Steam Ch. 00-01

His mark was an incredible specimen, pushing his lumbering frame through the crowd toward the train yard behind the station. The man had an arrogant sort of strut, his weight moving indelicately across the ground in long strides. There was little refinement to his motion, thought Nash, and he probably had little, if any, combat training. The approach would be speed, silence and opportunity. A harsh, shuddering breath was all Nash could muster as the man passed within a meter of him, completely unaware. When he was roughly thirty meters away, Nash began to follow.

He tipped down the brim of the hat over his eyes, just enough to not be spotted by the man should he turn around. The mark left a large wake in the crowd that Nash avoided. His appearance would immediately cause suspicion if he was seen too closely.

The crowd thinned as he stalked his quarry through the station. It made him easier to spot, but made his prey easier to follow. The far end of the station ended in a series of offices, storage hangars and the miles of tracks used to organize the routes of the incoming and outbound trains. His target stepped through a doorway into the back areas, and, after a moment, Nash followed him through.

The rear passages reeked of oil and overheated steel, and were much quieter than the conversation-filled din of the platform. The mission files had said the security would be lax, aside from active magic detection on the platform and in the train yard. He wasn't disappointed. The few staff in the long, door-filled hallway bustled past, unconcerned, and there were no dedicated security guards.

The target stopped at an office door midway down the line, knocking twice and heading inside. Clocking in for work at Compton E&L, thought Nash. He took a seat on a bench in front of an unmarked supply office. The door to the office in front of him had been left open. A pretty young secretary sat at the desk inside the door, plucking away lazily at the keys of a typewriter. She looked up and caught his eye, and he smiled and winked. She blushed and went back to work, typing perhaps a bit quicker. Magic, he marveled.

A door closed down the hall and Nash saw the target coming towards him out of the corner of his eye. He feigned sleep, stretching out a bit on the bench, and the man passed him again, oblivious. The man walked past a few more doors, and then took a right through a set of double doors that led out to the yard. Nash followed at a brisk pace, only stopping when he heard the man's voice in conversation with some unseen woman on the far side of the door. He promised to come see her when the train stopped for the night, breaking the promise even as he made it. They said goodbye to each other, fondly.

Nash heard the woman walking toward the door, her footsteps a great deal quieter than his target's, and he swept the door open with a great flourish. He doffed his hat and bowed deeply, holding the door open for her with an embarrassingly loud "Madame." His face was too low for her to see, and his very presence was awkward enough that she made a fast exit from the situation with little more than a mumbled thanks. When the heavy brown leather of her boots was out of sight, he continued the chase.

The train yard was a massive, interconnected jumble of glinting steel tracks winding their way over the gravel-covered ground toward the station. Rumbling engines and the clash of connecting train cars drowned out every other sound but the occasional squeal of wheels braking on the line. Nash quickly discarded the tall hat, jacket, and gloves of his disguise and rolled up his sleeves to his elbow. Being dressed as a dandy wouldn't do him any good out here. He scanned the area for his mark and saw the man just as he turned the corner around the closest line of cars.

Nash looked around for any other personnel in the yard that were close enough to spot him, noting that the closest workers were about fifty meters away and busy at work. He hopped between the connectors of the closest line of trains, peeked up and down the line, and moved into the next alley. The mark was nowhere in sight.

He cursed to himself and jumped onto the next set of connectors. He peeked around the corner and spotted a group of mechanics sitting along the doorframe of an empty boxcar. He popped back around the side of the car before they noticed him, and ran a few cars up the track before jumping over the connectors into their alley. The mark wasn't with them, and they weren't with Compton E&L.

"Hey!" Nash called, getting their attention. They stopped talking and looked over at him, trying to squint through the sunlight rising over the glass roof of the platform behind him.

"Yeah?"

"You know where Compton E&L's quartermaster is? I've got 30,000 liters of milk that needs to get loaded into an ice car before it spoils."

"Uh, no," one of the workers replied, shielding his eyes with his hand. "You try the office? You're really not allowed to be out here."

"Yeah I tried the office," Nash said, "but I couldn't find the guy and if I don't get this stuff off the truck in the next hour I'm up shit creek without a paddle." They talked among themselves for a second.

"The only Compton train that's loading up is on line 5, headed for platform 2B," the worker said. "Go three more lines down and you'll see it." The man pointed north and Nash waved and thanked him, running off between the cars. He jumped two more sets of couplings in rapid succession before spotting his mark, walking the line with a clipboard and inspecting the rails and couplings. His back was to Nash, and only twenty or so meters away. Too far for gravel below foot and the long, unbroken corridors of visible area between the lines.

Nash ducked back between the cars to think of the best approach when the cars began moving beneath him, pulling further into the yard and moving him closer to his target. It would be too easy to spot him standing on the couplings from the right angle. He thought for a second and then dropped down onto the track, letting the cars move over him. There was nearly a meter of space between the trestles and the suspension of the train, leaving Nash with plenty of space. He watched the suspension until he saw something that wasn't moving or sharp looking and grabbed onto it, pulling himself up off the track.

The car moved him slowly down the line until he let go five cars past his target. He rolled out from beneath the train and kept rolling until he made it to the other side of the Compton train. He scanned up and down the line, saw no one, and sprinted up the side of the cars, looking below each car to keep tabs on his target's legs. Nash climbed to the top of the target's car, staying low to the roof to avoid being spotted by the control tower at the far edge of the yard. He crawled on all fours, his arms out to the side and bent at ninety-degree angles like an alligator's, moving slowly. Slowly. Slowly.

Nash peaked over the edge and saw his mark by the side of the train. He watched the man's every move, unblinking, as he moved his body into position to strike. His mouth watered. He could feel heat building up at the back of his neck. He could see bits of cracked graphite flaking away from the point of the man's pencil as he checked a box on the form. The car on the line next to them screeched to a halt. He dropped.

Nash hit the man from above. He wrapped his arm around the man's neck on the descent and used the man's upper body as a pivot point, choking off a surprised yelp. Nash rotated to land on his feet and used the momentum of the fall to roll backward just as he finished curling his arms around the man's neck. He wrapped his legs around the man's waist and arched his back as hard as possible. Nash savored the few ecstatic moments of struggle. There was a snap. The man's body went limp.

Nash fell back on the gravel, breathing heavily. He checked up and down the line for workers and found none, pushing the mark's body off of himself and standing. The man's radiant blue eyes had gone glassy. Nash slapped the man's face and double-checked his pulse to make sure the job was done. It was.

He stripped down and replaced his clothes with the man's brown mechanic uniform. It was a perfect fit, along with the man's boots and cap. He pulled a gold key out of the man's pocket and unlocked the nearest boxcar, sliding the heavy wooden door open. He dragged the body to the door and managed to get it inside after some considerable effort, throwing his old clothes on top of it and securing the door. He checked the number of the car against the ledger on the clipboard and saw that its contents were listed as a series of X's. Nash chuckled, nobody was going to find that body until he was long gone.

"Hey!" Called voice from behind him. Nash turned and smiled, recognizing the train's quartermaster from the mission file.

"What's up Kittredge?" Nash asked.

"Oh," Kittredge said, recognizing him. The glamour had held up perfectly. "Hey Bennett, what're you doing back here?"

"Just some last minute checks on the coupling mechanisms," he said, holding up the clipboard. Kittredge nodded.

"Why are you sweating?" He asked. Nash laughed and rubbed the back of his head.

"I had a few too many drinks last night," he replied. "Hangover sweats, you know how it is." To his relief, Kittredge laughed.

"Yeah, yeah," he said. "Well make sure you've wrapped up soon, our schedule's been moved up an hour. We're getting crew briefings in ten, so be at the office by then."

"Will do," Nash said, feigning looking around at his surroundings. "Actually, I'm pretty much done here. I'll just head back with you."

"Uh, ok," said Kittredge, pausing for a second. "Wait a second, have you seen a guy asking about a milk shipment? That's the reason I came out here in the first place."

"Uh," Nash began, scratching his head, "yeah, I saw that guy a couple minutes ago. I'm pretty sure he had the wrong information, like he was a day ahead or something. He seemed pretty pissed, stormed off back toward the offices." He shrugged. Kittredge rolled his eyes.

"Whatever, let's get going then." They headed back down the line and took a right toward the offices. The glamour Nash had been fitted with before leaving had held. Bennett Carlisle's life was now his, and Bennett himself was dead and out of the way. He looked down the train yard, to where the lines fell off into infinity, past the horizon and into the west. Bennett Carlisle was dead, he thought. One down, three more to go.

Nash sighed to himself. Life was just great sometimes.

"Have a seat Beazley," said Perry Cartwright, the Bella Faccia's conductor, as Pram stepped into his temporary office in the bureaucratic hall of the station. She shut the gold inlaid door perhaps a bit too hard behind her, and the smoked glass window rattled in its filigreed frame. She jumped a bit. "You OK Beazley?" She smiled and nodded at him, then sat, running a hand through her hair.

"It's been a weird morning, sir," she responded, resting her calf on her knee and leaning back against the seat's uncomfortable leather padding. Field offices always had the worst furniture. Cartwright's desk was a sad, thin thing made of pressed metal and covered in a fluttering layer of paper. A wooden fan circled lethargically overhead, pulled along by clockwork wheels and taut leather thongs. Pram could hear an out of time tick in its flywheel, probably a broken bearing.

"Understood," said Cartwright, fumbling through a pile of heavy paper envelopes to his left and freeing one from near the top of the off-kilter stack. He peered at the label through the gold-rimmed spectacles hanging near the edge of his nose.

"Here," he said, tossing the envelope across the desk. "Your copy of the file for our next route. Maps, duty list, pay, and whatever else." She gave the packet a cursory thumbing through. Pram hadn't actually read over a briefing in nearly half a decade. No point in starting now. She set the envelope down beside the chair and turned her attention back to Cartwright. He was wiggling the fat tuft of hair beneath his nose, which meant bad news.

"Beazley," he started.

"Sir?"

He exhaled a rattling breath that made his moustache wiggle.

"There is an... opportunity that I'm under obligation to inform you of," he said, leaning back in the office chair with a creak. He folded his hands over his belly. "The Lady Turandot derailed last night in the Granger Pass, and the Croesus office specifically has asked us to run a route up there, pick up whatever's left, and then drop off what she was supposed to be carrying at the Imperium fort west of the pass."

"That's a military operation, sir," Pram said.

"And, as such, your compensation will increase alongside the risk."

"Is that why the Turandot was derailed sir?"

"No way of knowing until we get there," he said, scratching at his stomach. He leaned forward and pulled a plain steel canteen out of the right side desk drawer. The canteen was a relic from his days fighting for the Imperium, and he still only kept water in it. Pram could feel her father's watch ticking against the back of her wrist. What a weird morning. "Of course, that's what I wanted to speak to you about."

"Sir?"

"Your contract is up come arrival in Coalton, and you'll be able to sign on with another engine or head back home." He put the canteen back in the drawer and pulled out another, smaller envelope of the same color as the briefing packet. He dropped it on the desk as well. She looked at him, slightly confused, and then opened the packet to find a small fortune in promissory notes. "You stay aboard after Coalton and that's yours, plus another sum of the same amount when we get back."

"Sir, that's more than anybody on the line gets paid."

"Not my call Beazley," he responded, pointing a single, heavy finger at the envelope. "That bribe there came directly from the Croesus office with your name printed on the side. Not that I don't value your services, but that's more than I'm worth."

"Did they say why?"

"There are Imperium interests tied up in this route," he said, shrugging. "You're the only person going west of the hub that has a gauge level high enough to run the engine uphill for an extended period of time."

"Huh, lucky me," she said, pushing the envelope back across the desk to Cartwright. Now that she had noticed the offbeat tick in the ceiling fan, it had started driving her nuts. She fought the urge to rub the inside of her ear with her pinky finger.

"Not going to take it, then?" Cartwright asked, raising one of his bushy, white eyebrows.

"Going to think about it, sir," she said. "It's been a while since I've been home," she rubbed an unconscious finger beneath the watchband, "and the western rails rarely forgive greedy decision making." He nodded sagely.

"'No long arms on the western lines,' I think the saying goes?" He asked.

"Something like that sir," she replied, picking the briefing packet up from beside her chair. He nodded and picked up the packet of money, slapping it a few times atop the desk before returning it to the drawer it had come from.

"Well," he said, standing with an outstretched hand. "Thanks for your time, Beazley, and get word to me about your decision before Coalton if you can." She took his hand and shook it. Three gruff pumps. His hands were surprisingly soft for how big he was.

"Will do sir," she said, turning and leaving.

Pram took better care to close the door on the way out. She walked down the hallway toward the train yard access doors, scanning the blank backside of the packet as though it had some answers to her questions. Western rail jobs, colony rail jobs especially, were very dangerous. The frontier was little more than desperate settlers, bandits and wastelands. Nobody came of age in the Imperium without hearing stories of cannibal tribes, cloistered sorcerers and the nightmare creatures that slunk through the stinking marshes of the Verdant Wastes. She shivered.

"Hey, Pram!" Called a voice from down the hall. She looked up to see Kittredge's beaming face below a quickly waving hand. She chuckled and returned the greeting, trying not to blush when she caught Bennett grinning at her from behind him. She bit the inside of her lip and tried to smile at the same time. The face she ended up making made Kittredge raise confused eyebrow. She coughed to cover up her embarrassment. What a shitty morning.

"Hey Kittredge," she said, turning curtly to Bennett. "And, hello, Mr., um, Carlisle." They locked eyes and her heartbeat soared. His gaze was colder somehow, more confident. Was it because of this morning? He didn't even blink.

"Hello Pram."

"Oh," said Kittredge, taken somewhat aback by the informality. Technically speaking, Pram was Bennett's superior, though such formalities were rarely observed by the rail workers. Kittredge smiled like a man caught between two large dogs and a locked door. He hated confrontations he wasn't a part of.

"We, uh," Pram started. Her face was on fire. She hoped her dark skin and the poor lighting in the hallway were enough to hide the blush.

"Had drinks together last night," Bennett said, not breaking his gaze. She couldn't look away if she tried. Some electric thing ran its cool fingers along the edges of her scalp. Pram could almost feel his fingers on her neck, squeezing. She swallowed. "I went out with some buddies of mine and we ran into her and a few of her friends. You got home safely, right?"

"Yeah... just fine," she said, silently thanking him for the out. Something felt off. Pram's mind wandered to thin-faced specters floating over the platform, and then her brain took over and forced her mouth to smile. "I had a great time."

"Oh, nice," said Kittredge, willfully oblivious to whatever had just been exchanged. Pram wasn't sure herself. Kittredge turned to Pram. "I didn't know you had any friends." Pram narrowed her eyes incredulously.

"Hey!" She said, punching him softly in the shoulder. He laughed and pretended to curl up for protection. "What gives you that idea?"

"Your sunny disposition," he replied, still chuckling. He stopped abruptly, checking his watch and making a distressed face. "Oh dear, it seems were coming up a bit late."

"For?"

"Crew meeting and final preparations. Apparently," he said, "there's going to be some big hullabaloo with this job and we've all got to be briefed as a group before send off. All of us, that is, except our illustrious Steam Train, Madame Pram Beazley." Kittredge doffed his cap with a flourish and she laughed.

"You're a complete ass, Mr. Pascal," she said, returning the gesture with an awkward curtsey.

"Yes, well," he shrugged, "a complete ass needs all of its pieces, and I'm afraid some of mine may be chewed off if the honorable Mr. Cartwright doesn't see me in the next five minutes. I'll be seeing you." He flicked the brim of his cap and began to walk off down the hall.

"Maybe," Bennett added as he followed, winking at Pram as he walked off down the hall. Her eyes followed them, him specifically, until they both disappeared around a far corner. Bennett had told Kittredge something funny and they both exchanged a loud laugh that echoed off the powder blue paint of the hallway. She hoped, like an idiot she told herself, that he hadn't just made a joke about her. He was such a weird guy, she thought, but all guys were weird when you got to know them.

Pram caught her reflection in the glass of one of the office door windows. She had only a vague idea of what constituted pretty, but she thought she was pretty cute for her mid-20's. Soft brown skin, her mother's emerald green eyes, hell, she was a fucking catch if anybody asked. She pursed her lips defiantly in her makeshift mirror and nodded, throwing herself a thumbs-up as she did so.