HATT'S ARMY

By JustSomeHobo

Chapter 7: The Last Post

Boris put his hands to his ears, but by then the noise was over.

As the shock wore off, I… I looked around for whatever had startled us. Just ahead, the many spurs that the yard was made out of came back together into four tracks that stretched out of sight behind the edge of the cutting. Right between us and the grassy hills in the distance, a blurry yellow object was stopped next to the signal box just ahead of us. It occurred to us only then- such a daze it was that we'd dug ourselves into- that another engine had announced its intent to enter the yard.

There was a snap as the points turned, and in a moment the engine scurried forward onto our spur. As it approached us, its blurry colors took their places: a single orange water-tank draped over the boiler, a vellum face on a black smokebox ringed by the yellow letters 'BRENDAM BAY', and a fire-brigade-red guard iron that always threatened to scrape the rails ahead of it, but never would.

"Whadda' YOU lookin' at!?" the little engine squawked with a comical glare.

This snapped me out of my ogling and my eyes leapt back, now observing its entire form where before I had seen many separate parts.

I realized that the hills in the distance, the line ahead, the signal box and the engine were all closer than they had first appeared, due to what what you, Sir, would've called "a cursory miscalculation of scale".

In plain english, the engine's funnel didn't come up to the top of my boiler. He barely had one, in fact. I don't suppose any part of the engine- not its chimney, not its two domes, not the top of its cab- came more than two inches over its tank!

"...pFFF!AH-Ha-ha-h-angh!"

Without a second thought, I had burst into laughter at the absurd little engine, throwing my frame back on my suspension slightly in the process. As I rebounded forwards, some part of my chassis prodded at one of my bent parts. It smarted, and I jerked away from the area, wincing.

The other engine looked worried. "Are you okay?"

"And I said no, how could I be? Not with- well, not in the shape that I was in. So Bill said it'd be alright, that he'd take me somewhere, uh, where I'd be fixed, and I'd be back to work in no time, back where I was. But I said, You mean the Depot? Oh, no, don't take me back! I don't want to go back there! Bill said why ever not, and so… so I told him."

For a moment, the erecting shed is silent but for the roar of the factory's power plant, itself muffled by wall upon wall between them. Earlier it would've been filled with the skritchings of the Assistant Director's pen-and-pad standing front of him. Now both pen and pad are in his pocket, though the man's head still seems to point towards where he would have held them.

"And what did you tell him?"

"I told him I didn't belong there," Thomas explains, almost under his breath. "I was never one of them. They went out to the ends of the Island and back again. Meanwhile, I went nowhere. I mean, lately I thought I'd been getting somewhere, but I never was. Now everyone knew it, and I thought they'd never let me hear the end of it. Not the Big Engines, not Edward after all our training… not even you, Sir."

"Not even you," Havirty echoes back.

"No, Sir," the engine replies. "So now I've got two men left in all the world to rely on. One's head is knocked in, and the other's leg is broke…" Its voice trails off.

"You can stop now, Thomas," says the man concernedly. "I've already heard the rest from Bill and his driver."

"Thank you, Sir."

There is a long silence. All the while the engine looks to the man, but sees only a helmet's metal brim.

As load-bearing machines tend to do under excess pressure, it finally gives way.

"Please, Sir!" it begs softly, its voice now accompanied by the whir of a siren disc. "*sniff* I don't want to go back, I don-*sniff*... I don't wanna do England's flaming duty anymore!"

"Thomas!" The man's head raises wholeheartedly to meet the shunter's weary, submissive face.

"Yes, Sir?"

"I… we could make arrangements, then. I'll tell you what. How about we make a deal?"

"A- a deal, Sir?"

"Yes, Thomas. If what you've told me is true, you've simply gone too far to have all this taken away from you now. What would you say if I had Edward push coaches at Knapford for awhile, and in the meantime- well, remember Wellsworth? The station where you were uncoupled from Gordon's express?"

"Yes, Sir. Very much, Sir." The whir of the siren disc is winding down.

"There's a branch line that starts out of the yard there, stopping at a nearby scrapyard and in Upper and Lower Suddery. The other end, eight miles away along the coast, is in Brendam, the Big-Station-by-the-Sea. There, you'd make your home with Bill and Ben, who run the line from there to a china clay quarry. They would be more than happy to show you the ropes for the first few days, until you're sure you can manage on your own. You'd take loads of bulk goods to-and-from the dock twice a day or so, possibly doing odd jobs at either end if the need arises. The line itself is about as long as it is from Knapford to Wellsworth, but it's relatively smooth by comparison, and of course there's no great big hill to gather speed for." He chuckles. "I mean, there's a reason they call it Gordon's Hill: frankly, that hill's half the reason we need a Grand Duchess to pull the Nor'wester in the first place!"

"Oh, yes, Sir. Thank you, Sir! I-"

"Please," he requests as he takes two steps back, "call me Matthew. Now-" He checks his pocket watch. "-in a minute or so the workmen will come back in once more. They're going to poke around in certain places to make sure that you aren't rejecting the new parts, and then they'll do some fine-tuning so nothing feels too stiff or too loose. I wish you the best of luck in your duties to come. And if you must remember one thing, remember this: You may never be as strong or as fast as Gordon, but you will always be a really useful engine." He turns to leave.

"Good-bye, Matthew!" it calls out.

"Good-bye, Thomas. Don't let the silly trucks tease you!"

ATUOR"S NOSE

Consider Hatt's Army over. I may not have considered it over at this point six months ago when I started it, but now it's over.

It's not TTTE I was interested in all along, but rather the concept of 'living steam' it is founded on. The implications that their presence could have on a more well-developed fictional universe are very apparent; sadly, a G-rated cartoon is not that sort of universe. Therefore I've done a ton of worldbuilding in my head for my own canon, where the legendary technology that sort of thing requires has been discovered by treasure hunters in antediluvian ruins. Hatt's Army should be considered sort of a crossover between that and TTTE. The rest I shall reveal to you on both here and Wattpad next February, in a tale I like to call Steeplechaser.

Catch ya in a few,

JustSomeHobo