Hometaker: A Steampunk Dystopian Action Adventure (The Great Iron War, Book 6)

by Dean F. Wilson

   Yet before he could fire, he heard another gunshot, and soon after felt the stabbing pain in his leg. His leg buckled, and as he fell to his knee he glanced around to see Lieutenant Myre's head bobbing down behind one the landships.

   Damn it, Myre! he thought. Look before you shoot. He was only glad that his aim was off this time. What cold irony it would be to have been saved by Myre, only to be killed by him moments later.

   It should not have been a surprise, but the Regime soldier Rommond had just sprayed ran to him to help him up. As he did, the general realised that he must have thought the spray was an accident from all the gunfire, and that the bullet that struck their other companion also came from Myre's gun. The disguise was working—perhaps too well. It seemed he was now inadvertently fighting on the wrong side.

   He and his new comrade trotted off into the safety of the green cloud, keeping close together, side by side, watching each other's backs. On many occasions, Rommond considered taking out another pistol, but then his knee would cave, and the Regime soldier would help him up again. The soldier was short, probably more of a kid than all the others, and his hands shook a lot more noticeably too.

   God, the general thought. How did you get caught up in this?

   For a moment, he wondered if he was asking it of himself.

   They continued through the gas, hearing more gunfire in short rattles, and more roaring flame in long gushes. All the sounds set the other soldier's hands shaking even more, until Rommond was forced to pat him on the back for reassurance.

   It'll be all right, he thought. You'll be dead soon.

  22 – BENEATH

  Whistler felt the first glimmers of consciousness, accompanied by the first prickles of pain. His head throbbed. His muscles ached. His ears rang out fiercely. The screeching noise was constant for what seemed like forever, then slowly started to fade. As it did, his vision returned, though it returned blurred.

   Am I dead? he thought to himself, wondering if the dead could think. The second thought he buried: it was about his mother, and it was more painful than the physical sensations running through his body.

   He realised he was staring up at a stone plinth overhead, far up, so high up that he thought it had to be more than six feet. He thought maybe it was the crust of the earth, and he was in the centre. His mind raced with the ideas, dragging the next one over the last, like a burial tomb, until it seemed they tripped over one another, and his mind was a jumble, foggy and distant.

   For a moment he lay there, until he realised he could feel some of the stone beneath him too, a little cold in places, and quite hot in others, where the spears of the sun poked through to sear the surface. Yet he also felt something different beneath his head, like a pillow, and something a little coarser in his hand. He turned his head very slightly and looked down at his hand, only to realise that he was still clutching Jacob's, or rather that Jacob was still holding onto him.

   Then the fog cleared a little, and he remembered the rolling column, and the horrible fall that followed. He felt it again in the pit of his stomach, as if his organs were plummeting. He felt the wind catch his breath, stealing and silencing his cry. He saw the rush of colour, the tumble of ground and sky, the blurring of all things, and Jacob's body dropping like an anchor with him.

   He recalled hitting something, and feeling a stab of pain in his left ankle, before it seemed that he was sliding again, and Jacob was sliding faster. He thought they both reached out with their other hand for something to grip, and both looked up as the column came down upon the new, smaller slope, still intent on crushing them.

   Then they fell again. What little breath he had sucked in was torn once again from his lungs, and the sight became even blurrier, and the sounds became even harder to distinguish from the taunting whistlers of the wind. It seemed like a longer fall now, and he felt and heard the thump of the impact for barely a second before a rush of tingles leapt up through his body, as if to counterbalance the fall. Once it struck his head, the tingles became sparkles in his eyes, little growing stars upon a black field. And then nothing.

   He felt a different kind of tingle now in his feet, and he found he could wiggle his toes. There was a sudden sense of immense relief in that little movement that somewhat frightened him. He did not like the idea that he had even considered that he might have broken them beyond repair. As he glanced down towards his feet, he saw the shattered column that had plunged after them. It had not fared so well.

   He found it difficult to concentrate, and had to bring his attention back to his feet, and then to his hand, and then to the hand he held, before he could focus once again on the smuggler. Jacob! his mind erupted, and the lava of his thoughts caused his headache to worsen.

   It was a struggle to move, to shift in the gravel, feeling every little grain burrow into him, punching and prodding at the bruises, the sand stinging like salt at all the little cuts and grazes. He could feel the tears in his clothes, and the blood, some still wet, some already clotting. He could even see one of his shirt buttons dead in the sand a little to his right, its gossamer entrails all hanging out.

   Again he found his mind distracted, and it was as much of a struggle to refocus as it was to move. He rolled around, still feeling Jacob's coarse fingers in his, still feeling the pillow of the smuggler's torso beneath his head, and still feeling the probing gravel. But the rolling made him think of the column tumbling after them, and he felt once again the churning of his innards, the stealing of his breath, and the blurring of his eyes.

   It was the sudden sharp pain in his left ankle that tore him back to the present. Then it all settled, and he was on his belly, his head and shoulders resting on Jacob's chest. He ushered himself up, still clutching Jacob's hand, as if suddenly he might feel that fall again.

   Then his grip weakened as he saw Jacob's body, still and silent, bruised and bloodied. There was a large gash across his forehead, oozing blood. It ran like a waterfall down the side of his face, gathering in a pool on the ground below.

   He could not see Jacob's chest rising and falling, and he felt a sudden intense guilt that he had been lounging on the smuggler's chest, possibly preventing him from taking a life-saving breath. He realised that Jacob had, for the most part, broken his fall. He could barely contend with the thoughts of what Jacob had broken.

   “Jacob,” he whispered. It was an urgent whisper, and maybe he meant it as a cry. The gravel was in his throat as well, punching and prodding there too.

   There was no response, not even the slightest of twitches. The only thing that moved was the blood, still trickling away.

   Then the urgency of the situation kicked in, and Whistler realised he needed to act fast. He wished he had paid more attention to what Lorelai showed him in the infirmary, or what Mudro had showed him years before.

   He let go of Jacob's hand, which fell back down into the sand with a crack. It was a horrible sound. Whistler tried to tear off some of the straggles of his torn shirt, but was not strong enough to rip them through. He dangled them over the wound on Jacob's forehead, then pressed them down, sapping up the blood, pressing as hard as he could to staunch the blood flow.

   He wondered what Rommond might do in this situation. He remembered his words in the clouds when they chased the Worldwaker. Keep to the mission. He wondered what that meant for them now. Keep to it how? He even questioned for a moment if the general would have left Jacob behind.

   But he would not.

   He tried with all his meagre strength to haul Jacob up, only to collapse down with him with a thud, his ankle stinging and swelling. He panted from the effort, well aware that if the roles had been reversed, the smuggler would have whisked him up with ease. He cursed his boyish arms, with no bumps on his biceps, and wished he could have grown up faster and been of more use.

   In that moment of resignation, when he thought it all was futile, he thought again of Rommond's words, and realised there
was still a way to keep them. Keep to the mission, the general had told them. But the mission had changed. Now, for Whistler, the mission was getting Jacob out of that ravine alive.

   So he stuck to the mission, clambering up again, and crashing down again, and trying it all over, ignoring his own pain, until he found that he was making tiny advancements up the slope, more from the collapsing than the carrying or hauling. It was exhausting work, and he was glad that for now he was in the safety of the shade.

   He only hoped that by the end of it all, if perseverance paid off, he would not find that he had just dragged a body from its grave.

  23 – THE CLEANSING

  Rommond continued his careful prowling through the lime-coloured vapour, sometimes wafting it away with his hand as it grew thick around him. His Regime companion still strolled with him, and his hands still shook violently, especially when there was a sudden sound of gunfire nearby.

   The general could still feel the pain of the bullet in his thigh, just above the knee. He limped, and hated that he limped, not just because it was painful and embarrassing, but because it would make him stand out to anyone watching—or anyone shooting.

   Then they bumped into two fire-flingers, who were making a circle around the battlefield, burning almost anything that moved. The oil tanks on their backs released a foul smell, which mingled with the even fouler smell of the gas and acid, and seemed to seep even through the leather of Rommond's mask. God only knew what it was like for those without a mask. Yet men knew too. Rommond stepped over one of them, one of his own, with the vomit still wet upon his face, the blood still rolling down from his crazed and widened eyes.

   He let the fire-flingers pass, as they were heading away from where the battle still raged, if the gunfire could be trusted. Rommond had a saying for that: You can trust gunfire to give you away. Right now it gave away the position of one of the remaining Resistance fighters.

   He hurried over to the location, followed swiftly, and a little too closely, by the youthful Regime soldier. It was one thing to know someone who had your back; it was quite another to have someone cling to it.

   He saw one of Myre's cadets peeking out from one of the viewports of an upright, but disabled, landship about a hundred yards ahead. He could not remember the cadet's name, and probably never learned it in the first place. He learned the names of people who survived to promotion. Too often he had to forget them soon after.

   The cadet was careful with his shots, which suggested he was low on ammo, or had heard the general's saying before. Hiding inside the landship seemed like a good idea, as he was walled off from the world, well shielded, but clearly the young soldier had not heard another of Rommond's aphorisms: In a battle of fire and gas, make sure you're in the open.

   Rommond saw another two fire-flingers approaching from the side, outside the vision of the viewport, drawn by the rattle of bullets. He charged forward, gritting his teeth through the pain, and his Regime companion galloped after him. The fire-flingers only had to walk, only had to stick the nose of their flamethrowers through another viewport of the landship, only had to pull the trigger.

   The landship's interior lit up like a furnace. The cadet's scream was blood-curdling. It almost drowned out the sounds of his fists bashing against the metal, of his desperate attempt to get outside.

   Rommond slowed to a stop and tried hard not to shake his head. He watched as the fire-flingers passed him by, almost seeing the smile in their eyes through their fogged-up goggles. It took a special kind of person to join the Burning Unit, the kind that not only wanted to watch the world burn, but hear people scream. From the growing trembles of the youth beside him, he clearly was not one of them. His knees knocked together as if he had been shot worse than Rommond.

   There was gunfire far to the right, so Rommond raced towards it once again, but the sounds died off before he even made it close. He had to clamber up the side of a dune, with his fellow gas-gunner supporting him, to find the dead Resistance soldier on the other side.

   It was Lieutenant Myre. He was burned to a crisp. The only identifying mark was the golden coin hanging from his coat pocket. It was lucky all right, because it had survived the fire. But not its owner.

   Damn it, Rommond thought, but no one could damn it any more. This was the bottom of the barrel, as far down as he could go. This was Hell. This was war.

   Well, if this is Hell, then let everybody burn!

   He took up Myre's fallen rifle and checked how many bullets were left. A glint caught his eye, and he saw half a dozen bullets half-buried in the sand near the lieutenant's blackened hand. He never got to load them in time.

   Rommond perched himself on the top of the dune, like a hawk upon an eyrie. The other soldier knelt down with him, laying his gun on the sand. No doubt he was the type who never wanted to hold it in the first place. There was not the hint of residue on the barrel.

   From this vantage point, Rommond could see much of the battlefield, and the toxic cloud that hung over it. His eagle eyes caught the movement of figures in the haze, and his talon fingers caught the trigger of his rifle.

   This time he did not go for the head. The two fire-flingers who had burned the cadet were passing around again, and they turned their backs to Rommond, revealing the oil tanks. He fired just one bullet, which burst through one of the tanks and lit him and his companion ablaze. It took a special kind of person to join the Burning Unit, but they burned and screamed the same.

   Another bullet took out a second patrolling duo, and it seemed that the gas itself caught alight, spreading like wildfire. The whole place lit up, highlighting other patrolling figures inside. There were a lot of them there, and not enough bullets for them all, so Rommond made his careful calculations and fired a ricochet shot off one of the landships which took out half a dozen.

   The Regime soldier to his right shifted in place, surprised. He picked up his gun and backed away, but he never fired it. If he had been any other soldier, he would have fought Rommond. If he had been any other soldier, he would be dead.

   Rommond continued his lightning-fast blasting of the enemy, until all his bullets were spent, and no one moved in the haze below. He knew his own companions were already dead. He had counted them as he stepped over their bodies. He did not count the enemy. He had killed too many.

   With the battlefield cleansed, all that remained was the general and the new recruit.

   Rommond stood up and pulled off his mask, and the Regime soldier panicked. He seemed unsure if he should fire or run, or soil his pants. If he stood there during an earthquake, he would not have shook as much.

   “Put the gun down,” Rommond told him.

   Still the soldier did not know what to do.

   “Put it down, boy.”

   The soldier complied, as if Rommond was his superior. In war, he was.

   “Take off the mask.”

   The soldier pulled off his mask, revealing a teenager's face beneath, maybe fifteen or sixteen, his messy hair pasted to his blemished face with sweat, his eyes wide with terror, his lip trembling with it too.

   Rommond shook his head and sighed. “I'm supposed to kill you, you know.”

   That did not help the soldier's trembles.

   “That's what war is, boy. You've seen it up close. Did you volunteer? Were you conscripted? I noticed you never fired your weapon. This isn't for you, is it? Well, boy, it's not for anyone. It'll ruin you. So, go. Get away from here. Get away from this.”

   “Y-y-you're letting me g-go?” the teenager asked.

   “Yes, boy. Call it one good deed for a hundred bad ones.”

   “And y-you're not gonna shoot me in the head when I t-t-turn around?”

   Rommond humphed. “I've done that before, but no, not this time.”

   The soldier was incredulous. “So you're not the monster they said you were.”

   “Oh, I am,” the general replied. “It tak
es two devils to make a war.”

   The teenager had no words to reply to this, and barely had the wits to turn and run away. He clearly did not know where he was, because he was running west, into Resistance territory, where he would be imprisoned. Yet it was probably wiser than running back to Regime land, where he would be shot for desertion.

   Rommond sat back down on the dune for a moment to rest his limbs. He tore off the Regime coat and rolled up his sleeves. He bit into the wooden casing of the rifle, then dug his fingers into the wound on his leg, until he pulled the bullet out. He took his canister of water from his belt and cleaned the wound. He took the other canister of whiskey and cleaned his soul. He used what remained on his leg as well, before wrapping it tight with a torn strip of his trouser leg. He was not entirely sure if his unkempt uniform bothered him more than the gunshot wound.

   When he had rested for long enough, which was not long at all, he hauled himself up and looked back down to the battlefield, where the gas was clearing. The numerous bodies could be seen a lot clearer now. Sometimes it was easier to fight in the battle than witness the aftermath.

   Then his eyes turned to the carrier, what this fighting was all about. It sat on its side for the entire battle, largely outside the arena, a spectator to it all. He was only glad the fire-flingers had orders not to fling their fire inside that too.

   He hobbled down to the carrier, careful to watch for nearby mines. He spotted the one dangerously close to the hull, now partially covered by sand again. That was dangerous. Sometimes a single grain could set them off.

   He looked at the huge hatch door on the back of the vehicle, and knew he had no other choice. It was time to see what was under the cup. With the carrier on its side, it took a huge amount of force to open it, the kind of force Rommond did not feel he had. Yet with the thought of Brooklyn trapped inside, he found new strength buried behind his heart.