Chapter Forty-Seven - Casting Knife

The blast wasn’t contained.

There was a world of difference between an explosion out in the open, and an explosion that was properly contained. A stick going off in an enclosed space would do a whole lot more than one out in the open, and an explosive shell that managed to bury itself in a target would be more impressive still.

The stick of explosive on the mech’s shoulder? That was out in the open, a directionless charge.

That didn’t mean it didn’t have an impact.

I stumbled back, wincing as a spray of sand and heat washed over me. I had to bring a hand up to hold my hat in place.

When the dust cleared, I was able to take in the bit of damage I’d done.

The mech’s shoulder was blackened, spikes torn off and metal rattling in place. Some of the bolts might’ve gotten sheared off with the shock. The head was worse off. It wasn’t as armoured, and it looked like it was bent off to the side. Magical sparks were sizzling around the case with one of the mech’s eyes.

Decent, but the damned thing was still standing.

Standing, and turning around.

“Move, fidiot,” I swore to myself as I took off running. I kept myself behind the mech and aimed for cover behind a few small crates.

That particular bit of cover was taken.

The goblin there blinked at me, and I blinked back.

He growled.

I punched his nose in.

I grit my teeth at the lance of pain travelling through my knuckles.

The goblin growled louder and started to bring a gun up. A rifle with a bayonet on the end.

Dropping my revolver, I grabbed it by the barrel and shoved it aside while I flipped my knife around in my other hand so that I was holding it point-up.

I stabbed forward, but the goblin let go of his rifle and grabbed my wrist in both hands.

His little nails dug into my skin as I pressed forward and down. He groaned and started to push back.

I still held his rifle. It was a pain to flip it around, but I managed, tossed it up, I grasped it by the middle, then jabbed the bayonet into the goblin’s ribs.

It squealed, its grip over my knife hand going loose.

That was enough. The knife sliced into his cheek, slid down across a bone there, and plunged into his skull. It didn’t kill him, the goblin just started to wail and fight, so I shook the knife around to scramble things up.

Should have aimed for the throat.

Something gave, and the goblin fell back.

I tugged my knife free and wiped it on its raggedy clothes, then looked around. I couldn’t afford not to pay attention.

The mech had turned back towards Caroline, and now a pair of goblins were riding atop it.

I dropped to one knee, leaning the rifle against the crate while I reloaded from loose shells in my pocket. I stuffed my gun in its sheath. I’d need to clean it later.

Now, I just had to figure out how to deal with the mech, on foot.

I looked at the rifle. Nothing ventured...

Picking it up, I tucked the gun to my shoulder. Lighter than my lever action, with a bolt. The sights were bent and the blade on the end made it front-heavy. Still, it didn’t have any goblin decorations. Something stolen during this raid? The safety was off, as best I could tell.

I aimed at the mech and fired.

A thick golden beam impacted the mech in the side, the bang of lead bouncing off steel almost louder than the shot. I racked the bolt and fired again, then again. Centre mass. Nothing fancy with a gun I didn’t know.

I clicked empty on the fourth try. I dropped the gun. Useless now. Unless I found ammo for it, and none was obvious on the goblin bleeding out next to me.

Having been in a mech that got shot by rifles before, I knew how unpleasant it was. The pilot had to be feeling that, and judging from the screaming in goblin I heard, it was letting its ride-alongs know.

The goblins above the mech started looking for me, so I ducked back and tried to think.

I’d bought Caroline some seconds, but that was it. Not much of a contribution at all.

“Oh, I’m such a fidiot,” I said.

The trainyard still had a few goblins running around it, I was sure. Which only made what I was about to do stupider.

I ran out of cover.

One of the goblins saw me right away. It pointed and screamed, then remembered that it was armed and started to fumble for its gun.

I whipped my revolver out, cocked it, and fired all in one smooth motion.

My aim wasn’t perfect, but it winged the little bastard in the shoulder and sent him spinning off the mech to land with a hard thump on the ground.

The other fired at me, a red beam cutting the air some metres to my left.

A second and third shot and it crashed onto the mech, its body catching onto some of the spikes.

Goblins were handy sometimes. Their little spikes were like handholds, which is how they used them half the time.

I jumped up, stepped on one spike, cursed when it bent under my weight, then grabbed onto a couple more and pulled myself up. I wasn’t looking to kill the pilot, not unless they’d left a convenient hole open in the side of the mech. I was looking to cause trouble.

Mechs were as tough as they were fragile--cobbled-together heaps of junk like this more so than most.

I found a panel near the mech’s hip, held in place by a piece of twine. Tugging my knife out, I sliced it open and grinned at the wires within. Some were charged with magic, and there was a small liquid gauge next to a hydraulic line.

Right leg controls, if I had to guess.

I hacked at the hydraulic line with the end of my knife, kinking it at first, then cutting through until it started pissing fluid all over. Then I sawed the end of the blade across a few wires, cursing when a few sparks of loose magic snapped at the air.

That was a bit of damage. Hardly enough to even the odds.

I continued climbing, aware of the sharpness of some of the things I was hanging from.

Most mechs had something like a spine, a central location down the back through which most piping and wires could pass. It was usually well-armoured too. This mech had some openings in its spine, some of the thicker lines barely tucked away behind some flexible plates.

I hung onto the mech and brought my revolver around. Two shots tore a hole into something that looked important and had a dozen wires fritzing.

The mech stumbled a step, and I heard screaming from within. Couldn’t tell if it was frustration or pain. If the pilot was jacked in, it was likely both. Probably felt like someone jabbing a knuckle into their back.

The mech’s left arm swung around and back, then locked up when it reached as far back as it could go.

I took a risk and jumped over, landing on the palm and using that as a springboard to jump higher up the mech’s back. I was grabbing onto the plates near the edge of the mech’s neck, knife in mouth when I saw all the wires trailing into the mech’s head. Had the explosion earlier torn off a plate?

I grabbed my knife and started hacking. I even recognized some of the controls I was cutting. One had to be the power to the neck actuators. Not a big loss there. The hydraulic line leading into the head either fed into that or helped with something on the mech’s face. Some had shields that could deploy over their eyes.

It was the wires leading to what I knew had to be the gyroscopes and the mecha’s eyes that had me grinning.

“Hope you’re not jacked in,” I said. I rammed the tip of my knife into a small box. The entire mech twitched, legs and arms all jerking at once.

No gyroscope meant no idea of which direction was up or down anymore. Rusty’s was always getting caught, and I was damned familiar with the nauseating feeling of the world tipping one way while I knew it wasn’t.

The pilot screamed, and the front of the mech’s cabin was torn open.

“Got ya,” I whispered.

***