Dark Reign – Prologue

Thought I’d give you all a taste of what’s to come:

One of the many railway lines into the city ran on an embankment separating a housing district from a warehousing district. In a set of tracks on this embankment and nearing the main railway line to the city was a tiny sensor. Its job was to send information along the line to a second transceiver that then sent the same information to the points further up the track. The points would change the direction of the train depending on its destination.
This time, however, that tiny sensor failed which meant the points only changed partway. There was a spark and a sizzle of live electricity, then nothing. Until the next train bound for the city rocketed over it. A passenger train full to bursting point, it thundered over the point without slowing, its drive unaware of the danger beneath the train’s wheels.
The whole car rose from the ground and slammed onto the edge of the embankment, tipping over the edge and sliding on its side down the slope. A screech of metal could be heard along with squealing brakes as the driver attempted every action he could think of to save his passengers. Then the car hit an imperfection in the grade and turned so that it was travelling end on, still on its side until another bump lifted the entire car into the air and flipped it end on end. Screeching metal was changed to vocal screams as passengers and driver alike lost their seating and footing and became airborn until gravity hit and they landed with the car’s rear end heading straight for a house at the base of the descent.
One by one, shocked survivors who could move made their way to the end of the car that had now mostly caved in where it connected with the house’s roof and walls. They stumbled awkwardly through the small gap and moved far enough away from the car to see the damage. One survivor turned to the embankment and his gasp brought other survivors’ attention to the other cars that had tumbled haphazardly down the incline. All suddenly realised their luck in standing or sitting they were. They had made it out alive.
Then there was silence apart from the roar of the fire and screams of trapped passengers. It had been a crowded train and most of its load were trapped in cars scattered between houses and warehouses on either side of the embankment.