Chapter 11

Fort Strigamax had fallen. Elves were falling back from the rubble, and the only hope to keep this entire flank from collapsing was the other forts plugging up the other passes along the mountains ... and the fact that any attack through Strigamax’s ruins would open their own long, narrow flanks open.

Open to people like Estoc.

For the past week, Estoc had been doing nothing but fighting side by side with her lance. She was running on nothing but mana potions and sheer adrenaline. Her armor was pitted and battered, and she had gone through four swords. Her shoulder mounted magic missile launchers were running half on empty, and the load bearing servos of her suit’s left leg were running on twine, grace and a prayer.

Her grin stretched wide and feral as she peered through the forward view port of her armorite, the view bounced from helmet to the thronepit she slouched in. Her hands gripped the controls as she moved the palm of her suit to cradle the side of the tree, to keep her balanced. Below the trees, a patrol of orcish knights were bestriding their massive, white furred warbeasts.

“You take the left, I take the right,” Trebuchet whispered over their crystal line.

Estoc shifted the grip on her controls – adjusting the fingers of the metal gauntlet that clutched the long, thin blade she preferred. She brought the other hand around with a yank on the controls – and the two palms met around the hilt of the blade. She sighted in on the orc to the left – and then with instinct and adrenaline both screeching through her small body, she pushed down on the levers in her thronepit. Her armorite suit stood and dropped in a single fluid moment and, for just that fleeting instant, Estoc felt as if she was flying again.

The orc jerked his head up just in time for the tip of her sword to split his chest open, impaling him into the back of his mount, who let our a shrieking cry of agony before collapsing, their back legs going limp as their spine was severed. A stone ball the size of a human’s head swept the other rider off his mount as Trebuchet popped out of her cover, snow cascading down as her shoulder mounted gravity catapults set her entire armored suit wobbling. Estoc wrenched her blade free and parried the third scout’s ax as the orc bellowed in fury.

“Armorites!”

“Hey, they know our names!” Estoc said, her blade sparking as she met ax with edged steel again and again. She stepped away as the massive wolf-like-creature tried to bite down on her shoulder. His opened mouth gave her a perfect target – her fingers flicked down her secondary munitions buttons, switching half a dozen tiny crystals from blue to red. The fwit fwit fwit fwit of her shoulder mounted launcher firing darts into the opened maw of the beast was almost as loud as the crunch of skull and splatter of bone and brain. The entire beast fell, but the orc rolled off it and came to his feet, bellowing in rage.

Estoc lifted her blade, planting her palm against the flat of it as she caught his ax, twisted, and tried to throw him over her shoulder.

Which was when her servos gave out. The entire left leg of her armored suit seized up and she wobbled, then crashed to the side. The impact sent her smashing around inside of her thronepit. Her head barely avoided cracking into the metal edge of her suits interior, while she was pushed into her back and the orc began to hammer her with the ax. By now, the beasts had learned that the armorites weren’t merely human beings in plate mail – they knew that they were sophisticated magitech constructs, the pinnacle of the fairie arts. And so, his blows aimed not at the chest piece or helmet which were respectively heavily armored and relatively useless. Instead, he smashed at the hands. The crunch and whine of something valuable and complex being turned into fine grained powder filled Estoc’s ear and she cried out – more in rage than anything else. The orc then sprang off her and turned, sprinting away, panting as he ran. A second later, a rock thunked after him. Estoc couldn’t tell if the hit had landed. She heard only the splintering of wood, the crash of a tree thumping into the ground.

Then Trebuchet’s armor came into view above her, helmet dented but undamaged.

“Estoc! You okay in there?”

“I’m getting red lights all over the damn thing, I-” Estoc’s eyes widened. “No, no, no, no, no!”

“What is it?” Trebuchet asked.

“There’s a mana feedback in the arm vents!” Estoc said, unbuckling herself. She grabbed wildly for some of the emergency tools in her armor – then slapped the thronepit opening lever. The breastplate of her armor swung wing and she flapped out, buzzing delicately and leaving behind a fine patina of fairie sparkle. She landed on the mangled hand and started to wrench open the arm. The whine and sputter of mana backing up within the complex array of feed-lines and vents became overwhelmingly loud – more like a tea pot than anything else. She looked wildly for the blockage, while Trebuchet shouted.

“Eject the arm!”

“I eject the arm, the whole suit’s useless!” Estoc said.

“If you don’t eject the arm, the whole suit is gonna blow!” Trebuchet snapped.

“I got this!” Estoc said, springing forward. Her tank top did little to protect her from the chill of these northern lands – but they didn’t need to work so hard, as magical heat was blooming off the arm, as if it was fresh from a smithery. She jammed her wrench into it, trying to unkink the line. This was a kind of fault that barely cropped up on new suits – and when a suit got damaged enough for it to get a mana fault like this, well, you just ejected the arm. But this far from TechCom, this far from Scopes and the entire Armorite Command apparatus...

“Estoc!”

“I almost-” Estoc hissed.

A metal hand snatched her up and yanked her away. Estoc cried out in shock and annoyance – but then blinked as she saw the arrow thunking into where she had stood moments before. A javelin clattered off Trebuchet while the other armorite started to sprint away from their ambush. They had already stayed far too long near orc lines, but-

“No!” Estoc cried out.

She reached backwards for her armor – but it was already receding behind her. Farther. Farther. Farther.

The trees were shrouded and heavy with snow and shadows. But that meant little when the armor’s mana reactor finally went critical. The pale white flash of the explosion, the hot wind, the roar in the distance, all of it stabbed Estoc deep in her heart as Trebuchet kept her suit thundering forward.

The elf camp that they were operating from had Raptor and Warhammer there. Both of them were out of their suits and were taking apart bits of Warhammer’s left arm, to fix what they could in there. The elves, being primarily snow elves, had been forced to choose a camp-sight that their fairie and high elf allies could survive at ... which was why the entire camp smelled faintly of sulfur and burbling, warm water. Half a dozen hot pools were scattered among the wooden fortifications and tents, and elves relaxed in some of them while others honed arrows, swords, and discussed their latest raids. The commander of the camp, the selfsame Iceflow who had let Strigamax be blown to kingdom come, could be heard even from the armorite part of the camp.

“Good work at that raid. We need to shore up the defenses here, here ... and here...”

Normally, Estoc would have had something snippy to think about a man who had allowed his comfortable, effective fort to get blown to pieces by flamepowder weapons still being allowed to run things. But, in truth, Iceflow’s command of the retreat and the continued fight against the orcs had been enough to still her tongue.

But...

No.

“You BITCH!”

Trebuchet sighed as she stepped from her thronepit, her body bedraggled and her wings drooping.

“What happened?” Raptor asked – but Estoc grabbed onto Trebuchet’s arm, shaking her.

“I could have fixed it! I could have fixed her! It was just an arm fault!”

“And I said you should have ejected it!” Trebuchet snapped back. Raptor opened his mouth, about to speak, but Warhammer shook his head and placed his hand on the other fairie’s shoulders.

Estoc clenched her fists. Fury and a shocking burst of sorrow bloomed inside of her. That thing had just been a suit of armor. She would get another. She could get another. And yet, she felt as if she had lost a family member. A friend. She wanted to smack Trebuchet, but the other fairie looked so tired and wan – and Estoc felt as if every bit of her exhaustion was crashing home all at once. To her shame, what came next was tears. They beaded, then welled, then poured down her cheeks. Trebuchet snaked an arm around her back, whispering.