Ironshield Read online

  No. In their place, Striker Crimson wouldn’t miss this moment either.

  The black and white of the Industrialist flags and banners fluttered among the teeming spectators, indistinct in the distance. Striker knew some if not all the Gearsword symbols were embedded within the shape of a bronze-toned triangular shield, an addition made by those rebels loyal more to the Ironshield than the Northern president.

  Beyond the flap of Striker’s tent men called out to him, holding aloft blue banners bearing but a single red diagonal stripe. A play on the Arkenian flag made to honor Redstripe’s legacy. The accolades left a bitter taste in Striker’s mouth. There was something disturbingly obsequious, to his mind, in being so effusively applauded by one’s own soldiers. Compared to the distant hollers of the Northern civilians upon those hills, the cries of the Southern troops rang hollow and false in his ears.

  Be that as it may, Striker had to hold up morale, so he swept out of his tent and walked with his head held high.

  His personal guard closed ranks around him as he headed down the shallow slope to where his Kaizer waited.

  Already, Striker could see smoke plumes in the air to the North. Ironshield was approaching the battleground, making its way down the rough-hewn steps of the striated hill, its descent shielded by naturally formed walls of stone.

  Men parted aside with little prompting from Striker’s Red Guard, who had fierce reputations all their own. Everywhere men saluted as Redstripe’s pilot passed. He kept a straight-backed posture, doing his best to exude confidence and pride. Meanwhile he just wished he could reach under this damned mask to scratch his nose. Sweat dripped beneath the leather as Striker baked in the late spring heat. Such was the price of this charade he lived.

  “Commander Crimson!” Shouted a particularly loud, slurred voice. Striker turned.

  Edmund Paulson, secretary to Senator Samuel Mutton, stood jammed between two disgruntled soldiers, waving Striker over. The portly secretary’s shirt was rumpled, his cheeks rosy. The blasted man was drunk. Again.

  “I assume you come bearing a message from the senator?” Striker hated how the mask muffled his voice. It was difficult to get his disapproving tone across when he sounded like he had a sock in his mouth.

  Paulson hiccoughed with a grin. “I guess you can say that. I’m supposed to tell you how the spy’s execution went.”

  Yannick Mal, the Southern conscript turned Industrialist spy. Yes, Striker remembered. The man's smuggled information was the entire reason President Davids chose to execute this major offensive, a two-pronged assault proposed at the start of the war but not implemented for fear it would sacrifice too many Southern resources and leave them vulnerable should they fail. Thanks to the spy's observations in Talenport, the more reactionary Northerners were convinced the South was in secret accordance with Lytan. Senator Mutton had been vocal in opposing the landing of Imperial supply ships, but he'd been overruled. The Industrialist strength mustered here at Graytop and at Flemmingwood to the west were the result of that decision.

  If the North truly believed Southern Arkenia was giving its independence up to rejoin the Lytan Empire, there was no telling to what lengths they'd go to oppose them.

  Practically overnight, the Industrialists had turned from entrenched rebels under siege, to threatening the invasion of Southern lands. Davids didn't want to see it, but he'd awakened a monster.

  Striker only hoped Senator Elliot Salkirk hadn't given that beast more claws. "Were due honors given… as your employer suggested?"

  Paulson looked sideways. "The sentence was hanging," he said. "No friends or family were present. As for the witnesses who were invited…" Paulson seemed on the verge of saying something diplomatic. "Salkirk turned it into a fucking circus,” he said instead, spitting onto the dirt. "Flaunted his Kaizer, let his boot-lickers have their way with Mal before he swung. I've seen roadside lynch mobs with better manners."

  Striker nodded. It was as he'd feared. Members of the Southern Senate, Salkirk among them, seemed bent on stoking the fires of Northern fury.

  It should have been you, Mutton, Striker thought. If you’d been willing to carry out your senatorial duties, Yannick Mal would have met his end by firing squad. Instead, the Industrialists have yet another betrayal to add to their leger, and a legitimate one at that. Striker wasn’t about to hold out hope that the circumstances of the young veteran’s execution would remain any sort of secret. Yannick Mal had given up a leg fighting for the South as a conscript. He’d gone turncoat afterward, yes, but he still deserved a better death than the one he received. Allegiances weren’t black and white in a nation divided against itself.

  “Thank you for letting me know.” Striker shook Paulson’s hand. “Now, go report to Senator Mutton in Edinville. And while you’re at it,” Striker did manage to add some bite to his voice now, mask or no mask. “Tell your employer how you’ve been drinking on duty. In front of a senior officer, no less.”

  Paulson smirked. The reek of whiskey penetrated Striker’s mask. It was no wonder the red and brown clad soldiers to either side of the secretary were so sour-faced.

  “Oh, I’m sure it will be news to him, Commander,” Paulson said with a wink. In the next instant, Edmund Paulson was gone, disappeared into the military throng.

  Striker shook his head and put the drunken secretary out of his mind for now. People shouted, pointing north. Ironshield was in sight. Striker hurried his way toward his own Warsuit. He didn’t want to be late.

  Striker grabbed hold of the cable, stepped onto the platform, and let himself be carried up Redstripe’s side by the whirring winch.

  One of the early generations of Warsuit, Redstripe was built with speed and hand-to-hand combat in mind, sporting a great sharpened wedge of steel on each arm. Cannons and machineguns sprouted from its otherwise ornamental head, while the Warsuit’s chest plate was designed with minimalism in mind. Lacking as thick a carapace as other Kaizers, Redstripe depended on its maneuverability. It could hunch down and fold its limbs much easier than any of its counterparts, minimizing exposure to its center of mass. Detractors and rival Kaizer pilots sometimes referred to Redstripe as the Iron Spindle, due to its slim frame.

  Sunlight played over Redstripe's dulled steel plating, putting the Warsuit's titular feature into stark reveal. A diagonal slash of red painted across the machine's chest, following the line where Samuel Mutton, the Kaizer's original pilot, had split the wall of a Lytan fort during the Revolution, splattering gore from an unlucky group of Imperial soldiers upon its chest plate.

  To Striker, it hardly seemed a moment to be proud of. But the people needed their symbols.

  While Striker rose, he passed workers scrambling to and fro upon the scaffold built around Redstripe, tightening bolts, double and triple checking axles, and loading massive canisters of ammunition to the various guns.

  A young mechanic opened the cockpit with a hydraulic hiss and stepped aside as Striker ascended the last few feet and climbed onto the hatch. Striker drew his saber and ducked into the dark confines of the Warsuit.

  Inside, he grabbed hold of the leather-padded seat and lowered himself into it. The buttons and display bulbs arrayed in front of him were all dark. Redstripe was still asleep.

  To Striker's left side was a control stick, complete with small levers, buttons, and switches. On the right side, a cylinder, its flat circular top broken by a slot at the center. Striker raised his saber. Down the middle of the blade, encrusted with a red enamel, was a jagged groove, its pattern unique to this weapon.

  Striker slid the blade into the ignition cradle, feeling and hearing the tumblers click into place as he drove it down to its hilt. Then, he turned it.

  A shuddering boom resounded throughout the Warsuit. Lights flickered to life all around Striker, casting the dark cockpit in a ruddy glow. He depressed a button in the handle of his saber, and its controls popped free with a metallic shwick.

  Buckling himself into Redstripe's harness, Striker flicked swit
ches along the bulkhead terminals around him, turning the lights from red to dull green as he brought Redstripe's secondary engines to life.

  By pressing a button, he closed the hatch with a deafening clang, entombing himself within the dim cockpit with no sound but the roar of the Kaizer Engine around him, a cocoon of diesel-fueled power.

  "You're clear to move, Commander," an engineer's voice called over the radio.

  Striker nodded to himself. Already he felt the growing heat from the engine, made worse by the enclosed space. The ventilation system kept the pilot breathing, kept the heat from reaching lethal levels, but just barely.

  Striker pulled off his mask, reached up, and brought the periscope visor down, fitting the leather padding over his face as he used a dial on the side to flick between Redstripe’s various lines of sight. No obstructions on any of the scopes, good. Settling on the centermost lens, Striker grabbed hold of Redstripe’s control handles and pulled upward while working the pedals beneath his feet. With a mighty roar, Redstripe reared upward, clanking and rumbling as it did so. Striker still remembered when he’d first felt the terrifying sensation of the world bucking up around him. No matter how experienced one became with a Warsuit, one never really felt in control.

  Seeing the world through the magnifying scopes created an overwhelming sense of vertigo. Several feet of thick steel stood between Striker and the outside world, but thanks to a series of mirrors, tubes, and lenses, he saw the field ahead as though it were laid at his feet. As if Striker himself had become the giant.

  Wisps of black smoke drifted across his line of sight outside. The ventilated air carried the redolence of diesel, a flavor Striker could taste on his tongue along with the blood-like hint of iron.

  Across the field, Ironshield stomped toward him. The Industrialist Gearsword flag fluttered from the thick-bodied Kaizer's back.

  Where Redstripe was almost skeletal by Kaizer standards, Ironshield was anything but. The Northern Warsuit, plated in the thickest armor there was, lived up to its name. Wide, somewhat squatter than Striker's own machine, Ironshield was built for endurance, not maneuverability. Like a man overburdened with too much muscle, Ironshield took short, deliberate steps, its legs built thick and heavy to compensate for the heavier armor. No less than four huge exhaust pipes spewed flames and smoke above the Northern Warsuit. Ironshield sported head-mounted sights, shoulder-mounted cannons, and an untold number of machineguns and artillery hidden behind panels of its thick front carapace. Edstein’s Warsuit was less a mobile armor than it was a gun tower with legs.

  Striker allowed himself a moment of apprehension. Yes, James Edstein was young, and a relatively inexperienced Kaizer pilot. But he'd already won key victories, living up to his father's legacy. In truth, however, it was the Warsuit itself that made Striker nervous. Redstripe was designed to complement Ironshield, a nimbler machine to accompany the solidity of the stockier Warsuit. They'd never been meant to fight against each other. It had never been tried before.

  Striker had no idea what was about to happen.

  And that made him grin.

  He didn’t want this war, but if he was to be in it all the same, he had might as well put himself to the test.

  Striker’s mechanical world moved around him with rhythmic clanks and rattles, the constant roaring and shuddering of the Kaizer Engine. Like all Kaizer pilots, Striker had his ears stuffed with cotton to keep the loud din around the cockpit from damaging his hearing. It wasn’t until he brought Redstripe to a stop, sixty yards or so from Ironshield, and noticed a bulb blinking in his visor’s display, that Striker realized he was being hailed over the radio. He pulled back from the periscope and flicked the radio switch. Its blinking alert turned to a steady orange light as James Edstein’s voice crackled to life.

  “Redstripe pilot, respond. Striker Crimson, or whatever you want to be called. I’m going to go against my better judgement and give you this one chance to back away. The North has no wish to move on your lands or rights. We only ask the same of you.”

  It was a variation of what the Industrialists had been saying since the war began. And from their actions, it seemed true enough, up until this point. But that didn’t matter. If the North couldn’t be brought into the disarmament agreement, Xang would renew its hostilities against Arkenia.

  Striker almost touched the transmit button to say as much, but thought better of it. What would it accomplish, except to put a voice to his masked persona? It wasn’t worth the risk.

  A mutter came over the radio waves, then: “My father fought alongside Samuel Mutton in the Revolution and the Xang war, when he sat where you’re sitting. That man would have at least shown his opponent the courtesy of a response.”

  Striker ground his teeth. There was no more bitter draught than these conversations between countrymen whom, as little as a year ago, would stand as allies. He hit a panel beside him, and a telegraph machine popped out, trailing a roll of paper beneath it. He tapped in a response over the airwaves. Within Ironshield's cockpit, a similar device would be typing the message out on a ribbon of paper for James Edstein to read.

  Yes. STOP. That man would have. STOP.

  Edstein's heaved breath was audible over the crackling frequency. "I had to try, for all our sakes. I'm sorry it has to be this way."

  So am I. STOP. Striker tapped in response. He slammed the telegraph panel shut, pulled the periscope back to his face, then gripped Redstripe's control sticks.

  Across a space that looked all too small, the caps on Ironshield's shoulder cannons blew off.

  Redstripe lurched around Striker as he put his Warsuit into motion. As always, he felt as though his stomach remained behind. Metal shuddered around him with every booming stride, and a clank and screeching squeal accompanied the rattle of bearings and turning gears as Striker raised his machine's right arm for an attack. Manipulating the arm with one control stick, Striker pressed a button with his little finger on the other as his booted feet worked the gas pedals.

  As Redstripe closed the distance, both Warsuits simultaneously let loose their guns.

  Chapter 2

  The first barrage of cannon and machinegun fire erupted between the Storm and Retribution like a metal hurricane.

  Red sparks and flashes of flame spat gray gunsmoke, hot lead pounded against steel on both sides with a rapid, thunderous din.

  Aldren imagined a living creature being caught in the middle of that infernal hail. Flesh and bone would be vaporized, reduced to a red mist to drift along with the sulfurous smoke.

  But for all the violence of the ordnance flashing between the two massive Warsuits, this ferocity paled in comparison to the vitriol Renalds had spewed during the two pilots’ short radio exchange.

  Theodore Kolms, the man who'd captured and inherited the re-christened Retribution, had remained calm in the face of Renalds' anger. In fact, the Northern general had sounded nothing short of amused, leading his opponent with the occasional stinging verbal jab, for all the world like a bored man goading an angry drunk before a fight he knew he'd win.

  Aldren had snorted out a laugh or two at his superior's expense while listening in on the radio, and he wasn't the only one.

  Watching the iron behemoths pummel each other with heavy ordnance tempered their humor fast enough.

  A particularly well-placed shell blast sheared off a chunk of plating from the Storm's right arm. The flaming shard of gray metal spun through the air behind the Warsuit and struck an ammo cache behind the Southern line. Crates of shells exploded in a great red burst, raining fiery slag and dark earth about. A corpse flopped to the ground, torn in half by the blast. Whether the unfortunate soul was a casualty of the battling Kaizers, or a fallen soldier whose remains had been left behind, Aldren didn't care to know.

  In the shadow of a Warsuit, one man amounted to about as much as the dirt he lay on.

  "Son of a whore!" Renalds' voice hissed through the radio. "A traitor like you has no place in Virtue's cockpit."

&nb
sp; "Says the man here to rob his countrymen on Imperial orders," Kolms replied. "Talking's over. Let your Kaizer make your argument, Appeaser."

  Renalds let out an inarticulate shout. The Storm stomped forward, closing the distance between itself and Retribution meter by meter. In the pattering of machinegun fire and explosive bursts of heavy shells, the surfaces of both Warsuits were being turned into a pockmarked mess, bullet scars and the larger warped rents of artillery blasts obliterating what little aesthetic appeal the monstrous machines might have had. Retribution's front looked like a cragged rock on the side of some ancient mountain, its armor seeming to erode under the unceasing sparks of hot metal being blasted against it. The Northern Warsuit slowed down its return fire, and for a moment, Aldren thought Theodore Kolms’ Kaizer was done for.

  Then, the cannon on Retribution's left arm loosed a lightning-fast shell amid a spurt of smoke. The round struck a direct hit on the Storm's exposed right arm, which burst in a combustion of fire and flying gears. The limb crashed to the ground, leveling a section of the evacuated trench. It was almost the exact spot Aldren had been running through just minutes ago.