Consider Phlebas

There was light in station six, dim and yellow, as though from a weak torch. He waited for Wubslin and Neisin to tell him they could see the station from their tu

A Command System train stood in station six, its rotund bulk three storeys tall and three hundred metres long, half filling the cylindrical cavern. The light came from the train's far end, high at the front, where the control deck was. The sounds came from the train, too. He moved across the foot tu

At the far end of the platform floated the Mind.

He stared at it for a moment, then magnified the image to make sure. It looked genuine; an ellipsoid, maybe fifteen metres long and three in diameter, silvery yellow in the weak light spilling from the train's control cabin, and floating in the stale air like a dead fish on the surface of a still pond. He checked the suit's mass sensor. It registered the fuzzy signal of the train's reactor, but nothing else.

"Yalson," he said, whispering even though he knew it was u

"Just a weak trace; a reactor, I guess."

"Wubslin," Horza said, "I can see what looks like the Mind in the station, floating at the far end. But it's not showing on either sensor. Would its AG make it invisible to the sensors?"

"Shouldn't," Wubslin's puzzled voice came back. "Might fool a passive gravity sensor, but not-"

A loud, metallic breaking noise came from the train. Horza's suit registered an abrupt increase in local radiation. "Holy shit!" he said.

"What's happening?" Yalson said. More clicking, snapping noises echoed through the station, and another weak, yellow light appeared, from beneath the reactor car in the middle of the train.

"They're fucking about with the reactor carriage, that's what's happening," Horza said.

"God," Wubslin said. "Don't they know how old all this stuff is?"

"What are they doing that for?" Aviger said.

"Could be trying to get the train to run under its own power," Horza said. "Crazy bastards."

"Maybe they're too lazy to push their prize back to the surface," the drone suggested.

"These… nuclear reactors, they can't explode, can they?" Aviger said, just as a blinding blue light burst from under the centre of the train. Horza flinched, his eyes closed. He heard Wubslin shout something. He waited for the blast, the noise, death.

He looked up. The light still flashed and sparkled, under the reactor car. He heard an erratic hissing noise, like static.

"Horza!" Yalson shouted.

"God's balls!" Wubslin said. "I nearly filled my pants."

"Its OK," Horza said. "I thought they'd blown the damn thing up. What is that, Wubslin?"

"Welding, I think," Wubslin said. "Electric arc."

"Right," Horza said. "Let's stop these crazies before they blow us all away. Yalson, join me. Dorolow, meet up with Wubslin. Aviger, stay with Balveda."

It took a few minutes for the others to arrange themselves. Horza watched the bright, flickering blue light as it sizzled away under the centre of the train. Then it stopped. The station was lit only by the two weak lights from the control deck and reactor car. Yalson floated down the foot tu

"Ready," Dorolow said over the intercom. Then a screen in Horza's helmet flashed; a speaker beeped in his ear. Something had transmitted a signal near by; not one of their suits, or the drone.

"What was that?" Wubslin said. Then: "Look, there. On the ground. Looks like a communicator." Horza and Yalson looked at each other. "Horza," Wubslin said, "there's a communicator on the floor of the tu

"Sorry," Dorolow said.

"Well, don't touch the thing," Yalson said quickly. "Could be boobied."

"So. Now they know we're here," Aviger said.

"They were going to know soon anyway," Horza said. "I'll try hailing them; everybody ready, in case they don't want to talk."

Horza cut his AG and walked to the end of the tu

Something flashed from a slit-like window near the rear of the train. His head was knocked back inside the helmet, and he fell, stu

Yalson ducked and ran. She skidded to the lip of the tu

"Command override, level zero," a small voice chirped in Horza's buzzing ears. "This suit has sustained system-fatal damage automatically voiding all warranties from this point; immediate total overhaul required. Further use at wearer's risk. Powering down." Horza tried to tell Yalson he was all right, but the communicator was dead. He pointed to his head, to make her understand this. Then more shots, from the nose of the train, came bursting into the foot tu

Horza watched Yalson shooting at the far end of the train. Laser trails flicked out from the left side of their tu

Yalson stopped shooting. The front of the train glowed red where she'd been firing at it. The explosive shells from Neisin's gun crackled round the window the first shots had come from; short bursts of fire. Wubslin and Dorolow had come out of the main tu

The plasma fire had stopped. The humans stopped shooting, too. The station went dark; the gunfire echoed, faded. Horza tried to stand up, but somebody seemed to have removed the bones from his legs.

"Anybody-" Yalson began.

Fire cascaded around Wubslin and Dorolow, lancing out from the lower deck of the last carriage. Dorolow screamed and fell. Hand spasming, her gun blasted wildly over the cavern roof. Wubslin rolled along the ground, shooting back at the Idirans. Yalson and Neisin joined in. The carriage's skin buckled and burst under the fusilade. Dorolow lay on the platform, moving spasmodically, moaning.

More shots came from the front of the train, bursting around the tu

Dorolow's suit was blown tumbling and burning across the black floor of the station. Wubslin's gun arm was hit. Then Yalson's shots found the Idiran, scattering fire across his suit, the structure of the gantry and the side of the train. The ramp supports gave way before the Idiran's armoured suit; softening and disintegrating under the stream of fire, the gantry tubing sagged and collapsed, sending the top platform of the ramp crashing down, trapping the Idiran warrior underneath the smoking wreckage. Wubslin cursed and shot one-handed at the nose of the train, where the second Idiran was still firing.