by Han Yang
“We can set traps. Pitfalls, trip wires, and steam mines.” I glanced at Duke, who gave me a creaky thumbs up in response to my suggestions. “Anything and everything to slow them down.”
“What about the Moonlit Goddess?” Joanna looked up from her intense scrutiny of the map. “They want to send blimps. Why don’t we use our own? Bullets falling down hurt more than those flying up.”
“Indeed. Risky, but perhaps worth it for distraction purposes alone.” Duke accepted her wild plan with an easy nod. I had half expected him to refuse, given how much danger it would put his pride and joy in, but it seemed like anything was on the table when it came to slowing down the tide in the upcoming war.
We had just over a week to prepare. After that point, everything would be in the hands of the gods.
If they existed on Gearnix, that is.
Chapter 13
Our work rate escalated massively once the final plans were drawn up and confirmed. It turned out Duke had used several teams of venturebots to complete their construction. A strategy rarely employed in other cities due to the limited skills of the robotic workers, a fact that irritated Corvo to no end.
But, under Duke’s firm hand, the work went off without a hitch.
Now that their original tasks were completed, the teams moved onto the next stage. Most of them began work digging a huge trench from the cold, hard dirt in front of the wall, while the remainder prepared in the cleared area just beyond the wall itself.
Pits were dug, anchor points set, and vegetation cleared away. Everything that could provide even a modicum of cover to the invaders in our lands was swiftly and mercilessly slashed and crushed into nothing.
Corvo took over as my second in command when it came to the more human portion of our forces. At his repeated suggestions, I decided to visit the guards working along the wall.
I toured the watch towers, partially to inspect Duke’s handiwork, but mostly for the morale boost it gave the guards standing at each post. Every single one of them gave me a crisp salute the moment I walked through the door, an awkward gesture for me to receive, given the danger they would be put through in just over a week.
Then again, some of them might choose to leave my employ once the war was officially announced.
It was at that point when I dragged Duke aside and suggested we make the guards and soldiers in Norn aware of the upcoming battle against Portin and Darden.
Duke nodded calmly at my request. “I anticipated this, so I have made the preparations already.”
“What do you mean by that, exactly?”
“Every single one of them has been fully briefed. A few decided to retreat to other nearby cities, but the majority made the decision to stay.”
His calm explanation caught me off guard. There was no way I would have tried to force anyone to fight under my banner, but… the fact that almost every single one of the soldiers under me had decided to stay?
Shocking, to say the least. I pulled out my checker just to see if anything odd had happened to my statistics.
Name: Bradley
Origin: Ocarna
Race: Human
Gender: Male
Residence: Norn - Baron Lord
Rating: 13.1
Strength: 10
Endurance: 13
Perception: 14
Burst: 12
Luck: 21
Reflex: 17
Charisma: 28
Charge: 98%
Healing: 4
Intelligence: 26
Melee Combat: 19
Crafting: 8.4
Aim: 18
Dexterity: 12
Steam-bot Mastery: 256
Leadership: 48
Construction: 15
Farming: 13
Tree harvesting: 18
Gathering: 12
Fishing: 7
Skinning: 13
My Leadership score had jumped up massively over the past week or so, but that didn’t fully explain the odd situation. A statistical value was more of an estimate of skill rather than an omnipotent number dictating the results of any action.
Even with an aim of one hundred, it was possible to miss a shot if you didn’t take the care to line it up.
But they wanted to stay in Norn and fight, no matter the odds they faced.
Be it confidence or bravery, I couldn’t quite tell. Anyone with half a brain would be able to estimate the results of such an unbalanced war with their eyes closed.
Norn would lose, badly. Anyone still loyal to its current leader would have to run, hide, or die as the city was taken over by its new overseers. If they’d know about my other advantages, the betting odds still wouldn’t change all that much.
Even with a tactical genius like Corvo at my side and Duke’s venturebot teams under my control, our chances of victory were slim to nil.
Our inspection tour passed without any incident. We still had a day before the war declarations were officially announced to the other citizens living in Norn, and there was still way too much left to prepare.
Ginli’s situation had remained stable. She still laid upon her bed, dead to the world, unmoving and uncaring as time slowly drifted by. Several times I had to fight down the temptation to send her away from Norn but, even if I had wanted to get her somewhere safe, where could I send her?
Langshire? Not a chance in hell I’d trust the slime bags there to keep her safe, no matter what Charlie said.
Hexpa? Maybe, but the possibility they would take her as leverage to force me to do their bidding was too high to even consider.
There were a few other cities near enough, but I didn’t have any contacts within their walls. Rather than flipping a heavily weighted coin, I decided to keep her with us in Norn.
If the worst came to worst, I would get her loaded up on the Moonlit Goddess with Duke and Joanna. It wasn’t perfect, but at least they wouldn’t have to face up against whatever happened if we did end up losing the war with Portin and Darden.
As we stepped back into the manor, a faint chill caused a shiver to take over my body. The hairs on the back of my neck stood on end as I glanced around, looking for the source of my discomfort.
But I didn’t see anything.
“Duke, stay by me.” I kept my voice calm and steady as I moved toward the stairs. Duke didn’t respond openly, instead choosing to follow a beat behind me as I strode up the stairs to the upper levels of the manor.
The pressure heightened with every step I took. My mind screamed at me to stop, to retreat from the overwhelming danger I walked toward, but there was no way I could listen to its cold, hard logic.
Joanna was still in my study, and Ginli slumbered away in her room not too far away.
I laid a hand on the hidden pistol at my hip. Though I didn’t go anywhere without Darcy Sr., I felt like its oversized form wouldn’t be suited to whatever situation I was walking into.
Once we had cleared the final corner and the upper corridor came into view, my heart settled a little. No signs of danger showed themselves, though I still couldn’t get rid of the overwhelming feeling that-
“Duck!”
A metallic screeching filled the air as Duke dived forward, planting his arm firmly between my head and the oncoming blade swinging down from above.
“Damn.”
A low growl echoed out as a shadowy figure tumbled through the air away from us. Duke stepped up beside me as a dull red glare took over his glimmering eyes. His toughened metal arm showed the power behind the assassin’s blow as it hung by a few threads of twisted metal.
If that strike had landed on my head…
“Who the hell are you?” I leveled my pistol in the direction of the cloaked figure.
A leather clad gauntlet swung out, revealing the vicious looking steam blade that had destroyed Duke’s arm in a single blow. It hissed and shivered, almost as though the inanimate weapon wanted nothing more than to leap forward and rip my head from my shoulders.
“Standard venturebot, advanced
intelligence. Threat: Low.”
A man’s voice, from what I could tell, but it was somehow distorted and broken. It sounded like an electronic filter had been placed over words, but I could tell that our opponent was anything but a steam powered machine.
He was a human.
“What about me then, huh?” I lifted the pistol and pointed it directly at the assassin’s covered face. “Go on, try to talk your way out of this one.”
“Bradley, Baron Lord. Target priority: High. Threat: Unknown.”
The man took a step forward, then froze up as his head twitched in a disturbing way. I fought the urge to just open fire as Duke raised his remaining arm up into a combat ready stance.
“Threat: Unknown. Threat: Threat…. Unknown. Threat…”
The assassin’s words tumbled out as he shuddered and twitched. Something had clearly knocked him for a loop, and I didn’t know how long it would last.
BANG!
My pistol shot slammed into the figure’s leg, knocking him to the ground as I blew everything below his knee clean off.
Still, the assassin didn’t stop mumbling to himself.
BANG! BANG! BANG!
With smooth efficiency, I shot off his remaining limbs. Every single one of them had been augmented, and the parts of his body my shots revealed showed that his enhancements were top of the line.
It made sense how he’d destroyed Duke’s arm in a single blow.
The assassin was more machine than man. Duke cautioned me to stay back as he walked toward the now limbless man. After a close inspection, he pulled the man’s hood and mask aside, revealing his face to the world.
Or what was left of his face.
Augmented eyes, nose, and ears. Even his mouth had been replaced by an unmoving, cold, metallic speaker box. Only a few wrinkled pieces of flesh showed between each of his upgrades, the last hints at the human form he had once held.
I couldn’t bring myself to care overly about who or what our assailant had been.
“Joanna!” I dashed past Duke and our new prisoner and barged my way into the office. A quick look around showed no signs of a struggle, but I also didn’t see my Baroness.
There was only one other place she might have gone to wait.
I rushed back out of the room, barely glancing at Duke as he secured the assassin. Ginli’s room waited just ahead, and the door-
It was open, slightly.
“Joanna! Are you there?” I kicked the door open, and my heart stopped as I saw the scene inside.
The side table had been destroyed, while the walls showed signs of a brutal battle. Ginli’s bed, while mostly untouched, showed some signs of damage.
But the one who had held back the storm hadn’t fared as well.
Joanna leaned against the edge of the bed. Her face was pure white as she fought to keep herself conscious. Several cuts and bruises showed on her body as she clamped her arm down on a large gash across her side.
“No!” I tossed the pistol to the floor and sprinted to her side. After a quick check, I pulled out several cubes of Hydrox and fed them into the port on her arm.
Steam hissed and her face tightened as the energy shot through her body. After a few moments, her expression calmed a little as the pain faded away, but she still didn’t respond to my calls no matter what I tried.
Only after she had drifted off to sleep did I calm myself a little. After checking over Ginli and finding her completely uninjured, I lifted Joanna from the cold, hard floor and gently lowered her onto the bed.
I had seen worse injuries in the past. One time, Ginli had taken a spear to the guts, and it had only taken her a bit of time to recover enough thanks to the helping hand of Gearnix and the Hydrox it provided.
But still...
The door creaked open behind me as Duke cautiously made his way into the room. “Baron Lord, the assassin has-”
“Is he still alive?” I kept my gaze locked onto Joanna’s face as I spoke. Cold rage flowed through my veins as I, once again, thought about how close I had come to losing the woman I loved.
“I- Yes. What do you -?”
“Good. Bring the doctor here to check over Joanna and keep a full squad of venturebots by her side at all times” I gave Joanna’s palm a gentle kiss before I pushed myself up and turned my icy gaze toward Duke. “I have some questions, and that freak is going to answer them. Take me to him. Now.”
Chapter 14
Venturebots stomped to and fro as Duke led me down into the underground lair. I barely registered their movements as images of Joanna’s injured form fleeting back and forth through my thoughts.
She’d almost died. If I had been a minute slower…
“We’re here.”
I shook myself off as Duke stopped in front of a large, securely bolted door which seemed to have been carved from the stone wall itself. It took several minutes for every security device to be disconnected and lock to be deactivated before it finally swung open to reveal the prisoner stored within.
The limbless assassin had been strung up by several wires thicker than my finger. Each one threaded directly into the walls on every side of the cell, and I could tell that the tension in his bonds was set to the maximum amount.
Our little sneak thief could barely move, never mind escape.
“I took the liberty of having his augments investigated.” Duke called in a bot, who carried one of the assassin’s detached arms in a sealed, transparent container.
“High tech, extremely expensive to create. Perhaps impossible to replicate with our current funds.”
“This thing cost more than a city to build?” I turned away from the mumbling old man with great difficulty. “And what the hell is he? I thought there was a limit on augmentations?”
“There is, but this one seems to have bypassed it.” Duke leaned in close to the assassin’s weathered features as we listened to his nonstop barrage of odd phrases and garbled sentences. “Not without a price, it seems.”
“He hasn’t even begun to pay for what he’s done.” I nodded to the venturebot, who took the steam powered arm back out of the cell and pushed the door closed behind itself. “We need to know why he’s here, how he got in, what his main goals were, who sent him-”
“How, why, what, where, and when?” Duke moved away from our prisoner as he turned to face me again. “I might be able to answer a few questions myself.”
“Go on.”
“First, how he managed to infiltrate the manor.” Duke’s remaining hand clenched as he glared at the assassin. “Several venturebot patrols have been decommissioned. It happened too fast for them to report the intruder, but the flaws in our defensive routes have been sealed.”
“Good. Why is he here? It didn’t seem like I was the main target.” I chewed on the inside of my cheek as I recalled the exact words and phrases the man turned machine had used. “I was a high priority, but not the goal. Why else would someone send an assassin into a city leader’s home?”
“That… I cannot answer.”
I shrugged as Duke shook his head. As much as I trusted him, it wasn’t like I thought of my robotic friend as an omniscient soothsayer, and there was no way I could blame him for what had happened.
My focus had been set squarely upon Norn’s defenses, but I hadn’t put much time into the potential internal threats we might face. Duke had caught squads of assassins in the past who had made their way into the city to take Ginli down, but the idea of someone sending one to take me out personally?
“The who is easy to guess.” I sighed bitterly as the upcoming war reader its head once more. “Portin or Darden, it doesn’t matter much. Either or both, it’s clear someone wasn’t willing to wait for the war to end naturally.”
“A good sign, perhaps? It seems as though they are not fully confident in their chances to take the city.”
I shook my head at Duke’s optimistic notion. “No. It’s more likely they got impatient. A distracted leader is an easy target, and what better way
to keep me occupied than a near unwinnable war.”
With the most pertinent questions answered, that left one final mystery.
What the hell was the freakish abomination of man and machine hanging in my home?
“You have checked him for hidden weapons, yeah?” I waited for Duke to give me an affirmative nod before I stepped closer to what remained of the assassin’s body.
What little remained of his human face twitched and writhed beneath the augmentations. Clearly the work had been completed years ago, but the lack of care toward the human portion of the assassin left me speechless.
Hydrox should have kept the body fit and healthy for decades, but the old man seemed on the verge of collapse. If it weren’t for the steam powered implants slotted into every available space in his flesh, I would have assumed he was a corpse rather than a living, breathing man.
Duke lifted a folder from a side table and leafed through the pages it contained. “Age is hard to determine, but he is older than the Mistress at her time of death.”
“So, he did this to himself to avoid death?” I stared into the assassin’s lifeless, mechanical eyes for a moment before I stepped back and shook my head. “I think I’d prefer to let it go than to turn myself into something like... this thing. Gearnix can allow a bot to have a soul, in their own way, but turning yourself into a machine leaves nothing but an empty shell.”
“I can’t help but agree. Even to the venturebots who brought him down, this thing seemed…” Duke paused for a moment as his eyes glimmered oddly before he finally finished his assessment. “Creepy.”
“Well, we need answers.” I rolled my shoulders to relieve the tension built up within them as I turned to the door. “And he won’t answer willingly. We need to -”
“No!”
The door creaked open as a voice called out from the corridor outside. I recognized the person who was yelling, and after a moment of stunned silence, I darted forward and helped push the heavy cell door aside.
“Joanna, what are you doing down here!?” I grabbed Joanna’s shoulders as she staggered into the room. Her skin was still as pale as snow as she staggered forward, barely able to keep herself upright as several venturebots awkwardly peered into the cell. “You lot, guard the corridor. I’ll speak to you later.”