by Edward Nile
Samuel lined up his sight between the wheels of one Warsuit, one that appeared to have been made using Xangese parts of all things. He fired a burst of rounds in time to clip a man's helmet at he poked his head around a crate within the bunker.
The shot brought Edstein's attention, and the crude ode to Ironshield swiveled its head-mounted periscope lens his way. Through the smoke, Samuel doubted the man inside would be able to recognize him. Which didn't matter for shit, except that he wanted the bastard to see him before the end, to know who had finally brought him down.
The Warsuit's arm cannon whirred in his direction with a series of mechanical clicks and rattles, the muzzle dropping to line up with Samuel's position. One shot from that forty-millimeter machine gun would be enough to vaporize a man.
Samuel held fast and let off a long burst from his rifle, scattering sparks around the Warsuit's sights.
Edstein swerved the scope aside to preserve his vision and fired.
Samuel had already dived out of the way. He felt the earth buck and heave beneath him as round after explosive round sent up showers of dirt.
Turning, Samuel saw the nearest field gun still intact.
A shell from another gun struck the Krieger's left shoulder, ricocheting off its armor plating to leave little more than a scrape along the machine's surface. However, it distracted Edstein enough to turn his Warsuit toward the threat.
"Sir!" A pair of infantrymen rushed up alongside Samuel and helped him to his feet. He shoved them off. "The field piece. Get it prepped now!"
They rushed to do as he said, loading the gun with frantic speed.
Samuel got behind the field piece, ready to pick his target. One of the soldiers who'd come to help him fell, a hole from a sniper’s bullet spurting blood out of his chest.
"Shit!"
"Should I hit the Warsuit, Sir?" The remaining man flinched from the spark of another bullet near him.
More explosions rippled among the enemy Warsuits. One of the four-legged machines lost a limb and staggered while the treads on a Krieger burst with a clank of sundered metal, bringing the machine to a grinding halt.
The two-wheeled Warsuit had stopped firing, and instead moved to ram one of the barricades. The Industrialists were running out of ammunition as well as working machines.
Samuel was finished playing games, finished showing honor to those with none. Let them be the ones to feel helpless, this time.
"Fire into the bunker," he ordered. "Don't leave the curs anywhere to retreat to!"
"Yes, Sir!" The soldier, whose bearded face was stained with soot and whose uniform was sullied with even more blood, cranked the lever and brought the field piece down to point straight for the opening.
Edstein's Warsuit rattled and stomped around, thudding its way toward their line of fire. He saw where Samuel was aiming.
"Ready!" The soot-faced man announced.
Samuel was yelling "fire!" as he caught sight of movement deeper inside the bunker. A minute form scampered across the concrete floor, like a cat or a small dog. And, chasing after it, a form only slightly taller. A child.
Samuel's world lurched to a crawl while the muzzle of the field piece bloomed, the gun bucking back in slow motion as its projectile hurtled its way to decimate the delicate flesh of those inside the structure. Enclosed by those walls, the blast would kill everyone inside, bury their corpses in rubble.
And Samuel couldn't stop it.
Dear God, what have I done? He thought, eyes squeezing shut.
After being a soldier for as long as he had, there were some things Samuel could not forget. Many a time, half-blind in a dark, overheated cockpit, with smoke backing up inside and victory dependent on his last shot, Samuel had had no recourse but to listen for the right sound, to strain his ears for the difference between the shriek of torn metal, the clang of gears knocked out of alignment, and the ringing strike of a ricochet. Samuel knew what a heavy round sounded like when it struck concrete, and when it hit steel.
What he heard next in that unnaturally slow instant wasn't what he expected.
Samuel opened his eyes.
Edstein's Warsuit stood in the path of the shot, half its head blown to a jagged mess, smoke trailing from exposed machinery that whined as it struggled to function.
One of the miniature Ironshield's exhaust pipes had been shorn away, a flap of torn steel folded over the opening, blocking fumes from escaping.
With its main scope obliterated, the Warsuit brought a secondary one whirring over from about its waist at the same time as Edstein took aim at Samuel's field gun.
"Sir, get out of the way!" The soot-faced man grabbed Samuel by the sleeve and shoved, leaping on top of him as he fell over.
Shrapnel and fire flew overhead, the sound of the forty-millimeter gun blasts leaving nothing in their wake but a loud, keening ring in Samuel's ears.
As the man above him coughed and crawled forward, one of his legs a gored mess, Samuel tried to sit up and fell back to the dirt, his vision doubled.
Come on, fight through it, old man. Samuel struggled to focus on something, anything.
Hands grabbed hold of him, and Samuel was hoisted up onto someone's shoulders in a deadman's lift.
Edstein kept up the firepower, aiming for the field pieces spread out along the edges of the battlefield, obviously recognizing the threat they posed not only to his armored soldiers but to the rebels inside the bunker.
The gunfire was muffled to Samuel's ears. Smoking Warsuits, those that could still move, backed up toward the bunker, forming a crude semi-circle around the structure as they continued to endure machinegun barrages from the military lines.
The two-wheeled machine lay on its side, and through his blurred vision Samuel saw a man pop from the cockpit hatch, mouth open in an unheard cry as he fired on his vanquishers with a sidearm. The rebel took two bullets to the chest and slumped lifeless along the side of his machine.
The still-functioning four-legged Warsuit sidestepped to join Edstein's Krieger, its rotating gun spinning until its barrels ceased to flash, its ammunition spent.
"Put me down," Samuel croaked from a dry mouth.
The man carrying him didn't hear, or chose not to listen. Troops had formed a knot around Samuel and his porter, returning fire to the Industrialist snipers shooting from the bunker. More shells burst against the enemy structure, taking out a section of concrete wall.
The child.
"Put. Me. DOWN." Samuel slapped his porter's back.
Reluctantly, the soldier lowered him.
His legs shook violently. His vision swam in and out of focus and his head pounded. However, Samuel got to his feet. "Cease firing," he panted, bracing his hands on a nearby barricade and closing his eyes as he tried to will the pain and disorientation away.
"Commander?"
"You fucking heard me," he growled, pressing the heel of his palm against his forehead, begging the world to stop shaking around him. "Get on the radio and send the order out. Cease fire and keep our men back." It meant giving the enemy an opening to reload and refuel, but it was a risk they’d have to take. Samuel Mutton would not be responsible for the death of a young child and neither would his army. “We have them surrounded.” He accepted a water canteen as he spoke. “They aren’t getting out of here unless it’s in our custody or in boxes. We’re just going to have to go about it differently.”
The Warsuits stopped shooting, taking the chance for a reprieve. Samuel looked over the sandbags toward Edstein’s Warsuit. “No heavy ordnance is to be fired into that bunker,” he said. “I saw a kid in there. We don’t need that on our conscience for the sake of apprehending some fugitives. When I give the command, pick your shots, and pick them carefully. Understand?”
The men around him responded with a unanimous “yes, Sir!” and a joint salute. The one operating the radio relayed the order.
Wisps of black smoke drifted in lazy ribbons above and snaked across the ground, turning the battlefield into a rolling gray lake fr
om which the Warsuits jutted like cragged stones.
“On my word,” Samuel called, steeling himself for a return to battle. The ringing in his ears had lessened somewhat, but still everything came in muffled. No amount of cotton plugs would save a man’s hearing from such chaos.
Samuel lifted his hand, his focus on the still -smoking form of James Edstein’s Krieger, a helpless, smog-wreathed creature, at once terrifying and pitiful.
“F—”
“Commander Mutton!” A young messenger ran to him from the tree line where their fallback post stood. “Senator!”
“Now isn’t the time for letters, boy!” Samuel snapped. “Get out of here before you’re killed.”
The messenger all but collapsed as he skidded to a halt, requiring Ostreman’s help to keep him from pitching to the ground. Gasping for breath, the youth brandished a missive. “Urgent,” he panted. “Need… to read…this.”
“Unless it’s from the president and has to do with this operation, it can wait.”
The messenger just stared at him, continuing to hold out the folded paper. “It’s a telegram, Sir,” he said, regaining some composure. “And it is from the pres—”
Samuel tore the missive from the young man’s hands and ripped it open. “This is no time for politics damn it…” he trailed off as he scanned the page.
Samuel read the message, re-read it, then read it again.
“What’s going on” someone called over the radio.
“Commander?” The man who’d carried him sounded uneasy. “Do we go ahead with the attack?”
Having read the missive over a fourth and fifth time, and being convinced by the code word inscribed at the bottom of the text that the source was authentic, Samuel looked up, for a moment at a loss for what to say.
*
Red emergency lights blinked on the bulkhead panels around James, the light distorted through thick fumes.
Coughing, he made a blind, fumbling search for the vent controls. He’d never piloted this Krieger before, and, besides the ignition cradle salvaged from the original Ironshield and a few basic controls, the layout was completely different from the Warsuits he’d been used to. He’d only just managed to intercept that shot before it could hit the bunker, and it was costing him his air.
He felt sick, his stomach turning as his lungs took in the engine exhaust. James dug around to either side of his seat for an oxygen tank. That, apparently, was one detail Ivan’s rebels hadn’t gotten around to yet. Terrific.
“Tess,” he rasped into his radio. “Tess?”
Nothing. James slammed the mouthpiece onto its hook with a curse. There was no indicator light on the radio box.
“Fucking junker,” he growled. Something rose in his throat as he said it and in the next moment James was bending over the side of his seat, hot bile spewing from his mouth.
Wiping away strings of vomit from his beard, James hit the radio panel with an angry grunt.
A yellow light blinked. “Jim?” Tessa’s voice crackled. “JIM?”
“I’m an idiot,” he said into the mouthpiece. “Didn’t turn the damn thing on.”
“Are you okay?”
“Cockpit’s filling up pretty quick—” a hacking cough interrupted him. “Can’t breathe so good, feeling…” Sleepy. He was sleepy.
“God damn it, James. Pull the vent lever.”
“H…huh?” He blinked several times, his addled mind trying to make sense of what she was saying.
“Gray lever, upper right side. Yank it!””
Lifting his arm took effort. At this point, holding the mouthpiece up was a challenge. James felt around the bulkhead in the nearly opaque smog until he felt the smooth handle of a pull lever. He tugged down and all but collapsed in his seat, his arm dropping limp at his side the moment the lever came down.
Steel panels creaked to either side, opening to allow some daylight from outside to filter through vent chutes James hadn’t even been aware of. Buckler’s engine rumbling was joined by the rattle and hum of an air pump. Smoke rushed from James’ cockpit. The air still carried the bitter tang of diesel and oil, but compared to the thick fumes of a second ago it was the freshest James had ever breathed.
“Jim?”
“Oh, that’s good,” he sighed and wiped sweat from his drenched face, relieved by the cool air that drifted up the vents. “How are things looking out there?” He pulled the periscope visor down as he spoke.
“Roy’s dead…” Tessa made a sound that could have been a sob, somehow made all the more sorrowful over the radio frequency. “Ivan’s stuck. The Appeasers, they’re…”
“They’re not shooting, I noticed. Fuckers nearly killed Stella.” James didn’t mention who he’d seen operating that field gun. Samuel Mutton, in the red leather uniform of Striker Crimson. It was shocking enough that a senator campaigning to be president had come all this way to stage a raid on a small group of fugitives. Would the man really start manning artillery himself, or were the fumes getting to James? “What’s ‘Tet doing, letting the kid run around in there?”
“Been kind of busy for me to be watching what’s going on inside,” Tessa replied. “Maybe that damn dog of hers ran off.” Tessa sighed. “Jim…”
“I know,” he said. “We can’t let them bring the bunker down, not with her inside. Dying for the cause is all well and good, but…”
“Yeah…”
“Hey,” James said. “We can count a trial as a date, right?”
Tessa laughed. “It’s better than nothing. Uncle?”
“Can’t say I fucking like the concept, but the kid’s not given us any option. I’ll come out and give the surrender.”
“If it’s all the same, Ivan, I’ll do it.”
“You sure about this, Jim?”
“It’s time.’ James caressed the hilt of his father’s saber where it jutted from the ignition cradle. “I can’t run forever.”
“The fuck?” Tessa said, as if to herself.
“Don’t argue with me, Tess.”
“Are you all seeing this?”
James brought his periscope down to his face and looked out across the battleground. He didn’t see what Tessa was talking about for several seconds and when he did, he didn’t believe it.
The military had erected a white flag.
“Ha!” Ivan exclaimed. “Maybe they didn’t come as prepared as they thought. Jim, you can have the honor of accepting their surrender. I can’t believe it.”
“Neither can I.”
A figure strode from the sandbag emplacements, empty hands raised. He walked across the chewed earth, red leather coat brushing against blackened mounds.
This time, James knew he wasn’t hallucinating. The mustached man heading toward them was Samuel Mutton. Striker Crimson.
Tessa’s crawler lumbered forward.
“Tess,” James said. “Hold on.”
“Fuck accepting his surrender,” she seethed.
James moved Buckler after her. “It could be a trap.”
“Tess, he’s unarmed,” came Ivan’s voice on the heel of James’.
“So was I,” she snarled. “So were the civilians of Quarrystone. This is no more than he deserves.”
She had the head start, but her machine was damaged, one of its back legs dragging, leaking oil with each feeble step.
James brought Buckler alongside her Warsuit.
“Don’t you dare try to stop me, Jim!” she shouted. James had never heard her speak with such venom. The hatred in Tessa Kolms’ voice was palpable over the radio, radiating like heat from each word. And knowing what she’d been through, having seen what happened at Quarrystone and the scars it left, James couldn’t blame her. He had his own scores to settle with Samuel Mutton, but they paled next to hers. James wished he could let Tessa have her revenge.
“Sorry, Tess.” James reared back with Buckler’s left arm and swung at the crawler’s damaged leg with the blade affixed beneath his gun. The strike sheared through what remained
of the limb’s joint, leaving hydraulic tubes to flail, spraying oil.
“You son of a—"
“I won’t let you get yourself killed,” James interrupted as he brought his Warsuit past her toward Samuel Mutton. “Not again.”
“Don’t think I’ll forgive you for this y—"
“I love you, Tess.”
Her breath hissed through James’ radio. Finally, she heaved a long sigh. “I love you too, asshole.”
Ivan hadn’t been entirely correct. Striker Crimson had brought one weapon to the field with him. Mutton drew his saber, its ruby-hued key-groove a dark bloodstain against the shimmer of the blade in the sunlight. Coming to a stop, Samuel Mutton planted the sword in the dirt point first, and stepped back from it. If the man felt any fear, standing unarmed as a Warsuit stomped toward him, he didn’t show it.