Suicide Run (Engines of Liberty Book 2) Read online

  Then all was silent, save for the ringing in her ears and the diminishing cadence of Calvin’s labored breathing. His skin glistened with sweat, then turned white and clammy to the touch, save for the deep holes where the nails had been. These filled with dark blood that oozed up and out. With a final click, the teeth that lined the device’s edge retracted back into its underside. Disgusted, she batted the thing away, unable to imagine such a hellish thing buried over her own heart.

  Keep treating him, she thought. He needed aggressive medical attention; infection was his worst enemy now. The trauma site was a horrible mess of blood and flesh that needed serious treatment, or else it would turn gangrenous. For now, the immediate concern was bandaging the wound and covering him with a blanket; he’d soon go into shock.

  A quarter of an hour went by in relative silence while she sponged blood and pus out of the wound and applied an antiseptic, followed by a clotting agent. She stuffed the whole of it with gauze and secured the bandage with tape. Unfortunately the medical kit didn’t have any tobacco leaves, or she could have used them to treat the bruises on his face; a yellowing spot on the bridge of his nose might have been more than a week old, while a fresher, purple mark colored the side of his head.

  “You’re going to be all right, Cal,” Amelia whimpered. For now, she’d done all she could. Calvin’s breathing and pulse had stabilized, and he slept.

  Heaving a sigh of relief, Amelia wiped away a tear and pressed the back of one hand to her mouth, trying not to think of all that had happened in the last hour. Of all that she’d lost.

  Dad. Peter. Brian. Home.

  But Calvin was here.

  An hour ago she thought she’d never see him again. Now they were lost together, and a cruel reality awaited them outside the mimic.

  Amelia took Calvin’s hands in hers, drawing what comfort it offered. She wanted so desperately to talk to him, to know what had happened and where he’d been and how he’d ended up in the brig again. It would all have to wait. When he awoke, they would talk, and they would figure out where to go from there.

  Because she had no idea what to do next.

  *

  A stream of sunlight pierced the cockpit window and hit Calvin’s eyelids. He stirred.

  “Amelia?” He could barely talk, and everything in his body begged him to be still. At least his bed was comfortable, whatever it was.

  Amelia appeared at his side. Their hands found each other’s without a sound. Her eyes were red and puffy, but she had that beautiful smile on her face, and he sagged in relief at her presence.

  “Hi,” she whispered.

  “Hi,” he said back. He poked at his chest with his fingers. A large bandage covered a tender wound. The device was gone!

  “I took it out,” she explained.

  “Of course you did.” He stroked her face with his hand. “How did you do it?”

  “A little brutishly,” she confessed. She told him how she’d seen a schematic for the device in a notebook that Hamilton had given to Brian. Calvin flushed with anger at the mention of their names.

  “Hamilton tried to kill me. He put that thing in personally.”

  She stared at the device, sitting on a countertop opposite them. “I never thought . . . I mean I knew he was violent, I just can’t see how he could do that to someone. I never knew he had that in him.”

  Calvin positioned his elbows beneath himself and held his breath, trying to sit up. “He wanted to keep you from me.”

  Her eyes drifted back to his. “That would never have worked, Cal.”

  Privately he was thrilled to hear her say that, just as an extra confirmation that her alleged betrothal to Hamilton was only so much blown smoke. He wasn’t done with Eustice Hamilton, not by a long shot. “He’ll get his,” Calvin said.

  She chewed her lip and stared off at nothing. Her free hand rested on one side of his chest, away from the bandage.

  “I cleaned it,” she said, sensing his question. “Be glad you were out, because it took a lot of alcohol. We’ll have to watch it for the next week. You’ll have scars for the rest of your life.”

  “Don’t care about that.” He took her hand again. “Amelia, where are we?”

  “North of Virginia. We sort of crash-landed so I could take care of that thing, and I thought it best that we get going from there. Whoever attacked Mount Vernon did a pretty thorough job. It’s all gone, and I don’t know where my brothers took the recruits. If my orienteering is right, we’re in the New Jersey province. There’s a place I know outside Philadelphia where we can stay long term, I was just too tired to fly us there last night.”

  “Would you please help me up?”

  She slipped her hands behind his shoulders and pulled him upright. Before he sat back against the bulkhead in the wyvern’s sleeping quarter, she leaned in close for a hug, burying her cheek against his neck. His let his arms drape around her and gave her a gentle squeeze, holding her close to remind himself that yes, she was real. Her embrace told him that she needed that same

  confirmation.

  “Thank you, for all of this. You saved my life,” he whispered.

  “You saved my brothers, and those recruits.”

  He stiffened at that.

  “Cal, I know you didn’t get along with them, but they’re all I have left. Dad, he . . .” she choked on her words, and became silent. She didn’t need to say more.

  “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. I don’t know how to say this, Amelia: there was some trouble in Ohio, where your father sent me. I went under a false pretense. He tried to lock me up there, basically. And then I tried calling you on a HAM radio, and it all went downhill from there.”

  Amelia frowned. “Dad said you’d deserted.” As soon as she said it, a horrific recognition dawned on her face.

  “Technically I did, after this happened.” He pulled back and tapped his chest. Amelia took his hand again.

  “Don’t touch it too much. You need your rest,” she said. “And it seems like we have a lot of catching up to do.”

  “You said it. I don’t even know where to start.”

  “Well, I can start with the bad news.”

  “More bad than what we just went through?”

  She pursed her lips again, a signal that she was about to say something that she didn’t want to be true. “We’re in trouble, Calvin. Not just the technomancers, I mean all of us Merykans. The British are dead set on wiping us out after what happened at Camp Liberty—I heard Dad talking about it with Peter and Brian.

  A messenger came last week.”

  “That’s old news. For all their faults, the technomancers have no shortage of firepower. You ever heard of the Saint George?”

  “Whatever it is, it won’t be enough,” Amelia insisted. “King George sent reinforcements. Redcloak Elites, a contingent of Scottish Highlanders, and mercenaries from a place called Hesse. I don’t know what they do but it sounds bad. Dad was nervous. Calvin . . . they’re ready for us. Dad wanted to attack them tomorrow, but even if we could, they know we’re coming.

  “I don’t know if we can win this anymore.”

  *

  What a shame. The mansion had boasted an extensive library before it burned to the ground. The duffers had even acquired books on magic that were hard to get back in Britain; no wonder their tinkering had improved so much in recent generations.

  Godfrey poked through the ashes, perusing the titles that had survived the conflagration; he couldn’t pass up a chance to gaze into the duffers’ minds by seeing their stronghold. Vulgar as they were, perhaps there was merit in studying their methods of combat. He had never learned such things back home.

  Home. What an arbitrary term. Was Britain still home? Did he really want to go back, while so much untapped potential was staring him down on this side of the pond?

  He examined a slightly burned map on the wall, its edges

  blackened by soot. The western half detailed the Merykan colonies, the Atlantic dominated most of th
e eastern half, and the British

  Isles resided at the very edge, nestled above France.

  What was so great about the Isles? Cold, rainy, miserable all the time . . . on the other hand, Meryka was a vast wilderness, an expanse of endless possibilities. The Isles had no shortage of bickering politicians, of stuffy nobles jockeying for power and favor in the court of a corpulent inbred king.

  It was a game he had no inclination to play, not after seeing his father contend all of his life only to become the Minister of Transcontinental Teleportation. In this land, Godfrey hadn’t just honed his skills, he’d gained new magic. If he could scamper over hill and vale, get knocked unconscious, lose two days of memory, and come out on the other side with an inhuman combination of powers, what else could he do here?

  “Don’t make much sense to go back, does it?” he mused aloud, shelving a half-burnt tome. Let the King’s toy soldiers fight each other for a higher spot on the shelf; Godfrey could stay far away from all of that over here, and be the smartest fox in the world, ruling the roost of hens.

  Plenty of space, food, and opportunity.

  Of course there’d be challengers; there always were. If he were to take over the Merykan colonies, he’d have to be fast and decisive about it. Shock and awe, as it were. Storm Vauxhaul Outpost, overwhelm the House of Commons, close off the teleportals, and seize control of the continental lodestone . . .

  “Well, damn me blind. I could actually do all of that now.” He studied the palms of his hands, then turned them over to admire

  the intricate details of the wasp tattoos on his knuckles. He’d stomped out a technomancer outpost in under an hour using only necromancy and psychomancy. He hadn’t even tapped the pictomancy! Oh, there was so much left in the world for him to do. He couldn’t possibly go back to the way things were.

  That settled it. This was just a test run, a way to stretch his legs and showcase his talents.

  I am unstoppable now. Sod the homecoming; I will rule this land instead. The mages will bow and the duffers will fall. Once it’s all said and done, I will build a new throne on this continent, and before his life is over, King Charles will swear fealty to the Norrington Crown.

  A thought occurred to him. I will put the ‘god’ in ‘Godfrey.’

  He grinned, studying the map for a long, long while.

  END BOOK TWO

  WAR HITS THE HOMELAND!

  Calvin, Amelia, and the Rebel Hearts will return in

  ENGINES OF LIBERTY:

  PATRIOT’S GAME

  Coming soon!

  TACKLED MEN GOWNS!

  (ACKNOWLEDGMENTS)

  During the summer of 2013, when I was only a few short months into my career as a long-haul truck driver, I experienced my first DOT Crackdown. It’s a border-to-border, coast-to-coast event where the governments of the USA, Canada, and Mexico all get together and spend three days over-citing truckers for violations. Cha-ching for them.

  At the time, I worked for Knight Transportation. Their policy regarding the crackdown was that if there was anything more than slightly wrong with your truck, you stayed at a terminal and got it fixed. My truck had an issue with one axle which caused all four tires on it to wear irregularly, so like a ton of other drivers, I got stuck in Denver waiting for the backlogged mechanics to get to it. Rather than waste those three days with a bunch of sweaty dudes in the lounge watching Swamp People marathons, I sat in my truck and outlined Engines of Liberty in its entirety.

  It took me less than a month to hammer out a complete draft of REBEL HEART. It went very fast, but it was designed that way; I wanted to put out a trilogy of light novels that wouldn’t take too long to read. Just something to get me in the game. Within a year of that happening, REBEL HEART was fully edited, illustrated, and published, and I was well into SUICIDE RUN, the first sequel I’ve ever really written.

  REBEL HEART had a lengthy acknowledgments section,

  dedicated to the people who critiqued it and made it better. Honestly that list of people hasn’t changed much for SUICIDE RUN, as they’ve all formed a sort of brain trust on the series. Savannah and Shantewa offered some helpful notes especially, and of course Emily and Holly nailed the edits. To cap it off, Carter once again proved his chops as a cover artist.

  But the most serendipitous feedback came from my mother, who read a version that still had some of my older notes in it; in particular, there was a scene that referenced Amelia’s mother, and I put in a note about how I still needed to select a name for her. Later I would choose the name “Edith”, without telling anyone (because it didn’t matter…just a minor detail.) After Mom’s notes came back, she suggested “Edith”, and when I looked at my working copy of the manuscript, I kind of laughed, because I’d already made that selection. Good old Mom.

  (Her name’s not “Edith”, if you were wondering.)

  So you see how making these books has kind of been a magical process; what you might not see is how horribly exhausting it is. The stress of creating a world and fixing it on paper can only be known by those who have attempted it, or their families. I don’t say it enough, and maybe I don’t express it properly, but I’ll always be grateful to my wife Schaara for her support in this. Putting up with my multipolar behavior when I’m in “hardware mode” isn’t easy, and that was especially true with this book, as she became pregnant with our second son while I was halfway through the illustrations. She is strong in ways that I’ll never match, and this

  book might not have happened without her. I love you, babe.

  The two unique names that I can add to this section are Jenn Johansson, who gave me a few pointers at WesterCon 67. She then introduced me to Michelle Argyle, who was kind enough to read REBEL HEART and make formatting suggestions that greatly improved the aesthetics of these last two books. Ladies, I owe you one. (Apiece, I suppose…I won’t make you share.)

  And of course, I would be horribly remiss if I did not thank you. Even if I didn’t publish, even if nobody read my books, I would still write and I would still draw. I don’t think I could give that up. I love it too much. In fact, I want to be able to do it full-time someday, and in order for that to happen, readers like you are crucial. I appreciate you purchasing this book, or checking it out, or borrowing it, and taking the time to read it. I hope you liked it.

  And if you hated it, write a hilariously vicious review online somewhere. You’ll go viral, and people will snatch up Engines of Liberty just to see if it’s really *that* bad. We all win.

  All joking aside though, I really mean that: thank you. Someday you’ll be the reason why I don’t have to drive a truck anymore.

  Until then, well, enjoy the ending!

  Graham Bradley, February 2015

  About the Author

  Graham Bradley began writing at the age of 8, and it’s been a bad habit ever since. He enjoys cars, history, the Indianapolis Colts, BBQ, reading, and traveling. He currently lives in Henderson, Nevada, with his wife and son.

  SUICIDE RUN is his second published book.

  (If you get in a fight with a honey badger, my money’s on you.)

  Twitter.com/GrahamBeRad

  Instagram.com/GrahamBeRad