Tarnished Chapter 46 (Patreon)

John would be lying to himself if he didn’t admit he was a little apprehensive about riding this automaton. It wasn’t fear, just a healthy respect for what the construct might be capable of. He had seen more than one accident back in New Gata involving the auto carts. And this thing was running on the soul stone. So there was a lot more energy behind it than a normal automaton, despite Travis’ assurances that it was perfectly safe. The day he completely trusted that scatterbrained artificer was not today.

At least Seline hadn’t tried to sugarcoat it for him.

Sitting on the ostrich felt a bit weird, even with the saddle. It took him a bit to figure out why. It was the lack of a head he decided. Asking them to hold off on him testing the contraption so they could build something resembling a head wasn’t really in the cards though.

He pushed down the slight discomfort and felt at the controls, making sure not to push the lever that acted as the brake.

With a quiet sigh, that made Travis giddy with anticipation, John had to admit it all felt rather natural. Coming from him, that was high praise. He never much liked these artificer inventions, not that he aired his distaste for them for all the world to know though.

John learned long ago not to step in the way of progress if he could help it. It tended to piss a lot of people off. Usually rich people.

Finally feeling situated, John released the brake and the ostrich slowly rose into the air. It didn’t move at first, because he had the speed set to the lowest level. It was good to know he could idle there without moving.

He turned to see small puffs of steam escaping from a pipe tucked in the back. The machine was surprisingly quiet except for the occasional soft puff. It sounded a bit like an animal breathing heavily after a long run.

John had assumed it would be noisier like the walker was.

Seline must have seen where he was looking and spoke up. “The steam pipe is baffled to help deaden the sound. Once you get moving, it’s gonna make a bit more noise.”

“How much noise?” he asked as he pulled the reins back and forth, getting a feel for the strange resistance.

“Not a whole lot more. Mostly the puffing will increase in intensity and you will hear the mechanical legs moving.”

With a grunt of acknowledgment, he decided to stop stalling and get this over with. Applying a little pressure to the stirrup to get the thing moving, he was jerked back as it practically leaped forward ten feet before he pressed the other stirrup to stop it again.

He turned to the two artificers and stared at them.

“What?” Travis responded. “We warned you it was untested. Obviously, we will adjust the sensitivity now that we know.”

John narrowed his eyes at the man but sat back in the saddle. Now that he sort of knew what to expect, he gripped the reins tighter and squeezed his legs harder against the saddle.

When he was ready again, he pressed on the stirrup. He was glad they had angled the contraption so it was facing the gates out of Travis’ compound, otherwise he would have slammed into it even with his faster reaction speed. Even then he was forced to jerk the thing left so it didn’t clip the side of the gate.

Out past the confines of the wooden walls, it felt much slower. John knew that was a trick of the eyes though as he flew past a few startled people. He had experienced much the same thing the first time he was forced to ride a horse. Not just the ones used for farm work, but a military one bred for speed and war.

The ostrich seemed to dart about wildly as he struggled to control the damn thing. Soon he realized small, smooth movements were all that was needed. Once he realized this, his experience as a trigger puller came in quite handy.

Soon he was effortlessly weaving his way past people as he started putting on a little more speed.

He was going so fast now that his eyes started to water from the wind. If he had to guess, he was probably going a bit faster than he had ever ridden a horse. And unlike a horse, this thing wasn’t gonna get tired.

John made a mental note to get a pair of those goggles that Travis and Seline seemed to always be carrying around. Not much point to this machine if you can’t see.

With open fields ahead of him, John pushed the stirrup all the way down and held on for dear life. John had seen a runaway train once, back when they were first being introduced. This felt like that.

The Ostrich ate up the space between the town and the still-burning wreckage at ungodly speeds. But he didn’t feel out of control. As he crossed the open terrain, he adjusted his position in the saddle. He could already tell a normal horse saddle wasn’t going to cut it for these things. They would have to modify it to have some sort of rear brace to keep you from sliding off the back.

John locked in the speed and began testing the thing’s maneuverability. He already knew it could be a bit unruly if he jerked too hard on the reins, but what he soon realized was that if he leaned his weight slightly to one side or the other while he turned, it actually allowed it to turn slightly sharper without the additional jerkiness.

He did a full lap around the derailed train when he spotted something in the distance. Wanting to stop to see what he had spotted, John released the locking lever and pressed the stirrup meant to stop the machine.

It stopped alright.

The thing came to a halt so abruptly that the front of it nosed down and into the dirt, where it dug a nice long trench. John wasn’t there to witness that part, because as soon as the thing touched the ground, he was sent flying.

This was hardly the first time John had been thrown from a saddle. But it was definitely the fastest.

He barely had time to cover his head with his arms as he hit the dirt twenty feet in front of the machine. There was a snapping sound in his arm, and he grunted in pain as he felt the bone poke through his skin. Then he continued to roll through the grass a few times before finally coming to a stop face up.

John groaned and tried to blink away the stars, but his head was a bit fuzzy. So he just lay there for a few minutes before he heard the whistling puff of an auto wagon approaching. Even then, he didn’t move.

He could hear hurried footsteps as someone approached.

Soon a very paniced-looking Seline entered his field of view. “John, oh my god, are you ok?”

“I’ll survive,” he managed to get out. He lifted his good arm and the Deputy attempted to pull him to his feet. When she couldn’t manage, she yelled at Travis. “Dammit, Uncle, get over here and help me instead of checking the damn ostrich for damage!”

He couldn’t quite make out what the man said because of his fuzzy head, but the man was probably grumbling about John’s rough handling of the stupid thing.

With the pair of them pulling, they managed to get John to his feet, where he wobbled unsteadily as Seline held onto him.

“I need you to pull my other arm out to reset the bone.”

“I’m sorry?” Seline asked, looking confused until John lifted his broken arm.

The woman looked like she was going to be sick for a moment and almost let go of his good arm.

“It’s just a bone,” Travis scoffed as he walked around and grabbed the broken arm. Without a warning, the man tugged sharply on the arm and the bone slid back beneath the skin, letting out a spurt of blood.

As the man held the broken part, John pushed into it, setting it back in place. Thankfully it was the upper arm and not the lower. It would have been much harder to self-align the lower bones.

“Hold it there for a few minutes,” he grunted and tried to stop himself from swaying unsteadily.

His head was starting to clear up, but he could tell he had been concussed from the fall.

Travis obliged, but he could see the man constantly glancing over his shoulder. It was probably where the ostrich lay.

Once he felt the arm was set enough and he felt steady on his feet, he asked Seline to make him a sling from his shoulder holster.

After she did her best with the materials available, it seemed like Travis couldn’t hold it in any longer.

“What did you do to my… ostrich,” he said in disgust.

John wasn’t sure if the disgust was for the name or the accident. He decided he was in too much pain to care at the moment. “Don’t blame me for your faulty design. All I did was slow it down. The damn thing pitched forward so fast, it faceplanted into the dirt, sending me flying.”

“Oh,” the man stated simply. “Hmm, I guess that makes sense. I’ll need to adjust that mechanism so it leans back when it comes to an abrupt halt. Kind of like horses tend to rear back. What about how it operated?”

“I’m not doing this now,” he stated as he started walking toward the auto cart. “Seline, can you take me to Hawthorne?”

“What about my machine!” Travis called.

“If it still works, you can ride the damn thing back to town.” John paused and turned. He suddenly remembered why he had stopped in the first place. Something had caught his attention.

John scanned the horizon for where he had spotted the oddity. He passed over it a few times before he finally realized it was what he was looking for. He had dismissed the tiny black dot as a bird at first. But it wasn’t moving like a bird. And there was an occasional glint coming from it.

“Do either of you have a spyglass handy?”

Seline reached into Travis’ cart and dug around before she came up with one.

He held it as steady as he could with his good arm as he tried to see what the object in the distance was. When that failed to work, he had to enlist Seline's help to hold it steady.

Once he was satisfied, he pulled his face away from the spyglass. “I think we’re going to have company far sooner than I thought,” he said, gesturing with his head.

Both Seline and Travis took turns looking through the device.

“An airship?” Travis asked in surprise.

“That would be Vernon Hensley if I had to guess. He’s the man who set all our trouble into motion.”

“It doesn’t look like it's moving,” Seline stated.

“They probably noticed the black cloud from the train. My guess is, they are debating on what to do. But that won’t hold them off for long. If Hensley went through all this trouble to claim this town from Daniel Novarez, he isn’t going to sit and wait forever. Sooner or later, the man will approach. Or his people will disembark and approach on foot.” John looked back at the ostrich. “We can’t leave that out here. Seline, you’re probably the best person to ride it back to town. It’s a lot like riding a wild horse. Take it slow, you’ll be fine.”

“But I’ve never ridden a wild horse!” she started to object, but John ignored her as he grabbed Travis’ collar  with his good arm and pulled him along to the cart.