Chapter Nineteen - Mortarview

The sun was past its zenith when I hopped into Rusty and flicked on the mech’s engines. The purr was nice. A glance at all the gauges, all of them in the green, was much nicer.

“You did great work,” I called out to Akx and his nomads.

The kobold nodded once. “We did,” he agreed easily. “Now come down, and we’ll say goodbye properly.”

I left Rusty running as I jumped back down and walked over to the old kobold. We shook hands, and he pulled something from a pouch around his hip and gave it to me. A small box, maybe the size of both my fists atop each other.

“Thank you,” I said as I accepted it.

“Don’t stare at the sun, got?”

“Got,” I said. “Don’t let those undersized dragons of yours shit on your head.”

Akx barked a laugh. “That’s good luck,” he said.

“Keep telling yourself that.” I smacked him on the shoulder.

“Hey, girl. You keep an eye on the skies, got? There’s a storm coming tonight.”

I nodded, then turned to Clin who was standing awkwardly to the side. Not quite awkwardly. He didn’t have any proper expressions on his face, and his back was rigid-straight, but I figured I was starting to figure the elf out enough to read his non-expressions. “C’mon, skinny.”

“Skinny, really?” Clin asked as he followed me. He paused by the ramp leading up to Rusty and bowed at the waist to the nomads. A few laughed at the gesture, but it didn’t go further than that. They probably knew it was meant as a sign of respect, of sorts.

I sat down, waited for the elf to crawl to the back, then pulled the cockpit’s door closed and locked it. “I don’t actually know any insults for elf,” I admitted.

“You can just avoid using any racial slurs,” Clin suggested.

“Now, where’s the fun in that?”

I sat down, checked around to make sure everything was in place, then leaned forwards until my hands were in their respective gauntlets. “There has to be a few insults for humans among the elves, right?”

Flicking on the last of Rusty’s systems, I looked up to the mech’s main readouts and read through the list.

Combat Core - RUSTY - Active

... Surface Controls... Light Damage [RUN CHECK!]

... Cooling... Optimal

... Fuel Levels... Optimal

... Weapons... Loaded

... Mana Circulation ... Optimal

DAMAGE CHECK

...

Left Arm - MISSING

Right Shoulder MISSING

Neck Actuation Damaged

Primary Heat Sink Damaged

WEAPON CHECK

...

Lever-Action, Emberbar Rifle - Functional

Model 1634 Revolving Gun - Functional

Pilot Check

...

Pilot Not Responding...

Still some damage. The heat-sink would need someone who could cast the white-iron fins, or someone who had a replacement that would fit on Rusty. I might find something like that in Mortarview, it was a decent-sized little city.

“I think we generally try to avoid such crass behaviour,” Clin siad.

“Sand wyrm shit,” I said as I pulled the pilot’s gantry down and set the pads around my head. The needle came down, and I closed my eyes and let the nausea wash over me.

The fact that we were rocking already, without actively moving, made it worse, and I felt as if Rusty was tipping to the side with every step. Reaching up, I gave the gyroscope a good thump and felt the world right itself.

My vision felt off, but that passed as I blinked and focused on the inside of the cabin until my stomach settled.

Nomad food didn’t agree with vertigo.

“You, ah, you...” I paused to burp. I was really feeling off. When I connected to Rusty, it was always while on stable footing, connecting while on the back of a walker was new, and unwelcome. “You must have some insults for humans. I’ve heard folk call elves cactus huggers before. Twigs, sometimes beardless.”

Clin hummed. “Those aren’t too bad. I’ve heard some rather crass individuals call human women breeders. I suppose on account of how quickly you can have young.”

I turned around to look at the elf. “That’s disgusting.”

“Elves can only have a child every decade,” he said. “Seeing a human couple have five, six or more children in that same time frame... well. It certainly leads to rumours.”

I shook my head. Insults went both ways. The nomads waved at me in their hand-speak, and I caught on a little, raised one of Rusty’s hands and gave them a thumb’s up. “We’re dropping,” I said.

The lift we were on started to lower, slowly and gently, until we were hovering just over the ground. Nomads leapt down and undid the chains holding us in place. When they were done, one of them stuck his head in against the opening in Rusty’s front. “You’re good to go,” he said.

“Thanks! Y’all get cleared, got?”

“Got!”

The last of the nomads jumped off, when I looked across the deck, it was to see a dozen of them spread out, some of them trading things between each other. Were they placing bets?

I laughed and took a small step back, still staying aboard the lift, but giving myself some room to work with. The platform jumped as its bottom scraped against the sand.

“Hang on to something,” I said.

I made sure I didn’t have anything between my teeth, then I bent Rusty’s knees just a little.

I jumped backwards.

Rusty was far too heavy for any sort of proper jump, but it did lift me off the platform and the rear-ward momentum got the walker to move out from under me. Rusty’s feet crashed into the sand, and our forward motion, now lost since we weren’t on the platform, tipped the mecha forward.

Grimaching, I squeezed my thighs against the edge of my seat to stop myself from bouncing off.

I brought Rusty’s foot up with a jam on the pedal, then slammed it into the ground. Still too much motion. The other foot came up, then down, then up. We went from standing relatively still to running all out until, finally, I had some control over Rusty’s motions and was able to slow down to a jog.

The nomads cheered and I waved at them before peeling off towards the east. “That was something,” I said as I got into the motions of walking Rusty along.

“I think I almost brained myself there,” Clin said.

“Poor you,” I said.

The sun was setting, but we still had a few hours of light left to move with, and we were nearer to the Mortarview basin, a spot of the land that dipped downwards a little. It made keeping a decent walking pace a little tricky, but it wasn’t so bad that I couldn’t manage.

Rusty was doing better, at least. The right leg came up and moved without any jerking motions and the foot actuators seemed a little smoother. The nomads had done good work.

“What was in that box?” Clin asked.

“What?”

“The box the kobold gave you. Just before we left.”

“Oh,” I said. Reaching into a pocket, I pulled it out and handed it over. “Open it up. “

Clin fiddled with the box, and pulled the thin paper apart to reveal a bottle within. Nothing special, just some blown glass with a tin cap on the top. No label or anything. “Alcohol?” he guessed.

“Water,” I replied. “It’s a nomad thing. When someone’s leaving, you gift them a bottle of water. It’s not much, but there’s enough there to save your life if you find yourself in a spot of trouble. Now, if they don’t like you, the water’ll be piss. So, I guess Akx liked us well enough.”

“How quaint,” Clin deadpanned.

I kept pressing on. Mortarview wasn’t so far away that we couldn’t reach it before nightfall. I was looking forward to sitting at the Centre Saloon and forgetting some of the more interesting moments from the past couple of days.

We crested a dune, and I brought Rusty to a slow stop.

Mortarview was out ahead.

Set atop a rocky hill, the city had sandstone walls three times as tall as Rusty, with heavy stone walls behind them, and little towers poking out here and there. Craters dotted the landscape leading up to the city, one or two of them still smoking decades after they’d been blown apart. There was only one gate in the wall, and not a single building in sight, not on this side of the city, at least.

I twisted my head left and right, cracking my neck. “Well then, let’s get you to town, shall we?”

The sun was turning the sky orange as we started walking over.

***

(More details about maps and such on the Maps and Art chapter!)