Conductor’s Log 18: First Lesson

Hello Everyone,

Welcome to this week’s Conductor’s Log! Engine Room Update 0.3.4 went out last Thursday, bringing Medikits, natural health regeneration, fully re-bindable controls, new hit reactions, and a round of weapon and robot rebalancing.

Now, on with the story….

Our newest passenger slept for fourteen hours. When they finally surfaced, the pipe came with them, tucked under one arm like a walking stick they didn’t need.

Brains checked them over in the Den while Gunner pretended not to hover. Frostnip on the fingers, a cough that rattled, and not much left of them under the blanket. Nothing a Medikit couldn’t patch, Brains said, and nothing that wouldn’t mend on its own now, as long as they kept eating. He’s been saying that a lot lately. Keep the body fed, and it does the rest of the work for you. Our passenger took this as permission to finish a second ration bar before he’d finished the sentence.

After breakfast, they found me at the supervisor’s desk.

“If I’m staying,” they asked, “what do I do?”

It was a fair question, and nobody had a good answer. Driver, listening in from the cockpit, suggested we start with whatever kept people alive the longest. So we gave them a lesson instead.

Brains went first, because Brains always goes first when there’s teaching to be done. He set a Medikit and a toolbelt on the table in the Expedition Wagon and said these were the two things you never leave the train without. Not the rifle. Not the armour. The kit that keeps you alive, and the tools that get you home. Our passenger turned the Medikit over in their hands for a long time, like they were memorising it.

The siblings took the afternoon. They’d rigged a row of scrap-metal targets at the far end of the storage car, and spent an hour arguing over who was the better teacher while their student quietly outshot both of their first attempts. The elder hunter showed them how to settle into the sights and let the view close in. The younger hunter insisted on headshots. “A body shot just makes them angry,” they said, which is not technically how robots work, but I let it stand.

Gunner’s lesson was shorter. He walked them to the storage car door, the one with the dent in it, and told them about the day he’d sprinted into it face first. Then he made them jump the crates. Over and over, until they were bent double and gasping. “Every jump costs you,” he said. “Out there, you spend your breath like you spend your ammo.” Then he sent them to the Den to eat, because that’s how you get it back.

The sparring session was my idea, and possibly a mistake. Gunner kept his Exosuit powered down and his hands open, and every time the pipe found him, the whole train heard about it. A grunt for the shoulder. A groan for the ribs. One very undignified yelp that Gunner has since denied, and that Brains has since written down.

By evening, they could strap on a toolbelt in the dark, hit four targets out of five, and clear the crate line without stopping for breath. Not ready for a facility. But closer than I was, once. Radio, who’d watched the whole thing from the doorway of the glider cabin, gave them a small, shy nod on the way past. From Radio, that’s a standing ovation.

Later, I found them at the supervisor’s desk, scrolling the map the way I do in the mornings. They’d stopped on the marker outside the minefield.

“Who was that?” they asked.

I told them. Not everything, but enough. That we’d had someone who saw things before the rest of us did. That we still keep their spot on the map, because the train decided to, and because we agreed.

They were quiet for a while. Then they set the pipe down on the desk, the first time I’d seen them let go of it since the pod.

“Then I’d better learn fast,” they said.