Track of the Apocalypse Ch11 Ficbit – Repair Crew

Sam kept glancing towards the woods nearby. A little too nearby, obviously nobody’d been able to cut the underbrush near the rails here for a while. “I wonder how good their sense of smell is.”

“Just don’t bleed.” Uryuu slowed a hair, obviously taking a good look at the brass-and-glass problem in front of them before they crashed Kurusu’s party. “Keep your voices down, they know humans when they hear us… but blood pulls ‘em in faster than anything.”

“Good to know,” Jack muttered. Like bleeding was usually a choice.

But now they were nearly at the light, standing tall on the right-hand side of the track. Suzuki was already hands-on weather-beaten metal, checking over the outside fittings. Kurusu traded a nod with Uryuu, before the Hunter shifted to a spot on the track that let him watch the lamp and the woods. Then the bushi glanced their way, eyes slightly narrowed in a way Jack could tell meant of course another Problem shows up, while his two fellow close-combat types kept an eye out-

Jack took a second look, as Kurusu seemed to shrug and Ikoma leaned in to follow Suzuki’s gestures. Kurusu and Mumei were keeping an eye out. Ikoma’s piercing gun was slung to the side, and he had one hand in his toolbag as Suzuki walked him through lamp parts at a rapid patter only another engineer could probably understand.

The colonel glanced at his astrophysicist, wondering what she made of it. He knew what he thought it was, but….

Stepping a hair to the side so she could get an unobstructed view of antique tools, Sam grimaced in rueful sympathy. “Looks like on the job training, sir. The hard way.”

Yeah. That. “Just once, I’d like to be wrong,” Jack muttered.

“No, you wouldn’t,” Daniel mused, shaking out one wrist.

Okay, no, he wouldn’t. Except that if they were right, and Ikoma had that slightly geek-frazzled look Jack had come to know and dread that implied they were – oh man.

If Ayame loses her senior steamsmith out here, we are so screwed….