• Joseph and Gracchus entered through the back entrance of the guard car. The inside was lined with lockers full of guns and ammunition.
    “Can you shoot anything besides that pistol?” Gracchus said.
    “Yes. Submachine, scatter shots, short range things.” Joseph said. Unlike Delilah, he was built for fighting in small spaces.
    “Good.” Gracchus handed Joseph some more flachette magazines and a submachine gun with it's own magazines; Joseph loaded it. Gracchus grabbed a shotgun and a bag of cartridges. He walked over to the other side of the car and grabbed two cases of grenades and a grenade launcher. It looked like an oversized pump action shotgun. He loaded three under the barrel and chambered a fourth. “Hector's been eyeballing my gun since he saw it.” Gracchus poured the rest of the box in one bag and put five from the other box in another bag. “Beehive rounds. Fires forty flachettes.” The grenade looked like a fat shotgun cartridge.
    Joseph stood there feeling stupid amazement at forty arrow like needles over the ten waiting chambered in his flachette pistol. He wanted to grin stupidly and he forgot why he was in here. It felt like he was down here for hours. His attention snapped back to reality with the crack of rifle from somebody on the roof. He took three deep breaths, fought back the desire to panic and belched a cloud of smoke.
    “Hector is a bit high strung and slightly shell shocked. As a result, he tends to stay heavily sedated up here.” Gracchus tapped his forehead. “Be careful about smoking what he smokes.”
    “Noted.” Joseph grinned. He had been caught unprepared but he knew once instinct took over, everything would be alright; he used something milder ritually during duels.
    “Per procedure, they are going to stop the train rather than walk into an assumed trap. Problem is that we're stopped now.”
    “uh...”
    “We're down here in case they try to get into the passenger cabin.” Gracchus answered. “I want to talk to the crew. We need to get this train moving.”
    They went through the other end of the car. There was a linked steel fence that came to the roof to keep people from breaking in between the cars; when Joseph looked up, he saw Delilah dash from the guard car to the next car, Hector followed after. Joseph followed inside the train. This must have been the passenger cars; this one was a hallway with four doors that Joseph assumed were the private quarters of the passengers. The hallway was lined with a glossed redwood and had sliding doors with gold numbers and letters. These were nicer that anything he ever rode in. They passed through two more similar cars, the other two cars having six doors. There was a dining car and a crew car before the locomotive.
    Joseph and Gracchus entered the crew car. One half of the car had small bunks along the sides while the other half had a small lounge area. As they traveled through the crew car, they were jolted forward from the trains brakes. Gracchus said, “They will try and get in through the front and back. We're going to the sides to keep them from going after the crew. I'm gonna try and get the train moving, keep them from getting in this side.”.
    Joseph heard three large booms when he stepped outside. He walked around the car on a small railing that surrounded the crew car. He saw Delilah's great sword drift towards the car; the base of the blade was wrapped in leather with another guard. Joseph pulled the slide back on his submachine gun locked his legs around the railing of the car. With one hand holding the submachine gun, he leaned over and hung off the railing by his legs to grab Delilah's sword as it drifted past. He set it down and watched Delilah demolish a truck with a large gun. Hector must have been above doing his job because Joseph wasn't able to do his. Hector didn't let anybody out of their truck alive. When Joseph knew Delilah saw him, he held up her sword to let her know where it was and set it down. Behind him, Judeu was picking apart the trucks that got too close. How desperate were these people to recklessly throw themselves at the train like this?
    “We have a problem.” Gracchus came out and said. He yelled up to Hector; “Hector! Big machine coming from behind! Go do what you do best!”
    Without acknowledging Gracchus, Hector jumped over the gap and ran to the back of the train.
    “Crap. We're still stopped.” Joseph said.
    With a pop, Gracchus lobbed a grenade into the hood of one truck and ran to the other side of the train. The truck was useless and the driver most likely injured or dead but the passengers in the back jumped out and headed straight for Joseph.
    One had a decent but old rifle but everybody else had pistols. Joseph knew by looking at them that they were not fighters. How did they get led to this end? Regardless of who they were, Joseph had a job to do; these people should have known it would come to this. Joseph pulled the trigger of his submachine gun to mow them down. Nothing. The gun jammed. The people started shooting, wildly, thankfully, at Joseph.
    “Gracchus!” Joseph yelled. He ran over to see Gracchus off the train running to the back while loading his grenade launcher. “Great.”
    Joseph opened the crew car door, slung his submachine gun and drew his flachette pistol with his left hand and waited in the doorway His sword on his right side, he drew it with his right hand; it was a smooth mechanical motion from an ancient fighting style. This short range thrusting and hacking style was once ideal in tight shielded formations and adapted well inside a vehicle or building. The blades were usually one to two feet in length and were rarely longer; Joseph's blade was a little longer than a foot.
    Joseph shot the first five people with his flachette pistol and holstered it. There were three men left who moved at him with machetes; poor fools wouldn't live long enough to regret picking them up. He drove his sword in and up under the ribcage of one who crumpled as Joseph pulled his sword out to slash upward into the second man's armpit and moved forward to thrust it down through the neck and into the chest of the third man. He pulled his sword out and shoved the body off the train and into the back of the second who tried to run away. He stumbled and fell; he lost too much blood and didn't have the strength to get back up. Joseph left him to die on his own.
    Joseph changed magazines on his flachette pistol and started struggling with the slide on the submachine gun.
    Delilah had destroyed four trucks with her vulcan cannon and stopped two and killed the rest of their crew. Joseph noticed how she had lured the trucks closer to the train; closer to her sword. With the fourth truck and crew dispatched, Delilah ran to grab her sword and ready for the next attack.
    The armored door the locomotive slid open and somebody shouted “Hector and Gracchus are going after some kind of large machine from behind. We're clear in front for now. Don't let anything get past you.” The man slid the door shut and locked it.
    Delilah set the vulcan cannon on the railing at Joseph's feet and looked up to say. “These guys don't know how to fight, they're worse than conscripts.”
    “Maybe they're some kind of forced criminal deputes.” Joseph said.
    “Here come two more trucks.” Delilah said. “They look different.”
    “Is that a halftrack?” Joseph asked.