Spear of Destiny James Baldwin (free romance novels .TXT) 📖

I don’t have enough leverage to get the damn thing off.”

“The what?”

“The AMEN. Arcane Machima ENcoder.”

I glanced at Suri. She shrugged.

“What’s the AMEN do?” I asked, turning back.

Gar leaned out and looked down over his shoulder. “You know what a ribosome is?”

“That’s a sports drink flavor, right?” I beamed up at him.

“Dios, ayúdame.” He made a show of crossing himself. “Ribosomes are cellular machines that turn amino acids into chains of protein, you dumbass. AMENs do the same thing, but for magic. They take mana and encode it so it can manifest functions without a wizard standing over it, waving their hands.”

I crossed my arms. “So what you’re saying is that you need help getting the panel off?”

“Ugggggh.” He made a sound of disgust. “Yes.”

“Me not know what ribosome is, but me STRONG.” I tensed, adjusted my footing, and leaped up. I caught a handhold on the Warsinger and pulled myself to a narrow ledge, then monkeyed over to where Gar was struggling to reach. Clinging on with one hand, I reached back. “Give me a crowbar.”

He handed over a short army-style crowbar. I wedged it in, then began to rock it back and forth, working the decayed rivets loose. The bolts shrieked as they gave way: first the two at the top, and then the rest.

“Watch your head!” Gar called to Suri, giving her time to move as the plate tumbled off and clanged to the ground.

“There you go. One thingimajig, served cold.” I scurried to the left a bit in case anything decided to blow up in my face. There was a strange device behind the panel: a double-walled metal cylinder with two tubes feeding through the top, and several dozen small tubes flaring out the bottom. It was inset with golden rings that spun like prayer wheels when Gar reached in.

“Can you pull my swing forward and hold in closer?” He asked.

“Sure.” I leaned out, caught the rope, and hauled it forward, wrapping my arm around a pipe so I wasn’t dislodged.

“Thanks,” he grunted. “Damn, look at this thing. Ain’t seen anything quite like it.”

“How’s it different to the things we have now?” I asked.

“Because this puppy somehow handles twenty-seven different magical functions,” Gar replied, attaching some kind of small meter to one of the intake pipes. “Doesn’t sound like a lot, but the AMEN in an engine only handles six: intake and exhaust, fuel injection, conversion and catalyzation, and engine temperature. This thing’s got three command rings on it, nine functions per ring. Looks to me like the rings allowed custom functionality. It must have been red-hot when it was running, unless there was some kind of fluid to keep it cool.”

“Huh.” I barely understood what he was saying, but I was interested anyway. “Man… the world of artificing is totally different to the world of combat classes. What made you get into it?”

“I was into mechanics before Archemi,” he replied tersely. “Wanted to open my own shop. Was close to doing just that when the War happened and I got called up. Pull that wire there out of the way for me.”

I leaned down and caught the cable, pushing it aside. “Wait: you were conscripted?”

“Yeah. Who wasn’t?”

“Anyone over thirty-five. Did you make yourself look older in the game?”

He sighed. “No. I was overage, but I got drafted anyway. Served in TW1 as a UAS pilot. Left the army for five years. They recalled me to duty at the beginning of ‘69. Talk about getting fucked.”

‘UAS pilots’ were drone pilots: a soldier who flew unmanned aircraft. “Jeez. You must have been a real ace if they pulled you back in.” I clicked my tongue. “Which unit?”

“The second time ‘round? 3rd Brigade Combat Team, 82nd Airborne.”

“Oh, hey, we did a lot of work with you guys.” I leaned out a little further. “I was a dogface for five years.”

“Oh yeah? Lemme guess: 79th?”

I laughed. “Yeah. How d'you know?”

“How the hell else does some smartmouth city kid end up with eyes like yours? I knew the second I saw you that you’ve seen some real bad shit, and the brass worked that whole fucking division to death.” Gar hawked in his throat. “What company? Might even have flown for you.”

“E Company,” I said. “And yeah. I can’t speak for others, but the war gave a lot and took a lot from me. Took more than it gave, but hey—I was able to put my airborne experience to good use here.”

Gar looked up at me. “Huh?”

I laughed. “Yeah, we had to retake one of the counties of Myszno from this dickhead baron. He had himself a pretty damn good position, with air defenses and everything, but it turns out no one’d thought to invent a working parachute in Archemi yet. I was able to help Rin make blueprints for the old T-11 and the HI-5 systems. We trained a bunch of mercenaries to jump, then dropped straight into his damn castle.”

“E Company didn’t do airborne.” Gar irritably shook his head, twisting his wrench deep in the bowels of the Warsinger.

“Well, I wasn’t dreaming all those jumps, was I?” I laughed. “I did at least ten over five years.”

Gar craned his head back to look straight at me. “I’m telling you, son. E Company didn’t have any damn airborne. The conscript C.Ts weren’t ever run through Airborne School. I know because I was there from the beginning through to the day when the whole of China dropped dead from HEX.”

I blinked back at him in confusion. “Well, I know what I did and didn’t do. Don’t give a shit if you don’t believe me.”

“Sure thing.” He gave me a wry, sardonic smile—a smile I’d given more than one person myself. It was the look any combat Vet would give to someone who