Titan’s Pub.

VIR Day -25.

      “It’s just too hot,” said Miller,” but room-temperature? Please… a beer should be ice-cold.”

      “A glass of water like you drink, or a lager, maybe. But a pint of stout… no questions… room-temperature.”

      “Titan” James was a tall man by the standards of humans but average by the standards of Furs, but since he was human he went by the human standards, and enjoyed his position in the upper ninety-fifth quartile. The man was from the United Kingdom, no one knew where per se, just that he was from the big island, and he preferred to keep it that way for the wellbeing of himself. He stood six feet seven inches and weighed at least two-hundred-fifty pounds. He wore dark aviators and a long, black trench coat that was well worn from many years, with a black shirt and greyed pants that were tucked into his big, black boots.

      “I am going to have to sign you both up for classes. Beer is different from beer even when it is beer let’s just leave it at that.”

      “Now what?” Miller exclaimed,” I thought you were on my side, Luftennant.”

      Johan shook his head,” I never said I was on a side to begin with, I’m just validating James’ opinions and your opinions against each other to show you both that if you’re going to argue that there’s not going to be a true I-win-you-lose solution and the gratification that you’re both seeking.”

      He took a drink of his beer and set the empty mug back down on the counter which wasn’t much more than a sheet of plywood covered up with wood grain decals.

      “But if you feel you must argue,” he said,” I would be happy to continue validating James’ opinions and your opinions against each other to show you both that if you’re going to argue that there’s not going to be a true I-win-you-lose solution and the gratification that you’re both seeking… if you would refill my mug.”

      “Can’t argue with that,” said James, taking the mug.

      Titan’s Public House was a bar five minutes after it opened in the morning because nobody in their right mind would choose the place as a gathering place to have breakfast, lunch, dinner, brunch, or that other meal that never ends that the Americans invented, and no parent would bring their child within five city blocks of it for fear of having protective services called on them. Most of the tables were just a sheet of plywood or particle board nailed down to an old wooden spool one would associate with vast quantities baling wire or barbed wire. These tables were positioned along the walls. If you were a lucky man you got the one that wasn’t stained with someone’s stomach contents.

      The floor of the old building was bare hardwood that might have looked quite nice twenty years ago. It was scuffed, pitted, stained, and abused in ways that no one really knew about and perhaps no one wanted to know about, and for one reason or another it was covered with sawdust in the corners and along the walls. That was to say until you got to the bar itself.

      The bar was real. Or at least most of it was. James had been working on getting the place fixed up and presentable, and he had started in the room that was now the kitchen where Martin, a friend from Spain, worked the grill and a pair of fryers. When he had finished the kitchen he began restoring the bar and had done a hell of a job. Behind James were three shelves filled with clean mugs, mirrors lined the backs of them, and a well-furnished window into the kitchen had been added so that Trixie, the waitress everyone believed to be James’ squeeze, wouldn’t have to traverse the long, crowded corridor into the kitchen and then risk tripping over some damn mop bucket on her way back. Yes, the bar looked quite alright. James had built it out of some beautiful red colored wood, and didn’t have any money left over to complete it. Johan had recommended to James that he should start saving whatever he could in the meantime, and use a simple series of plywood sheets with the red colored wood grain details until he had the money to buy the expensive table-tops.

      The food wasn’t half-bad, Martin knew how to make a variety of foods from around the world, and his European meals were usually better than a borrowed Russian one, or a Chinese one, but it seemed that even with his talent more and more people asked for a hamburger with fries than, say, a liverwurst. But without money, the food wasn’t served on a plate. It was served as is if it had a bun, or on butcher paper if it didn’t. If you wanted to eat there and you were getting a bunless item like a steak or fish… you brought your own silverware because lack of money meant that James, Martin, and Trixie frequently had to bring their own kitchen utensils like pots and pans so that Martin could cook certain meals. They couldn’t afford silverware.

      It was an institution. It was Johan’s type of place. It was Miller’s type of place. It was the type of place that you could go no matter what you were. If you were a Fur you went to Titan’s. If you were a human, you went to Titan’s. If you were somewhere in between the two you went to Titan’s. If you were a shitbag you went to Titan’s. If you were an asshole you went to Titan’s. If you were a four-two-fiver you went to Titan’s. It was the type of place that had warmth to it even with its poor lighting and underpowered 1930’s era heater. It was somewhere you could be yourself. It was somewhere you could take your mate when it was raining because she would gladly take a sip of the expensive wine that James kept hidden away behind the coolers and the tap, and she would be willing to wait while you were shooting the shit with your friends, or at least until James had finally fished The Old Parka out of his bin for her.

      James set a frothy glass of a local brew in front if Johan, who took it and drank it as slowly as he could. Johan wasn’t fond of beer, it made him a little queasy, but as long as he had a large supply of pretzels nearby he preferred it over the wine that cost him one-hundred Marks, the equivalent of five-hundred USD, per bottle. Johan gave it to James so that “Foxee” wouldn’t drink it all.

      “So, Luftennant,” said Miller,” how was your two days leave?”

      “I’ve had one day so far,” said Johan,” today is the second day. I come back to the base tomorrow at twenty-one-hundred hours, and until then I would like to continue the remainder of my leave without being questioned.”     

      “Alright then ‘Captain Serious,’” Miller scoffed,” Why don’t you just go and tell that to SINC Leona, and see how she likes that?”

      Johan took a sip of his beer, his second one to Miller’s fourth. He turned around on his stool and looked around the room. There were twenty-three people in the pub tonight, six of which he knew, two of which he knew personally, all of which were subordinate to him. The other seventeen were all civilian, no question.

      The six he knew were grouped in the middle of the room around the one table that didn’t have vomit stains on it, munching on pretzels and Doritos, drinking beer, whooping and hollering to the soccer game on the television up in one of the room’s corners. There was Private Wentz, a young kid of about nineteen, the second best shot in the Steinherring Sniper School after von Ackerman. Private Leo was there too, not a bad shot but not even close to the level of Wentz, but a very funny man, and a good man to have an educated debate with. Corporal Theresa was sitting across from Wentz talking up a storm with Private First Class Billig who sat next to her across from Leo. “Ma”, the Master Sergeant who was the chef, was there too, a polite but firm woman who was not to be trifled with. And across from her was Staff Sergeant Mikado; a rather short man who was the base hand-to-hand combat instructor of nearly fifteen years.

      “But if you are interested,” Johan said, turning back to Miller and James,” I visited my mother and had a nice evening with Luftennant Dominique Khole Fieseler from Berlin.”

      “Oh ho ho!!” exclaimed Miller quite exclaimedly,” ‘a nice evening,’ I see.”

      Johan turned cold in an instant. He was suddenly finding it difficult to believe that he was affiliating with someone who had just made, albeit a bad one, a pun that relied on sexual innuendo and the insult of someone he had known for the better part of twenty years. He regained a little of his composure in the second following the losing of said composure, and turned to Miller and locked eyes with him.

      “Dominique Khole Fieseler is a fine woman,” he said, his voice dipping down into its natural bass filled tone,” and we are Furs, like you and like everyone else.”

      He set down his hand on the bar, extending all of his fingers…

      I’m bigger than you, and I’m not particularly happy with you right now…

      “Please don’t insult her, Miller, I don’t find it acceptable.”

      Their eyes remained locked for just a second longer.

      “I’m sorry, Luftennant,” said Miller, looking back at the bar, searching for his beer,” I forgot about your morals. Friends?”

      Miller extended his hand in a peace offering and Johan took it in his.

      “Friends, Miller.”

      They took up their mugs and clanked them together loudly, shook their hands and took a big gulp of the frothy liquid, slammed them back on the bar table, and wiped their mouths with their sleeves.

      “But I do believe it’s my fault, sir,” said Johan, a little lackadaisilly,” I need to learn how to not be so serious all the time; it’s a character flaw that has persisted from my youth till now. I just can’t seem to shake it.”

      Miller lit one of his cigars, a big, green thing from Cuba that smelt like a trash compacter. Johan had to keep himself from falling over, it smelt so bad.

      “Oh, you’ll grow out of it,” said Miller taking a puff,” I was the same way. Fresh to the force, young, trying to show everyone how it’s done. Trying your best to act mature and be all you can be all the time. Hoping to be noticed as a good egg, maybe.” Miller took another puff and leaned in a little bit,” They only notice you if you do something god the first time, Luftennant. After that they’ll just come to expect it of you, and you’ll keep on doing it that way just so that one day they might say ‘good job, kid’ and give you a pat on the back. If you want to prove how serious you are… then you have to do something serious. That’s why you’re the shooter on this mission. I’ve already done something big and serious, and that means I’m going to be stuck here at Captain for a long time. You’re going to be one hell of a commanding officer one day, Luftennant, I can see it in you. You do this mission… you’ll be an overnight Major, no question.”

      Miller puffed on his cigar, took a drink of his beer.

      “Just let go of yourself every now and again,” he said,” or you’ll end up stuck at Captain for ten years, like me.”

      Johan thought about that long and hard until something caught his eye in one of the corners of the bar. He turned to look right as Trixie put down a cheeseburger in front of him and a pair of hotdogs down in front of Miller. Something was happening over there, but the poor lighting from the forty watt lights made it almost impossible to see back there. Almost, but not quite.

      He looked a little harder back there while Miller munched on his hotdogs beside him, and made out the shape of an average sized, male Dingo in a light-brown trench-coat standing in front of a table that had two glasses and a bowl of pretzels on it, with two figures sitting, pushed-back in the crook of the corner. From their size they were either two under-sized males or two average sized females, but he couldn’t tell. The group in the middle of the room shouted the word goal at the top of their lungs, and the announcer went nuts on the old set.

      He turned back to the bar, took a bite of his burger, which wasn’t half-bad, poked Miller on the designated spot on his shoulder, and disengaged from his seat heading for the group in the middle of the room.

      Private Wentz saw him first and got the table quiet. Everyone at the table turned and looked in his general direction and then focused intently on him and his movements when they saw him pull on his whiskers on the right side of his muzzle. Leo got up and turned the volume on the set way, way down and kept standing, watching Johan.

      When he was satisfied with the level of attention, Johan walked over to the table in the corner at a non-threatening pace with his shoulders slumped a little to make himself seem smaller and further less threatening. Over his shoulder he heard Miller say something like ‘watch this guy; best I’ve ever seen’ to James.

      It was in his nature to be a kind, caring, loving individual who was a non-confrontational type of guy despite his large size and vastly understated intellect. It was also in his nature to not have fear of anything but spiders; arachnids were his only fear. And it was also in his nature not to set out to hurt people unless they were going to hurt him, and when he did hurt people it was with a degree of mercy in that broken hoses or cheekbones were better than down and out brain damage.

      He approached from behind and intentionally stepped on the spot of floor that squeaked loudly when any weight was put on it, just to get the guy to turn around and size up opposition. Johan got a fairly nifty surprise when the guy whipped around and was holding a handgun unsteadily in his hand.

      “Back the fuck up!!” he shouted, and the rest of the normal conversations went quiet in the room.

      Johan flicked his eyes down at the gun and back up at the man holding it. A junkie for sure. He had seen a few of them before now and they were all the same. Small, jumpy, wiry guys that would do anything for whatever they used or money to buy whatever they used, a very unimpressive sample of society that Johan wished could just go away. And to enhance the guy’s image was an equally unimpressive handgun wobbling through large circles in his right hand.

      To Johan, this guy wasn’t quite a full-blown junkie yet, he still had decent muscle structure and size, but he was well on his way into his first major withdrawal after his first major score. His nervous system was probably screaming at him, hence the unsteady hand, and drugs or alcohol dampened the response times to everything from driving a car or boarding a train to the time it took his trigger finger to pull and the time it took him to move out of the way of an oncoming fist that was about to smash into his chin and knock his ass out.

      This was happening at just that moment as it happened, because the ultimate fears are the ones that Johan didn’t have direct control over, and they were the ones he didn’t realize he had. His eyes told his brain that there was a man holding a gun not more than an arm’s length away and that that man’s own body and brain were functioning in a way that could potentially kill him. Johan’s brain told Johan’s instincts the same information and Johan’s instincts told Johan’s brain what Johan’s body should do to prevent anything from harming it. So Johan’s brain told Johan’s fist to ball up and connect with the man’s chin, and Johan’s arm began to propel itself upwards to do so. Meanwhile Johan’s brain did a split second calculation and told Johan’s legs to move forward about a foot to help drive the fist into the right spot on the man’s chin, and also told the idle right arm to tuck itself inward for a secondary blow if necessary.

      Which it wasn’t because Johan’s fist connected with the spot that he wanted to hit within an instant, and the man’s lower jaw clamped shut and pinched the set of nerves that would knock him out cold for almost seven minutes.

      Lights out…

      He was lifted almost two feet off the ground by the massive force of Johan’s arm and leg driving his fist and was propelled backwards on to the table, knocking over the glasses and spilling the pretzels everywhere. The gun discharged once into the ceiling and then the guy’s arm came to rest beside him and crooked to the left.

      Johan acted quickly and stepped in to remove the weapon from the incapacitated man’s hand, clicking out the magazine, racking the slide and throwing both the gun and magazine to Leo who was behind him now. The tiny cartridge that he had ejected into his palm was a twenty-five caliber automatic, which was a good thing because the twenty-five lacked enough mass to make it as deadly as any other round; it was too small going too fast. It was probably stuck up in the two by four supports for the floor above, a nifty little trinket for whoever’s head it fell on when it decided to come out.

      He shoved the tiny bullet into his pocket and picked up the brass from the round that had accidentally discharged into the ceiling, pocketing it as he stood up to address the two people at the table.

      “I’m sorry this man made it a point of ruining your evening,” he said,” May I buy either of you a drink?”

      They both moved into the light enough that he could tell they were female and not male, but he couldn’t make out any distinguishing features.

      One of them giggled, cutely,” What are you? Some sort of Superman?”

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      Leona had never cared much for trains. Something about them just didn’t mesh right with her, though she could never explain it. But she didn’t complain as the porter with the trolley handed her a glass of wine and she sat in her rather comfortable chair in the first class coach at two-hundred miles per hour. The interior of the car was mostly plastic covered in a thin fabric the color of a day old newspaper with glossy black stripes where the walls met the floor and ceiling. The windows were tinted and the outside world looked darker than it really was, but they also had shades to cover the windows entirely and block out the world. The chairs in the first class car were wider than the normal coaches, these ones were set four across the car and the coach was set with five across. Leg room was increased by a rather generous ten inches from the normal coaches to almost thirty inches, which was more than Eurostar and TGV too. They had lavish padding for lumbar support and a semi-adjustable headrest with fold-down arms, all of which were creamy colored plastic over metal frames with the padding, the same color of the walls, healthily applied.

      She was watching an all-news channel on the small monitor on the seat headrest in front of her with her meal tray folded down to hold her wine and something she had ordered from one of the food service cars that was on its way to her. There were three main courses for eating at breakfast, lunch, and dinner, and a large selection of snacks and beverages was available at the passenger’s request throughout the night and day. Tonight’s choice of dinner was a freshly-caught trout with a choice of sides that she didn’t care for, a large sushi platter loaded with basically one roll of every kind and a choice of sides that she also didn’t care for, and something else that she didn’t even want to hear about because she had already chose the sushi platter with two Chinese eggrolls, and a bottle of soda. Though the small screen was on and the ear buds were in her ears she wasn’t really listening to the program, she just needed some background noise as was part of her nature as a pilot and musician, and she was in thought about the train she had heard about from the enthusiastic conductor as she overheard his conversation in the station.

      Reynard manufactured the new InterCity Express train sets of the Class A2A-EL electric locomotive consist. Called ICE-X by train spotters, they featured two ten-thousand horsepower power cars at each end of a twenty or twenty-five car train, and the best food service cars on ‘The Corridor’ between Berlin and Paris. But their staple was a set of sleepers and coaches that made the round trip from Berlin to Brussels to London to Paris to Madrid and back to Berlin all the more enjoyable to the passengers aboard. Not bad for the second fastest conventional train in the world.

      And ICE-X was fast, too. Two ten-thousand horsepower locomotives driving twenty-five lightweight ninety foot passenger cars was a lite snack at one-hundred-fifty miles per hour from Berlin to Brussels and barely noticeable at three-hundred miles per hour between Madrid and Berlin, much less at two-hundred between London and Paris. The Junker City and Herrning Central Railway System, or just JC&H, prided themselves on high-speed, high-class, high-everything trains and was the only company thus far to buy the futuristic train set from Reynard.

      JC&H itself controlled the largest system of railway track in Europe, in Russia, in the northern hemisphere, in the world. As new alliances were made following the end of World War Two, Germany took the lead by first asking all of Europe to join under a common cause to rebuild itself and then asked Russia if they would like to be part of the healing. JC&H was at the forefront of the movement, driving one of their home shop built Class 25A steam locomotives with fifty wagons to Moscow in 1953. What was to be the Berlin wall was soon scrapped and a project was started to make things on the rails able to keep up with demand.

       Starting in late 1955, JC&H and DB began a project in Europe to widen the rails to five foot gauge by simply laying a third rail down next to the standard gauge tracks, thereby allowing standard gauge locomotives and rollingstock to continue operating until the new five foot gauge equipment sets were more prominent in number. A similar operation was undertaken in Russia with V.L. Moskava leading the way. The massive task wasn’t completed until 1972 when a five foot gauge JC&H Class B1A DEL diesel electric locomotive and a V.L. Moskava electric met at what is called The Point on the border of Russia and Poland.

      Or at least that’s what the photo paper brochure with a large black, red, and white ‘bulldog’ diesel on it said. She folded it back up and stuck it back in its little pouch on the seat ahead of hers. She took a sip of the wine and then the intercom announced their arrival in Paris would be delayed by at least thirty minutes.

      Great, just what I need…

      Her sushi arrived and was placed in front of her by a male porter who smiled and asked her if there was anything else she needed.

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       Malcolm Jones received the stop order twenty miles after the “Chunnel” portal and began applying moderate breaking power to slow the train down. In the cab of the ICE-X the controls were laid out in what the American’s called a desktop configuration, where all the controls were mounted in front of the operator instead of to the left side like he preferred. Directly in front of him, sandwiching a covered keyboard that his conductor would use later when their shift was over to download train data, was the throttle/accelerator on the right and the regenerative break lever on the left five inches to the left of that were the control levers for the friction breaks. The train break, used to apply breaks to all of the cars and locomotives in a train, was the inboard lever, and the locomotive break was outboard, furthest away from him because the locomotive break was rarely used by itself. Beneath these two levers was a big, red button, outlined in black and yellow lines that had EMG printed on its face in white print.

      Five inches to the right of the throttle/accelerator was the reverser lever witch was currently pressed forward in the direction of ICE-X’s travel. Pulling this lever back would put the train in its equivalent of neutral, and pulling it back further would put the train in reverse. Under the reverser was the blue button for sanding the tracks and the yellow button for the bell, which was an idea taken from American railroads and fitted only to JC&H and Reynard-built locomotives, making them even more distinct than other European locomotives. To the left of these buttons was a simple switch that had three positions for the headlights, off, dim, and on.

      Mounted to the very far right was what most of the operators considered the fun part, the controls for the horn. The lever was actually a sliding mechanism that you pulled towards yourself, and to Malcolm it was reminiscent of an airplane throttle. But the horn itself had become something of a statement of power to JC&H trains, and they abandoned anything that made a squeak or was a two-tone. In the place of these “horns” was what many European’s considered over the top and horrid offenders of noise pollution and what was, now, the greatest toy any operator for the JC&H had ever had. The monsters were mounted underneath the locomotive, behind the front truck, and they yelled with five-chimes of anguish at about one-hundred-fifty decibels.

      And at the head of the desktop were four liquid crystal displays that showed breaking status on the left and speed and throttle settings on the right. These displays cast a white and yellow glow in the dark cab that the operators sometimes called “moon-glow” or “fire-glow.”He removed the headset from its small rack and put it on his head without moving his hand off the break and without looking away from his window.

      “Attention passengers,” he chirped as happily as he could,” I’m sorry to dampen your spirits but it seems that our arrival in Paris is going to be delayed by no less than thirty minutes due to minor Overhead Contact System repairs several miles up ahead.”

      “How informative,” said, conductor, Roger Steinbeck.

      Malcolm ignored him and modulated the regenerating breaks. He would have normally responded to Roger’s criticism on queue but up ahead loomed was what most people had come to call the death trap of rail in Europe. Ahead was Porterman’s Crossing LGC-1245, Europe’s last, and only, unguarded grade crossing on a high-speed line. The only thing that warned of an oncoming train was the horn of the train itself and two posts on either side of the tracks that had a white and red X and a small sign that said “four tracks; trains exceed 150mph.”

      Malcolm’s train was on one of the outside tracks dedicated to high-speed trains like ICE, TGV, and Eurostar heading from London to Paris, while two more parallel tracks, separated by a fifteen foot space, were provided for short and medium haul trains and commuters, another fifteen foot gap separated these from the other high-speed track, sporting service from Paris to London. Freight trains didn’t typically run in the daytime, and when they did they were the ninety mile an hour speed-balls with two locomotives and no more than seventy cars. Heavy freight service didn’t start until after 20:00 when the high-speed passenger trains were off the lines and replaced with the overnight Sleep Trains that did similar speeds when compared to the freights. It was 19:07 right now, but even then the freights would start early if they could, and right then Malcolm could see the distant headlights of a characteristic freight locomotive on the outside track of the commuter line.

      The lights ahead were arranged in the peculiar way that was associated with a long, slow refrigerator train. Two vertical headlights, the uppermost one being a dim, red warning light that would flash in conjunction with blowing the horn, and two horizontal lights low across the front of the locomotive, above the anti-climber. These ditch-lights would flash together when the horn was sounded and would only stop flashing when the distinctly American bell was disengaged. An A-B-B set of JC&H Shop Class G-6AT-DHL-A diesel hydraulic locomotives probably. Malcolm’s ICE had a similar arrangement, minus the vertical headlights.

      Porterman’s whistle-post loomed up at Malcolm, still nearly a mile away, but at one-hundred-ninety miles per hour and slowing slowly, it was a mere twenty seconds or so to the crossing.

       Malcolm placed his hand on the horn lever and pulled it toward him to about halfway, letting out a long two-chime note, then pulling it all the way to the active position letting all five-chimes cry out ahead of him at seven-hundred-sixty-two miles per hour. The bell came on, an electronic unit instead of a traditional mechanical one, and the two hi-beams on the outside of the four light bar began their flash, but side-to-side instead of both at the same time. He did the standard horn pattern of long, long, short, long, short, short all connected by the low two-chime half-open note.

      He heard a response a second or two later from the nearing freight, and he hoped that any cars in the vicinity had taken heed to the warning and decided that death wasn’t a good alternative to being stuck for less than ten seconds by a two-hundred mile an hour train.

      “Crunch time,” said Roger, a little tensely.

      Twelve seconds to go and Malcolm blew the horn pattern again. Maybe they’d get through the crossing without a problem. Maybe the guy that would have tried to run it had a popped tire on the approach road to the crossing and he had pulled over and got on his phone to call a tow truck. Maybe things would be alright.

      Eight seconds to go and Malcolm placed his hand on the large, red button to his left next to the throttle lever that was the emergency break that would slam the friction breaks down and turn the regenerative breaks to full power. Maybe the guy in the tow truck was the same as the guy he was going to go and pick up. Maybe he’d run the tracks with two trains bearing down on the crossing, because he didn’t want to wait for less than ten seconds for a two-hundred mile an hour train, or less than ten minutes for a freight train.

      Two seconds to go and the flash of the right hand side hi-beam caught a small, blue sports car in its beam. Malcolm smashed the big, red button down into the desktop and pulled the horn for all five chimes to cry loudly at the pathetic blue vehicle that was, by now, on the tracks. The digital gauges that had been warmly illuminating the cab with soft yellow light turned a vicious red and jumped from their positions to a mark with EMG printed next to it. One-hundred-eighty-nine miles per hour turned to one-hundred-eighty-eight miles per hour in an instant, but the subtle decrease was hardly enough to prevent a total catastrophe on the part of the driver of the small, blue sports car. The rear tires of the vehicle were still on the left side rail when the three-hundred ton ICE-X power car smashed into it, crumpling it like a soda can to only half of its original length and giving it a hefty boost across the Paris bound commuter track.

      The damage to the car was not over. From its original position on the asphalt where track and road met, it was flung almost two-hundred yards closer to Paris, throwing up ballast and misaligning the track of the Paris bound commuter line, rolling once and finally stopping on the London bound line. That is before the freight on the London track smashed into it at eighty miles per hour and drug it for one-hundred yards before crushing it flat under the weight of three Class G-6AT-DHL-A/B diesel-hydraulic locomotives and their hefty train of refers, presumably loaded.

      Roger saw all of this in the tall, thin rearview mirror outside of his window. From outside there was a sudden high-pitched shrill as the freight train was thrown into emergency and began to slow. What was left of the car was now on fire. A loud, low urgent note began going off in the cab on Roger’s side and he began looking at a half dozen LCD screens that were telling him whether or not the train was still on the tracks.      “Any damage?” asked Malcolm.

      “…Moderate dents on our power car,” replied Roger,” some mild crushing damage to the breaks on T1AL-1 and T1AL-2, the formation of cracks in the wheel disks of T1AL-1 has increased dramatically… same with T2AL-1, T2AL-2, and T2AL-3. Computer’s also reading the force of the impact as having a factor of plus three on undesirable shock along the Z-axis of the train, and a factor of plus one for X-axis, and the pantograph on 98035 is bent.”

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      Leona’s California roll jumped out of her chopsticks, flew through the air, smacked a porter in the back of the head, dropped to the ground, and began rolling all the way back to California. The sudden jolt was not of common practice aboard JC&H or DB trains, they both prided themselves on soft, smooth rides between any destination, over any and all terrain no matter if you were going to Murmansk from Paris, or Berlin to Hamburg. So something was wrong, even if the other passengers didn’t get up and look around like he did, even if they kept right on reading their books and newspapers, or watching their television programs on the backs of other people’s heads.

      Leona got out of her place between the seats and began making her way to the front of the train, despite two protests from a porter and a rear guardsman, pressing a button on the frame of the door for the first-class car, and watching in amazement as it slid open to the left. She made her way through the flexible diaphragm and the door to the rearmost sleeper car opened automatically letting her into the corridor that led past four two-bed rooms, a porter’s station and three four-bed rooms on her right. She repeated this action seven more times before she got to the on board high-speed-kitchen, from which all manner of pleasant smells was emerging. She really got a kick from a gout of flame that came off of a hibachi type grill in the low-ceiling car, which most people weren’t allowed to walk through and observe, having to take a matching corridor along the left side like the sleeper cars.

      The dining car, otherwise called a food-service car, was where you actually ate the food if you so wished. Along the walls of the car were twelve two-seat tables on both sides, with the corners that didn’t serve the kitchen having a four-seat table each, the way into the kitchen was a six foot wide door that allowed the waiters and waitresses to pass each other on their way in and out of the kitchen with their big carts. The corridor to the rear half of the train became a choke point at lunch, but JC&H had actually installed a traffic light system based on if there was already someone in the corridor with a cart. Leona remembered watching the system with some interest earlier that day.

      She proceeded through the door at the table end of the diner and entered the first of the general coaches with two seats on the right and three on the left, providing seats for just over sixty people, with enough room for two porters to pass each other in the isle down the center. She definitely liked the consistency in the interiors of the cars; about as much as the small signs at each end of the cars and over the doors that told you what stop was coming up next in seven or ten different European languages, Russian, and Japanese that scrolled by on little, yellow LEDs. Passing through the remaining nine coaches she saw at least one Russian, one Japanese, one German, one Brit, one French, one Spanish, one Polish, one Finnish, and one Swedish person in each one, just proving the length and influence of the German mega-railroad, headquartered in Berlin, starting in Madrid, Spain, and terminating in a large yard outside of Tokyo, Japan.

      She passed out of the foremost coach and into the coach/café combined car, which was like a coach with half of its seats removed to make room for three soda machines on the right side, one squeezed into the corner and the other two shifted five feet to the right of it to allow the platform door to be used at stops, and porter guarded desk on the left with candy, potato chips, and ice cream behind it. After opening the door and being amazed for the twenty-first time at the sliding doors was the real café car that was an eight foot wide desk at what was called the A-end, that was kind of like a mobile coffee shop with cakes and breads and all the other things that made a coffee shop a coffee shop… on wheels. But on the right side was a narrow gap about two feet wide that led to a service door behind the coffee serving fruits at the counter and all of their supplies on the back of a fake wall that was there to hide the fact that you could get into the baggage cars and storage cars and even the power car. Leona smacked a small male out of her way when he got between her and the gap, the male held his face where she smacked him in some sort of shock.

      Leona pressed the button, amazed for the twenty-second time, stepped into the diaphragm and out into the liquid-consumables supply-car, which was fancy talk for a refrigerator car that was streamlined to match the rest of the train set and lengthened to ninety feet as per JC&H regulations. Inside this car were beverages of just about every kind including the wine she had been enjoying in her seat on the first-class coach, hundreds of bottles of water and soda, whole milk, her favorite kind, and even these weird Japanese soda things that she liked a lot. It was cold in there so she didn’t spend too much time reflecting on the interesting spectacle.

      Leona pressed the button, amazed for the twenty-third time, stepped into the diaphragm and out into the solid-consumables supply-car, which wasn’t fancy talk to her because that’s what she was taught to call supply trucks back in her basic training days. This car was also streamlined, ninety feet long, and refrigerated though a separate section was dedicated to things that needed to be frozen rather than just stored in a cool, dry place. She walked hurriedly through the isle; she didn’t like to be surrounded by dead things that looked vaguely like people she knew and trusted and kind of had feelings for.

      Leona pressed the button, amazed for the twenty-fourth time, stepped into the diaphragm and out into the head end power car that supplied electrical power, heating, air conditioning, and water pressure to the rest of the train. There were two men dressed in red, black, and white uniforms scrambling around, yelling things at each other, scrambling around again, running to a new LCD display, yelling things at each other again. A low urgent note similar to a submarine dive claxon was sounding and several LCD screens were flashing red, telling them that something was wrong, in the dark car. She squeezed past them, catching a speed reading in the process.

      Negative five over two-hundred.

      Leona pressed the button, amazed for the twenty-fifth time, stepped into the diaphragm and out into the baggage car. Negative five over two-hundred meant that the train was slowing by five miles per hour over two-hundred yards, which meant that the train had gone into emergency braking for some reason. She stepped through the baggage car, which was meticulously organized so that someone could be inside it and work around the bags and other luggage with speed and efficiency without causing damage or injury. And there was someone inside. She could tell because it sounded like a chainsaw convention inside the baggage officer’s quarters, and also because a small, female wolf in porter’s uniform was sleeping on a mattress made up of large pieces of red luggage.

      Poor thing… if I had a job that mind numbing, I’d do it too…

      Leona pressed the button, amazement now gone from the spectacle of the twenty-sixth sliding door, stepped into the diaphragm between the baggage and power cars and looked at the small LCD screen that came to life with her presence. There was a one through nine plus zero number pad on the small screen that was only about as big as a three by five inch paper card, and a little digital display above it showed that she needed a six digit password to enter the door. Simple enough, she popped an about-face and headed back into the baggage car toward the baggage officer’s quarters.

      She opened the narrow door into the space and found a fat, squat bear leaning back in his chair fast asleep and snoring as loud as the aforementioned chainsaw convention. There was a large key ring on his desk with about thirty different keys around it all silver and bronze colored, some of them pretty old, but most of them new and untarnished. He kept on snoozing away as she turned out of the door and looked at the wolf girl sleeping without a sound on her luggage. Leona approached cautiously, wolf Furs were known to become violent if they felt threatened, and most of their attacks happened when they woke up with a stranger standing over their bed. A lot of burglars had been caught when the child of a wolf family woke up and let their instincts do all of the work that was normally done by the brain when it was consciously aware of itself and its body.

      Leona got behind the girl and kneeled down slowly, reaching her hand into the pocket on the right breast of the JC&H uniform. Nothing. She pulled her hand out and reached over into the left breast pocket on the uniform and searched around with her fingers. Something. Leona pulled out her hand and looked at the small slip of laminated paper she had clutched in between her pointer and ring fingers and read the small print on it.Junker City and Herrning Central Railway System.M10143C; Schneider, Myla T. 235689

      Leona smiled. Two-three-five-six-eight-nine. She slipped the little paper back into the girl’s left breast pocket and kissed her on the cheek.

      “Thank you, Myla,” she whispered into the girl’s ear.

      Leona pressed the button, mildly amused by the door and stepped into the diaphragm, waiting for the little LCD screen to come on and welcome her with its blue/white glow. The number pad came on and she touched the digits two-three-five-six-eight-nine, was satisfied with a cheerful note from a small speaker and the door slid open, but to the right this time instead of the left like all the other ones on the train. She stepped through the door into the warmth of the electric locomotive.