MECH

by Tim Marquitz

  “The demon is invulnerable,” said Lucius, seeing the same thing. “Like Achilles of the Myrmidons.”

  Octavius looked through the ruin of scattered warbands, seeing a pellucid white shimmer of light at the edge of the forest where the druids worked their sorcery.

  “No,” he said, gripping his sword tightly. “It’s not.”

  With no shields, this was no normal battle drill. Paulinus and Agricola formed the tip of the wedge, slathered in salt water and blood. Octavius, Tiberius and Cato flanked them, along with two hundred men arrayed in the cuneum formate, the line-breaking wedge.

  Cato held the eagle aloft, its former bearer crushed beneath the demon’s towering form. It grappled with the Roman war-engines of Ordo Talos, a grinding, howling brawl that crashed back and forth across the churned sand.

  “What certainty do you have in this?” shouted Paulinus over the din of the warring gods.

  “Enough to wager our lives,” replied Octavius.

  “Does Fortuna favor you, soldier?”

  “I yet live.”

  “I shall take that in the affirmative,” said Paulinus.

  “Fortuna and the Dea Tacita favor him, sire,” said Cato. “A Berber cut him four times and yet he lived. He earned his cognomen of Rabaa in Mauretania.”

  “Mauretania? You and I have come far, soldier.”

  “And I would have it still further,” said Octavius.

  Paulinus nodded and turned to Cato, who lifted the eagle high. A stray shaft of light caught it and the wings glittered like the sun over the Palatine Hill.

  “Onwards!” shouted Paulinus.

  They set off at a fast walk, the mile-eating pace known to all legionaries, one a trained soldier could maintain for hours if necessary. At first, the Ordovice all but ignored them, too focused on the battling giants.

  That changed as the first of tribesmen began to die.

  Paulinus and Agricola fought with the strokes of men trained by the finest swordmasters of Rome. Clean kills, efficient. Worthy of immortalization in art and verse.

  Octavius, Cato, and Tiberius fought like the low-born soldiers they were. Techniques learned in the gutters and streets of conquered provinces, killing strikes that no poet would name or hero countenance.

  He stabbed a warrior through the belly, hauling out the loops of his intestines with the outstroke. He shouldered the next warrior, stabbing down through his mouth as he fell. Another took his dagger through the eye. The blade was torn from his grip. He left it jammed in the warrior’s skull.

  Cato fought left-handed, equally adept with his off-hand. He held the eagle tight to his body and not even the gods themselves could have parted him from its haft. Tiberius killed with bellowing howls of a lean and hungry wolf.

  They were the tip of the wedge, the killing thrust into the heart of the enemy. The tribesmen were scattered and not even the ululating blasts of carnyx horns seemed to rally them. This was fighting Octavius relished, head down, sword arm stabbing. Rending flesh. He was bloody to the shoulder, barging and stamping. Blades cut him, spittle and curses sprayed him. He saw nothing but painted meat and bloodied bone, enemies of Rome to hew like dead wood before the pioneer’s saw.

  Heaving flesh and sinew strained and heaved. Romans fell to the whirling swords and axes of the Ordovice, for they were defending their land and no other cause gave a man reason to fight as hard.

  The dying was done by Romans and tribesmen alike, but legion discipline and stamina now proved their worth. Paulinus and his warriors pushed the Ordovice back over piles of their dead. Octavius stamped over the bleeding, screaming bodies, not even gracing them with a killing thrust.

  Octavius saw the line of druids at the edge of the forest, their robes gleaming silver in the ill-starred moonlight. Their hands moved in graceful arcs, words of power spilling from their lips as they channelled savage, ancient power.

  The ground shook with the clash of the titans; bellowing roars, snapping timbers and screeching metal. Gigantic bellows within the Roman war-engines vented clouds of infernal steam. The scent of coal-smoke and brimstone set the air afire with a burning reek.

  Packs of painted tribesmen streamed from the forest behind the druids. They howled in a language that profaned every sense. The charging wedge of Romans met them head on.

  Octavius picked his target, a broad-shouldered brute with black teeth, wild eyes and lank hair corded with beads and leaves. A true savage. He swung his axe like a woodsman, and Octavius threw himself forward. The vast axe head passed over him, and he rolled, stabbing up into the man’s groin.

  His gladius sank to the hilt into the gap of his pelvic girdle. Octavius cranked the blade to open the wound, hewing down to the knee and paring his foeman’s inner thigh to the bone. The tribesman’s severed cock tore loose, and his scream was hideous. Octavius dragged the gladius free, pushing past the dying man to the pale boulders at the edge of the forest.

  “Kill them all!” he yelled, hurling himself at the nearest druid. The man was oblivious to him, eyes rolled back in their sockets and blind to the approaching killers.

  Octavius struck two-handed, putting every ounce of fury behind the blow. The gladius entered the druid’s throat on an upward angle, ripping through his jaw and erupting from the back of his skull. Octavius wrenched the blade, letting the man’s falling weight lever the vault of his skull open.

  He turned to see the last of the druids falling, hacked down by the vengeful Romans. Stabbed and cut like discarded butcher meat, their robes no longer shone silver, instead rendered oil black with blood in the moonlight.

  The breath heaved in his lungs, the lunatic joy of a defeated enemy filling his limbs with surging power. He tasted blood and drew in great lungfuls of cold, clear air. Victory was an elixir that tasted just as sweet the hundredth time, its capricious glory fleeting, and ever sought by men of war.

  “Roma locuta est!” he shouted into the sky.

  Rome has spoken!

  The demon staggered, and the Roman war-engines were swift to capitalize on its weakness. The vast gladius speared into its belly and tore upwards. A cascade of slaughtered beasts rained into the sea. Treacherous waters crashed against the Roman giants, but they were well braced and bore the waves without flinching. A fist of interlocked shields beat the demon’s flank and another rain of beast and bone tumbled loose.

  But the demon yet had life left to it.

  A mighty fist of oaken flesh slammed the Roman titan bearing the buckled spear, and a pivotal windlass mechanism with a complex series of gears and pulleys controlling its arm, ripped clear of its moorings.

  Torsion-wound ropes and metal spars kept under permanent tension shattered, tearing through the war-engine’s interior like threshing blades to kill scores of legionary crew.

  The limb sank to the war-engine’s side, and it slumped as the crew frantically sought to step back. Scenting blood, the demon crashed its vast bulk into the war-engine. Its upper structure cracked, mighty timbers within snapping like tinder.

  It toppled slowly, as though the fates might yet spare it, but neither man nor god could have kept it upright. Its upper body fell in a cascade of splintered timbers, whipping ropes, broken shields, and screaming men. The impact sent a tidal wave surging over Mona Insulis and the mainland.

  The second war-engine was swift to avenge its fallen Ordo Talos brother, driving its mighty gladius through the demon’s belly. More lightning forked from the sky in flickering traceries of burning light. The gladius struck again, this time at the tattooed mortal blazing at the demon’s heart.

  The blade plunged into the demon’s chest cavity and split the tribesmen asunder. Its monstrous timber skeleton shattered, and the living blood of the demon spilled from its broken body. More with each passing second as the Roman war-engine worked its blade like the handle of a water pump.

  The demon sank to its knees, and its killer took the gladius in a two-handed grip. It lifted the vast weapon and brought the blade down on the sagging
head of the demon.

  The blade clove it apart, smashing the wood and pulverizing the life within. It tore onwards, down through the demon’s chest and stomach. Writhing timber split and all that was alive within the wicker giant poured from its doomed body in a flood of living entrails.

  It came apart as though every shred of connective tissue was instantly undone. A rain of heartwood, beasts, and bloodied ropes fell to the ocean. The Roman engine’s war horn brayed, drowning the mourning thunder with its triumph.

  In moments, all that remained of the demon was a froth of gore and bloated bodies afloat in the sea.

  Soon, even that was washed away.

  Paulinus watched the last of the Ordovice tribesmen executed from his vantage point at the edge of the forest. Their throats were being cut and their bodies tossed onto pyres built from the felled oak groves of the druids.

  “They do not beg,” said Agricola. “I commend them for that, at least.”

  Paulinus nodded, watching the soldiers of Ordo Talos working to salvage the remains of the downed giant from the strait. A mass of boats and chain-moored pontoons lifted enormous lengths of planed timber and cold-forged iron from the water.

  “Will it march again?” asked Agricola, addressing his question to the third man standing with them.

  “It will,” said Domitus Viridius Maximian, a tightly-wound warrior with a mind that spiraled in dozens of directions at once. As befitted his rank, he wore the armor of a legion commander, but Paulinus had yet to see him draw a sword.

  “Where next does Ordo Talos march?” he asked.

  “We are to cross the sea to Hibernia to face an ancient threat,” said Maximian, looking up from a vellum map of Britannia and its surrounding isles.

  “What ancient threat?” asked Agricola.

  “Balor of the Evil Eye,” said Maximian.

  Paulinus blanched. “The king of the Fomorians? He rises?”

  “So the divinations of the Haruspex say,” said Maximian, folding the map and tucking it in his tunic. “They say he will lead his Fomorian devils from the ocean depths once again.”

  “Much glory would be won in such a war,” said Agricola.

  Maximian shook his head. “Not for the likes of you, Gnaeus Julius Agricola. I intend no insult, but only the Ordo Talos can face the armies of Balor with any hope of victory. Besides, have you not another war to fight?”

  Maximian gave a short bow to Paulinus and said, “General, by your leave, I have much to attend to, and time is short if we are to sail to Hibernia before our enemy arises.”

  “Of course,” said Paulinus. “Gratitude for your timely arrival. May the gods grant you their blessing.”

  Maximian grinned and marched towards the boat awaiting him at the shoreline. Paulinus watched him go, dearly wishing he might have counted upon the strength of Ordo Talos.

  “What war does Maximian speak of?” asked Agricola.

  Paulinus knelt to lift a handful of sand from the beach before letting it fall through his fingers. He wiped his palm and pulled a scroll from his belt.

  “This campaign far from Britannia’s heartland has allowed the tribes to think us absent permanently.”

  “Rebellion?”

  Paulinus nodded. “A faithless queen of the Iceni and her Trinovante allies have sacked Camulodunum and threaten a march on Londinium.”

  “Does this queen have a name?” asked Agricola.

  Paulinus nodded, consulting the scroll.

  “She does,” he said. “They call her Boudica.”

  Thank you for your pledges! This book wouldn’t have been possible without your support.

  BATTLEMECH CENTURIONS

  Sarah LeBlanc from Aphonic Sarah, Warren Kress, Joe “Joerocks1981” Martin, Edea Baldwin, Joe Kontor, Dylan ArkhantheBlack Murphy, Tad Ottman (@UncleT_Bag), Ryan Lawler, J. Scott McClellan, Joseph S. Fleischman, Timothy Ball, Matthew Summers - Centurion Mech Pilot and Defender of Humanity, battlegrip.com, James Mason Cox, Michael Cobb (lifelong fan of giant robots), Christian Lindke, Mechagamera, Kerry aka Troube, Anthony Cavanaugh, Jeremy Brett, Ammon, Bryan K Borgman (aka Stratos), Keith West (Future Potentate of the Solar System), Steven Callen, Steven M Irwin, Andrew Candia, Jason Grace, Anders M. Ytterdahl, Dennis Kikkenborg Pedersen, Scott Maynard, Shawn T. King, Jay Thomason, Seth Skorkowsky, LJ Heydorn, Paul Genesse, Ryan Courtney, Thanks John!, Allen Wan, This is for all the Mecha lovers!, Jeffrey Kern, Kevin Lozandier, Dana Cameron!, Eric W Wei, Daniel Tran and the members of Australia-New Zealand Tactical Community (ATC), C. B. Ash, Martin Helsdon, Anthony Higgs, kckk Family, Thank you Mark Penniston, J.T. Evans, Matt James, a Junkie!, Steve McHugh, Jonathan Harris (Bring on the Kaiju), David Barnes (Because giant robots beating on each other is extremely entertaining), David & Julie Humphrey, Lark Cunningham, Victor J. Rasky Jr., E. Torres says hi!, Robert D. Stewart, Tarron “Wereman” Wheeler, Eric Munson, Reggie Young (self-appointed prophet of Peter Clines), Deborah Rose (because chicks dig giant robots), Martin Kern, Ron Brooks, Kane Gilmour, Robert Viola, Mihir Wanchoo, Jeremiah B. (a fan of Good and Wholesome Awesomeness), N.B. Dodge

  BATTLEMECH PANZERS

  Jason M. Hough, Thomas Clews, Samuel L. Sharps, Thanks for backing us Dale Wood, Jim “The Destroyer” Bellmore, C.T. Phipps (Author of The Rules of Supervillainy and Esoterrorism), Matthew J. Rogers, Kyle & Amy Spencer, Richard (Brimstone Prime) Taylor, Gareth Bradshaw, Ven & Nikki Sio, Ian Chung, For a wonderful “staycation” travel the world(s) in a book—Gail E. Hofmar, David “Daristar” Taue, Steven Mentzel, Seth Lee Straughan aka Trashman, Lawrence Ebuen: just a thank you.:), Anonymous, Randall Beem, Michael “SeattleVlad” Brunk, Joe Anders, Sam Smith Jr, Tarus L Latacki Jr, Chris Roby, C. Corbin Talley, Andrew Carrick, E. Myers, Anonymous, D. ‘TheJaxx’ Wyble, Kenny Soward, Glenn Mochon, Brett L., Mark Blanchard, To my friend Bowdog, Ian Jobe, Michelle F. Evans, WolfDawg, Gina & Jonathan Freed, Katie R., Shane Smith, Ethan R Edwards, M Findley

  BATTLEMECH OMEGAS

  Sue Nowakowski, I hope I don’t get killed off in this one – Weck, Jeff “Spank” Hanoff, Chris Callicoat, Stan Bundy (Basara549), Thank you to Stephen for supporting this awesome project!, Chad Bowden, John Idlor, Tracey AKA Trinitytwo at The Qwillery, Brian Oma Thomas, Christopher Irvin, Revek, George Sarantopoulos, Bernard Chan, Joseph Elyas, Gabe Zuehlsdorf, Marjorie-Ann Garza, Saz, Melissa Bassett, Brian “Toby” Toberman, Anthony Liell, Rachel Sasseen, David “Kong” Heiligmann, James Phillips, GreatGooglyMoogly, Arne Fischmann, Ken “Merlyn” Mencher, Paul y cod asyn Jarman, Gwenaël, Ian Alexander Casey, Scott Macauley, Jason Rogers, Greg Jayson, Mark Teppo, C. Prezel

  PLUSH PILOTS

  SontaranPR, Sally Novak Janin, Also backed by: Michael K Elliott, Yezar, Ed Cammarota, Anton Strout

  MECHA COMMANDERS

  Caitlin Rayadinh, Auraboron, Rissa, Damon and Jenna Bratcher, Michelle Palmer, R.B. Wood, Jaime O. Mayer, Michael Leaich, Nathan Black, I dig giant robots. We dig giant robots. Hopefully you’ll dig giant robots too!—Jack Gibbs, James Conason, Missy Katano, In Memory of Peggy Vrabel, Michael & Anne Prucha, Special thanks to Yankton D. Robins, Master of Walnut Creek, William Huggins, Dee “Can someone help me?” Haddrill, Carl Smith, Congratulations to all of the authors!

  TIM MARQUITZ

  tmarquitz.com

  MELANIE R. MEADORS

  melaniermeadors.com

  MATT FORBECK

  forbeck.com

  PETER CLINES

  peterclines.com

  RAMEZ NAAM

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  JASON M. HOUGH

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  JAMES SWALLOW

  jmswallow.livejournal.com

  KEVIN J. ANDERSON

  wordfire.com

  DAVID BOOP

  authorpage.com/davidboop

  JODY LYNN NYE

  jodynye.net

  C.L. WERNER

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  J.C. KOCH

  ginikoch.com

  SHAWN SPEAKMAN

  shawnspeakman.com

&n
bsp; M. L. BRENNAN

  mlbrennan.com

  JAMES R. TUCK

  jamesrtuck.com/index.html

  PAUL GENESSE

  paulgenesse.com

  PATRICK M. TRACY

  pmtracy.com

  ANTON STROUT

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  JENNIFER BROZEK

  jenniferbrozek.com

  STEVE DIAMOND

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  KANE GILMOUR

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  SCOTT SIGLER

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  MALLORY REAVES

  On Twitter @pwncessmallory

  JEFF SOMERS

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  MARSHEILA ROCKWELL

  marsheilarockwell.com

  JEFFREY J. MARIOTTE

  www.jeffmariotte.com

  MARTHA WELLS

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  JEREMY ROBINSON

  bewareofmonsters.com

  MARK TEPPO

  markteppo.com

  GRAHAM MCNEILL

  graham-mcneill.com