Oh, hell. Guests. In a narrow passageway.

"Combat stations! We're going to have to pass that ship to get where we're going."

The Navigator shouts into the speaking tubes, relaying the message. "Wake the first officer!"

Meanwhile, the Driver had been tempted to turn back, but settles for angling towards one side of the pass in hope of avoiding them. No luck- The dark locomotive steers erratically towards them, clearly having spotted them.

There is the sound of pounding feet and shouting behind them.

"Warming up the gun," comes a slightly bleary message through the turret's speaking tube, a bit later. "Will be ready to fire in... Twenty seconds."

"Hold her steady and be ready to dodge!"

The Driver's usual muttering has stopped entirely. He squeaks out an 'aye aye!'. The Navigator is scribbling furiously.

The Guest-ridden engine explodes in a spray of black goo, wriggling tendrils twice as long as a man excitedly sprouting from every opening. It's heading straight for them still, modulo a fair bit of wobbling and a list that leaves its front pointed fifteen degrees to the right.

Through the speaking tube, Clunk. "Gun ready!"

"Helm left twenty, line up a shot! Fire when ready!"

The helm tracks the hostile engine's wavering course. Once it's lined up, there's a thunderous BANG and an orange dot of a tracer flies out ahead of them. A moment later it impacts the Guest-Ridden Scout and turns several tentacles into an expanding cloud of black fragments.

After a brief pause- BANG-cluBANG-cluBANG-cluBANG-cluBANG. The shots come one after another, a bit over one every second, panning right and up over the bridge's field of view as the curving turn continues. More of them hit and blast holes into or chunks off of the enemy, than not.

Then the turn has gone a little too far and the shooting stops, the Morningstar's angle wrong. What's more, roiling balls of black goop lance out towards them! But the Paranoid Driver swings right again and slams the steam-vent controls, knocking the whole engine violently to the side, taking them out of the projectiles' paths as the engine passes its foe.

"Hold her steady, we're past! Ready to dodge!"

The Driver steadies out. The foe turns alarmingly adroitly in the air behind them, with a loud wet groaning noise.

"S-Should we go full steam?"

Full Steam being the engine's maximum operation mode. Desperately hard to control, and quite hard on their coal reserves, but would absolutely get them away from this foe.

"Full steam," confirms Thorn. "Let's not give any of those Guests a chance to find purchase."

The startup sequence for Full Steam takes a nerve-rattling twenty seconds, from the shouted command to the engine room until the clunk of the Big Lever, and the whole engine surging forward, something in the walls shaking, sounding like distant thunder. In this relatively narrow pass, the slow and cautious turns the Driver dares make make the whole engine strain and several plates on the bridge develop narrow visible gaps as the twisting strain affects them. They were designed to stretch just so, admittedly, but still! With this surge of speed, surely they are home free, yes?

Problem is...

The lookout announces, "They're not falling behind! They're, uh, not getting closer, but not getting any further either! Fuck, Guests are fast-"

"Deploy mines?" Lenora asks from her post in the gun room.

"Deploy mines!" Thorn confirms.

Mines are deployed.

What follows is a tense chase as, even battered by mines, the Guest-ridden engine attempts to pursue them through. Eventually something important breaks and the Guests careen into a wall and break apart. A cheer goes up throughout the engine.

"Maybe we should go back and pulverize them," the Driver comments. "Just in case."

"Best not to risk letting any Guests aboard. Hold her steady!"

The Driver continues careening through the relatively narrow fungal passage. Lookouts watch for any sign of further hostiles; There are none.

"Could we please slow down?" Her Navigator asks. "I'm having trouble keeping up and will have to start guessing soon."

"Slow," orders Thorn. "We've lost the Guests." She trusts in her chief engineer to bleed pressure appropriately.

The engine settles down into a more sedate pace. Her engineer is swearing but in a pleased sort of way. Nothing broke except her blood pressure going up, and it was almost a religious experience to have all that beautiful machinery running so hot and smooth.

Lenora lets the gun cool, then unloads it and tells another crewman to clean it. She pops her head into the bridge. "Captain. Glad we escaped. Need anything else, 'cause I want to go back to sleep?"

"I think we're good, Lenora. Good shooting."

"Glad to hear it, Captain."

Off she goes.

The Navigator mutters something as she continues to work.

Eventually, they come out of this narrow back-passage into an already-traversed area, closer to Hybras. The crew is getting somewhat tense, but there's more searching yet to be done.

She selects another passageway, and directs the navigator to proceed.

Nothing horrible happens to them for the rest of the next day. Then in the middle of her sleep there's pounding on her door.

"Captain! There's a... Fuck, I don't know. A thing!"

She gets up, bleary-eyed but functional. "On the ship or off it?"

"Up ahead! We've stopped! Some kind of fungus monster. Lenora sent us to get you instead of just blowing it up since it's holding still."

"Alright, I'll consult with her. Thank you." She stomps off towards the bridge.