Ioana skipped across the tracks, reaching the opposite platform just as the Number Six razor train (recently liberated) shuddered to a halt. The Nova Prospekt rail link was almost entirely inbound traffic now, shipping in ammunition from the Russian-built military base to the east. It had been humming with rebel freight ever since eleventh hour repair had reopened the canals track.
She turned her back on the munitions-laden Combine train and pushed through a crowd of lightly wounded equipment handlers. Now that she had worked the last kinks out of the automated rail network and demolished the final vestiges of security features, the station was under military control. Not only was she no longer needed, but the new crop of lambda overseers were entirely capable of pressing her into service unloading crates.
The maze-like queue of chainlink fencing had been flattened by angry citizens, and she bounded across it into the station's waiting area. There were no casualties there, but the main hall was still teeming with the wounded. They filled the hot air under the vaulted glass ceiling with moans and echoes, waiting to be sent north on the Vitosha Line. The stench rose with the temperature. At least her assistant had returned to his place on the general staff of the Canals Commissariat. They were welcome to his borderline competence.
"Ion! Walls moving!"
She was brought up short by the address, and peered at a uniformed, Middle Eastern woman with something like recognition. Ah, right, she had told them to keep her informed.
"Copy." Ioanna jogged through the blood-slick circus that was the main platform and made for the vestibule. If the walls advanced much farther, it could be time to use some of the newly-arrived mining charges to knock out the relocation mechanisms.
She arrived behind the set of ornate windows in the station's western tower and looked out through the missing panes. The yellow bulk of the Terminal Hotel cast its deepening shadow well past the monument at the plaza's midpoint. Rainclouds were massing behind the citadel, the fiercest weather the anemic currents of the Black Sea could muster. Judging by the quickening breeze, it could be upon the city before sunset.
But the walking walls were still. A narrow set of panels hung poised in the air like the forelegs of a mantis, likely what her watchwoman had seen. That behavior was new to her but—wait...
Just as Ioanna detected a persistent hum in the air, the small rear section of barricade lifted skyward. Metal teeth disengaged from the cobbles, ripping out of their craters amid swirls of dust. She ducked behind one of the dirtier windows, waiting for Civil Protection to come charging through the gate that had appeared in the wall. Where the hell were the rebel pickets?
An APC—or rather a two-wheeled bullet-riddled sledge—struggled out of the dust. As the gate closed behind it, she picked out the large lambda done in yellow spraypaint. Someone in a window nearby shouted 'hold fire,' and the armored car sagged to a merciful halt abreast the obelisk.
The war clamored on to the east, south and west, but nonetheless in the the plaza there was quiet. A few outriders of sea breeze reached her cheeks, bringing the scent of burning and news that the rain would be upon them sooner than expected. She hesitated by the window's broad marble sill. Ioanna had herself instructed all personnel to stay out of the plaza, so that the triage site could remain concealed. Now the Commissar had adopted her order, and enforced it religiously. But really, to hell with him and his canals.
She vaulted through the broken frame, her boots carving the pavement with glass fragments. Three gunships floated above, but their attention was focused on the fighting to the south, and there were no scanners in sight. The pavement crunched under her feet as she broke into a run. Her footsteps made a whisking sound in the layer of dust that now coated the entire city, a film in some places and and a blanket in others, but always there. The front right tire of the APC was deflating even as she approached, speckled with tiny pulse fire cavitations like the rest of the chassis.
"Ahoj! Anyone alive in there?"
She took a high step onto the boarding platform, only to snag a pant leg on a jagged piece of distorted metal.
"Hello? Shit, who taught you to pa—"
Isander's discolored face peered up at her through the frosted wreck of the canopy, an angry red hole in his chest and blood all over the seat.
"Medic! Medic now!" She tried to haul the hyperventilating rat from the driver's seat, but he resisted, hanging on with his left leg and gesturing animatedly to the south. "The hell are you—Iskander! Talk to me!"
He managed a pained croak in response, now banging his head against the seat to indicate the rear of the vehicle. She took his meaning and stuck her head into the ruin of the cargo compartment.
"Nothing there."
Iskander sagged, closing his eyes. Two field medics had appeared, and he offered no more resistance as they dragged him from the vehicle.
"He looks like he's been buried alive in a swamp," Ioanna exclaimed. "And then spat up by bullsquids."
They ignored her, chattering amongst themselves about chest wounds and respiratory blockages. More mountain rebels with no grasp of city folklore. She gave the APC a useless slap as Iskander was carried away on a stretcher, and for some reason did not follow. Wind swirled down from the rooftops, and the breenscreen's electrical wires danced. Someone had shot out the speakers a day earlier, but it still played static from time to time, offering single-frame glimpses of a graying man with desperate eyes.
Ioanna kicked the nearest tire and shuffled towards the shadowy front window of a souvenir shop. She cast a reluctant glance at the station, thrust her hands in her pockets and—
"Oj!"
She whirled around.
"Kučka!" The voice again. It called from the base of the wall. Yes, there. A figure lay in the shattered ground, in the narrow space between two of the barrier's blocky dark teeth. Only he wasn't lying, but crawling, pulling himself glacially forward with his arms.
"Christ! Is that... Miljan?"
The Serb flattened against the pavement, exuding relief.
"Aye. Dumb shit dropped—me. Drives like... gr-r..."
"Medic!" she called again. "We've got another one here! Hang on there, Miljan, you're a little big for me to carry, but they'll be back."
"I... l-lighter now." He flashed a broken-toothed grin, but his eyes stayed dim.
"Oh J—" She saw what was missing. "Why are you alive?"
He whispered something and sniggered, a private joke.
Only one of the medics returned. They rolled the maimed Serb onto the stretcher and Ioanna carried the back end, staring at the incinerated trunk all the way across the plaza. A little piece of pure white bone peaked out from the mortified gray and black, and she flexed her sides to keep down the bile.
Just as they crossed the threshold into the station, a blast of wind and rain lashed at her back. Cold water ran down her spine, through her sleeves and onto her wrists. The dust that coated Miljan's stricken form caught the wave of vapor and melted away.
"Hey... Champion Rats... I 'an see yer bra."
She shot an incredulous glance at the casualty, then laughed despite herself.
"I really should have given the power plant job to someone else, shouldn't I? But Iskander brought you back after all, Commander Batshit."
"Kurac. I—him, brought? Still... smart Turk."
The rain on the glass roof was an immense sound, a natural drumroll that stifled the hospital noises and plunged the expansive hall into luminous blue shadow. The medic up front maneuvered the stretcher towards an empty cot, and off to the side she could see nurses piercing Iskander's chest with a needle.
An even chance, she told herself. Dropships passed overhead, buffeted by the wind.
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.
They carried him into the middle of the car, calling him 'Commander.' What a farce. The seat was unspeakably comfortable, however, with a rag pillow for his right leg (or the morphine-dampened mummified ache that remained of it). All was dark outside the window, but he could hear the slackening rain clean summer's grime from the glass. Ioanna and Iskander were talking about the storm as they returned from the observation platform at the train's rear, he with his crutch and she with her broken nose.
"I'm telling you, Ioanna, it's clean."
"You can't possibly know that without filtering it."
"It doesn't smell, and that means a lot. I've been gardening all year, remember? Here, Miljan, tell me what you think."
He opened his eyes as Iskander held a small cup of rainwater beneath his nose.
"I already know you're toilet-trained, Iska. No need to show me."
"But it doesn't have that tang to it, don't you agree? No pollutants in it."
"Iskander thinks the storm wins us the war," Ioanna explained.
"I think it gives them another few days in the fight. What are you, playing at pessimist now? You told me yourself, they've been shipping in ammo and food but no water."
"Perhaps. I'll believe it when I see you drink it."
Miljan was tracing shapes in the fogged window. The vibrations of the cars were different from that of the steam-driven train he had once ridden, so long ago, but the feeling was the same.
"And please don't drink it," Ioanna added, climbing into the row of seats.
"Fine." Iskander joined them, favoring his re-dressed knee bandage and secondhand smock. "Let me tell you, it's a wonderful thing, being able to breathe. I even managed to sleep all evening in that charnel house. What time do you think it is, almost first siren?"
"Wrong," the Champion of Rats declared. "We don't use sirens anymore. Only sensible order the Canals Commissar issued." She reached into a pocket and retrieved an analog wristwatch.
"The hell is that?"
Miljan snorted at his friend's ignorance and cast his gaze out the window, where nothing but illuminated smoke trails and muzzle flashes could be seen.
"It's a prewar timepiece. When the short hand points at twelve, it's ten sirens. Or five, if it's day out. A more complicated system, overall."
The rat took the watch and examined it doubtfully.
"I always thought that those number wheels were just store signs."
"Learn to use it. There's no sirens where we're going."
"And where's that?" Miljan's voice was sullen.
"Up north. In the foothills where they've got a rail depot with air defenses. Or more importantly, a real hospital with doctors instead of those hacks." Iskander twitched at the word. "They'll pump you full of drugs so your leg doesn't rot like a side of beef."
"And have they a veteran's home there too?" Miljan turned his head towards the wartorn night, his jaw quivering with something like anger. "Iskander, if you put a hole in your breather dragging me out of that mess, then I'm sorry, because you wasted your time. You know where we live; there's no nice government man who sends you a check so someone can push your wheelchair around. I can't live like this, not even for a week." His voice had risen in volume, and more of his nasally accent entered his speech. Those passengers who were in too much pain to sleep craned their necks, but Miljan kept the back of his head to Iskander and Ioanna, wishing the reflection on the inside of the windows would go away.
The train lurched into a westward curve, and the greenish glow of the citadel pulled into view on the left. City 17 was receding. Her city. Let the rebels have it. There was more work to be done up ahead. Ioanna felt bloodshot eyes upon her.
"That's true," she stated. "An amputee like you is as good as dead."
Miljan made no reply, and she steeled her voice.
"...But only if we lose." She snatched the wristwatch from Iskander's hands and brandished it. "Tonight I tell you it's 1:44 in the morning, the time you read off the wall of your childhood bedroom when you woke from your nightmares. Give me a few hours, and I will tell you the month, the day of the week in the language of your fathers. Just you wait and find out what else we will take back by tomorrow."
The train hit a kink in the rails, and their car made a vertical jump that rattled the seats violently, setting off groans from some of the wounded. The tension in Ioanna's legs carried her upwards and she remained standing when their course resumed its former smoothness.
"If we win..." she addressed the entire car now. "Oh, by dead Freeman's glasses, if we win! Then we'll see what your right leg means. And if we have to carry you ourselves, we'll see it through, and you'll see where and how we live tomorrow!"
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The End