Sgt. Golem: Royal Mech Hussar - Stubs Soon!

A sharp whistle split the air, starting soft but growing louder. Around the hangar, heads snapped up and soldiers looked around, but I was the first to shout, "Incoming!"

Everyone threw themselves flat. I ducked behind a large crate and crouched, wrapping my arms around my head. They were huge, but thick enough to block shrapnel? Probably not.

The explosion shook the whole hangar, the doors rattling in their tracks. I lifted my head. The newcomers’ truck had exploded. What was left burnt merrily.

I leapt to my feet and shouted "Get in the hauler!” as I took off running for the ladder. As the men shook off their shock, they obeyed. Two men were still struggling with a large crate, but I yelled at them, "Drop it and go! Move! Move!"

I didn’t know how well armored the hauler was, but it looked tough. More importantly, if somebody had dialed the mortar in on our location, they wouldn't be alone. There'd be more mortars coming and guys with guns. We had to get moving. A moving target is harder to hit.

By now the ladder was swarming with men. Another group came running up behind me and I pointed them to the cargo lift. "Take the lift! Go! Go!"

I went up the ladder last and climbed inside. Alexander had said something about being the driver, so I headed forward, pushing through the crowd.

I had no idea how to work this bizarre alternate world Royal Polish mech carrier truck, but as a former Army MOS 21E — a Heavy Construction Equipment Operator — I had a lot of experience figuring out all kinds of shit. Diggers, excavators, dump trucks, you name it. Some of those things seemed like their controls had been set up for a pack of deranged monkeys. I had no doubt that I could figure out almost anything.

"Make a hole!" I shouted and elbowed my way up the gangway. Ahead, a set of incredibly narrow metal stairs led upward. I squeezed through into the control room.

There was a bank of glass windows in front of me. Four chairs, more control panels and levers than I could count, gauges, dials, and what I was almost certain was a radio set. Alex was already there, sitting in a chair. He glanced back as I clambered into the room. "Oh good. Get in the driver's seat.” He gestured to the one next to him. It was slightly raised and had at least eight levers and dozens of dials and gauges in front of it.

I slid forward, trying not to bang my hip or shoulder into consoles and panels. Everything was made of metal, except for the chairs which had a pad on them. I dropped into the chair. It wasn't too uncomfortable considering how utilitarian it looked, or maybe golem butts are better padded than the ordinary human’s. In front of me was an array of controls that would have done an old WWII bomber pilot proud. I didn’t have a clue what any of them did.

"You think you can drive this thing?" Alexander asked. He was preoccupied with his own control panels. "I don't think the download worked. You probably don't actually have the skill set."

I snorted. "I can drive anything that moves. Give me a second."

"Really?" He looked up.

"You really need to stop being surprised. I'm not a mindless slab of meat. Where I come from, I work machines like this every day. Well, not this big, but this complicated, sure." Of course, it would really help if I could read Polish, but we can’t have everything. I’d gotten a new leg today; I was probably out of my quota of good luck.

Big yoke in the front so it didn't have independent skid steer. That bit was definitely articulated wheels or axles. Pedals, lots of pedals. What were those for? Separate brakes for different sets of bogeys? Maybe. There was a hand tiller off to one side.

"How do I turn it on?" I asked.

"It's already on. I've got the engine controls here." I glanced at his array of dials, knobs, levers, and gauges. Must be just like an old-school propeller plane. They had complicated and finicky engines, so had a separate flight engineer to babysit the motors. These days computers did all that for you. Whatever powerplant this monster used took an operator just to manage it.

I focused on my array of controls. Where were the parking brakes? I looked around for handles that had release levers. Sure enough, there was a big set of them. How many wheel banks had I seen back there? I was looking at one brake per bank, probably.

I grabbed the first handle and squeezed the lever, then shoved it forward. One, two, three released and something somewhere in this thing groaned. I kept going.

As I released the final lever the room lurched. The hauler was rolling forward very slowly. Must be an automatic transmission system. Well, that'll be a lot easier. I can't imagine if I had to gear jam it like an 18-wheeler. This much mass, it'd need a gear change every 2 RPM.

"Alright, here we go. Where's the throttle?" I muttered to myself.

The lever bank on my other side looked like throttles for a jumbo jet. I laid my massive hand across the whole bank of small levers and moved them forward together.

The room lurched again and now we were moving faster. I didn't want to stall, so I asked Alex, "Does this thing have an automatic transmission?"

"Automatic trans... what do you mean?”

“Do I manually control the gear ratios? Is there a clutch that I have to disengage?"

Alexander launched into an explanation of how the drivetrain worked and I only followed a quarter of it.

Nah, I'm giving myself too much credit. More like a tenth. But it helped. When he talked about the interlocking clutch assemblies and transmission drive shafts, I was able to make sense of a few more levers. There was a whole bunch of them off to one side, down low, that seemed to disengage the drive shafts between the different cars. They seemed to all have powered wheels, but I couldn't tell whether they had independent engines in each one or whether it was all transmitted from a central location.

What the engines ran on I had no idea. Alex called it a desh engine, so probably not gasoline or diesel.

I nudged the throttles forward more and we picked up a little speed, crawling out of the hangar doors slowly but surely.

Something clanged against the side of our control room and Alexander muttered something under his breath. He pulled a lever and shutters started sliding across the windows from above and below, massive metal sheets blocking our field of view.

"Uh, how are we gonna steer?"

"Use the periscope." He was distracted by his own dials and made it sound like the most obvious thing ever.

I looked up. Sure enough, right above me was a damn periscope. I reached for the handle and tugged. Once I spotted and disengaged the latch on the side, it slid down and dropped in front of my face. Hopefully it had a wider field of view than a submarine periscope. I didn't need telescoping lenses to see a freighter miles away. I just needed situational awareness.

I put my eyes to the scope and the world appeared in front of me. This wasn't so bad. I could see everything in front of me and a good deal to the sides.

"Alright, let's get this show on the road,” I said, and reached for the throttles again.

With my eyes to the scope and a hand on the yoke and one on the throttles, I eased the power up a bit. Experimentally, I turned the yoke and the view started shifting to the side. This monster was so big and so slow, I could hardly feel any turning sensation.

Ahead was a wide stretch of tarmac like you'd see at an airport, with room to park a whole bunch of airplanes or to turn donuts in a hauler. I hadn't seen any sign of flying machines.

"Which way is the exit?"

"Uh, left, go left.”

“Towards all of those tanks?"

"What?"

I couldn't tell if Alexander had his own periscope, and I didn't want to look away.

Up ahead was a line of armored vehicles. They weren't actually tanks, more like armored cars. They looked like old jalopies that had an armored shell dropped over the top like a kid wearing a ghost costume for Halloween made from an old sheet. With their spoked tires, they looked pretty silly.

They were, however, shooting at us with rifles and mortars.

“Why aren’t we shooting back?”

"Hang on, let me see what I can do." When he spoke next, Alexander's voice was muffled. I glanced over and he was speaking into a tube.

"Now hear this, man the guns! Able-bodied personnel, man the guns! Man the top side turrets!"

"Hopefully they know what they're doing back there." I muttered.

"You and me both.”

I pushed the throttles forward and aimed straight for the armored vehicles. How big were our tires? Eight feet tall? Ten? I hadn’t measured them. Their rubber had looked pretty hard. Tough enough for a monster truck. Would they survive crushing over those vehicles? Hopefully.

"Alright, time for the world's slowest game of chicken," I muttered under my breath as we crawled towards them.

It wasn't really a crawl. Probably ten miles an hour, a respectable pace for something this massive. But the tarmac was huge, a wide-open expanse of smooth concrete, and it made it feel like I was going even slower.

A headlight started flickering at me from the vehicles and I knew we were getting lit up.

There was a dull whomp and I thought they'd shot us with something bigger until I saw the round heading toward the enemy. From overhead, a shell streaked downrange and landed amongst the armored vehicles. There was a blossom of fire and two vehicles flipped up, tossed aside and landing on their fellows in a tangle of metal and bodies.

Now that was more like it! I guess we had a cannon on top. This wasn't a train; it was a freaking tank!

The cannon wasn't our only weapon. Suddenly a stream of tracers started hosing down the enemy. Vehicles and men scattered, and I was headed for an opening instead of a parking lot.

I couldn't help but wince at the shots still coming in our direction. The fleeing men every now and then took the time to turn and shoot at us before heading for safety.

Several armored cars got underway and swung around to our sides, firing machine guns as they went. I hoped our armor was good against whatever caliber they were using. They were out of my field of view pretty quickly, but I continued to hear the spangs off of our armor.

There were more whomps and noise from behind me and I guessed our cannon was engaging them or somebody else behind us. I had enough to worry about without borrowing trouble. Time to head for the exit.

As I had figured out, we were on an army base, the old school kind with a wall around it. It was hard packed earth reinforced with concrete, 20 feet high. Fortunately, the gate was really wide. Even more fortunately, it had been smashed inward recently and there was plenty of room for us to get through. I could see it in the distance down the main avenue as we crawled past smashed and burned-out buildings.

"Hey Alex, I see some guys up ahead." They were emerging from one of the more-intact structures that lined our route.

“Keep going. The gunners will deal with them.”

"No, I think they’re our guys.” I don't know why I said ‘our’. I wasn't Polish.

Only I kind of was now.

The soldiers running out of the building were wearing those same grayish uniforms as the other Polish troops. "Can we stop and get them?" My hand was already reaching for the throttle to slow us down.

"We don't have time. We have to keep rolling."

"Well then, call for someone to lower the cargo lift. I'll slow down and we can pick them up while we're still moving."

There was a pause. "Alright, let's do it." Alexander’s voice seemed almost wondering as he realized we maybe could help them after all. He issued commands through the intercom. As the men came alongside us, I pulled the throttle levers back, getting it down to what I hoped was just a crawl.

"Is that slow enough? Can they get aboard?”

He bent back over the intercom and had the answer a minute later. "Yeah, we got them.”

"Alright." I pushed the throttles smoothly forward. I didn't want to just jam them all the way. As I eased the throttles up, we crawled up past maybe 25 miles an hour. Pretty respectable for something this big.

There wasn't much to do now other than keep things straight, and soon we were passing through the slab of earth and concrete that surrounded the base and out into open farmlands.

Of course, I worried, that just meant we were a much, much more visible target.

I hoped these guys didn’t have bomber planes.