Line Through the Wild Country

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Leah Moreno had lived on Orison for eleven months before she understood why the
intersettlement trains carried guns.

At Halcyon Station, the weapons had seemed almost theatrical. The maglev waited
beneath a brilliant blue sky, armored flanks gleaming beside a platform shaded by
trees whose lowest branches were higher than the station roof. Families queued with
luggage. A boy pressed both hands to the glass and counted the articulated turrets
along the train’s spine.

A maintenance worker climbed down from the forward roof before departure while
the train’s antennas folded flush into armored slots. “Hookwings?” another worker
asked. “Three. One got the forward sensor mast again.” Nobody nearby reacted
except Leah.

Twenty minutes later the settlement fell behind, then the perimeter pylons and the
last service towers. The guideway ran alone through country built on another scale.
Pale trunks rose through fernlike crowns hundreds of feet above the train. Farther
off, branches moved high enough that Leah first mistook the disturbance for wind.

The cabin speaker chimed. “Wildlife contact. Please remain seated.” The woman
across the aisle put a lid on her coffee. A father two rows ahead tightened his
daughter’s restraint. An older man lowered his shade halfway, leaving himself a
narrow strip to look through. Nobody asked what was happening. Leah’s seat
display changed to a distance figure dropping much faster than she liked.

At first she could follow the animal only by what the forest did around it. Crown
fronds shook. A trunk as wide as a house bent aside and sprang slowly back. Each
footfall reached the guideway as a faint shudder before the animal itself was fully
visible. Then a gray-green flank appeared between two trees and vanished before
Leah could understand how much of the animal she had seen.

The train accelerated. Three hundred eighty kilometers per hour became four-fifty,
then five-ten. The forest stretched into bands of color, and the distance figure began
to increase. Leah let out a breath. Then the animal came out of the trees.

Its forequarters rose above the lower canopy, muscle and overlapping plates moving
in a rhythm too large to grasp at once. One black eye, broad as a tabletop, turned
toward the train. The animal lengthened its stride, and the distance figure began
falling again.

Leah looked at the speed display. Five hundred sixty. Five eighty. Outside, the
creature ran with the loose, buoyant motion of something nowhere near its limit.

The cabin chimed again. “Speed separation unsuccessful. Deterrence sequence
authorized.” The woman across the aisle took her coffee off the tray and held it in
both hands. Mechanisms worked above the ceiling as the roof projectors came out
of their housings.

The creature surged closer. For several seconds its shoulder filled the windows.
Leah saw scars across the hide, pale parasites between armor plates, and the dark
fold where one forelimb met the chest. Then it swatted the train.

The limb came across almost lazily, as if testing whether the bright moving thing
would dodge. The impact struck through the carriage like a giant hammer. Leah’s
shoulder hit the side of her seat. A bag jumped against its restraint webbing.

A pressure pulse reached Leah’s teeth before her ears. Outside, violet light flickered
across the plates behind the animal’s jaw. It jerked its head away and dropped back.

“Adult kerrath,” the older man said through the gap above his shade.

The distance opened to sixty meters, then began closing again. This time Leah
understood. The kerrath feinted toward the train, fell away, then rushed alongside
again with a rolling twist that would have looked playful in something weighing a few
kilograms. The woman across the aisle swore softly and put her coffee on the floor.

The turrets tracked. A second pulse hit, lower and deeper; Leah felt it in her ribs. At
the same instant, a fan of hard blue-white light swept the animal’s face and chest.
The kerrath recoiled so sharply that dirt erupted beneath its feet. It stumbled once,
recovered, and stood beside the guideway as the train tore away.

For several seconds Leah could still see it through the rearward windows: enormous,
unhurt, watching. Then trees folded between them.

The seat display returned to the route map. Around the carriage, ordinary life
restarted with practiced speed. The father loosened his daughter’s restraint.
Someone secured the fallen bag. The woman retrieved her coffee, checked the lid,
and took a drink.

The older man raised his shade. “Does that happen often?” Leah asked.

He looked toward the trees sliding past. “Less than it used to.”

Outside, the guideway ran on between trunks too large for any human settlement to
have planted, a narrow bright line disappearing into the forest.