The Iron War: A Xander Cain Novel

by P W Hillard

  “And what have they done, Mr Cain? We’ve heard from across the planet that fighting has broken out everywhere. Numerous mercenary companies, multiple sightings of these Black Rose, and corporations fighting corporations. Do you think this is all Black Rose’s doing?”

  “Possibly. I would classify them as a terrorist group, for now, and it’s hard to deny that they aren’t doing a good job at that.”

  “We’ve spoken to some of the rest of your company, and they seem to be under the impression that this is happening across the Iron Belt, would you like to comment on that?”

  “First,” Xander said. “We aren’t a company, we’re freelancers. Second, we’ve only got rumour and second-hand report to go on. I wouldn’t think so, open war on that scale is sure to breach the Articles.”

  “So, freelancer, what does that mean?” Tamara placed one arm on the back of the bench, trying to look casual for the camera.

  “It means we work for ourselves. Independents, still guild registered and controlled, but we don’t work for a company.”

  “You used to, though, correct? Very famously you worked for Cain's Corsairs, a family-run company. Run by your parents in-fact. Why did you leave the Corsairs, Mr Cain? You've never spoken openly about your side.”

  There it was. Tamara had waited, the question loaded and ready to fire. She had sprung her trap, luring Xander down an unsuspecting path. She was good.

  “My side is the same as the official side. I was let go by the company after a friendly fire incident.”

  Tamara nodded. “I seem to recall that particular incident was very high profile at the time. Your family is extremely renowned. Possibly one of the most famous companies in known space. What you describe as a friendly fire incident is actually the death of your brother and heir to the family business.”

  Xander sat silently for a moment. “That’s right, yes,” he said.

  “So, the family loses one heir, and in response sacks the other?” Tamara had removed her arm from the bench, placing both hands clasped on her knee as she leant forward.

  “Reputation is everything to a mercenary group. Everything. It’s what brings in the jobs, it’s what gets your bid picked over the others. They couldn’t have me step up and take over. Not after what happened.”

  “It was you that killed your brother, correct? In this friendly-fire incident.

  “That’s right, yes.” Xander could hear the air quotes around friendly fire, the doubt in her voice. It was always there, whenever he was asked, the doubt.

  “What you’re trying to say and do forgive me if I’m putting words in your mouth, Mr Cain, is that having the company run by someone suspected of killing their brother to get there, is bad for business.”

  “Yes,” Xander said. What else could he say? It was the truth after all. “I had to leave, for the good of the company.”

  “Again, correct me on this, I’m no expert, but I gather from movies and web shows that mechsuits have some kind of beacon that helps identify who is on your side?” Tamara was really pushing now; she could see it in Xander’s eyes. She couldn’t stop, it was just too compelling. Perfect television ready to broadcast to millions.

  “An IFF, yes. Identification, friend or foe it stands for.”

  “And even then, you managed to shoot him?”

  Xander sat there, stunned to silence for a moment. He had expected the question. How could he not? But he hadn’t truly been prepared for it.

  “Yes,” Xander said. “This interview is over, turn off that camera, Mitch.”

  Tamara nodded to the cameraman, who responded with a thumbs up. She leant forward, switching off the recording on the tablet.

  “I'm sorry, Xander, you know I had to ask. You did well, by the way,” Tamara said. She had gone slack like a weight had been lifted off her. She wasn't a natural before the camera, preferring to work behind the scenes. She had simply been imitating the supposed journalists she had watched through glass for years, actually just mouthpieces for Tamara and her crew.

  “I’m sure I fucking did,” Xander said. He felt angry, furious at himself for allowing the interview to take place at all. “I’m sorry, I don’t mean to blow up at you. You’re doing your job. I get that.”

  “Don’t worry, this is going to prove really useful for us. For you.”

  “How so?”

  “The stuff at the start, about Black Rose. That wasn’t just fluff. If you’re right, and they are a terrorist group, they’re working for some ideology. A goal, a belief. Learning exactly what that is might be handy to know down the road. And what do terrorists love more than anything?”

  “Blowing stuff up?” Xander said with a shrug. “I’ve no idea.”

  “A voice! A way to get their word out. And you know what they hate?” Tamara asked. Xander’s shaking head gave her the answer she was after. “Being called out. We put out this interview on the web, and I guarantee they will have to respond.”

  “Is riling them up a good idea?” Sergei said. He had been stood across the cabin, leaning against the wall, watching the interview intently.

  “Come on, don’t you want answers?”

  “You mean video clicks?” Xander narrowed his eyes at her. What she was saying made sense, but he couldn’t help but see how much it helped her.

  “Can’t it be both? Come on, we’ve got nothing to lose here. You said yourself reputation matters. Imagine being the mercenary that discovered Black Rose? That will help your profile, right?”

  “I’m not sure…” Xander began.

  “Come on, look at it this way. Staying here is no good for us,” Tamara said, gesturing to Mitch and Trevor as they packed away the drone. “And you want to keep using the drones. This is a two-way relationship if you think about it. We film you, we film Black Rose, you lot get a good rep, we get clicks. I don’t see a downside here at all.”

  “It’s like PR,” Sergei said. He seemed to be nodding in agreement. “She’s got a point.”

  “We can’t even guarantee Black Rose will respond.”

  “Oh, when we’re done editing this, add in some footage of their suits getting taken out,” Tamara said with a wicked grin. “They won’t be able to resist.”

  Chapter Sixteen

  It had been a long night. Xander had managed to snatch some sleep, but not much, and he was feeling it now. His head was drooping downwards, catching on the cables connected above his eye. There were stimulants in the compartment above his head, but he was loathed to take them. They woke you up quickly enough, but the comedown was terrible, meaning he would need to take them back to back to keep up his strength. Instead, Xander had resorted to the socially acceptable energy-giving drug, coffee.

  The steam was drifting off his tin mug, working its way up through the open armour panel. He hadn't closed it yet, instead running diagnostics on his joints. There was a series of whirs and creaks as the suit waved it's arms up and down, feeding back the results into his mind. They weren't good reading. Several of the joints were damaged, likely from his fall fighting the helicopter. There were fractures across multiple armour panels. Xander considered ditching the suit, swapping to one of the QT's that had been propped up against the wall but decided against it. His suit had come this far, it would hold until the end.

  It was hard to explain the attachment a rider could develop with a suit to a layman. Oh sure, people got attached to machines they worked on, but it was different for a rider, the connection more personal. They had been the machine in a way, feeling its movement as if it were their own. Mercenaries weren’t totally glued to a single machine, they knew ultimately that better equipment meant the difference between life and death, but most companies had a museum bay, where beloved mechs went to retire. The difference in performance of his worn defender and the captured QTs was small enough that Xander’s attachment was tipping the scales.

  Xander hadn’t activated his suits cameras, instead choosing to look at the dawn light with his own eyes. It was oddly beautiful, the s
un glittering off the high-rise buildings and skyscrapers as it rose, a brilliant orange glow enveloping the world. It would be a peaceful scene, were it not for the sound of gunshots still ringing through the air. It had settled down a little at night, but the rising sun had signalled a return to hostilities.

  Xander was as much to blame as anyone for the noise. Ahead of him, under the watchful gaze of Anya, a line of quivering civilians were firing against a hastily assembled shooting range. It was built from office plants resting on chairs-both salvaged from the studio- with crude targets drawn on them. Someone had found a large cardboard mechsuit from one of the storage buildings, some set prop from one of the many mech-based actions shows. Anya had scribbled arrows all over it in black marker, indicating weak points on the joints.

  They had protested at first, Tamara and her crew, Sergei and his, but Xander had insisted. He had no intention of sending the civilians into a fight, but there was no guarantee that a fight wouldn't come to them. He had collected the rifles and sidearms stored beneath the seats of the QTs. They were a little singed, but in working condition, so he had distributed them out. He knew enemy mercenaries would treat them kindly, but Xander didn't trust Black Rose to do the same. A little self-defence never hurt.

  One of the warehouse workers shouldered a rifle against his shoulder, his turn to shoot. He squeezed the trigger, planting the lead within the centre of the target. Soil leaked out from the hole, spilling onto the floor. The worker, smiled happily, spinning around to high five his nearest comrade, weapon pointing across the waiting line.

  Anya was quick, grabbing the barrel and lifting the tip of the weapon. The worker released the rifle, Anya’s look enough to tell him he had messed up. She was proving a stern but gifted teacher, bringing a kind of constant steely disapproval that seemed to push her trainees to work hard. It reminded Xander of a tutor his parents had hired, always pushing their sons to be the best.

  She was Svarogian as well. That planet made people hard, the pressures of survival squeezing them until they were like diamond. The world was at the far edge of its stars habitable ring, a cold place, survival only possible in cities built beneath the surface. That same tutor had taught him the planet’s name was a grim irony, Svarog was a fire god from some long-dead religion, the specifics lost to time.

  Xander sipped at the warm coffee. It wasn’t particularly good, instant granules poured from a small sachet tucked in the box with the ration pouches. He drank it anyway, savouring the taste. Coffee was a strange thing, where even a terrible blend could be the most amazing thing in the world at three in the morning. It felt good going down, its bitter taste kickstarting Xander’s alertness.

  He sighed, reaching up and tugging the cables free from his wetware port. He could feel the click as they pulled loose. Xander gulped most of his coffee, tossing the remaining dregs out the open cockpit. There was work to be done.

  ***

  The drone buzzed happily through the door of the loader, ascending towards the sky, soaring over the outer wall. The rotors of its four engines were spinning at their maximum, propelling the little drone onwards and upwards, as high as it could whilst remaining in range. The drone dodged past buildings, pulling itself free of the city, guided by an unseen hand as it flew forwards.

  The camera mounted on the bottom swivelled, a curious eye taking in what it could. From here the picture wasn’t perfect, the drone designed to capture footage from a safe, but close, distance. It swung over the city below, sending its recordings back to its control unit. It carried onwards, the images it had captured interesting, but not its goal.

  Ahead of it, a spear pierced the heavens, a long metal spike reaching out from the earth to the stars. It was visible from everywhere, a guiding star pulled down from the sky and shackled to the ground. The elevator was one of three spread around the planet, each on the equator and equidistant to the others, conduits to the stars. Without it, space travel was restricted to dropships or rockets, neither an option for the drone’s controllers.

  The drone began to dip, bringing itself closer to the ground. The simple AI within adjusted the angle of the blades, compensating for imperfect human control. It didn’t think about the danger the drone was in, getting closer every moment to prospective enemies, it didn’t think much about anything, the AI’s control restricted to only the very basic processes needed to do its job.

  The camera locked forwards, the incoming commands dictating its movement. The elevator was massive now the drone was close, even more imposing than from afar, a solid wall of carbon nanotubes, a dull grey monolith. The tether was attached to a station in orbit, whilst around the base, a complex had sprung up, a labyrinth of buildings designed to serve the people and cargo ferried aboard the object known as a climber.

  The climber was a pair of large discs, the tether running through the centre. A large metal ring ran around the tether as it passed through, the powered rollers that pulled the disks up and down the elevator. Above and below the climber were two more sets of motors, each attached with long cables to the outer edge of the discs. More power to lift the climber to the stars. The bottom of each disc was covered in a series of large mirrors, energy transmitted to the vehicle as it rose by huge lasers mounted around the base of the structure.

  It was a miracle of engineering, a masterpiece of design that made space travel as mundane as a commercial flight or a train journey. On a normal day, people and cargo would be carefully loaded onto the climber, balanced against the other elevators and their journeys to keep the planet spinning at the same speed, the powerful forces exerted on the tether fractionally altering the turning of the world. It was only the tiniest fractions of a second, but the constant use of the elevators would add up over time.

  Now though, the complex around the elevator and its climber was awash with a different kind of activity. Mechsuits stalked through its roadways, tanks trundled across car parks and infantry swarmed through hallways, taking up positions in doorways and windows. The drone swung around, its camera taking in what it could, recording every defended position, every stack of sandbags.

  The drone's luck ran out, a squad of infantry spotting it as it lifted itself over a bridge that crossed a large road. They fired, bursts ringing out. The drone was quick, but it wasn't faster than bullets. An engine shattered, and whilst the AI struggled to keep the drone aloft, its controller abandoned it, signalling for a total shut off. It fell, shattering against the asphalt below in a shower of plastic and metal.

  ***

  Xander rubbed his chin with his left hand, a new fresh cup of coffee in his right. It had been thrust upon him unasked, but he wasn’t one to turn it down. He considered for the first time how funny it was that in all the hundreds of planets in known space, they all had coffee, the plant transplanted between worlds almost as often as humans had been. He wondered if it had come with people when they had first left their mythical homeworld, its name and location lost to history.

  The footage was troubling, to say the least. Xander had watched as the drone had flown its course, taking in what information it could. The advance towards the elevator looked troubling enough, several fights were happening along the road, but those were fluid situations, likely to have moved on by the time the loader reached them. The elevator itself was another matter.

  It was heavily defended. Xander had expected that, but the level of forces there was still shocking. Tanks, mechs, and at least an entire battalion of infantry. Every single one of the enemies was unmarked. As far as Xander was concerned, they might as well be painting the Black Rose across themselves at this point. He had no idea how his tiny force was going to get past that.

  “Well,” Xander said, taking a seat on the cabins back bench. “We’re fucked.”

  “That bad?” Sergei said, taking a seat a little further along. He had his own steaming mug of coffee, and for the first time, Xander felt a slight spark of kinship with the stuffy manager.

  “That bad. There was maybe thirty, possibl
y forty mechs. At least the same again in tanks. As soon as we start pushing, we’re going to be swarmed, that’s if we even make it past the armour at every corner or rise.” Xander took a sip. The coffee was better than his ration blend, he wondered where it had come from. “That’s ignoring the fact that we need to escort this thing.” Xander gestured at the cabin around himself with his mug.

  “That's not such a problem,” Tamara said. A rifle was slung across her shoulder. After a few false starts, she had the basics down, proving one of Anya's better students. She sat down between the two men, her tablet in hand. She had already uploaded the video from the drone to the device. It had been a calculated loss, the drone traded for information. “A year and a bit back we did a news piece on the elevator, some big anniversary for its opening. We got a tour. Here.” She passed the tablet to Xander, having paused the footage.

  “What am I looking at?” Xander turned the tablet in his hands, trying to work out what Tamara was attempting to show him.

  “This road,” she said, turning the tablet the right way. “This one is for incoming cargo. Trucks, and that kind of thing. It heads under the outer edge of the complex. Cargo is loaded onto a train, then shipped to the climber where it’s unloaded again.”

  “And they’re big enough?”

  “Oh yeah, heavy-duty things. We can just drive the loader right on.”

  “Ok, ok, yeah.” Xander could feel a plan forming, the idea lining themselves up in his mind. “So, we need to punch through, get onto the train quickly, and then ride that to where we need to go.”

  “I hate to be a downer,” Sergei said, snatching the tablet, “but this still looks pretty far. You think the loader can get there quick enough? This is assuming there is even a train for us to board.”

  “They're automated, we can call one,” Tamara said. “There is one other problem though, but it's what we call a bad news gift in the industry.” Blank stares just looked back at her. “Bad news with an upside, like, it's shitty, but will get us a lot of clicks. In this case, the controls for the climber are planetside. Here,” Tamara said, pointing to a building on her tablet. “It doesn't matter if we can get the loader on the train if we can't switch on the climber.”