He forced open several doors, pulling great levers that had almost sealed shut. He raced up steps and slopes, and fired his grappling hook to pull him up a few levels a little quicker. When he came out at the top, he stood on the flat roof of the plateau, where he had a solar-powered generator and a signal dish.
He hooked the radio up to the dish, moving it manually to point in different directions as he tried to find a signal. Then he got it, though it was faint and muddled with static.
“Porridge,” he said. He had to say it a few times.
“Oh!” a man replied, his shrill voice cutting through the hiss. “It's you, plum!”
“I need a favour.”
“Anything for my little—”
“I need a lift.”
“Oh, well! Isn't it a treat that I've got such strong arms, hmm?”
“Your copter,” Nox said.
He had no time for pleasantries, and that's almost all Porridge had time for.
“My what?”
“I need you to fly it here.”
“Where's here?”
“My workshop. Park it on the roof.”
“It doesn't really park, per se.”
“Just be here.”
“When do you want me? Oh, when doesn't he!”
“Now, Porridge. I need you now.”
“It'll take me an hour, peach. At least that.”
“Give it all you've got.”
“Oh! You know me!”
Nox turned off the channel and raced back down into his workshop. An hour was plenty of time to do what he needed to do, but it was also plenty of time for Luke to die. He knew where the kid was going, where Laura had already gone. He'd try to catch him before he went inside, but he knew there wasn't much time for that. He'd have to go in after.
He filled a bag with supplies, grabbing some parts from his shelves. There was a lot of unfinished stuff, things he thought he'd have many months to work on, but now couldn't wait. He dragged a heavy chest out from under his barren bed. He took two extra-large revolvers out, which were a little too big for him. He hadn't quite gotten them to work reliably, but when they did, they fired rounds that could pierce metal. He scooped boxes of ammunition into a bag.
He took out his pocket watch. Still half an hour to go. Thirty minutes closer to the boy's death.
He broke into one of the rooms he hadn't touched in a while, a bit of an abandoned project. He thought one day he might need it. He didn't quite expect it'd be so soon. The lights didn't work there, and he had to fight his way through cobwebs.
He lit an oil lantern and opened up a steel cabinet on the far wall. He held the light up. It was very weak, but it was enough to show the huge metal suit of armour inside.
21 – COPTER SUPPORT
The Coilhunter was waiting for the copter on the rooftop plateau when Porridge arrived. The rickety flying machine gave the appearance that it flew on belief as much as science. It was orb-shaped, with many glass bubbles across its surface, where the driver could see out into the dusty domain. It had numerous propellers and engines, some of which broke down as it flew, causing the machine to drop, before the next set kicked in, and the entire globe rotated, sending the driver inside towards one of the many other windows. The vehicle kicked up the sand something fierce, and it might've kicked the Coilhunter over the edge of the cliff, were he not like an immovable statue in his new armour.
The copter didn't so much as park as crash. It got as close as it could, then the engines conked out, and it fell like a brick, leaving a little crater in the plateau. One of the many circular doors creaked open, and out stepped Porridge, a tall, thin, somewhat effeminate man with an outrageous style of dress, colourful and gaudy. You rarely caught him in the same clothes or colours, and if you thought you'd seen all the shades of the rainbow, Porridge had a few hundred more just for himself.
On this particular day, he was all silk scarves, wrapped around his abdomen and arms as much as his neck, and in various pastel hues. His playful golden curls slipped through a variety of tied scarves that formed a kind of headdress. Just like you rarely saw Nox without his cowboy hat, you rarely saw Porridge without one of his thousand equivalents.
“Oh!” Porridge cried, frolicking over to Nox, who didn't move an inch. “I'm here! I'm here!”
“Good,” Nox said, marching towards the vehicle with a clang in his step. Porridge tried to link his arm, but couldn't quite get his own around the immense plating that now protected the Coilhunter.
“Oh my,” Porridge said. “You've grown, pickle.”
Nox's boots made an even louder clang when they hit the metal floor of the copter. It was significantly harder to move in his new armour. He was sacrificing mobility for survivability. Sometimes you had to do that, or you'd be sacrificing yourself instead.
Porridge trotted after him, making fainter footsteps with his high heels. Nothing about him was for agility or practicality. He was an odd remnant of the days when people didn't have to think about survival when it came to clothing.
“I'm in a hurry,” Nox said.
“I can see that,” Porridge replied, trying to squeeze past him. He hurried to the pilot's chair, which was attached to a metal track. It allowed the seat to swing back and forth in multiple directions, from one globular window to another. It had to. That vehicle didn't so much as fly as roll across the sky like a tumbleweed.
The eccentric pilot started the engines up, and the propellers spun like crazy outside. The metal groaned, steam spewed, and one or two rivets pinged out of their holdings. The whole thing looked and felt like it was about to fall apart at any moment. It was as mismatching as its owner's attire.
“Oh, my ripened raspberries!” Porridge exclaimed.
“What's wrong?”
Porridge glanced back at Nox in his colossal armour.
“How much does that weigh?” he shrieked.
“A lot.”
“This is going to slow us down.”
Nox grumbled. “Can't you adapt?”
Porridge glanced around at his collection of, in his words, doodads and doohickeys. A lot of the stuff had nothing to do with the copter at all. “I can try,” he squeaked.
“Try harder.”
Anyone else might've been more polite to someone doing them a favour, but Nox knew Porridge owed him big time, and there was no time for pleasantries. He only hoped what little time there was would be enough to save Luke. He'd already given up hope for Laura. That hourglass was well and truly spent.
It took a tremendous effort to get the copter off the ground, and Nox didn't think that it was entirely due to the added weight. It wouldn't be the first time it was overburdened. Porridge had made a living out of scavenging, and there was no greater scavenging ground than the Rust Valley. He was one of the few people brave enough, or mad enough, to hover over that place. You had to be mad to fly one of these things. You had to be even madder to fly it over Clockwork Commune territory.
Nox got to work on some things of his own. His suit wasn't quite finished, but he felt he needed more than just good armour. He never went into a fight without a few extra toys, and he thought he'd need more than a few for this. He took off one of his shoulder pads and screwed a few wooden and metal panels together. He caught the periodic glances of Porridge, and couldn't help but wonder if he was looking at him or salivating over the gadgets in his hands.
“So, plum … what is this all about?”
“It's a rescue mission.”
Porridge eyed him up and down, making a variety of expressions—far more than necessary. “Are you sure you're not readying to fight a war, hun?”
“I don't fight wars.”
Porridge indulged him with a nod. “You probably should. You're a bit of a one-man army.”
Nox shoved the shoulder pad back into place. “Yeah, well now I've got the armour for it.”
22 – THE ROCKY SKIES
It took longer to get to the Rust Valley by air than Nox had hoped, and he spent much of the time goin
g back and forth between working on his gadgets and gazing out one of the nearby windows. He could feel the grains of sand, like life, slipping away.
And then, just as he was in the middle of some careful mechanics that required him to take off his enormous gloves, the copter shook violently, almost toppling him to the floor.
“What's up?” he asked.
“We're here,” Porridge said. “The Rust Valley.”
The Coilhunter should've known it by the sudden darkness. Those towers of junk obscured the sun, giving the rust-covered denizens inside an almost perpetual night. The lack of heat was a godsend, especially in Nox's extra protective layers, but the thing about the Rust Valley was: God wouldn't send you in there. But he didn't stop you either. Maybe the Clockwork Commune had shred him too.
“Let me see where we should land,” Nox said. He leant against one of the glass bubbles, peering down into the streets of shadows. He heard a sudden crack as a fissure appeared in the glass.
“I wouldn't lean on that, tulip,” Porridge warned.
Nox pulled himself up, but heard the rest of the vessel groan. It seemed he couldn't really lean on anything at all.
“It's hard to see,” he said.
“Welcome to the Rust Valley. I'd put on the lights, but … well, you know.”
“We might attract company.”
“Not that you're not ready for that,” Porridge said, biting his lip.
The copter shook even more violently, forcing Nox to grab the netting that held an assortment of scavenged goods to one of the walls.
“Oh!” Porridge cried. “Peach, we have a problem.”
The vehicle sank suddenly, tilting as it went, which was enough to cause the pilot seat to swing down upon its track, with Porridge screaming as it went. Nox clung to the net, but the rivets holding it in place started to come away. With each degree the vessel tilted, another rivet popped from the wall, and more of the netting's contents tumbled out. Nox started to slide down the floor towards the cracked window.
The Coilhunter didn't need to ask Porridge what was happening. He could feel it from the vehicle. Something was pulling them in. In the Rust Valley, that could only mean one thing: the Clockwork Commune. There was no doubt the cogs had turned their eyes wide open at the sight of so much metal hovering across the heavens.
Then the netting tore completely, sending Nox down on the glass. He crashed through it, unable to grab a hold of anything, falling down several metres to the cracked ground beneath. In the process of the fall, he saw a series of wires attached to the bottom of the copter, slowly reeling it in.
He turned, spotting the operator of one of those wires. It was a small construct, wheel-shaped, with several large prongs inserted into the ground for stability. It coiled the wire around its entire rust-covered body. It didn't appear to have a face, but it turned slightly towards Nox, as if it noticed him.
The Coilhunter made a dash towards it, thundering across the path. The creature gave a shriek like metal grating against metal. Nox unleashed a dagger from his belt, diving towards the construct. He sliced at the wire, severing it, and knocked the creature on its side from the force of his charge. He came down upon it, just in time to grasp some of the metal prongs that now stabbed wildly at him. Had he been in his normal cloth and leather, they would have impaled him. Now, they just battered off the plating, making a little percussive tune, a little like the ones he sometimes played on his guitar to frighten enemies.
Nox grasped any part of the creature he could get a hold of and yanked it free, tearing it piece by piece. It didn't quite have limbs, so that'd have to do. And it did. The creature slumped to the ground in a pile of springs and cogs, the guts of the living machines.
But this was only one of them. The others continued to haul the copter in, despite Porridge's best efforts to keep it airborne. The propellers on one side severed another wire, but they broke down in the process, forcing the vessel to rotate in the air as the next set took the dominant position. The rotation pulled two of the constructs up from the ground. Nox saw them cast high, then swing like pendulums. Each of them was different, though they all had similar wheel shapes.
Porridge couldn't hold out much longer. The copter struck the top of one of the scrap piles, knocking one of the vehicle remains to the ground. The last of the engines conked out and the vessel careened down, striking the ground and skidding across in a plume of dust, halting just metres away from Nox, who stood unmoving.
One of the hatches swung open, and out stumbled Porridge, his scarves affray. He took a few unsteady steps forward, then turned to look at his vessel. To him, it was more than just a transport. It was home.
“My baby,” he said.
“You'll have another one,” Nox said.
Then the two constructs that had been pulled up and then down with the copter appeared from either side of the metal orb. Before they could advance, and before Porridge could fully utter his shriek, the Coilhunter grabbed his pistols and gunned them down with his new metal-piercing ammunition.
Porridge hurried up to the Coilhunter, clutching his scarves as he went.
“Wait with the copter,” Nox told him. “Get it back up and runnin'.”
“But I don't feel safe here.”
Nox looked at him. “Good, because you're not.”
23 – OWL-LIGHT TRACKING
The Coilhunter headed into the maze. The thing about the Rust Valley was that as soon as you entered it, you were already lost. How the Clockwork Commune found their way, no one knew. Anyone who did was quickly added to another scrapyard pile, this time of flesh and bone.
Nox surveyed the area. It wasn't much to look at. There were various winding paths between the high walls of crushed cars. It was hard to see far, as the walls blocked his view, and the shadows they cast made it difficult to see. His own mask, which now extended over all of his face, also added to the obscuration.
He pressed a little latch on his right shoulder pad, which opened the circular hatch made into the armour. Out of it came a tightly-folded, spring-loaded set of wood and steel panels, which opened as they sprang into the air, forming into the shape of an owl. It fluttered there for a moment, before intense headlights shone out from its large, circular eyes. Nox shielded his own.
Nox yanked a panel open on the inside of his left wrist. He'd moved his wristpad to there, thinking it might be safer there, away from the prodding and stabbing of the Clockwork Commune. He entered a few commands. There weren't many he could give this new toy. It wasn't a fighter or a transport, or even a tracker. It was just another set of eyes, up in the sky.
As Nox bashed the controls, he thought about the monowheel the kid took. He could still control it now, and bring it back to him, but he was afraid that he might bring it back alone, and leave the boy stranded wherever he was. Then again, if the kid was stranded in the afterlife, there wasn't much the Coilhunter could do. He hadn't quite made the right toys for that.
The owl ascended up past the pinnacles of the junk barriers, making it look like there were two moons out. Its light grew fainter on the ground the farther it went up, but it was better than nothing—and better than the daylight that never entered that place. The sun was all kinds of cruel, but it was also several shades of wise.
Nox tried to track the monowheel, but its signal was weak. He hadn't quite considered the possibility that the Clockwork Commune might be using signal jammers, or that those jammers might be little walking constructs of their own. He hadn't prepared for that. He didn't have the time to prepare. Even now, he didn't just feel the hourglass emptying—he felt it cracking. You couldn't fill it back up with the sand of the desert. That stuff was only there to kill you, not give you an extra lease of life.
He directed the owl to lead a path for him, well aware that it wasn't just guiding his way. It was acting like a beacon for the denizens of the Rust Valley, telling them where he was. In any other situation, that was madness—and he wasn't altogether sure it wasn't madness now. But i
f it helped direct their attention away from the boy, and away from the lucrative scrap-ball that Porridge was hiding in, then the Coilhunter could live with that. The question was: for how long?
24 – THE CONGREGATION
The Coilhunter turned a corner and found himself in a large clearing, still shrouded in shadow, though now illuminated by the eyes of his own clockwork owl. It showed many things. Some of them were still, the bones of people. And some of them were moving, the limbs of constructs. They reared their ugly heads to stare at this new arrival, so full of gleaming metal. They hadn't found much in the bodies of those unlucky souls that scattered the area, though one or two had made off with a necklace or a pocket watch. The Coilhunter, on the other hand, was a walking prize. They could do a lot with all those metal platings. As for the rest of him, well—at least he'd have company amongst the bones.
He stared them down, not with his uncovered, vulnerable eyes, but through the metal gauze of his helmet. The owl illuminated his glare. Nobody moved. Like the calm before the storm, there was the stillness before the draw. He didn't wonder who would stir first. He knew it'd be him.
He wondered if they knew fear, and thought that maybe if they didn't, he could teach them it, like he'd taught manners to the foul-tongued and the red-handed. These were an uncultured race, a product of the discarded. If the Wild North were a living place, as the local tribes often claimed, then these were the embodiment of its dark subconscious. The spirits of men could haunt you, so why would the spirits of machines be any different?
He could see a few of the constructs shifting slightly, reaching out slowly with their mismatching limbs, hoping he didn't notice. But he saw them. He saw them as clear as he saw the twitch of a finger readying to pull out a gun.
He drew and fired, just as the first of the constructs readied to leap his way. The armour-piercing bullets, a product of the war down south, punctured great big holes in them, tearing through their clockwork innards, sending them down to join the human dead. He fired again, and again, moving his arms in an arc, crossing his arms over each other, before moving them back again. He blew off metal limbs and metal heads, and left that iron congregation with everything to pray for, but no one there to pray.
Rustkiller - A Science Fiction Western Adventure (The Coilhunter Chronicles Book 2) Page 7
