by Lee Bond
The King deserved this. All of it. Chevy didn’t know how the Outside World truly worked, but those who did for a King’s Son out there inevitably fell afoul of the Gearmen in one way or another, and it was with intense curiosity that the constabulary grilled those travelers about … everything.
Including the simple things, like where they grew up.
“Now how could I’ve missed all that then, hey?” Chevy stroked his chin thoughtfully, answering the question a moment later with the tip of an imaginary hat. “King’s Will, I suppose. All them worlds out there, growing larger and larger, with the cities becoming more and more full of people, until, welladay, they find that they’ve got to move on to another world. Now, that there does my head in a bit, as this little spot of land is all we’ve ever known. The thought of there being so many people as you’ve got to move them to another planet … all those souls, all needing to be fed, all needing to work, all the noise. But grow they do, and flourish for all the seeming efforts of criminals and blaggards everywhere, aye, but grow and grow and grow.
But not here, no King, not here, not at all. Here we’ve got the reverse, it seems, which don’t make no sense from where I stand. None at all.” Chevy turned around and around, taking in all of Ickford with the Gunboys and beyond that, Arcade City itself. “Here we started with cities, so they say, full to the brim like them cities I learned about from them fools from the Outside, with millions and millions of good King’s men and women, all about their business, but now look at us, hey? I can scarcely imagine there’s more than million souls all told, left to right, back and forth! Why, I ask now, why should that be?”
Some of the Gearman blamed the King’s gothic mood on the decline of their grand civilization, but Chevy knew it weren’t so. It weren’t. The deplorable state of their wondrous Arcade City –which had, at one time, been just that, full of wonder and miracles- had begun the very moment that their King had hooked his wardogs on Dark Iron.
Chevy narrowed his eyes. There were corners of this mystery that he couldn’t see, shrouded in the darkness of thirty thousand years of secrets, but he saw enough; the gearheads were supposed to move inward, fighting and fighting and fighting until they made their way to Arcadia, whereupon they were supposed to triumph over the Platinum King so they might receive their reward of purest ‘Dark’ Iron. At which time they would find themselves transformed into Platinum Brigadiers.
But the gauntlet was a meat grinder, more than anything else. More gearheads had died the true, final death than made it to Arcadia’s doorstep. For every Brigadier –all slaughtered by the King Himself- Chevy realized, four hundred thousand gearheads had perished since.
“I’ll be buggered backwards.” Chevy muttered angrily, mind reeling from the revelation. The entire system was skewed towards depleting the population of Arcade City to the point where there were naught but Brigadiers! Only … only the King had done for them all and what with Ickford being the lure it was and them old gearheads keeping all else as would move inwards from doing so …
Chevy had the awful suspicion that the Gunboys were around to do more than destroy Ickford. “And,” the elder Gearman turned his attention back to the squadron of Dark Iron Bastards, “I warrant it has more to do with them mad fools down there and their murdered, shining brethren than anyone realized. Master Nickels may well have caught the ire of the King, aye, but there is an awful lot more going on here, I think, than any of us can appreciate.”
Chevy said miserably as the first of the shells were launched at the lumbering Gunboy. “I reckon we’ll all be lucky if we see another day. I feel as though the King is done with us.”
The explosive shell caught the Gunboy square in the chest. It screamed with a sound of tortured metal and the hot stink of burning oil flooded the area.
Chevril Pointillier nodded to himself. It was time to join those Dark Iron Bastards. Today may very well be their last day under The Dome.
***
Garth N’Chalez walked through the empty streets of Ickford, half a mind tuned on the sounds of war and chaos erupting everywhere, the other half wondering if, in the wildly impractical city within a city, there was anywhere he could find ice cream. Preferably something with chocolate, though really, if all he could find was vanilla, he’d be just fine with that.
“Only not mint.” Garth tilted his head a bit when a huge explosion made the air shiver with violence. Hot on the heels of that titanic boom came smoke and fire.
“Well, shit.” The ex-Specter hopped lithely to the nearest rooftop, enjoying the feeling of properly working Geared armor and insanely excited to see just what DarkBook planned on doing once enough Dark Iron was introduced into the systems.
Once on the roof, the Eye zoomed in on the nearest Gunboy. No further away than eight hundred feet, it was a hot mess. Somewhere in Ickford there was a guy who liked to cackle a lot and spent an inordinate amount of time looking to see what stuff could make other stuff blow up really well, and it was no more evident than in the –thankfully- full-metal version of the Latelian Gunboy; one whole leg had been stripped clean of armor plating, transforming it into something more familiar to the gearheads who were even then risking the clouds and intermittent lightning shooting out from the heavily damaged systems to climb up and in, eagerly striding over corpses by the dozens to claim their piece of fortune and glory.
As he watched, a handful of gearheads made an unfortunate zig when they should’ve zagged; they walked right into a huge bolt of displaced electricity, each of them going up like a Roman candle, hair bursting into flames and their flesh transforming into a charred mess. Each carcass tumbled to the ground, a collection of barbeque and undamaged metalwork.
“If there’s any smiths left after this little war,” Garth turned his Eye to the inner workings of the Gunboy, hoping to catch sight of gearheads clambering their way up tendons and muscles made of iron and steel, “they’ll have enough raw materials to last a lifetime.”
There. There they were, hauling themselves up with dogged determination, faces etched with pain and determination. Garth looked around a bit, hunting for sign of the same kind of internal defenses used by the Big Kings but came up empty. As far as he could tell –and this was backed up by DarkBook, who was still reminding him that he needed to get to his Dark Iron supply sooner rather than later if he wanted to have any fun at all- there was nothing inside the Gunboy’s frame.
“Don’t mean nothing, though. King Barnabas Blake the One and Only has gone of the damn rails. Raw Iron could be attacking them for all I know.” Garth bowed to the gearheads crawling their precarious way through the largest monster they’d ever personally fought, wishing them all the luck in the world. Madmen and crazy women they might be, not all of them, it seemed, were like Nicked Jimmy or Mental Marc. Some of them just wanted to live another day.
007 theme song now playing loudly in his head, Garth resumed trekking towards Ickford’s bank and official N’Chalez Dark Iron Repository. His ears perked up a few minutes later when a different kind of explosion rocketed through Ickford. Unlike last time, without input and guidance, the impressive weaponry being brought against the Gunboys could only do so much damage.
Garth imagined the wry grin and knowing wink Agnethea would hand his way over these conceits, but it wasn’t that. It wasn’t ego that had him thinking this way, not at all.
No, it was Barnabas Blake. They’d traveled together for over a month, and in that time, the ‘blacksmith’ had done everything imaginable to con his companion into partaking of more Dark Iron. Failing that, he’d tried to cause a tremendous blowout of anger, eyes glittering with interest the whole while, insanely interested in summoning the Specter from enforced slumber. Every step of the way, every night, every morning, every spare stretch of time between smithy-work, it’d been the same old saw, over and over again
Until they’d gotten close enough to Ickford, that is. From the moment Agnethea’s dank city had been within eyeshot, Barnabas had finally called a halt to
his ceaseless demands.
All because the King had come to the decision to rain wrack and ruin as far as the eye could see. Little point in pursuing old goals when your mind is full of fire and brimstone, and Garth was willing to bet every last foul dollop of Iron he owned that the moment the asshole King had gotten to wherever it was he hung his crown, the first thing he’d done was dig into the past. Using the power of Cloud particulate as his weapon of choice, it couldn’t have been too hard for King Barnabas Blake to discover who and what Garth Nickels really was, especially if the monarch really was thirty thousand years old.
Discovering, amongst other things, a Kin’kithal’s true reason for coming to Arcade City. That, and there were more contenders seeking to destroy the Universe than was even reasonable.
“I bet you a King-sized shit brick, Barnie.” Garth imagined … actually, he didn’t need to imagine Barnie’s response.
It surrounded him on all sides, a perpetual echo of the Dark Iron King’s positively lambent rage.
Another brash scream ripped the air above Ickford apart, forcing Garth to concede one thing: for all his irascibility, all his weird and cantankerous ways, when he put his mind to it, King Barnabas Blake the One and Only was –sadly- a damn fine engineer.
“Which is why,” Garth skirted a handful of squashed gearheads, “I got to get my ass in gear!”
One more corner and he’d be there. The Kin’kithal thanked his lucky stars everyone was either busy dealing with the Gunboys or hunkered down in basements. There was no more time to fuck around.
Not anymore.
Garth looked over his shoulder at the Gunboy closest to him, then fixed his eye on Agnethea’s bank. Not far now.
Those Gunboys were Kin’kithal killers. Plain and simple. Any fallout from that singular goal –the death of Ickford, the slaughter of recalcitrant gearheads not playing the game, the murder of thousands of innocents- all that was secondary. No amount of damage done by gearheads or the weapons they employed would be enough to bring them down. Not entirely. They might be able to cause egregious damage, might be able to prevent them from manifesting city-smashing weapons, might keep them where they were, but that’d be the whole of it.
Of that, Garth was …
“Hey, man, what the fucking fuck?” Garth reached out and grabbed hold of Idle Eric’s stained collar. Yanking the wee creepy gearhead away from the vault doors, he held the would-be bank robber at arm’s length.
Idle Eric spat and cursed and tried to wriggle his way free, but Master Nickels’ grip was unbreakable. He gave up the fight and dangled there, mortified to his very metallic toes. How undignified. “This aren’t wot it seems like, squire, honest it hain’t.”
Shaking his head at the mangled King’s English sprouting forth from the gnome’s mouth, Garth quirked an eyebrow at the lock pick set strewn about the ground in front of the inner door, and at the pieces jammed into the mechanisms themselves. “Looks to me like you’re trying to break in, Eric.”
“Ah. Yes. Well.” Eric bowed as best he could, discovering that when you are being dangled from someone’s arm like a small child, bows aren’t so much bows as a kind of awkward gesture that had no earthly comparison. “Then, yes, it does indeed seem like what … it … seems.”
Garth wanted to pull Idle Eric closer for the effect, but didn’t, because the tiny gearhead stank to high heaven. “Why is it that all the rest of your kind are out there in the city proper trying to do for those monsters and you’re out here, at the gates, trying to break into the bank vault?”
Eric hemmed and hawed, tucking his hands politely behind his back. Or so he hoped that’s what the gesture appeared to be; in truth, he was digging around for his wickedly sharp and jagged-toothed hummer blades. He were well in the shit with Master Nickels and he were fair certain he weren’t going to make it home for supper, but damn him if he weren’t going to get in a few good slashes here and there on the way down into the dirt. “Well, squire, the truth of it is, I’m on me last bit of Vicious Elixir, so to speak, hey? Meanin’ I won’t be much good in a fight, you see? And I know for a fact that ‘tween you and Barnabas, there’s a King’s ransom in tools and Dark Iron within yon vault. I thought to …”
Garth nodded appreciatively. It was just the sort of gambit he’d run a hundred times on different planets when he’d been a proper Specter. “You decided to wait until everyone was involved with the Gunboys and off you’d scarper with everything you could carry and then some. Good plan.”
Eric’s hands closed around the shafts of his blades. Shame he wouldn’t be able to turn them on for the first deadly sweep. Master Nickels was well dangerous and quick to the touch, as they said. It were dead cert he’d hear the faintest of clicks and that would be that. “Aye, Master Nickels. But now you’re here to do the same, wot if we were to … make a deal?”
“The same? A deal?” Garth was astounded at Eric’s persistence. Under different circumstances –and thanks in no small part to his own larcenous heart- it was entirely likely that he’d divvy up the contents and let the small fucker on his way, but a quadruple Gunboy attack on what was probably the last bastion of freedom in a pocket Kingdom fueled by nanotechnology and run by a certified insane cocksucker fell so far away from ‘normal’ that if he had the fucking time, he’d chart the distance between the two and use that impossible number to divide by fucking zero and save the Unreal Universe that way. “Now listen here, you little shit…”
Idle Eric smiled and slashed out with his lethal blades, driving them at the exposed gearwork in the arm holding him so easily in the air. The tips of each blade sank in further than made any sense, jamming in between cog and gear alike, filling the air with a high-pitched whine that had him letting go of the daggers so he might clap hands to ears instead.
Garth and Idle Eric both stood there, staring at the daggers ticking back and forth as the gears between which they were wedged tried to continue functioning.
“Erm.” Eric opened his mouth then closed it. Words escaped him. He tried again. “Wot … erm … so, does that … hurt? At all? I can’t ‘elp but notice that they is in there a goodly five inches, Master Nickels. I hate to say it, but you should be in considerable pain right about now. Them blades is sharp as sin.”
The blades gave one more prolonged ‘tick’ before the tips –still buried deep inside the armor- shattered. The now ruined daggers clattered to the ground. Garth stared, nonplussed, at the weapons in the dirt for a long, thoughtful moment before turning his attention back to Idle Eric, who, at last, had the decency to pretend to be embarrassed.
“Well, now, this is quite awkward, hain’t it just?” Eric considered kicking the man in the arm with his Dark Iron legs, only considering the man had just had two daggers sticking out of that very same limb with no sign of being remotely worse for it, the whole enterprise seemed doomed.
There were some things that just got the better of you, no matter what, and Eric supposed he weren’t too proud a man to admit that in this particular occasion, he may have overestimated his abilities to come out on top.
“Awkward doesn’t begin to cover half of it.” Garth snapped, feeling Specter surge alongside at the flare of anger. “As near as I can tell, you little shit, every other man, woman and thing in Ickford is right this minute fighting against those monsters. Including the Obsidian Golems.” He wasn’t entirely certain about that last statement, but it sounded like the sort of thing that should be said. Besides, Garth reasoned, Agnethea was for damn sure out there somewhere.
Eric pointed to the ruination that were his legs, gesturing feebly. “I hain’t no good, Master Nickels. Not against them big things.”
“You’ve got a brain in that melon of yours, don’t you?” The clamor of war reached his ears once more; from the din, it sounded as though another … gaggle had made their way to one of the remaining uninjured Gunboys.
The refrain of the Gunboys was growing more and more fevered, the echoing resonance of the two –at the very least-
unwounded metal soldiers sounding all too much like ‘hang on, bro, we’re comin’ for ya’ for comfort. Well, maybe not that specifically, but Garth knew those sounds better than the English language. The bloody tongue of War was the same everywhere.
“Find a great big gearhead. A giant hulking dude. Climb onto his shoulders and run around shouting ‘Who run Bartertown?’ There. I can’t believe it took this long to work that into conversation. I feel better, don’t you? I know I do. No. But seriously now. Head back into Ickford, find some gearheads, offer your services as looker and leader or so help me Christ I will fling you right back into the fucking city myself. I don’t know if the King has any laws against Dwarf Tossing, but I’m willing to find out if you choose to be a dick.”
Idle Eric crossed his arms defiantly. He were sure Nickels were making fun of him in some way, but if he were, it didn’t make no sense.
No matter the man’s unkind, mocking tone, he weren’t going back, not at all. He’d rather die at the hands of a maniac, which, it seemed, that Master Nickels really and truly was. He’d heard the rumors about the man actually being an assassin for the King, sent to Ickford to do for the Golems, he’d seen the mayhem left in the man’s wake.
No sane man, not even one who did horrible things for a living, left behind that kind of mess. Not wi’out having a brainpan full of demons.
“Seriously?” Garth shrugged his shoulders at Eric’s erroneous stand. “You really …” Eric set his jaw and willfully stared off into the middle distance. “No? Okay. Weird.”
And with that, Garth N’Chalez hurtled Idle Eric the Midget Gearhead back into Ickford. Not necessarily the most heroic thing to do, but really, when Gunboys attack, it was kind of an all hands on deck thing, even if you were a horrid little dwarf-thief.
Garth settled himself down. Specter loomed in the background, vastly and terribly amused that he’d tossed a midget gearhead, but not so much that a struggle for dominance was around the corner.
