Worldwaker: A Steampunk Dystopian Action Adventure (The Great Iron War, Book 5)

by Dean F. Wilson

   “Who is it?” he asked.

   “It's me,” his mother said. The normal forcefulness of her voice was restrained, though it almost sounded like she had to force that restraint.

   “Oh,” Whistler uttered unintentionally, trying to mask the disappointment.

   There was a brief pause.

   “Can I come in?”

   “I guess.”

   The curtain parted, and Taberah stepped in hesitantly. To anyone else watching at that moment, they would have recognised where Whistler's own perpetual hesitation came from. And yet, his mother was not hesitant in anything else.

   “I just wanted to … talk,” she said, standing awkwardly by the entrance. Perhaps she expected him to tell her to get out. Part of him expected he might still do.

   “Why?” he asked.

   “Why?” she repeated, showing the same surprise that he showed about her presence there.

   “I mean … why talk? Why now?”

   “I know we haven't had a great relationship, Brogan.” She approached closer, like a predator stalking its prey. “I'm sorry.”

   Whistler pouted and shrugged his shoulders. He knew he could not just say It's okay. It was not okay. He could not lie like that, even to make her feel better, even though part of him really wanted to. The part of him that did not feel better always stopped him.

   “The war may be over soon,” she said. He doubted that. He was born in the war. The war was his life. He wondered if even the Regime disappeared, if the fighting would not just start somewhere else, with someone else. He had fourteen years to try to understand “why,” and he was still trying.

   “I have a new mission,” Taberah added, when he did not give a reply. “I thought maybe … you and me … we could create a pleasant memory—just in case.”

   “Just in case?”

   “I'm not sure what will happen. I know I wasn't there for you, Brogan. I might not be there for you in the future either. I might not be here for anyone.”

   “No,” Whistler said, shaking his head. “Why are you saying this?”

   “Because I'm not sure I belong here.”

   Whistler furrowed his brow. “Doesn't everyone feel like that?”

   “Perhaps,” Taberah said. “But I haven't felt like this in a long time. I was writing the story of my life in my diary, and I feel like now my story is coming to an end. I just want our last chapter together to be a little better than the ones before. I know it's my fault the others weren't. If only I tried a little harder. If only I could see past … him.”

   A tear rolled down Whistler's cheek. He could feel it, caressing him, like she never did. “But you can still try now,” he said. “Can't you?”

   “I don't think I can, Brogan. I don't think I can.”

   Another tear followed, and it felt a little colder than the last. “But I thought … maybe you and Jacob … and me. No?”

   She gave a teary smile, like someone remembering a pleasant dream. Then she shook her head. “No. I'm still chasing ghosts. I can't chase anything else.”

   Whistler's lip trembled, and his voice was hoarse and broken. “Why won't you fight for me, mom? Why do you fight for everything else? Am I not good enough?”

   He could see her struggle with her own tears, in case they doused the flames. “You're good enough,” she said. “You're too good. Way too good for me. I don't deserve you. You would have been better off with someone else. You still will be.”

   “But there is no one else,” he said. “You're my mom. I don't want anyone else.”

   He reached his hand out to hers. She involuntarily recoiled her own, then brought her hand back to gently hold his. Yet she would not look him in the eyes. Not in Domas' eyes. She was always chasing ghosts, and though he was gone, the dead still haunted her.

   “I wish it could be different,” Taberah said. “I can't make it up to you. I can't make amends. All I can do is be honest with you.”

   She held his arms and bowed her head towards him, until her forehead rested against his, until their tears joined together in a little pool below them. It was the closest they had been in a long time, and yet she still felt very far away.

   “Don't weep for me,” she said. “Don't weep for us.”

   She started to withdraw, but he grabbed her hand with both of his. She glanced at him, then looked away, before pulling away from him. He held her hand for a moment, but she did not hold his. His grip was weak, and her fingers slid through his, until—as she was only weeks before—he was holding nothing.

  5 – THE RUST ROAD

  Jacob found Lorelai patching up Rommond's back in the medical tent. He cringed at the sight of all the criss-crossing scars, many still bleeding. Brooklyn was there too, grimacing at the sight.

   “Hell,” Jacob said. “I see you're a dab hand at the old self-flagellation.”

   “Well, we all strive for perfection,” Rommond grumbled, clearly irritated at anyone seeing him without his shirt, coat and medals on. They were pristinely displayed on a nearby mannequin.

   “I'm surprised you let anyone patch you up,” Jacob said.

   “I had to make him,” Brooklyn explained.

   “And just as well you did,” Lorelai added, casting away a bloodied cloth. “I've never seen such terrible sewing before in my life. No wonder you boys don't do your own trouser legs.”

   “Well, you try sewing up your own back,” the general snapped, pulling away from her needle. “Are we done?”

   “Not really,” she said, but he was already buttoning up his shirt.

   “He is stubborn,” Brooklyn pointed out.

   Rommond shook his head. “It isn't stubbornness if you're right.”

   “I guess you're right then,” Jacob said.

   The general gave him a sardonic smile. “Let's go. We should set out as soon as possible.”

   “Sure, just give me a minute.”

   “A minute,” Rommond insisted, as if he would accept nothing more. He linked Brooklyn's arm and left the tent.

   Lorelai started to wrap up her bandages. She cast a glance at Jacob, as if she was surprised he was still there. He thought her job must have felt a little unrewarding. Those she successfully patched up left just as quickly. Those who stayed were dead.

   “So, I suppose you're not coming on the road trip,” he said.

   “I don't think I'd be any help on one of those flying machines. Besides, there are still many people injured from the battle of the Iron Wall.”

   “You mean the Landquaker.”

   She smiled at him. “It's all the same.”

   “Yeah, I guess it is. Well, until the next cut or bruise.” He gave her a mock salute, then left to join the others.

  * * *

  Rommond spared little time in setting out. He already felt they wasted enough with planning, and yet the master planner knew no other method. He divided his pilots into two trucks, keeping Jacob, Algan and Whistler with him. Armax led the other team, at Leadman's insistence, with Cantro and Nissi.

   Wisdom would have had them take another way, but there were few options left for the weakened Resistance, and so they decided on the Rust Road, an old trading route that was abandoned for good reason. There the carcasses of machines piled up on either side like metal cliffs, and it was not the erosion of weather that ate away at them, but something far more mischievous, and far more deadly.

   “The Clockwork Commune,” Jacob mused. “Yet another one of those names I thought belonged to the fairy tales.” He shifted uneasily in his leather seat.

   “So you're starting to believe?” Rommond asked, sitting perfectly still.

   “I'm wishing I could remain incredulous.”

   “They're friendly though, aren't they?” Whistler wondered. He rested his chin on the back of Jacob's seat, peering over his shoulder at the path ahead. He did not budge at the mention of the clockwork const
ructs either. Maybe wonder trumps fear, Jacob thought.

   Rommond scoffed. “If you have no metal.”

   “Shame you got that gold tooth then,” Jacob quipped.

   “Trust me, Jacob, they'll rip through that ribcage of yours to see if you have any gold in you too—especially if you arrive in a vehicle. That's as much a 'come get me' cry as any other.”

   The truck purred a little louder, a cry of its own.

   “Remind me again why we're going this way?” Jacob asked.

   “This is the quiet road.” Still, the general spent a lot of time loading guns. The dashboard was starting to get very cluttered with them.

   “Yeah, for good reason, it sounds like.”

   “All roads carry risks. This is the only one unpoliced by the Regime. If we are to get to Rustport with ease, then this is our only option. We threw everything we had at the Landquaker, and even that is now destroyed. Had we that gun, we could have stormed Rustport by rail. Now … we sneak in.”

   Jacob perked up. “Sounds like a smuggling route.”

   He could see Whistler smiling knowingly at him from the rear-view mirror.

   “Precisely,” the general said. “Maybe you'll be useful after all.”

   “After all?” Jacob scoffed. “I think I've been pretty useful so far.”

   “So far,” Whistler jeered.

   “Cheeky.” He paused. “You know, it's kind of funny.”

   “What is?” Rommond asked, holding a shotgun shell up for inspection. He seemed unhappy at the tiny imperfections in it.

   “That we're now trying to save the Iron Emperor.”

   “We're not trying to save him.”

   “Yeah, but that'll be the net result of what we do, when we stop the Worldwaker.”

   “I like your confidence,” Algan said from the back seat. He was a quiet type, one of Rommond's unsung lieutenants. He did what he was told, and got people to do what they were told. The general had a lot of people like that. Jacob was not one of them.

   “Something tells me he won't appreciate the gesture,” Jacob continued.

   “I could have told you that,” Rommond said.

   “You kind of pity them,” Jacob said. “Our 'enemy'.”

   “You might, but I don't.” The general had a lot of polished weapons to prove it.

   “What's there to pity?” Algan added, reinforcing Rommond's view.

   “Well, they didn't really sign up for this,” Jacob said. He could really empathise with that. “It was all the Iron Emperor. He came and conquered them. Conquering is all he's about. It's even on the coils we use.”

   “Is that what the nurse told you?” Rommond asked. “If he conquered them, they let him. He came with gifts and promises, and they voted for him willingly. The Devil did not storm office. He hid his horns and was elected.”

   “So you know they're not really demons then. You know their history.”

   “I know enough,” Rommond said, giving his revolver another scrub. “We always demonise our adversaries. I'm a general, Jacob. This is part of the propaganda that helps us win a war. Except in the case of the marans, what they've done, the path they've chosen, is inherently demonic—so they demonised themselves.”

   “And what about us?”

   “What about us?”

   “Well, we're not exactly angels either.”

   “We don't have to be to be good.”

   Jacob furrowed his brow. “I suppose you're right.”

  The day wore on, and Rommond scrambled into the back to take a nap, insisting that he would be on watch for the duration of their time on the Rust Road—a promise that was not encouraging. Algan followed suit, and both were snoring in no time.

   Whistler sat in the front with the smuggler, hugging his legs and resting his chin on his knees. He kept well enough away from Rommond's arsenal. He seemed distracted, looking neither at the weapons nor the road ahead, his mouth formed into a perpetual pout.

   “Are you okay?” Jacob asked.

   Whistler was startled from his daze. “Yeah. Why?”

   “You seem a little … I don't know … distracted.”

   Whistler bit his lip and shrugged. “It's nothing,” he said. He was not a good liar. Jacob decided not to press the issue.

   “What was your mom like?” the boy asked after a brief pause.

   “My mom?”

   “Yeah.”

   “Eh, she was nice. You know, I kind of don't remember her that well. I was a kid when she died. My last memories of her were in the workhouse. We didn't really get to be family there.”

   “Oh.” Whistler scrunched his mouth, contorting it from side to side. “Sorry.”

   “Well, it's not your fault.”

   “I know. It's just … that's what we're supposed to say, right?”

   “Yeah, I suppose.”

   “If the war ended today … what would you do? Where would you go?”

   “Hell,” Jacob said. “I haven't thought that far ahead. Have you?”

   Whistler shrugged. “A little.”

   “Who knows what the future holds? There's really no point in worrying about it.”

   “I guess.”

   “Well then, what would you do?”

   “I don't know.”

   “Seems we're in the same boat then.”

   “While we have a reason to paddle together.”

   Jacob raised an eyebrow. “What's this about?”

   Whistler shrugged again. It seemed he shrugged not because he did not have an answer, but because he was afraid to tell it. “Will you go back to smuggling?”

   “Probably,” Jacob said. “Don't think I'd be much good at anything else. Can you imagine me as a farmer? Or a miner? Don't think I could do an honest day's work.”

   Whistler forced a chuckle. “Yeah, I guess so.”

   Jacob frowned. “You're supposed to say No, Jacob, I think you'd do a great job at any of those.”

   The boy gave the faintest of smiles. “If … when this is all over,” he said. “Can … can we still be friends?”

   “Of course,” Jacob said, putting his arm around Whistler's shoulder. “Buddies for life. Sure, who else'd I get to squash into all the small places? Master and apprentice smuggler.” He held his hand out, waving it across the darkening sky, as if he could paint the words there. “Look out, world!”

  * * *

  As dusk set in, they set out along the Canopy Trail, where the traders of old used to gather to sell their wares. Scraps of fabric from pavilions, gazebos, tents and other canopies still clung to the periodic metal poles that littered the landscape, the sand-laced material clattering in the fierce breeze. It was a desolate scene, but the people of Altadas had gotten pretty used to desolation.

   As the darkness deepened, the sky was streaked with veins of red, the last low beats of a dying sun. Against this scarlet canopy, the hulk of the Rust Road's twin peaks stood tall, mountains of metal, unnaturally jagged. Their sharp pinnacles pierced the sky, and Jacob could not help but wonder if that explained the blood there.

   It did not take long before they fell fully under the shadow of those sentinels, and what fading glimmers of sunlight peaked through only accentuated the form. Thousands of vehicles were piled hundreds of feet high on either side, a tangled mess of metal. The only thing that was abundantly clear was that the vehicles had been thoroughly scavenged, and all that was left was the empty shells. Anything of use or value was removed, and forcibly so. Everything else, the useless skin, was left to rot.

   Armax drove behind, dimming his lights. Jacob followed suit. They needed just enough to see, not to be seen.

   Jacob got ready to wake the general, as requested, but he found Rommond already stirring, as if the shadows of the junk yard had invaded his sleep. He came back to the waking world with that recognisable grim determination in his eyes, suggest
ing he might have slain demons and destroyed clockwork constructs as he snored.

   He ushered Whistler to change places. “Let me go in front, there's a good chap.”

   Whistler closed his eyes in the back, and Algan rolled over in his sleep. He did what he was told, but the general had not told him to wake up yet.

   As Rommond adjusted his uniform, Jacob studied the iron graveyard, where every vehicle was its own gravestone. He drove slowly through, as if he was afraid to wake the dead. That was not it though. The general made it clear that they should fear the living.

   “You know, you probably should melt these wrecks down and make some coils with the iron,” Jacob suggested.

   “Oh, we tried that,” Rommond replied. “Back in the early days of the war. The Regime copped on quick and changed the coils to make them impossible to replicate.”

   “Really? I never noticed a difference. Have you got an original?”

   “Sure,” Rommond said. He flicked the coil over to Jacob.

   Jacob inspected it between glances at the winding road, but did not see anything unfamiliar. The general must have noticed, because he flicked another coil over.

   “This is the new type, the ones we haven't been able to copy.”

   Jacob compared them. They were both made the same: an iron coil flattened, and stamped on one side with the image of the Iron Emperor, surrounded by his maran slogan.

   “So, what am I looking for?”

   Rommond smiled. “That's what I said when I was shown this for the first time. Tilt the new one.”

   Jacob did just that, and watched as the Iron Emperor's gawking eyes followed him.

   “Now tilt the old one.”

   Jacob tried it, but the eyes did not follow him.

   “That's an old painter's trick, right?” Jacob asked.

   “Not the way they do it here,” Rommond explained. “And I know, because I used to paint, and when I saw this, I tried my hand at painting the Iron Emperor as if he was staring straight at me. His eyes follow, sure, but look again.”

   Jacob tilted the newer coil once more, and then he saw it. Depending on whether it was tilted back or forward, or side to side, the Iron Emperor's eyes did not just continue their eternal staring—they changed colour.