Fighting Iron 2: Perdition Plains

by Jake Bible

  “What are you still doing up there?” she asked. “Come on. We need to get this done before dawn. If we’re lucky, they haven’t come for it yet, but I can guarantee that when the sun comes up there will be a crew on its way.”

  “On its way where?” Clay asked.

  The look Paige gave him could not be mistaken for anything other than, “Are you freaking kidding me, you moron?”

  When Clay didn’t move, Paige sighed and actually said, “The Vernacht.”

  “What about it?” Clay asked. “Isn’t it already here? Your father said he’d drag it back and transfer Gibbons that way.”

  “Right, you were passed out,” Paige said. “I forgot. No, the Vernacht isn’t here. Father had to do the transfer in the field. The storm made the ground too muddy, and the Vernacht was sinking into the muck. We got your mech back here, but the Vernacht wasn’t going anywhere. Now the ground should have soaked up all that precipitation. We can drag the Vernacht back here and piece it out for parts. Your mech needs metal, not flesh.”

  “But the Perdition folks will want the Vernacht back too, and they’ll come at first light to get it,” Clay said once everything clicked into place in his head. “This is a night raid.”

  “This is a night raid,” Paige said.

  “I love night raids,” Clay said and hurried down the scaffolding. “You driving the flesh mech or do you want me to?”

  “If we want to do this as fast as possible without any screw ups then I better drive,” Paige said. “You get to hook the chains to the Vernacht.”

  Clay blinked a couple of times then laughed. “You’re good,” he said. “I can see why living here in this cave is preferable to living with those brain dead ghouls back at—Sorry, not ghouls. Lazaroti. Preferable to living with those lazaroti back in town.”

  “They’re ghouls,” Paige said as she leaned in for a conspiratorial whisper. “Don’t tell my father I said that, but it disgusts me to think I’m even closely related to their kind at all. I prefer to think we’re the true lazaroti and they’re just corpses in motion.”

  “Good way of looking at it,” Clay said.

  “Come on,” Paige said and tugged at his vest. “We’re losing night. It’s going to take us until dawn to get the chains hooked up. We’re in a race now.”

  “You’re loving this, aren’t you?” Clay asked, seeing the obvious pleasure on Paige’s face.

  Paige started to protest then shrugged. “Yeah, I kind of am,” she admitted. “Come on.”

  They rushed through a side passage until they came to a smaller, but no less impressive, cavern that housed the flesh mech. Clay looked around, marveling at the cavern space.

  “Underground lakes,” Paige said. “That’s Father’s theory. These caverns were underground lakes that were buried deep until billions of years of erosion created the plains and the caverns revealed themselves for the first time. Another billion years and people found them. Probably not until after the second apocalypse. The landscape has changed a lot since the first fall of this land’s civilization.”

  “Any issues with flooding?” Clay asked. “I’d think a place like this would be right where the surface water goes.”

  “It does,” Paige said. “But to caverns in the far back. The system angles downward. We’re up in the dry areas.”

  “Good to know,” Clay said. He studied the mech briefly, puzzled by something.

  “What?” Paige asked.

  “Is that… Nah, never mind,” Clay replied.

  Paige stepped to the flesh mech’s leg and placed a hand on it. She was instantly swallowed up and lost from sight. Clay shuddered, knowing exactly what that felt like. A moment later, the flesh mech shifted and crouched low, its hand extended for Clay to climb up onto.

  It wasn’t until Clay was level with the cockpit that he realized the flesh mech had both arms again. He started to say something, but Paige cut him off.

  “My father is a genius,” Paige said without looking at him. She was busy strapping herself into the flesh harness and doing what Clay guessed was the equivalent of checking systems. “I’m the real mechanic in the family, sure, able to do anything with anything, but when it comes to the flesh, my father will always rule. He can connect tissues faster than anyone living.” She finally looked up at Clay, her smirk in place. “Or not living.”

  “Good to know,” Clay said as he climbed into the cockpit and the hatch closed behind him. He shivered at the wet, sucking sound the hatch made as it fit into place.

  Clay found the bone and flesh jumpseat that had been added and he strapped in. He wasn’t exactly comfortable with the material used for the straps, but he didn’t have much of a choice. Secretly, despite being a mech pilot himself, he was glad Paige had decided to pilot the flesh mech. He had no intention of becoming one with the giant hunk of meat ever again.

  “So,” Clay began as Paige set the flesh mech to moving. She navigated several piles of flesh parts and a few more piles of old equipment that looked like they were barely more than shells of rust with nothing of substance underneath. “If you are such a good mechanic, able to do anything to anything, then why are we salvaging the Vernacht for parts?”

  “I’m good, but not a miracle worker,” Paige said. “My father can meld flesh and metal, as can I, but on a smaller scale. Like I said, he is the master of tissue. I’m an excellent mechanic, but your mech is too large. I’ve never worked on something of its scale before.”

  “Holcomb didn’t seem to have much of a problem,” Clay said.

  The flesh mech stomped its way out of the cavern, into a long passageway, then out into the open air of the prairie night. Clay longed for stars, but all there was above the flesh mech was the persistent blanket of clouds. It was dark enough that Clay felt them more than he saw them. In fact, he didn’t see much of anything as Paige turned the mech and piloted it in the direction Clay assumed the Vernacht lay.

  Once they had gone a good half a kilometer, Clay repeated, “Holcomb didn’t seem to have much of a problem.”

  “I heard you,” Paige said. “It takes slightly more concentration to pilot a flesh mech than one of your metal machines.”

  “That’s a bit of an assumption,” Clay said.

  “Not really,” Paige said. “I’ve studied mechs. Lots of them. All styles and models. The one advantage a battle mech like yours has is the AI. It can handle systems for you. All you have to do is not fall over.”

  “If you’re trying to be insulting, you’re doing a right good job,” Clay said.

  “Just like you questioning my mechanic’s skills,” Paige said. “We all have strengths, we all have weaknesses, we all have blind spots.”

  “I’ll bet you can tell me just what all of mine are,” Clay said. The jumpseat was uncomfortably moist and he shifted in it, not wanting to know what might be soaking into his clothes.

  “You are easy,” Paige said. “Your strengths, weaknesses, and blind spots are all the same thing. You’re a born mech pilot. You live it, breathe it, walk it. If we’d never met, and I knew absolutely nothing about you, and, say, you walked into a saloon, I’d be able to pick you out as a pilot in an instant.”

  “Mech pilots are a rare thing,” Clay said. He thought back on his experiences back in Northeast MexiCali. “Getting rarer by the day.”

  “I told you I know my mechs,” Paige said. “I’ve done my homework. Your swagger and overconfidence is a dead giveaway.”

  “Swagger?” Clay asked. “When have you seen me swagger? You barely know me.”

  “You are nothing but swagger,” Paige said. “I’ve seen it before on plenty of men and women. That overconfidence that you are secure in your place in life, that you know who you are and the rest of us are all just a little sad because we’ll never know ourselves the way you know yourself.”

  “You are way off the mark, Paige,” Clay said. He liked how her name rolled of his tongue. Sharp, but regal, in a strange way. Just like the woman the name belonged to. Clay shook hi
s head. “I think you may have grossly misread me.”

  “I haven’t,” Paige said. “I’ve been in a lot of minds. I know how they work.”

  “What the hell does that mean?” Clay laughed. “Are you one of those fabled psychics? The kind my great-grandmother used to tell scary stories about?”

  “Psychic? No,” Paige said. “I wish it were that simple.”

  “Nothing ever is,” Clay said. “But I still say you have misjudged me. You’d laugh if you knew my story.”

  “We have a little time,” Paige said. “Fill me in.”

  “I wish it were that simple,” Clay said.

  “Touché,” Paige replied.

  The inside of the cockpit glowed with an eerie pink light. Outside, it was nothing but a murky blackness.

  “How can you see?” Clay asked. “You have no spots or running lights. No heads-up displays or scanners.”

  “Have you forgotten how this thing works already?” Paige asked. “Maybe I did overestimate your place as a mech pilot.”

  “Just answer the question,” Clay said.

  “Full integration,” Paige said. “I see what it sees, it sees what I see, we are one.”

  “How very Old Age of you,” Clay replied. “So it’s the visual overlays?”

  “That’s how it would seem to you,” Paige said. “To me, there’s no overlay, it’s just my vision. I turn my head and I see what the flesh mech sees. You could stand in front of me right here in this cockpit, and I wouldn’t see you there unless I specifically drew my focus and attention back into this cockpit.”

  Clay’s first instinct was to make a smart-ass remark, but he held back. He was a good enough pilot to see the advantage of not being distracted by the cockpit itself.

  “I may have to talk to Gibbons about an interface upgrade,” Clay said. “Maybe rig a helmet that could give me the same advantage.”

  Paige laughed. Hard.

  “Or not,” Clay grumbled. “Tell me what you really think.”

  “You and Gibbons are meant to be separate minds,” Paige said. “That’s the natural mech pilot to AI relationship. There’s a reason full integration with an artificial intelligence stopped being used a long, long time ago.”

  “So, this thing doesn’t have a fleshy AI hanging out in its grey matter?” Clay asked. “What are you integrating with?”

  “The flesh itself,” Paige said. “I am the mech, the mech is me. I thought I was making this clear.”

  Clay laughed and swiped a hand across the jumpseat, cringing at the residue that came off the surface. “There is nothing clear about this mech,” he replied. “I’m in foreign territory here.”

  “That you are, Clay,” Paige said. “That you are.”

  They were quiet for rest of the journey. It took them longer to reach the Vernacht than Clay would have liked. The sun would be threatening to ruin the perfectly dreary night with a perfectly dreary day soon. But he knew that they couldn’t just run the flesh mech to the Vernacht without possibly drawing unwanted attention. The Perdition Plains folks were mech savvy enough to have seismic sensors in place. A running mech, flesh or metal, makes itself known for kilometers.

  They reached the Vernacht and Paige stopped the flesh mech, the organic machine standing over the fallen metal machine that was submerged in the semi-dry muck of the muddy prairie.

  Clay stood up and walked to the cockpit hatch. He looked down and frowned.

  “I can’t see shit,” he said. “Integration or not, this thing needs a set of floodlights.”

  “That is not a problem,” Paige said. A second later, the landscape below was bathed in a hearty red glow. “There. Better than floodlights. The red is on a spectrum that is hard to detect at night from the distance. If I’d had floodlights, then we might as well have lit up a sign saying to come and get us.”

  With the added illumination, Clay quickly saw that they had their work cut out for them. The Vernacht was more than halfway submerged in drying mud and muck. Most of it completely lost from sight.

  “You’re going to need to get into the cockpit and see if the machine has any power left,” Paige said. “If we can get it started up, then maybe it can wriggle its way out enough for me to move it.”

  “What are you going to do?” Clay asked as the cockpit hatch opened and a fleshy palm was raised for him to step onto.

  “I’m going to go ahead and start digging,” Paige said. “That’s about all I can do until we get the mud clear enough to get it free.”

  “Sounds like a plan,” Clay said. He started to step out onto the flesh mech’s palm then stopped. “Wait, how will we communicate?”

  “Right, sorry,” Paige said. She plucked a small bit of meat from her harness and held it out. Clay looked at it dubiously. “Take it. Put it in your ear. It’s this mech’s version of a com.”

  “Sure. Why not,” Clay sighed.

  He took the bit of meat and stuck it in his ear. Clay didn’t say another word as he stepped onto the waiting palm, his flesh crawling from the bit of meat that was busy settling itself into his ear canal.

  Nineteen

  The fleshy palm set Clay down on top of the exposed section of the Vernacht. Clay instantly saw that the mech was beyond any hope of repair. He had no idea if the damage was done during his battle with Mr. Bell or if the storm worked a little of Nature’s violence upon it, but it wasn’t going to be getting up and walking away anytime soon.

  Careful not to slip and fall off the slick surface of the damp mech, Clay made his way into the cockpit. There was a smell, of course, that Clay had grown to know very well.

  Rotted meat.

  He slapped at his belt and realized he didn’t have a flashlight. Sighing, Clay moved about the cockpit cautiously with only the red glow from the flesh mech outside to illuminate his way. It didn’t take long to find the source of the smell. Bundled up in the corner was a pile of long, pinkish cable. It was thicker than any cable Clay was familiar with. At least any cable that would be needed inside a mech’s cockpit.

  Not really wanting to, but feeling like he had to, Clay approached the pile of cable. He stood over it for a couple of seconds then turned and hurried to the cockpit door, making it in time before his salted meat came back up. He retched at the door for a minute or two, wiped his mouth with the back of his hands, glad he’d thought to bring his gloves, then took a couple deep breaths and went back in.

  “You alright there, Clay?” Paige asked, her voice crystal clear in his head. Not his ear, but his head. It was as if she’d taken up residence in his skull. “Sounded like you might have had an argument with your dinner.”

  “Paige? Why is there a pile of rotting intestines in the corner of this cockpit?” Clay asked. “They look, and smell, like they were fresh fairly recently.”

  “Father likes to use fresh intestines when completing a consciousness transfer,” Paige replied as if it was the most normal thing ever. “He says it leads to zero data loss and makes for a smoother transition from vessel to vessel. I told you he was a genius.”

  “I have a few other words for what he might be after seeing this,” Clay said.

  “What? You’d rather Gibbons was still stuck in the Vernacht’s black box?” Paige asked. She didn’t sound offended, but Clay could tell she was just one wrong comment away from getting there. “You’re out of your depth here, Clay. Let the experts handle the science and tech when it comes to flesh and consciousness.”

  “Gibbons is an AI,” Clay said. “He’s a program, not a consciousness.”

  “You really believe that?” Paige asked.

  Clay didn’t answer. No, he didn’t believe that. He never had. Gibbons was as conscious and self-aware as any sentient being. It’s what made Gibbons different than other mech AIs. It’s why after the Bloody Conflict, AIs like Gibbons were ordered to be destroyed. Wouldn’t do to have thinking machines wandering about the continent.

  The destruction and dismantling of so many cavalry battle mechs was not only to sc
avenge for needed resources after generations of war, but to ensure that the AI co-pilots of those mechs didn’t decide they wanted the same freedoms that their other halves, their human pilot partners, were granted. Not that the mech pilots on both sides after the Bloody Conflict were granted much in the way of freedoms.

  Clay shivered at the stories told. At the memories buried. At the reality that war heroes had found themselves the new targets of violence and persecution.

  Clay shook the thoughts from his head. He had work to do.

  “Clay? Are you alright?” Paige asked. There was genuine concern in her voice. “I lost you there for a bit. Literally. It was like your mind disconnected.”

  “Bad thoughts,” Clay said. He cleared his throat. “Can I trust you?”

  Paige hesitated.

  “Never mind,” Clay said.

  “No, no, you can trust me,” Paige said hurriedly. “Sorry, I didn’t answer right away because…”

  “Because we all have secrets,” Clay said. “I get that. Never mind. My head isn’t on straight right now. I’ve been through a lot these past few days.” He barked a laugh. “Been through a lot most of my life, really. Just felt like confessing, but realized that would either put an unfair burden on you or you’d turn on me and all this fun would be over before I was ready to get the hell out of the Midlands.”

  Paige hesitated again.

  Clay waited as he busied himself with inspecting the Vernacht’s control consoles. He could feel Paige ready to say something, so he let her take her time as he tried to figure out if the Vernacht had any juice left in it or was nothing but a mud-covered lump of dead metal weight.

  “We all have confessions to make,” Paige said finally.

  The Vernacht shook, and Clay steadied himself as he looked out the grimy, mud-streaked windows as the flesh mech began to excavate the muck from around the construction mech. Clay laughed and thought that it sure would be handy to have a construction mech to free the construction mech.