by Jake Bible
“Yeah, I guess so,” Gibbons responded. “He also wasn’t as upset as I thought he’d be when we saw his flesh mech lying in a heap of bits and pieces after Paige fought off those tweener hounds.”
“He’s got another flesh mech,” Clay said. “Maybe two or three more.”
“Why?” Gibbons asked.
“For raids and maybe for war,” Clay said. “He was awfully disgusted by the Perditions and those townsfolk. Maybe he intended to do something about them so they’d leave him alone to do the sick work he does.”
“Could be,” Gibbons said. “Might explain why the folks in charge were eager for our mech. Too bad they picked a fight with us before using it to fight the Barneses. If that was their aim.”
“We stepped into another damned range war,” Clay said. “We really need to stop doing that.”
“Amen,” Gibbons said.
“It’s probably not going to happen,” Clay admitted.
“True,” Gibbons agreed. “Nothing but damn range wars on this continent.”
“Gonna have to leave the continent,” Clay said.
“Is that the goal?” Gibbons asked.
“Not sure,” Clay replied. “We’ll find out when we reach the coordinates.”
“If we reach the coordinates,” Gibbons added.
“Yeah, that’s about what it’s feeling like lately,” Clay said.
“Lately?” Gibbons chuckled in his monotone. “I think our entire journey has been one big if, pal. One giant, stinking pile of if.”
Clay didn’t respond, just let the subject drop as he piloted the mech across the prairie to the shape of the Vernacht which luckily was still standing as tall as it could over the swaying grasses.
It took them longer than it needed to approach the Vernacht. Clay wanted to take it slow and make sure there wasn’t an ambush lying in wait. But when they finally reached the construction mech, they saw that all that was lying there was the far-off mound of rotting flesh mech and the putrefying bodies of the tweener hounds.
“You have a list of what we need?” Clay asked Gibbons as he parked the mech and unstrapped from the pilot’s seat. “This has to go fast and efficiently so we can get the hell out of here before any more weirdness gets dropped on us.”
“I’ve got a list of the bare essentials,” Gibbons said. “We work on this crap then we start in on the luxuries.”
“Luxuries,” Clay scoffed. “That better not include the toilet.”
“It doesn’t,” Gibbons said. “No way I want you crapping in my mech.”
“Your mech, eh?” Clay replied.
“You know what I mean,” Gibbons said and climbed over the lip of the cockpit to the waiting hand. “Alright, send me over. I have a good idea of where to find everything since I was stuck in the Vernacht’s system for a spell.”
Clay didn’t lower the hand, just sent it across the space between mechs. With the Vernacht up on its feet, it was much easier to coordinate movement back and forth. One arm of the battle mech basically became a bridge to the main deck while the other arm was a bridge to the decks below.
Clay set the battle mech’s stabilizers and followed Gibbons across to the Vernacht.
It took them an hour to gather the basic parts and get them back to the battle mech. It was another hour before they had finished testing the parts to make sure they were compatible. A third hour to run some trials on each part to make sure they were not only compatible, but would hold up to the stress that would be needed if they were going to handle life out in the open lands and the conflicts that the battle mech would eventually encounter.
“We’re losing daylight,” Clay said.
“I can see fine,” Gibbons said.
“You got dead man’s eyes,” Clay said. “I’m sure you can see just fine.”
“No need to get bigoted on me,” Gibbons said. “I can’t help who I am now.”
“When are we going to fix that?” Clay asked. “How soon can we transfer you back to your proper drives?”
“Once we get the basic repairs done,” Gibbons said. “That should give all the systems enough stability to handle the awesome power of Gibbons.”
“Talk in the third person again, and I’ll short circuit that dead brain of yours and leave you to rot with the tweeners,” Clay said.
“Someone is a pissy grump and needs to take a break,” Gibbons said. “How about I keep working on this console while you sit your ass down on some of that fine prairie dirt and eat a bite or two?”
Clay began to argue, but his stomach growled so loud that he couldn’t help but smile and nod.
“Fine,” he said. “I’ll go eat more oh so flippin’ delicious salted meat and drink more refreshing warm water. Then it’s your turn to eat and rest.”
“Nothing for me to eat,” Gibbons said.
“What?” Clay exclaimed and dug through the food bags Gibbons had brought onto the mech. Salted meat only. Plenty of salted meat. “Where’s the stinky stuff? Why didn’t you pack some of that rotten bison?”
“Didn’t think I’d need it,” Gibbons said. “I’m ditching this meat bag and getting back to my comfy circuits soon. No need to waste time and feed this pile of yuck.”
“There is if you want the pile of yuck to run right,” Clay said. “Dammit, Gibbons, you can’t make decisions like that when you don’t know a damn thing about having a flesh and bone body. That was just stupid.”
“Maybe, but my stupid column is still shorter than yours,” Gibbons replied.
“I don’t care,” Clay said and climbed out of the cockpit with a couple handfuls of salted meat stuffed into his pockets and a water skin over his shoulder. “I’m going to take my break. Do as much as you can before I get back because it’ll be your break next even if you don’t have any food to eat. Rest will do you some good.”
“You ain’t my mom,” Gibbons said.
Clay laughed. “How long have you been waiting to say that?”
“I have no idea,” Gibbons said. “I don’t think I ever have really wanted to, but now I get to since I have a body.”
“I don’t want to know what birthed that body of yours,” Clay said.
He climbed across the extended mech arm and found the steps down to the Vernacht’s lower decks. Deck by deck, he made it to a ladder he could kick loose and drop to the ground. It slid easily in its tracks and the bottom landed with a thump in the soft earth below.
Clay was actually quite happy to be standing on the ground once again despite the smell of rot wafting his way every time the breeze shifted in the Vernacht’s direction from the tweener hounds and fallen flesh mech.
He sat down cross-legged, pulled out a loose handkerchief and emptied his pockets of the salted meat onto it. He longed for something fresh, but he took what he got. Maybe, if they had time, he’d hunt for some dandelion greens or sweetgrass before they were on their way to wherever they would be on their way to.
The past few days whirled around in Clay’s mind, and he tried to make sense of them as he chewed slowly on the meat. Chewing slowly was the only way to eat salted meat. Chew too fast and you risked pulling something in your jaw.
The folks in charge back at Perdition Plains had stated they wanted his mech. They didn’t want him specifically, but they wanted his mech. They needed it to fight off the Barneses and their flesh mech. Or mechs? Clay still wasn’t sure.
Or did the folks in charge need his mech not to fight off the Barneses’ flesh mech so much as to fight against it? There was a difference, Clay knew. If the Barneses were immortal, mechanically or whatever, then wouldn’t the Perditions and the townsfolk want a piece of that forever action?
No, that didn’t make sense. The Perditions and the townsfolk were lazaroti. As long as they kept eating what they needed to eat, then they’d live for a very long time. Or would they?
Clay had heard of lazaroti, but never come across their like before. They weren’t rightly immortal. They did live for decades, maybe even centuries, but the image of the Perd
ition siblings sitting in a row, their cheeks sunken in, their skin so sickly they could have been corpses set in chairs, flashed across Clay’s brain, and he thought he had the answer.
The folks in charge wanted new bodies. Morley had the bodies they wanted. He also had a way to transfer their consciousnesses from their nearly desiccated husks into the new bodies.
The Reaper chips.
Clay sighed and ate more salted meat. He didn’t want to think of the Reaper chips. He didn’t want to think of what lay ahead when he and Gibbons finally made it to the coordinates logged into the battle mech. Would that be the end? Would that be where he found answers to a life made up of nothing but questions?
He laughed to himself. He doubted he’d ever get any answers. He was as much a vessel as the mech was. He’d come to terms with his purpose a long ways back.
Clay shifted and looked over his shoulder at the Vernacht. Far above him, he heard Gibbons curse, but he ignored the swearing and studied the construction mech. There was more than enough metal there, and parts beyond parts, that Holcomb could have surely built two, if not three mechs out of the Vernacht and created some decent battle mechs.
Yeah, sure, they wouldn’t be on par with Clay’s, but they would have held up against the flesh mech.
Something occurred to Clay.
“Hey, Gibbons?” Clay asked, happy to have a regular com back in his ear instead of that small chunk of flesh Paige had made him wear. “How’d you get rockets for the mech?”
“What? Oh, Barnes had them in one of the side caves,” Gibbons said. “He’d found a downed mech a while back and parted it out. Kept the ammunition separate, which was smart, but let me have it when I came to rescue your ass.”
“Ammo for the belt guns, too?” Clay asked.
“Belt guns too,” Gibbons said. “But that is limited. Very limited. Five minutes’ worth. Maybe. Don’t matter none, since we have topped off power cells. That’ll keep the plasma cannons firing for a long while. Anything comes at us and it’ll regret it.”
That didn’t sit right. Clay grumbled then got up and started pacing.
“Did you use all of the rockets?” Clay asked.
“Hell no,” Gibbons replied. “There are plenty more back in that side cave.”
“Damn,” Clay said. “That ain’t good.”
“You want to tell me why not?” Gibbons asked.
“That’s too many rockets,” Clay said. “How did the old guy come across that much armaments out here in the Midlands? Not to mention the Reaper chips. Where the hell did he find all those Reaper chips?”
“Uh, excuse me, what?” Gibbons asked, nearly choking on the words. “What the hell are you talking about? You didn’t mention Reaper chips! Clay, some old mad man shows you Reaper chips you best be telling me pronto, pal!”
“I know, I know, sorry,” Clay apologized. “But forget that for now, will ya? The issue is where did he get the ammunition and where did he get the Reaper chips.”
“If the guy isn’t totally insane and told you some truth, then he’s had plenty of time all these years to collect that stuff,” Gibbons said.
“But from where?” Clay asked. “You don’t find rockets lying around. Not even during the Bloody Conflict. That stuff gets locked down. And you sure as hell never, I mean never, just find Reaper chips. Not the specialized ones. Ones meant for mech pilots like the kind that started all those centuries ago.”
Gibbons didn’t respond.
“Are you listening to what I am saying?” Clay snapped.
“I’m listening,” Gibbons sighed. “This means we’re going back, doesn’t it?”
“No, it doesn’t mean that at all,” Clay replied, a little too quickly. A couple seconds went by and, “Yes, it means we’re going back. This is too much of a coincidence, Gibbons. I need some answers before we leave this place.”
“I knew it,” Gibbons said, sighing louder and longer. It sounded like a tire slowly going flat. “It’s going to have to be in the morning. We are finishing these repairs first, you hear me?”
“I hear you,” Clay said. “If we are going back, then I’d rather have a fully functional mech under me. One that isn’t filled with dead flesh and yuck.”
“You and me both, pal,” Gibbons said.
Twenty-Eight
They worked long after dark. Clay rigged up some floodlights from across the Vernacht, and he and Gibbons kept at the repairs until neither of them could move their hands. Their fingers were gnarled and cramped and both were dead on their feet, Gibbons considerably more than Clay. But Gibbons had a head start on that state of being.
“We need to keep a watch,” Clay said sleepily as he leaned his back against the wall of the cockpit. He was seated on the floor, too tired to crawl up into the pilot’s seat. “Or set the scanners to let us know if anything comes creeping up in the night.”
“I’ll take first watch,” Gibbons said. “I can keep my eyes open longer than you can.”
“No you can’t,” Clay said. “You told me that your body has two settings: off and on. What’s going to happen is I’ll fall asleep and then your eyes will shut and that will be that.”
“I’ll set the scanners,” Gibbons said.
“You do that,” Clay replied. “Set them loud. I want full klaxons going off if anything of substance gets within two hundred meters of us.”
“Full klaxons?” Gibbons asked. “That’s pretty damn loud, pal.”
“Says the guy that’s had ears for only a couple of days,” Clay replied. “Trust me, if you end up in a dead sleep, which is all your body can do, you need klaxons at full to wake up ready to fight.”
“Who’s coming at us?” Gibbons asked. “Morley is busy putting your girlfriend back together, the folks in charge have to be out of tweener hounds, and we’re fixing the one mech they tried to steal with parts from the other mech they owned. Is there a third party coming to kick our ass we don’t know about?”
“It’s the Midlands,” Clay said.
“Good point,” Gibbons conceded quickly. “Klaxons to full, it is.”
Gibbons walked about the cockpit in that automaton body, looking like a stilted corpse, and switched off all the lights. The space was plunged into pure darkness. There was no sign of a moon in the sky, the ever-present cloud cover thicker than it had been for days. It made the air almost as thick, stifling despite the time of year.
“Might be another storm heading this way,” Gibbons said as he sat down in the pilot’s seat and manipulated the mech’s arms back to its sides so the way from the Vernacht didn’t exist anymore. No point in giving any possible visitors a clear way to get to the cockpit.
“Probably,” Clay said. “Good thing we got most of our work done. Managing repairs in the rain ain’t no fun, trust me.”
“I imagine they ain’t,” Gibbons replied. After a while, he said, “You want the pilot’s seat to sleep in?”
“I’m good,” Clay said and curled up on the floor.
He didn’t bother finding a blanket or wadding his vest up under his head for a pillow. He just tucked his arm under his cheek and took a deep breath, letting the day disappear as he exhaled slowly.
Sleep gave him a dropkick to the head and he was out.
The klaxons gave him a sucker punch to the gut when they went off, followed closely by a soul-shaking rumble of thunder directly overhead. Clay was no longer out, but fully back in.
Clay bolted upright, and Gibbons jumped from the pilot’s seat, staggering across the cockpit to smash headfirst into the hatch. He ricocheted and fell back into the pilot’s seat, his dead eyes so wide, Clay was afraid he’d tear skin.
“Make them stop!” Gibbons screamed, his hands over his ears.
Clay scrambled to the controls and cut the klaxons. The thunder crashed again and Gibbons squeaked, but he pulled his hands away from his ears.
Clay fired up the scanner display and stared at what he saw.
“Move,” he ordered Gibbons.
&nb
sp; The storm above them broke wide open and a downpour of fat, violent rain assaulted the mech.
“Why? What’s happening?” Gibbons asked, glancing at the hatch and the quickly raging storm.
“Look,” Clay said and pointed to the scanners.
Gibbons did and his jaw dropped. “That thing is huge? What the hell is it?”
“How the hell should I know?” Clay asked. “It’s big, whatever it is. Bigger than us, bigger than the Vernacht.”
“Hold on,” Gibbons said and squinted at the scanner readings. “Ugh. These eyes are shit. I miss being in the mech’s systems.”
“What do you see?” Clay asked.
“These,” Gibbons said and pointed at the huge blob on the scanners. There were hundreds of tiny dots in front of the blob. Hundreds of them, all arranged in a loose wedge with the point leading the blob. “What do you make of those?”
“No damn idea,” Clay said. “Troops? Is this an army coming at us?”
“Not big enough,” Gibbons said.
“It’s pretty damn big,” Clay replied.
“Not army big,” Gibbons argued. “It’s too dense, also. It’s a structure of some sort. I’d say a mech, but it isn’t moving like a mech.”
“Too big to be a mech,” Clay said.
“You see what’s sitting outside us right now?” Gibbons countered.
“It’s bigger than the Vernacht,” Clay responded. “We’ve established that. Get your dead head in the game, Gibbons. There isn’t a mech known to man that is as big as that thing.”
They watched the blob grow closer.
“We need to move,” Clay said.
“Shit, yes we do,” Gibbons replied.
Clay hopped into the pilot’s seat and started the mech up. It purred perfectly, healthy and happy with its full power cells. Clay checked systems, but not too closely. They didn’t have the time to go over the checklist thoroughly. They needed to get the Vernacht between them and the oncoming blob as fast as possible.
“Hold on,” Clay said as he piloted the battle mech up and over the Vernacht. It was like a toddler climbing his much older brother.
Clamber, scramble, tumble, fall. Then stillness.