Skytrain Heist – Part Two

Skytrain Heist – Part Two

by Lucas X. Wiseman

Written June 23, 2024

“Are you going to tell me how you shot down my ships?” the Marshall asked, now that my coffee was sufficiently and deliciously full of real cream. I sighed happily and sipped it, nodding.

Marshall Xen waited approximately thirty seconds while I sipped and savored.

“Ms. Smythe.”

“Righto,” I said. “Where was I? One of the Meatheads was dead, Cousin and the other two were battling your goons, and me and Brains were panicking. We ran out of the navigation control area and out onto the deck where the fighting was happening. Brains was slower than me with her leg and all, but we stuck together. I’m not one to--”

I cut myself off, a wave of emotion clouding my vision again. My last memory of her was seeing that cold, ambitious calculation in her dull brown eyes, and realizing what it meant for me. What I meant to her.

“She left me. I can’t believe…”

“Focus, Ms. Smythe. 

I dabbed at my eyes with the flimsy little napkin the doughnuts came with and took a deep, deep breath.

“Sorry. Okay, so we got across the deck where the shooting was happening. It was obvious that the potato guns the Meatheads were using had some kind of efficacy against your Marshalls-- or at least, they didn’t want to get the paint scraped. They were ducking back and forth in the air, avoiding the huge, tumbling slugs that smoked through the air as they soared. Big, dumb weapons for big, dumb people.”

“We recovered one of the projectile shooters. Some form of… gas powered grenade pistol?” The Marshall asked.

“You’d have to ask them, I don’t know,” I said, waving the comment away. “But it was also clear to me, at least, that the Meatheads hadn’t brought enough ammo for a long fight. Your pilots couldn’t be sure they could take a hit from those cannons so they were dodging, but once the ammo ran out…”

“So anyway, we legged it across all five of the dirigible cars, until we came to the final one, and we just sort of stood there, panicking. We’d run out of road, literally. I was feeling this massive weight of overwhelm, I wanted to piss my pants and surrender, I wanted to jump and try to… well, I don’t know, but I felt–”

“Stick to facts, please, Ms. Smythe.”

“Facts, righto. Anyway, I decide we might as well hide. I break us in to the storage area, and what do we find inside but a bunch of fancy mech suits and weapons? Now that surprised the hell out of me, and I stood stupid and dumb, but Brains clambers up into one and starts doing her thing, hacking or whatever. I keep poking around, thinking of finding a parachute or a, I dunno, magic set of wings. Mostly just shell shocked.”

“Your companion succeeds and engages with our hovers?”

“That’s the long and short of it, yeah. Meatheads and Cousin retreated after us, maybe figuring we had some kind of a plan. I climb back up onto the deck, no weapon, no magic wings or nothing, ready to just… surrender, I guess. But they’re up there shooting at each other still, and then Brains pops up in her new mecha.”

“You seen em? They got these arm cannon things that shoot… shit I dunno, air, or maybe magnetism? Whatever they did, they disable the first hover, it drops like a rock. The second pilot, I guess she saw what happened so she maneuvers over the dirigible car so that when she gets hit, she drops onto it instead of out of the sky.”

I blew out my cheeks. I’d had too many doughnuts too fast and now there was an ache in my stomach too. Or maybe that had to do with the story I was telling.

“There were an awful lot of Marshalls inside that thing, Marshall Xen,” I said. “Dozen, at least?”

“A full contingent is thirteen.”

“Baker’s, then. At any rate, they come spilling out like angry ants, and I realize I’m caught in the middle again, my fellows on one side, ya’ll on the other. Except Brains, Cousin and the Meatheads are all retreating, leaping over the attachment cables. I see what they are thinking and start to run after them, but I get grazed by a blast of some kind, and it knocks me down and out. When I come to, I’m maybe fifteen feet from the edge. Couldn’t have been more than a few seconds. My ears were ringing…”

I saw her again then, framed clear as crystal in my mind. That clever brown eyed girl, staring across at me. I could feel the blood coming out of my ears and dripping down my chin, and our eyes met. I didn’t see compassion or affection or concern on her face. 

“Brains stared at me across the gap. She said something, but my ears…”

“And she blasted the conjunction cable apart,” the Marshall concluded.

“There was a bit of a hitch when it blew, and I fell over again. When I got my feet under me, the rest of the train was soaring away, and then a big sweaty Marshall tackled me. And now I’m here.”

Marshall Xen finished scribbling and flipped her pad closed. She regarded me in much the same way that Brains had done, with cool analysis, little emotion. But she wasn’t as good at poker as me, I could tell. Something was going on behind her eyes, though she was hiding it real good.

“So, that was about six hours ago? Long enough for your medifolks to regrow my eardrums and fix my concussion,” I said. “But since we’re still talking and you started by bringing in confectionary bribes, well, I know the search ain’t been too successful.”

“It… has not been,” the Marshall said evenly. 

“So then, riddle me this Marshall Xen,” I said, my fingers dancing along the table between us in an uneven rhythm. “What was so damn valuable on that ship that you’re still looking? I mean, I see a hundred of them things fly over a day. What was in the one we hit? Obviously the dirigible that was carrying them mecha got left behind when they made their escape, minus the one Brains was in, so that ain’t it…”

For the first time, the Marshall didn’t seem perfectly precise and put together. She wore an expression that reminded me of a kid caught in a lie. Nothing like when I’d got my cuffs off, but still she was surprised. Which got me thinking, maybe there was a way out of this for me.

“What was it? Gold bullion? Citizenship chits? Medical equipment? No, too common, no reason to fly it neither…” I mused. “Maybe the whole car was them mecha suits? But every police force on the coast has them, so they ain’t unique. And I didn’t see what was in the other couple dirigible carriers, but…”

And then it hit me like a ton of bricks. “You can’t find it,” I said.

“Yes, that’s why we’re having this conversation, Ms.–”

“Naw, I mean you’ve gotta have trackers in that shit. I bet each one of them blimps has got some kinda tracking, plus the engine would have one too, right? But you can’t find none of them.”

The Marshall just looked at me, and I gave her a big, toothy grin.

“Shit, you ain’t after the loot. You want Brains.”

The Marshall didn’t move, didn’t blink, barely breathed, but I knew I was right. Some po-dunk kid from flyover country had figured out a way to hack and steal their shit, and they didn’t know how.

“Well, now. That puts a rightful interesting spin on me helping, wouldn’t you say?”

“I wouldn't say it that particular way,” she said slowly.

“Well, you don’t talk as pretty as me,” I agreed. “But I think what you’re after is the girl who managed to disable and evade you. The stuff is way less important. Am I right?”

“Your associates are of interest to us, yes.”

“Mmhmm.”

We stared at each other, me and Marshall Xen. She looked real hard at me, too, and I almost broke the silence first. Lucky for me, a yawn took over my mouth before any words could. I felt my jaw crack and gave my neck a rub. Once I was through, I could see she was starting to squirm. Bad gambler she’d be, Marshall Xen. 

“Well, I ain’t getting any younger,” I said. “What’s the deal?”

“The same as I said before, if you–”

I shook my head real slow like. “No, I think the arithmetic has changed a bit. You’re after Brains cause she’s valuable. She’s not like that shit in the Skytrain, she’s unique. One of a kind. And I don’t think you and your friends are interested in her because of that fancy prosthesis she made herself.”

“You’re assuming a great deal about what we want.”

“Always been a bit of a gambler, me.” I took another risk, acting on a hunch I’d had since she sat down. “Who are you really, then?”

The “Marshal” eyed me, then reached into her blouse and pulled out some kind of tiny disk on a chain from around her neck. She clicked it once, and then pinched the bridge of her nose for a few seconds, eyes closed. Either I was giving her a headache, or she’d already had one.

“We’ve got about two minutes,” she said, her posture sagging slightly. “Nobody else is hearing this, ok? They’re having camera and audio issues right now.”

I hiked an eyebrow up as far as it could go. “Well? Go on then.”

“Your friend did three things that should be impossible. One, she hacked into and disabled the AI daemon that protects and directs the skytrain. It’s a thinking AI, able to fight back, and she wiped it out completely– in no time. Impressive, yes, but something many well trained Netspikers could do.”

I selected another doughnut and gestured for her to get on with it. My stomach was complaining that it was full, but I nibbled the classic chocolate round anyway. Who knew when I’d get a chance to eat this good again? Plus, it made me look nonchalant. 

“Secondly, she bypassed the bio lock on that security mecha, as you said. It should only have functioned at the command of a registered cop or a soldier.”

“Thirdly? I asked.”

“You remember you told me about how she took those Marshall ships out?”

I grinned at her. “You already knew, though.”

“She took them down remotely, using the malware cannon in the mecha. Marshall aircraft are insanely well shielded, even against shit like Mal-C’s. Which means she’d either already written and prepared her own program to load into the cannon, or she wrote one in real time. Either way, we’re impressed. Beyond impressed.”

“So she’s a prodigy.”

“Exactly,” Xen said. 

“You ain’t no Marshall, neither.”

She gave me a smirk that felt like the first bit of real, non-performed emotion I’d seen. She’d been putting on airs for a while, and winking at me from behind the mask of “Marshall Xen” was her way of letting off a little steam.

“You’re quite a lot smarter than I expected, Ms. Smythe.”

“We’re not all meatheads down in flyover country,” I replied. 

“So I see. So here’s the deal, the real one. I bust you out of here, we go get Brains, and then you convince her to help us with a job. You do that, and we succeed? We all get paid, big time.”

“You and your fellows, youse a crew of Netspikers?”

“Honey, we’re the Netspikers,” she said proudly. “But there’s a tough nut we need to crack, and it seems like you and your friend are just the women for the job.

“What’s the cut?”

“Ten mil in Zuilder Coin.”

“Ten million Z?” My jaw dropped, and I don’t mind saying it. That kind of crypto could get a girl a nice beachfront property almost anywhere along the coast. But momma didn’t raise no fool.

“How do I know you’re good for it? That you won’t just find her, shoot me and pop off to Neverland with all that dosh?”

“We’re an honorable group of thieves,” Xen said with a pout. “We steal from the obscenely wealthy and give to the poor. Which means us, obviously.”

“Obviously.”

“Plus, killing smart people is messy, unprofessional, and bad for business. Always got to think about the next job,” she said. 

The disk around her neck chirped two quick notes, and her posture straightened up immediately. I felt her become Marshall Xen again, quick as putting on a hat.

“Well? What do you think Ms. Smythe? Will you aid us?”

“I think I’m not going to wait around for a better offer,” I said. “Let’s go.”

“And one last thing. I know you’re bound to be angry at her. You might want revenge, you might want to kill her– but justice must take its course. No heroics, no getting even. Heard?”

“Heard.” I said solemnly. She was right about one thing, I was definitely looking to get even– but that didn’t mean I wouldn’t take all the advantage I could first. Something was telling me that Brains wasn’t just your average one legged hacker girl from the middle of nowhere. Powerful people were very interested in her, and I’d be damned if I couldn’t turn that to my advantage.

Xen stood up and flashed me a quick wink. 

“Let’s hit the skies, then.”