Fall of the Iron Gods by Olivia Chadha

Author:Olivia Chadha
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Erewhon Books
Published: 2024-01-17T18:05:59+00:00

22//ASHIVA

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In the dream, it takes me exactly ten seconds to come to. I’m in the past, in a battle I’ve never known. Metal shifts, weapons discharge, drones dive from overhead. Then the ground reverberates, but there are no earthquakes here. Gotta be mecha soldiers coming to finish me off. My vision strobes in and out, and my peripheral sight line is black. The ache in my head is extraordinary. The sand beneath my chest is strangely cold and slips through my fingers like water. With one arm, I crawl toward a transport tank. Something stops me: the face of a dead soldier, frozen in surprise. Bodies are all around—so many bodies. The battle returns to me all at once, and I vomit. When I’m done, I search desperately for my gun. There it is. As I set it to kill, the weapon crumbles like old metal bones, rusted. Everything’s broken; our mission went sideways.

My mouth is full of dirt, blood, and sand. My system runs a report accounting for every corner of my body at lightning speed. I’m running at sixty percent, which means my injuries are going to slow me down. If I hit fifty percent, my replacement capabilities will be null, and I’ll be basically human again. I will likely die here.

Shadows move in the distance. Alive or dead, friend or enemy, or I could be imagining the whole thing. My head throbs like a thousand grenades are exploding in my skull. I run my flesh hand above my ear and touch a sticky wet mess. Blood. Cracked skull. Shit, where’s my helmet?

This was a goddamn ambush.

In the horizon, a tremendous figure moves toward me, and a scream scrapes my throat, a mecha to destroy us all. A staticky voice on my comms says, “This is The War Hammer. Can anyone hear me? We’re trapped inside the transport. Need assistance.”

The transport tank is flipped on its side. Flames threaten to consume it. I say into the comms, “I’m injured on the field. Ten meters from you. On my way.”

“Mechanic, we need your help.” I stumble as I stand. Then I stop at my reflection in the half-broken window of another transport. Two mechanized legs, face covered in dirt and blood, honey-colored eyes, stern upper lip. A rifle in my arms. I am her; I’ve become her. Masiji. Behind me in the reflection is a mech approaching, one of theirs.

Then all the sound in the world is disengaged, and there is a blast of fire—or is it ice cold? It’s impossible to differentiate between the two. Then nothing. The universe goes white.

< . . . >

When I wake from this dream, I’m covered in a sick sweat that I was accustomed to in the Narrows, caused by the heat, pollution, and hunger. My head throbs with fire. I’m not well. But this is different. This time I don’t have Mrs. Zinnat, or Masiji, or Taru to comfort me. This time, I am on a mission into the heart of some hell, with toxic sand eking into my joints.

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