Fighting Iron 2: Perdition Plains

by Jake Bible

  “If they have decent scanners, then they may have noticed us,” Gibbons said.

  “Yeah, I expect they may have,” Clay replied. “But maybe we got lucky and they didn’t see us against the bulk of the Vernacht.”

  “Yeah, because our luck has been so damn great lately,” Gibbons replied.

  “You may have a monotone voice, but I am pretty sure I heard sarcasm,” Clay said.

  “Good catch,” Gibbons said.

  “We wait here until the thing passes then we finish our repairs and get the hell out of the Midlands,” Clay said.

  They both remained silent for the time it took the massive whatever it was to move past the Vernacht. The rain kept coming down, and the storm felt like it was intentionally targeting them with its malevolence, Gibbons barely contained his discomfort at every thunderclap.

  Once the thing was gone, which took a long, slow while, Clay piloted the mech back around the Vernacht, going the long way instead of the climb and tumble route. He was about to put them back where they’d been, get them set up once again to start salvaging from the Vernacht, but the scanner readings that came up before him made him stop the mech dead in its tracks.

  “Gibbons? You see this?” Clay asked.

  Gibbons shoved in and studied the scanner readings. “I do. It’s not a mech and those blips aren’t people.”

  “Those are tweeners, right?” Clay asked. “How many do you think?”

  “Three, maybe four hundred,” Gibbons guessed.

  “What are they pulling? It’s like some land ark,” Clay said. “I mean, I haven’t seen anything that big since we left the gulf coast.”

  Gibbons gasped.

  “What?” Clay asked.

  “My slow brain just caught up,” Gibbons said. “I know what this. I’ve seen one before in the Brazilian Empire. It’s a siege engine.”

  “A what what?” Clay asked. “And when would you have seen one down south?”

  “I wasn’t always with you, pal,” Gibbons said. “Remember? I had to come from somewhere when I saved your ass. I watched one of these mow down a path from Amazonia to a warlord’s fort. It spent twenty-seven days laying siege to that fort before they finally collapsed the walls and the troops hidden inside could storm the place. It weren’t pretty what happened to the warlord and his people once them walls was breached.”

  “I imagine not,” Clay said. “But why would a siege engine be moving across the prairie? If those were tweeners pulling it, then it stands to reason that this thing came from Perdition Plains.”

  “Stands to reason,” Gibbons agreed.

  “Why?” Clay asked.

  “Only thing I can guess is that it’s going to see the Barneses,” Gibbons said. “Morley can shut that cavern system down tight, if he wants to. Only thing that can outlast them might be a siege engine.”

  Clay didn’t respond.

  “I’m sure they’ll be fine,” Gibbons continued. “Morley has plenty of provisions. Not like he has to worry about the meat spoiling, right?”

  Gibbons chuckled, Clay didn’t.

  “Clay? Pal? What are you thinking?” Gibbons asked. “Talk to me here. I’m not liking the brooding.”

  “I’m not brooding,” Clay said. “Just thinking.”

  “Thinking about the last repairs we need to make, right?” Gibbons asked. “That’s what you’re thinking about, yeah? Then which direction we’ll go once we have our mech fully functional. Tell me that’s what you are thinking about.”

  “I’m thinking that Barnes is holed up in his lab with Paige,” Clay said. “He won’t hear the siege engine coming. Not with this storm raging overhead.”

  “Ah, come on!” Gibbons cried. “You said it yourself that Barnes is whacko! Why the hell would we go back?”

  “Paige isn’t whacko,” Clay said. “She saved my bacon when those tweener hounds showed up.”

  “Now she’s pieces and parts on a slab,” Gibbons said. “What the hell could we possibly do for her? Barnes can get that cavern locked up and then he just has to wait out the Perdition Plains folks.”

  “But if he doesn’t hear them,” Clay said, “then the Perdition Plains folks will get inside there and it’s all over.”

  “Still not seeing why that’s our problem,” Gibbons said.

  “Reaper chips,” Clay said. “If the Perditions get ahold of Reaper chips, then hell knows what they’ll be able to do.”

  “So what if they do?” Gibbons asked. “Seriously. Won’t matter none to us.”

  “You want the Perdition family to be able to transfer their consciousnesses to other bodies when theirs finally give out?” Clay asked. “Right now, they have their little neck of the Midlands sewed up. But what if they have eternity ahead of them? How much of this hellscape could they take over? Dealing with NorthAm and the MexiCalis is crappy enough, Gibbons. You want a new player to step up on this continent? That’s what’s going to happen.”

  “You are one gloom and doom asshole, you know that, pal?” Gibbons muttered. “Shit. Shit, shit, shit. So what do we do? Go fight the siege engine? How? Our mech ain’t in the best of shape.”

  “We have way more skill than any of them,” Clay said. “We could hurt them. Hurt them bad. Maybe just long enough to allow Barnes and Paige to escape. We just make sure we get the Reaper chips instead of the Perditions. Then we destroy them before they can be misused.”

  “Too late for that,” Gibbons said. “But, yeah, I see what you’re saying.”

  “I think the storm is giving us enough cover,” Clay said. “We can get close to that siege engine to see what it’s made of and how we take it down. We’ll also be close enough to send a secure communication to Barnes. We tell him to get ready to leave as soon as we make it possible. He gets out of there, we get in, destroy the Reaper chips, and then the Perditions have nothing to fight for.”

  “Assuming that’s what they are fighting for,” Gibbons said.

  “Well, yeah, there is that,” Clay said. “But my gut says I’m right.”

  “Oh, well, if your gut says so,” Gibbons sighed.

  Twenty-Nine

  It didn’t take long for either Clay or Gibbons to realize that their biggest issue wasn’t the siege engine or that their mech wasn’t fully repaired. The biggest issue was the storm that refused to stop. The rain came down in sheets, the thunder and lightning in bone snapping rumbles and violent flashes. They were halfway back to the caverns when the ground began to turn to soup.

  “I can’t go any faster than this,” Clay said, settling the battle mech into a slow, loping stride. “It’s taking all of my concentration to get one foot in front of the other. They’d rather get themselves stuck in the mud.”

  “Good,” Gibbons said. “Because I need the time to set up the secure com connection. The coms system is one of the components we didn’t repair. It works fine for open communications, but secure and private are not cooperating.”

  “Doesn’t have to be perfect,” Clay said. “Just working well enough that we can get our point across to Barnes.”

  “Right now, we can’t even do that,” Gibbons said. “But I’ll get it up and ready by the time we reach the caverns.”

  “Good,” Clay said. “Because if we don’t then—Holy hell!”

  He sent the mech into a side dive and rolled it across the muddy ground for several meters before coming up onto one knee. The battle mech was coated in mud and grass, but the cockpit hatch was clear enough for both Clay and Gibbons to see what was only a few meters ahead of them.

  The siege engine was mired in the ever-increasing mud. Its wheels, which had to be a story high each, ten of them per side of the massive rolling structure, were halfway submerged in the wet earth. All around the thing were hundreds of townsfolk, plus a couple hundred tweeners, all trying to use ropes and wedged sheets of metal to get the siege engine out of its predicament.

  On top of the massive structure were three turrets facing in their direction. They were the reason Clay had
cried out while sending the battle mech into a diving roll.

  “Big guns!” Gibbons yelled as flashes of yellow flame lit up the dreary day.

  They could hear the artillery shells whistling towards them.

  Clay pushed the battle mech back up to its feet and ran as fast as he could to the right to avoid the oncoming attack. The ground protested and fought him the entire way, but he managed to put enough distance between where he was and where he had been that when the shells exploded, the concussive blasts were only a good hard slap to the back, not mech shattering.

  The battle mech went for a tumble then came up again on its feet. Clay didn’t miss a step and kept moving. He ignored the treacherous terrain and pushed the mech into an all-out sprint as more fire barked from the top turrets. None of the shells came close as the turrets were too slow in tracking their target.

  “I think they are using hand cranks to shift their aim,” Gibbons said, voicing what Clay had just been thinking. “This siege engine may be more medieval than modern.”

  “Looks like they have quite a bit of flesh on it too,” Clay said as he kept the battle mech going. “See? They put all their resources into building that thing. I doubt they have the motors and servos needed to run everything. Flesh parts are holding it together, and people are powering the systems. It doesn’t have engines to move it. They need tweeners to do that.”

  “That would make things convenient for us,” Gibbons said. “They could end up stuck in that mud for the rest of this storm. If they have no significant motors running anything, then that gives us a window to get to the cavern and get the Barneses out of there.”

  “Let’s freaking hope so,” Clay said.

  They kept going, switching directions once they were clear of the turrets’ range, and headed for the Barneses’ cavern. It took a lot longer than they would have liked since the ground wasn’t being too cooperative. The battle mech wasn’t anywhere near the size of the siege engine, but it was still a heavy machine that wanted to sink into the mud with every step.

  Finally, they reached the cavern. Gibbons tried to hail Barnes over and over, but there was no response over the com.

  “The mouth is wide open,” Clay said. “The old man has no idea what is heading their way. We need to go inside.”

  “Do we?” Gibbons asked.

  “We do to get the Reaper chips at the very least,” Clay said.

  “Dammit,” Gibbons replied. “Fine. Take us in.”

  Clay piloted the battle mech inside. He navigated the huge passageways until he was in the main cavern, familiar scaffolding still standing tall.

  “I’m going to go look for the guy,” Clay said. “Stay here and keep the mech powered up. We may need to leave fast.”

  “Roger that, pal,” Gibbons said, taking the pilot’s seat as Clay vacated it and opened the cockpit hatch.

  Clay climbed down to the cavern floor, paused, and listened. He thought he heard someone crying, but he couldn’t be sure. He found the passageway to Morley’s laboratory and followed that until he came to the first room with all of the vats and the workbench.

  Clay quickly found the drawer of Reaper chips and dumped them out onto the surface of the workbench. He grabbed up a mallet that hung from a rack of tools on the wall, lifted the mallet, and prepared to bring it down onto the Reaper chips. But he hesitated.

  The sight of all of those chips, all that long-forgotten technology, gave him pause. He could destroy them, ensuring that no one like Barnes or the Perditions could use them for their own greedy ends. But something like nostalgia, or ancestral pride, welled in Clay’s heart, and he couldn’t bring himself to smash the mallet down.

  Then he looked closer and realization hit him.

  “Dammit,” he muttered as he set the mallet aside and scouted around for something to put the chips in.

  He found a pouch made of bison hide and scooped the chips into it, pulling the leather draw strings tight before tucking the pouch into his pocket. He turned to leave, stopped, took the pouch out, set it on the workbench, reached for the mallet once again, paused, pulled his hand back, grabbed up the pouch, and started for the laboratory’s entrance.

  Clay repeated that process four times before cursing himself and committing to keeping the pouch and getting the hell out of the room.

  He reached the fork in the passage and headed towards the main cavern then stopped.

  “Make up your damn mind,” he scolded himself as he turned around.

  Instead of going to the laboratory he’d just come from, Clay crept slowly to the second room. The room where Paige would be laid on a slab with most of her body gone and her replacement parts, or components as Morley called them, being kept alive and viable by a thousand wires and electrodes.

  Clay was ready to start yelling and shouting at Morley when he entered the room, but the old man wasn’t there. Neither was Paige’s dismembered body.

  “What the hell?” Clay asked as he looked at the destruction that had befallen the room.

  The tank that had held the severed head in suspension was empty, but intact. It was the only thing that was intact. All the vats that had held body parts were shattered or overturned. Bloody liquid pooled everywhere. The stench was overwhelming. Clay covered his nose and mouth with the crook of his elbow as he struggled to figure out what had happened.

  It took him a while, longer than he knew he had, but he finally spotted drops of blood that he figured came from the old man, not from Paige’s parts and pieces body. The drops told a story and it was a violent one. Clay shook his head, took one last look at the room, then decided to get the hell out of there.

  “What’s going on?” Gibbons asked as Clay finally climbed back into the cockpit. “Where are the Barneses?”

  “I don’t know,” Clay said. “I couldn’t find them.”

  “Are we leaving?” Gibbons asked. “Did you destroy the Reaper chips?”

  “Yes,” Clay said.

  Gibbons eyed him. “Clay? Are you lying to me?”

  “No,” Clay said. “We’re leaving. Now.”

  “What about the—?” Gibbons began, but was cut off as a pained wail echoed through the cavern. “What the hell was that?”

  “I think that was Barnes,” Clay said. “Come on, we’re going.”

  “You want to tell me what you found?” Gibbons asked. “What is going on?”

  “I think Paige may have protested her new body,” Clay said. “Might have hurt Barnes a little.”

  There was another wail of anguish.

  “That doesn’t sound like a wounded hurt,” Gibbons said. “I may not be human, but I know grief when I hear it.”

  Clay started to argue then nodded.

  “Yeah, I think you’re right,” Clay said. “But we’re still leaving. These people made their own beds, they can sleep in them. We have got to go before the Perdition Plains folks get their siege engine unstuck and start rolling this way again.”

  “Now that’s a plan,” Gibbons said.

  Clay turned the battle mech around and headed for the cavern entrance.

  When they reached it, Clay brought them to a full stop.

  “Son of a bitch,” he growled at the sight before them. “Gibbons? You said we are armed, right?”

  “Yeah,” Gibbons said. “We have plenty of power for plasma cannons and a full load of rockets. But we’re low on belt gun ammo.”

  “Plasma and rockets should work,” Clay said. “Right?”

  “I count one hundred riders,” Gibbons said. “I guess it depends on whether they are armed or not.”

  Outside the cave sat a hundred riders astride tweener bison. There were clumped into a large group, but quickly started to spread out. At the head of the group sat a man. With a green and brown hat. A very familiar hat.

  “What the hell?” Clay snapped. “Is that Holcomb? And is that son of a bitch wearing my hat?”

  “I don’t think that’s what we need to worry about, Clay,” Gibbons said as all of the r
iders pulled rifles from the sides of their tweeners. “That is.”

  “That’s my damn hat!” Clay shouted.

  “Forget the hat, Clay!” Gibbons shouted. “We need to get running!”

  “We need to get my hat!” Clay yelled and sent the battle mech right into the crowd of tweeners and their armed riders.

  “CLAY!” Gibbons yelled as the world erupted with gunfire.

  Thirty

  Bullets pinged and ricocheted off the battle mech’s hull. Armored plating became dented and dinged in a matter of seconds. Klaxons rang out, warnings blared, a litany of curses streamed from Gibbons’ mouth as Clay thrust the mech into the fight without much thought other than he wanted his damn hat back.

  It had sentimental value.

  “We just lost the right outside strut supporting the knee,” Gibbons called out as he strapped himself into the jumpseat. “You hear that, pal? We’re already weak on the right leg!”

  “I hear it,” Clay growled in a voice that was barely audible yet could be heard perfectly clear even with the gunfire everywhere. “Don’t matter. We squash some tweeners and get my hat. That’s what matters.”

  Clay focused squarely on the one rider that stood out from the others. Holcomb must have seen what Clay intended, and he took evasive action as a huge metal foot came down right where the man and his tweener had been.

  “That’s how you’re going to get your hat?” Gibbons barked. “By stomping on it?”

  “I can fetch it out of the mud,” Clay replied. “If I shoot him, then I could destroy it. I don’t want to do that.”

  “How about you shoot the others, though?” Gibbons suggested as more warnings blared in the cockpit. “While we can still shoot? Forget Holcomb for a second and kill some riflemen, will ya!”

  A hundred more pings and ricochets managed to grab Clay’s attention. The warnings continued, but Clay silenced them. He knew he’d screwed up, gotten emotional, let sentimentality put their lives at risk. But there was no going back, so he had to go forward.

  And going forward meant all guns blazing and rockets firing.