The Forge - (From Rust) by Daniel James Clark (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

Best friends Zak Lockwood and Mark Alder are training to pilot massive war machines at the United Entities Mechanized Warfare Academy. They've just finished work on restoring their own mech when The Harbingers of The Fall, an organization bent on rendering society to ashes, forces them into conflict overnight. Zak, Mark, and a close-knit group of other cadets must figure out their place in a generational conflict that threatens to tear the world apart. As they fight through cities and race across the desert with nothing but their training mechs, their friendship and love are tested through vicious patterns of violence and loss. Questions rise about whether or not a system that causes this much pain is worth preserving at all.