Tinker's War (The Tinkerer's Daughter Book 2)

by Sedgwick, Jamie

  “Tinker couldn’t come tonight?” Hatch said.

  “No, he hasn’t been feeling well.”

  “Tell him we miss him,” Shel said. “And we hope he gets better soon.”

  I nodded quietly. I didn’t have the heart to tell them Tinker wasn’t going to get better.

  “Did you miss me, gorgeous?” Kale said, brushing up against me. He gave me a mischievous smile and I pushed him away.

  “Stop it. You know you’re like a brother to me.”

  “Like a big, muscular, sexy brother that all your friends are in love with?” he said. Laughter broke out around us.

  “No. More like a very special brother who needs a cork on his fork so he won’t put his own eyes out.”

  The others hooted at that one and Kale turned slightly red. I was impressed with myself. Being the ruffian he was, Kale wasn’t quick to blush. He had a way with the ladies. He always had, ever since he hit puberty at the ripe old age of eleven. I couldn’t help but think that his only interest in me was due to the fact that I always rebuffed his advances. Or perhaps he just did it to get a reaction out of me. Kale was like that. He had a bit of a mean streak.

  Like many of us, Kale had his scars to bear. His entire family had been slain during the Vangar invasion, except for his father who died after a year of hard labor in the Vangar slave mines. Kale had a bright red scar on the side of his face the size of a man’s hand. From a distance, it almost looked like he had been slapped, but up close it was obvious that he had been badly burned. That happened when a Vangar warrior threw a spear at him, but missed and instead impaled the boiler on the back of the steamwagon next to him. Kale bore the scar proudly now, claiming it as proof that the Vangars couldn’t kill him.

  “Every scar makes me stronger,” he told me once. “One day I’ll be nothing but scars, and then you’ll know all the Vangars are dead.” Of course that was but one of many boasts, and I took everything Kale said with a grain of salt.

  “We’ve got some good stuff this time,” Hatch said, gesturing at the table. I glanced over the pile of parts.

  “Well, what do you think?” Kale urged. “Can you use this stuff?”

  I shuffled through the mess, looking for anything useful. “Gears, springs, a few bits of Blackrock steel,” I murmured. “No welded pipe?”

  “Not this time,” Kale said. “The Vangars got there too fast.”

  I arched an eyebrow, wondering just what Kale had done to get those materials. I decided it was better if I didn’t know. “I can’t make weapons without good steel pipe,” I said. “Guns need a barrel.”

  One of the gifts I inherited from my mother is the ability to build things. Or perhaps I just picked it up from Tinker. There’s no magic to it, I just have a knack at putting the pieces together. I’m something of a mechanic, but my abilities are nowhere near Tinker’s, nor my mother’s, who could reach into a machine and feel the parts with her mind.

  “Maybe not a gun then,” Kale said hopefully. “Can’t you come up with something else?”

  I glanced at him and then at the rest of them. If gray hair and wrinkled skin could have made an army, we’d have been in great shape. Kale and I were the only sleepwalkers left under the age of thirty.

  “I’m not an engineer,” I sighed. “I can fix things or build weapons if I have the right parts, but what can I do with a pile of gears and springs?”

  “Maybe Tinker could look at it, see what he thinks?”

  I glanced around the room and saw the disappointed looks on their faces. So much of their hope depended on Tinker. If they knew how bad he was, they might give up altogether. I sighed. “I suppose I could show him, if he’s up to it,” I said. “Put this stuff in a bag and I’ll take it with me.”

  “Excellent!” Kale said. “I know he’ll figure something out.”

  I smiled weakly, already working on the problem in the back of my mind. I knew it would fall to me, because Tinker simply didn’t have the capacity to build things anymore. It had been two years since he’d been in the workshop below our home. That was when he’d finished his last big project, a machine we both referred to as the boneshaker. I wasn’t sure if he even remembered about it anymore.

  The others began moving away from the table, talking in low voices as they scattered around the factory. Our meeting was over. In a few minutes, they would all begin quietly making their way back home. I looked at Kale and then back at the pile of materials, wondering what I would possibly make from it all. It was up to me to make something useful out of that pile of junk and I didn’t have the slightest idea where to start. I had almost nothing to work with.

  A feeling of hopelessness washed over me as I realized how pathetic we were. A handful of revolutionaries with no weapons and no army. Kale and I were the only real fighters in the group. As much as we liked to celebrate our minor victories, I knew we couldn’t ever accomplish anything meaningful. Not like this. Not hiding out in abandoned factories, trying to plan an insurgency with a pile of rusty nuts and bolts. The best we could ever hope to accomplish was to kill a Vangar now and then, or help a few slaves escape from the mines. That wasn’t enough. Our resistance was dying.

  “I know what you’re thinking,” Kale said, stepping closer.

  I arched an eyebrow. “Is that so?”

  “Yes. I can see it on your face. You should remember that any one of them would die for our cause.”

  “They probably will, eventually,” I muttered. “If old age doesn’t get them first.”

  Kale laughed. He started to say something but at that moment a massive explosion went off near the front end of the building. I saw a flash of light and heard the sound of tearing metal. A cloud of dust and smoke poured into the factory, filling the front of the building. Screams filled my ears.

  Someone shouted, “Sentinel!”

  I exchanged a glance with Kale. We had crossed paths with sentinels before. If this truly was a sentinel, we were in a lot of trouble. Sentinels are Vangars, but they aren’t entirely human. Soon after invading our country, the Vangars learned that half-breeds like my mother possessed certain gifts. They had the ability to work magic on both machines and living people. The Vangars used this to their advantage, forcing magic-users to create strange abominations of man and machine.

  They experimented first on victims of the war, creating new arms and legs for them, giving fallen soldiers the ability to continue living and working. These artificial limbs were powered by springs at first, but they quickly evolved. It wasn’t long before the Vangars were looking for ways to improve their subjects. With springs and steam power, they created powerful robotic arms and legs, and integrated weapons into the soldiers’ bodies.

  These experiments went on for years, until the Vangars finally created the ultimate warrior. They called it the sentinel.

  Sentinels stand nine feet tall and have the strength of twenty men. Their armor and helmets protect them from conventional weapons, making them nearly indestructible. The sentinels remain slightly human, but not enough to have any empathy or conscience. If they ever had any, that is. They are Vangars, after all.

  Sentinels are the perfect killing machines. They have very few weaknesses, and even those are deceptive. For instance, the grated metal visor at the front of their helmets appears to be an opening, but the plate is made of specially treated Blackrock steel. It’s nearly impossible to damage, even with a firearm. Most of their armor is similar, and it covers their entire bodies. Against warriors like this, we were helpless.

  Instantly, we were moving. Kale disappeared into the shadows off to my right and I raced back to the metal stairway at the center of the building. I leapt over the banister and flew up the stairs. I landed on the catwalk and paused, scanning the front of the building for a clearer view. At first, I could only see smoke. Then a massive section of the wall gave way with a shrieking sound and the old lumber collapsed inward, crashing across the floor.

  The smoke drifted out through the opening and a sentinel
stepped through, his massive steel boots thudding against the floor as he moved. I heard the unmistakable whirring sound of the gears and springs that powered his suit. My gaze went to the scattergun he wore in a long holster at his side and then to the massive sword strapped to his back. I sized him up, calculating my chances of winning a battle with this creature. I scanned the area for a weapon, wondering what damage I might do with a length of iron pipe or a scrap of board.

  Not much, I thought cynically.

  As the smoke cleared, the sentinel crossed the front of the factory and I saw another dark form appear in the opening behind him. My heart fell as a second sentinel appeared, and then a third. Three sentinels! We were doomed.

  In unison, they raised their scatterguns and started firing indiscriminately into the building. A chorus of screams went up in the smoky darkness below me. I heard the sounds of the other sleepwalkers scattering through the factory, running for their lives. I broke into a run, flying down the catwalk towards the front of the building. I didn’t have a plan at that point. I only knew that I had to distract the sentinels before they killed everyone. I reached the end of the catwalk and without slowing down, I leapt onto the guardrail and plunged forward, hurling myself over the edge.

  The sentinels had spread out at the front of the building. I landed directly behind them, touching down as gracefully as a panther. I rose to my feet, glancing at the backs of their suits, wondering at the technological genius that made all of those gears and springs work together, meshing flesh and bone. I’m good with machines, but not that good. The half-breed engineers who created the sentinels were pure genius. Mad genius.

  I heard the faint clicking and whirring of the machinery under their armor and noted the steady rattle of the steam condenser and boiler that drove it all. The boiler housings on the back of their suits looked like rectangular boxes made of copper-plated steel. Being an obvious vulnerability, the Vangars had gone to great lengths to protect their power source. I doubted even a high-powered rifle could puncture that boiler.

  One of the sentinels noticed me. He turned, swinging his scattergun in my direction. I latched onto his arm and heaved myself upward. I moved gracefully, without hesitation. Before he even realized what I was doing, I had climbed his suit just like a tree. I stood over the Vangar’s helmet, straddling it with one foot on each shoulder. He waved his gun in the air trying to knock me off, but I easily dodged out of reach.

  “Meva!” he called out to his companions. “Help!” At the sound of his voice, the others ceased their firing and turned to see what was the matter. They raised their scatterguns to shoot me, but the sentinel cried out, “Naya, Naya!”

  If they shot at me, they’d probably kill him, too. His armor could protect the Vangar from a weapon like that, but the steel mesh on his helmet was an obvious weakness when it came to scatter-guns. He didn’t want to risk it.

  I smiled grimly. I noticed a latch on the side of his helmet and on a hunch, I pulled the linchpin. I bent my knees and yanked back as hard as I could, thinking that I might have found a way to remove the helmet. It moved slightly, but it was fighting me. I had missed another latch somewhere.

  I stood up and kicked it. Instead of pulling free, the helmet twisted sideways, binding against the rest of the suit, leaving the Vangar inside half-blinded. He dropped his scattergun and reached up to straighten the helmet, but his large clumsy hands broke a piece of copper tubing in the process.

  Hot oil spurted out of the tube, splattering painfully across my arm. I sprang backwards, deftly landing on the ground behind him. As my feet touched down, I heard the warrior inside the suit screaming. The hot oil was working its way through the cracks, burning his skin. I glanced down at my arm and saw a dozen small blisters beginning to form. I almost felt sorry for the Vangar. Almost.

  The other sentinels had their scatterguns trained on me, but they didn’t dare shoot for fear of injuring their companion. Instead, they lowered their weapons and rushed me. I took a cautious step back, making some quick mental calculations, and then dashed for the hole in the wall.

  I leapt through the opening as the heavy kathud of a scattergun went off behind me. I dove for the ground, hoping the stonework foundation might offer some protection. Projectiles riddled the wall above me, tearing holes through the tin siding and hammering into the brick building across the street. The pellets whistled as they ricocheted off the brick wall, sending puffs of dust up in the air.

  The first shot was high. Luckily, I had gone low. I rolled aside as I landed and came to my feet at the corner of the building. Another shot went off, closer this time but still wildly inaccurate. I cursed myself once again for not bringing a weapon. I should have known better.

  Standing at the corner of the building, I took a step back, positioning myself at an angle to the adjacent building across the alleyway. With a burst of speed, I ran straight at it. I had learned the trick from a Tal’mar thief when I was a child. He was the only full-blood Tal’mar I’d ever met, and he made his living picking the pockets of Vangars and other corrupt businessmen of Avenston. Unbeknownst to Tinker, I had followed the Tal’mar around for a while, learning his trade. I helped him occasionally, and for this he gave me trinkets and coins that I used to buy food. More importantly, he taught me certain skills that came in handy later in my life, especially at moments like this.

  When I reached the corner of the adjacent building I leapt up, climbing the wall several steps, and then pushed away, twisting as I flew over the narrow alley. As I hit the outside corner of the factory, I curled my legs up like springs. The tin siding rattled noisily as I rebounded, pushing back toward the first building. Just like that, in two jumps I was within reach of the roof. Or so I thought.

  Out of the corner of my eye, I saw something dark and massive hurtling towards me. I twisted awkwardly in midair trying to avoid the object. As I turned, a massive axe whooshed by my head, missing me by an inch. I contorted my body, struggling to regain my balance, straining to reach the roof of the building. As I reached the arc of my flight, I barely caught the ledge with my fingertips. I instantly knew it wasn’t enough of a handhold to support my weight.

  Using my momentum, I swung myself forward, gliding along the side of the building, trying to bring my feet up to the level of the roof. I swung my legs up over my head, curving my knees back towards the ledge. I vaulted upside down and gently came to rest hanging by my knees with my back against the wall. My hair dangled down beneath me, my arms at my side, fingers searching desperately for a handhold. The hard cobblestone street stretched out below, taunting me.

  I took a deep breath, analyzing my precarious situation. I had spent my momentum. There was nowhere else to go. I bent my torso, trying to reach up to the ledge of the roof. My foothold immediately started to give. I felt myself sliding away from the ledge and I quickly straightened out, pressing my back up to the wall. I turned my head to stare awkwardly at the sentinels as they stepped around the corner. They raised their weapons, training their sights on me. I closed my eyes, measuring, calculating.

  I couldn’t drop. Not that far and not at that angle. I’d never make it to my feet. I’d break my neck in the fall, and that was if I was lucky. If I wasn’t, I’d survive long enough for the sentinels to make me wish I had broken my neck.

  I heard deep taunting laughter from below, and the unmistakable click of a scattergun round being loaded into the chamber.

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