The Mask And The Master (Mechanized Wizardry Book 2), page 12
She had her arms out wide for balance as the nine of them clambered up the hillside. The seven-league boots that encircled her legs up to the knee were still disconcerting, even after half a day of walking. The ranine coils added extra bounce to her stride and took most of the strain of walking away from her muscles. On flat ground, it was fantastic; she was cantering along with the rest of the ‘nauts at twice the speed of a regular hiker, without her leg muscles screaming for mercy. But on slopes like this one, not being able to really feel the ground was sending her wobbling. The insulating coils made her feel like she was on stilts, without the contours of the ground plainly announcing themselves through her customary thin-soled shoes. Samanthi bit her lip and swung her right arm across her body as her foot yet again landed in a way she didn’t expect. Mathias walks wearing this junk every day? I think I’ll stay a technician, thanks, she groused.
She was one of three lucky techs (including Iggy) to be out in the vanguard like this. Since this Golden Caravan had been operating for who knows how long without being spotted, they had to be based in the eastern Tarmic where Delia’s eyes and ears were thinnest. The Army wanted them found, and fast. The commanders also recognized that sending scouts out in ones and twos to find an army with Petronaut weaponry was a good way to clear out an excess supply of scouts, but not much else. So instead, they’d search in bands large enough to win fights, or at the very least, hold the line long enough to get reports back to Delia, or Fort Campos in the east.
The compromise between speed and power was that six ‘nauts (and select oh-so-fortunate techs) would barrel forward into the woods at Petronaut speed to a friendly logging camp in the east, on the banks of the Bantam River. As a unit, the ‘nauts would begin preliminary intelligence gathering while two platoons of musketeers would make their slower way to the camp with more techs and fresh supplies. By the time the soldiers arrived, the ‘nauts would have had about two days of reconnaissance, and would, with any luck, know where to find the Golden Caravan and strike it in force. The danger, of course, was in either half of the team being caught in a fight in the days before they met up; but it was a risk the Army and the Board of Governors had considered worth taking.
Not that we’re exactly pushovers right now, she thought, adjusting her backpack straps as she finally staggered to the top of the slope. It was a sign of these paranoid times that a team of six fully armored ‘nauts could be considered ‘at risk’ from much of anything. She saw Kelley and Mathias leading the pack in their sleek black armor, about a hundred fifty meters ahead through the thin white trees. Dame Gaulda of the Shock Troops was momentarily stopped, watching the sky through her death’s head helmet. The compact woman inside the camouflaged gray-green steel wasn’t much of a talker, unless you got her going on her favorite subjects: her two-year-old son, and the relative terminal ballistics of conical bullets and cast lead shot. Iggy, flying above the treeline in Ironsides, had developed a serious platonic crush on the hard-edged ‘naut at their briefing, and was irrepressibly determined to get Dame Gaulda “drunk and happy” before the mission was done. Samanthi wasn’t quite ready to sign on for drunk target practice with the Shock Trooper, but she admitted to feeling her own flutter of excitement inside the woman’s aura of confident competence. The prospect of seeing Dame Gaulda open up on a host of badniks with all the fiendish weapons just below the surface of her suit was as dazzling as it was macabre.
Three Cavaliers and their tech, a bookishly handsome ginger named Zig, rounded out the team. The Cavaliers were the oldest squad in Delia, and the largest. From the first Petronauts in Delia through until the beginning of King Randolph’s reign, all suits were built to the same basic specifications, with each individual ‘naut making cosmetic or functional changes haphazardly, as their interests and inspirations moved them. But in the ‘40s, as Workshop Row grew and King Randolph began the reforms Tess would help him complete a decade later, the Petronauts started to consider how suits might change if designed, say, specifically for Reconnaissance, or specifically for Aerial travel. Workshop sketches turned into prototypes, and models into battle-hardened reality. One by one, over the decades, seven other squads formed with their own specialized suits, missions, equipment and cultures.
The Cavaliers were the embodiment of the jack-of-all-trades spirit of the early ‘nauts. Their suits weren’t as tough as the Bulwark’s armor, or light and quiet as the Recon squad’s, or as powerful as the Shock Troops’, or mobile as Aerials’ or Haulers’; and their diplomatic training was less thorough than what the Civics or the Parade squad received. But balanced equipment and a broad knowledge base made Cavaliers reasonably good at most everything a Petronaut might be asked to do. Their rallying cry was Primel Vuluntaris, or ‘First to Volunteer’ (which, jaded members of the more specialized squads were fond of saying, was because they were never the first ones picked).
Damn chipper idiots probably volunteered for this trip, Samanthi thought, shaking her head with a grin as the three Cavaliers trotted into view up the hill, in their black armor with silly white trim on their shoulder blades and outseams. Their sabres clattered against their legs as they moved. Sir Xiaoden noticed her taking them in as the tech caught her breath.
“Doing all right, Ms. Elena?” he asked brightly, his voice coming out clearly through the amplifier in his helmet.
“Sure thing, Sir, thanks.”
“We can break in fifteen for some water,” Dame Orinoco said solicitously.
“No, no, I’m fine,” Samanthi brushed away the concern, looking up at the female ‘naut. Dame Orinoco was one of the tallest women in the world, or so it seemed to Samanthi from her (arguably) lower-than-average vantage point. Maybe it was just a trick of the racing stripes on the Cavalier’s outer thighs, but she seemed to be entirely legs, even more so than Dame Miri. One might think that would elevate her into a new realm of heterosexiness, but the effect was less sex kitten and more sex giraffe. Samanthi tilted her head, wondering if anyone had ever considered the anthropomorphic sexiness of giraffes before. Maybe I could use a water break after all, she thought a moment later, her mind continuing to drift in wide, fuzzy loops.
Dame Orinoco galloped forward, probably to spread the word that the techs needed a break soon. Samanthi didn’t raise any objections. The third Cavalier, a sturdy dark-skinned woman closer to human height, laid a metal hand on Samanthi’s arm as gently as she could. “Only a few more hours today,” Dame Julie told her.
“That was some hill, huh? I can’t wait to take off these seven-leaguers,” their tech, Zig, complained with a smile, as if that could make whining ingratiating. Take ‘em off, then; and say hi to the troops when they catch up with your corpse in two days, ‘cause there’s no way you’ll keep up with us without them. Samanthi was in no mood for any woe-is-me tech banter, but she just nodded and kept her mouth shut. She had to stay on good terms with Zig because if anything happened to one of the six ‘naut suits over the next few days, the two of them were going to be logging a lot of hard hours together. The only tools were what they had in their packs, and whatever dated, dusty equipment was going to be at this logging camp, a ramshackle outpost of Delians that doubled as an out-of-the-way surveillance site for the Army. Serious repairs would fly or fail on the basis of how much sweat they put into them. Letting her tongue wag too much would just get in the way.
I feel like I’m doing that a lot lately, she mused as she started walking again, the whining gears in her seven-league boots launching her forwards. Clamming up instead of speaking my mind.Worrying about rubbing people the wrong way. She deliberately aimed her foot towards a little red mushroom peeking up from the soil. Her mechanized boot mashed it into pulp, without any audible crunch or feeling through her metal sole, and she felt a little guilty. Were the people around her getting more uptight, or was she getting more nervous? I just want to be myself again, warts and all. I want to joke and swear and annoy the piss out of the idiots I work with, and still finish the job early enough to go get a beer.
She thought back to the look of delight on Lundin’s face when he ran into her at the workshop, and the face he made when she had to leave. It made her nervous to think what her expression must have been. I want the old squad back, a small part of her said, plaintively, for the thousandth time.
Samanthi shook the thought away as quickly as it formed. If you take off your boots, don’t be surprised when you get left behind. She gritted her teeth and plowed through the forest after the Petronauts.
“Fine,” Sir Kelley said, his flat voice barely audible over the sound of Dame Orinoco’s heavy footfalls. The Cavalier nodded and tromped back towards to her squadmates at the rear of the party. Sir Mathias watched her go, shaking his head in amazement. Her suit sounded like a clockwork elephant as she bounded through the leaves. “I forget sometimes how good our noise dampening is,” he said to Kelley. “Can you believe how loud she is when she walks?”
“I can’t tell if it’s her suit, or because she’s a flaming colossus,” Kelley deadpanned, scanning the trees ahead of them. Sir Mathias grinned; Orinoco was nearly a head taller than his partner, and almost as tall as him.
“Nothing wrong with a woman being the proper size,” he said appreciatively.
“Must come in handy on missions. Anywhere she stands turns into high ground.”
Mathias turned again, watching the Cavalier go. The forest air tasted good in his mouth, though his throat still shuddered from the smoke damage if he breathed in too deep. Still, there was a smile on his face. It felt like Delia was finally taking the initiative, after weeks of wondering if they next time they saw their enemies would be when they attacked the Princess again.
Of course, there’s no guarantee that the Golden Caravan are the ones who hired that wizard Jilmaq. But it sure looks like it was their Petronaut protecting him on the feastday. And even if they weren’t involved in the plot, if they’re really spreading sedition and Petronaut weapons among the woodsmen out here, they’re going to have some explaining to do no matter what.
He caught sight of Samanthi a distance through the trees, taking long awkward strides on her seven-leaguers and staring at the ground, deep in thought. Sir Mathias’ smile faded, and he turned back around. The two ‘nauts marched in silence for a moment.
“Sir Kelley?”
“Sir Mathias?” Kelley said evenly.
“Have you given any thought to taking on a new junior tech?”
Kelley looked over at him. Mathias could imagine that unblinking green-eyed stare through his black helmet. “Can’t say I have, Sir Mathias, seeing as we’ve spent nearly two weeks straight deployed in these damn woods. Not the time to be breaking in a new teammate, is it?”
“No, sir.”
Sir Kelley looked forward again, reaching up to steer a branch out of his face. “Of course we’ll get someone eventually,” he said. “All our surveillance gear? The Abacus? Our suits? Too much for one tech, no question.”
“So no thoughts on who, yet.”
“My hope is to find someone who isn’t a belligerent, mutinous psychopath. Other than that I’m fairly flexible,” he drawled.
Sir Mathias nodded and shut his mouth. There was a pause, the silence only broken by the noisy ‘nauts far behind them.
“Well?” Kelley finally said, palms upturned. “Spit it out! Do you have a niece, or a pet, or a bastard son you’re recommending for the job? Why bring this up?”
He took a deep breath, letting his caution drop. “I think Sam really misses Lundin.”
It looked for all the world like Sir Kelley’s eye visor narrowed. “Well, that’s a crying shame.”
“Look, Sir Kelley, say what you want about Lundin—”
“Oh, I will; assuming he doesn’t play witchcraft with my brain again.”
“—but you can’t deny that he and Samanthi made a great team together. The best in Delia.”
“‘The best in—!’ By what possible measure?” he said with wolfish delight. “Efficiency? Productivity? Organization? Discipline?”
Sir Mathias struggled for the right word. “Spirit.”
“You’re embarrassing yourself, junior ‘naut.”
“I just—”
“Listen.” Sir Mathias slammed his jaw shut. Kelley’s voice was calm and amused as they kept walking at the same steady pace. “I don’t begrudge you for liking the techs. I understand that people like you are insecure about asserting authority, and so you convince yourself you’re not in a position of power after all; you’re just one of the guys! And that’s fine, Mathias. Go ahead! Abdicate your responsibility all you want, because I’ve got more than enough authority to run the squad all by myself.
“But you know what does hurt my feelings, Mathias? You know what really hurts my ‘spirit?’ The knowledge that I’m the only one on the whole burning squad who understands that we’re here to work.” He touched his chestplate with his fingertips, making a dull clinking sound. “I’m not here—in the woods—because it fills me with friendship and happiness and camaraderie. I’m here because we’re on a mission. We have work to do.
“If camaraderie happens as a result of our daring exploits, I’m all for it. But you seem to think that it goes the other way around! That daring exploits and fabulous success come naturally to people who are good friends. And only people who love to get drunk and make asses of each other are capable of doing a day’s work together. Ridiculous! We work together first, and we like each other second; if at all!”
“I shouldn’t have said anything.”
“Damn right,” Sir Kelley said. He ticked off points on his metal fingers. “Your argument that we’ve lost our team spirit makes no sense, even if spirit were measurable or meaningful. Your implication that Ms. Elena is working less hard because she misses her friend has no basis in reality. Believe me, I’ve been watching, and if anything she’s better since he’s been gone. More focused. Less chatty.
“Finally, as for your insinuation that I should, could, would ever consider reinstating Mr. Lundin in my squad?”
Kelley stopped dead in his tracks and pushed himself right into Sir Mathias’ face, quick as a snake. Their visors were touching. Sir Mathias kept absolutely still. Something was pressing into the thin seam between his cowl and his helmet, just above his adam’s apple, and it felt suspiciously like the tip of a knife.
“I find it offensive,” Sir Kelley whispered through his expressionless visor.
A single green leaf fluttered down to the ground over Kelley’s left shoulder. It was the only moving thing in the forest. “Withdrawn,” Sir Mathias whispered back.
The knife—if there had been a knife—also withdrew, and Sir Kelley stepped away. Sir Mathias watched stonily as the lean man stretched his arms wide and sighed. “Another four or five hours of daylight,” he said. “Tomorrow we get to the logging camp and see what they know. Then I say we press up the Bantam to that farming colony on our maps—‘Two Forks,’ was it?—and see if they know anything about our golden boys. How does that plan sound, comrade?”
“Some people are meant to work together, Kelley,” Mathias said, quietly, touching his neck with one massive hand.
The senior ‘naut stopped moving. “You can’t take a hint, can you?” he said, just as quietly.
“The three of us were already comrades when you broke us up. Three years of working together will do that for you, if you let it.”
“‘I broke you up?’” Kelley shook his head, furious. “Lundin’s the one who—”
“Lundin messed up, and he needed to be punished,” Sir Mathias said more loudly, his anger building like an avalanche. “But he’s wasted over there with the Civics. Samanthi’s going to crack the minute we’re not on deployment and she lets herself breathe. And when you tell me I’m an insecure leader because I don’t play the tyrant over a staff of two?” He paused. “It makes me wonder, Sir, what’s in your head.”
The noisy footfalls of the other ‘nauts might as well have been a thousand kilometers away. The men were completely focused on each other as they stood, unmoving, in the leaves. Sir Kelley’s voice was a lash. “Flagrant disrespect. Questioning a senior ‘naut’s decisions. Expect to be hauled before the Board the instant we get back home; your little buddy Elena too.”
“Do it,” Sir Mathias said bluntly. “When a senior ‘naut fires his entire squad in a month, I can’t imagine the Board gives him fresh blood without asking some questions about his leadership.”
“This is why I’ve never understood camaraderie. Other people are such assholes,” Sir Kelley fumed. He turned on his heel and stomped northeast through the woods, making as much noise as half-a-dozen statuesque Cavaliers.
Sir Mathias blew all the air out of his lungs, wincing as his torn-up throat gave a little spasm of revolt. His mind was spinning on everything and nothing when he heard heavy footsteps behind him. “Hey,” Samanthi said, frowning. She shifted her feet, lifting her legs a little too high with each mincing step from the boots. “What was that about?”
“Oh, you know me.” Sir Mathias flipped his visor up and looked down at her with a sad grin. “Just making friends.”
Chapter Thirteen
Royal Reassignment
The trumpet fanfare made him turn, but it was already too late. The receptionist’s eyes bugged out of his head. He leapt to his feet, his stool rocking back precariously on two legs. He reached a hand behind him to catch it before it toppled onto the hardwood floors of the Civic annex. As he set the stool right again, he struggled to get his voice under control. “Welcome—ahem! Welcome, your—”
<
The flustered young man did his best not to look at the swelling entourage of Heralds and guardsmen filing into the annex behind the heir to Delia’s Throne. There were nearly two dozen impassive men and women crowding the lobby in dazzling royal white, and at least as many swords and pistols on display, glinting in the mid-afternoon sunlight. A pair of massive soldiers, muskets resting against their shoulders, were settling into place right outside the doorway, and the heads of the horses drawing Her Highness’ royal carriage were visible in the looping driveway just past them. The receptionist had heard the carriage riding up, of course, but he’d kept shuffling lazily through his ledger, not thinking anything of it until; well, until Delia’s sovereign had appeared in front of him with a blast of royal fanfare.
