Dark Iron King II: Arcadia Falls (Unreal Universe Book 5)

by Lee Bond

  Dom took a deep breath. “That beast is drinking the Elixir out through the skin. The higher they go, the faster it’s drained. The only way to do for this and the other Gunboys is with the weapons you acquired from Masters Mickel and Harvard. Not a one of you could make it to the top. Your experience and raw power will not win this day, lads.”

  Tobias narrowed his eyes skeptically before nodding. It were plain the Gearman had summat else to say, so he kept his lips zippered.

  Dom pointed to the shining gun and sword belted at the looker’s waist. “I shall require those two items, Tobias. In payment for information given.”

  Tobias didn’t bother wondering why, with all the power a Gearman had, that one would be asking for such simple weapons, nor did he waste a moment to fill the demands. In truth, his hands were unbuckling the belt upon which the gun and sword were moored before the armored maniac had gotten halfway through the request. He handed the gear over with a courteous nod, watched as the Gearman held the Ickfordian weapons up to the light, and heaved a huge sigh of relief as the volatile copper leaped to a nearby rooftop.

  Turning back to his gearheads, Tobias started bawling orders. “Orl right, you crudey-crude sucking bastards, listen up and listen close. You, Queer Mary, get your fine behind down to the fools down below and tell ‘em that there hain’t no way they’s goin’ to climb up that damn beast to rip it’s brain out, orl right?”

  “Why’s that, then?” Queer Mary demanded.

  Tobias pointed a finger at the beast. “That there is Elixirsponge, my dear Queer Mary. Yon bastard pulls the Iron from your soul and there hain’t no comin’ back from that.”

  Elixirsponge.

  The monster roared as if on cue.

  The bombers doubled their efforts.

  Elixirsponge howled once more.

  ***

  Chevy watched on as the gearheads began adapting to their foe. It was amazing to see them work like this, especially when it was a well-known –and well documented- fact that when you got more than two crews in the same general vicinity, they went at one another like enraged dogs until everyone was either dead or a single person was left just barely enough alive to call their side the victor. The Elder Gearman had seen more than one Estate razed to the ground over the matter of who got to stay where, and yet here they were … one, two … no … four different gearhead crews working in near-perfect harmony.

  If he didn’t know any better, Chevy would confess to a sneaking suspicion that the Dark Iron rage that percolated through the veins of every gearhead was nothing more than a game. A bit of ‘boys and girls fun’ perpetrated for no other reason than they had nowt else to do with their time. It weren’t true, of course, but watching on as he did, it was still easy to believe.

  These Dark Iron Bastards … they defied the odds, they defied the nature of their being. They fought together, brilliant, mad grins on their faces as they threw themselves into the very maw of death itself, all while their Gunboy howled and tried to bat the slow-moving projectiles that were being launched at it.

  “Got to be Ickford.” Chevy said to himself, laughing appreciatively at a maniac with a single metal eye growing out the middle of her forehead as she literally tried to leap from the tallest building near to the Gunboy. He –along with the calm looker and leader leaning against the wall right beside him- moaned in commiseration as she fell nearly fifty feet short and then fell fifty feet to the ground.

  The Gunboy, almost certainly unaware of the cyclopean swan song, shuffled it’s enormous feet and stomped her flat as anything.

  “Cor, that ‘ad to ‘urt, hey?” Barnacle Pete rubbed a clawed hand through his thinning hair, not quite sure what to do with their Gearman.

  Or, they thought he were a Gearman. He certainly wore that fancy long coat and underneath all that you could see the finely meshed gears of the armor that them coppers did wear, but the man weren’t acting like no Gearman none of them had ever seen.

  Why, he were just lounging around, no helmet on or nothing, lettin’ them all get on with the business to hand. And he were spendin’ an awful lot of time lookin’ at their Giant Green Man and mutterin’ to hisself about wot it were.

  “Oh aye, Peter, aye indeed.” Chevy watched on through his field glasses as an intrepid crew –probably friends of the nose-diving Cyclops Girl- launched ropes attached to spears at their quarry. Some few of the sharp-looking spears wedged themselves in between armored plates or were lucky enough to dig into spots where the persistent damage from mortar cannons had worn through. The gearheads cheered themselves on, then quickly started slinging themselves across, two of the largest crudey-crude gents Chevy had ever seen in his life wrapping the ropes about their arms and legs and standing there, immovable as mountains. “Crikey, who’re them two?”

  Pete squinted. “Oh, them. Big Ron and Bigger Ron. Brothers, them two. Come to Ickford round about two year ago now I reckon. Hire themselves out as enforcers and all.”

  “They’re big as trees.” Chevy looked doubtfully to his splashgun and the few other bibs and bobs that were built to take down spasticated gearheads. He’d never done for one of them with anything more than a single shot from a splashgun or a single tap from the mace, yet he couldn’t help but think that for Big and Bigger … welladay!

  Temptation to slap on the old helmet to see how Big and Bigger were put together was slapped down by the reality that –gearheads being gearheads- they’d most certainly take said helmeting as sign of imminent danger.

  Good old Arcade City. Keeping a jaded old man on his toes still.

  “The crudey-crude been off century, beggin’ your pardon and all, Master Gearman.” Barnacle Pete fiddled with the sharp edges of his clawed hand nervously. He were talkin’ to a Gearman like he were a regular person. Worse still, like he were good enough to talk to one. “All sorts of strange fings, really.”

  Across the way, where the Gunboy lumbered, patiently smashing the area flat and doing it’s best to ignore those who were trying to bring it down, the rappelling gearheads tumbled to the ground scant seconds after debarking on a giant shoulder.

  Barnacle Pete spat. “Now wot is it wiv all these lads and lasses, hey?”

  Chevy looked properly at Barnacle Pete, doing his best not to blanch; every single inch of visible skin was puckered and warped with odd, disturbing-looking whorls of twisted iron, looking like, well, like King’s Will-forged barnacles. “Now what’s all this, Pete? They’re gearheads, they’ll rise up soon enough and be right back it, yes?”

  Pete shook his head and pulled the Gearman closer to the edge and pointed downwards, down at the scattering of dead and gone gearheads, them as weren’t getting back up. “You was busy assistin’ with the … wot did you call it?” Pete nodded when Chevy answered. “You was busy with the mortar cannon, yeah? You missed all them boys and girls doin’ as they do, right? Summat this big? Always run up and up and up, always. It’s wot you do, ‘specially since they’s four of ‘em and they hain’t goin’ nowhere but stay stood, see?”

  Chevy looked through his binoculars and did a quick count of all the flattened corpses he could lay his eyes on. He shook his head in utter disbelief. There were –at best estimate- more than a hundred corpses littering the field. And –lest he forget- Ickford was too far in for fledgling crews to make the journey without having an epic story to tell in the process.

  No, no, the crews living and working from Ickford were the best of the best, maniacs who should’ve long ago moved inward to become Brigadiers. Thus far, Chevy’d laid eyes on dozens of men and women who stank of Darkest Iron -so close to the line of crudey-crude toxicity that it was frankly a miracle they were still alive- that could’ve banged through the rest of the gauntlet in no time at all. Every one of them should be Lord This and Lady That by now, were it not for Ickford.

  Pursing his lips, listening to Pete bark orders to the gunnery crew, Chevy found a handful of gearheads down by a boot, getting ready to begin the risky journey up top. Even from hi
s terrifically high vantage point, fear and consternation were clear to read on their warped faces.

  “Well now.’ Chevy said to himself. “That’s a new thing, isn’t it?”

  Pete stopped shouting at his crew. “What’s that, Master Gearman?”

  Chevy pointed at the gearheads down below. “They’re afraid. They don’t want to do this.”

  Pete splayed his hands wide, mechanical claw whining loudly. He absentmindedly grabbed a can of lube he kept at his waist and spritzed the blasted thing with diluted Dark Iron. Flexing the freshly lubed hand, he explained. “As I said, sir, they dyin’ the true death somehow. Hain’t no explanation. ‘Course,” the looker pointed to the Gearman’s field glasses, “we hain’t had no proper tellyscopes, neither. There they go, Master Gearman, off and runnin’. Mayhap you could do us a favor and spy on wot is doin’ for them so quick-like?”

  Chevy clapped the field glasses to his eyes and dialed them up for maximum resolution. The gearhead in charge of the foray swam into view. Another prime example of a woman ready to move inward; her skin showed the faintest hint of the dusty gray tint that said quite loudly ‘I am full of Dark Iron’ and more than half her visible limbs were in one way or another covered with the strange augmentations that such levels of Vicious Elixir seemed fond of creating.

  This –and indeed, so too were the three others following her so nimbly up the leg- was a woman who could bring down Kings on her own, if she so chose. An errant thought –of Nicked Jimmy, in fact- crossed his mind, and against propriety, Chevy chuckled. That warped bastard had imagined himself a hard man, a true and proper villain, but in all his time under The Dome, Jimmy had never once stopped for long in Ickford. No, no, he’d plied his trade everywhere but Ickford, taking only fools who’d also never been to Agnethea’s city. All the better to convince them that he was the toughest and baddest.

  Chevy felt a right git when, as he was laughing, that magnificent woman who should’ve become Lady Something gave a silent scream of pain before tumbling off the leg. Her compatriots fell shortly thereafter. “Apologies for the laughter, Barnacle Pete. Errant thought.”

  “It’s all well and good, Master Gearman.” Pete scratched his head. “Truth, it is a bit funny, all these grand soldiers, fallin’ so quick. Makes them as are dyin’ look they hain’t done no Kingkilling at all. What ho! Good shot, boys! Er, and girls! Brilliantly done!”

  The Gunboy’s eternal, monotonous shouting turned once more to a shrill, bleating scream that sent shivers down the spines of all those within earshot; the gunnery crew was finally beginning to get the hang of working something as sophisticated as the mortar cannon and had scored a perfect, direct hit right into the mouth of the giant metal monster. Smoke and fire and huge chunks of ironwork fell free of the gaping hole.

  Still screaming, the Gunboy turned it’s attention –finally, unhappily, drawing to a close all their luck- in the direction from which the deadly attack had come, revealing to the onlookers that their fortuitous shot had blasted not only into the mouth, but out through the other side, ripping a tremendous furrow through the cheek and dislodging one gigantic orb of an eyeball. It’s howls of blackest rage were filling with frenzy.

  Barnacle Pete grimaced. “Blimey. That’s grim, hain’t it?”

  “Isn’t it just?” Chevy mused half-aloud, still pondering the mystery of the quickly dying gearheads. He played his memories back, saying aloud, “I should order your fine lads and lasses to load up another round of heavy shot, Master Pete, if I were you. That Gunboy does look as though he’s going to abandon his post in favor of doing for us all.”

  Barnacle Pete fairly floated from the ground at being called ‘Master’ by a copper. The most he could’ve ever expected from one of them police was a splashing, and here he was, ‘Master Pete’. Not letting too many airs get into him, the looker and leader did as he’d be bade.

  Chevril Pointillier stared at the half-wrecked face of the Gunboy, watching Lady Something fall over and over and over and over again in his mind. It wasn’t sitting well with him, that … casual death. Garth had left without giving either him or Dom any kind of proper explanation as to the capabilities of a Gunboy, and so the two of them –indeed, every single man and woman going up against the invasion force- were and had been working under the assumption that though the chassis was different, the form was the same.

  But this was clearly not the case.

  Lady Something fell again, pale skin turning blotchy as life escaped. The others foll…

  “Wot in the bleedin’ fuck?” Chevy ignored the starts from the gearheads around him. “Wot in the actual bleedin’ fuck?”

  Lady Something did not have pale skin. Lady Something was –had been- a very old gearhead. Old enough, inundated enough with Vicious Elixir, for her skin to turn ever-so-slightly gray.

  Master Pete didn’t like the squinting, thoughtful look in the Gearman’s eye, nor was he entirely comfortable with the sudden cursing; it was when them coppers started cursing and swearing that you was in for a lot of worrying and hurrying, usually followed by a great deal of splashing about the local geography.

  Squaring his shoulders, Master Pete stepped forth and addressed the Gearman. “Wot is the matter, sir?”

  Chevy was shaking his head. He couldn’t … wouldn’t … accept what his mind’s eye was telling him. It was … it was a perversion. It was something that the King would never do.

  That was to say, he’d never do it if he were interested in keeping Arcade City running. The decline of their civilization was apparent, and now, here he was, looking at four beasts designed to rid their wonderful King of anything associated with Dark Iron.

  “Find a way to call those man and women back, Master Pete.” Chevy slid the delicate field glasses into their pouch. “The Gunboys are killing them by sucking the crude right out.”

  Pete stuck a finger in his ear and wiggled. “Beg pardon, Master, but it did sound to me as though you called that beast Crudesucker. Hain’t no way King’d allow that. We’re the chosen ones. We do this for him.”

  “Be that as it may, Master Pete of the Barnacle,” Chevy pointed a copper-coated finger at Crudesucker as it lumbered it’s way closer, it’s expression turned fiendish thanks to the serious wound, “Crudesucker comes this way, and it will drink you all dry.”

  Master Pete gave the Gearman a single, solid nod. “I thank you for the warning, friend. Now, if you shall take yourself hither from our post, me and mine shall do battle with this … with Crudesucker the Gunboy. And we’ll either do for it with our mortar fire or we’ll fling ourselves down it’s gullet ‘til it chokes on our crude! Hain’t that right, boys?”

  Chevy’s heart caught in his throat as every single gearhead atop the roof bayed their agreement before turning back to the chore of bombarding Crudesucker until it died. He unclipped his helmet and slapped it on.

  Pete’s face went ashen.

  “Fear not,” Chevy’s helmet-augmented voice was a distorted hiss, “Fear not, Master Pete. I do not don my helm to do for you and yours.”

  “Then why?” Pete looked about, puzzled. “None of mine are a threat.”

  Elder Gearman Chevril Pointillier pulled the augmented splashgun given to him by Mistress Primrose and pointed it at Crudesucker. “I am sworn by the office of Gearman to protect the people of Arcade City from dangers so great that they cannot survive elsewise. And that fucking thing, Master Pete of the Barnacle, is a threat to us all.”

  Pete gave a loud whoop, face split with joy. “All right you bastards, we got ourselves a Gearman fightin’ alongside! This be history in the making, so let’s show our copper what we got!”

  And so it was that gearhead and Gearman did battle against Crudesucker the Gunboy.

  ***

  Agnethea was angry, a deep, boiling rage that threatened to rattle her ever-so-carefully crafted Queenly persona with every step that she was forcing herself to take back roads towards the first of the monstrosities lest any of her ‘loyal’ subj
ects see her well and truly lose her composure; since the last brick had been put into place in Ickford, Queen Agnethea had felt … complete, the gut-churning, villainous hatred of all life pushed up and away and into some other place.

  But it was back, now, so close to the forefront of her mind that she found herself hammering on walls with gore-soaked fists, kicking everything out of her way and generally assisting the screaming metal men in their goal of flattening her goddamn city.

  How dare they?

  Agnethea could not believe they’d stormed her castle like that, that they’d murdered Willem in such a gruesome –and entirely unnecessary- way.

  That they’d forced her to kill them all.

  That was the worst thing. Oh, she grieved in her own way for Willem, but truth be told the man had been positively ancient and that was the way of life for all men and women who chose to remain ‘normal’. He would’ve died on his own in a few years and it would’ve been equally sad then as now, but …

  Forcing such violence upon her! In her own home.

  Agnethea slammed a blood-caked fist into a wall as she hurried back, sending brick and mortar flying all over the place. They’d been good and loyal brothers and sisters for so very long, and they’d just … switched. They’d abandoned all hope –or even the pretense of hope- in ever finding their way back to the kind of … of … of humanity they each of them claimed to remember fondly, wilfully allying themselves with a true demon, a monster in the guise of a child who promised them all the blood and death they could stomach, and then some more on top of that.

  She’d torn through the aghast crowd of jumped-up Golems, a black bloody whirlwind, bits and pieces of Thom’s brains and eyes clinging still to her unbreakable fingers. She’d pulled arms from sockets, yanked heads from necks, broken ribcages open to snatch still beating hearts from warm chests, showing them all that no matter how powerful they imagined they were, no matter how unstoppable, that there was always going to be someone more powerful, more unstoppable.