, two are trapped, seven are loose?" asked Otto, shouting over the rush of the wind.

"Confirmed. No fatalities. I'm going to have to shut Chloe off soon. We're approaching the outlying bastions of the Great Firewall. I've deactivated the train's automated defence systems, but you're on your own now. We've about ten minutes before other Cossack border units get here. We'll meet you at the transport car."

"Be careful!" shouted Otto. "We have no idea how many of Kaplinski's men are aboard the train. Lehmann, stay here, cover the train roof. I'm going back down. I'll signal you when I have the transport."

Lehmann's icon flashed in his iHUD. Affirmative. He unzipped his bag and started to assemble his gun.

Otto left his gear with Lehmann, pulled his pistol and ran, the need for stealth gone, toward the transport cars behind the barracks van. The first held horses for each of the Cossacks. It was not merely tradition; out in the wilds they were still the most efficient means of transport. He ran swiftly over the roof of the stable, enhanced senses picking up the movement of the animals within. He leapt from the top onto the flatbed behind, landing between two rows of four airbikes locked into stands. A tall autoturret stood in the middle. Past it, at the far end of the flatbed, was what he'd come for; a Szyminksi-Braun SSATV1123a "Stelsco", a six-wheeled, all-terrain stealth scouting vehicle, fast and armed, made by the same company as had altered Otto, clamped into a travel cradle.

He strode toward it, his near-I adjutant seeking entry to its systems. It found a keyhole and engaged, pouring out a parcel of hackware Valdaire had provided him with.

Here they come! thought out Lehmann. Otto watched on his squad feed as four Cossacks came down the train on bounding overwatch.

Try not to kill them, thought Otto.

I'll do my best, said Lehmann, opening fire. He kept his bursts short and accurate, playing fire over the roof of the armoured train, driving the Cossacks back until they found sanctuary in a gap between the carriages.

Where are the other three?

No idea, thought Otto. I have no tactical overview now Chloe is offline. Keep an eye on the men below — the gas will be wearing off soon.

From Lehmann's ears he heard the sound of hammering on the interior of the barracks van. Now you tell me, he thought.

There were twelve elements to the Stelsco system's lock, a Chance Key. Twelve red dots in his mind that could be anything, images, snatches of song, complex equations. He felt his mentaug struggle as it applied the full force of Valdaire's 'ware to the task. Chloe would have been better suited to this operation, but AI were almost immediately detected in Sinocyberspace and were extirpated without mercy. Ever since the Five crisis the Chinese had had a genocidal ban on thinking machines, and Chloe was well over the line of the Chinese definition of such.

Eight and a half minutes. They were running out of time.

He approached the Stelsco, evaluating if he could rip the cradle's locking bars away by force. His earpiece crackled. Valdaire.

"Otto, we've got a problem!"

And then Sakaday stepped round the Stelsco and pointed a gun at Otto's head. "Been a long time, Klein."

Fucking stupid plan, Otto, said Kaplinski over the MT. Now stand down and help me find Waldo, or I swear to God I will tear your little friend's arms off.

Lehmann was taking fire from the Cossacks guarding the train, forcing him to duck in between his own bursts.

Sakaday grinned wide.

In Otto's head, a chime sounded; the Chance Key. One dot green. Eleven to go. He had to buy some time.

"He got you, Valdaire?" asked Otto. Static replied, the radio jammed.

I have her, Klein, thought Kaplinski. Stand down.

Then let me speak to her.

I have her, repeated Kaplinski.

You're bluffing, thought out Otto. And maybe he's not, he added to himself.

He launched himself at Sakaday anyway. What choice did he have?

Chures bundled Valdaire into a compartment as bullets hissed down the corridor. A man in grey, one of Kaplinski's goons, held a gun out in front of him. Chures dropped to the floor and a scream sounded from behind him as a bullet meant for him caught another. A weapon discharged loudly, ricocheting off the bulletproof external window and shattering compartment glass. More screams. A door crashed open, wild firing. The man in grey shot over Chures, dropping someone else.

"We're crossing the demarcation line. Chloe's going off!" shouted Valdaire. "Three… two… one…"

The man drew a bead on Chures, a savage glee on his face.

"Disengaging! We're over the line" shouted Valdaire.

The train juddered as its AI driver shut down, to be replaced with a People's Dynasty approved human operator. The ride became correspondingly rougher.

The man in grey's shot went wild as the train lurched. Chures recovered quickly, and put a bullet through his heart.

Chures got up. Behind him a dead Cossack sprawled, blood pooling on the expensive carpet, its absorption facility overwhelmed by the amount. A passenger, a pumped-up Russian with a machine pistol, lay bleeding and whimpering by him, skin white. Chures walked to the man in grey. He lay with eyes open. Chures spat on him. " Puta," he said. He recognised the man. He squatted down, checked him over. Not full Ky-tech like Klein.

Valdaire came out of the compartment, checking and rechecking Chloe. Happy she was asleep, she put the phone away and pulled out her own gun. "Is he dead?"

"Yes. These ones are lightly augmented. They die easily enough."

Valdaire looked uncomfortable.

"Do not feel sorry for him, Senora. These pendejos almost trapped me in Colorado the day before I found you. One of them caught me in a goods yard, but a half metre of timber put him down. I have them to thank for this." He indicated the yellowing bruises on his face.

"Doesn't mean he deserved to die, Chures."

Chures looked at her hard. She was a soldier, she protested her dislike of violence, but she held her gun comfortably enough. "Come on."

Otto closed the distance between him and Sakaday with a standing leap of four metres. Sakaday's eyes widened, and Otto's iHUD saw his pulse rate skyrocket. His adjutant predicted likely firing patterns from the mercenary and Otto moved accordingly, turning in the air as he came. Sakaday was fast, getting off four rounds. Pain streaked across Otto's bicep as one clipped him. Then Otto made contact, slapping the gun aside, grabbing the mercenary's wrist and pulling himself fast onto the Nigerian, dragging the other cyborg's arm out and exposing his chin to a blow from Otto's elbow.

Sakaday was younger than Otto, his biologicals fitter and his bionic components more modern, not yet at war with his birth body. Electoos glinted like golden serpents on his rich brown skin. He was not as heavily specced, but he was fast. He caught Otto's elbow as they fell and pushed it up and away. Simultaneously he jerked his arm, still in the vice of Otto's fist. Otto was forced backwards, releasing Sakaday's wrist. Sakaday was staggered by the momentum of Otto's leap. Otto crashed into a clamped airbike, wrecking it. Both recovered quickly.

Sakaday looked at the wreckage. The train wavered from side to side violently. The AI driver had capacity to govern its smart bogies, constant adjustments compensating for the ancient track. With the train into the DMZ, the AI was off and they were running dumb. Sakaday drew a knife as Otto pulled himself to his feet.

Otto shook his head and spat a rope of bloody saliva from his mouth. He smiled.

"What are you doing? What are you doing?" shouted Sakaday. He slapped his chest and held his arms wide. "You are a crazy man." His accent was richly African. "Heh? Heh? Klein, surrender now. Kaplinski wants you alive. Stop!"

Good, thought Otto, he didn't think he was going to have to fight me. "So I can work with a rapist and killer like you, Sakaday? I don't think so," said Otto. A second green light pinged in his mind, rapidly followed by a third. He ran again at Sakaday.

They grappled like animals. Their enhancements included many safeguards against standard melee techniques. Many moves that would put a normal man out of a fight by destroying joints or snapping limbs did not work on Ky-tech. When fighting one another, they were trained to utilise a brutal blend of martial arts, based primarily on military combat disciplines like Defendu and Krav Maga, but incorporating martial arts like Aikido, primarily those that involved the redirection of mass and energy, forever trying to put one another off balance.

That was the idea behind their training, but mostly they just punched the shit out of each other using their massively enhanced strength.

Otto pinned Sakaday's arms by his side, preventing him from bringing his monomolecular knife to bear, and headbutted him three times in the face. Sakaday twisted back and forth, trying to avoid Otto's bludgeoning skull. He caught two blows on his cheeks and the third cracked his nose.

A fourth green light. Otto's adjutant was working faster, bandwidth freed up by the deactivation of train AI, allowing it to search the Grid rapidly for Chance Key matches. Lucky for him the USNA and the EU wouldn't sell high-end quantum cyphering to the Russians.

Sakaday snapped his teeth towards Otto, drew himself down and in, then flung his arms out. Unable to break Otto's hold, he got enough room to hook his feet behind Otto's calves and send them both tumbling to the floor. Otto's hold jarred loose, allowing Sakaday to roll free. Lying on his back, Otto chopped down with his forearm, aiming for the African's throat. Sakaday evaded, Otto's arm leaving a long dent in the metal. Otto followed the momentum of his strike, rolling himself over, flipping his legs out and round, tangling Sakaday's knife hand and kicking the weapon free. Otto's legs spun. He pushed with his arms and landed on his feet.

Sakaday scowled at him, blood trickling from his nose. "You are fighting well for an old man."

They circled one another round the autoturret, the train swaying under them.

"You fight like a girl, Sakaday. I suppose that is all you have fought against, women, you and your unit, murdering and raping civilians."

Sakaday shrugged. Otto cursed inwardly. Things would be better if he were fighting Kaplinski, or some shit like Tufa. He needed a talker. Kaplinski he could goad, he was a self-justifier. Kaplinski would rant on until Christmas. Sakaday never said much. He just killed and laughed while he did it.

It was so much easier with talkers.

A fifth green light. Then a sixth.

Come on! He thought, urging his adjutant on. The mentaug's information flow stuttered with effort, but the remaining six lights remained stubbornly red.

He was going to have to fight some more.

Verdammt, his shoulder hurt. He rotated it, snarled at the pain, and charged back into the fray.

Chures dropped another man in grey. There were a lot of them, so many that their clothes must have had camo-functions, only morphing into their anonymous uniform as the conflict began. It was obvious tech, if you were looking for it. Anywhere else such adaptive garb would have been cause for high suspicion, but this was Russia, where questions of that kind were answered by bullets, or silenced with cash.

The men were coming fast, too eagerly, and Chures wondered what the hell Kaplinski had promised them to get them to attack so recklessly.

"These idiots are behaving like zealots, not mercenaries," he said under his breath. His uplinks gave him no clue as to their identity, the same masking techniques as effective here as they had been when they'd taken him on in Colorado and when they'd killed Qifang 2 back in Morden.

Gunfire blazed the length of the train. Many of the passengers were armed, and the few Cossacks remaining at liberty had identified the men in grey as the threat. For the time being, he and Valdaire would look just like another gung-ho pair engaging hostile elements on the train; it had happened before.

"How long until the Cossacks work out the complexity of the situation?" he shouted back to Valdaire. She shrugged; there was no way of knowing, now that Chloe was off. She covered the corridor behind them. Chures refrained then from asking her how many men in grey there were.

"There's a firefight still going on in the carriage two down from ours. Cossacks, I think. Nothing coming our way."

Chures breathed out, forcing the tension from his muscles. He changed the magazine in his gun; there were only two bullets left in his current clip. "The only thing we can do is go forward."

A man with muscles like melons took advantage of the lull in fighting, bursting out of his compartment. He toted an automatic pistol like an action hero, a meathead's weapon, a 500-roundsa-minute job whose gilded magazine would last approximately half a second before running dry. Chures held up his hand placatingly. The Slav's face was red and throbbing, his eyes carrying the jaundice associated with bad genehacks and synthetic testosterone burn. He looked angry.

"Easy! Easy!" called Chures, hoping the man spoke enough English to understand. He glared. Chures pointed to the corpse of the man in grey and wagged a finger, shaking his head. The Russian nodded, and turned to walk up the corridor. He was so full of mood modifiers he'd probably kick a bear in the balls without thinking about the consequences.

"We've got to get to Klein. If the men in grey don't get us, the Cossacks or one of these crazy bastards will," said Chures.

The door at the end of the carriage burst open and a huge shape pulled itself through, grunting as it squeezed into the confined space.

The Russian yelled something. A fist the size of a head grabbed him by the shoulder and squeezed. Chures heard the bone crack from where he was. The Russian screamed as he was plucked off the floor. His weapon discharged its entire load in a cacophony of sparks, bullets bouncing wildly off the train's toughened interior, gunsmoke filling the corridor. The fist slammed him up, mashing his skull into the ceiling. Another hand grabbed the limp form about the neck and pulled. The ruined head came free with a gristly pop. Still holding the corpse, the monster smashed the train's bulletproof window with a lazy backhand. The dead Russian went through it.

Kaplinski filled the corridor. He had grown monstrous, hulking body barely fitting into the passageway, his head comically small on shoulders that heaved with unnatural power. He was naked, and his muscles bulged and throbbed, distended by some process far removed from Ky- technischeren technology. His eyes blazed feral and saliva ran from his mouth.

"Klein! I have them now! Little pigs, little pigs," Kaplinski said, lips twisted into a snarl of joyful savagery. "Let me in."

Then his grin faded, and his head whipped round. "Sakaday…" he growled.

Chures steadied his gun arm, grasping his right wrist with his left hand, took careful aim at Kaplinski's head, and fired, and fired, and fired.

The tenth dot of the Chance Key turned green.

Otto dodged a flathanded punch that smashed a hole into the autoturret's pillar. He pivoted under Sakaday's next, delivering a forearm slam to the other Ky-tech's head. Sakaday staggered. Otto followed it up fluidly, punching and punching, standard boxing technique now, a sport he had once been a master of.

Sakaday was driven back. A stagger turned into a dodge and Otto felt his legs swept away from under him. Sakaday kept back, hand reaching down to where his knife rocked on the train flatbed. Otto was up in a crouch as the Nigerian came for him. The monomolecular blade parted the air like a kiss millimetres from his face. He palmed away a strike from Sakaday's other fist and used the momentum of the Nigerian to send him stumbling onward. Otto followed to press his attack, but Sakaday recovered, hopping onto the Stelsco's cradle and turning the movement into a roundhouse kick that caught Otto in the face.

Eleven green dots in his head, to go with the innumerable coloured blobs dancing across his field of vision, courtesy of Sakaday's foot.

Sakaday came toward Otto slowly, cautiously. Old or not, Otto was holding his own. Sakaday was limping, his left hand straying to his ribs. Good, thought Otto, I hurt the bastard. Otto considered getting up, but did not.

Christ, I'm tired, he thought, and urged his healthtech to damp down the fire in his malformed shoulder. Sakaday was younger and fitter than him. Fuck knew which twisted psycho in that tinpot dictatorship had had him altered. They were the only ones who used full mods now. Tech they'd used was good, no Sinosiberian shit here. This was only going to end one way, he thought.

The Nigerian realised Otto was not going to stand and paused. He stood taller. Healthtech flares lit up in Otto's iHUD overlay, mending his opponent as they talked. "You are old, you should have given up."

Otto grinned a bloody smile. "You are not the first person to say that to me."

Sakaday stretched out. Otto watched the shift in Sakaday's EM aura as his healthtech nanobots worked hard. If only Otto's own healthtech were so swift.

Sakaday grinned, startling white teeth revealed by lips already losing their swelling. He tossed his knife from hand to hand and crouched. "But I will be the last."

Behind Sakaday the Stelsco lit up, flexing on gimballed wheel units as it awoke, the grumble and whine of hardware coming online hidden by the train's clatter. Command permissions flooded Otto's mentaug, handing control to his adjutant, running fast even on old hardware, the beauty of modern aware 'ware, adapting itself to what it found. Otto fused his mind to the machine's. He ran the turret on its roof rail to the front of the Stelsco and tracked it down.

"No, you won't." Otto selected the upper third of Sakaday's body as a target through the turret eye cams, the reticule system rendered in flat orange in his iHUD.

Remote fire online, confirm target? said the Stelsco's mind in a rush of machine speak.

Sakaday! Kaplinski's warning was a ludicrous drone over the MT.

Confirm, commanded Otto. Otto lifted his hand to protect his eyes as the Stelsco's turret opened fire.

Sakaday was laughing as twin heavy machine guns shredded his right arm, shoulder, head and neck into mince. Bits of him splattered the flatbed like thrown paint. The rest of him was untouched, Otto having targeted those areas that would prevent him from being hit by stray rounds. Sakaday's skull held for a moment before shattering under the pounding bullets. His augmented bones twisted to plastic scrap, leaving a gory mannequin tottering on top of a pair of undamaged legs. For a moment the corpse swayed, impossibly upright.

Sakaday's long knife fell to the floor and stuck quivering in the metal.

His body toppled from the flatbed, snatched away by the rushing landscape.

Kaplinski roared in anger as Chures' bullets slammed into his face. For a second, Chures thought he might have done the cyborg damage, but his head came round and fixed him with a bloody stare. The righthand side of his face was shredded down to black bone, one eye pulped to jelly and fibrous machine parts. His gun ran dry, and he shot out the smoking magazine, reaching smoothly for a fresh one and slamming it home.

"That the best you got, you fucking little dago?" said Kaplinski.

" Madre de Dios," said Chures, and there was grim acceptance in there. This was not a man he could beat. This was not a man.

Kaplinski's ragged flesh writhed, strips of flesh reached over to one another and pulled tight. Wounds sealed themselves like lips. The cyborg shut his eyes, his distended body pulsed, and he gasped with something akin to pleasure. When he opened his eyes again, both were whole.

Kaplinski forced himself down the corridor, wiping ocular humours and blood from his face. He dragged his swollen bulk through the passage, grasping at doorways, tearing metal and shattering glass to pull himself forward.

"I told Klein that I had been cured by k52," roared the cyborg as he came on.

Chures put bullets into the cyborg until his gun clicked empty again.

"I didn't tell him what else he has done for me." Kaplinski loomed over the VIA agent. Chures had read the cyborg's file; he was supposed to be around 1.9m, but he was at least half a metre over that. Impossible.

"Valdaire," he said, his voice quiet. The train and its racket receded. He remembered another rhythmic noise: hard rain on tattered tents and shelters of sun-bleached plastic. Puerto Penasco. He remembered the man and his sister. He fought only for her to die. No matter what he did, the strong would always destroy the weak. He could only put himself in the way for a while.

He prayed that he had done enough.

"Run," he said.

Valdaire turned to flee as Kaplinski slammed Chures in the chest with the flat of his palm. The Colombian flew backwards, limbs tangling on her heels, bringing her down. She struggled round. Chures' breath was shallow. Blood leaked from his nostrils. She'd lost her gun, but it would have been no use against the altered Ky-tech. Kaplinski stood over her, malformed and diabolical, features twisted in a mask of pleasure and fury.

"Klein killed one of mine, now I take two of his. Only fair."

Chloe, she still had Chloe. Her hand hidden under Chures' unconscious body, she surreptitiously keyed her on.

A giant hand descended toward her, encircled her chest and plucked her from the floor. He held her up before his face, nostrils flaring like those of a mad horse.

"How do you want to die, Fraulein?"

"Veronique? Veev? Are we there yet? Why have you activated me? Veev!"

Kaplinski's eyes locked with Valdaire's. He sneered. "Oh, Fraulein, what can that little thing do to me?"

The door to the rear of the carriage opened. Two Cossacks shouldered their way through. They shouted, opening fire. Another came forward, a bulky tube on his back. It launched a small guided missile. It embedded itself in Kaplinski's flesh. A huge discharge of energy arced through it, following the trail of ionised air from gun to projectile. Valdaire nearly blacked out, her teeth jamming together as her muscles locked. Kaplinski seemed unaffected, and swiped the missile from his side.

"I don't have time for this," growled the ex-Ky-tech. He squeezed Valdaire in his fist as bullets thwacked into his skin. They were pushed out by his runaway healthtech, the wounds they caused sealing instantly.

"Chloe!" screamed Valdaire. There was barely enough air in her crushed chest to get the words out. She couldn't breathe. For the first time in a long time she found herself praying again that the energy surge from the Cossack's maxi-taser had not destroyed her friend. She remembered the last occasion, in the church of St Germaine in Sakassou, her kneeling before damp plaster effigies. Was her life already flashing before her? For a moment she sat there in the past, in the damp coolness of the church, hoping it would be alright and that the shouting and screams outside wouldn't find their way into the church, and then a rib creaked and she was back in the present, confronted with another horror. Blackness limned the edge of her awareness. "Kitty Claw! Kitty Claw!" she gasped.

Valdaire had no idea if the programme, one she'd designed to shut off intrusive AIs, would work on the cyborg's built-in software. All of them carried an advanced near-I adjutant, a military version of a helper valet. Without the adjutant, the efficiency of their systems was severely compromised. She hoped to God that Kitty Claw would engage it and shut it down.

It did better than she'd hoped. Kaplinski locked rigid. She gasped and wriggled, trying to prise herself free of Kaplinski's grip.

The Cossacks came forward and tugged at the cyborg's fingers, eventually managing to free Valdaire. She fell to the floor, gasping. The Cossacks levelled their guns at her.

She waved them away. "My friend," she said, pulling Chures into her arms, "please, help him."

Otto scrambled toward the Stelsco, its doors folding up and backwards in greeting. He clambered into the pilot's station, buried deep in the thing's nose, and spread his adjutant throughout its systems, bringing it all online.

He threw the Stelsco's wheel units into reverse, burning rubber to match the train's speed. He disengaged the clamps, and it flew backwards, hitting the ground with an impact that made his teeth clack. The car fishtailed madly as it sped backwards alongside the train, skidding along the slope of the embankment where the line crossed a bog. He slammed the right side wheels off, spinning the car round. The train appeared to leap forward like a stag pursued by a hound as the car ground to an immediate halt. The barracks car whipped past, and he saw Lehmann struggling hand-to-hand with two Cossacks atop it.

He looked through Lehmann's eyes. Stop playing with them now, Lehmann, we're getting out of here.

Affirmative, thought Lehmann back.

The electric crack of a stun pistol discharging came to Otto via Lehmann. A Cossack tumbled from the roof, his sabre clattering to the deck. It looked like they weren't going to be able to do this without killing some of the good guys.

Ballast sprayed as the Stelsco's wheels found traction on the embankment and hurtled forward, Otto heading for Chures' and Valdaire's last known location.

Otto ran the Stelsco up to 174kph, marginally faster than the train. Sparse woodland blurred by. He let the machine's onboard systems take over the driving while he scanned the train's windows for Valdaire and Chures. Most of the carriages showed signs of conflict: cracked windows or sprays of blood.

There. He could see two Cossacks pointing their guns down at something. It looked like a prone man and a crouching woman. Chures and Valdaire?

Next to them stood something monstrous, a bloated mass of man and machine, frozen, arm outstretched.

"Kaplinski?" he said, amplifying all his visual feeds to get a better look at it. He couldn't see its face. He checked his iHUD; the links were still there from the old days, and if Kaplinski could use it, so could he. It took a moment for him to hook in. It was him.

Kaplinski was no longer human, he wasn't even Ky-tech any more. His body writhed with inconceivable technology, alive with power for which Otto could see no source. He tried to look out of Kaplinski's eyes, but something had him frozen solid, jamming up his iHUD and adjutant. Not for the first time, Otto was glad Valdaire was on his side.

There was a flicker in Otto's iHUD. Kaplinski's adjutant was rebooting, fighting off whatever Valdaire had attacked him with.

"Valdaire! Down!" he yelled via radio, not knowing if it was still jammed.

Something sinewy and sharp leapt out from Kaplinski's outstretched hand, spearing the Cossacks one after the other and retreating back into his body. The Cossacks fell. Kaplinski reached out to the figure on the floor.

Otto swung the Stelsco turret round. The twin-machine guns opened fire. The hardened glass of the train's exterior windows held for a moment before imploding under the rain of bullets. Kaplinski half turned, and Otto's amplified vision caught sight of his face; nothing but rage and hate there. So much for k52's great and noble project.

Kaplinski disappeared sideways as the bullets shredded his side and hurled him into a compartment. The side of the train disintegrated, leaving a gaping hole ringed with flaps of hardened carbon plastic and metal wobbling in the train's slipstream.

"Klein? Chures is down!" Valdaire spoke over the radio, airwaves cleared by the Stelsco's sophisticated comms suite, clearing aside the train's jammer. She stood and looked out the window.

"You're going to have to jump."

"I can't make it."

Otto tried to bring the car in closer. The railway was running over a level area, but still its embankment made it impossible for the Stelsco to keep close with anything approaching stability. The car ran up and down the slope, holding position for a second or so and then skittering sideways down the embankment. Valdaire crouched by the hole, arm out, the other supporting Chures.

Then Otto said, "Wait."

Lehmann was running up the train, head low, hands spread before him ready to catch himself should he fall, long rifle slung on his back. He jumped down into the gap between the carriages. Lehmann hacked his way through the flexible corridor linking the carriages with his combat knife.

Lehmann, get Chures and Valdaire off the train. Watch out for Kaplinski, something's happened to him, he thought out.

I had to kill two of them, Otto, he replied. I'm sorry. There was no other way.

Verdammt, thought Otto. Never mind, get off the damn train and watch out for Kaplinski.

Pistol grasped in both hands, Lehmann walked cautiously round the smashed compartment where Kaplinski lay.

"What the hell have they done to him?" said Lehmann, speaking on the radio now.

Otto saw the modified cyborg through Lehmann's feed. Kaplinski lay in a tangle of shattered plastic slicked with gore. His swollen form filled the compartment, feet sticking out into the corridor, torn flesh crawling with movement. Kaplinski stirred. Lehmann raised his pistol and fired twelve times, each round a heavy calibre explosive bullet, designed with military-grade autonomous machine units and cyborgs in mind.

Kaplinski stilled.

"I can't get through his thorax armour or his skull," said Lehmann.

"He's still alive. Healthtech activity is off the chart. He'll be up and fighting soon. Get out of there now, Lehmann, you can't take him," said Otto.

"Affirmative," said Lehmann. He kept his eyes on Kaplinski as he skirted the wreckage in the corridor. One of Kaplinski's feet shuddered and drew swiftly into the compartment.

"Lehmann!"

Lehmann bent to Chures, looking over him with Ky-tech eyes. "Chures isn't looking good, Otto."

"Just get them out of there." Otto watched via his IR as Kaplinski's massive bulk moved.

Shots rang out. Autonomous eye cams swivelled on the Stelsco, zooming in on the source of noise. Cossacks aboard the next carriage. More were working their way back, cautious for the moment.

They'd got out of the barracks carriage then. An alarm pinged on the Stelsco's sophisticated sensor suite — energy emissions from the flatbed, airbikes powering up.

Otto swept the Stelsco turret round, blasting with limited bursts around the windows the Cossacks shot from. They drew back.

"Lehmann! Now!" Kaplinski was pulling himself up onto his hands and knees. Blinding whiteness played around his form, massive energy consumption. What the hell was he drawing on?

Lehmann stood. Valdaire hanging onto him like a child to its father, arms round his neck, legs wrapped round his waist. Under his other arm he held the limp form of Chures.

Lehmann indicated via MT that he was ready, his face set in concentration.

Otto opened the two left doors of the Stelsco, leaving the entire side of the vehicle open to the elements. He had the rearmost door fold back and reconfigure, forming an armour plate protecting them to the rear.

On the count of three, thought out Otto. One. Two. Three.

He swung the drive wheel to the left hard. The Stelsco's folded back door caught on the train, shaking the car and ripping a chunk of shattered carbons from the carriage side.

Lehmann leapt, twisting and balling himself up as he came. He slammed into a comms station, taking the impact on his back, keeping it from Chures and Valdaire. The Stelsco swerved as he hit. Otto wrestled it back under control and shut the doors. Gunfire rattled off the vehicle's armour. Otto heard the low whump of EMP discharge and felt a residual surge in his systems, but the vehicle's faraday armour took care of most of it.

He pulled away from the train, the Stelsco bouncing madly as it left the embankment. Lehmann and the others, unsecured, slammed backward and forward, Lehmann doing his best to protect Chures and Valdaire as he slid across the cabin floor.

The vehicle skidded to one side as something big hit.

"Kaplinski," growled Otto.

Kaplinski straddled the vehicle's nose, his face shredded, two insane eyes staring from his ruined face, his grin a death's-head rictus of bloodied teeth in shiny black bone, his lips stripped from his skull. The fingers of one hand were firmly wrapped around one of the Stelsco's forward sensor pods. The other formed into a fist. Roaring in pain and rage, the cyborg pounded at the Stelsco's armoured windscreen.

On the fourth hit, cracks appeared.

A pair of airbikes roared overhead. Twin lines of bullet impacts perforated the earth and passed over Kaplinski, knocking bits of flesh from him. He did not flinch, but continued to methodically smash his way into the Stelsco.

Otto brought the turret forward, right to the front of the roof. He brought it to its lowest elevation. Its eye cams were so close to Kaplinski the cyborg filled the view on Otto's iHUD.

"Goodbye, Kaplinski," he said.

The guns opened up. At such close range, they would have pulverised a mountain. Kaplinski danced upon the Stelsco's rounded front, one arm up in front of his face. He came off the bonnet and bounced onto the ground. Otto was not sure if he jumped or fell.

In the rearview cameras, Otto saw Kaplinski stagger to his feet. A bright lance of energy, emanating from the train, hit him square in the back, and he fell. Otto lost sight of him.

The Stelsco hurtled across abandoned fields. The Cossacks had got into the air, and their airbikes raced overhead; it would not be long before others from the border patrols joined them, the only military units allowed in the DMZ. Lehmann and Valdaire wrestled Chures into a chair. Valdaire stumbled onto Lehmann, and he pushed her into another seat and strapped her in. Otto jinked as missiles streaked from airbike farings, the Stelsco's defensive arsenal taking some out, others sending plumes of dirt and fire into the sky as they impacted the ground.

The treeline; he had to get into the forest. He swung the car hard onto an overgrown dirt track, the armoured vehicle's wide wheels overhanging both sides. A missile got through its countermeasures, destroying the middle left wheel. The car jettisoned the damaged unit, the Stelsco bucking as it went under the back wheels and was tossed high into the air. Water fountained as the car plunged down and up, surging through a small river, the small bridge that had once crossed it long gone.

In seconds, they were in the trees, racing along a forestry road. Otto engaged the machine's camouflage lamellae, and the scales that comprised it rippled and changed, depicting the road under it and forest around it. The Cossacks' shots grew less accurate.

"I'm going for the lake!" he bellowed. "Hang on!"

He turned off the road into an area recently felled. The Stelsco bounced madly as he forced it over tree stumps and gouges. A trio of auto-foresters blurred past, backs stacked high with logs. The car bumped over a series of concrete foundation blocks, remains of an old suburb, and then was into an area where the rotting remnants of houses still stood. The Stelsco burst through house after house, dragging rotting memories out into overgrown streets as it went. They crossed a road pockmarked with shell holes, past the rusting wrecks of ancient groundcars, and went down a narrow lane lined by the wild back gardens of two streets. Crumbling fencing exploded under the Stelsco's fat tyres. Otto swerved to avoid an overturned truck, Weeds growing thickly between long-forgotten possessions turned to mush on the road. More forest. A horrible grinding came from the front right wheel unit, a major malfunction, but salvageable. Otto told the machine to withdraw the unit and repair it.

With two wheels out of action, their speed reduced as the car's near-I struggled to keep it stable.

They went up and over the remains of the P-419 highway into the southern industrial zones. Concrete giants loomed, the remains of ancient refineries.

"We're getting close," he said.

Bullets rattled off the car roof as the airbikes locked onto them once more. Five of them wove back and forth above them, strafing. Warning lights blinked red in Otto's iHUD and on consoles round the compartment as subsidiary systems died, some sacrificed by the Stelsco to keep its priority gear running.

"Let me take them out!" shouted Lehmann.

"No more collateral damage!" replied Otto.

He wove through dry sump pools, their beds stained bright with toxic chemical deposits. The vast Bratsk aluminium refinery opened up in front of him like a belated apology, rust and weeds and yesterday's poisons.

"Nearly there!"

Tumbledown warehouses clustered round the refinery dock. The hulks of rusting barges slumped at their berths, cargoes forever undelivered. Otto hit the dockside at high speed. The engines whined as wheels spun wildly, free of the ground's friction. They bounced hard as they hit the cracked mud at the bottom.

"The river!" shouted Lehmann, and pointed through the cracked windscreen. Ahead, glinting silver, a series of loops surrounded by deep mud, cutting across the bottom of the empty Bratskoye reservoir. Once held back by one of the world's largest hydroelectric dams, it had been blown by what the Russian government had blandly termed "rogue nationalist elements" after the Secret War and the subsequent Sinosiberian purchase. The ensuing flood had taken out the other four dams on the Angara river, leaving wrecked infrastructure and flattened towns to the Chinese.

Now the noxious mud, thick with mercury from the town's aluminium and chemical processing past, was open to the skies, and the unbounded river formed the true border between the Russian Federation and the People's Republic of China, slap in the middle of the 75-kilometre-wide demilitarised zone.

A clunk sounded from the Stelsco as it redeployed its repaired wheel unit, and it became easier to control. The ghostly remains of the city whipped past far on their left, and receded as they travelled across the mudflats. Otto made good use of the shipwrecks dotting the plain, and for a few precious moments the airbikes lost them. Otto accelerated. One of the airbikes picked up his dust plume, and suddenly all five swooped in, hammering away with missiles and guns.

The Stelsco lurched as it hit the sticky mud round the river, skidded, then spun through 180 degrees as it hit the water. Its fat wheels and flotation units kept it on top of the water, the wheels stopped spinning and water jets took over. Otto disengaged the left jet and slewed the vehicle across the water as he grappled to bring the Stelsco back under control. Bullets followed their plume of spray, then abruptly stopped.

"They're retreating," said Lehmann. Eye cam screens showed the airbikes splitting in the air and falling back, as if they'd seen an invisible wall.

"Welcome to China," said Otto.

The Stelsco's wheels re-engaged as they hit the other bank. It struggled to haul them up out of the river. Otto eased back as they found their way back onto the dry.

"Everyone OK?" he asked. He looked back. Lehmann was as impassive as he always was when he was in mission mode. Valdaire was shaken up, and was anxiously checking over Chures.

Otto set the car to autodrive and went back. The VIA man was sprawled in his seat, deathly pale and barely conscious.

"Chures," he said. "Chures! Where's the damn medical pack in this vehicle?" Otto asked Lehmann.

Lehmann shook his head. It won't do any good, he thought out to Otto. Kaplinski has shattered all his ribs, he's got massive internal bleeding. He might have a chance if we got him into a proper hospital, but out here… His MT cut out as his thoughts trailed away.

"Hang in there, Chures," said Otto. "We'll get you help."

Chures smiled weakly. His breathing was weak and pink bubbles frothed at the corner of his lips.

Valdaire looked at Otto. "We could always neurally pattern him. I'm sure we could effect a quick download through his uplinks. It'll hurt, but it's better than the alternative."

Chures pushed weakly at her arm. "No…" His words came in brief pants, as his increasingly laboured breath would allow. "Don't… make… me… into… one of… them."

"Let him alone," said Otto. He remembered another time, and another person saying those words. This time he'd listen.

"It's the only way," said Valdaire, "I've got to do it, I can do it," and she began to throw open storage bins in the Stelsco. "I can get an emergency neural pattern, I can. If only…"

Otto grabbed her arm. "He said no."

Chures gasped and he passed out. His skin was white, his lips ashen.

An alarm trilled. "Veev! I'm under assault, help me, Veev!"

Valdaire's mouth dropped open. "I forgot to shut Chloe off!" She pawed at buttons until the trilling of her life companion ceased.

"Too late now," said Otto, and nodded at the windscreen. Against the grey sky bright points of light glowed, blowtorch flames in the air. They grew larger. Each burned from a jetpack attached to a heavily armoured human figure. "Dragon Fire soldiers," he said.

"The Chinese are coming," said Lehmann.