Sgt. Golem: Royal Mech Hussar - Stubs Soon!

The hauler rumbled steadily down the road, and I started to relax as I felt more and more in tune with the controls.

Alex opened the armored slats. Light flooded in, revealing a broad sweep of cheery countryside. Out here, past the base and headed away from the city, everything looked idyllic. Beautiful trees framed farm fields, and in the distance, rustic little hamlets. It was surreal. I could tell by the architecture and trees that I was nowhere near where I had been a day ago. This definitely wasn't Alabama anymore. Not a bit of kudzu or a single trailer park anywhere to be seen.

Now that things had calmed down a little, I had time to think. How did I get here? They had used a Frankenstein-esque machine to program a body like a giant robot. I examined the parts of me that I could get to. Hands, arms, cheeks, knees. I felt normal enough. My skin was warm. My hands had veins on the back of them. I could feel my heart beating, so I was in a living body, at least. But it wasn't my body, not my original body.

None of this made sense. I remembered what had happened to me. I was dead. I mean, my original body was gone. That front loader run by my brother-in-law had crushed right over me. I shuddered. I remembered the feel of the bones crunching in my one real leg, and it had worked up from there, already on my pelvis before I blacked out. There was absolutely no way I had survived that.

Then here I was, given another life. Reincarnated, for lack of a better word. It seemed ludicrous. But this world just didn't make any sense. Giant robots, alongside technology from a hundred years ago? Machines that powered fleshy golems? Russia invading its neighbors made sense, at least.

Alexander had been talking steadily into the intercom for a while now. I could hear snippets of what he was discussing. Moving supplies around, getting people situated. He was getting a lot of questions that he didn't seem to have answers for.

When he paused for a moment, I spoke up. "Can you find out if any of those soldiers know how to drive one of these things? Or have any kind of heavy machinery experience? If we get somebody up here, I could show them how to run it. It sounds like they need a lot of help down in the back."

"Good idea.” Alexander looked relieved at the idea of having help. “Maybe somebody knows how to run a desh engine.” He got back on the intercom.

A few minutes later, a couple of soldiers climbed into the control room. They looked a little bewildered, but they weren't visibly injured like so many of the others had been.

They were both corporals with names I couldn’t pronounce. Why had the magic taught me to speak Polish, but not to read it? Given me a tongue that couldn’t manage these names without vowels they all seemed so fond of? At least Angelica and Alex were easy enough to say.

One of the newcomers stood over me as I pointed out the various levers. When you instruct newbies, you need confidence. You give them the impression that you absolutely know what you are talking about, and they trust every word coming out of your mouth. Give them any doubt and they'll think they need to experiment on their own. When it comes to heavy machinery, playing around is a quick way to get someone killed. Ask me how I know.

So I spoke like I’d been driving one of these things for years instead of ten minutes, and he kept smiling like he got what I was saying.

Alexander was explaining the control panel to the other guy, who seemed to be nodding a lot. It wasn't very long before the two of us were exchanging seats with these guys and moving on back. We watched them for a couple minutes and then left the control room.

"I need to go check on Lieutenant Angelica. She probably needs help with her charger,” Alex said.

"Charger? You mean that robot thing? Should I come with you?" If I was going to be here, and it looked like a permanent situation now, I needed a role, and it wasn't going to be as a menial slave. It was time to start proving my worth.

“We could use your strength. Some of those components are heavy. Come along and we'll see what she wants to do with you."

I smiled to myself. Definitely time to start pulling rank and carving a place for myself.

We made our way down various passages. We passed galleys and bunkrooms. The men we had picked up were making themselves at home. At least one of the bunkrooms had been turned into an injured soldier's ward. There was a galley; several soldiers were already preparing food. Beyond that were machine spaces and storerooms, along with plenty of closed doors.

Then we were into a gangway between front part of the train and the flatbed trailer. We weren’t moving very fast, but the road below seemed to whip away. I held on to the rail as we crossed from one car to the next.

We stepped out of the gangway and into a maintenance hangar at the front of the flatbed cargo trailer.

It was big enough to hold two of those huge robots, but only one of them was there now. Lieutenant Angelica was climbing over it. A couple of the refugee soldiers were standing around looking confused. Clearly, they had no experience working with one of these kinds of machines. That further confirmed my impression that these robots were not common.

“Alexander, thank goodness. Come give me a hand." She had one of the giant robot arms suspended from an overhead crane just above where she was attempting to attach it. A damaged and discarded arm lay on the deck nearby.

This was clearly not a job for one person. Alexander set to work on something with the wiring and hydraulic connections as I started up the crane. I shifted the arm slightly, lifting it into a better position, and got the winches locked down. Whatever other skills she might have, Angelica was not an expert crane operator.

Then I came over and started helping Warrant Officer Alexander with the connections. I didn't know much about robots, but hydraulic hoses were simple clear enough. With only a little direction, I was soon making myself useful.

Angelica stepped out of the way. She looked completely frazzled and clearly had been at this for a while solo.

The two soldiers were still standing around being useless. I eyed them. Time to start acting like a sergeant.

"You, what's your name?" I pointed to the more competent looking one of the pair. He’d been eyeing what Alexander was doing with curiosity.

He rattled off a name that sounded like "Sjycough," but I couldn't be sure. That was ok. Junior enlisted men don’t actually have names, they’re “you” and “private” if the sergeant is in a good mood and “bitch” or “shithead” if he isn’t.

"Get over here and assist the warrant officer,” I told him.

He stepped up, looking confused but relieved at having something to do. Nothing was more nerve-wracking than being a soldier with no task. Anybody might just come along and start shouting at you. Even a jumped-up golem with delusions of sergeanthood. I started giving him instructions, standing over his shoulder and telling him what clamps to grab, as if I'd been doing this for years instead of for five minutes.

Finally, I stepped back and pointed to the other guy, the more clueless looking one. "You, what's your name?"

In a thick country accent, he said he was Private Jerblonski, or something like that. I brought him over to the crane controls and explained each one in great, slow, and simple terms. The man smiled and nodded. At the end of my explanation, I said that he was under no circumstances to touch any of those controls for any reason. He gave me a confused look but shrugged.

"Sure, Mr. Golem."

I loomed over him. "That's Sergeant Golem to you."

He snapped to attention. "Yes, Sergeant Golem.”

"Very good."

I took a step back and surveyed the scene. Alexander and the other man were getting along fine, working on the arm. It looked like they would be finished soon.

“It's true, then," came a voice from behind me. I turned around. Lieutenant Angelica was sitting on a crate, cradling her canteen and eyeing me with interest. “You said you were a sergeant somewhere before. America?”

I nodded.

“I wouldn't have believed it. Never in a million years would I have believed it. Now I do. How did you get here?"

I shrugged. "Your guess is as good as mine, Lieutenant. One minute I was in an industrial accident, doomed and dead, and the next minute I woke up on your table in a completely different body."

She considered that. "I've always thought golems were a suspicious sort of magya, bringing life from nothing. They say they got the secrets from Jews or Gypsies or maybe Baba Yaga herself. I don't know. The priests say it's an acceptable magya." She shrugged again. “Not my area. That's for clergy and inquisition. Right now, we need any help we can get. I don't care if you're from Timbuktu or Hades. If you're willing to step up, then we need you."

"Sir, I don't know how I got here, but as far as I can see, there's no way back. I mean, I was dead. My old body, crushed. So even if there was a way back, I probably wouldn't take it. The best I could hope for is to go back to a mangled corpse. As far as I see it, I'm here to stay. I had better make the best of it. You guys seem like a decent lot, and those Russians are the aggressors, right? I'm in. Whatever you need."

"What I need, Sergeant, is a sergeant.” She gestured, keeping her voice low. The privates were busy staring at the robot. Alexander was sweating over the connections. “Look around. There's me, there’s Hannah, there's Warrant Officer Alexander. We've picked up one other sergeant and an infantry lieutenant who is badly wounded, along with a couple dozen enlisted men. We've got to get this rabble into shape, and we've got to get them somewhere safe. That's going to be awfully hard in the middle of an invasion. But it's our duty to evade and hit back.”

“Is that why we're getting this thing back online?"

She nodded. “My charger's probably the only chance we have if we get attacked by a mech wing.”

“We have more of these, outside on the flatbed. What about putting some guys in those and firing them up? If one's good, three or four would be even better."

She laughed. "You really aren’t from this world, are you? Men can't control mechs."

I stared at her. "What do you mean?” This was the weirdest sexism I’d ever heard of.

She shook her head. “Chargers aren't controlled by levers and dials. They're controlled in here." She thumped her chest. "It becomes like an extension of you."

I considered this. "And you say only women can do it?"

She snorted. "Only girls. After about 30, or 35, sometimes 40, they can't seem to hold on to the link anymore. Nobody really knows why. It's just a thing."

"Ok.” I nodded. It didn't make any sense at all, but if that was the rule… I had to assume she knew what she was talking about. “Can any woman do it? If she’s the right age?”

She shook her head. “No, not any. We're pretty sure it has to do with nobility."

"Nobility." Now that right away offended my red-white-and-blue American sensibilities.

"That's right. Peasant girls usually can't. They say it's in the blood."

I considered that a bit more. That might make sense. Some kind of recessive gene or... I don't know. I'm not a biologist. There are traits that get passed down through the blood. So it was as believable as anything else. “But the other girl, Hannah, she can use one of these?"

"That's right. She's pretty broken up right now. Her mech got destroyed in the fighting and a lot of our friends got killed. She is blaming herself. If I can get her to snap out of that, maybe we can get her to bond with one of the others."

"Bond? You can only use one at a time?”

She nodded again. “It takes effort of will to connect with one. Once they've been bonded, they stay bonded for life or until they're destroyed."

"Ah. So that's why we're fixing this one instead of you using one of the ones that's out there."

She nodded. "That's right. If mine was really damaged, I mean broken beyond reasonable repair, then we could smash its core and I could re-bond with one of the others. But it's not a pleasant process. In fact, it's downright excruciating from what I hear. So if this one's at all fixable, that's the better plan.”

I nodded. This was starting to make a little bit of sense and that worried me. "Okay. I'm in. We get your mech up and running, and we see if we can't get Hannah back in the cockpit. Good plan.”

Angelica laughed. "There's no cockpit."

“But…” I looked back at her mech again, studying it for openings or cracks in its chest. It had enough space for someone to fit inside. “Well, where the hell do you sit?”

She laughed at my expression. "See the shoulders?"

It looked like an anti-fatigue mat someone would use in a shop, or anywhere they needed high traction…

No fucking way.

"Wait, you stand on the shoulders? You've got to be kidding me." There were some pieces on the head that could have been used as handholds, but there wasn't a saddle or anything that would make sense for someone riding on the outside.

“We stand on the shoulders. You don't want to get all wrapped up inside in case you have to get off or away from it quickly.”

“That makes absolutely no sense. What if you fall off? In combat, up there, exposed?"

"We're not exactly exposed. The power of a Hussar is more than just controlling the mech. We wield the power of heaven.”

Now, a day ago, I wouldn't have believed a word she said, but she appeared completely honest, and the things I had seen so far made me willing to listen to almost anything. At least until a better explanation presented itself.

"Okay, so you stand on top of a mech, and you ride it into combat. A charger. Ah." Suddenly the name made sense. Hussars. Chargers. They were derived from the old cavalry days. Whatever divergent history had happened on this planet, what had once been cavalry now had turned into girls riding robots.

This was definitely a video game world. Or one of those anime with the chicks with giant swords and big robots. At least these women wore proper outfits and not just underwear.

"So, we get your mech up and running, we get Hannah in one, then what? Where are we going?"

“In a few dozen miles we will get to the crossroads at Lezany. If it hasn't already been overrun. Then we can turn westward and try to slip around their front and back to our lines. If the enemy gets in front of us, we've got bigger problems. But what worries me is the Red Widow. She is up to something, and I don’t know what.”