Ironshield

  “A ray of sunshine as usual, Genny.” Aldren couldn’t keep up the act, though. “May? He’s got a point.”

  “I’m thinking,” said Mayla. “We could be in luck. The men keeping guard on Kaizer might not even know what they’re protecting.”

  “Sounds like a bigger gamble than the snake basket.”

  “Then we really are in luck,” Mayla replied. “Because that was easy.”

  Aldren patted the covered rifle beside him for reassurance. Maybe he’d never used one of the damned things on anything livelier than a straw target, but it was still a comfort to have. A slim one.

  The base’s pleasure district gave way to more industrial avenues, wide gravel roads lined with warehouses, the skeletal forms of cranes peaking over the tops of squat concrete buildings, turning this way and that in the construction of one piece of machinery or another. And ever the wall of monstrous churning smoke and steel came closer, the impossible to imagine ship or whatever it was that Xang intended to send after Aldren’s country.

  So they have a big boat, he told himself. Won’t matter if they can’t dock. And how far could its artillery really reach? Beatrice Mal was deep inland in cattle country. The only way Aldren’s mother would even find out about such a naval event was through the newspapers. Right, and that’s really the extent of their plan. Please, Aldren. No matter how he wanted to rationalize away and dismiss this threat, that thing could not bode well for Arkenia. The idea of his mother wasting away with an open pipe between her teeth outside some whorehouse made Aldren’s blood boil.

  “We’re here,” Mayla pointed out an undersized warehouse to the left. A guard stood in front of the side entrance, a rifle held across his chest. “Pull over.”

  “This is a mistake,” said Genlu. “You should take a boat and go. What do you plan to do, charm the guard?”

  Hate agreeing with him so much, Aldren thought. “Maybe he swings the other way. I’ve been told I have pretty eyes.”

  “A pretty mouth, too, if you ever closed it,” Mayla snapped. “I said stop the car asshole,” she continued to Genlu.

  Letting out one last Xangese curse, Genlu pulled over alongside the warehouse.

  “Alright, now we’re going to—"

  Genlu popped his door open and dove out of the truck.

  Mayla fired on him but missed, hitting the door as Genlu broke free and dashed toward the guard, shouting and pointing at Aldren and Mayla.

  “Oh well,” Mayla shot the soldier through the head before he could bring his rifle to bear.

  “Fuck!” Aldren looked around. Genlu was ducking and running, still shouting as he looked around for help. As he ran away, Mayla slid into the driver’s seat.

  “May, what are you—” Aldren’s question was cut off in a shout as the truck’s acceleration knocked him back in his seat.

  Genlu had time to look over his shoulder before the front of the vehicle slammed into him. Aldren heard bones crunch.

  Mayla brought the truck to a stop. “Get in there and get Kaizer,” she commanded, slipping out with her rifle in hand.

  “You really think we have time for that—shit!” Aldren ducked when a gunshot shattered the window behind him. Soldiers were firing at the truck from across the street.

  “Nope,” Mayla replied, shooting from over the hood while Aldren crawled out beside her. “So hurry the fuck up!”

  From the corner of his vision Aldren saw Genlu's twitching form, the pool of fresh gore soaking into the gravel beneath him.

  A soldier emerged from around the right-hand corner of the warehouse.

  Aldren's rifle shook in his grip when he squeezed the trigger, letting off a burst along the wall beside the assailant. "Get back!" Aldren shouted, sidestepping toward the door. "Get—"

  Mayla interrupted her suppressive fire on the men across the street long enough to put two through the lone soldier's chest. "Now, Aldren!"

  Averting his gaze from yet another fresh corpse, Aldren shot the lock off and kicked his way inside. He turned back to Mayla.

  She'd let the rifle hang from its strap and was pulling the pin on a grenade. "Hurry!" She drew her arm back, hurled the explosive, and ducked.

  The warehouse door swung shut before the blast happened, its light a brief flash around the edges of the doorway.

  Don't die, you crazy broad, Aldren thought, turning toward the interior while men screamed under Mayla's attentions.

  "Mr. Kaizer?" Aldren blinked, trying to adjust his eyes to the relatively dim room. He headed to the light of a single floor lamp several yards away. Mayla's firefight outside was somewhat drowned out by the roar of multiple generators along the walls.

  Well, this looks familiar. The parts were different and the designs weren't the same, but Aldren recognized this as a Warsuit workshop.

  Wheels and sections of limbs lined the walls. Hollow iron frames stood next to piled engine parts and labelled crates. Along the right-hand wall, a long table was covered with half-finished projects. Power tools and tall racks festooned with wrenches and screwdrivers of every make and size, blueprints and notes scattered everywhere between the myriad pieces of metalwork.

  "Clint Kaizer," Aldren called. "I'm Sargent Aldren Mal with the Arkenian military. I'm here to rescue you, but you need to come out." He started to worry the man had run off through a different exit, though all he saw was a large garage door, closed tight.

  But what if they moved him before we got here?

  Another explosion outside made Aldren jump.

  "Come on, my friend's getting herself killed out there so I can get you. Come out, asshole!"

  Aldren shut his mouth when something cold pressed against his temple. He looked sideways without moving as the soldier holding the gun to him said something in Xangese.

  Well, this one looks pissed. "Don't suppose diplomatic immunity counts for much, eh?" Aldren dropped his rifle and raised his hands, slowly.

  The soldier sneered, adjusting his grip on his own weapon. That's when Aldren knew he was going to shoot.

  A sound filled the room, a hollow pop accompanied by a burst of smoke. The gun to Aldren's temple dropped. He turned in time to see the soldier fall over, a gigantic nail sticking out of his skull.

  "Who sent you?" An old man stepped through a fresh cloud of sulfuric smoke. Tall, he had the sagging jowls of a man who'd lost too much weight too fast. Long greasy locks of gray hair framed his stubble-speckled face, and his bloodshot eyes glittered, sunken within dark pouches. He wore a plain wool robe. Wooden sandals clacked on the concrete when he walked. The clothes were Xangese in style, but the old man, and his accent, was all Arkenian.

  The stranger's appearance didn't catch Aldren's attention so much as the contraption he held in his hands. A mass of steel and copper tubes, quivering with each rumbling shake of a small engine jutting from the butt end. There was no barrel to the front of the strange weapon, but instead a curved shelf on which rested a nail much like the one in the dearly departed soldier's head. A belt of similar projectiles hung from the weapon.

  "Clint Kaizer?" Aldren guessed aloud.

  "I asked who sent you, boy. Don't make me ask again."

  "We need to move!" Mayla burst into the chamber.

  "May - Clint, no!"

  But Aldren's shout came too late. The moment Clint Kaizer saw Mayla, he turned his nail cannon her way and fired.

  Mayla saw the danger a fraction of as second before the projectile flew her way. She made a spinning leap to evade the nail.

  She landed on the concrete floor, the nine-inch spike stuck in her left thigh. Mayla let out a cry and clutched the wound.

  "Clint, we're on your side, damn it!" Aldren stepped between the old man and Mayla. "I'm a Sargent with the Arkenian military, and she's a Quarish partner. We're here to help." May... he looked over his shoulder at Mayla, who was hyperventilating between gritted teeth, grabbing hold of the nail.

  "Ah, shit." Clint Kaizer shouldered past Aldren. "Sorry, girl. Been cooped up with these
other squints too long. Don't pull, now," he warned. "You'll bleed, and judging by the ruckus you two've caused, there's no time to stitch that up."

  Aldren scooped his rifle off the floor. "There another way outta here?"

  Kaizer had reached down and was pulling Mayla to her feet with one surprisingly thick-muscled arm, his large weapon held casually in the other.

  A pair of soldiers burst through the side entrance and received spikes through their chests, sending them crumpling to the floor.

  "The lever to the right." Kaizer motioned toward a panel beside the door. "Pull it down."

  Mayla hung on Kaizer's shoulder, wincing, her injured leg on tip-toes. A thin line of blood ran over her pants.

  Aldren dashed to the panel and flipped the lever as instructed.

  A thick slab of gray metal rattled down from above the opening on a chain pulley, slamming home to block off the next group of shouting men.

  "That'll buy us a few minutes," said Kaizer. Depositing Mayla in a rolling chair, the old man slammed his weapon onto the long workbench. He collected a sidearm from one of the fallen soldiers and tucked it into the pocket of his robes.

  Gunshots pinged against the other side of the metal slab, and the large garage door on the opposite end rattled as it was struck.

  Kaizer swung a leather tube from his tool rack and started to collect seemingly random pieces of paper into it from around his workspace.

  "May?" Aldren knelt beside his travelling companion. Mayla's injured leg quivered, and her face was pale. Sweat beaded her brow as she sucked in a deep breath. "I'll live." She forced the words out.

  "So, what's the deal?" asked Kaizer as he continued to roll up blueprints and pages of illegible scribbling. "Cavalry coming in from the mountains or the sea?"

  "Neither," Aldren answered. "We're it."

  Kaizer looked over his shoulder with a raised eyebrow. "Whose brilliant idea was this operation?"

  "We're in Xang to ensure their participation in a disarmament deal," Mayla said as she wrapped a cloth around her wound. "When we found out you were here, we—"

  "Yeah, I get it. Weren't in over your heads enough as it was." The old man’s words were punctuated by even louder hammering against the garage door, causing sections to dent inward. Kaizer went over to a pile of scrap covered overtop by a large oiled cloth. Pulling the cloth down, he reiterated his question. "Who sent you to Xang? The president? Davids, or did Orvid win the election?"

  "You mean you don't know?"

  "Can't imagine they'd have much reason to keep him updated," Mayla pointed out, tying the last knot on her makeshift bandage.

  "Davids is president, still,” Aldren told Kaizer. “He signed off on this trip, but Senator Samuel Mutton's the one who hired us."

  "Senator, eh? Never took Redstripe's pilot for the political sort." Kaizer shrugged and turned to the scrap pile. He stopped tinkering a moment later. "You two know anything about my boy? How’s Matthew doing?"

  "No one knows." Mayla had grabbed a pair of broom handles and was affixing a spare piece of steel to make them into hasty crutch. "As far as the state's concerned, he's a fugitive."

  "Fugitive?"

  "Arkenia went through a civil war, Sir," said Aldren. "North vs south, right after the mess with Xang. Your son fought with the losing side."

  Kaizer went still for a moment, his eyelids drooping as he processed the information. He nodded. "Fugitive is better than dead." The old man scratched his head. "Sorry 'bout the leg, girl. all this excitement…"

  "I'll chalk it up to senility," replied Mayla, her voice dry. "Might even forgive it if you actually figure us a way out of this alive. So, any more tricks up your sleeve?"

  Kaizer grinned, flashing half a row of silver teeth. "Yup." He reached under a piece of scrap in the pile and yanked back, pulling a starter cord free.

  Smoke spluttered from at least half a dozen random-looking pipes as something inside the mess popped and roared to life.

  Hydraulics whirred, and the scrap pile rose on a pair of three-wheeled treads.

  "As you can imagine," Clint Kaizer crossed his arms as what could only be described as an abomination came to rumbling life. "Folk who need to steal an engineer don't have many on hand to oversee the work. None that could outwit me, at least." He grabbed a hand bar and hoisted himself into a ratty seat that, up until a moment ago, had sat at an impractical angle. "Grab something and hop on," he called, taking hold of a pair of levers. A glowing red spot appeared in the middle of the garage door. The Xangese were cutting through.

  Aldren helped Mayla up first, propping her to her feet until she could take hold of one of the many jutting pieces. Though seemingly bashed together into a crude pile, the closer Aldren came to the rumbling, quivering contraption, the more apparent the machine's design became. Pieces of bent metal beams and tubes formed seats, complete with foot rails for the passengers to keep themselves from sliding down the rig's scrap-metal shell.

  Passing the rifles up to Mayla, Aldren climbed into a seat next to hers, made from several tires jumbled together, their wheels welded in place. Aldren gulped a breath, feeling the engine shake under him, the raw power of burning diesel as wild and unpredictable as a beast. It brought home all the ingrained fear he'd tried to suppress, the apprehension he'd carried ever since Flemmingwood.

  Aldren checked the magazine for his rifle and slammed it in place. Be scared later. “Ready!” he shouted, looking toward the searing tear growing in the sheet steel before them.

  Kaizer stepped on various foot pedals and pushed a lever forward.

  "Pray we don't blow up!" cried the old man.

  "What did you just s—" Aldren let out a strangled shout as the contraption surged forward. A pair of large blades sheered through the garage door and moved outward with the clang of working gears, spreading the already damaged metal apart with an ear-splitting squeal.

  Aldren hadn't seen any guns on Kaizer's scrap machine, which meant they'd been as cleverly hidden as the rest of the beast's attributes, because no sooner had Kaizer torn through the door than Ugly, as Aldren determined to dub the creation, let loose on the Xangese machines outside with booming artillery.

  Aldren's ears were already ringing from the earlier gunfire. This barrage nearly deafened him, and made Ugly buck backward at least a foot as its guns sprayed the enemy with assorted shards of metal. Soldiers fell with nails, ball bearings, saw blades, and other junk sticking out of them, and Xangese Warsuits spun blindly, their sights obliterated.

  Kaizer didn't stop to admire his handiwork. Ugly roared louder and pushed its way outside, its rough hull scraping against the hot, jagged edges of the freshly torn door.

  Gunshots pinged off Ugly near Aldren. He looked down his rifle, searching for a target. Now or never, Al.

  A rifle-toting soldier Aldren was aiming for fell, but not from Aldren's gun.

  Mayla seemed determined to compensate for her injured state. She fired her rifle in rapid, consecutive bursts, bringing down clusters of enemies, even striking one right out of the open cockpit of an old-fashioned Xangese landship.

  A call blared out over a set of loudspeakers on a wooden post. While Ugly veered down the road, fresh assailants lowered their guns.

  "Wonder how long that'll last," Aldren called. A dead master mechanic was no doubt preferable to one in enemy hands, from the Xangese perspective.

  Kaizer rolled Ugly straight through a hasty barricade two blocks down the road. Aldren found himself kicking Xangese soldiers in their faces as they attempted to leap and climb up Ugly to grab him. The last one he managed to dislodge hit the side of a building with a wet crunch as Ugly made a sharp right turn. Aldren winced.

  The harbor was fast approaching, the streets Ugly traversed darkening in the shadow of the impossibly sized monster Clint Kaizer had been forced to design. Just getting past that slab of weaponized machinery would take two or three blocks, let alone finding a boat they could hijack. Plenty of time for the enemy to figure out a way to
stop them without killing their pet mechanic. Or for them to decide they didn't care about the non-lethal approach.

  Mayla was relentless with her rifle, forcing groups of soldiers to duck for cover when she wasn't killing them outright.

  She went through three magazines before reaching into her rucksack to find herself out of ammunition. Mayla hurled the empty gun at a soldier's head, knocking him down.