An autopilot that wouldn’t turn off but also didn’t pose an immediate problem. Superexpress. Nonstop ride.
“Don’t tell me. You’re on a train.”
“Bingo!”
Aranea had a bad feeling. There were only so many lines extending from the capital. And of those, fewer still were in any sort of operable state.
“And let me guess. You’re headed for Tenebrae.”
“Bingo again! You’re on a hot streak today, Lady A!”
Biggs let out a big, bellowing laugh. Aranea wanted to clutch her head and scream. Their evacuees were out of the frying pan and speeding straight into the fire.
“Listen, Biggs, I hate to be the one to tell you this,” she said, “but our friend Tiny’s taken to the skies. And he’s headed the same way you are.”
“Ha ha h―Uh, sorry? Say again?”
“Tenebrae’s next on the docket for Diamond Weapon.”
Biggs’s tone soured. “Can’t say I saw that coming,” he groused.
And she couldn’t blame him. Who could have guessed that the giant magitek armor would bother going all the way to Tenebrae to “have a little fun”? It was a plan that could only come out of the mind of a madman. Like the one standing before her now.
“Wedge!” she called out.
She wasn’t about to let the children she’d saved run straight into the same danger as before. First, she needed to chase down that train.
“Wedge! Do you read? Where are you?!”
An agonizing moment passed before the terse reply “Dropship.” She sensed the tension in his voice.
“What’s your status?”
“Being chased. Swarm of daemons.”
Aranea groaned. She knew she should be thankful for the simple fact that their ship had not been downed or destroyed like so many others. But the ship already being up in the air meant that her plan wouldn’t make it off the ground. It would’ve been so simple: Wedge would fly up to her, she’d hop on board, and the two of them would go racing after the train.
“Uh . . . Is this thing on?” Another transmission crackled through the comm, this one from Biggs, though it wasn’t for her. “Attention, all passengers. We’ve got a bit of a, um, situation.”
The reception was poor, and it was hard to hear him through all the static, but he seemed to be making a general announcement on the train.
“It looks like the brake lever’s snapped. There wouldn’t happen to be anybody on board with a tube of industrial adhesive, would there?”
Biggs’s words were a little slurred. He’d clearly had a nip or two, which Aranea wasn’t the least bit surprised by. He had a tendency to crack under pressure. Normally optimistic and composed, he’d grow skittish and fretful when the going got tough. He was aware of the problem himself, but nonetheless he often went for a swig of liquid courage when larger threats loomed. Today, though, the alcohol didn’t seem to be helping.
Aranea glanced up to find Izunia watching her with a thin smile on his face. He’d been listening to the entire exchange, and it seemed to amuse him.
Irritation surged through her. “You know what you could use? A good beating.” She struggled to her feet. “How about I put you down and stop all these damn daemons once and for all.”
She’d hoped her words might bring the slightest hint of dismay to Izunia’s face. That alone would’ve been cause for celebration. But the man didn’t even give her that.
“Why not try? I’ve even got a little prize for you, if you manage to best me.”
Izunia extended the apple toward her. The gesture and his grin made her sick. The jagged bite torn out of the apple was turned in her direction. Deliberately, she assumed.
“Afraid I’m not much for sloppy seconds,” she said, swatting his hand away and stepping past him. She took a glimpse over the edge of the Keep: still the same cityscape painted in flame and smoke below.
“And anyway, we have more pressing business,” Aranea continued. “I think my subordinates and I are just about done playing soldier.”
“Is that so?”
“Mind if we tender our resignation to you? You know, seeing as His Radiance isn’t with us anymore.”
“I suppose I could oblige,” Izunia said. “What prompted the decision, if I may ask?”
Aranea was surprised he hadn’t figured it out for himself. She thought she’d made it obvious enough.
“It’s simple: I really can’t stand you.”
She winked, then dove off the edge.
She was hurtling through the air when Wedge’s next transmission arrived.
“Think I can shake ’em. Train line?”
He’d apparently kept an ear on her conversation with Biggs while outmaneuvering the daemons. Good. This would get them in position to chase down the runaway train.
“On my way now,” she replied.
As the ground rushed up toward her, Aranea engaged the Stoss’s retrofire to brake her descent. Her landing would be perfectly timed. Or at least it wouldn’t be a wipe-out.
“Oof!” The air left her lungs as she slammed into the ground, a wave of pain rushing from the bottom of her soles to the top of her head. She’d lessened the impact somewhat, but that didn’t mean it was a soft, comfy landing. In any case, she was still alive, and that seemed about as good as she could hope for given the distance from the top of the Keep to the ground.
All she had to do now was sprint the remaining distance to the rendezvous point. But as if fate were determined to deny her any imminent victory, no matter how small, the comm crackled to life again.
First there was just static. Gut-sinking static. Finally a voice came through. “Aranea!”
Of all the times . . . She was ready to throw back her head and start yelling curses at the sky.
“Where have you been?! You have a job to do! Stop messing about and help fight off these daemons!”
Loqi Tummelt. Arguably the most annoying man in the entire imperial army, if not the entire world. Sure, making commander in his early twenties was a real achievement and implied he had some talent, but as far as Aranea could tell, he produced more noise than actual results. And gods, he was always so uptight.
“It is the duty of all a nation’s people to defend the homeland!”
How did one pair of human lungs manage to produce that kind of volume? It was like a direct assault on her eardrums. She flicked off the comm―no time to deal with Little Lord Hotblood―and focused on sprinting with everything she had. Anything less wasn’t gonna cut it in a chase after a superexpress train.