Fighting Iron 2: Perdition Plains

by Jake Bible

“You were right,” Morley said as he hurried up to Clay. “How could you be sure?”

  “I wasn’t,” Clay said.

  “What?” Morley exclaimed.

  “I figured it out when what happened to Paige happened to Paige,” Clay said. “The Reaper chips were meant for one purpose originally: to destroy the brain of their host if they died. Old safeguard for a world long dead. I had a hunch that if you put them in the Perditions, who are basically already dead, then it was only a matter of the chips doing a full body scan before activating. Fried ‘em dead dead.”

  “Dead dead,” Morley said as he looked at the Perditions’ bodies. “I thought I only had converted chips in my possession.”

  “There were only a handful of those ever made,” Clay said. “You got lucky that you didn’t get fried before we arrived. At least you saved Paige inside that mech.”

  “I wouldn’t call it saving her,” Gibbons said.

  “Nor would I,” Morley said, his voice heavy with grief.

  There was the sound of a good many rifles being cocked behind Clay, and he slowly turned around to face the armed townsfolk as they stood on the porch of the not-saloon.

  “Howdy, y’all,” Clay said. He nodded with his chin over his shoulder at the remains of the Perditions. “I took care of a little trash for ya. You can live, you can die, you can do whatever you all want to do. Your choice now.”

  Eyes went from Clay to the Perditions and back. That lasted for a good five minutes before the rifles were lowered and everyone sauntered back into the not-saloon.

  “Good choice,” Clay said. “Excuse me one second.”

  He doubled over and threw up the nasty liquor. After several deep breaths, he straightened and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand that held the pistol. He looked down at Torsten’s corpse with the gun belt and holster firmly pinned.

  “Care to give me a hand?” he asked Morley.

  The two of them managed to shift the corpse’s sizable bulk enough to free the gun belt and holster.

  “I appreciate it,” Clay said. “Care for a ride back to Paige?”

  “I do,” Morley said.

  Gibbons lowered a hand for them to climb onto. Once secured in the cockpit, the battle mech turned about, skirted the bulk of the siege engine, and left Perdition Plains for good.

  Thirty-Five

  It took some doing, but Clay managed to get the flesh mech torso back into the cavern. Once it was settled next to the other flesh mechs, he exited the battle mech and joined Morley on the ground.

  “You know you can’t transfer anymore, right?” Clay asked as he held out his hand. Morley reluctantly handed him the pouch of Reaper chips. “Right, Barnes?”

  “Yes, I understand that,” Morley said. “There still could be a solution.” He looked at the flesh mech torso. “I would hate for Paige to be stuck inside that the rest of her existence.”

  “So would I, but you two have had more than your share of lives,” Clay replied. “You might want to think about retiring.”

  “We shall see,” Morley responded. He held out a hand. “Godspeed to you, Clay MacAulay.”

  “You as well, Morley Barnes,” Clay said and shook the offered hand. “Try to keep the mad science to a minimum. It’s gonna cause you nothing but trouble.”

  “Yes, of course,” Morley said.

  “And the killing stops, you hear?” Clay said, his voice resolute. “You’re done with other people’s bodies. Don’t make me come back.”

  “I wouldn’t want that to happen,” Morley said. “The killings stop.”

  With that answer, Morley turned and walked to the flesh mech torso indicating their time was done.

  Clay shrugged and climbed back into his battle mech.

  “Where to now?” Gibbons asked as they left the cavern.

  “One quick stop,” Clay said and piloted the mech to the huge trench he’d cut to trap the riders and tweeners.

  Some survivors still struggled, wriggling in the mass of blood and flesh that filled the trench. Clay ignored them, instead digging deep with both hands until he’d scooped most of the contents out of the trench and had piled it along the edge.

  “Are you kidding me?” Gibbons asked as Clay climbed out of the mech.

  “Be right back,” Clay said.

  He climbed down and methodically began to dig through the hellish refuse. There might have been some throwing up, there certainly was some gagging. But eventually, Clay found what he wanted.

  He wiped the hat off the best he could and plopped it on his head.

  A hand reached out and gripped his boot.

  “Damn, Holcomb,” Clay said. “You still alive?”

  “No,” Holcomb said, his body broken and twisted.

  Clay understood. He pulled his pistol and fired. Holcomb’s body went slack, finally seeing a little peace. Clay sighed and tipped his hat down at the body. He holstered his pistol and turned back to the battle mech.

  “Don’t know where my knife is, but I got my hat and pistol,” Clay said as he climbed into the cockpit and sat down, a smug look on his face. “I call this a good day. Now, let’s get the hell out of here.”

  “You think it’s that easy?” Gibbons chuckled. “We have another stop to make. I’m glad you liked today, because tonight is gonna suck for you, pal.”

  “Why the hell is that?” Clay asked.

  “Because you’re the only one that can do the repairs,” Gibbons said. “I ain’t got hands and fingers no more.”

  “Whoa, hold on, are you taking us to the Vernacht?” Clay protested.

  “That I am, pal, that I am,” Gibbons said, chuckling some more. “Best be thinking about what direction we’re going after you finish the repairs to the mech tonight. I do have some new coordinates that may interest you.”

  “That so?” Clay asked.

  “That’s so,” Gibbons replied. “We’ll talk while you do repairs.”

  “You are such a giving AI,” Clay said. “Asshole.”

  “I learned a lot while living in a meat bag,” Gibbons said. “It’s made me a better person.”

  “Oh, shut up and get us to the Vernacht,” Clay said. “We’ll worry about you and your new coordinates tomorrow.”

  The battle mech turned and lumbered in the direction of the ever-waiting construction mech. Before Clay and Gibbons reached the horizon, the sun had set and the world went from gloomy grey to gloomy black. Both Clay and Gibbons couldn’t wait to get the hell out of the Midlands.

  Get as far away as humanly, and mechly, possible. Screw the Midlands and screw Perdition Plains.

  Perdition Plains…

  “Hey, Clay?” Gibbons asked.

  “Yeah?” Clay replied.

  “Aren’t there still people penned up in Perdition Plains? You know, the ones they like to eat?” Gibbons said.

  “Son of a bitch,” Clay grumbled. “Looks like we have to add one more stop to the list. Dammit.”

  He sighed.

  “I hate the Midlands.”

  The End

  Read on for a free sample of The Void

  1

  It was the single most disconcerting sight Vichna Lashke had ever seen in her life. On one side of the bridge’s view screen she could see a field of stars, the entire expanse of the Milky Way and every star system humanity had ever visited or colonized. The other side was dark, inky blackness, a true void that her mind had trouble comprehending. Sure, if she looked in the right places she might see tiny smudges of color, all that the naked eye could see of other galaxies in their own corners of the universe. Except those were few and far between, doing little to relieve the disquiet from the reminder that she was quite literally on the edge of nothingness.

  She could tell that the four hired mercenaries currently on the bridge, all official members of the crew unlike her, had similar feelings. The captain, Mart Lersson, sat in their chair absently picking at a piece of skin on their thumb. It was the quietest Vichna had seen Captain Lersson since meeting th
em thirteen standard days ago. On the other hand, the pilot, Elric Gregs, was uncharacteristically chatty, his voice providing a constant running commentary on everything from their speed to life sign readings. The latter, of course, was completely needless out here, but simply saying that there was nothing, or that nobody could live out here, seemed to help him deal with that fact.

  Like Vichna, the two remaining people on the bridge didn’t have to be here for this part. Also like her, they apparently hadn’t been able to fight their curiosity. Both Bas Merton and Lussa Dakkenspear were here as security, the reason Vichna’s backers had hired this particular mercenary team. They were the firepower in the unlikely event that they all came across something during the mission that required itchy trigger fingers. Vichna had protested using a team that included so many ex-marines and fleet members when she was helping put the mission together, but in the case of Lussa, at least, Vichna was glad her backers had outvoted her. In the previous two weeks, they had become close, even sharing a bed on occasion when the boredom of deep space got to them and they needed something (or someone) to do. Bas was a different story. Vichna couldn’t exactly say she disliked him, but he came from a planet with some very old-fashioned views not shared by the rest of the mercenary crew. All attempts Vichna had made at talking to him had been tense, like at any moment he expected her to say something offensive so he could chew her out.

  The only other person on the ship was Deck down in the engine room. He was an odd one, preferring to spend his time tinkering with the space-fold drive rather than hanging around anyone else, but during the few times Vichna had interacted with him, he’d been pleasant. Captain Lersson said he was the one on the ship with the experience in these deep space missions, and the sight of all the blackness had done strange things to his personality. Experiencing the emptiness herself now for the first time, Vichna could understand.

  Captain Lersson looked her direction and must have seen something worrisome on her face. “It’s not always this disturbing,” they said. “You get used to it.”

  “How many times have you been out this far?” Vichna asked.

  “This is my second time,” Lersson said.

  “But I thought you said Deck had been to the edge several times.”

  Gregs was the one who answered her. “Deck wasn’t with the marines. He was with the fleet. He served on the Merv Swansson for three years.”

  Vichna certainly recognized the name of the ship. She should, considering the role it had played in the Violet and Lily Wars, which had been the subject of many of her studies. It annoyed her a little that they had such a notable veteran with them this whole time, yet no one had thought to tell her before now. Although part of that was her own fault, she supposed. The team knew that they’d been hired to escort her to find something, but to maintain secrecy, none of them had been told exactly what yet. Now they were here, though, practically on top of it from a galactic standpoint, and completely out of range for any kind of space-fold contact with any ship, colony, or inhabited planet.

  “These are the correct coordinates I gave you?” Vichna asked the captain.

  “We’re coming up on them. Can you finally tell us what exactly we’re looking for?”

  “If you find something out here, anything at all, then obviously that’s what we’re here for.”

  “Then maybe we were paid to come out here for nothing, because I’m not seeing anything.” There was a very clear note of frustration in the captain’s voice, and Vichna couldn’t blame them. All the people on the ship were right now on the very edge of the known galaxy. Here there were no outposts, no emergency supply caches, no help of any kind. It would have been dangerous if there were even anything out here to be afraid of, unless she counted the emptiness of space itself. If they went out any farther, they would vanish into the literal nothingness of the universe.

  Which, of course, was why someone long ago had decided this would be the perfect hiding place.

  “Finally picking up a faint radioactive signature,” Gregs said from his console. “It’s not much stronger than the background radiation. Probably wouldn’t have noticed it if we weren’t looking.” He turned to Vichna. “Is that it?”

  “I think so,” she said. She actually knew so, but after so long searching for it, she almost felt afraid to jinx herself at the last moment.

  “Visual?” Captain Lersson asked Gregs.

  “It’s still pretty far away,” he said. “But whatever it is, it’s big.”

  “How big?” Vichna asked.

  “Similar to a decent-sized asteroid.” He looked to her for confirmation that was correct, but Vichna couldn’t speak. For most of her life, nearly one hundred and thirty-two years, she’d been looking for this. Granted, that only made her middle-aged, but sometimes it had felt like longer.

  “So are you finally going to tell us what it is?” Lussa asked. “Or are you going to leave us guessing all the way up until the moment we can actually see it?”

  “If I’m right, you’ll want to wait,” Vichna said. “This should be impressive. I hope.”

  “We’ve still got some distance to go yet before we’ll even be able to make out details,” Gregs said. “Want me to space fold until we’re right next to it?”

  The captain looked like they were about to okay this, but Vichna stopped them. “No! There… there might be some danger if we show up too suddenly.” The captain shrugged. If anyone was upset at the idea that what they were here for might be dangerous, nobody showed it. They were usually paid for danger, after all, and they also had the mini-arsenal that her sponsors had paid to be brought along with them in the hold of the ship.

  It took several more minutes before they were able to see anything with the naked eye, a problem caused by both the distance and the near-total lack of light. They had to rely on sensor images for most of the approach even as they got closer, and Vichna had the sensation of a large, invisible mouth approaching from ahead. Finally, they were close enough that the measly amount of light given off by their ship could be seen against the side of the approaching…

  “Whoa,” Merton said. “What even is that?”

  “That” was a matte-black, blocky structure floating in the emptiness for no apparent reason. The design didn’t look like anything special, or even functional for that matter. It looked like the designer (as the thing was definitely man-made) had simply taken a cube and then haphazardly continued to add smaller cubes to random places on its sides until the entire thing resembled a heavily-pixilated peanut. It would have seemed ridiculous if not for the enormous size of it. Gregs’ estimation that it was the size of an asteroid wasn’t far off, yet the thing still dwarfed their ship by a magnitude of about twenty or thirty. And even now, it was still hard to see, as whatever material it had been made out of was pure black and absorbed everything but direct light shined right upon it. Vichna looked to see if the structure had any thrusters or engines, something to indicate how it had been moved here in the first place, but there was nothing. She supposed it could have been built directly in this spot, although it was hard to imagine any construction team being able to stay sane in the emptiness long enough to finish it.

  “This is really what we were hired to come out here and find?” the captain asked.

  “Yes, this is it,” Vichna said, not that she had ever seen it or even found a proper description of it. No one had, even if it was a fairy tale that everyone had heard at least once in their lifetimes. “It has to be. There’s nothing else it could be.”

  “Well?” Merton asked. “Are you finally going to grace our ears with whatever secret you’ve been keeping?”

  Vichna took a deep breath, less because she needed it and more for dramatic effect. “It’s the Void.”

  Three of the four other people on the bridge reacted exactly the way she’d hoped they would. Captain Lersson turned to her with an expression that clearly said they didn’t believe her. Gregs also stared at her but with his mouth agape. Merton just kept
staring at the image on the screen in front of them. He was the only one on the ship with skin light enough for Vichna to see him visibly pale. Only Lussa looked confused.

  “The Void?” she asked.

  Vichna was about to answer but Merton beat her to it. “A space station. The space station. The one used by Captain Melissa Harvey.”

  “Oh,” was all Lussa could say. That name she clearly recognized. Vichna would have been shocked if she hadn’t. It did, after all, belong to the worst mass murderer ever known to the human race, a woman responsible for the complete genocide of eight entire star systems.

  They all stared at the station floating outside their ship, a creation that most people only knew as something out of their nightmares. For many seconds, no one spoke.

  Finally, Gregs said, “I thought it would be bigger.”

  The Void is available from Amazon here.