Sgt. Golem: Royal Mech Hussar - Stubs Soon!

"I'm fine," Veronica insisted to the ward sister. The woman paid no attention as she checked Veronica's bandaged leg for the third time. The private room at Budapest Central Hospital was bright and airy. It was a corner room with four large windows standing open to let in air and sunshine. The view faced away from the military grounds and last night’s. Veronica imagined she could still smell the blood and smoke, but when she actually took a deep breath, only the antiseptic smell of carbolic acid and starched white linen reached her nostrils.

"Lady Veronica, please. We must keep you still for observation until the doctor has released you back to duty."

"I'm fine. I've sprained my ankle and drained my istota reserves. You must have other patients who actually need tending."

Through the open door, she could see the ward beyond, lined with beds with only a foot between them. The beds were filled with injured women, the mech pilots who had been wounded last night, or perhaps hapless bystanders, wives, and dates of army officers. It didn't matter which. Veronica could hear the moans and quiet weeping from here. A single ward sister moved between the beds, checking up on them.

"It's a waste of your time and resources to treat me. If I must be kept quiet, at least let me return to my rooms at the palace."

The nurse would not meet her eye. "I shall pass your request along to the doctor," she said, and went out, pulling Veronica's door closed behind her.

Veronica lay back and stared at the ceiling. She could just walk out on her own, but somebody would be sure to raise a fuss. She was only three floors up. She could always go out the window, even with her sprained ankle. That would get back to her father, and she'd endure a dressing down for it. But what did it really matter?

Yet again, Veronica had made a mess of things. She had been so close to having new friends who saw her usefulness. And then last night, she'd run off with no weapon, fallen through a hole in a roof, caused a couple of explosions, and then had to be evacuated from the grounds on a stretcher. It was embarrassing. Humiliating. Yet another incident in Veronica's life.

How did she keep doing this to herself? Ever since she'd bonded her mech, she'd wanted more than anything to be part of a unit. She'd tried so hard in training, even when the other girls bowed and scraped and deferred to her while whispering behind her back. She'd tried to prove to all of them what a strong member of the team she could be, and yet somehow she always found herself the outcast, the one doing the wrong thing at the wrong time, messing up training maneuvers, or stretching a little too far in an attempt to impress a visiting dignitary.

At this point, she'd been a member of almost every Hussar unit in Budapest. None of them had outright kicked her off the team. No, it had been more subtle than that. Words from their patrons, the well-connected, retired mech driver women who mentored the Hussar cadet corps, suggesting that perhaps Veronica's talents would be put to better use with another unit.

She had been so pleased last night, walking into the ball on the arms of the handsome young American fighter pilot with her new Polish hero friends in tow. It was a chance to show off for the girls who had dismissed her before. Then everything went to hell, and Veronica went with it.

There was a knock on her door. She sat up. "Come in." Maybe the doctor was coming to give her the all-clear to leave. She was going to have words with the mech corps commandant. The way resources were being spent here in the hospital was ridiculous. So much lavished on a single, noble patient when other pilots were in dire need. Shouldn't matter who her father was. Veronica had a sprained ankle and needed rest. That didn't take a palatial suite.

The door opened. Her father's private secretary, Andras, entered. He gave her a polite bow. "Contessa, I'm glad to see you looking much better."

"Yes, Andras, I'm well. I'm just waiting for the doctor to release me. What can I do for you?"

He had an old-fashioned parchment scroll with red ribbons and a bright red wax seal in his hand. He approached her bed and held the scroll out to her. "From your noble father."

Veronica's mouth was dry. She took the scroll and stared at it as though it were a dead rat. Nothing good ever came in scrolls like this. They were for very official, very political business. The military used good, honest paper.

At last, seeing that Andras had no intention of going anywhere, Veronica broke the seal and unrolled the scroll. She frowned at the elegantly lettered French on the page. She was fluent in French. It was, in fact, her first language. But reading it in the archaic form was always a bit of a headache. And even after she'd been through it twice, she still couldn't believe what she read.

She looked up at Andras. "This is your handwriting."

"I wrote as your father dictated," Andras said stiffly.

"But of course, you know what this says." It wasn't really a question and would have been foolish if it were. "How long has he been working on this?" she whispered.

"Contessa, you know your marriage has been a matter of discussion for some time now."

"Yes, of course. I'm the acknowledged daughter of the Prince Regent, a talented mech rider. I expected to make a political marriage at some point, but this?" she gestured. "To a backwater German Count? I've never even heard of him. I think I could find Handlesleben on a map if I looked long enough. And the map was big enough.”

“He has good connections and is in fact the heir to the Elector of Saxony."

Veronica closed her eyes. So she was being gotten out of the way with a political marriage, but at least it wouldn't be a complete disgrace. Marriage to an Elector would bring her position, if not prestige. And Handlesleben was a comfortably long way away from Budapest.

"But I'm barely twenty," she said. "I have at least fifteen years of my mech career ahead of me."

"Germany also uses mech riders. Perhaps you will be permitted to train and keep up your skills."

"Germany isn't engaged in a fight for its survival right now," Angelica said, furious. "They've got us and Austria and Poland keeping Russia at bay. I can't believe the mech training and squadrons there will be in any better combat shape than they are here."

She had been absolutely humiliated the previous night to see how few of her fellow mech hussars were in any shape to fight off the Russians. Just because it was a night off with a fancy party was no excuse for having been caught so flat-footed. She had been planning to speak to the Hussar Corps Commandant about that at some length, which, she had to admit, might very well be part of the reason why she was being hurried off. She had spoken her mind to the older officers a few too many times. Word would have gotten back to her father by now that she couldn't play well with others.

"Our country is in a fight for its survival, and my father would send away one of our assets," she said, shaking her head.

"Strong political alliances are as vital to a country's survival as its armed forces," Andras said.

Veronica bit back a very rude reply. "We had Russian forces here in Budapest in our own army base, striking with no apparent fear of our reprisals, and you want me to believe that diplomatic matters are nearly as important? Nonsense."

Andras shrugged. "Very well. However, I have delivered your father's missive."

Veronica forced herself to focus. "When is the betrothal to be?"

"Once you have recovered, we will begin to make the plans," Andras said. "It shall take some time to arrange for travel, of course."

Veronica lay back on her pillows. "Yes, of course. Please tell my father I have read and understood his missive."

Andras bowed. "Thank you, my lady. I wish you a pleasant and swift recovery." He bowed himself out.

Veronica stared up at the ceiling and wondered what was to become of her. Traditionally, dowry of a mech hassar of high status did include a mech unit, but with the losses they had just suffered the night before, Hungary could ill afford to spare even a single mech. Perhaps she should ask to have the bridal arrangements negotiated to state that her future husband would provide her with a mech and perhaps command of a training unit.

Veronica let her mind wander, thinking bitter thoughts. All her effort, all her training, everything she had been through since she was twelve years old and discovered that she could command mechs had been for nothing. Just to make her a more appealing bride for some Teutonic noble in a town she'd never even heard of.

Another knock.

"Come in," Veronica said without even bothering to sit up.

The door opened. An enormous bouquet of flowers floated through the opening, all bright colors and different shapes. Veronica stared. The flowers were followed by the man carrying them. Frank, the American pilot.

Veronica sat up. "Frank!" She blushed. She was dressed in a perfectly decent hospital gown with her blankets up to her waist, and there was a ward sister hovering just behind Frank's shoulder, glaring at him. But still, to have a strange man in her room…. Well, he had been her date the night before. They weren't exactly strangers.

Frank entered and presented her with the bouquet. She inhaled the scent of five or six different flowers. "These are beautiful. Where did you find them?"

"A pilot can always find flowers for a beautiful lady," Frank said, bowing.

He seized the wooden chair beside her bed, spun it around, and sat straddled across it, arms leaning on the backrest. "You doing all right?"

"I'm fine," she said, "just tired. I burned through all of my istota and suffered a backlash." She eyed the sister. "I’m fine."

"You don't look fine," Frank said. He spotted the scroll lying on the bed beside her and before she could protest, had grabbed it, unrolled it, and was looking at it through narrowed eyes. With some pains, he sounded out a few of the sentences, then shook his head.

"I can tell it's French, but not much beyond that, and I thought my French was pretty good."

She laughed and picked it up. "Diplomatic French is always difficult to read."

"Looked to me like it was saying something about a marriage."

She nodded.

"Yours?"

She nodded again.

"Well then," he slapped his knee, "I didn't know I'd made that good an impression on your father, but I'll be happy to present myself to him and give my respects. When shall we set the day?"

Veronica stared at him and then she couldn't help herself. She laughed. It felt strange to laugh, like she hadn't done it in a very long time.

"You are incorrigible."

"So I hope."

He glanced over his shoulder at the ward sister, then switched to badly accented French. "Obviously you speak this tongue, my lady."

"Better than you do," she said, but smiled to hopefully take the sting out of her words.

He nodded and grinned.

"But I'm thinking maybe that harridan standing there doesn't?"

"It seems unlikely," Veronica allowed.

"Well then, tell me how this makes you feel."

"How it makes me feel?" Veronica hesitated. She didn't really know this man at all. "How do I feel?" She shook her head and laughed. "I... it's my duty. I've expected this since I was twelve and became a mech hussar."

"Why? What's that got to do with things?"

"Well, that's what my father acknowledged to me. I'm an illegitimate daughter, you know?"

Frank nodded. "I'd heard that.”

“Well, once I became a mech rider, he acknowledged me as his natural daughter, and I was given my rank of countess. If I'd shown no skill at it, I would have merely received a respectable dowry and been able to make a decent marriage. The usual sort of thing that a prince does for his by-blows."

Frank shook his head. "That’s not how we do things in America."

"I know. I've heard tales of your country, or at least of how things were twenty years ago. I take it things have changed a little?"

"Eh." Frank shrugged. "I haven't been home in four years, so I take all the rumors with a grain of salt. But go on."

"Well, as a countess and a mech rider, I'm somewhat desirable marriage material. There's a higher chance that my daughters will also be able to control mechs. Especially if I marry into the nobility."

Frank scratched his head. "Yeah, and as an American, I cannot figure out how this works. You folk are keeping your magic locked up in the upper class, I guess."

"It's been a proven scientific fact that even when we institute testing of all girls in the correct age range, more mech riders come from the nobility than from the peasantry. By a lot. Quite a few of the ones who do come from the peasant family, if we look closely enough, have different fathers than was supposed."

"Hmm. Go on," Frank said.

"That's really all there is to it. Then we elevate any girl who has the ability to ride a mech, and then they tend to marry into at least the lower classes of the nobility, and that does reinforce things. But it’s important to keep new girls coming. We need every mech rider we can get if we're to maintain a defense against Russia."

"That makes sense to me," Frank allowed. "But that still doesn't tell me how you feel about this."

"How would you feel," she asked, "if after all of your training and time in the air and experience, you were asked to give up your airplane and go settle down and make babies for some inbred rich man in a country you'd never even visited, whose people think your people are barely a step above barbarians and would probably rather he married a Russian woman than a Hungarian?"

Frank shrugged. "Well, I can see there'd be some difficulties about me making babies with a fat German man, but the rest of it, I take your point."

She laughed again. Frank had a way of disarming her. She had been so looking forward to an entire night of dancing and subtle flirtation with him. Too bad it had ended badly.

"I was coming to ask if I could take you out on another date, seeing as our last one got interrupted by those Russians,” Frank said, echoing her thoughts. "But I suppose if you're going to be busy..."

"No," she said. "I mean, I'd very much like it, but you're right, I probably will be busy. My father said as soon as I'm recovered, I should begin my preparations for this marriage."

"As soon as you're recovered, hmm?" Frank's eyes narrowed. "Tell me, Veronica, if you had your way about it, would you be heading to Germany for this baron of yours, or heading to the front to take on the Russians when the rest of the army leaves tomorrow?"

Her breath caught. "Tomorrow? They're leaving for the front tomorrow?”

“That's the scuttlebutt I hear. Captain Angelica...”

“I thought she was a lieutenant?”

“She’s got a promotion coming, courtesy of Colonel Mazur. Anyway, Captain Angelica is going to be loading her team aboard a borrowed airship tonight. Of course, they're pretty short-handed, and from what I hear, they're taking that little girl and her antique mech along. Must be really desperate for firepower."

Veronica sighed.

"What I would give to go along."

"Yes," Frank said. "What would you give?"

She stared at him. "What?”

“What would you give?”

“I mean, it's not an option. My father..."

"Your father said once you were feeling recovered, you’d start in on the marriage matters. Well, I see you here lying in a hospital, my lady. Now let me ask you this. Girls who have istota backlash, don't they sometimes suffer from a relapse?"

"Yes, I've heard of that happening.”

“And it can take quite a while to recover properly."

"Yes?”

“Now it seems to me somebody who's a Contessa and the daughter of a Prince Regent ought to have access to some sort of quiet country property where she could go to rest and recover."

"I could," Veronica said, not quite seeing where this was going.

"Only it might just be possible for there to be a little bit of a miscommunication between her and the palace and said country property to where the palace knows that she's out by the lake getting her strength back. But that cottage by the lake never gets word to expect the Contessa. So when she doesn't show up, they're not alarmed and don't send a message back to the palace asking where she is. And meanwhile, a young lady who happens to be a mech rider could hitch a ride to the front along with her new Polish friends who are so desperate for another hussar to pump up their wing. They're not going to ask too many questions, not as long as she's got a mech she can drive."

Veronica's eyes widened as she understood the audacity of the scheme Frank was planning. It would never work. Except that once she was at the battlefield, they wouldn't easily be able to send her back, not with the need to defend against the Russians and engage. Frank was right. Angelica's unit was badly under strength. They would be almost certain to accept her help if she phrased it properly.

"But what about my mech? I can’t bond a new one without it being decommissioned."

"Well it just so happens our gracious Hungarian hosts let us take one of their spares. It’s a bit scratched up. Seems like someone went running around with it last night and tangled with a lot of Russians. But it shouldn’t be too hard to polish it up a bit. Seems like it has a serial number ending in 57 or something like that.

"My mech! Why you cunning, devious… American!," she gasped.

Frank shrugged. “We do try. Providing weapons to wayward Europeans is something of a habit of ours.”

“But why would you do this for me?”

"The Poles took me in as one of their own. I was in a bad place after the war. They helped me out, gave me honorary citizenship, and I think they're getting a raw deal here. Besides, I lost a bet with Sergeant Golem and I owe him a little bit of help."

Veronica laughed.

"All right," she said. "I'll do it."