Then again, a walker could flail around madly, its hands a couple of crushing hammers or swirling blades. And since Asian cybersportsmen were often reckless and tried to rush their opponents, our Albion fellows did stand a chance.
“The only thing I hope for is that our general is a smart person,” Tranh confessed to me. “But then, everyone is a general these days, so who knows.”
“I’m not even sure it’s not an AI,” I said, feeling somewhat uneasy after today’s Wakeworld clashes. Was it computers who wanted us people of different worldviews to betray and backstab each other? Was the Baron merely a carefully chosen sacrifice meant to cause a major conflict between us humans?
Were DCs endangered, or were DCs the danger?
Daphne, my sweet, sweet girl. I miss you.
“You know this one time they disqualified a commander because he turned out to be a little kid?” I said.
“Really?” Tranh answered, dragging his wares after him like a skilled rickshaw. “How curious.”
“Yes,” I said. “Thirteen or something. Wasn’t even supposed to be on the Web.”
“I bet his mother was displeased.” Tranh shook his head.
“Oh, I bet his folks were proud of him!” I said. “I would be. Besides, it would make him the star of the entire block. A hero.”
“In my village, the people who really like these artificial dreams are called crazy, obsessed,” Tranh explained. “If he were a child, the mother would whip him hard. Maybe a priest would come to rid him of devils.”
“So the point is,” I said, “even a kid can be a general. It’s mostly about gimmicks. You know. Like mechanical, except tactical gimmicks. Formations, reserves. I won’t pretend I know all about it.”
“Yes,” Tranh said. “I also hope our general is a wise old man.”
Then we fell silent — not just us, everyone around us as well. We were approaching the final crag marked on the map next to the Citadel. From this height, I was sure we’d see the fortress itself.
It was also the end of our hiding, and our approach, as poorly masked as it already was.
Our active Knightwalker boys were in the avant-garde of course — you could arrange a feast behind this wall of steel and flailing clockwork arms and never worry about as much as an arrow landing at your feet. Siege towers dragged behind them, packed with regular yeomen of Albion, each one of them carrying a telescopic dagger-lance and a shoulder crossbow trained to follow their line of sight. We mechanics trailed behind the lines, laden with trinkets and supplies. Technically, each one of us was also able to fight: I had a small wrist-mounted crossbow myself, and a dagger I had no idea how to use. I really hoped it wouldn’t come to this — no matter how good those fabled Assassins were, they were but assorted hunters, cybersportsmen who liked to stab and shoot things for high scores. Us though, we were an army. We were supplied, coordinated, and armed to the teeth.
The Citadel was a massive yellow cube made out of sandstone, with four turrets crowning it, each one with a set of long vertical murder holes covering pretty much every possible line of approach with a sector of fire. A bunch of long cranes of shiny metal, perhaps bronze, was protruding from the center of the stronghold, making the square yellow building look a bit like a massive potted plant. These cranes were no joke though — if any of them was primed, it would tip our siege towers over right on approach, as easily as Archimedes once dealt with triremes.
I tried magnification in my goggles, and I couldn’t see any activity on their scaffolding.
“INFANTREEEE, nock arrows!” The order reached us, amplified by a bronze bullhorn. Those loudspeakers seemed to have become a fad in both realities.
I heard some clatter from the slowly advancing towers — hundreds of men priming their shoulder-mounted crossbows, which was supposed to be done ten to five minutes before the actual attack, so it was a sign. We were about to charge the Citadel.
“You think it’s a trap?” I asked as we went on to quickly assemble the walkers, each one of us following the standard procedure as an automaton, clicking parts together and ticking off items from the mental list.
“Most likely.” Tranh shrugged, his first Knightwalker nearly finished. “It’s far too quiet.”
In the last two weeks, I’d seen combat three times; each time it was a barbarian raiding party, half-naked savages with stone and wooden weapons, sometimes bronze. Cannon fodder. Tranh had been with Albion for a couple of months. He was much more experienced.
“You think we — ” I started.
“Battering ram!” Another command rung above our assorted ranks. “Make way! Battering ram!”
All of a sudden, there was commotion everywhere. Two siege towers crawling right in front of us changed their course and were now parting. Knightwalker boys poured in the gap between them. Mechanics steered their carts and half-assembled walkers away from me in all directions, and I was left alone among the beaten sand.
“Battering ram!” The command sounded over and over again. “Make way! Make way! Battering ram!”
Someone pulled me to the side. This wasn’t easy, me still holding to the Knightwalker I was working on.
“Move, what are you, asleep? Come with me!”
It was Tranh, coming to the rescue. He took me aside and helped me steer my cart and my unfinished walker clear of the beaten path. Right the next moment, a giant machine clattered by with incredible speed, homing in on the Citadel. It resembled an oblong turtle: a panzer with four wheels on each side and a huge steel piston hidden underneath, its springs primed so hard I heard them sing as the machine passed me by.
“What was this thing?” I asked.
“The battering ram,” Tranh said. “What else? We need to break through their gates first.”
“Oh,” I said, and we closed ranks again.
There was a powerful thump, so heavy I felt the ground shake. Then one more thump, and I saw the Knightwalker boys go wild. As the Citadel’s heavy gates splintered and crashed down, the avant-garde of our walking armors poured in. The siege towers closed in next, and in less than a minute, the sandstone fortifications in front of us were crawling with Albion yeomen and chock-full of heavily armored troops. The Citadel was ours.
And yet, the silence in the rear was growing more uneasy with every minute. Something was terribly amiss.
“There was no one in the Citadel, was there?” I asked another mechanic, a fellow I didn’t know, but he merely shrugged.
“Here they come!” Tranh shouted then. “Spiders! Oh no!”
Then I looked up, and I saw them. From so far away, they seemed like a massive flock of birds soaring towards us, human-sized birds with artificial bat-like wings. They were coming in, a couple hundred, no less, and their front was meant to converge on us from the rear, and brush the Citadel only slightly.
“They’re coming at us!” Still looking up, Tranh nervously unfastened his load.
”It’s an ambush!” People were shouting all around us, like it wasn’t obvious from the start, and like their shouting was bound to help us somehow.
Tranh pulled out a few copper parts, of which I knew the basic crossbow module and a couple heavy-duty springs. Working with steady determination, he quickly assembled a portable auto-loading ballista.
“Help me out, friend,” he said.
A loud explosion sounded from the Citadel gates and, much to our horror, the archway collapsed, sealing the fortress with tons of crumbling sandstone, the bulk of our troops locked inside.
“Gunpowder?” I asked. This was impossible. Only the people of Divine Kingdom were supposed to have access to gunpowder in Clockworld.
Tranh simply looked at me, waiting for my help.
And then they were upon us, fighting the fickle wind with awesome precision: a swarm of elite Spider troopers of the Crescent. They were landing everywhere, folding their mechanical wings and rolling through sand, then springing to their feet and dashing into combat. Each Sp
ider was carrying two short curved blades, and a few bombs on their belt — the forbidden gunpowder! — and their fighting skills matched their excellent combat tactics. Screams arose from everywhere, our mechanics and supply troops slaughtered like lambs.
“Pull this lever, I will bring them down!” Tranh pointed me towards the bolt release mechanism. I did what he asked, and the ballista in his hands became alive, revving with huge compressed kinetic energy. It spat the bolts one after the other — twang-twang-twang — and each one of them was powerful enough to impale a Spider.
The lever wasn’t easy to hold, especially when the weapon spent its bolts and was pulling in like crazy. Judging from Tranh’s look — all muscle and nerve — aiming wasn’t easy either. Our effort wasn’t lost on the Spiders though, especially when friendly targets grew scarce. I could see one Spider after another collapsing under our thick blanket of flying bolts, sometimes even two Spiders at once. For a moment, as the bodies towered in front of us, it seemed we were winning. We were going to consume the entire enemy force, the two of us.
Then, one of them got Tranh.
It was but a dark figure — the Spider showed its face for a fraction of a second, armed with a pneumatic dart rifle, Albion issued. It obviously didn’t know how to operate the rifle, and ditched it after a single shot. Still, the Spider fired once, and Tranh dropped his weapon, then collapsed on top of it.
I took the Spider out, frantically unloading my small crossbow into the dark figure. Still, there was no way I could keep firing the heavy ballista on my own. Portable or not, it required a crew of two mechanics.
More and more dark shadows appeared on top of the mound of corpses and broken hardware. They were trying to flank me. Either because they wanted to take me alive (unlikely) or they were simply afraid I could still open fire with my useless ballista. If they only knew even my wrist crossbow was out of ammo now!
I let my end of the ballista drop as well, and pulled out my dagger. I knew I still had a few seconds to make up my mind, and I also knew every second was crucial on the battlefield. Still, I had no idea what to do. Should I charge the nearest Spider? Should I try and slash my way out, attempt to escape while holding their numbers back? Should I try and take a hostage? Or should I just slit my throat and save everyone’s time? It’s not like I had the best fighting skills, being a crafter.
And then, another miracle happened.
As they circled me, slowly closing ranks, I heard the familiar clank-clank-clanking sound of an advancing Knightwalker. And the next moment, a huge metal figure appeared behind the two Spiders facing me, grabbed them both like helpless kittens, and crushed them one against the other, then tossed the two dead ragdolls aside. I turned to look, and indeed, our Knightwalkers were now everywhere, mowing down the Crescent men with ease and mopping up those who tried to get up and fight some more.
“We won,” I said to the boys at the Pit that evening. “Turns out our commanders weren’t stupid. They had left some walkers in the reserve to flank the enemy, you know. In case something went wrong with the Citadel. So it did go wrong, but we were prepared.”
“To Tranh!” they replied in unison. And we drank some ale to honor Tranh and many other fallen mechanics, the people absent from the Pit this evening. Some of them, or so I heard, would have to wait for as long as a week until the next Clockworld respawn was open to them.
“Well, you fellows did hold them Spiders back,” a fellow Apprentice told me in such a thick Irish accent I could only wonder if he was doing it for the money or if it was his regular manner of speaking. “Without that ballista, them walkers in reserve would find nothing but charred remains of our rear. And then they’d torch the rest of our troops locked inside that Citadel.”
“Charred remains,” someone else noted. “Now this is a good question: where does their gunpowder come from? If Crescent Spiders do have firearms, and it was Divine Kingdom who supplied them, then trust me, it’s going to be one hell of a diplomatic mess now.”
“Man,” the Irish Apprentice retorted. “Our little foray is also a diplomatic mess. It wasn’t Assassins who attacked us after all. It was their regular shock troops who did. The Crescent knew about our raid, so they decided to strike first, step in for their Assassins.”
“Still, they only sent Spiders, and not a lot of them,” someone else said.
“Well, they obviously wanted to test us, they never intended to win.”
I hardly took part in the conversation, because despite the questionable battle of the morning, I had something planned for the evening all along. And I did intend to win this time.
Remember the parts I pocketed the night before? Let me show you my list, I’ve got it in my cool clockwork wallet still, among these assorted Tarot cards telling me who I am and how I’m supposed to feel:
Death Head x1
Steel Wire x25
Copper Spike, Poisoned, x1
Assorted Metal Planks, x16
Heavy Spring, x1
“Hey fellows, anyone here for the fight?” the owner of the Pit barged in, a man so fat you wanted to question his motives in picking such an avatar. Was he also fat in the Wakeworld, and proud of it? Was it a camouflage of sorts, meant to earn your trust, or maybe push you away?
“I want to fight,” I said.
“Oh!” He looked me top to bottom. “A hardened battle veteran, eh? Think your dog will also be saved by the walker boys?”
“My dog will take care of itself just fine,” I said.
He nodded and carried his belly onwards.
Me and three other mechanics, we soon waved goodbye to our company. We walked down a small flight of creaky planks found underneath an ale barrel the owner and his servant moved aside as we approached. The hole in the floor smelled of hot gears and rotten cabbage. Some things never change.
This was the Pit itself, not the shabby drinking hole on top of it. This manhole in the floor, and the odors emanating from it, were what brought mechanics and spectators here, the reason why the Pit was known across the whole of Albion. For spectators, it was on to the seats around a big cage guarded by walls of small-meshed metal net. For us mechanics, it was on to one of four tiny rooms at the cage’s corners, each one locked tight, with the only automatic gate opening into the cage, straight into the fighting pit the institution got its name from.
“You all set?” the owner asked me before locking me inside, as if my answer really mattered. Then he was gone, and I was in the small preparation room, alone with my parts and my crafting recipes.
First thing I did was make a simple walking chassis out of my metal planks and the heavy spring. The main problem here was making the chassis walk real slow and steady — I didn’t want my dog to dart past its opponents and crash into walls. I dealt with the problem by redirecting most of the spring’s compressed energy into a pair of small metal sticks twirling on my chassis’ sides — a good way to upturn an enemy device trying to flank yours.
Crafting . . . Basic Walker, x1
Assorted Metal Planks, x8
Heavy Spring, x1
The first horn blared outside — RRAWR! — and I heard growing applause and cheers. The crowd wasn’t big tonight; many of ours had despawned during the botched raid. Still, the fights in the Pit were always heated, and the bets were huge. All of it was supposed to be illegal, see. Illegal things always attract big money.
The next thing I did was combine the chassis with my membrane-guided bronze skull — you remember the Death Head, right? This wasn’t an easy task, as I had to partly disassemble the chassis to attach the head’s control levers to the mechanism. The almighty omnipresent computers rewarded me generously for my efforts. I felt my spring-operated wallet grow heavier even as I worked. This was nothing compared to the main prize though. If only I were to win the main prize!
Crafting . . . Guided Walker, x1
Death Head, x1
Assorted Metal Planks, x8
The construction it
self was rather plain (as you might have guessed from its generic name) and not protected all too well. I sacrificed the defense for mobility and the arithmometer on board. The last bit was a major advantage though. I spent no less than five minutes programming it for every possible situation. The second horn blared right when I was done.
My next step was based on a hunch — a little thing I saw last time one of the dogs was about to win. I don’t say this entire game was rigged, but… well, it was better to come prepared. So I disassembled my “guided walker” one more time and hid a nasty surprise within, wired up to the same arithmometer and meant to switch on between the fights, sort of like a car-jacking alarm.
This time, the system registered a new invention, upgraded my Inventor card to the next level, rewarded me with some bitpounds, and asked me to think of a name for the new thing.
“Rabid Dog,” I said, smirking at the irony.
Crafting . . . Rabid Dog, x1
Guided Walker, x1
Copper spike, Poisoned, x1
And then, my creation was clicking at my feet, ready for a fight, bristling with simple Archimedean levers. It was basic enough, in terms of the number of parts, to pass the qualification check of the referee, and intricate enough to present my opponents with something they never expected to meet (or so I hoped): a dog that fights using its brain and not brute force or pumped-up mobility.
The horn blared for the third time, and the iron gate leading to the cage opened just so my creation could scuttle outside. They let me out the same way I entered, to this square amphitheater of a hundred long benches, most of which were occupied despite the casualties we suffered this morning.
I took a seat, watching three other mechanics emerge from their black boxes where each of them assembled their own dog for this evening’s fight. One of these fellows looked plain, another anxious. These were weak; I had no doubt their dogs were bound to lose. The third one looked smug and self-assured. A bad sign. If the game was rigged, as many people suggested, this fellow was the one who paid the referee. The cheating was a part of the entire affair though.
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