by Lee Bond
‘course, didn’t matter one way or t’other, no it didn’t. The gargantuan screamers ignored all wounds delivered from weapons designed by the now-legendary Smiths of Ickford, and all who ran up a leg or risked a leap to an elbow, soon fell down again.
Idle Eric remembered his … crash landing, nearly right at the foot of a gaggle of gearheads as had done just that, how they’d all been puffed up and full of pride at their crudey-crude levels, at the grey duskiness of their skin, at the weird outcroppings of King’s cruel Will. He remembered them laughing at him, finding the fact that someone had literally thrown the downtrodden wee gearhead halfway through Ickford to be well and truly hilarious.
One of them, a maddened sack of flesh calling herself Tremendous Tina –a crazed bomber with but a single eye in the middle of her forehead, too close to her nose to even be considered acceptable- had patted him on the head, suggesting he run off and hide until the grownups had done for this beast they’d called BloodSponge.
The wee mad gearhead’s insides quivered again in rage at the insult. She’d patted his head like he were some kind of animal, one of them dogs they kept in kennels far to the East. She’d patted his head and gone running after her mates, no doubt her stupid brain filled with thoughts of triumph and glory and all that.
“Well,” Eric whispered, staring down at Nickels, pulling his sharp, sharp blades free, “there ain’t no triumph and there ain’t no glory, not no more.”
Eric’s beady eyes turned upwards to the giant, who had it’s massive head cocked to one side, it’s tremendous, backlit eyes looking down on Master Nickels and the Gearman. It were unnatural.
“World’s endin’, aye, hain’t it, Eric?” Eric licked his lips nervously. Master Nickels, him in his fancy, shiny armor, wouldn’t know what hit him, would he now? And besides all that, the bastard’s hands ended in guns, which were a thing that didn’t make no sense neither, but –Eric laughed quietly as his gaze swung back up again to the oversized metal soldier- nothing were making no sense at all anymore.
Once upon a time, Idle Eric had been a great Kingkiller, brave and tall and strong and quick as a whip. Then he’d lost his legs in an unfortunate stomping and his mates had done the best they could, but the Iron in his blood had already set about fixing the problem, and so they’d only had time to add on the lower parts, turning him into a caricature of the man he’d once been.
Unable to kill Kings at all any longer, and all because other gearheads found him … him … distasteful –when they took on weird freaks who’d scavenged blown off arms, only to add them to their own bodies- Eric had fallen on hard times, yes, yes he had, but there were one advantage to having odd legs such as his.
He were terribly good at jumping, and the shape of his Dark Iron crafted legs made it daftly simple for him to land on a man’s back, sharp daggers plunging deep into a man’s neck.
Master Nickels deserved it. All that Kingsblood, swimming in a vat larger than anyone in Ickford had ever seen before. He could’ve shared, could’ve given a hungry man a last meal before his neck cracked from the noose.
But no. Master Nickels had thrown a poor, wee man into the air, subjecting him to embarrassment and all sorts of mockery.
Idle Eric leaped, decades of training and skill putting him on the perfect trajectory. His vicious, sharp blades glinted shards of captured light.
This were only fair.
This were only right.
***
A warning from his stupid suit came hot on the heels of Dom’s incredulous shout of revolted fear, prompting Garth to devote a solid second of wondering if there were some way to rewire the bloody thing to respond directly to mental commands, because clearly, it was as dumb as pile of rocks.
: incoming:
Then two razor thing needles –or so it felt like- sank deep into the muscle tissue on either side of his neck. The pain was extravagant and exhilarating. Somewhere deep inside Garth, Specter rose up to greet the sudden hot surge of agony, a vicious grin, all hunger, all excitement.
“Weren’t fair.” Eric whispered petulantly into Nickels’ ear. He were keeping one eye on the Gearman, as the shooter he held cupped in his hands were well capable of plugging a man in the head quick as a think, only, only the man in the helmet weren’t doing nothing. “Weren’t right.”
Driven by twin spikes of lethal agony, Garth punched high and over his shoulder with his shot-gun hand directly into Idle Eric’s stupid fucking face had stabbed him. The grisly sound of metal ramming itself down his instantly-recognized assailant’s throat and a gobbling, choking slobber-sound filled their little alley.
Still following pain-fueled instinct, Garth pulled whatever was pinioned onto the shotgun over and in front of him, commanding the weapon to fire once he was confident he wouldn’t get hammered by blowback.
Idle Eric exploded like a piñata full of particularly vile candy, sending blood, bones, and a scattering of metal implants splooshing about the place. The death was a bit more … explode-y than expected, but then again, Garth had never really killed a nanotech-enhanced steampunk soldier in quite this way before, so there was no way of knowing what was and wasn’t normal under those kinds of situations.
Revolted and ashamed, Garth started shaking loose bits of Idle Eric off his shotty. “Fuck me and fuck … ouch!”
In his haste to deal with the diminutive gearhead and desperation to rid his gun of goopy, he’d forgotten about Dominic Breton, giving the Gearman ample time to reload his Ickfordian pistol. Making matters worse, sometime in the last few minutes, his frenzied opponent had grown much better in aiming the decidedly plain-looking gun; a white-hot brand drilled it’s way through the meaty portion of his left leg.
“What the fuck, bro?” Garth shouted hoarsely, jumping back a few feet and filling the alley with a few shotgun rounds to clear the air. “We were, like, in the middle of negotiations and shit before Idle Eric the Mad Midget dropped down on me like some kind of murderous koala bear! Enough is enough, dude!”
“Aye.” Gearman Breton replied, voice a ragged burr of raw emotion as he stepped back around from his hiding place; he’d known for certain that Nickels would respond by shooting blindly, so –though he’d been sorely tempted to empty the clip- Dom had wisely chosen to fire a single round before hiding himself away.
“Aye,” Dom said again, caressing the torn, tattered and burning Book hanging from a single connection point on his chest, “aye, we were in the middle of negotiations. In your haste to do for that loathsome beast, though, you blew my Book to smithereens.”
The whole of his history, gone. Dom could scarcely believe the hollow emptiness that’d settled in around his heart. That Book had been a part of him for so long now that with it’s destruction, why, he hardly felt like a whole man.
He now knew, with rather intimate and horrid detail, precisely how Chevy felt when his horse had been kilt by this very same demon.
Garth clenched his jaw. He’d shat the bed. All the way. Now that he was looking more closely at the Gearman’s armor, it was hard to miss the gaping spot on the man’s chest where Book used to be. There was a tiny little bit left, but that didn’t matter.
“Well.” Garth let loose with a Herrig-worthy sigh of bitter disappointment. “That explains the explodey part.”
With Dom standing there mentally attempting to come to grips with the utter destruction of everything he believed in, DB stole a moment to warn Garth of the nature of his wounds.
: either medical attention or rest is required. Your wounds, while not grievous, will prevent or otherwise hinder you from full efficiency during the remainder of this operation:
“Tell me something I don’t know.” Shot three times, stabbed twice, the wounds running full of blood and thin layers of residual Dark Iron, a moronic semi-AI reminding him that he was hurt was the last thing he needed. He turned his attention back to Dom, who practically glowed with hostility and forlorn loss. “Now, look, that was an accident. I …”
:
incoming:
“Are you fucking…”
Irondrinker chose that moment to get down to serious business. It brought one of it’s Brobdingnagian feet slamming downwards, a piston-driven cataclysm shattering buildings and sending Garth N’Chalez and Gearman Dominic Breton crashing through the alleyways like leaves once more.
***
Crude Kurt and his gang of heavy lifters lugged the Fool’s Basket into place, with him staring up the backside of the trapped Gunboy, musing on the mind of the King as would allow summat like this threat to come into being.
“Oi, Curvy Mervy, you drop that fuckin’ fing and I swear by all that’s awful and grim in this fuckin’ place that I will surely slice you from groin to gullet!” Kurt smacked Curvy Mervy, once known as Merciless Mervin but who now insisted on being Curvy as he’d … acquired … some bits … Kurt shook his head. Some gearheads lost their minds and started mucking about with Kingsblood and some of the strange things it could do to the body, and Mervy had gone just about as far off the deep end as you could go.
Curvy Mervy fluttered a hand and flipped Kurt the bird. “You ain’t lifting this thing, Crude Kurt. It’s right heavy and a bitch to move.”
“Sounds just like you these days, Curvy.” Viking Orlanda, him with actual horns grafted onto the sides of his head like some kind of old-time Viking, grinned blackly at Merv’s huffy disposition. “But Crikey, Kurt, he en’t lyin’. This thing weighs considerable.”
Crude Kurt twirled his fingers and motioned for the lads and lasses to get their asses in gear; their foe was getting quite worked up, and he reckoned that it had summat to do with the giant coming their way. A quick, shouted chat with Pete and the friendly Gearman revealed that that … what were the word … Gunboy were chasing someone through Ickford, and that someone were –for wotever fuckin’ reason- comin’ their way as if his pants were on bloody fire.
The rough and tumble Kurt gazed looked over his shoulder as the first gusts of wind and dust reached him. The mobile Gunboy were acting mightily different from all the others, for not only were it chasing someone over hill and dale, it were doing an incredibly efficient job of smashing the city to bits and pieces en route as it did so.
Kurt and the other walkers –them as were keeping their eyes peeled for the sudden appearance of gaggles as were more interested in looting than in defending their homestead- trailed slowly, impatiently beside the carriers.
“Queenie ain’t goin’ to like that at all.” Kurt snapped his fingers impatiently. They were almost there and he didn’t like the notion of being so close to Crudesucker. Too many of them had gone the way of all things just by brushing up against that poisonous skin, and more would fall sooner rather than late: even if by some miracle the bombs they slammed against Crudesucker’s hide did do for the trapped beastie, there were three more to deal with.
They very well couldn’t haul Fool’s Basket all over Ickford! No, their friendly Gearman had best come up with other brilliant ideas, as Kurt knew for certain that few gearheads would volunteer a second time for this sweaty, awkward work, least of all if they was bein’ chased.
Curvy Mervy huffed and puffed and the heavy rouge on his lips and cheeks made him look –in this particular light- like a clown. “I reckon we’re in about the right range, Kurt. Apex o’ anyfing we launch should hit Crudesucker right about the shoulders, hey? Big explosion like that’ll push the blasted thing right over. Clean as you like, then up The Wall for a bit of a buzz, I ‘spect.”
Kurt eyed the carriers. Four of ‘em, muscles straining and trembling under the great heavy weight of the Fool’s Basket. And well, it needed to be heavy, didn’t it? Some of the morons as broke the Queen’s Law were right dense, both in body and in brain. In order to get them up high enough to force the Wall into growing, they needed to fly, fly, fly.
Plucking at the whiskers of his scraggly beard with a free hand, Kurt estimated the distance between them and Crudesucker. He motioned for one of the bombers to come forth and he had a bit of a quick chat concerning their payload. The sweaty explosives expert barely had any crude in her system, which explained her nervousness; this whole adventure they was on could spell her doom at any minute. The young lass was skilled as they come, mayhap one o’ the best in the entire world, to’ve come to Ickford fresh as she was. Her scientifical estimates were rock solid, they were.
“Come on, Kurt, the lads and I are gettin’ right pissed, ‘ere. The fucking fing weighs much as a goddamn bloody King do and if you hain’t sayin’ move it free fuckin’ inches to the left like in the next few goddamn seconds, we is droppin’ it ‘ere and you can palaver wiv the Gearman an’ ‘is splashgun, all right?”
Crude Kurt waited for Curvy Mervy’s lips to stop flapping then nodded. “Aye, lads. Wee Lissa there says this be the best spot for the bombs to go sailin’. Down she goes, steady as a drunkard in front of a copper.”
Fool’s Basket was lowered down the ground as carefully as the four gearheads could manage. Everyone started fiddling with the various bits of the machinery that’d required tying down during transport and Kurt turned to bellow for the bombers to start bringing all they’d been hoarding when, quite suddenly –and quite unexpectedly- their little corner of Ickford became quite inexplicably busy.
A strange man in shining brass tiktok armor burst into the square, shouting incomprehensibly about ‘jetpacks’. Mixed in with his diatribe against whatever ‘jetpacks’ were, this new type of Gearman –Kurt decided the man was a Gearman from his new vantage point well away from Fool’s Basket, for though there was an armistice with Chevril, the gearhead would bet all his remaining proper teeth that would hold no cachet with any other copper- was telling someone to ‘fucking make it fucking happen right fucking now’.
Kurt thought it strange that –as the man ran quickly by- that he had guns for hands and that he were bleeding from several gunshots. The Gearman in the shiny, blood-streaked armor hit the heavily fortified lip of the Fool’s Basket and leaped into the air, adroitly spinning halfway towards the zenith of his journey. Soon as the man were properly oriented, flying backwards through the air, the larger of the two guns was brought to bear.
Kurt turned his head to see what the man was aiming at, and it was then that he –and all the other gearheads- saw the second Gearman come hustling into the square. He weren’t running as fast as the first one, but he were running quick enough and picking up speed.
The looker felt his gaggle shuffle their weapons, preparing to do battle against this angrier, helmeted dispenser of foul justice, but Kurt stayed their hands; it were well obvious from the man’s trajectory and single-minded focus that the man who was mid-air –really, for quite a preposterous amount of time already given how heavy he had to be and all that sort of thing- was his target.
“Oi!” Curvy Mervy whisper-shouted. “What’s that fella … oh fuck, mate, ‘e’s gonna ruin the fucking Basket!”
The second Gearman hopped lithely into the basket, expertly severing the winch holding the arm in place with a glinting sword as he moved into position. There was a loud crack that caused all the gearheads nearby to flinch and curse the ruination of their efforts. They turned their heads briefly Domeward to watch the second King’s man sail through the air directly towards the first Gearman.
“Wot in the utter fuck is goin’ on?” Kurt demanded, utterly, utterly confused.
There, up in the air, the two Gearmen were destined to meet in a collision of arms, legs, and guns.
Then something very strange happened.
***
Chevy wished he could take his gauntlets off to rub his eyes. He opted for merely closing them and squeezing them until strange little lights popped and flitted across the inky black of his eyelids. Dom had ignored his entreaty to stop chasing after Nickels and now the fools were rushing this way, bringing with them their one-armed Gunboy…
The whole day had … no. The whole month had started off wrong. He didn’t know if it was because they’d gotten bad info
rmation or if it was some strange effect of this Nickels person being an Outsider or if it was direct intervention by the King, but … everything they’d done in pursuit of Nickels had been the wrong thing.
And now his best friend and partner, Dominic Breton, had lost his …
“Um, guv’nor?” Pete nudged Gearman Chevy’s elbow with his rigging finger, then pointed.
Chevy swore. He swore so violently and colorfully that the few gearheads remaining on the rooftop –Pete included- felt compelled to take a few steps off to one side. Several hopped to another roof, ostensibly to get a better look at what was, and what would, happen in the next few seconds, but mostly because they’d never seen a Gearman lose his temper quite like this before.
Against better judgment, Chevy slammed the dread helmet atop his noggin. What little data input the blasted thing could glean whilst under the effects of the miasma was frightfully important, as what was happening now was a feat that never to be repeated ’neath The Dome.
Master Garth Nickels, blacksmith extraordinaire and Arcade City’s greatest enigma, swam into view. Chevy took immediate note of the bullet holes punctured through Garth’s once-immaculate armor, saw how the gears surrounding the damage had reknit themselves to work around the holes, saw fresh red stuff dribbling over the collar of the tightly woven armor.
The lad had been through summat awful prior to this moment. Wounds as bled like that over the gear were terrible bad.
Chevy tsked. The lad must be in dire straits and in a black mood. Damnfool Dom was most definitely not making things better.
The helmet and armor tried getting readings from Garth’s suit and failed, throwing up a hash of confusing looking symbols that made no sense to Chevy, so he commanded the blasted thing to just look.