Moving Targets

by C. L. Werner

  Taryn raised her eyes to the enormous scoop fitted at the end of the crane, then lowered her gaze to the imposing bulk of the warjack. “You think I’ll be able to destroy it?” she asked. Guilty silence was her only answer. “Slow it down then?”

  “All I need you to do is distract it long enough for me to get the heir,” Rutger said.

  “What have I told you about these mad stunts of yours?” Taryn hissed at him.

  “This time it’s in a good cause,” Rutger told her. “Besides, it’s your plan, after all. Remember, I dash in and take on Olt and twenty of his thugs while you sit back and try to pick them off one by one.”

  “That wasn’t my plan,” Taryn protested. “And even if it was, we didn’t know about the warjack.”

  “I’m hoping the ’jack’s cortex is advanced enough to follow Olt’s commands to the letter,” Rutger told her. “That’ll give us an edge. I don’t want you doing anything unless that ’jack starts to move.”

  “And when it does?” Taryn asked, her tone frantic with worry and anger.

  “Stop it,” Rutger told her, making it sound as easy as pulling on a boot.

  Taryn watched until he reached the shelter of a coal cart, then turned around and made her way towards the operator’s platform at the top of the steel tower that supported the crane. Midway into her climb up the ladder, she risked a look at the dock far below.

  What she saw sent her scrambling upwards with renewed haste. Rutger was still creeping from one patch of cover to another, Janos and Smiler as yet unaware of him. The thing that sent cold horror rushing through her veins was the warjack. Amok’s helm was facing towards Rutger, moving when he moved, following him as he stole through the shadows. The Toro knew he was there! Why the machine’s cortex told it to wait, Taryn didn’t know, but she was certain that the first wrong move Rutger made would unleash the warjack’s fury.

  Suddenly, with an angry shout, Janos shook his stolen sword and pointed it up at Taryn. “It’s the earl’s gun-witch!” he roared. Smiler bellowed angrily, charging down the dock with a speed that seemed incredible for a creature of its size and bulk.

  The reptile’s charge had the exact effect Taryn least desired. Rutger leapt out from behind the crates that had been hiding him. Shouting at the bokor, he aimed his pistol and fired at the gatorman’s back. Either Smiler’s magic or its thick scaly hide deflected Rutger’s shot and the reptile rushed onward without even noticing the attack.

  Others, however, did. Rutger soon found himself diving for cover as Janos aimed Rutger’s own hand cannon at him. Before he could shoot, the rogue was forced to deal with the heir as the youth kicked at him and knocked him from his feet. The respite didn’t help Rutger, however. He had far bigger problems than Janos to deal with.

  Rutger could feel the dock shudder beneath the heavy tread of Amok as the excited warjack strode towards him. True to Olt’s command, the chain-cannon retro-fitted to its left arm remained silent. Instead, the Toro raised its right arm and swung. Rutger threw himself flat as the warjack’s mammoth sword came hurtling towards him, smashing the crates into splinters. Amok growled with what might have been annoyance and rotated its torso around to lend momentum to a second attack.

  Rutger knew the almost organic mannerisms of a complex and sophisticated cortex. It wouldn’t easily be fooled by the same trick twice. Instead of trying to duck under the sweeping blade, he instead dove towards it, scrambling between the Toro’s legs before it could react. As he scrambled out from the machine’s shadow, one of its legs smashed down, nearly crushing him into the earth. Amok swung its torso around and lurched after him, steam venting from the grill in its steamplant.

  Before the enraged machine could close upon him, a tremendous mass came hurtling down from overhead. The scoop of the steam crane, all three tons of it, smacked into the Toro’s hull. The dock splintered beneath the warjack, pitching both it and the crane into the shallow channel beneath.

  Casting his eyes upward, Rutger could see Taryn scrambling from the control box fitted to the side of the crane. The cause of her retreat reached the box a few seconds after she quit it. Smiler lashed its tail in annoyance and sprang after the fleeing gun mage, forcing her onto the arm of the crane, driving her upwards from whence there could be no escape.

  Rutger was torn between two obligations: the rescue of the heir or the rescue of Taryn. The choice was taken from him when burning pain seared its way through his shoulder, shearing through his pauldron and burning into the flesh beneath. The mercenary staggered under the impact of the shot, one hand clamped about the oozing wound.

  “You should have let Delt finish you,” Janos sneered, smoke rising from his hand cannon.

  With an old trencher’s battle cry, Rutger threw himself at Janos, smashing the hand cannon from the man’s hand and driving his knee into his gut. The powerful killer responded by gouging a finger into Rutger’s wound, the resultant pain doubling him over.

  Janos glared down at his foe and brought Jackknife’s glowing edge sweeping down. In the instant before the blow could land, Rutger struck out with his own sword, smashing the pommel into Janos’s injured leg. The thug howled as he was sent sprawling. The man’s shriek ended in a ghastly gurgle as his face landed against the mechanikal sword’s glowing edge.

  Rutger pried the dead man’s finger away from the activation stud, causing the glow to fade from Jackknife’s blade. “Thanks for holding on to that,” he told the corpse as he wrenched his sword free from Janos’s skull.

  Lifting his eyes to the crane once more, Rutger felt panic hammer at his heart. Smiler had nearly driven Taryn as high as she could go, the wind up there pulling dangerously at both of them. The reptile didn’t need to reach her, if it kept going after her it was going to send them both hurtling to the ground!

  “No time for formalities, Your Grace,” Rutger apologized as he dashed over to the heir and slashed the bindings about his arms. Gruffly, he grabbed young man and pushed him away from the dock.

  The planks in front of them suddenly exploded, throwing both men from their feet. A wet steel hand closed about the edge of the hole, dragging after it a battered metal hulk. Amok had withstood the impact of the crane and its fall through the dock to the water and rocks below. Battered, smoke billowing from ruptured pipes and torn hoses, its sword lost in the water, the Toro was down but most certainly not out!

  Every muscle in Taryn’s body tensed as she felt the metal framework beneath her shiver and sway. She resisted the impulse to look down, to see how far she would fall if she slipped from the steel. Instead she turned her gaze towards the grinning reptile climbing after her.

  Smiler’s fangs glistened in the moonlight. “Gon’ bein’ makin’ de ju-ju stick with y’uz bones,” the gatorman hissed. “Put’n y’uz eyes in de gris-gris bag,” it added, one of its claws jabbing at the glowing bag tied about its neck.

  “Is this about your pet turtle?” Taryn snarled back at the bokor, eliciting an angry hiss.

  “Bein’ makin’ a new pet, a snapper,” Smiler growled. “And after, I be takin’ y’uz scalp an’ bein’ stichin’ it with de possum bones to remind me of ya.”

  “Big talk from a pair of boots, especially since I killed your snapper in the foundry!” Taryn lied. Smiler scrabbled forward a few more feet, causing the crane to judder and groan. The saurian cast an uneasy look at the framework beneath its claws.

  For an instant, it looked to Taryn like the gatorman was going to relent, cut its losses and climb back down. The instant passed, however, when Smiler suddenly lunged at her, the bokor’s jaws snapping shut only inches from her face. Taryn reeled back, smacking her head against the framework and nearly losing her footing. While her legs kicked against open air, the gatorman clawed its way upwards.

  “Y’all gon’ bein’ soup when you hit, sure-an-sure,” Smiler hissed up at her. The gatorman stretched an arm under the framework, trying to claw at her dangling legs.

  Clenching her teeth, trying not to envision what w
ould happen to her if she miscalculated, Taryn let one of her hands release the framework and pull the knife hidden in her bodice. For a hideous instant, she swung from the crane, supported only by one hand, then her other hand came slashing down.

  In trying to reach her, Smiler had also resorted to supporting himself with one hand. Now Taryn’s knife came slicing down. She knew from prior experience that the bokor’s magic would dull her blow, so she put her full weight behind the blade. The knife bit into Smiler’s claw, sending scaly talons leaping away.

  The reptile bellowed in pain, its entire body recoiling at the mutilating blow. Smiler’s grip broken, its weight now dragged it from the framework. The bokor hissed as it fell, plummeting into the black waters of the channel.

  Taryn very nearly joined the monster in its descent. Only by a matter of seconds did she manage to get her legs wrapped about a lower strut before her hand lost its grip. If her knife hadn’t struck true, if Smiler hadn’t fallen, her new position would have put her within easy reach of the monster’s jaws.

  She risked a look down into the channel, just to be sure the gatorman was gone. As she did so, she saw a sight every bit as horrible. The warjack was still functional and had climbed back onto the dock.

  And standing before it, with only his sword to defend himself, was Rutger!

  Amok was living up to its name. With mindless violence, the warjack slashed its now empty hand at Rutger, carving deep furrows in the dock. The warjack was clumsy in its assault, the lenses of its left optic cracked, a fold of crumpled metal partially blocking the vision in its right. The Toro’s cortex was struggling to correct the infirmity. With each stroke, it was trying to compensate, trying to calculate the correction needed to aim true. Once the cortex found that equation, Rutger would lose what little edge he had.

  “Get out of here, Your Grace!” Rutger shouted at the young man. The youth looked as though the very thought was offensive to him. “You have to get help before Olt and his men get out of that hold!” Rutger told him.

  “I am in your debt, Sir!” the youth swore before running down the dock. As he passed the raging Amok, the warjack’s head swung around, its torso pivoting to face him.

  Rutger charged the Toro, hacking at it with Jackknife and cleaving a six-inch rent in the armor shielding its right arm. Instantly, the machine came swinging back around, its optics blazing. “Remember me?” Rutger snarled at it, slashing the edge of his glowing sword across the warjack’s helm. Bits of severed steel dripped from the torn grillwork.

  From the deck of the Jhordwolf, a single shot rang out. Rutger risked turning his eyes from Amok to glance at the shore. He felt a great sense of relief when he saw the heir still on his feet and hurrying away.

  “He’s no good to me dead!” Olt’s voice barked. From the corner of his eye, Rutger could see the cutthroat struggling to pluck a gun from Crocella’s fingers.

  “He’ll warn them!” Crocella protested. “He’ll bring the whole city down on our heads!”

  Olt glared at his bearded accomplice. “Then I suggest you make sure the treasure doesn’t get where it’s meant to go. It might be embarrassing for your master, and lethal for you.” He smiled cruelly at the Llaelese traitor. “But I suppose that for someone such as yourself, serving their lord is more important than life…”

  Crocella stared at Olt for a moment, then a steely glint crept into his eyes. Releasing the pistol, he scurried back below decks.

  Arisztid Olt let the weapon clatter to the deck and stalked down the gangplank. “You’ve cost me much today, Shaw,” he snarled at the embattled mercenary. At the sound of his voice, the warjack hesitated, swinging its body around to face its master.

  “Amok,” the killer addressed the Toro, “kill this meddling bastard.”

  With renewed ferocity, the warjack hurled itself at Rutger, pressing him back, forcing him towards the edge of the dock. The mercenary strove to slip past the Toro’s guard, to intercept Olt as he retreated towards the shore, but at every turn Amok thwarted his efforts. He could only watch as the cutthroat vanished into the darkness.

  Rutger knew this was a contest he couldn’t win. For all his deftness with the blade, for all his brawn and stamina, he was still only flesh and blood. His strength was already starting to ebb, his speed slacken, his agility lessening. Despite the damage inflicted upon it, Amok was still a thing of steel and steam, tireless and indefatigable. It wouldn’t relent. It couldn’t be reasoned with or appealed to. The only thing that mattered in the coils of its cortex were the commands of its master.

  Staking all on a desperate drive for the warjack’s steamplant, Rutger dove once more at the Toro’s legs. This time his reflexes failed him. The steel fingers closed tight about Rutger’s body, pinning him in a vice-like grip.

  Rutger brought Jackknife sawing across Amok’s wrist, but when the warjack tightened its hand, crippling pain forced the mercenary to relent. The shining optics bore down upon him, fixing him in a mechanikal gaze. Slowly, Amok raised its left arm, bringing the barrel of its chain-cannon towards the man trapped in its claw.

  The Toro hesitated, its frame shuddering for a moment. Rutger knew enough about steamjacks to know why it stopped. Amok was remembering Olt’s earlier injunction against using the cannon and was trying to reconcile the command to present circumstances. His jack marshal skills also taught him that with a sophisticated cortex, such a conflict wouldn’t last long.

  The warjack never resolved its logic conflict. Deep in the bowels of the Jhordwolf, in a final act of honor and defiance, Crocella touched off the explosives Olt’s men had set. The steamship’s hull shattered in a holocaust of flame. Jagged chunks of deckplate scythed through the air, smashing the brick and timber buildings of the supply station. The violence of the explosion ripped the dock from its moorings, scattering its planks in a storm of splinters.

  The blast lifted Amok from its feet, flinging it through the air like a tinker toy. Its smokestack snapped like a twig, its steamplant crumpled as a chunk from the Jhordwolf smashed into it. The already weakened arm armor, where Rutger’s sword had slashed it, shredded away from its body in a great ribbon of torn steel and left Rutger tenuously pinned to the dock

  Amok’s hull smashed through the wall of a warehouse and kept plowing onwards to crash through the opposite wall. Its right arm was ripped from its shoulder as its momentum drove it into the stone foundation of a coal chute. The remainder of the warjack’s body smacked into the great mound of coal piled above the station, embedding itself in the side of the black hill.

  It was several minutes before Rutger dared to even try to move. He felt like one big bruise, every breath he took sent a little shiver of pain racing through him. Releasing the death-grip his fingers had taken about Jackknife’s hilt, he tried to squirm free from the claws of the severed arm. The effort was tortuous, of such agony that several times he felt on the verge of passing out. Just the same, he thanked Morrow for his blessings. It was fortunate for him that the Toro was so sturdily built.

  “Rutger!” Taryn’s anguished cry forced the mercenary to move his head. Relief flooded into his heart. She’d escaped Smiler! She was all right!

  The gun mage was roving through the wreckage, trying to find him. Rutger redoubled his efforts to free himself from Amok’s claw. He started to call out to Taryn when he saw something that turned his blood to ice. The gun mage had spotted the warjack half-buried in the coal and was running towards it, but that wasn’t what sent fear coursing through his body. It was the still glowing optics behind Amok’s visor and the way the machine’s head was slowly moving to follow her advance.

  With a roar of pain, Rutger broke free from the iron claw and shouted to his partner in a horrified gasp. “Taryn! Get away from the ’jack!” Snatching his sword from the ground, he started to run towards the gun mage.

  Taryn was just spinning around at the sound of Rutger’s voice, when the buried steel behemoth pulled itself free from the mound. A savage growl rattled through Amok’s
chassis as it lurched towards Taryn. Rutger shouted again as he ran towards the imperiled woman. Even as he did so, the warjack lifted its remaining arm and aimed the cannon at her. The Toro’s cortex had resolved its logic conflict. Olt had commanded it not to shoot for fear of blowing up the Jhordwolf. With the ship obliterated, however, Amok was no longer bound by such restraint.

  Rutger howled, trying to draw Amok’s attention back to himself, make it fire at him and give Taryn a chance to escape. The warjack pivoted towards him. As he looked into the gaping barrel of its cannon, he couldn’t help but laugh. Taryn would be furious with him for such reckless heroics.

  A burst of steam vented from the Toro’s arm as it trained the weapon on Rutger, but when it tried to fire the result was far from what its cortex expected. The cannon barrel had been smashed flat when it slammed into the coal. Amok’s head shifted to one side, its optics staring at the impacted weapon. The warjack continued to try to operate it, a frustrated snarl billowing from its grill as its murderous cortex tried to force the gun to function.

  Rutger seized the opportunity the warjack’s distraction provided. Thumbing Jackknife’s activation stud, he charged at Amok, driving his blade into the barrel of the chain-cannon. Every muscle in his bruised body shrieked in protest as he wrenched his sword with a savage twist, deforming the mouth of the gun. Even as he did so, he heard a shriek of tearing metal, saw the cylinder start to rotate under the persistent pressure Amok was exerting on it.

  The warjack’s optics burned down at Rutger in a hungry glare. It lifted the cannon, aiming it at the mercenary as he fled for cover. The impacted cylinder continued to resist, grinding against the gun’s frame, slowly flattening the cylinder even further. After a few failed rotations, the smashed cylinder finally cycled past the main shaft, freeing the mechanism. Venting a bloodthirsty growl, Amok fired its now armed cannon at the retreating mercenary, its cortex unaware of Rutger’s deformation of the gun barrel.