02:50 AM.

  The rain over the Rust Yard didn't fall; it was driven sideways by a gale-force wind coming off the Toxic Sea. It hammered against the corrugated iron siding of the abandoned viaduct maintenance station, creating a deafening, rhythmic drumbeat.

  We were huddled in the shadow of a massive, rusted billboard that read "BUY IMPERIAL WAR BONDS" in peeling red paint. The Centurion crouched in the dark, a tarp thrown over the cockpit to keep the worst of the deluge out.

  Inside, it was cold. Not the damp chill of the sewer, but a sharp, biting cold that cut through layers of wool.

  "Temperature is dropping," I muttered, tapping the glass gauge on the dashboard. "Air density is high. The engine will run lean if I don't adjust the intake."

  I reached out and tweaked a brass screw on the carburetor assembly. The idle of the V8 smoothed out, the deep thrum-thrum-thrum vibration resonating through the chassis.

  "Julian," Amelia's voice was small over the howling wind.

  I looked back. She was wrapped in three blankets, her hands clutching a thermos of coffee Silas had left us. She wasn't drinking it; she was just holding it, using the residual heat to stop her hands from shaking.

  "I'm okay," she said before I could ask. "I'm just... I've never moved fast before. The fastest thing I've ever ridden was a donkey cart."

  "We're going to go a little faster than a donkey," I said, forcing a grin I didn't feel. "Just hold onto that coffee. Don't spill a drop. That's liquid gold."

  Rax, strapped into the makeshift gunner's seat welded to the side of the cockpit, checked the feed mechanism of The Riveter. "Ten minutes," Rax growled. "If Silas is right."

  "He's right," I said, staring into the rain-lashed darkness of the railway tracks. "He's too greedy to be wrong."

  The Iron Rail Line wasn't built on the ground. It ran on massive stone arches a hundred feet above the slums, a dedicated artery for the Empire's military logistics. We were parked on a narrow service maintenance track that ran parallel to the main line.

  There were no guardrails. One slip, and we would plummet ten stories into the squalor below.

  02:58 AM. The rails began to sing. A low, humming vibration traveled through the steel tracks, audible even over the storm.

  03:00 AM. "Contact!" Rax shouted, pointing north.

  A singular, blindingly bright green light pierced the rain. The Iron Rail train didn't look like a machine; it looked like a predator. The locomotive was a massive, streamlined slab of black iron, shaped like a bullet. Green mana-steam vented from its sides, hissing as it hit the cold rain. It was pulling twenty armored cars. No windows. No passengers. Just steel, rivets, and death.

  It was moving fast. Eighty kilometers per hour. Maybe ninety.

  "Ignition!" I roared.

  Amelia dropped the blanket and grabbed the distributor. Her eyes flared with mana. ROAR! The V8 screamed to life.

  I didn't ease into it. I slammed the throttle levers forward.

  In the old configuration, this would have been suicide. The sudden torque would have caused the metal feet to spin and slip on the wet concrete, sending us sliding off the edge. But we had the Torque Converter now.

  Whirrrrrr-THUD. The fluid coupling took the violent rotational energy of the engine and smoothed it out. The power delivery was instant but manageable. The Centurion lurched forward, its massive feet digging into the wet concrete.

  Stolen novel; please report.

  "Go! Go! Go!" Rax yelled over the wind.

  We burst out from behind the billboard just as the locomotive thundered past us. The shockwave of air hit us like a physical hammer, rocking the fifty-ton mech.

  I fought the controls, pushing the hydraulic levers to the limit. The chase was on.

  We were running parallel to the train, separated by a five-meter gap of empty air. The sensation of speed in a mech was terrifying. In a car, you feel the road. In a Walker, you feel every step. BOOM. BOOM. BOOM. Each footfall was a localized earthquake. The world outside was a blur of rain and grey stone. The wind tore at my goggles, forcing tears from my eyes.

  The train was faster on the straightaways. It began to pull ahead. "We're losing it!" Amelia screamed.

  "Not yet!" I yelled back. "The curve! We have the inside line!"

  The viaduct curved sharply to the left ahead. The train, bound by its rails, had to take the long way around. We could cut the corner on the service track.

  I leaned into the turn, feeling the mech's gyroscope fight to keep us upright. We gained ground. We were gaining. We passed the caboose. We passed the rear guard cars.

  "Car Seven!" Rax shouted. "Identifying target!"

  I saw it. It was distinct from the others. While the rest of the train was black iron, the seventh car was plated in a dull, silver-grey metal. Mithril alloy. Etched with glowing blue runes that pulsed in the rain.

  We were neck and neck. The Centurion thundered along the service track, matching the train's speed perfectly. We were running at eighty-five kilometers per hour, a feat that should have shaken the machine to pieces. The torque converter was whining in protest, the oil inside boiling hot.

  "Gap is closing!" I yelled. "The service track ends in two hundred meters!"

  I could see the end of the concrete path ahead. Just a sheer drop into darkness. "Rax! The Anchor! Now!"

  Rax swung The Riveter around on its pintle mount. We weren't using standard spikes today. Loaded in the chamber was a specialized harpoon—a jagged, barbed iron head welded to a thick coil of high-tensile steel cable. The other end of the cable was bolted to the Centurion's main chassis.

  Rax lined up the shot. The train car was bouncing and swaying. The rain was blinding. "Steady..." Rax gritted his teeth. "Steady..."

  THUNK!

  The pneumatic cannon fired. The recoil shook the entire upper torso of the mech. The harpoon flew across the five-meter gap. It hit the mithril plating of Car Seven.

  Sparks showered like fireworks. For a split second, I thought it would bounce off. But physics doesn't care about magic resistance. The kinetic energy of a ten-pound spike moving at four hundred feet per second punched through the alloy. It buried itself deep in the armored flank of the train.

  "Hit!" Rax screamed. "Retracting!"

  He slammed the lever on the high-speed winch. The steel cable went taut instantly. SNAP! The cable hummed like a giant guitar string.

  "Brace for impact!" I cut the engine throttle and engaged the mag-locks on the feet.

  The winch pulled us off the service track. For a terrifying second, we were airborne. Fifty tons of steel, suspended over a hundred-foot drop by a single cable.

  Then gravity and momentum took over. We swung inward.

  CRASH!

  The Centurion slammed into the side of the moving train. The sound was apocalyptic. Metal shrieked as our knees gouged furrows into the armored plating. The entire train car listed dangerously to the right under our weight, sparks flying from the wheels as they ground against the rails.

  "Mag-locks!" I slammed the switch.

  CLANG. The electromagnets in the Centurion's feet engaged, seizing onto the iron frame of the car. We were stuck to the side of the train like a giant metallic tick.

  "We're on!" Amelia gasped, her face white.

  "Climb!" I ordered. "Get to the roof before they shake us off!"

  I manipulated the hydraulic levers, forcing the mech to crawl up the side of the car. One magnetic foot release. Step up. Re-engage. It was a vertical climb at eighty kilometers per hour, in a hurricane.

  We crested the roof of Car Seven. The wind here was insane. It threatened to blow us right off. I crouched the mech low, locking all four limbs onto the roof to lower our profile.

  "We need to cut the roof open!" I yelled, reaching for the plasma cutter we had mounted on the left arm.

  "Wait!" Rax shouted, pointing forward. "Company!"

  A hatch on the roof of the car ahead—Car Six—burst open. Figures emerged from the interior. They weren't ordinary guards. They wore heavy, rubberized longcoats and silver masks. They carried staffs that crackled with energy.

  Imperial Battle Mages. And behind them, climbing out of the rear car, came something worse. Clockwork Centurions. Smaller, sleeker versions of our own machine. Automated defense drones. No pilots. Just gears and murder protocols.

  "They knew we were coming," Rax spat, racking the slide on The Riveter to load a standard spike.

  A mage in the front raised his staff. He didn't speak. He just pointed. A bolt of blue lightning, brighter than the storm, arced through the rain. It hit the Centurion's chest plate.

  ZZAAP!

  The cockpit went dark. The gauges flickered and died. "System rebooting!" I screamed, wrestling with the dead controls.

  "Shields!" I yelled at Amelia. "Amelia, get the shields up or we're cooked!"

  We were stuck on top of a speeding bullet train, blind, rebooting, and under fire. The heist had officially begun.