Ironshield Page 11

  “For the most part,” Salkirk replied. “There was resistance, but that’s only to be expected.”

  “Well, I’m glad you can be so sanguine about all this, Salkirk,” Samuel snapped. “You two conspired to move my Warsuit without notifying me, committed an act of aggression against a country I fought to defend, whose only crime now is backing the one side that still seems to care about their freedom. But it’s alright, because it’s all within your twisted expectations. And as for you, Nathaniel, what do you think will become of your name if we go through with this insanity? It will undermine the nation’s faith in our entire administration!”

  “That, Senator Mutton, is why the President’s involvement can never be made public.”

  “Just what are you suggesting?” Though Samuel suspected he already knew. “Nathaniel?”

  Davids rubbed his temples. “I wasn’t exaggerating when I said I’d beat Orvid at his own game, Sam. James Edstein and compatriots of his such as Theodore Kolms broke the War Codes, and their president denied any involvement or knowledge. But even though Orvid condemns the Ironshield, a Warsuit still attacked Edinville as a diversion to spring him. Orvid denounces that as well, but we can’t trust it. We have to act under the premise that every one of these actions had Connor Orvid’s seal of approval. So, if he’s going to hide his treasonous acts behind a veil of ignorance, the only way to counter him is to do the same.”

  Samuel wanted to spit out the vile taste in his mouth, right onto the president’s desk. Looking into Davids’ face, Samuel tried to see the man he’d fought under on the field so long ago. The fire was still there, somewhere in Nathaniel Davids’ stare. But the years had dimmed its blaze. Rather than a hale soldier, Samuel saw a tired old man, burdened with the weight of an office he’d never wanted to begin with. He stood. “You want me to take responsibility, when word gets out about this. You want me to tell the world I went rogue and broke our laws.”

  “I want you to end the war, old friend. I want you to bring us the peace you’ve always spoken of.”

  “At the cost of my soul.”

  “Being free of the implication doesn’t exempt us from the guilt,” said Salkirk.

  “Right, I’m sure you’ll lose sleep over my ruin. Nathaniel, I expect this from him. I thought more highly of you.” Samuel turned his back on them both.

  “My wife is dying, Sam.”

  Samuel stopped. “Iris? When did you find out?”

  “Her condition has been advancing for months. The disease is back, spreading up her body. When it reaches her lungs, she’ll start to…”

  Samuel turned back to see the president looking down at his desk. Davids took a deep breath. “What will be left to me, Samuel, when my time comes? My wife’s mobility robbed of her within the first two years of our wedding. No children to speak of, no one to carry my name or hers. What’s my legacy to be? An endless series of wars, one of which against my own countrymen. You may think I don’t understand what I’m asking you to do, but I know it better than you can imagine. I’ve lived it, Samuel. I live it every day, every time I read the battle reports counting off how many of my people died slaughtering one another.”

  Samuel could only imagine how he’d feel, in Nathaniel’s place. Leanne could hate him all she wanted, be a traitor all she wanted. She was still everything to him, and the thought of her suffocating slowly broke something in his soul. Yes, he thought. If it were her, I’d do whatever I could, sacrifice whatever I could, just to make one thing right. Just to even a scale that can never be balanced. And I’d be wrong. “Are you giving me a direct order, Mr. President?”

  Davids opened his mouth, but hesitated before speaking. “No,” he said at last. “No, I couldn’t compel you to undertake this kind of task. It has to be your decision, Sam, and yours alone. But either way, Redstripe is in the north. I can’t risk transporting it back within our lines. No more than I can for the Virtue.”

  Two Kaizer Warsuits trapped behind enemy lines, just waiting for an Industrialist patrol to find them, kill whoever stood guard, and claim them for the North. Southern Arkenia was weak in mechanized strength as it was, constantly towing the line between the necessity for Warsuits and their aim to faze them out. With the Industrialists no doubt mass-producing their smaller Warsuits, the new Krieger machines first unveiled at Graytop and Flemmingwood, they had a disturbing advantage, reduced as their strength of numbers was. “When do you need my decision by?”

  “A car will come to your house in three days. Whether you get in or not is up to you.”

  Samuel took his leave, feeling the eyes of the two men bore into his back.

  Chapter 8

  James’ hand shook as he brought the straight razor to his face. He couldn’t help it. In the freight car of a speeding locomotive, everything shook.

  His beard had grown into a bird’s nest over the course of his captivity. James had had to trim it with scissors just to make it manageable enough to take a razor to.

  Water sloshed about in the tin bowl in front of his knees. The steel mirror pegged to the wooden wall tapped incessantly as it was shaken. James knew he should wait until the train stopped, but he didn’t know how long he’d have once he reached the halfway mark of his journey. He wanted to return to Quarrystone looking like himself.

  So far, he’d managed to get the job almost done without slicing his own nose off.

  James took in several deep breaths, clutching the razor’s handle tight. He brought it to his lathered cheek. One more pass.

  “Speaker…”

  “Not now,” James said. He’d tried everything from ignoring the tribesman’s ramblings to playing along and commanding him to be quiet in the name of his metal gods. None of it had worked.

  “But, Holy James, here is where—"

  “Just shut up. I have to concentrate.”

  “Forgiveness, Holy Speaker.”

  “And cut it with the -ow!” The train hit a particularly jarring bump. James hissed, touching the fresh cut along his cheek.

  “Na’Tet remembers this part of the journey, Master.”

  “Figures.” James reached for his towel.

  Na’Tet shuffled over beside him. “May I see the blade, Sacred James?”

  Every time James reprimanded him for using an honorific, the tribesman conjured up a different one. Then, eventually, Na’Tet defaulted back to the titles James had forbidden in the first place. James passed him the razor. “Should have said something sooner, if you knew the ride was going to get bumpy.”

  “Na’Tet tries to abide by Holy James’ message of silence.”

  “Could have fooled me.”

  Na’Tet took the straight razor and wiped James’ blood onto a bit of string. Then, from within his robes, he pulled out a strange object. A figure made from gears, steel wire and bits of metal piping, all twisted together in what James could only assume was a crude approximation of a Warsuit.

  Na’Tet gathered a clump of James’ beard shavings from the tin bowl and affixed them to the figure’s head with the bloodied string. This done, the tribesman smiled at James and bowed in thanks.

  Well, that isn’t disturbing at all.

  The train was slowing down. James pulled the door aside and poked his head out. They were coming up on a town.

  “Our stop, Speaker,” Na’Tet said from over James’ shoulder.

  “How’re we going to avoid being spotted in town?”

  Na’Tet shoved James out of the train.

  James had a half-second to scream before he crashed into the brambles below, scratching and bruising himself as he tumbled down the overgrown slope.

  He landed on his back, groaning while the sky spun above.

  Na’Tet slid after him feet first, slicing through the thorny growth with a hatchet on his way down. The tribesman came to a standing stop and placed James’ rucksack and saber down beside him.

  “Na’Tet gives many pardons, Holy James. This way is always easier if one does not see it coming.”

/>   “You son of a bitch.” James drew his machine pistol. “Are you trying to kill me?”

  “’Tet might be annoying, Jim, but he’s useful. Without a bullet in him, that is.”

  James spun around.

  Matthew Kaizer stood holding the reigns to a trio of saddled horses. The tall, thickly built man flashed a wide grin. His face was framed in shoulder-length brown hair that matched his thick sideburns. “Have a good trip?”

  James crashed into his friend, and found his own embrace returned five-fold. Matthew lifted him off his feet in a crushing hug that squeezed the air from his lungs.

  "Never thought I'd see a familiar face again," James said once he regained his composure. "I should be dead by now." Saying it aloud made everything all the more real in his mind. Had things gone differently, had he not been broken out of the Edinville Senate House and smuggled out of town, he'd have hung from his neck days ago.

  "If you thought I'd let that happen, you're an idiot." Matthew offered him the reins of a brown mare as the tail end of the train rattled past. "We shouldn't hang around here. We've got some miles to cover before we reach Quarrystone. Sound good, 'Tet?"

  “Na’Tet is honored to serve the Great Speaker in whatever way he can." Na’Tet's voice was muffled. He was bent prostrate, his face in the dirt.

  Matthew Kaizer, along with his father Clint Kaizer, were the creators of the Kaizer Engine, the technology that allowed Warsuits to function. Though more traditional engineering sufficed for the new Kriegers, the smaller models unveiled at Graytop, only a Kaizer Engine could power something as massive as Ironshield or its peers.

  If James was a saint to Na’Tet, Matthew Kaizer must have been akin to the Savior himself.

  They rode through the dusty, overgrown fields along a winding path that almost blended perfectly into the wilderness. James drank from his canteens as Matthew filled him in on matters in the North. There'd been a skirmish or two, attempts by the South to capture Industrialist forts along the Garut Pass, but the Northern position along the river held strong. Flemmingwood was under constant artillery cover, with troops patrolling the forest alongside Krieger Warsuits. Fuel wasn't an issue, with the Northern oilfields still producing well over their requirements and no one to sell it to. Food, however, along with salt, cotton and other staples were at all-time lows. Slowly, day by day, the northern provinces crept closer to starvation.

  "Orvid's been visiting the provinces, trying to rally more troops. People are getting fed up, though. Whole towns are demanding the right to surrender to the Appeasers, pressuring their provincial senators to do the same. Orvid's been forced to 'take it into consideration.' He can't stall for long, and neither can we."

  "Then at the very least I bought us time back in the spring. The bastards don't want to risk another all-out attack."

  Matthew brought his horse to a stop. "You really believe that, even now?"

  James halted his mount as well. Na’Tet rode on ahead, studiously averting his gaze.

  “Well, it’s true,” James said. “Even with Orvid condemning it, what we did knocked the South down a few pegs. They can’t be sure it was a fluke, so they’re treading carefully. And that’s how we’ll win.”

  “The question is, do we deserve to?”

  James’ jaw tightened. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “It means had I known you’d use the Kriegers to mow down unarmored infantry, I wouldn’t have designed them. And had my father known his inventions would be turned against his own countrymen, in betrayal of agreed upon treaties, he might never have built his first Warsuit.”

  “You’re still on this?” James exclaimed, flabbergasted. “Those damn ‘Codes’ were nothing more than a way for the South to curtail our strength. They saw the one advantage we had and used moral grandstanding to rob us of it.”

  “Maybe, James, but we agreed to it. And whatever disadvantage it put us at, it was the right thing to do.”

  “Should we have adhered to rules like these when we fought Xang?”

  “Of course not—"

  “Then why now?”

  “Because those are our brothers!” Matthew shouted. “Our countrymen, our comrades. Politics and provincial lines are all that separate us from them. We’re killing each other over ink and words, Jim!”

  “So we’re supposed to let ourselves lose?”

  “No, we’re supposed to find a better way to win. Savior’s name, many of those men aren’t even fighting by choice.”

  “No, they’re conscripts. Another reason we can’t lose, no matter what. Because If they can take freedom away from their own people, Matt, what do you think happens to us after we give in?” He was shouting too, his angry voice echoing through the plains.

  “Whatever it is can’t be worse than winning as tyrants. Or do you think the South will welcome us with open arms after we kill their husbands, fathers, and sons under iron boots? If we keep fighting this way, the South will escalate. I, for one, don’t want to see what our enemies do when they feel backed into a corner.”

  “The South can lay the blame for those deaths where it belongs. In the hands of Davids and his Senate.”

  Matthew shook his head. “I was sure, given the time you’ve had to think, that you’d see the error of your ways.”

  “Do you regret springing me, now?” Can’t see how you’re still on your soapbox, after what Kolms did to get me here.”

  Matthew grimaced. “I never condoned that.”

  “Then why the hell are you here?”

  “Because we’re still friends!”

  James scoffed. “Well, you sure took your time acting the part.” He kneed his horse forward, trotting between Matthew and Na’Tet. Silence fell over the trio, broken only by the rumble of another train speeding down the tracks behind them.

  *

  Smoking craters dotted a gray field. Samuel stumbled his way between them, fumbling for his saber. It wasn’t there.

  He tripped over something. Catching himself short of falling, he looked down. Cedric Flanner, one of his fallen Red Guard, looked up at him with glazed eyes. His face was ashen. A Warsuit’s gun had blasted a twelve-inch hole where his chest used to be. Flesh and fabric were blackened around the wound, as though he’d been shot at point-blank range.

  Others from his ten lay strewn about like thrown chess pieces. Here, Fred Drant, crushed beneath the body of his horse. There, Michael Aldwin, or at least his bottom half, recognizable by the silver spurs he always kept polished.

  For all the dead bodies in red and brown, there were startlingly few Industrialist gray or black uniforms to be seen. Samuel wandered through the blasted battlefield until he saw a hulking shape. One of the track-driven Krieger Warsuits, the ones James Edstein had had hidden in camouflaged trenches to spring on the Southern men. A blackened shell hole marred its chest plate. It was covered in blood, surrounded by the corpses of Samuel’s soldiers.

  One body hung in the Warsuit’s claw. Samuel got close enough to peer up at the limp form’s face. Nicholas stared down at him, his mouth dripping crimson.

  I’m sorry, boy. Samuel reached up to the cadaver with a shaking hand. I should have been there to protect you.

  Nicholas broke into a bloody smile and winked at him. The Krieger moved, rearing up to an impossible height. Gone was the small Northern Warsuit. In its place, Samuel stared up at the behemoth figure of his own machine. Redstripe raised its claw and crushed Nicholas. Gore rained on Samuel as he fell screaming to his knees…

  He started awake in a cold sweat. Light from the train’s aisle filtered through fogged glass into his unlit cabin. Outside, the night blurred by.

  Nicholas’ face had haunted his waking mind ever since he saw the boy’s corpse. Now, apparently, even his dreams weren’t safe.

  Nineteen years old. The lad had been a nervous one. Brave, when push came to shove. Foolhardy, even, but uneasy with the jostling and crude jokes of his comrades, always turning to his brother with an anxious laugh, hoping he�
�d fit in. The lads had all taken to him, watching over him when battle started.

  His gun had been fired in the Senate House basement. The boy had gone out fighting.

  That fact embittered Samuel more than it relieved him. Nicholas should have been in school, or tending a ranch with his father. Not facing iron monsters, not serving as a gaoler, dying underground for politics beyond his control.

  He should never have been there. Retribution shouldn’t have been, either. What was and what should be were rarely the same.