Five cities, one train
The cities
Each city has its own streets, its own black market with its own prices, and one job that only it offers. The train links them all: book a ticket at the station and ride.
What is cheap in one city sells dear in another, so the smugglers ride the night trains. The specialty jobs pay in their own way: in cash, in scrap for bullets, or in goods for your cargo, worth most where they are scarce.
Krasnograd
The capital. Stalinist towers, wide avenues and the Party's eyes on every corner.
Only here: Forge Party papers. A stamp, a signature, a new life. Krasnograd pays well for the right papers.
Borschtograd
Beets, factories and smoke. The city works hard and drinks harder.
Only here: Strip the soup factory. The night shift sleeps; its pipes and brass become scrap, and scrap becomes bullets.
Novo-Potatovsk
Grey panel blocks around a potato statue and a farm market, where everyone knows a man who can get things.
Only here: Run a potato still. Vodka from the kolkhoz's potatoes, straight into your cargo.
Port Sardinsk
The harbour and the cannery. The imports land here, and not all of them through the front gate.
Only here: Unload a night boat. No papers, no customs, no questions: video recorders off a trawler, into your cargo.
Uglegorsk
A coal town under the slag heaps. Hard men, faces black with coal dust, and money for whoever brings what they miss.
Only here: Rob the coal train. Heavy work, heavy money: the mine's payroll rides with the coal.