Ironshield

by Edward Nile

  “Thanks.” Aldren lit it and inhaled deep.

  “You just sign up?”

  “Yeah,” Aldren replied. “I’m supposed to report to the mechanics division. Matthew Kaizer’s running it, right?”

  “In his own way, I guess,” the man replied, looking up to the wall. “Doesn’t start his day ‘till late in the morning. Directs people, mostly. Prick has barely touched a wrench this whole time, from what I can tell.”

  “Fucker thinks he’s royalty eh?” said Aldren, picking up on the man’s tone. “Hell, I saw a couple Industrialist uniforms, thought I was seeing things.”

  “Nah, those were real. Stuck up rebels think their shit don’t stink because they turned out to be right about something for once.”

  “I hear ya there.” Aldren took another puff. “Hey, listen, thanks for the smoke. No idea why, but my assigning officer back in Talenport wanted me to deliver a letter to Little Kaizer. Was probably too lazy to hire a damn courier.”

  “Little Kaizer, that’s a good one.” The soldier chuckled. “He’s got a guardhouse up on that wall,” he said with a gesture above. “Service gate around the left will take you inside. Good luck.”

  Aldren thanked the man and continued on, following his directions.

  “You can’t just walk up and see him without an appointment,” said a guard standing in front of Kaizer’s door, arms out.

  “Listen, buddy, I’ve been through too much to just turn away now,” said Aldren. “I’ve got a delivery for Matthew Kaizer, and he’s gonna get it even if he has to dig this tube outta your—”

  “I’m warning you.” The guard reached for his sidearm.

  “Hey, Matty!” Aldren shouted. “Your dad sent me.”

  “Turn around, psycho,” the guard growled. “Before I get the MPs to—”

  The door cracked open behind him. “Stand down,” said a gruff voice. A sharp eye looked at Aldren from a somewhat fleshy face. It was a younger, less emaciated version of Clint Kaizer.

  The guard obeyed, shaking his head as he left and looking at Aldren suspiciously.

  Matthew Kaizer stepped aside to let Aldren into the room.

  Once Aldren crossed the threshold, the larger man grabbed him by his coat and shoved him against a wall. "I don't know who you are or what your play is," Matthew hissed. "But you made a big mistake bringing my father's name into it."

  "Name's Mal," Aldren said, placing a hand over Matthew's clenched fists. "Former Sargent Aldren Mal. I was sent to Xang on a survey mission. I saw your dad there, a prisoner of the Xangese and a Lytan named Harkan Raith." He coughed as Matthew's fists tightened, pressing him further against the wall, squeezing down on his throat. "We tried to get Clint out of there, but there were too many. He told me to bring this case to you."

  "If my dad couldn't get out, there's no way a scrawny shit like you did."

  "He helped us. Let himself get captured again so I could deliver this to you." Aldren had to force out the words as the pressure increased and his face flushed. "I think it's the plans for what they made him build!"

  Matthew let go. Aldren dropped to the floor, coughing, wet spittle flying from his lips as he drew in painful, blissful breaths.

  Matthew Kaizer scooped up the case and shook the documents out onto a cot that looked far too narrow for someone his size.

  "This is his handwriting," Matthew said. "But it doesn't make any sense. There's nothing here about a weapon."

  "Don't know what to tell you," Aldren rasped. "Your dad thought it was important. Thought Arkenia depended on it."

  Matthew heaved a sigh as he ran his hand over the paperwork. "Was he okay? When you left him, I mean.”

  Aldren grabbed onto a table and he lifted himself to his feet. "Looked like he wasn’t eating too well," he said. Leastways not as well as you. "But he was alive. Built a couple of crazy things right under their noses that helped us get away. Smart guy. Scary smart."

  "You don't know the half of it." Matthew Kaizer seemed to perk up, standing straighter and lifting a sheet of paper from the collection of his father's notes. "Maybe…" he muttered.

  "Figure something out?"

  Kaizer looked over at Aldren. "Unless he gave you some other message, that'll be all, Sargent—"

  "Former Sargent."

  "Whatever. I've got work to do. See yourself out."

  Aldren didn't need further prompting. His last glimpse of Matthew Kaizer before he let the door close behind him was the large man carrying paperwork to a rough desk in a corner of the room and flicking on a lamp.

  Hope he figures it out. Whatever it is.

  What would that be like? Aldren wondered as he walked along Gorrad's southern wall. How would he take it, if he could get a message from someone who'd gone missing, someone he'd thought dead and gone?

  What would Aldren do, if he got one last word from Yannick?

  He'd tell you we weren't kids anymore, Al. Twerp was always the more grown up one. Idiot. Aldren put his hands on the battlements and looked down at the field, at the forms of myriad pieces of machinery, the columns of men training. He pulled out his discharge paper. The ticket to his freedom, all he'd wanted since being conscripted. With this, he could leave all the violence and danger, go to his mother's farm, wait out the storm brewing on the eastern horizon.

  Let everyone else fight the war.

  You're done, he told himself. You don't owe anyone anything else.

  Except he didn't believe that anymore. Yannick had been right. Mayla had been right. Even Sam Mutton had had the right of things, in his way. Had he sent anyone else to Xang, they might have turned back when they had the chance, left Arkenia with its pants down.

  ‘Your brother would be ashamed.’ Of course Mayla knew who Aldren was, and who he was related to. Knowing her, she’d probably read a whole file on him before they even met.

  But Mayla didn't know Yannick like Aldren did. Yannick Mal had held nothing but love for his small family, even when they disagreed. If Aldren's brother were here, he'd say “I'm happy for you. Get away from this mess and live the good life for both of us." Yannick would say it with a smile, even as he shrugged on his pack and marched to war. He'd use that smile of his to hide the disappointment in his eyes. Disappointment that his brother wasn't marching with him.

  Damn it. Aldren clenched his fists, the paper crinkling between his fingers. All this horse shit, all this time and risk, all Mutton's fucking promises. But I've been the one lying. Conning myself into thinking there was any way out. The war was going to touch his life no matter what Aldren did. It would affect him, his mother, her fucking cows.

  The only difference now, was that Aldren got to make his own choices.

  He folded out the discharge paper and put it back in his pocket. Good to have, just in case, he thought.

  Aldren pushed off from the battlement and descended the stairs.

  This time, he’d report to duty a free man.

  *

  Tessa Kolms looked up at the gaudiest piece of machinery she’d ever seen. Radiance was a chrome-plated, gilded testament to a traitor’s ego.

  And it was to be hers.

  “We can strip the plating easy enough, give it a duller finish,” one of the mechanics said. “Not much to be done about the gold inlays though, not without fabricating new parts we just don’t have time for.”

  Tessa nodded. “Do what you can.” She turned from the machine to find James standing a few yards away, studying it himself.

  She snaked her arms around him and pressed up close. No matter how many times they held each other, it always sent the same thrill through her. An excitement that was almost too much for her to contain.

  James stroked her hair and kissed her, a sad smile touching his lips.

  “You don’t want me to get in that thing,” Tessa said, pulling on James’ beard.

  “I’m not going to stop you,” James said. “I just can’t help but worry.”

  “Don’t,” she said. “I promise the guns won’t
be empty this time.”

  A crane swiveled toward another Kaizer. Retribution. More parts had arrived this morning, and the mechanics had finished the Warsuit’s other arm. Tessa’s fists tightened on James’ coat.

  “I’ll talk to Mutton, when then time is right,” said James as he followed her gaze.

  “The time is right now,” Tessa hissed. “I don’t care what the Appeasers say, that is my father’s machine, and he should be the one to pilot it. He should be here with us.”

  “It’s complicated, Tess.”

  “How? What’s complicated about releasing men who fought for the side in the right? Are Mutton’s politics so important he’d deprive us of valuable soldiers to save face?”

  “To be honest, I’m not sure it’s all about politics. Besides Isaac Renalds’ huffing and puffing for his old Warsuit—”

  “A suit he lost, fair and square.”

  “Right. But looking past that, I think there’s a personal stake in this Mutton’s not talking about.”

  “Pride, then.” Tessa snorted. “My father rots useless in a cell for Samuel Mutton’s pride.”

  “I didn’t say that. Listen, someone got killed in order for your dad to spring me back in Edinville. Others could have died, too. Would it be that hard to believe the man takes that personal?”

  Tessa didn’t know what to say. “You don’t agree with that mustached twit, do you?” She stepped back from James.

  Her lover patted the air between them. “Your dad did his duty for the cause, and he deserves to be free. I don’t know how far to trust Mutton. God knows I’ve dreamed of ripping out his throat myself. But I do know that right now, there’s a worse enemy to fight. I promise, Tess, we won’t abandon your father in there.” James jerked his chin toward his own Warsuit. “Even if I have to burst through the prison walls with Ironshield to get him.”

  Tessa nuzzled back into him, casting a look over her shoulder at Radiance. “It’ll take weeks to clean Salkirk’s stink out of that cockpit,” she said.

  “Are you going to keep the name he gave it?” James inquired, kissing the side of her head.

  “Uh uh,” Tessa craned her neck back to kiss him. She’d thought of a better name.

  Chapter 37

  When Aldren returned to Samuel Mutton’s tent, the senator was poring over paperwork with his wife by his side. Aldren had to admit, he took pleasure in the dumbfounded look on the senator’s face when he told him he wanted an active duty role in the defense effort.

  The one thing he’d forgotten about was the uniform. The damn thing was stiff and itched in places Aldren couldn’t reach with any semblance of dignity. He hadn’t had to wear the red and brown since Flemmingwood. After that, all his operations had been covert as he and his small team hunted fugitive Industrialists disguised as civilians.

  Aldren reported in with a queue of other recruits. Whether out of ignorance of Aldren’s past experiences or just to get on his nerves, the senator had assigned him to the Krieger division. Under General Isaac Renalds.

  The machines standing row by row made Aldren itch in an entirely different way, but he swallowed his apprehensions. Warsuits were going to be part of this, and he couldn’t afford to choke up every time he was faced with one of them.

  No, this is better, Aldren determined as he moved up the line. This time, I’ll be behind the controls to one of these monsters. Then someone else can shit themselves scared.

  “You’re all here because, situations being as they are, Arkenia’s scraping the bottom of the barrel. But in the days to come you will familiarize yourselves with these buckets of bolts and one another, until you’re good and ready to be useful cannon fodder.”

  Renalds hadn’t changed much except for his gut. Where the man had been weaselly and thin before, his uniform was now tailored around an ample middle, doing as poor a job disguising his extra pounds as the thin beard did at hiding the roundness about his jaw.

  Aldren clenched his fists at his sides. Hasn’t learned an ounce of humility. There were few people Aldren actively hated, in truth. But Renalds had to be one of them. To learn that the general was being put back in the cockpit of a Kaizer felt like a slap in the face to every man who died needlessly so Renalds could have his little duel with Theodore Kolms.

  “The new machines are simple, and with a pilot and gunner in each one, we’re confident numbers will make up for what you lot lack in brains. So, I’m going to go down the line and pick teams of two for the first training exercise. You.” Renalds pointed at Aldren.

  Shit, maybe he recognizes me after all. Aldren saluted. “Yes, Sir!”

  “Go to the mess tent and grab me a coffee, quick. Make it black.”

  Do I just have one of those faces or something? Aldren hurried off. Once he was out of eyesight, he slowed down to a casual walk. He’d make the best of things.

  Between meals, the mess tent was sparsely populated. A handful of officers smoking and drinking coffee at mostly empty tables, a few sleepy-looking recruits sneaking a break between tasks.

  Aldren poured a cup of hot, black coffee from one of the carafes at the long serving table. Clearing his throat loudly, he hocked a fat wad of phlegm into the steaming liquid and stirred it in with a wooden stick.

  “Like the taste or something?”

  Aldren turned and nearly dropped his cup. That the young woman facing him wore an Industrialist uniform would have been disconcerting, but not surprising. He’d seen enough of them around, practically prancing in righteous vindication at the South having been proven wrong.

  What got to Aldren, though, was that he recognized this woman.

  “Something wrong?” The black-haired girl looked at his rank. “Private?”

  “Sargent,” Aldren croaked. Kind of. Clearing his throat in earnest, he repeated himself. “Sargent Mal, Ma’am.” She didn’t seem to recognize him, and why would she? The last time Aldren saw her was in a smoky warehouse as she fired at him and his team from a half-finished Warsuit. This was the girl Aldren hadn’t shot at.

  “Who’s the coffee for, Sargent Mal?” She asked it with such open frankness Aldren felt compelled to tell the truth. That, and he couldn’t think of a convincing lie.

  “General Renalds,” Aldren answered. “Ah, funny story, see…”

  The girl took the cup from his hands. “Say no more.” She spat into the coffee with even more gusto than Aldren had, then gave it back to him. “Stir it good,” she said. “I want him to drink every drop.”

  “Yes, Ma’am!” Aldren had never been happier to salute someone.

  “Tess, come play with us!” An older man with a thick build and sweeping black hair called from one of the tables. He also wore an Industrialist uniform, and was dealing cards to others wearing the same.

  “Coming, Uncle.” Tess snagged two rolls from the basket on the serving table and put one in Aldren’s free hand as she walked away. “Better hurry to the general while his coffee’s hot.”

  By the time Aldren got back to the training ground, teams of two had been picked and were waiting by their Kriegers.

  “Here you are, Sir.” Aldren proffered the coffee to Renalds.

  “Took your damn time about it, boy.” Renalds sniffed the coffee. “Least they got the brew right today.” He took a long sip.

  Aldren kept a straight face. “So, which machine do I report to?” Were those drums he was hearing?

  Renalds gestured as he drank. “You’ll be gunning with the rusty at the end of the line there.”

  “Gunning? Sir, I thought I was going to be a pilot.”

  “You’ll do whatever you’re best suited for, private, and you’ll do it gladly. For this exercise, you get the gunner’s seat. Shouldn’t have any trouble finding the machine, now go.”

  Aldren saluted and walked off. He waited until he was a few dozen yards away to look back. Renalds was back to his coffee, drinking deep.

  Small victories, Al. Small victories.

  The sound of drumming became louder, acco
mpanied by ululating calls. By ‘rusty’ Aldren assumed Renalds meant a tribesman and, sure enough, he found a group of copper-skinned people in robes banging on skin drums in a semi-circle before the Krieger at the end of the line.

  One man had cast aside his robe, and stood bare-chested, his muscled body painted with symbols that looked like stylized gears in shades of red and black. He carried a small figure in his hands, a sort of doll twisted together from scrap metal and wire.

  The drumming and throat singing grew faster and louder, a rising crescendo, more intense with each step the man took toward the Warsuit.