• Children of Liberty
    Episode 1: The Train Job

    Passenger train 13-37 glided smoothly along its route, the magnetic track humming quietly as the six-car train flew across the flat landscape. Concealed speakers chimed as a tinny female voice emanated from the corners of the walls, “Thank you for riding Samtex Speedway. We will be reaching our final destination, Okan, in approximately five hours.”

    In the control car of the train, the dozing driver snapped to attention as the announcer’s voice crackled from the speaker over his head. He scanned the various computer screens in front of him, made sure the train was still on its tracks, and dozed off again. The computers told him everything was fine; but then again, the computers didn’t know who was on board the train.

    Connected to the control car was the seating car, which held a few dozen seats, arranged in rows of six in the middle of the car. As if on cue, after the female announcer’s voice faded, a woman in the front row reached into her pockets and fetched a pair of gloves, slipping them onto her hands.

    Meanwhile, In the dining car, someone was getting impatient. The long bar that spanned the length of one wall had a few customers. Most of them were quiet, except the snoring drunk who had long since passed out on the bar top. The half of the car had various chairs, tables, and couches, though most of the couches were either too stiff to be comfortable or too worn in to sit on.

    A black-haired woman sat at the bar, swirling a glass of dark liquor, the ice clinking. As the announcement silenced, she tilted her head to the side. She stared at her glass and contemplated, Five hours to Okan. That can’t leave much more than half an hour before we have to make the switch. What is he waiting for? She downed the drink, setting the glass aside. She got to her feet, a long buttoned up black coat concealing most of her body as she slipped her hands in her pockets.

    At the end of the dining car, sitting opposite the bar in the corner seat beside the door to the cargo hold, a tall man coughed. He wore military fatigues, a pair of dog tags shining on his chest. His feet rested on a small briefcase under his chair. He waited a whole minute after the announcement faded before he raised his sleeve to his face. He was not looking at the ground, or averting his gaze from the other customers, since that would just make him look like he was hiding something. Instead he simply muttered quietly, scratching the stubble on his face. In the collar of his jacket was a microphone that transmitted his voice to three of the passengers on the train.

    “Loki, your move. Change the course first, then unlock the cargo doors. Karen, you know where to go from there.” Dominic’s voice didn’t need to be loud, he knew the others would hear him, “Meanwhile, Shane, are you staying out of-”

    “Yeah Dom, just let me play another hand.” Dominic heard the gambler’s voice in his ear, distracted and annoyed, and it was only his own discipline that kept him from cursing at his comrade.

    “Shane, do not tell me you’re gambling. Not now, of all times. Look, Loki, where are you with that door?”

    The gloved woman from the second car, Loki, had walked over to the door as soon as she heard Dominic’s voice. Her unique contacts, a marvel of technology, allowed her to wirelessly access the train’s computer systems and display them for only her to see, the contacts displaying them the equivalent size of a wide-screen television monitor. The supposedly locked door, with bold “Authorized Personnel Only” letters stamped across it, slid open before her. She walked into the control car, the door quietly hissing shut behind her. Slipping the cap off a syringe she extracted from her coat pocket, she quickly and quietly injected the pilot with a drug that would keep him out of commission for a few hours.

    “I’m getting to it, Dominic.” Her voice was callous and impatient, “I’ll have your door open in a minute. You’re the one that decided to hold off until the last thirty minutes.” Dominic was uneasy, which hardly ever happened. When it did, it had always meant trouble for the rest of the group.

    “I already explained, we need to wait so-” Dominic caught himself, and cut himself short. Arguing would only make it harder for them to cooperate, “Continue with the operation.”

    “Yessir”

    “You’re the boss.”

    The black haired woman in the dining car gave Dominic a furtive glance, wondering why he was so on edge. Karen didn’t ask, nor look at him again, since it would just draw attention to them. Instead she slowly made her way to the back of the car, and leaned against the door to the cargo hold.

    Meanwhile, Loki stepped past the unconscious guard, and examined the variety of screens before her. One console had a glowing map on its surface, an assortment of colored lines denoting the numerous train routes. The boldest one, a pulsing ember red curve, showed the train they were aboard approaching Ekena, the capitol city. However, the track curved and bypassed the city, and followed a southern course that ran parallel to the river.

    Loki held out her gloved hands, pressing her palms against the screens. The palm side of the gloves was a network of nanotechnology, a film of sensors known as an Omniscope. Needing only to think the commands, the implanted device in her brain would allow her to hack into the computer as efficiently as if she had a full-size desktop computer before her. To help her focus on the superimposed computer images in her contacts, the lenses blacked out, displaying only her personal monitor.

    Sliding past firewalls with minimal effort, Loki cut her way through the train’s security with the finesse of a surgeon. Hacking into the access security, she saw the list of doors and their respective status. She found the doors connecting the dining and cargo cars, and like flipping on a light switch, turned it from hold to release, “Karen, you’re good to go.”

    A red light beside the door to the cargo hold turned green. Dominic slid the briefcase at his feet into the middle of the aisle, which Karen picked up as the door she had been leaning on slipped open, and she walked inside the hold, shutting the door behind her.

    One of the passengers at the bar decided he wanted to retrieve something from the cargo hold too, and took Karen’s entrance as an open invitation. Before he reached the door, Dominic rose to his feet and barred his way. He simply shook his head, very gently, his right hand patting the firearm strapped to his waist. While weapons were supposed to be stored during the trip, most military officials got slack from the security at the stations, and few people bothered to question them. The man looked startled, and decided it was best if he buy himself another drink.

    Dominic fell back onto the seat with a sigh. He was slipping. Jobs like this never sat well with Dominic. They had been hired by a mysterious “Mr. X” to pull off this particular job, and Dominic had always made a point to know their employers beforehand. He only agreed to it because work was scarce, and after looking over the details of the operation, he confirmed that there shouldn’t be any need for civilian casualties. Dominic may toe the line of legitimacy, but he wasn’t a cold-hearted killer. Still, all the assurances in the world wouldn’t calm his soldier’s sense. Something was going to happen, and he didn’t like it.

    Meanwhile, Karen snapped open the briefcase with two quick clicks. In front of her lay an assembled explosive, which she extracted and laid it in the center of the room, as their orders had commanded. From years of experience, Karen knew that this device would rip most of the room’s contents to shreds, but shouldn’t breach any further than the car, preventing collateral damage.

    Karen cast a quick look around, spotting a large aluminum case with the initials D.T. on it. She made her way over to it and slid it across the floor to rest beside the door she had entered in. When she pushed it aside, she saw that it had been resting in front of an even larger container, a good cubic meter in size, with a large logo glowing on the electronic panel on its side. Pulsing dimly in the dark room were the words “Donecks Enterprises”, and there had to be at least a dozen of them.

    “Loki?”

    “Yeah, I see it.” Loki had been following Karen’s progress in a side window on her personal monitor, displaying the single camera that was placed in the center of the ceiling in each of the train cars. “Inventory registry shows it marked as a private third party. Custom encryption too. Well, let’s see how well you handle this…” Loki’s access was denied so quickly that she thought she must have missed a key. She tried again, to no avail, “What?” There was no way her program could be blocked that easily, but despite all her efforts, the information regarding the cargo was sealed tight, “I can’t break the encryption. Whatever it is, it’s well protected.” She noticed that the program’s coding had registered two failed entries to the cargo’s registration information, “I can’t get to it.”

    “It has nothing to do with us, so move on.” Dominic’s clipped voice whispered into their ears as he listened in to the conversation. However, his mind had already reached the same conclusion as the others; it is possible that Mr. X wanted the explosive planted in order to damage whatever was contained in those Donecks boxes. So why would X have specifically stated, protect the cargo as a mission parameter? Dominic shrugged it aside for now, and focused on the mission at hand, “Ignore it and continue.”

    The dining car door skimmed open, and Karen walked out with a large aluminum case, setting it on the ground beside the table where Dominic was. His nod was almost imperceptible, but Karen saw it, and walked back to the bar table, ordering another drink.

    Dominic calmed his nerves, now it would simply be a matter of time. They would wait, and-

    “Dom, intercepted transmission.” Loki’s calm but urgent voice whispered in Dominic’s ear, “We got hostiles approaching the train, three strike bikes from the look of it, coming up hot on our six.” Strike bikes were modified racing motorcycles, equipped with mounted weaponry, popular with hit and run gangs. “Have we been set up?”

    The soldier was on his feet by the time she said his name, heaving the aluminum case onto the table by the time she was done speaking. He ignored her question, but knew they all were wondering the same thing. The time for discretion had passed; now their job was to keep the train in one piece while they made it to their destination.

    Karen reacted quickly and professionally, stepping off the stool she had been sitting on, pulling the front of her jacket open with one hand, her free one reaching to grab a lethal-looking pistol. “Everyone, get into the seating car!”

    The few customers at the bar, far from sober, gave Karen a confused, irritated look, as if she was waving around a toy. “Si’ down laty,” one drunkard muttered, fumbling for his glass. Dominic, currently screwing the barrel onto some sort of sniper rifle, shook his head, “I’d do what the lady says. This is a heist after all.”

    Seeing the much larger, scarier gun, the conscious customers scrambled to get off their seats and into a car that didn’t hold a lunatic with a gun. Meanwhile the waiter had quietly retrieved a stun baton from behind the counter. He raised it up, ready to strike down their female assailant, when she casually turned her arm and shot him in the chest, not bothering to turn her head. “They always have to argue.”

    Karen checked the waiter’s pulse to see how he reacted to the shock charge. He was unconscious, and would remain that way for a few hours at least. Non lethal and effective, so long as he stayed out of water.

    “Round up the passengers, keep them in one car.” Dominic rested his rifle on his shoulder, walking past Karen. “Loki, monitor those transmissions, keep us updated. Where is Shane?”

    The dining car’s door slid open, and through the eye level window in the door to the next car, Dominic saw Shane brawling with some of the card players. Apparently, they thought he was cheating, and decided to take back their money. No time to reprimand the gambler now, as Loki updated them, “Strike bikes are still on our tail, Dom.”

    The train cars were connected by an enclosed, flexible seal. Each seal had a roof access hatch, and it was up the ladder leading to it that Dominic climbed. “Don’t worry Dom, the alarm won’t go off, already got it handled.” In motion, the roof hatches were supposed to remain closed.

    “That’s my hacker.” Throwing open the hatch, Dominic crawled out flat against the roof of the train. The top was mostly flat, curving down on either side. He positioned himself prostrate in the center of the roof, bringing his rifle up to rest in front of him. The wind pulled at him, begging him to slip and fall to his death. The soldier adjusted his weight to accommodate the conditions, one booted foot finding something to brace against. Ahead of him, past the remaining cars of the train, three black dots followed the train’s trailing tail of dust rising from the tracks, growing larger every second.

    Peering into his rifle’s scope, his vision was suddenly magnified, and he quickly found his bearing through the disorienting enlargement. His crosshairs spotted the first rider, dust covered goggles staring at him, rugged clothes whipping in the wind. Clearly not official military, most likely a raiding gang that just happened to pick the wrong train.

    A headshot, Dominic’s preference, would be nearly impossible given the bikes’ mobility and the unpredictable tilt and bump of the train. Instead, he set his sights for the chest, the body’s larger mass. He exhaled, and held the breath; steadying his aim for the crucial split moment it took for his fingers to gently squeeze the trigger.

    Powered by coil technology, driven by electromagnetism, the rifle made very little sound, so at first the bikers were unsure what the maniac on the roof was doing. They were too far away to see the rifle, so even though his first shot went off target, he was able to take his time and adjust for wind and distance. Aiming off-center this time, he took another shot, which also missed its mark. The bullet ricocheted off the bike’s metal hull, and now the riders knew what was happening.

    The bikes swerved, making quick, random dashes to try to keep the sniper from getting a bead on them. Following their every movement, however, would be stupid. Instead he watched their movements, and let his scope hover over an area, waiting for a rider to coast into his range. His aim drifted to the rider on the far left, and by this time they had gotten close enough that he was confident he could make the shot.

    A little more. Just scoot over a few more meters..

    The biker zigged, then zagged, and moved closer to the middle rider. At that moment, Dominic squeezed off another shot, the charge zinging off the bike’s right side. The driver jumped and tried to dodge to his left, but he was too close to the middle driver. Their bikes collided, and despite a series of overcompensated turns and frantic flailing, they both lost their balance and tumbled, at over one hundred miles per hour, onto the ground, skidding in a tangle of leather, metal, and burned flesh as they crashed into the ground.

    The third rider swerved around his falling comrades, and revved his bike. Flicking on the auto drive, he reached to his back and pulled around a short barreled grenade launcher. One grenade at a time, it required little skill to use and could cause plenty of damage, and by the time Dominic readied his next shot, the biker was within range.

    Dominic fired almost a second too late, and his shot missed the target. He ripped his gaze away from his scope in time to see the sailing explosive. Instinctively he let go of his rifle, and rolled to the nearest handhold on the roof, “Oh shi-”

    The grenade hit the edge of the roof and exploded, sending shrapnel in all directions. Dominic felt his body scream as his arm was lacerated, another shard sinking into his leg. It took all of his strength to hold onto the train, having managed to find a handle to grab onto. His rifle flew off the train and hit the ground spinning, fading quickly into the distance.

    A small section of the train was mangled and charred, but it remained mostly intact. Mostly. Dominic pulled himself, painfully, over to the other edge of the car’s roof, looking for the rider. The bike had reached the end of the last car of the train now, and was quickly making its way to the front. Dominic fumbled for his pistol, but the rider had already loaded another round into the grenade launcher. He leveled the barrel at the train, just as Dominic saw something skating across the ground from farther up the train. The bike ran over it, and its front end exploded, sending the bike backwards, landing belly up, driver down, on the ground.

    Dominic looked over his shoulder to see Karen, one car forward, grinning and hefting another explosive in her hand. She said something, probably playfully mocking, but her voice was snatched by the wind. She dropped back down into the train, leaving Dominic to slowly crawl his way to the nearest roof hatch. He, too, dropped back into the train, nearly collapsing as his wounded leg shook with the shock. Now that the wind was no longer blurring his hearing, several voices yelled in his ear.

    “Dom, what happened? Something hit-”

    “Boss man, are you alrig-”

    “Dominic, the passengers are-”

    “Enough!” He didn’t need to shout, but it helped his nerves. The others silenced themselves immediately, “Now, we are going to handle this like any other situation. Loki, diagnosis on structural integrity, fourth car took a hit. Karen, just tell the passengers that as long as they cooperate, no one will be harmed. Shane, time to earn your keep.”

    The others obeyed without hesitation, all falling into their roles with ease. Dominic slammed his fist against the door to the lounge car, half hopping his way through the doorway. He looked up to see a couple unconscious bodies on the floor, a card table knocked over, and Shane sitting in the middle of the room, failing to keep an innocent look on his face.

    “What? They started it. I’m no cheat.” His joking tone turned serious when he saw the blood stains on the soldier’s uniform. “Hell, boss man, why didn’t you say anything?” Shane wiped his arm across one of the larger lounge tables, clearing a space for Dominic to sit on while Shane retrieved his first-aid equipment and began examining the wound. A little disinfectant and a skin patch made quick work of the cuts.

    “We’re arriving in Ekena now, Dom. We should be at the destination in a few minutes.” Loki’s soothing voice chimed in while Shane finished putting the skin patch on Dominic’s arm, slapping it to signal that he was good to go.

    The rest of the trip passed in relative peace, with Dominic and Shane helping settle down the rest of the civilians. The train finally pulled into a private storage building, the train slipping into one of the many underground garages used to repair and maintain the city’s transit vehicles.

    As soon the computer system linked up with the local grid, Loki found that she lost control of the network, “Dom, something is overriding me.” Her voice was unnerved; she was a very skilled hacker and it wasn’t very often that someone else could crack her security, especially not with this level of ease. Her firewalls might as well have been welcome mats.

    The external doors to the seating car slid open and a squad of police burst through the entrance, instantly leveling their rifles at Dominic and crew. Dominic automatically raised a hand, his fingers deftly catching the pistol Karen had raised. He shook his head, and she lowered the gun. This had been briefly discussed in the contract; Mr. X’s ‘men’ would receive them when they arrived. The policemen, then, were fraud, a way to get the innocent people off the train.

    Dominic, Karen, and Shane all backed up against the wall, waiting for whatever would happen next. Loki tried to regain control of the network, more out of defensive instinct than to provoke whoever was doing this, but the screens simply flashed, “Nice try, Loki.”

    After the fake police ushered everyone out, three men stepped aboard. Two of them were typical escorts, fully equipped with the blacked out sunglasses, dark suits, and shaved heads. They roughly resembled shaved gorillas in suits, except that shaved gorillas were more charming. The third man was tall and lanky, probably in his early thirties with red hair pulled back in a low ponytail. He slid smoothly into the control room, not even looking at Loki. He pressed gloved hands against the computer screens, and various statistics flew across the screen as the man’s tinted glasses glowed with electronic displays.

    “Cargo’s clean. No tampering, except one failed registration entry.” He looked over his shoulder at Loki and winked, “Not bad, but you’re using an outdated algorithm.” The female hacker bristled against this cocky stranger. She had personally modified that algorithm, and it was far from outdated.

    The two suits were currently demanding to know how a hole in the roof of the dining car fit under the definition of minimal damage to train.

    “Hey, that is minimal. It…could have been a bigger hole.” Shane’s disregard for authority simply received a stern look from Dominic.

    “We will deal with this delay later” The large man instructed them on where and when to meet Mr. X the next day before looking to the command car, “Dos, X wants his report soon.”

    The red headed stranger turned at the calling, and winked at Loki, who was now staring with the gaze of a priest who has just seen God himself. Dos was a hacker. Not just a hacker, he was the hacker. Her algorithm, her codes, her equipment, everything that wasn’t what Dos used was not just outdated, it was obsolete. Justified as his arrogance may be, it only further infuriated Loki as she watched him leave, grinding her teeth.

    The four comrades were shuffled out of the train, and behind them they saw a maintenance crew step inside and start breaking down the train, removing anything that wasn’t already bolted down. The train’s interior could be changed to serve as a luxury passenger car, a formal business meeting on rails, or open storage. From the rigid, space efficient seats that awaited beside the train, it looked like it would be rigged to be a city passenger vehicle, where as many businessmen would cram in as would fit, and ride like a can of packed fish to their destination. Efficiency ruled over comfort during rush hour.

    * * *

    The next day went by in a blur, and at 4:45 the group left to meet with Mr. X. The address they were given was, curiously enough, the headquarters for Donecks Enterprises. They were in the city square, a hub of businesses centered around a park and monument to the city of Ekena.

    Dos was waiting for them at reception, and directed them to an elevator in the back, “Up to the roof, X is waiting.” Loki tried to remain casual, tried to keep a professional air of relaxed ease, which is a difficult emotion to portray when your eyes were glued to someone. The previous day’s rivalry hadn’t faded, but the anger had subsided to intrigue, and as the elevator doors closed, he winked devilishly at her, and she couldn’t help herself but to smirk back at him.

    The roof was blasted with sunlight at almost five in the afternoon. The two large bodyguards were back, flanking a tall man with his back to them. He stood at the roof’s edge, his long trench coat flapping in the breeze. He turned to face them, jet black hair gelled back professionally. His eyes were a sharp emerald green, and they glinted behind blue tinted glasses. His hands in his pockets, he looked somewhere in his mid twenties, and he held himself with the pose and stature that only the fabulously wealthy and dangerously powerful could.

    He didn’t say anything at first. He didn’t need to. Instead he fixed a calculating, intelligent gaze upon each of them in turn. His stare was piercing, penetrating, as if he could see past their exterior and examine their very minds. He took a few steps towards them, before bowing before them with a flourish of his hands, “I am sure you are pleased to meet me. I am Mr. X.” His confidence was absolute, his strength of character unquestioned.

    “Yeah, and I’m Mr. S.” Shane’s voice spoke up in the line of the four hired hands.

    Mr. X raised one eyebrow fractionally, as if he had just heard someone laugh at a joke that wasn’t remotely funny, “I believe you misinterpret the pronunciation of my namesake. My name is Donald Eckley; this company was named after my childhood nickname, Don Ecks. My friends called me ‘Ecks’, e-c-k-s, and now I am known as simply, Mr. X.”

    His voice was silk, flowing gracefully around them, but Dominic was not put off by his presentation of supremacy, and spoke up next, “Down to business, X. I just want to get paid and move on.”

    “Oh, but don’t you want to witness the fruits of your labors? Don’t you want to know the motivations behind your actions, the effects of your cause?” Eckly’s voice started to break from its rigid formality, though he held his composure. The four of them stood, not quite nervous, but not very comfortable.

    “Let me explain myself. You see, the world government that has been in rule for the last several decades, has followed the pattern that all great powers do. First there is peace, and then there is corruption. You see,” At this point Eckly began pacing, walking around the comrades as he spoke, “The planet of Brus is not the idyllic model of perfection we’ve been lead to believe. None of us here are old enough to remember the last war. Why? There hasn’t been one. The world government has stamped out rebellion and free thinkers that threaten their way of life.”

    Now his voice was full of passion, an intense resolution that he was apart of something greater, “Those who speak out against the government are quickly silenced. Newspapers that run articles on political tensions find themselves suddenly missed within a few issues. Websites that narrate the hardships of struggling economies find themselves crashing. Brus is dying, because we are missing that which humanity has always demanded. Freedom.”

    His words rang true in their hearts. Dominic knew from his experience in the military, even in the domestic services that comprise most national militaries today, that there were rumors that elite squads of soldiers employed by the world government were sent to silence any potential threats to its stability.

    “Whenever humanity is put into a cage, it finds a way out. Whenever we have been shunned into a corner, we kick and bite and fight until we are once again free. Without war, we think are at peace with the world, but in fact war is just what the world needs. We need that chaos. War creates jobs, employs thousands. It gives hope to the oppressed, and banishes the oppressors. It is through chaos, the disorder of bedlam that the people of Brus will once again be set free.” Eckly spoke with the voice of a leader, the fervor and ardor that made people follow their words.

    He beckoned them over to the roof’s edge, and motioned with a hand to the square below. He stood behind them as they looked, and saw with a strange, detached curiosity as a passenger train pulled up to the building across the square. It was now just past five and dozens if not hundreds of people were filing out of the building, many of them trying to find a space on the train.

    “I lead a group of men and women devoted to this ideal of freedom. We will shake the world’s foundations; we will open the people’s eyes to the injustices before us. We have been blinded by consumer satisfaction, by food and movies and sex, and it is only through a renewal of thought shall we once again be free.”

    Behind Eckly, a handful of people filed out. Dos was among them, and he stood beside a mountain of a man. Dark, ebony skin covered massive muscles of the figure, his hands the rough size and shape of spades. Next in line was a female, and though she was of average height she was dwarfed by the tall hulk. She looked to be a walking arsenal; guns strapped to her legs, her waist, her back, ammunition strapped across her chest, explosives on her belt. An older looking woman, graying hair falling down her shoulders, stood to the side, and she had no gear besides a simple outfit. She seemed to move with the breeze, rocking gently with the wind.

    A sick sense of dread started to grow within Dominic as he watched the people below. Eckly’s voice lowered, and it held an almost sinister tone to it as he whispered, “These are my four leaders. They follow me, because they see what I see. They know what I know.” Eckly stood between the two groups of four, as Dominic and company looked down at the train below them.

    The train below them exploded, ripping itself apart from what had been the cargo car, engulfed in a sudden eruption of flame, a massive surge of metal and fire that felt no mercy and left no survivors, and damaging the entire radius around the train stop. It had all happened in a matter of moments, and the only illusion that it had taken longer was for the reality of the moment to sink into all of their minds.

    Behind them they heard Eckley speak.

    “We are the Children of Liberty.”


    “We will not be ignored.”