Sgt. Golem: Royal Mech Hussar - Stubs Soon!

When I got back to the hauler, the little girl's mech was already standing by the trailer. It was taller than our own mechs and much bulkier. It looked like a cross between an armored knight and a sumo wrestler. For a weapon, it had a length of log held like a club. The bark was chipped and spattered with blood. I didn’t ask.

As we approached, Eva ran ahead and threw her arms arounds its left knee. The mech growled in response, sounding more like a gruff grampa than an enraged gorilla.

Angelica stopped short. She stared wide-eyed and open-mouthed at Eva's mech, muttering a curse word under her breath and crossing herself. I think that was the first time I had ever seen Angelica do anything religious.

"What is it?" I asked.

"It's Plater’s charger." Her voice was full of awe. "It is," she breathed. "It's Emilia Plater’s mech."

"Who's that?"

She turned to look at me in surprise. Understanding dawned. "Of course, you don't know who she is. Emilia was a countess from Lithuania, instrumental in the November Uprising. She and other mech riders threw out the Russians and re-established Polish independence."

"I see." but I didn't. "Lithuanian against the Russians. What was she doing down here at the edge of Hungary?"

She looked at me again with that same surprise shifting into understanding. "This is where she lost her mech."

“I guess she must have, if that’s it,” I said, pointing at Eva’s monster.

“She was a great hero in the Polish revolution of independence, but years later, when the Hungarian uprising started, the Polish Congress didn't want to get involved. Emilia gathered up mech riders and other fighters and marched across the Carpathians, west of here. When the Russians tried to cross, they made their stand. They say the Hungarian uprising would have failed if it weren’t for her."

“You think they’re right?”

Angelica shrugged. "Either way, it was a heroic stand. During the battle, she lost her mech."

"He seems okay. Did they fix him up later, as a memorial?"

"No, you don't understand. She was in her early 40s."

I just looked at her.

"She lost her bond to it."

Ah, now it made sense. She had said before that only younger women and girls could bond to mechs. Somewhere in their late 30s or early 40s, they simply lost the ability. A great hero losing her power in a major battle. That must have been devastating for her. “But they pushed the Russians back?”

“They did.” Angelica left me behind as she moved up to the mech and placed her hands on it. With all its growling and rumbling, I half expected it to attack her for her impudence, but it just stood there, looking down at her.

Assuming its stylized knight visor could even see. Did mechs have eyes? Or did they perceive through their rider’s senses?

I studied the old mech more closely. It had faded patterns on its chest that looked like a fleur-de-lis. When I had first seen it, I took it to be something akin to the Polish eagle, but now I realized it was more French-looking.

Alexander had joined the proceedings, so I went over and asked him about the markings.

"Yes, most of the mechs we had during the Revolution were from the Napoleonic Wars."

I tried not to let my surprise show. How long exactly had this world had mechs? I'd have to ask at some point when I could get a more detailed history of them. How different would Waterloo have been with mechs? Had Napoleon won, this time?

I wondered about the American Civil War and tried to picture girls and mechs fighting at Gettysburg. The one time I had asked about America, I had only gotten a vague answer, with no time to follow up. I made a mental note to ask more later.

But for now, there was work to be done.

Sergeant Jablonski met us at the foot of the ladder.

I pointed off to the south. "The Hussars are going out for a little raid. There's a big group of Russians coming up the pass and the Hussars are going to hit them, and then fall back. Move the hauler a half mile south and we will meet you there when we are done."

Jablonski nodded. "Sounds good. I’ll have my boys man the guns.”

"Excellent. We're taking the scout car too, so make sure you have several guys ready to hoist us all back aboard when we return."

He nodded and went over to the ladder. Just above the hinge was a speaking tube. He flipped up its cover and spoke into it as I went to join Angelica and the others by the flatbed trailer.

Tamara was going ahead to scout. She jumped her mech down from the trailer without waiting for a hoist, leapt up onto its shoulder, and headed off into the woods. As her mech disappeared into the trees, Alexander turned to me.

"Are you sure we should trust her? She could be going to set us up an ambush."

"You didn’t see her fighting the Russians before. Besides, right now we're really short on options."

Alexander shrugged. "Well, if you believe in her, and the lieutenant believes in you, I guess that's good enough."

The flatbed trailer had two cranes on it, one at the front right, the other at the back left corner. At the rear of the trailer was a double crane hoist that could lift up a truck, a jeep, or even a small armored car, like a dinghy hung from the back of a sailboat. We went around and helped the soldiers unhook the scout car from the hoist. The car didn’t look much like an old Willys but I found myself thinking of it as a jeep anyway.

Alexander climbed into the driver's seat. The engine turned over with a cough and a belch of smoke. I eyed the pintle mount in the back. "Is there a gun for this thing?" I shouted up to the troopers on the trailer. A minute later a man came puffing up with a machine gun over his shoulder.

"Sorry Sarge, took it off last night before the dew came," he panted. That made sense; weapons of this era were a lot more susceptible to rust and required constant attention.

The trooper slapped the gun on the mount and dug up a box of ammo. I jabbed a thumb in his direction and asked Alexander, "Hey, should we bring a gunner along? Do you need me to navigate?"

Alexander shook his head, “The two of us can cover it.”

I shrugged. "Fair enough,” and the jeep lurched into motion, spluttering its way along the mountain road.

The plan was simple. The road came through a wide bowl-shaped valley. There was a tiny village in the middle, just a handful of huts and a stone church, then the road continued on toward the fortress. The girls were positioning themselves on the southwest range of hills overlooking the valley, and when the enemy artillery arrived, we’d blow it away.

I switched the engine off, and the scout car sputtered and died. Behind us, silence returned to the thick stand of pines. Ahead of us, three mechs stood in a huddle, as their riders conferred. Hannah, Angelica, and Tamara turned toward us as Alexander and I got out of the scout car.

I unstrapped the artillery scope and its tripod from the back of the scout car and slung it over my shoulder.

"Is everything ready?"

Hannah nodded, and Tamara said, "Yes, as ready as we can be."

"You don’t have much view from here.” I looked down the road past the mechs but didn't see an opening in the trees.

Angelica pointed up the slope. "About 50 yards ahead there's a good-sized clearing. We have a great view all the way across the valley. We’ll stay under cover until the enemy gets here. No sense letting them spot the trap. You two go be our lookout. Signal us when you see their guns. When they’re in range we will move into the open and light them up."

Alexander and I hiked ahead as the girls remained behind with their mechs. Just as Angelica had said, the trees ended in a high mountain meadow, and we had a stunning view of the entire valley. There were a cluster of buildings that made up a small village in the center along the road about a mile away.

We set up the spotting scope tripod at the edge of the woods, in the shadow of a tree, and carefully arranged some brush to screen it. If we didn't move around much, we should avoid detection.

"Is that them?" I pointed at a faint cloud of dust at the far end of the valley.

It was the Russians, but we still had an interminable wait. Columns of men slowly crawled into view and worked their way down the valley. They held up at the village itself for a while, but there was still no sign of their caissons and artillery. Finally, they started moving again, headed down, getting closer to our hill in the southwest corner of the bowl-shaped valley.

They were getting close enough that I was worried about getting cut off. Our way out was a road through the forest along the side of the valley. It snaked along the ridge but rejoined the main road further south, near the fortress. If the main Russian force reached the road before the artillery arrived, they could end up at our backs.

We finally spotted the wagons and mule teams pulling the guns.

Alexander took a turn on the artillery periscope. "Yep, that's them alright. Looks like six, no, seven pieces. Plus the ammo wagons.”

All three of the girls had armed themselves with howitzers before we left the hauler, turning their chargers into mobile artillery. They didn't have the rate of fire of the autocannons, but they had a heck of a lot more range and hitting power.

“How close do they need to be?" I knew guns like ours would easily shoot across the valley, but I wasn’t sure how well the mechs could aim.

"Oh, probably just the other side of the village. At that range it will be easy for us to hit them."

Alexander went back to alert the Hussars and I took over the scope, carefully watching the field pieces roll into view, taking note of where each one was. I counted seven guns and twelve wagons that looked like they were support. The crews would probably be on the wagons or marching nearby. If we could take out most or all of those, it would be a severe blow to the Russians' ability to assault the fortress.

The ground shuddered slightly as the mechs arrived behind me. I watched as they stepped out of the forest and lined up, each one sitting and taking up a firing stance. It was impressive how well the girls could control their mechs, arranging their limbs just right to assume the classic elbow-on-knee, seated shooter's position.

I didn't immediately see a reaction from the troops marching below. They might not have spotted us yet, but they would soon. There was no time to lose.

“Commence firing!" The muzzle blast from Angelica's howitzer was spectacular. The weapon was a fast firing artillery piece, redesigned to be held in massive mech hands. The action at the rear was manual, and so there was several seconds between each shot. With all three girls firing, it was a rolling, almost continuous roar. Boom, boom, boom.

The first shots landed dozens of yards from any of the guns and wagons. A few seconds later the sound of the impacts rolled in, just in time to be drowned out by the cannons firing again. Boom, boom, boom.

I called shot placements and corrections to Alexander. I could barely hear him shouting out to the girls as I watched them walk their shots in.

Now they had the range. The next shots struck home, landing squarely on the nearest cluster of artillery wagons. Dirt, men, horses, and equipment blasted into the sky as the girls rained volley after volley into them.

Rapidly, the smoke and carnage made it difficult to tell see the chaos we were making of the artillery division. My ears were ringing when Angelica called cease fire. “Get a move on! They’ll be on us fast!”

I stood and swept up the periscope, flipping it over my shoulder as if it weighed nothing. The valley in front of us had the look of an anthill with men scurrying in all directions. The orderly marching formations were gone. Everywhere was chaos. Men were scattered, throwing themselves to the ground or running for cover, of which there was very little in the valley.

Three small knots of soldiers raced up the slope towards us. Rifle bullets started to whiz past us, thudding into the trees nearby. It was definitely time to go.

I took off down the road at a trot, keeping to one side so the mechs had room to get by. I hadn't gotten more than a few yards before Tamara jogged past me, her mech moving along with easy strides. She waved down at me from where she surfed on the shoulder pad and then was gone.

I realized I had just seen more destruction wrought in less than a minute by those three young women than in my entire career in the Army. Explosions in densely packed formations caused an indescribable level of carnage. Men were dying down there. Men had taken wounds that would cost them their legs or arms. I knew what that felt like.

I didn't have time to dwell on it. I made it back to the scout car and had finished strapping down the scope by the time Alexander came puffing along.