Fighting Iron 2: Perdition Plains

by Jake Bible

“Fuck you,” Paige snapped.

  “What?” Clay asked. “No, wait, I wasn’t laughing at you. I was laughing at the irony of a construction mech being dug out when it’s usually a construction mech doing the digging.”

  “Sorry,” Paige replied. “This conversation about confessions has me…on edge.”

  “You and me both,” Clay said. “How about if we drop any thought of confessions and stick to getting the job done we’re here to do?”

  “Deal,” Paige said, her voice sounding like a weight had been lifted. “Maybe some other time.”

  “Or not at all,” Clay said. “We barely know each other. I’ll be on my way as soon as we get my mech working again, so no need to bare our souls. Sometimes secrets are best left buried and covered over with guilt and pain.”

  Paige laughed. It was her hard laugh, from the belly, from the soul. Clay felt all of its energy in his head and smiled.

  “Another deal?” he asked, a warm feeling spreading through him.

  “Another deal,” Paige replied. “Any luck with the Vernacht’s systems?”

  “I’m working on it,” Clay said. “I think there’s some juice left in this puppy. I’m getting flickers on the console. But that could just be residual electricity working through the circuits. Give me a couple more minutes.”

  “Don’t take too long,” Paige said. “We’ll have dawn in about an hour. The Perditions will have their people here not much longer after that. Holcomb is going to want his Vernacht back.”

  “Holcomb,” Clay said thoughtfully. “He didn’t strike me as such a bad fella. How’d he get wrapped up with the Perditions?”

  “Everyone has their story,” Paige said. “I don’t know Holcomb’s too well. Father does. He remembers when Holcomb first came to Perdition Plains. He’s spoken about it vaguely. Something about a cursed man looking for salvation and sanctuary.”

  “Sounds like Holcomb has his own secrets he’d like to keep buried,” Clay said. “We should start a club.”

  “We already have,” Paige said. “It’s called humanity.”

  Clay chuckled then grabbed the control console with both hands as the Vernacht shifted violently to the right. “Careful! Don’t kill me to get this thing free! I’d rather be alive without a working mech than dead with plenty of spare parts just lying about.”

  “No such thing as spare parts,” Paige said. “Only parts that are waiting to be used. Everything gets used at some point.”

  Clay detected a strange tone in that comment, but let it drop as he found a bit of hope in front of him.

  “Think I may have something here,” Clay said. “Auxiliary systems don’t look too fried. I’m disconnecting all main systems so they aren’t a drain on the controls. I’ll go full auxiliary and see if I can make progress that way.”

  “I expected you’d do that first thing,” Paige said. “What have you been doing all this time?”

  “Talking to you,” Clay replied. “And making sure the main systems and controls couldn’t be salvaged. Auxiliary is just that, auxiliary. Main is better, any day of the damned week.”

  “You’re more thorough than I gave you credit for,” Paige said. “Maybe you aren’t the cocky maverick with the swagger I thought before.”

  “I’m plenty maverick,” Clay said. “When I’ve had some sleep, a few decent meals, and haven’t had my ass handed to me for days on end.”

  “So never then?” Paige laughed.

  “Exactly,” Clay laughed back.

  Clay worked at the auxiliary controls. He managed to find enough power to get some basic readings. A quick check told him that the Vernacht’s power cells weren’t going to do much. Not for long, at least. Clay found himself with two races on his hands. The race against the approaching dawn and the race against failing power cells. They were leaking energy like the intestines in the corner were leaking stink.

  “How are you doing?” Clay asked as the Vernacht shuddered and shifted again. “Making any headway?”

  “Slowly,” Paige said. “You ever tried to dig a hole with your bare hands?”

  “Too many times,” Clay said.

  “That’s how it’s going for me,” Paige said. “Except on a larger scale.”

  Clay watched as hydraulics systems came on line, and he felt the Vernacht hum with life for the first time since stepping into the intestine stench of the cockpit.

  “Hot damn!” he cried and punched a fist in the air.

  “Good for you, Clay,” Paige said. “See if you can get those legs to work and help lift this machine out of the mud.”

  “That’s the first order of business,” Clay said as he grabbed the motor controls and checked to see what was working and what was dead. The Vernacht didn’t have all of its legs, so Clay had to find what ones were still intact by trial and error. “Got ‘em. Step back as I try to stand up. I don’t want this thing lurching and smacking into you.”

  Paige moved the flesh mech back several meters as Clay slowly worked the controls back and forth, moving the Vernacht from side to side as he carefully applied power to the legs. He couldn’t stand too fast, or he’d risk any damaged struts snapping in half or the legs just falling right off.

  The cockpit’s view shifted and raised about three meters and Clay smiled.

  Until a barely audible beeping got his attention.

  “What is that?” Paige asked.

  “You can hear that? I can barely hear that,” Clay said.

  “I hear what you hear,” Paige said.

  “I don’t hear what you hear,” Clay replied.

  “I know,” Paige said and laughed.

  “Ha ha, funny,” Clay said then any feeling of laughter instantly drained away. “Oh, shit.”

  “What is it?” Paige asked again.

  “Scanners came online,” Clay said. “I didn’t bring them up. I must have triggered something while fiddling with power levels.”

  “Scanners? Hold on,” Paige responded. Silence for a minute as Clay studied the scanner readings. “I’ve got nothing. What are you seeing?”

  “Not sure,” Clay said. “Just blips. Not sure why you can’t pick it up.” He paused and studied the readings carefully. “This is radar. Old school doppler. What the hell?”

  “It’s a construction mech, Clay,” Paige said. “It has to do deep scans through kilometers of earth sometimes. The scanners must have gotten their configuration messed up. Instead of seeing into the ground, you’re seeing across the landscape.”

  “But what am I seeing?” Clay asked.

  “That’s what I’d like to know,” Paige said. “Describe the readings.”

  Clay did and Paige gasped.

  “Shit,” she muttered. “Shit, shit, shit. We’re out of time.”

  The flesh mech backed away from the Vernacht, its massive fists coated in mud, and turned around to face the opposite direction.

  “Hey! What are you doing?” Clay asked.

  “I’m getting ready for the fight,” Paige said. “Listen. Can you set that thing to autopilot so it wriggles free on its own? You should be able to program in a motion protocol.”

  “Maybe, but then what?” Clay asked.

  “Then you get your ass out of that cockpit and start hooking up chains to the tow points,” Paige said. “I can’t lift the Vernacht. Even if we get it free of the mud, we’ll still have to drag it back home. I’ll only have enough leverage if you get the chains hooked to the correct tow points.”

  “Okay, I can do that, but what are you going to do?” Clay asked. “What do the scanner readings mean?”

  “Hounds,” Paige said. “The Perditions have released the tweener hounds. All of them.”

  “Hounds? Shit, that’s never a good thing to hear,” Clay said. “Are all of these blips hounds?”

  “Yes,” Paige replied.

  “That’s close to a hundred!” Clay shouted.

  “I know!” Paige said. “Get that mech programmed then get those chains hooked up! I’ve got a fight to ge
t to!”

  “You sure you don’t want me to do the fighting?” Clay asked. “I know fighting better—”

  “Don’t be an asshole,” Paige said as the flesh mech took off running, headed in the direction of the oncoming swarm of tweener hounds. “I don’t doubt you’re good, but not that good. I know this mech. I got this fight. Just get the Vernacht ready for a fast getaway.”

  Clay thought about responding, but didn’t. He had a couple jobs to do.

  Twenty

  His fingers flew across the console in a rush to get the motion protocol locked in before anything shorted out and he was cut off from the controls. The smell of ozone was beginning to overpower the smell of intestines, so Clay was fairly certain circuits were frying left and right. His race had grown considerably shorter.

  “Son of a bitch,” he snapped as he kept screwing up a line of code and had to backtrack three times to get it right. “Come on, come on.”

  The Vernacht rocked violently, then the ear-splitting sound of metal grinding on metal made Clay cringe. But it was a good cringe because it meant the Vernacht was moving on its own and Clay didn’t need to be at the controls anymore.

  The console burst into flame, and he had to jump back to keep from getting singed. Clay held his breath, not because of the fumes billowing up out of the console, although that was part of it, but because he was waiting for his hard work to come crashing down. Literally.

  Yet the Vernacht kept moving despite the control console giving up the ghost. He sighed with relief, but it was short lived as he looked out into the darkness and realized he’d have to not only find the chains needed, but have to hook them up in the dark. His illumination was busy rushing towards a dog fight.

  “Dammit,” he grumbled as he began to search the cockpit for a flashlight, a halogen torch, anything he could use to see by once he stepped from of the relative safety of the cockpit and out onto the swaying Vernacht. “Come on!”

  Clay kicked open a locker and found three headlamps inside. Two were cracked, but the third had a working halogen and he flicked it on, momentarily blinding himself as he stared directly into the bulb. He closed his eyes, counted to five, then opened them again. His sight was better, but the halogen had already dimmed. Power was going to be an issue. Power was always an issue.

  Clay affixed the headlamp’s strap around his head and adjusted it so it wouldn’t slip off. It wasn’t easy; he was coated in a sheen of sweat. He wished he had his hat and that trusty headband that had kept the perspiration from his eyes for so many years.

  The Vernacht shook violently, and Clay braced himself in the cockpit’s doorway before he rushed out onto the narrow walkway that led to the main deck one level below. As Clay found the metal steps that took him to where he hoped he’d find storage lockers with ancillary equipment, such as heavy chains, Clay realized that the Vernacht was almost as much a ship as it was a mech. A land ship, sure, but it was more of a horizontal vehicle than a vertical one like his battle mech, there was no arguing that.

  He had heard the prairies of the Midlands sometimes being called the Oceans of Death, so he wasn’t surprised a Vernacht had found its way to the plains.

  Clay let the train of thought go as he reached the first storage locker. He grabbed the handle and pulled, but the door was warped and wouldn’t open. He had to brace a foot against the side of it and yank with all of his strength, which was waning as the night wore on, and keep pulling until it finally opened with a protesting squeal of wrenching metal.

  Tarps. Heavy, oiled tarps. No chains.

  Clay moved on to the next one. And the next one. And the next one.

  Tarps, cables, cans of lubricant that smelled as bad as the cockpit had, even some very large, thick hooks, which Clay took note of since he figured he’d need those once he found the chains. But he didn’t find any chains.

  The Vernacht made a grinding noise that sent Clay into a panic. He knew a dying servo when he heard one. He managed to grab onto a large handle welded next to a storage locker just as the servo died and one of the mech’s legs went with it. The Vernacht tilted at a dangerous angle, more dangerous than the angle it already had been at, and Clay gripped the handle with everything he had until the Vernacht’s gyros told the remaining legs to compensate for the loss of stability.

  “Chains. Chains, chains, chains,” Clay muttered once he could regain a stable footing.

  He left the storage lockers and worked his way across the main deck towards a few shadowed squares that he thought might be hatches to larger storage sections, possibly recessed holds.

  The first one was locked down tight. There was no budging it, and Clay figured there weren’t chains in there anyway since no one would care enough to lock up chains with that kind of security. He did wonder what was in there, but only briefly as he moved to the next hold. He grabbed the second hatch and fell right on his ass as he flung it open with ease, not expecting it to be so willing to give up its contents.

  Clay picked himself up, steadied his stance as the Vernacht lurched to the left then bounced slightly, then peered into the open hold. Chains. Lots of chains. Very large, heavy chains.

  Heavy chains…

  The individual links were almost as long as his forearms. Clay’s back hurt just looking at the coiled metal that sat waiting in the shadows. Getting them up out of the hold was not going to be easy. Their weight aside, the first coil of chain was a good two meters below the hatch’s edge. The hold itself was about four meters by four meters, which would have allowed enough space for the Vernacht’s no longer existent claw to pluck a coil right out of there with ease. For Clay? Not so easy.

  “How’s it going?” Paige asked, her voice clear as if she was standing right next to Clay. It made him jump, and he almost fell into the open hold. “Clay?”

  “Just working out some logistics,” Clay said. “I found the chains.”

  “So what’s the problem?” Paige asked.

  “You have any idea how big these things are?” Clay replied. “I can’t lift these!”

  “There should be hoists somewhere on that deck,” Paige said. “Start looking for—Hold on.”

  The communications went silent for a long while until Paige came back on, puffing and panting. “Damn, these hounds are brutal. I need to ask Father to develop some type of repellant. Like a nasty whistle or scent bomb that will send them fleeing with their metal tails between their legs.”

  “They have metal tails?” Clay asked.

  “Nasty ones,” Paige replied. “Sharp with barbed tips. They hook them in the flesh so I can’t shake them off then start biting and clawing. I have to literally tear them free. It’s taking chunks out of the mech. Much more, and I won’t be able to drag the Vernacht back home.”

  “Great,” Clay said as he began to search the deck for the hoists Paige mentioned.

  He found one, just one, and it didn’t look like it was in the best of condition. But he was able to get it free of the straps holding it in place and wheel it over to the edge of the hold. Paige was busy cursing in his ear, but Clay didn’t bother to respond. He knew fight language when he heard it. She was busy. So was he.

  There were several series of clamp locks set around the hold edge, and Clay set the feet of the hoist into them then locked it down tight. He shoved on the hoist and smiled when he saw it wasn’t going to move even a centimeter. Then he set about trying to figure out how to get the hoist to work.

  “Lever, four cables, one long arm,” he muttered as he talked himself through the mechanics of the hoist. “I lower it this way.”

  He hand-cranked the hoist arm out over the hold then released a couple of gears and the three cables descended quickly. Clay scrambled over the edge of the hold, dropped on top of the chains, grabbed the cables, then threaded them through the first coil. They had heavy duty clasps on each end, so he was able to loop the cables and secure them in place. He yanked hard on each one to make sure they were snug then found the recessed hand and foot holds in
the wall and climbed back up to the hoist.

  Cranking the arm out over the hold had been easy, but having to manually crank the cables up, with the incredibly heavy chain attached, was close to impossible. Clay put his full weight into each revolution of the crank. He was sweating and heaving by the time the chain showed itself above the hold’s edge.

  He turned the hoist arm and let the chain fall to the deck, then stood there, bent over and panting, as he tried to catch his breath. His arms ached, and he groaned at the thought of having to repeat the process.

  There was a shout so loud that Clay thought his head would explode. He clamped his hands over his ears, but that did nothing to dampen the effect. He almost buckled under the pain, his knees shaking.

  “Hey,” he cried out. “Hey!”

  “Sorry,” Paige said. “It got close there for a second.”

  ‘“You good?” Clay asked, his breathing finally under control from the exertion of lifting the chain and the pain of Paige’s shout.

  “I am now,” Paige said. “Still touch and go, though. How are you doing? Find a hoist?”

  “Yeah,” Clay replied. “I’ve got one chain up.”

  “One?” Paige exclaimed. “We’ll need at least four!”

  “I’m working on it!” Clay snapped. “This isn’t easy!”

  Four… Clay was nearly sick at the thought.

  Paige said a few more choice words, but Clay tuned her out. He dropped back into the hold, the cables in hand, and secured another chain. He repeated the process from before, albeit a little slower, and wrangled a second chain. Then a third. Then a fourth.

  Clay had no problem collapsing onto the deck, his body drenched in sweat. He laughed as he took the lamp off his head and the light faded to a dull yellow then flickered out. He smacked it a couple times, just because, but it wasn’t going to illuminate anything anymore. Didn’t matter, the sun had begun to make its presence known on the horizon.

  “Paige?” Clay whispered, realizing he hadn’t heard her voice in a while. “Paige?”

  “Here,” Paige whispered back. She sounded as exhausted as he felt. “Almost got them done in. Taking care of a couple more then heading your way.”