Worldwaker: A Steampunk Dystopian Action Adventure (The Great Iron War, Book 5) Read online

  Contents

  1 – PIECES

  2 – A FOREIGN IDEA

  3 – VOLUNTEERS

  4 – PARTING PATHS

  5 – THE RUST ROAD

  6 – AVALANCHE

  7 – RIDDLES IN RUINS

  8 – RUSTPORT

  9 – CABARET

  10 – GUNFIGHT AT CLUB CRIMSON

  11 – PAPER ORDNANCE

  12 – FLIGHT

  13 – THE DUNE BURROWS

  14 – COMMSPIRE OASIS

  15 – CACTUS X

  16 – WAR OF THE WEATHER

  17 – THE BLACK FIELDS

  18 – CONFLICT IN THE CLOUDS

  19 – A LONG WAY DOWN

  20 – THE IRON RALLY

  21 – THE WINGWALKERS

  22 – HELD

  23 – BOARDING THE BOMB

  24 – LANDLOCKED

  25 – THE SINS OF SCIENCE

  26 – THE FACILITY

  27 – FREEFALL

  28 – SORRY

  29 – UNDER CONTROL

  30 – A LITTLE BIT OF CRAZY

  31 – A FABULOUS COPTER

  32 – ENDING EVERYTHING

  33 – THREAD

  34 – BATTLE OF THE BIRTH-MASTERS

  35 – BROKEN GLASS

  36 – CRASH LANDING

  37 – WAKE-UP CALL

  38 – UNDOING PROGRESS

  39 – HATE

  40 – INSTINCT

  41 – WAKE

  42 – WHY?

  43 – HOMECOMING

  WORLDWAKER

  The Great Iron War – Book Five

  Dean F. Wilson

  Copyright © 2016 Dean F. Wilson

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher.

  Any person who makes any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable for criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.

  The Moral Rights of the Author have been asserted.

  Cover illustration by Duy Phan

  First Edition 2016

  Published by Dioscuri Press

  Dublin, Ireland

  www.dioscuripress.com

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  THE GREAT IRON WAR

  In the world of Altadas, in the year 1888 of the Second Era, women everywhere dreamed of a coming desert. Those who were already pregnant miscarried, and those who became pregnant did not give birth to human children. An invasion had begun.

  The newborns had no horns or marks, and so they were loved and reared like all the others. It would take time before anyone realised what they really were, before anyone would call them demons.

  These events were marked by the arrival of strangers claiming to be from a distant land. The people of Altadas called them Pilgrims, but they did not know just how far they had come, nor by what strange doors they had entered, nor exactly what they had come for.

  The first Pilgrims were scouts, but subsequent waves were soldiers, sent by a man who would later call himself the Iron Emperor. He promised his people iron. He gave them war instead.

  They called that year the Harvest, and it became the first year of a new, darker calendar. Sand swept through the great chasms in the sky from where the demons came, the dust of a world that they had dried up. Ahead of the landships went great sandstorms, until the green grasses became an endless red desert.

  In Altadas, steam powers industry, but iron powers war. The abundant metal, idolised by the invaders, and depleted in their home world, became a beacon to the demons, and was the foundation upon which they would build their new civilisation. They called themselves the Iron Empire. Their enemies simply called them the Regime.

  As war began in the east, few among the Resistance knew that their own children were not really theirs. The invaders had mastered a magical technique to control the birth channels of a people they desired to conquer. Thus with one hand they would wield might, and with the other they would use guile, infiltrating and eradicating their enemies, anyone who would dare defy the Iron Emperor, who had brought his people to this promised land.

  Yet iron is more to the demons than just a metal. It provides the key ingredient for the sustenance of the invaders. To some it is a drug. To them, symbolising everything they were promised, and everything they were leaving behind, it is Hope.

  As one civilisation crumbled, and a new empire was founded on its remains, there were some who refused to live out their last days under the iron grip of their new ruler. They made a promise of their own: to fight, with everything they had, for the fate of humanity.

  Thus began the Great Iron War.

  1 – PIECES

  The panic that swept the sands was like that first experienced by the people of Altadas when the Rift opened in the east, out of which came an invading force like no other. Now, they did not fear any compass direction. The onslaught came from above. The invasion was in their minds.

   “We have to shoot it down,” Leadman ordered. His men brought their own scopes, none as powerful as Brooklyn's creation, but they were enough to see the little dot in the heavens that made everyone on earth quiver, and enough to aim their sniper rifles.

   “No!” Rommond cried as one of the soldiers fired into the air. It was a token shot, a paltry warning to the wind. Whatever message it carried would never reach the hull of the aeroplane, nor the ears of its psychotic crew. Yet Rommond still snatched the gun from the soldier's hands, casting it far away into the dunes.

   Leadman's gargantuan jaw dropped at Rommond's display. “You've got some nerve—”

   “Are you crazy?” the general interjected. Jacob wondered if the question was perhaps rhetorical.

   “We've got to do something, Rommond,” Leadman replied.

   “That thing up there can destroy us all!” Rommond barked, waving an angry finger to the clouds. “You won't just take the sky with it. You'll take the land as well.”

   “Maybe you should have thought about that before you started looking at unorthodox ways to end this war,” the opposing general said. “At least I'm sticking to good old-fashioned guns. You created this mess. I'm just trying to clean it up.”

   Rommond tried to mouth a reply, but the words were crushed by the frustration in his face, leaving just the splinters of sounds mixed with an embittered sigh. He held his hand up, palm outwards, and shook his head, before turning away and limping off to the nearby steamtruck.

   “Get out,” he told the driver. Few had to be told that twice by Rommond. That list grew fewer all the time. This driver was not one of them. He scrambled out, as if Rommond was the bomb.

   The general clambered inside, gritting his teeth as his injuries ganged up to remind him of their presence. All he wanted was to be alone, but the loneliness let him feel the pain even more. He felt the mix of dry and wet blood upon his back, the bruises on his limbs, the thumping headache in his brain. If only those were all of his problems.

   The image of the Worldwaker swam in his mind, the shark emblazoned on the bomb taunting him from his memory. That was his idea, an off-the-cuff remark to Doctor Elbern, the head of research at the top-secret Project Ironending. He could feel the Great Iron War coming to an end now, but he no longer had his fin
ger on the button. The curtains of the world were about to close, and the play of life would soon be over. There would be no applause.

   He tried to think of what to do, but he felt helpless. He was always the man with the plan, the great strategist that current historians—who were few and far between, and all in hiding—were writing about. He had no big plan for this. He had not prepared for the day when he would be fighting his own work. He had not plotted against his own plots.

   The frustration grew too much. He let it out by thumping the dashboard with his fist. It helped a little, but then he hoped the soldiers outside could not see his moment of weakness. From the corner of his eye, he could see Taberah rounding them up, drawing their attention away from him. She too knew what was at stake. He did not need them waking up to the realisation that their leader in this war was merely human, that he could be broken like the rest of them.

   The door on the other side creaked open, and Brooklyn climbed in. He closed the door and sat there in silence for a moment. “Odd,” he said in time.

   “What's odd?” Rommond asked, his voice much weaker than normal, his tone infused with resignation.

   “Odd you think you can hide here,” Brooklyn replied.

   “I'm tired,” Rommond said. “I'm tired of it all. Of war. Of fighting. I don't feel like we're getting anywhere. Each success becomes another failure.”

   “So you want to sleep, and Armageddon Brigade want to wake you.”

   Rommond sighed.

   “Too bad,” Brooklyn said. “Leaders don't get to sleep. This seat is no bed. It is driving seat. You drive. You lead. This truck is no bunker. And that,” he said, pointing upwards, “is what you call, I think, bunker-buster.”

   “If the bunker was the world.”

   “But it is not world,” the tribesman said, placing his hand on Rommond's. “We have no bunker from our troubles. We cannot hide from them. We must face them out in open, under sky.” He paused and looked deeply into the general's forlorn eyes. “In sky.”

   “They'll never fly,” Rommond said, as Brooklyn conjured the image of his aeroplane designs into his mind. It was a special kind of magic to be able to communicate without words.

   “There is many tonnes of wood and metal up there that fly.”

   Rommond shrugged. “I suppose it's worth a shot.”

   “Ricochet Rommond,” Brooklyn said, “only needs single shot.”

  * * *

  When Rommond emerged, Leadman was already making plans, leaning over a giant cloth map stretched over the sand and held down by several tyres. The opposing general continued to issue commands even when he became aware of Rommond's presence.

   “From what we can see,” Leadman said, pointing his spyglass to the map, “the target is circling the area, but making slow gestures towards an easterly direction.” He drew the spyglass across the map, pointing towards the north-east corner. “It seems likely it is heading, however slowly, towards Ironhold.”

   “Do continue,” Rommond said.

   Leadman ground his teeth, keenly aware that some of the soldiers were eager to roll up the map and fall into line now that the real commander had arrived.

   “If Ironhold is our target's target—”

   “If,” Rommond interjected, stressing the word, like the hiss of a fuse.

   “—then all we have to do is … sit back and wait.”

   Rommond rolled his eyes. “Isn't that what you've been doing most of this war in Copperfort? Sitting back and waiting for someone else to win this war for you?”

   Leadman snapped his spyglass shut. “Why should we do anything to stop this bomb if it is meant for the Iron Emperor's home?”

   “Because it will destroy far more than just Ironhold. Because even Ironhold has many innocent people.”

   “Are you worried that it will get into the wrong hands?”

   “It's already in the wrong hands!”

   “Then what do we do, Rommond? We can't do nothing and we can't shoot it out of the skies. Where does that leave us?”

   “We have to capture it.”

   Leadman laughed. “You're serious?” he asked, when met with Rommond's glower.

   “When have I never been?”

   “Well,” Leadman said, “we all thought you might have finally cracked.”

   Rommond responded with a glare.

   “The question is,” Jacob said, “why is it circling here? Why is it not heading straight to Ironhold?”

   “I wonder that too,” Rommond replied.

   “Maybe they want us to follow them,” Leadman said. “Maybe they're trying to get rid of both us and the Regime in one fell swoop. Round us up and bombs away!”

   “Maybe that's their mission,” Rommond said, “but this is ours. We need to get into the sky and take back the Worldwaker.”

   “Like we took back the Landquaker?” Leadman reminded him.

   Rommond chewed his lip. “We got it back.”

   “Not in one piece. And if you don't get that bomb back in one piece, where does that leave us, huh?”

   “It leaves us everywhere,” the general said, “in little pieces of our own.”

  2 – A FOREIGN IDEA

  Rommond pulled Taberah aside, as he often did when he was unsure of the road ahead. They were often at odds with one another on how to proceed, which was what made her valuable. Too many of his men were frightened to ever question him. It was the gift and curse of loyalty and discipline.

   “Tabs, I need you to—”

   “I can't,” she interrupted. “I can't go with you.”

   Rommond could not utter his disbelief.

   “I have my own mission,” she explained. “She gave it to me.”

   “Your own mission? Who gave it to you?”

   “You wouldn't understand, but I have to do this.”

   “You're turning your back on this war now? After everything?”

   “No,” she said. “I'm finally waking up to where my battle is. There's another front, Rommond, and we've got no one fighting there. We could win it all here, but it will be for nothing if we can't win there too.”

   Rommond smacked the palm of his hand to his face. “God, Tabs. If that thing goes off up there, or down here, or any bloody place else, there won't be any more war! There won't be any more anything! It'll all be over. This front. That front. None of it will matter! Right now this is our priority.” He reached his hand out, pleading with her. “Can't you see that, Tabs? Can't you see?”

   “It isn't my priority,” Taberah replied. “I'm sorry, but that's the truth. I know you don't get it, Rommond, but I can't ignore this. I've let this part of me sleep too long. The more I've tip-toed around it, the more it feels like I'm treading glass. Some day the pain will get too much, and I'll scream. And it'll wake up. I have to wake it gently now.”

   “Don't abandon us, Tabs,” Rommond said. “I gave you everything I could to keep you on board, to keep you on our side. You feel like you're treading glass now? I've been doing that my whole life, trying to keep the troops in order, trying to stop the Resistance from splintering apart. How many of us were there in the early days? And I don't just mean those who died. Some left willingly. One of those was you. Don't leave again.”

   He was ashamed to see pity in her eyes, but thankful that she tried to hide it.

   “You helped me find my path back then,” she said. “The Glassfinder Project gave me purpose. With the amulets, I could stop others from experiencing what I experienced. I'm just finishing what I started.”

   “You'll never be finished that. You can't chase ghosts forever in this world.”

   She gave a resigned smile, as if he had read the final page from the journal of her mind.

   “No,” Rommond said, shaking his head violently. He pointed aggressively at her, and his hand shook to match his voice. “You keep fighting. You keep fighting here. You have pe
ople here you need to fight for.”

   “I know,” she whispered, but it sounded like she was already leaving.

  * * *

  When the general consoled in Brooklyn, he was shocked to find the tribesman was heading off on his own mission too. Rommond never expected him to fly one of the planes, just like he generally avoided driving landships, but he hated the idea of Brooklyn willingly going back into Regime territory.

   “Why can't you just sit this one out?” the general asked him. “We need people in Blackout too.”

   “But really you need me to be old self,” Brooklyn said. “Much of me is back there with Controller.”

   “What if she wants you to go back? What if she's controlling you now?”

   “Either way, I have to go. I have to find out. I have to find me.”

   “What if you don't come back?”

   The thought was horrifying. Rommond was not sure he could withstand losing Brooklyn again. Though he was not the same as he was before, it was still him, or a part of him. It was something. He dared not think of how he would cope if Brooklyn did not return.

   Brooklyn held the general's hand between both of his. “But what if I do?”

  * * *

  As time ticked dangerously away, Rommond summoned anyone and everyone who might have even had the potential of a plan. They decided not to return to Blackout, in case the word got out, and panic undid the order that Rommond had worked so hard to establish there.

   “We need to get airborne,” the general said.

   “Pity we wasted the Skyshaker,” Cantro replied.

   “It wasn't wasted.”

   “So, I presume you checked out those Regime schematics for Brooklyn's aeroplanes?” Jacob asked. “Seems they were useful after all.”

   “We did, and they all carry the emblem of a military base attached to the coastal town of Rustport, at the very southern tip of the now toppled Iron Wall.”