Train crash

Jensen pitched back as the cargo wagon groaned and pulled away from the
outer rails, the angle of the tilting deck growing steeper. In a few seconds,
the whole train would follow it into ruin and fire.

He sprinted toward the broken skylight hatch where he had first boarded
and hauled himself back through it, ignoring the pain down his chest and
stomach. Every movement was like acid burning him from the inside out.

On the roof of the train car, his vision was distorted by driving rain and
screaming wind. He couldn’t clearly see the ground streaking past on either
side of him at nearly two hundred miles per hour, he could only feel the
fatigue clawing at him, trying to pull his hand free of the grab bar he was
clinging to. His power cells were almost drained, his landing system
implant useless to him. If he fell, he would be dashed to pieces.

Metal screamed and Jensen felt everything around him give a
monumental shudder. This was it; the train was crashing.

He let go, and against all reason he ran, allowing the wind and the rain to
push at his back. Light, stark and blinding, came from out of the sky,
suddenly surrounding him in a halo of whiteness. He heard a woman
shouting his name, saw the shimmer of cables swinging into arm’s reach.

Behind him, the locomotive left the rails and there was a crashing, tearing
discord as loud as the world ending.

Jensen leapt into space without thinking, without hesitation, without fear.

***

The VTOL thundered low along the line of the railroad, cresting a shallow
rise in a howl of engine noise.

In the cockpit, Sol Mendel leaned forward against his flight restraints
and gave a low mutter. “Dear god…”

Jarreau stood behind him, wedged in the open hatchway between the
cabin and the rear crew compartment. Both men saw the destruction laid out
before them, projected on to the inside of the aircraft’s virtual canopy.
Where the rail line bent into a shallow curve there was a mess of metal
wreckage and dozens of smoldering fires scattered all about it. Jarreau saw
a wide, ugly scar cut across the ground at an angle to the rails, a deep gouge
in the earth that ended in the burning mass of the train’s locomotive.
From behind him, one of the Task Force techs was sending out calls over
the unit’s encrypted radio channels, entreating anyone still alive down there
to respond. No replies were forthcoming.

“I’ll orbit around,” Mendel said grimly, snapping on twin spotlights that
stabbed down from the VTOL nose to sweep back and forth across the
crash site.

“You said you saw something on the scope as we closed in…” said
Jarreau, glancing at the local radar scope. “Another aircraft?”

Mendel shook his head. “Not sure. It was just a transient, there and gone
again.” He sighed. “Probably a ghost echo.”

“Give me a thermographic overlay,” ordered Jarreau, and the pilot
complied, tapping a key that turned the image on the canopy into a
patchwork of heat-color. Hot white blooms surrounded the fires and a dull
orange trail marked the final path the crashing train had taken. He scanned
the landscape, looking for any signs of life.

And he found one. “There!” Jarreau stabbed a finger at a human-shaped
blob moving slowly across the image.

Mendel drew that sector of the image closer and revealed the body heat
of a man, his torso glowing orange but his arms and legs the cold blue of
machines.

“Put us down, now!” Jarreau snapped, grabbing his weapon and turning
to the rest of his team. “Squad, deploy!”

Panels dropped open along the side of the VTOL as it settled on to the
ground with a bump, and Jarreau was the first one out on to the wet, muddy
earth.

***

Jensen staggered toward the Task Force aircraft, raising his hands to show
he was unarmed. Each step was slow and unsteady. The damage to his
augmented legs was severe but not enough to disable him.

Figures in the familiar black combat oversuits of TF29 spilled out of the
VTOL, brandishing assault rifles in his direction. At the head of them was
Jarreau, and there was a bleak expression on the team leader’s hard face.
“Jensen…” he began, his lips thinning. “What happened out here?”

“Vande’s dead,” he told him, cutting straight to the worst of it. “Chen,
the others… they’re all gone.”

“Fuck.” Jarreau barked out an order to the rest of his squad. “Spread out!
Check for bodies, double-time! The locals will be here as soon as they get
their asses in gear, and I want us gone by then…”

“I’m sorry,” added Jensen. “You people were set up. There was a
woman, her name was Thorne…” He hesitated. He had to be careful what
he said here.

- Deus Ex: Black Light, Chapter 13, pgs. 228-230