Ironshield Read online

  Striker barely had his own blade drawn in time to parry the younger man's desperate slash.

  "I told you to leave us be!" James Edstein growled. His mop of dirty blonde hair was plastered to his face with sweat. Blood coated his hand, no doubt from the bleeding wound along his side.

  Striker jabbed at his opponent, not bothering to respond. The time for talking was long past.

  Edstein slapped Striker’s blade aside with a savage swipe of his own. Like Striker’s saber, Edstein’s weapon had a jagged line down its middle, the metal a uniform color unlike the ruby inlay of Redstripe’s key groove. A dark shield embedded in the handguard was the only thing to mark the ignition saber for what it was. Heinrich Edstein’s saber, bequeathed to his only son after the first Ironshield fell in the Xang war.

  That symbol, that reminder of the Ironshield family legacy, gave Striker pause. He didn’t want to kill James Edstein, if he could avoid it.

  His hesitation earned him a slash across the forearm.

  Striker let out a shout as he parried the next swing and followed up with a thrust, only to be deflected once more.

  “Show your face, Appeaser lapdog!” Edstein increased the speed of his attacks. Striker found himself on the defensive, each wild thrust and slash of Edstein’s saber inching him ever closer to the deadly fall at his rear.

  “If a man’s willing to kill for something, he should own up to it and reveal himself, not ride the coattails of better men from behind a disguise.”

  He let the boy talk because it slowed down his blade. Not enough, however. Striker’s ankle bumped against the edge of the decimated bulkhead.

  “You don’t deserve to pilot that machine,” Edstein continued, raising his blade for another stroke. “You Goddamned-agh!” Edstein cried out when Striker slashed him across the thigh. Before the younger man could recover, Striker rushed in, grabbing hold of his opponent’s sword arm while swinging his own blade. He caught James Edstein across the face with the flat of his sword, sending him stumbling to the side. Edstein lost his grip on his weapon.

  Striker caught it and sent the Northern commander to the deck with a swift kick to his injured thigh. When Edstein moved to rise, he found both blades crossed at his throat.

  “You’re beat, Ironshield,” Striker growled. “Yield and raise the white, or I’ll kill you and do it myself.”

  Edstein spat out a wad of bloodied spit. “You don’t want to do that.” His bright green eyes locked with Striker’s masked gaze. Somehow, the young man’s stare exuded defiance and pleading in equal measure.

  “You’re right, I don’t,” Striker responded. “But I’ll do it all the same, if you force my hand.”

  Edstein scoffed. “You’re one to talk about force.”

  “Yield.” Striker pressed the blades close enough to draw blood. “I won’t ask again.”

  James Edstein maintained his sharp stare for several minutes. Nothing interrupted the silence but for the wind, the crackling of fires from burning engine parts, and the groan of several hundred tons of metal settling against itself around them.

  Finally, with a slow, deliberate hand, Edstein reached for a lever beside his control seat, and pulled it.

  Half of Striker expected a trap, some last-minute weapon. Instead, Ironshield’s flagpole folded down, collapsing the bullet-riddled Industrialist flag. Another one sprang up in its place, a stark white sheet rippling in the balmy breeze.

  Relief washed over Striker Crimson. He’d won. He’d captured the Ironshield and his Warsuit. If his army could do the same against the Industrialists today, both here and at Flemmingwood to the west, it could mean the end of the war.

  The two-pronged approach had been a desperate ploy, a move to cut the feet out from under the Industrialists before recent Southern actions had a chance to foment the North’s rage toward something unspeakable. Striker hadn’t been confident it would work, but it was all they had. He was overjoyed to be proven wrong.

  Artillery guns renewed from the Southern lines, sending a barrage ahead of the infantry, whose cheers Striker could hear drifting from below.

  Still holding the sabers to Edstein, Striker risked a look over the side to see his soldiers storming the field around the two Warsuits’ feet, his own Red Guard on horseback, leading the charge.

  “I’m sorry.”

  Striker turned to Edstein. The young man’s eyes were downcast, and when Striker took the sabers away, James Edstein hung his head.

  “You fought for what you believe is right,” Striker said. “And you fought well. There is no need for apologies.”

  “I’m sorry for your men.” Edstein looked up with pure hate in his eyes. “I told you to turn back. I told you not to do this. You should have listened.”

  “What do you mean?” As Striker asked, the cadence from the ground changed. Cheers turned to cries of alarm. Guns blared below, along with the tell-tale sound of roaring engines.

  Striker looked down again. “My God,” he breathed. “What have you done?”

  James Edstein answered.

  “What I believe is right.”

  Chapter 3

  Renalds’ army, led by the increasingly exuberant Major Zolar, ran through the forest with rifles raised, searching for an enemy that was nowhere to be seen. Everywhere they found the evidence of recent activity, including distinctive tracks through the overgrown ground which the major dismissed as the marks of Northern field guns being rolled back.

  Aldren wasn’t sure. The tracks seemed more widely spaced than those of common field pieces, but who knew what sort of artillery the Industrialists may have developed? The more pressing question was, had the Northerners really packed up their weapons and retreated? They’d have had to start when the Warsuits were still fighting, he thought.

  True, the War Codes meant the victor of a Warsuit duel had to be allowed to leave with his prisoner and their machine, regardless of who won the battle that followed. But to run away before even seeing who’d come out on top begged the question of why the rebels had fought here to begin with? Just to goad Renalds and capture yet another Southern Kaizer?

  Aldren pointed his rifle this way and that with nervous energy. This silence was more terrifying than the shell blasts, because it didn’t feel real. All of this, everything since the two gigantic machines faced off, felt wrong.

  Quarrystone is on the other side of these trees. The main Industrialist warcamp. Did the Northerners really want to draw their enemy closer to their center of command, even while Striker Crimson and his forces attacked its southern line at Graytop Hills?

  Aldren was no tactician –he was barely even a soldier- but this seemed like a dangerous game of roulette.

  Every snap of a breaking branch made him start, as did each shout as comrades called out to taunt unseen foes.

  To Aldren’s right, the naked sun cast warm light over felled trees flattened by Retribution’s giant steps. Centuries of growth trampled like so much grass.

  Now, Aldren and his fellow soldiers crawled through those same footsteps, as small and insignificant as ants.

  “Hey.”

  Aldren spun around and lifted his rifle, eyes wide and wild. But it was only Wellend. He was one of only a handful of friends Aldren had managed to make since being drafted and the only one assigned to the same unit as him after training. For both of them, today was their first taste of combat.

  "Al, relax," Wellend pushed the barrel of Aldren's weapon aside. "There's no rebels here. They all tucked tails and ran."

  Aldren might have imagined the hopeful note in Wellend's voice, but he didn't imagine the way his friend's gaze flickered about. Perhaps everyone else was just as nervous as he was, and all this bravado was for show.

  It wasn't a comforting thought.

  “You froze back there,” Wellend pointed out. “Could have gone bad.”

  "It's just..." Aldren gestured at his mud and gore-soaked uniform. "Been one of those days."

  "Ha! Got that right." Wellend pulled a
cigarette from a silver case in his jacket pocket and offered it to him.

  Aldren coughed on the first pull. "What kind of tobacco is this?"

  "Strong kind. The tribes grow it out west." Wellend flashed a yellow-toothed grin. "It gets better with each drag."

  He wasn't wrong. For the next several minutes they walked and smoked in companionable silence. Not only did the tobacco taste smoother with each lungful, but soon Aldren felt more relaxed, as though there was something stronger in the hand-rolled cigarette. He refrained from asking. The less he knew, the better.

  More at ease than he'd been all day, Aldren was even able to take in the scenery with something approaching appreciation.

  Through the leaves and needles of the treetops, rays of spring sunlight painted intricate patterns over the wild contours of forest floor. A squirrel fled across one of the flattened paths created by the enemy field guns. Aldren wondered again if the Northerners had switched to larger artillery. The tracks were certainly different than those he was used to seeing.

  Either way, they left good footpaths for the marching regiment. Maybe the Northerners will be ready to surrender when we catch up to them, Aldren mused. It was a possibility his anxious mind hadn’t considered before.

  “Yeah, probably,” Wellend replied when Aldren voiced the thought out loud. He exhaled a cloud of fragrant smoke. “I mean, they’ve got to know they’re beat, right?”

  In the distance to the east, the sounds of artillery fire drifted over the hills surrounding Quarrystone. It sounded as though the battle for Graytop Hills was in full swing. “Yeah,” Aldren agreed. “They’ve got no chance.”

  “Gotta take a leak.” Wellend moved ahead, toward a dense thicket. “Be right back.”

  Aldren took another pull on the cigarette and watched Wellend’s back. This reminded him of the hikes he’d taken with Yannick when they were teenagers, venturing beyond the outskirts of Talenport. First thing I’ll do, little brother, he thought. Is head portside, so I can tell you how crazy you are to want this life. Smiling ruefully at the thought, he finished off the smoke and ground the butt under the heel of his boot.

  “Make sure you save some of that for me,” Wellend called over the sound of his stream. “It’s my last one.”

  Crap. “Uh…”

  “I’m serious,” Wellend turned around, buttoning his fly. “Those are hard to find around h- Al, what’s wrong?”

  Aldren barely heard him. All his attention was on something in the shadows behind his friend.

  “Al?”

  Someone screamed, followed by a gunshot somewhere nearby. The shape in the trees moved with a rattle of gears, metal clanking against metal over the snap of breaking tree limbs.

  Wellend spun around and raised his rifle with a shout.

  Something in the air popped with a bright flash. It took Aldren a moment to piece together what just happened. The emerging Warsuit had shot Wellend through the chest.

  Aldren watched his friend flop to the ground. His gaze trailed from the bloodied corpse back up to the metal monstrosity that had created it.

  The Warsuit was smaller than the Kaizers Aldren was used to seeing, painted in forest greens and browns in an attempt to blend in with the scenery. It lacked a head, as well as legs, relying instead on a pair of belted treads to move it along. Besides the cannon-bearing arms, there were none of the usual humanoid touches to this Warsuit. At a little less than twenty feet tall, this was a new breed of machine altogether.

  A machine which had just killed an infantry soldier. That detail repeated itself in Aldren’s mind in an insistent mantra as he stumbled back. A Warsuit had just shot down an unarmored man.

  And it wasn’t alone.

  They rolled out from the shadows, their tracks squeaking, engines revving as they approached in a mechanized wall.

  Soldiers fired up at them in blind panic, only to fall to machinegun fire having barely scratched the Warsuits’ paint.

  Aldren stared up into a dull lens, knowing the pilot within was looking back through his periscope. On its right arm, a multi-barrelled machinegun spun and swivelled toward him. The threat was clear.

  Aldren dropped his rifle, turned, and ran.

  The killing and screaming continued behind him, and at any moment he was sure hot lead would pierce his flesh the same way it had Wellend’s. He ran until he emerged back on the field, then kept running, joined by others from his regiment.

  Retribution had turned and loomed above the fleeing men, watching them go.

  *

  Smaller, tracked Warsuits rolled about beneath Ironshield and Redstripe. And, to Striker’s shock and horror, they fired on his men, raking them with machinegun fire and cannons. Those unlucky enough to be closest were simply crushed under the Warsuits’ treads.

  Now Striker saw the ditches, their false dirt and rock coverings thrown aside to allow hidden machines to roll up the sloped dirt sides onto the battlefield. They’d lain in wait across the field and sprang up behind unsuspecting infantry and cavalrymen.

  The Industrialists had actually done it. They’d broken the War Codes.

  Striker heard horses scream as members of his ten-man Red Guard fell, their tradition of leading the charge proving their undoing. He saw one red-clothed man tumble forward off his mount and felt a cold hand clench around his spine. From up here, Striker couldn’t tell who fell.

  “You bastards really thought we’d keep playing your game?”

  Striker turned just as Edstein rushed for him. He was ready for it, driving the butt end of one saber into Edstein’s wounded side, then knocking him on the head with the other. James Edstein crumpled to the deck, unconscious.

  Taking his prisoner to Redstripe proved more difficult than Striker had feared. In the end, he strapped Edstein to the end of Redstripe’s claw, all the while hearing the sounds of slaughter drifting from the ground.

  Once he’d made it back to his own cockpit, Striker Crimson slid his saber into the ignition cradle and started his Kaizer again. With his terminal and scopes destroyed, he couldn’t see how much fuel he had left. He just had to hope it was enough. He brought the claw away from Ironshield, holding it out in front of his Warsuit, carefully gauging each move through the sparse visibility offered by the open cockpit hatch and the rent created by his opponent’s blade.

  Next, Striker pulled a lever on the righthand bulkhead, detaching Redstripe’s trapped arm with a mighty crack of metal fittings coming undone. Finally, he picked up his radio transmitter, taking in a deep, steadying breath before he spoke. “Soldiers of the Arkenian army, this is Commander Striker Crimson,” he said. “I’m calling in the retreat.”

  Chapter 4

  Three months later.

  In a solitary cell beneath the Edinville Senate House, James Edstein sat against a cold wall.

  Tomorrow, he was scheduled to hang.

  Without giving it much thought, he picked at the Gearsword embroidered on his black coat in silver thread. They’d let him wear his uniform for his final days on earth. Only, James no longer knew if he wanted to wear it.

  From beyond the narrow, barred window, people chanted and cheered, shouted and booed. In the din, James could make out a word, a name repeated over and over, chanted from hundreds of throats.

  "Ironshield! Ironshield!"

  They'd been outside shouting for his release on and off for weeks. Northern Arkenians living in the south, practicing their sanctioned right to congregate and speak freely.

  James' people stood behind him. It was one of the things Senator Samuel Mutton counted on using to the South's advantage. The Northern people refused to let the younger Edstein die. Unfortunately, the Industrialist president, Connor Orvid, didn't feel as strongly.

  Upon being challenged about the breach in the War Codes, not only had Orvid admitted, truthfully, that James Edstein and his comrades in military command willfully planned to break the agreed-upon treaties, but the Northern president also refused to negotiate for James' release, condem
ning him to Southern mercy.

  His own president had left James out to hang, all because he'd done something that actually worked in the North's favor.

  James plucked harder, unravelling the embroidered symbol thread by silver thread as he listened to his title being chanted in the street. Maybe James' country had turned its back on him, but these people and thousands like them hadn't. And he couldn't abandon them, even to save himself.

  He'd hang first.

  *

  "Don't they ever get tired?"

  Samuel Mutton turned to see his secretary rub his temples. Edmund Paulson sat across the table, a steaming cup of tea on a saucer in front of him. Paulson had barely touched the drink. Judging from his ruddy complexion and the stray strands of hair sticking from his all but bald head, the man had had a long night partaking in different victuals.