Blood and Sulfur Incantations

The blood dripping down Kyriakos’s jaw smelled of roasted sulfur and high-octane distillate. He crawled across the greasy ties of Siding Two with his ribs screaming, watching the four-hundred-ton armored freight locomotive grind out of its concrete shelter. If he did not catch the iron boarding ladder before the diesel prime mover found full traction, the two fools in the cab would haul four thousand gallons of volatile fuel directly into the slaughter pen at Junction Six.

Behind him, the roar of the cracking plant had settled into a rhythmic, pulsing thud that shook gravel between the rails. The cultists had slit six engineers' throats over the intake manifold before the primary vessel breached, reciting verses from iron-bound scrolls while the black sludge rose. Kyriakos had taken a pipe wrench to the ritual master's skull and dived through a shattered pressure window just as the first Tar-Stalker ripped free of the fractioning tower.

He still had three inches of cult embroidery clinging to his torn inspector's jacket. To anyone holding a gun in the yard, he looked like one of the fanatics who had just cracked the sky open.

The steel cowcatcher of Locomotive 404 crossed the frog of the switch thirty paces ahead. Blue exhaust belched from the twin turbochargers, showering sparks into the caustic mist.

Kyriakos pushed off the ballast stones, ignoring the hot stab in his side where a piece of shattered casing had sliced through his green ministry tunic. He lunged across the tie ends, matching the slow chug of the steel wheels. His left boot slipped in a pool of fresh hydraulic grease, but he threw his weight forward, catching the lower rung of the exterior catwalk ladder with both hands.

The jerk tore at his dislocated shoulder. His boots dragged in the crushed rock for five rattling yards before he found purchase on the stirrup step and hauled his torso onto the steel-mesh deck.

The armored cab door stood half-latched against the draft. Kyriakos slammed his shoulder against the latch plate and fell into the cab just as a fifty-caliber rifle barrel drove hard into the hollow beneath his ear.

"On your belly," a woman said. The voice was flat, devoid of panic, and backed by the crisp click of a hammer locking back. "Move a finger and I'll vent your skull through the roof plate."

Kyriakos stayed face-down on the diamond-plate floor, inhaling stale tobacco, ozone, and burnt iron. "Inspector Kyriakos. Third District Environmental Compliance. Check the brass badge in my left breast pocket before you pull that trigger."

A heavy work boot planted itself on the middle of his spine. An older man with a grey beard and grease-blackened forearms leaned over the control stand, keeping one hand on the air brake lever while the other reached down to wrench Kyriakos's collar back.

"Compliance?" Stathios spat, hauling Kyriakos upright against the steel locker. "You're wearing the yellow ribbon of the Fire-Purifiers, boy. The bastards who just blew up twenty square blocks of refinery."

"Undercover audit," Kyriakos wheezed, coughing up a fleck of dark soot. He reached slowly into his pocket and pulled out the bloodstained metal disc bearing the embossed crest of the Halikarnas Industrial Directorate. "I was inside the cracking plant when they broke the seals. If you don't dump the throttle right now, we are all dead in ninety seconds."

Damathea did not lower the rifle. Her eyes narrowed as she flicked a glance at the credentials, then back to the blood dripping from his cult-marked sleeves. "The yard is swarming with four-legged grease demons, inspector. Dumping the throttle leaves us as breakfast."

"The demons aren't hunting blindly," Kyriakos snapped. He pointed a shaking, soot-stained finger through the reinforced view slit toward the switching yard ahead. "The cult didn't blow the cracking plant to cause random destruction. It was a harvest. The beasts are blind to light and heat, but they track synthesized mercaptan and sulfur additives. The cult sprayed forty thousand gallons of odorized condensate along the bypass line."

Stathios paused, his hand hesitating above the pneumatic sander valve. "Track Two? That's our only clear run to the harbor district."

"It's a funnel," Kyriakos said. He dragged himself to his feet, leaning hard against the telemetry board to steady his trembling knees. His training in fluid dynamics and refinery distribution took over, cutting through the haze of pain. "Look at your track status indicators. Look at the relay banks on the southern throat."

Stathios glanced down at the brass-framed telemetry panel bolted beside the reverser handle. Two yellow lamps flickered steadily, while the primary line showed a solid green signal aspect.

"Signals are clear," Stathios muttered. "The interlock says Junction Six is open."

"The cult rewired the pneumatic signal circuit twenty minutes before the blast," Kyriakos said, his fingers tracing the copper conduit running along the cabin bulkhead. He reached into his tool pouch, drew a brass continuity probe, and jammed the two prongs into the test port beneath the signal block. The tester clicked twice and sparked a dull red. "The polarity is reversed. That green light isn't an automated clear. It’s a hardwired override. The points at Junction Six are wedged shut with iron spikes, throwing any south-bound freight straight into the chemical marshaling yard."

Damathea lowered the rifle by an inch, her gaze hardening. "What's sitting in the marshaling yard?"

"A full consist of twelve pressurized butane tankers," Kyriakos replied, his voice dropping into a harsh, dry rasp. "Coupled together, sitting on dead track, surrounded by the main pack of Tar-Stalkers. If this engine slams into that siding at forty miles an hour, the kinetic impact will detonate the butane and incinerate every rail line within three miles."

Stathios swore under his breath, a string of foul harbor oaths. He gripped the heavy brass reverser and shoved it toward neutral, then hauled the pneumatic train-brake handle to full emergency application.

The air compressors groaned, but no hiss of venting pressure echoed beneath the chassis. The brake cylinders rattled uselessly against the wheel treads, failing to bite.

Stathios slammed his palm against the pressure gauge. The needle was pinned at zero.

"Line's dead," the yardmaster growled, his knuckles white against the iron casing. "Someone cut the auxiliary air hoses between the tender and the lead bogie. We've got dynamic engine braking on the traction motors, but the mechanical friction shoes won't drop."

Kyriakos looked out through the armored cab's slit. Ahead in the thick, chemical-choked dark, the twin ruby lanterns of Junction Six were rushing closer, flanked by a dozen massive, shifting black bulks that glistened with crude oil under the emergency flares. The beast pack was waiting right beside the spiked switch, heads turning toward the vibration of the oncoming steel.

Stathios clamped both hands on the heavy iron throttle housing, leaning his full weight against the vibration. "Bypass line is cleared by three minutes on the clock, but that marshaling yard isn't an accident. They timed this to purge the entire southern transit line."

Damathea lowered her rifle to the deck plate, leaning against the cold bulkhead. Her eyes stayed on the dark tracks running ahead into the chemical fog. "Then we aren't running an evacuation. We're riding a missile."

Kyriakos looked down at the brass continuity probe in his grease-stained palm, watching the dull red ember of the modified sulfur-circuit slowly fade against the dark iron floor. The city's blueprints had lied to him for six months, but the scorched metal in the cab did not.

"They don't want the harbor," Kyriakos said quietly, wiping a streak of black condensate from his cheek. "They're herding everything toward the central pressure tanks."