((STORY EXTRACT))

Nosing up the Valkyrie, I started another turn to the north, looking out of the canopy to the ground below. A thick white plume caught my attention far in the distance, myself leveling off to head towards it. Huh… well, it’s a bit off the legputer map, I think, but I guess it’d be worth checking out. Wonder what it might be. Throttling back, again – these engines are too powerful for this thing’s own good – I tried to hold the Valkyrie in a right bank, getting a good look out the canopy at the ground below. Alright, smoke cloud, what exactly are you…

The source of the cloud drew near, a few details eventually making themselves able to be picked out against the snowy lands below – for example, the fact that whatever it was, it was moving fast enough to be shoving snow out of it’s way while it did. A few cars trailed behind it, some looking like the ones that the seamster’s shop was in… Wow, for being in an aircraft that can break the sound barrier like a forty-mil slug can break a lock, I am really slow. The train passed by beneath, heading in towards Maple Station, myself looking at the cargo aboard. Lesee, three passenger cars, a couple box cars, a tank car, and… were those tanks on the flatbeds? And some sort of truck, too, I guess… and some sort of turret bolted to the last car, too.

A turret that, as I shot past the end of the train, I finally noticed was starting to aim at me. Oh, crap.