Sgt. Golem: Royal Mech Hussar - Stubs Soon!

Alexander started to climb into the driver's seat and I said, "No, let me."

He gave me a quizzical look, but I set my hand on the door handle. He went around and climb into the rear of the vehicle.

I found the lever to adjust the seat. Even though it was in an unfamiliar location, my hand went right to it. That seemed odd. It was a bit surprising that the seat was able to adjust enough to accommodate my huge frame. But I guess if your Army has colossal artificial men in it, then you need to build your vehicles to accommodate them.

Alexander had been a competent driver on the way out, but I knew I would be able to make better time than him. He was too cautious. Driving on a dirt road needed a bit more reckless abandon to make good time. This vehicle had a starter button, not a key. A few of the other controls were strange to me, like the engine choke. Nevertheless, I started it with a feeling of familiarity that also struck me as weird. I was as comfortable in this driver's seat as in my old pickup truck back home.

By the time I got the engine started, Angelica and Hannah’s chargers had jogged past us and disappeared down the road. I revved the engine and popped it into gear with practiced ease. I worked the clutch and throttle with the easy familiarity of tying my shoes.

Only once I put the vehicle in motion did the feeling of familiarity fail me. I spun the wheel and revved the engine, popping the clutch and expecting to swing the rear around in a spray of dirt. Just as I was about to perform the maneuver, my hands and feet faltered. The vehicle lurched forward and halted. I had to stop and complete a Y-turn to get it pointed in the correct direction.

What was weird was that it wasn't the vehicle that had hesitated, but me. I shook my head and tried to focus. Putting it back in gear with the same practiced ease, I took off down the road.

My gear changes were smooth, but something was funny about the steering. Every time I dodged a divot in the road or swerved around a broken branch, I felt like I was having to fight the wheel. We were halfway back to the fortress before I was able to put my finger on what was so strange about it.

It wasn't the car fighting me. It was my own reflexes. Somewhere between what I thought the vehicle should do and what my muscle memory was trying was a disconnect. I focused and pressed the gas pedal to the floor. My reflexes were trying to take it easy, following the tire tracks right down the center of the dirt road.

The other part of my head was telling me was how I really wanted to drive.

I grew up in Alabama, in the backwoods, learning to drive in beat-up pickups. I knew a thing or two about driving down a rough dirt road fast. Back in the hills, kids did stuff with trucks that would make rally racers nervous. This strange muscle memory that gave me a sense of familiarity with the controls was conflicting with how I knew this vehicle could drive on a road like this one. Fast and crazy, but effective for a skilled driver.

I pushed harder and forced my body and the car to do what I wanted. I overrode the reflexes my body seemed to have baked in for smooth by-the-book driving. It took an effort of will and a kind of determination that made me break out in sweat all over. I hadn't realized this body could sweat.

We were screaming down the winding forest road now. Alexander holding on for dear life, making sharp yelps of protest when the wheels left the ground or when we slid around another curve, like my ex-wife would when I took her out mud racing.

Something in my head snapped into place. All at once, the muscle memory and the image in my head of how the vehicle should drive came together. There was a stab of blinding pain that immediately started to fade. And suddenly I was driving this vehicle like it was my own skin.

We came around another bend and came up on the rearmost retreating mech. I think it was Angelica's. We blew past her with two tires off the road, narrowly missing two trees and the embankment.

I think Hannah heard us coming. Her mech stepped to the side of the road as we blasted by. I glanced at Alexander and saw eyes the size of saucers and a mouth open in a silent scream. He stabbed his finger forward, panicking that my eyes weren't on the road, and I flashed him a grin.

We were almost to the fortress now and the forest was starting to thin. I slowed down slightly and yelled at Alexander, "Get in the back! Get on the gun!" He was holding on for dear life. I had to slow down a little bit more and shout louder before he pried his hands off the dash and climbed shakily into the back.

Alexander and Angelica had said when I first arrived in this world that they had been trying to load skills into a golem. That machine they used was supposed to fill an artificial body with the knowledge and abilities of people like mechanics, armorers, and equipment operators.

I knew from experience skills weren't just knowledge in the head. They involved muscle memory as well. Knowing what the controls on an excavator did came second to knowing exactly when to reach for them. Skill meant knowing deep down when you wanted this arm to do that certain thing, you had to reach for a certain control and pull it in a particular direction. Book knowledge was less than half of what you needed to be effective.

That held true for lots of jobs. As a mechanic it's fine to know which bolt to remove, but if you don't know how to hold a wrench, how to position your body to get leverage, how to get a wrench on a nut by nothing but feel, you’re only an apprentice. Not good for much besides getting yelled at. Their machine must load muscle memory straight into the nervous system of the artificial bodies. And that's what they put in my head.

The more I had these flashes of odd familiarity, the more I realized the machine had worked on me after all. But my own mind was at war with itself, trying to reconcile what I had brought from my old life with what had been loaded in.

In the case of driving, the machine had taught me how to feather this car’s clutch just right, and just how much braking would slow me down at the rate I desired. All that was now combined with the abilities I had brought with me into this world, skills I had developed growing up, the ability to look at a curve on a dirt road, judge the softness of the terrain, and know just how fast I could get my vehicle around it.

I considered what this meant. This body had interesting and useful skills that I hadn't had before. In some cases, they were new versions of things I did know, like how to operate firearms. I needed to learn to recognize when my implanted skills were trying to break through and find a way to merge them with what I had learned back home in my old life. If I could combine other skills like I did today…

I grinned as I gripped the steering wheel tighter. Figuring it out was going to be a lot of fun.

When I heard Alexander cycle the bolt on the machine gun, I knew we were ready, and I sped back up.

"Not too fast!" he wailed, but I didn't listen. With a maniac grin on my face, we flew out of the woods.

Just as I had feared, the lead elements of the Russian columns had made it this far. A dozen men on horseback and a truck full of soldiers were rolling up the main road. We caught them by complete surprise as the little scout car flew out of the woods.

Alexander, scared though he was, didn't hesitate. Our machine gun roared to life. Horses scattered, reared, died, and men ran in all directions. A Russian truck swerved and its engine burst into flames as Alexander hosed it down with copper and lead. I kept my right foot down and swung onto the main road in a spray of dust and gravel. Alexander stopped firing and we heard a dull boom behind us as one of the hussars opened up with her howitzer. I eased off on the throttle to give them time to catch up.

Half mile further up the road I yelled, "Are the girls back there?"

"Yeah, all three."

"Okay, I'm going to go on ahead so we can tell the unit they're coming."

"Wait, no!" he wailed as I slammed on the acceleration.

The main road was much smoother and better maintained than the mountain road had been. We were on an uphill grade, but I still got it up to a rather exciting pace before the fortress came into view.

I spotted some soldiers looking out of the gun ports on the battlements and waved as we drove by. Half a mile beyond the fortress, we pulled up behind the hauler. A dozen soldiers came out to meet us.

"The Hussars are right behind us! We gave the Russians hell! Get ready to load." They gave a cheer and spread out to their tasks.

The engine in the scout car had barely stopped before men were slapping straps onto the car’s front and rear tie-down points. I just had time to unmount the artillery scope and hop out before they started hoisting it onto the back of the hauler.

Tamara arrived before they had secured the jeep. Her scout mech was smaller and lighter than the others, and she controlled it with a graceful flair. Without waiting for a crane, she leapt the charger up onto the back of the trailer and landed lightly. She laid the howitzer on a storage cradle and shifted her mech into tie-down position with a degree of finesse that made the big machine look alive.

Hanna and Angelica came up together and lined their mechs for loading. Each of them held their gun out and a group of beefy men hefted it off to the side to be picked up by the other crane arm and laid on the cradle with Tamara’s. Meanwhile the mechs crouched in fetal position, head down and arms tucked in. They had a hook on the back of their neck that allowed the crane to pluck them off the ground.

The crane operator wasn't very good and after a couple of shouts I took over the controls and did it myself. Again, that familiar muscle memory took over as I put my hands the knobs and levers. I swung the massive machine around with shocking ease.

This time I didn’t fight it or try to use my own intuition, despite years of practice with cranes, excavators and all kinds of heavy equipment. I didn't need speed, so I didn’t second guess the implanted skills.

I had a theory I could integrate old skills and new -- with some careful practice, but not right then. You didn’t mess around with heavy machinery.

Someone be sure to tell that to my brother-in-law.