Skytrain Heist – Part One

by Lucas X. Wiseman

The handcuffs the Marshalls had slapped on me were a new fancy model, apparently “coded to my DNA and unescapable without the key.”

That was what they told me when they clapped them on, anyway. I sighed and laid down on the comfortable couch I was shackled to. Not like my crew cared enough to try to bust me out. I’d learned that the hard way.

When the interrogation lounge door finally opened, I was hit with the smell of hot, delicious coffee and fried bread. The woman who walked in had a steaming cup in one hand, and a box of doughnuts in the other. I salivated.

“Devan Smythe,” the woman said. “I’m Marshal Xen. I hope you’ve got an appetite.”

She set the food and drink down on the stylish coffee table and slid it my way.

“Not poisoned, is it?” I asked. The answer didn’t matter much; a maple bar was already on the way to my mouth before she answered.

“No, we need you to answer some questions first.”

“Before you poison me?” I asked around the delicious pastry. “Well, okay. Keep the doughnuts coming and I’m an open book.”

She didn’t quite smile, but her lips twitched.

“Ok Ms. Smythe. Tell me about the job you pulled.”

I sipped my coffee. Black, which was vile, but it was still caffeine.

“It’s like this. Dirigible trains are fat, vulnerable vaults of goodies, and I’m a poor kid from the bad side of town. Put two and two together.”

“How many of you were involved?”

“Six,” I told her. “I’d give you their names, but…”

She waved my objection away. “You’re not a snitch, I’m sure.”

“Not without some guarantees on your part,” I said. “I want immunity.”

“Grand-theft aircraft is a pretty serious crime. Especially since we don’t know where your buddies went,” the Marshal told me.

“You’ve not caught them? Lucky buggers,” I said. I retrieved a new doughnut: this one filled with creme.

“Listen: you want the details of our little operation? It’s your lucky day; they hung me out to dry. I’m willing to talk. Hell, I’m eager. But I need this to not ruin my life.”

Marshall Xen took a plain glazed from the box and chewed. “I see your position. You’ve got information we want, and motive to turn them in: all you need is incentive. I can persuade the powers that be to work with that.”

I squinted at her. “You funnin’ me, Marshall?”

“I don’t “fun”.”

Damn it, but I believed her. She spent a solid ten seconds eating her doughnut and maintaining cold, calculating eye contact with me. I tried not to blink.

“Here’s what we’re going to do,” she said. “You’re going to tell me the story of the heist, without naming names, and you won’t tell me where you were planning to rendezvous. I’ll go to my bosses and persuade them to cut you slack, you give me the rest of the details. Your life isn’t ruined, and I get a promotion. Deal?”

“What the hell,” I said. “Pop the popcorn: it’s storytime.”

---

The whole thing started because of the war. Not the capital “W” war between the once glorious nations of this forsaken continent, mind– I’m talking about the little wars between towns and villages and boroughs and preppers with way too much money and time and a degree in homemade landmines they got off the internet. That is what I grew up with, wars fought by neighbors. All people with a thousand guns, not a lick of sense, and a score to settle. Teacher taught us that in the before days, we were all one nation, under somegod-or-other, indivisible. Almost laughable now; if you look at a map, all you see is lines and divisions, little pocket kingdoms with little rulers who will shoot you dead just for steppin’ foot on the wrong rock.

And those rich coastal bastards? They just floated above it all once it got dangerous. They wanted to get their belongings to whichever mansion they’re living at this week, don’t they? But the ground ain’t safe. Not for big trucks, not for trains. Armored convoys can usually make it through ok, but they’re real expensive, and they still get hit. And it turns out, hydrogen is cheap. I dunno whose idea it first was, to ship above all the chaos, but I’m betting they’re a trillionaire now. Dozens of cargo blimps chained together in a giant train? Turns out to be right practical, once you consider the alternative.”

“I didn’t need a history lesson, Ms. Smythe,” Marshall Xen said drily.

I shrugged. “Give me a chance to finish my doughnut, it’ll make sense.”

I chewed with irritating slowness, but the Marshal was a pro. She watched patiently and sipped her own coffee without even a raised eyebrow.

“Right; so that’s the history, but what you didn’t pick up on was the desperation. Everybody started using these skytrains to ship their shit, and little me, living down in a piss-poor trailer castle… I got used to hearing the buzz of the engines, and looking up at these fat, peaceful sacks of gold that just… hummed on by, while my belly grumbled. I just got to watch them fly on by, full of goodies I could never get my hands on. Skytrains don’t stop in flyover country. But then, well… they do fly over.”

“There were five of us, plus me-- six kids from the bad side of life. And we got it in our heads to take over one of those skytrains, to hitch a ride on it and land it somewhere, and we could sell the goods inside. One of our number, uh… I’ll call him Cousin, said he had family connections that could help us fence the goods, once we gottem. So Cousin has the connection to sell the shit-- now how was we gonna get it?”

“That’s where Brains came in. Brains is a genius. If she’d have been born in a coastal city, she’d be in a college somewhere, or in some boardroom running one of the companies we was trying to steal from. Instead, she got shot in a trailer-turf war when she was seven and lost her leg. So it goes, I guess. Anyway, she knows about this old tech, cause she reads when we have enough power to get online. Rest of us just look at porn or sports, but she’s reading. She tells us about these things called hang gliders.”

The Marshall seemed interested for the very first time in our conversation. “Go on,” she urged.

“I’m going, I’m going. Basics are this: fixed wing, lightweight craft. You launch them from somewhere real high up and glide down to the ground, hoopin and hollerin all the way. Except, you can throw a real little engine on them too, and then they can stay up for hours before eventually touching down to earth.”

“So you built these contraptions? What was your role, Ms. Smythe, and the others? What were they to do?”

“I’m light fingered,” I said, wiggling the fingers on my formerly-shackled hand. The Marshall stared at me with delicious shock which quickly transformed into panic. She leapt up and pulled her hand cannon, but I just sipped my coffee with careful slowness.

“Haven’t got any cream, have you? I haven’t had real milk in… years, actually.”

“How the hell did you do that?” Despite her fear and her surprise, her voice didn’t shake at all. An impressive lady, the Marshall.

“Magicians don’t tell, Marshall,” I said. I stayed real still and nonthreatening like, aware of the death-black barrel aimed straight at my left eye. “But don’t you worry none, I haven’t got anything against you. I was just getting tired of that chain clanking.”

“I should restrain you again,” the Marshall said. She paused for about five second before sitting back down. She put her weapon away but kept a hand on it, just in case. Smart lady.

“Well I guess you could, but why? I’m not here to cause trouble. We’re on the same team, see? Anyway, my job was to deal with locks. The other three, the Meatheads, well, they were there to knock heads. Know how many people are usually flying on of those skytrains?”

“Barely a skeleton crew; navigation is all automated. There’s usually an engineer and then a guard, or two.”

“See we didn’t know that,” I said. “We figured they’d be guarded heavy, there would be a pilot we could threaten… well, anyway. Brains designed the gliders, Cousin got us the engines, the Meatheads built them while Brains yelled at them to be careful… and we spent three godforsaken days trekking down a holler and up a mountain to get the altitude we needed.”

“You carried them?”

“Each of us, except Brains. Cause of her leg. She rode on the back of the Meathead she was sweet on. She’d built an attachment thing that could click her onto the glider with the biggest engine. Cousin got all mad, you know? Said she was a liability, but she said it was her idea and her gliders and she was coming with”.

“Smart girl. She knew Cousin was a tricksy type, liable to leave her high and dry. Wish I’d been smart enough to see that,” I said bitterly.

“So you launch the gliders,” the Marshall hurried me along. I selected another doughnut, a chocolate one this time.

“We did, and we hung in the air for almost an hour before we landed back on the mountain. A test run, see? To make sure everything worked. Brains and her meathead’s glider landed a bit heavy because of the extra weight, so they used some tree branches to reinforce it. And then we were ready for the real thing. We all had grappling hooks, Cousin had his trusty whacking staff, the Meatheads had guns, and I had my magic fingers. And then of course, it all went to hell.”

“So you got up in the air, flew over the skytrain, and landed. The report from the meck mentioned hearing you land, though she didn’t know it at the time. Next thing she knew, she was on the floor with a massive concussion.”

“Cousin whacked her good with his stick,” I said. “Meatheads shot the guard looking lady, she fell off.” I felt a pang of sadness, and I set down my coffee.

“You seem bothered by her death?”

“I always imagined that the folk working on those machines, that they were evil. Mustache twirling villains, laughing at us poor folk as they soared over. But… she was just a person like us, trying to make her way in the world. She looked so scared and angry when she fell. Her scream…”

My throat was too tight to keep talking, and again the Marshall proved her stuff. She didn’t say a word, just waited till my eyes were water-free and my throat was clear.

“Anyway, we went looking for a pilot. Didn’t find one, just a control room. Brains is all jubilant like, mocking Cousin, saying “see, this is why I needed to come.” She starts hacking into the thing, I guess? I don’t know anything about that. Meanwhile, me and Cousin and two Meatheads go looking at all the goods. I crack the locks and we oooh and awe over all that shine. Brand new gaming systems, 3D projectors, computers, assistant robots with the big wheels and stretchy arms, real leather goods…”

“I’m aware of what was on the manifest,” Marshall Xen said coolly.

“Sure but you didn’t feel what it was like. Remember where and how I grew up, now. Suddenly, it seemed like everything I’d ever had dreams of was going to become real. I was standing in a treasure horde. Only I’d forgotten about the dragon.”

“The guard who fell,” she said. I nodded.

“Those skytrains fly pretty high up. She had enough time and, I guess enough hate in her heart, to spend her last seconds reporting the attack instead of praying or whatever you do when you’re falling to your death.”

“And so we came.”

“So you did, Marshall Xen.”

She flipped through a notebook with clinical detachment, and I admired how precise and polished her black fingernails were; each bearing the Marshall’s symbol. Nice touch, that.

“Your fellows opened fire when they saw a pair of Marshall hovercraft coming. Our Marshalls returned fire and destroyed two of your gliders. One of the… Meatheads, I presume, was killed, and her body fell. We’ve not yet recovered it for ID.”

“Brains had managed to hack the nav by that time, but the thing about skytrains is they’re awful slow.”

“Slow and steady?” the Marshall asked.

“Something like that. So Cousin and the remaining Meatheads are still shooting with you Marshalls, me and Brains are freaking out, trying to decide if we just bail. But we know the gliders can’t outrun those hovercraft, so all we can do is fight or die. Or I guess, get captured.”

“What I’m curious about is how you disabled our craft,” the Marshall said. “The report gets… hazy, there.”

“Ah, that’s an interesting tale,” I said. “But not one you’ll get unless I’m given something.”

She raised a perfect eyebrow at me.

I waited.

She waited longer.

“Cream?” I asked again, holding up my cup. I gave her my sweetest smile.

She sighed and I swear her eyes started to roll.

“Fine. Cream. Wait here.”

“Oh, like I have a choice?” I called as she rose.

“Ms. Smythe, if you walk through that door without cuffs on, they’ll kill you first and ask questions never.”

“Heard,” I said.

“Plus, what would you do once outside this door? Jump, and hope to learn to fly on the way down?” She laughed at her own joke, retreated and I heard the door click shut and lock. I figured I could still probably get out, but she was right– I didn’t really have a plan to escape.

But then of course, escape was the last thing I wanted.