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

by Dean F. Wilson

   It was a lonely road, the kind unwalked by man and maran. Different feet trod that earth. Metal feet. Brooklyn could not help but find that he was stepping inside the well-formed prints, walking in the footsteps of his iron kin.

   Memories stirred in him, but he beat them down, just like he beat the tribesman in the Wild North, just like he bashed at Rommond with his gauntlet of metal and wires. He felt a violence in him that was not his own, and yet it owned him.

   In time, Brooklyn arrived at what looked like an abandoned test facility, a simple square box, the ultimate expression of Regime architecture. Yet it was a buckled building, with broken windows, through which the dust passed through, like it passed through the Rift. Though it looked deserted, he knew deep down in the very core of him that it was not. It was filled with memories—and other things.

   He pressed his hand against the iron door, and felt a shudder inside of him. He had passed through that threshold before, but not willingly. He could feel the burn of the rope around his wrists. He recalled his shouts and pleas, and most especially his cry to Rommond to come and save him. He never came.

   He entered the building, where the light barely went. Instinctively, he turned on a flashlight made into his metal limb. He needed to be able to see. He just did not want the mechanical part of him to be his helper. It had never been before.

   The upper level was empty, and anyone else would have taken this as proof that the facility was no longer in use. But Brooklyn knew better. He remembered being hauled through those empty rooms, before memory was replaced with a mission. He could almost feel the urge of the mission now. Target 001.

   He headed down to the second level, which was very different to the first. It was deeper down, but the light was better there. It was artificial light, built by artificial things, to illuminate the artificial. He did not need the flashlight now, but it stayed on.

   There were bodies all around the room, on beds and tables, and hanging from the walls. More disturbingly, they were not complete bodies. Torsos were separated from limbs. Heads bobbed in glass jars filled with strange liquids. It was a horrifying sight. It was even more horrifying that Brooklyn recognised it as a memory.

   He walked on, trying not to let the sight break his will. He felt an urge to run, and remembered that feeling from before, when he was strapped down and filled with paralysing drugs, before he was taken apart, all while he was still awake, and still aware. He had seen parts of him being taken away, and foreign parts put in their place. He had been forced to watch them change him, unable to do anything to stop the process.

   He passed by large tanks of black liquid, and though he could see nothing there, he could hear the movement inside. There were buried memories of that too, of the submersion, of the days and days of feeling that he was drowning, and the nights of blindness, and the never sleeping, and the never blinking, and the barely breathing through tubes and wires.

   It took a great struggle to continue on, and not simply take a blade to his neck or a bullet to his head. Yet he knew with grim certainty that he would not die there. They would take his corpse and make it living again. Though there would be only a fraction of him left by the time they were through with him, that fraction would be conscious of all the changes, and unable to do anything to stop it.

   He was made in that room, but it did not feel like it was home. It was a temporary prison, where they worked on the more permanent prison of his body. He had to find the jailer, and had to get the key.

   He continued through until he came to a door down to the next level. He knew he had been down there too, but the memory was very faint. He was fully one of the Iron Guard then, under the iron grip of the Controller. He pushed the door open, vowing never to be controlled again.

  27 – FREEFALL

  Rommond struggled with the burning remains of his plane as it spiralled swiftly to the ground. It spun so quickly that his mind spun too, and his eyes found it difficult to focus on the rotating sky around him, which was becoming a sky of fire by the minute.

   He felt the heat approaching, and growing, as the fire ate away at the wooden panels and melted the metal ones. He knew he had to get out quick, but did not want to break his back in the process. He considered opening the canopy and leaping off the edge, manually opening his parachute, but he feared the flames would eat that too.

   You need to live, he thought, reconciling himself with the idea of spending his remaining days shackled to a chair, wheeled about by Brooklyn, if the tribesman even returned from the east. He was gone five years the last time he was dragged there. It was madness that he now went there willingly. Rommond only hoped he found find what he was looking for.

   You need to live for him, the general told himself.

   He pulled the lever between his legs, and heard a click. He closed his eyes and waited for the force of the springs. Then nothing happened. He opened his eyes, and saw the burning shell still around him. Then he yanked the handle again, much more forcefully, and he heard several more clicks, but still he sat in the plummeting wreckage, growing dizzier by the second.

   “Damn it.”

   He stretched his boot towards the backpack on the floor, which slid from side to side as the vessel continued to drop. He caught one of the straps around his toes and tugged it towards him, before grabbing it and hugging it close. He felt the straps of the seat holding him in place, stopping him from bashing off the dashboard or the glass. He knew he would have to free himself from those restraints. This was Plan B, and it was not a good one. His mind did not come up with it; his instincts did. He had to time it well or he risked being flung out in the downward spin, and breaking more than just his back. He needed to jump, not be thrown, to avoid the falling hull striking him on his way down, or his parachute getting entangled in it, or the fire leaping out to burn a hole in the fabric.

   He knew he would never be able to get the backpack on his back without first unbuckling himself, which would then see him thrown around the cockpit like a rag doll. He settled on putting it on backwards, over his chest, where he could still get the straps on, and would be able to clutch the pack as he fell.

   With the backpack in place, he reached for the gas mask dangling from the dashboard, and quickly pulled it over his face. There was some oxygen in its chambers, but he feared there was not enough. There was precious little this high up, and the fire was using that up swiftly.

   He pushed open the canopy shell, and even with the gas mask, he almost choked on the fumes. Black smoke swarmed him, and orange embers scalded any part of him that was exposed.

   He braced his right foot against the edge of the cockpit wall, then unbuckled his restraints, and jumped over the side, piercing the cloud of smoke. The flames seized him and set his uniform alight, but his swift descent extinguished them. That was the only time he was thankful for the fall.

   He tumbled, and the plane tumbled with him. He had not managed to jump far enough away, or maybe he did, and the wind brought him back close to the wreckage, like fate ushering him towards his coffin.

   He tried to regain control of his fall, but the sky continued to toss him, so that at every fraction of a second he saw the alternation of the ground and sky. His brain felt like it was expanding in his head. He felt weak. He could not see properly. It was all a burning blur. He felt himself fading out of consciousness, and for a moment it all went black, and it was kind of peaceful, until the sounds blared suddenly, and the sights stabbed his aching eyes.

   He kicked his legs, but continued to tumble. He kicked again, and again, until finally he kicked against the hull of the monoplane, and managed to simultaneously right himself and push himself away.

   He reached about his body, but was so disorientated he was not sure where he was reaching. String, he thought, but the thought was a struggle. He felt about for something to pull, but could not feel anything, and could not see anything. Even the gas mask conspired against him, blocking his
vision.

   Then he grabbed it, and yanked it hard. He heard a flutter of fabric, then felt a harsh tug upwards as the wind hauled the parachute up. He let out a long sigh, and felt he had time now to attend to the overwhelming feeling of nausea.

   But he was still dropping fast, faster than he should have been if the parachute was working. He heard a whistle of wind, and glanced up to see a large hole in the canopy above, through which the air rushed through. He knew with grim certainty that the parachute would not ease his fall, and if he did not know it then, he would have learned it from the quickly-approaching ground, with not a cushioning area in sight.

   What false hope, he thought, shaking his head. He had been a fool to trust in it. He knew better. Hope was the enemy.

  28 – SORRY

  Whistler saw the Regime planes turning, and spotted Trokus bundling the scientists on board his own. The canopy closed shut, and then the commander turned as well to flee the scene.

   “What's going on?” the boy called into the radio. “Why are you leaving?”

   “We got what we came for,” Trokus replied.

   “But … the bomb?”

   “I don't think there's any stopping that now.”

   “But surely we have to try.”

   “Go home, boy. It's over.”

   Whistler had been born into the Resistance. He knew that while any of them yet lived, it was not over. The fight continued. He was not of fighting age, but he had to fight all the same.

   He turned his plane and pursued the Regime vessels. He knew in his heart that they had betrayed the mission. Rommond would never have let the scientists get out alive. If they were taken by the Regime, the Iron Emperor would make many more of those world-destroying bombs. Maybe Altadas would not be the only world where he dropped them.

   “Turn back, boy,” Trokus warned.

   “I can't. I can't let you do this.”

   “I have to. I don't want to, but I have to.”

   “Then I have to stop you.”

   “Turn back. You don't have to die for this.”

   Whistler did not reply. He gained on them, which was response enough.

   “Fine,” Trokus said with a sigh. “Shoot him down.”

   The three Regime monoplanes turned sharply, and the gun barrels locked into place. Whistler spun his plane to avoid the initial barrage of bullets, then had to drop quickly to dodge the next. The enemy vessels split apart, then came at him from every angle. He had to use every trick he knew, and invent new ones, to get out of the line of fire, and no matter how hard he tried, the hull of his aircraft was peppered with holes.

   He pulled up sharply, and kept pulling, until he turned full circle and ended up behind the nearest plane. He closed his eyes and gripped the trigger, hearing the iron rattle, followed by an explosion outside. Then he heard the screams of the pilot over the radio, and wished he could turn it off.

   “I'm sorry,” Whistler sobbed.

   He did not want to have to stay it two more times.

   The remaining fighters split apart and came at him again, and Whistler rolled and dodged. One of them entered his field of fire, but his hand resisted the trigger, and he chose to veer off to the side instead. He flew into the cover of the clouds, circling in place.

   “I can't do this,” he said to himself. “I'm not a fighter.”

   After circling several more times, he came out of the cloud on the other side, and spotted the quickly-disappearing aircraft further ahead. He could try to chase them, but he knew it would be difficult to catch up, and even more difficult to find the cold-hearted killer in him to bring them down.

   “I'm sorry, Rommond,” he said, and when he thought of the bigger picture, he added: “I'm sorry, world.”

  29 – UNDER CONTROL

  Brooklyn continued down deeper into the facility, finding himself in a part unlike the rest. It was much older, with moss-covered brick, and a stone altar illuminated by light streaming in from a circular hole in the ceiling.

   It was there that he found her.

   The Controller.

   She stood in the spotlight, the light glinting off the silver edges of her iron armour, highlighting all the interlocking pieces, all the squares and diamonds, and shapes that did not have a name.

   “You use temple,” Brooklyn said disapprovingly.

   “It is just brick and mortar,” she replied. “No gods dwell here now.”

   “You are wrong. I feel them now.”

   It was hard to tell if she smiled at him from beneath her mask. “Then call me faithless. I believe only in iron, and the god who gave it to us: the Iron Emperor.”

   “He is no god. He is man.”

   “No,” she said, shaking her head. “He is not a man. He is so much more.”

   “Then call me faithless,” Brooklyn replied. It was difficult for him to mock her, when he tried to find the good in all, but it was difficult to see the good in her.

   “You cannot be faithless, when you're so zealous,” the Controller said, flicking a switch on her belt.

   Brooklyn felt his will immediately suppressed. Another power stood upon it, pulling the strings. He lost complete control of his ability to move. He was just a passenger in his own body.

   “Now bow,” she said, pressing another button.

   Brooklyn bowed low.

   “Now kneel.”

   He got down on his knees.

   “Now pray.”

   He pressed his hands and forehead against the ground, and whispered something in the maran tongue.

   Then she let him go, and he got back to his feet, exhausted from the inner struggle.

   “See,” she said. “You cannot be faithless when you pray to the Iron Emperor.”

   Brooklyn gulped hard, and clenched his fists. “You can make my body move, but not my soul. It is soul that prays. All else is passing.”

   “Give me time, Brooklyn,” she said, “and I will dig deep enough to find your soul. I will find a way to make it kneel as well.”

   Brooklyn heard familiar whispers. “The spirits are angry.”

   “There are no spirits, Brooklyn. You have deluded yourself. There is only your body, my puppet, and your wires, my strings.”

   It was then that he saw the other figures emerging from the darkness, all those other puppets answering her call. The Iron Guard stood forth, aiming their iron eyes at him, and their iron limbs, with their iron guns.

   “Come,” the Controller said, “sit on the shelves with your brothers and sisters. Add yourself to my collection. I have so few … tribal dolls.”

   Brooklyn glared at her. “No.”

   She flicked the switch, and he stepped forward involuntarily. She flicked it back, and he stepped back.

   “Why refuse? What does it accomplish?”

   “I am not your slave.”

   She smiled, and flicked the switch again. “But you are.”

   He lurched forward, his limbs seizing up, the fluidity replaced by the harsh and awkward movement of something mechanical. She let him go again so he could speak of his own accord.

   “Why fight?” she asked him.

   “Because freedom is worth fighting for.”

   “Is it? Whose words are those you're parroting? Isn't that just a form of mental slavery? You fight for the so-called Resistance, and yet you do everything they say. You follow their rules, their code. You speak their words and spread their propaganda. You fight and die for a cause, because a cause gives meaning to your otherwise meaningless lives. You've always been a slave. You're a slave to your instincts. You're a slave to biology. You're a slave to nature. Maybe it's comforting to tug on the strings, but it's also comforting to just let go.”

   “Perhaps you're right,” Brooklyn said, “but easy road is rarely right road. We struggle for bigger things. What you do is wrong. That is why we must fight you.”
/>    He pressed forward towards her, but she flicked the switch as he neared, and he stopped suddenly.

   She smiled. “You fight if I let you fight.”

   Then she paused suddenly as she heard a click. She looked to her belt, where the switch had moved back to the off position.

   Brooklyn looked at her, with his own eyes. He stepped forward.

   “Just a malfunction,” the Controller said, striking the switch again.

   Brooklyn halted and straightened up. The iron in him was stronger than his muscles.

   Then they heard the click again, and he was back.

   The mask hid her shock, but the Controller backed away.

   “Do you not feel in control?” Brooklyn asked her.

   “It's just a malfunction,” she insisted.

   “Once, error. Twice, thing of note. Three times, work of something higher.”

   She forced the switch back on, but it immediately turned off, and despite all her efforts to move it, it seemed to be jammed.

   “I don't understand,” she said.

   “The machine spirits are everywhere, and because you put machinery in me, and machinery on you, they are in me and on you too.”

   “But I don't believe—”

   “You don't have to believe. You will know.”

   The oil lamps flickered low, and the shadows deepened.

   The Controller looked to either side of her, where the Iron Guard stood still. She issued commands to all of them, and they started to advance towards Brooklyn.

   Yet, as some of them passed by the experiment tables, where mechanical limbs were arranged for surgical replacement of human or maran ones, those limbs came suddenly to life, and reached out to the advancing mechanical men.

   Everything that was metal or wire came to life in the temple, and moved towards the Iron Guard to block their way. Bars flew like projectiles, and crates barred like mines.