Railhead by Philip Reeve

gendered female, with a long, wise face, a blue dress, silver hair in a neat chignon.
    “Mr. Starling? I am Carlota, the manager. Mr. Raven told us to expect you.”
    “Is this where he lives?” Zen asked.
    “When he has nowhere better to be,” said Nova. “He got the old place up and running again, woke up all these wire dollies to keep it working.”
    “Mr. Raven is a regular guest here at the Terminal,” said Carlota. (If she was offended at being called a wire dolly, she did not let it show.)
    “You’d better keep an eye on Mr. Starling, Carlota,” said Nova. “He’s a thief. Count the spoons. Keep the safe locked.”
    Carlota’s smile was patient and preprogrammed. “Come, sir,” she said. “I’ll show you to your room.”

9
    At the heart of the Great Network lay Grand Central . All the main lines of the galaxy met there, which meant that whichever corporate family controlled Grand Central controlled the whole Network. For the past few generations that had been the Noons . Portraits of the Noon Emperors and Empresses beamed down from holoscreens, and the smiling golden sun of Noon flapped on bright banners above a garden city, which covered half the planet, the buildings spread wide apart, diamondglass towers and golden station canopies rising from a sea of trees. The imperial palace, the senate, the K-bahn Timetable Authority, all the dull, complicated departments that kept the Great Network running had their headquarters on Grand Central. The Guardians themselves kept data centers here: deep-buried vaults of computer substrate from which those wise old AIs could keep watch over human affairs. The Imperial College of Data Divers was always standing by to pass on their advice and instructions to the Emperor, although the Guardians seemed content these days to let Mahalaxmi XXIII rule without their instructions and advice. The Network ran itself happily enough in these peaceful times.
    On Grand Central there were always silvery trains snaking from one K-gate to another across the long viaducts, and the sky was forever busy with drones and air-taxis. At morning and evening these were joined by green parakeets, which rose from the treetops to fly in raucous, swirling flocks between the towers. The buildings used magnetic fields to warn the flocks away, and the birds flowed around them like water around the prows of huge ships.
    The shadows of their wings fell upon Captain Malik, who stood at a window high in the Railforce tower, looking out over the parks and lakes and malls of the galactic capital. The peace and luxury of the place unsettled him. He belonged on colder, rougher, dirtier worlds, and he was angry at being ordered back to Grand Central.
    “Yanvar!”
    He turned from the window as Rail Marshal Delius came into the room. A tall woman, taller than him, very dark skinned, her white hair combed and lacquered into a high arch like the crest of an ancient warrior. Her face was a warrior’s, too: stern and handsome, but lovely when she smiled, which she did when she saw Malik. He let her hug him. A row of medals was pinned across her tunic. They reminded him of the coins that he and Rail Marshal Delius used to leave on the K-bahn rails when they were kids together in the rail yards on Lakshmi’s Lament. They’d creep out to the lines and lay the coins on them like offerings, then hide and wait for a K-train to come by…
    Lyssa Delius was one of the very few people Malik thought of as a friend. They had joined Railforce together, and fought side by side against the Empire’s enemies all over the Network. But he doubted her friendship could help him much now. A wrecked wartrain was a serious business. He had whiled away his journey from Cleave by trying to calculate how many millions the armored loco must have cost. The Empire would be looking for someone to blame, and Lyssa did not have the imagination to blame Raven. Like the rest of Railforce Command, she did not even believe that Raven