Sgt. Golem: Royal Mech Hussar - Stubs Soon!

The mech hangar door rolled closed with a thud, and all eyes turned to Tamara.

Well, not all eyes. Warrant Officer Alex only had eyes for Tamara’s mech, which he had just gotten secured in one of our maintenance cradles. I was interested in the robot, but I was more interested in what Tamara had to say, and what Angelica's reaction would be.

Tamara hopped up on a crate and sat there, peeling open the wrapper on a ration bar. Angelica folded her arms and eyed her suspiciously. My stomach rumbled, and I realized I was starving. Hey, that was good! It meant my golem body had normal needs. I helped myself to a ration bar and settled in to watch the scene.

Hannah spoke first, stepping forward in a friendly tone and positioning herself at a polite conversational distance. “So, you're a Cossack?"

"Uh-huh," Tamara nodded through a mouthful of food. She swallowed. "I'm from the Don Sech.”

“But you scout for the Russians." Angelica's voice was as suspicious as her stare.

Tamara returned the gaze with a firm one of her own. "That's right. We have served honorably for decades. Lately, things have changed. They hold my people's hostage. Any women that can channel istota are taken for the Imperial Mechcorps. Then the Red Widow came. She spent the last year searching for Baba Yaga in the Caucasus mountains.”

"Right. But that doesn't explain why you're here," Angelica pointed down at the deck. “With us.”

I leaned forward. Had she really said Baba Yaga? The eastern European mythical witch woman? “Do you mean THE Baba Yaga?"

Four sets of eyes turned on me with confusion and some annoyance.

“Obviously.” Angelica said before turning back to Tamara. "Tell us about the Red Widow. How do you know her plans?"

"Wait,” I interrupted again. “Are we talking about the same Baba Yaga? Ancient witch of folklore?"

"Yes," Tamara nodded her head. "That's who I mean.”

Even Hannah looked confused by my question. “Obviously.”

Tamara continued, “So I joined the Red Widow’s battalion three months ago. As she was preparing for —”

"The one with the walking castle that wanders around on chicken legs?"

Angelica was getting irritated now, but Alex was shaking his head. "No, it's not a castle. It's a hut. Admittedly, it's kind of a big hut."

My mouth fell open, and I just stared. They were all acting like she was a real person. This was too bizarre. I couldn't think of anything more to ask at that moment.

Angelica turned back to Tamara. “Three months ago?" she prompted.

"Yes, while we were preparing for this operation.” She swung a hand to encompass the entire mountain range campaign of battle.

"What are her objectives?" Angelica said, leaning forward eagerly. This could be a huge intelligence coup.

"The main body is pushing towards Kirkov, but that is just a diversion. The Red Widow is looking for the Old Witch."

Angelica nodded like it made perfect sense that an enemy commander was looking for an ancient mythological person. "And she thinks that she'll find her up at Dukla?”

Tamara nodded. “At the fortress. She's got sources. I don't know any details, but I overheard some conversations, and she learned something. Enough to drop everything she was doing and start a new front of the war.”

Angelica looked like she believed her. She frowned in concentration. "What’s her strength? How many mechs? How many girls?"

"She's got a carrier cruiser of about two battle groups.”

Angelica was nodding again. "That makes sense, but we haven't seen it yet."

“She had to stop and reconfigure it for altitude. The pass is just too high. We were carrying extra armor and guns for the initial assault, and she will have to drop that stuff off.”

"Alright, so your team went on ahead to scout?"

"Exactly. My team was confirming the pass was open. The ones who came after you tonight were just the first elements. You need to get moving."

Angelica went over to the wall and popped open the hatch covering the intercom tube. “Bridge!"

A muttered voice responded. Angelica gave orders. “Get us moving south. Go slow and safe, but make time." A murmur came back, and she closed the tube and turned to face us. "So now we've got a choice.” Angelica stood up straighter and unfolded her arms, planting both hands on her hips. Alexander looked up from the mech he was examining. Something in the tone of her voice told me now was the time to make some decisions.

"We were going west to swing around the enemy flank to get back to our own lines. But this changes things."

Alexander was nodding. "If she has intel about the old witch, then we must thwart the Widow.”

I thought now was a safe time to chime in. "So, this Baba Yaga, she's important enough to detour our escape?”

Angelica nodded, but Hannah and Alexander looked at me as if surprised by the question. "Of course. If there's any chance the Russians could get secrets from her, it could turn the tide of the war."

I nodded, “Right, a secret. About what?"

Angelical frowned. “If we knew that, then it wouldn't be a secret."

Now I was getting annoyed. I really wanted some answers. Everyone else already seemed to know. "What sort of secrets is a mythological witch in a walking house likely to have?" I tried to be as polite and calm as I could. They still looked at me as if I was speaking nonsense.

“Well," Hannah spoke slowly, "you just said it, didn't you? She had a walking house."

Angelica nodded, then seemed to realize she was going to have to explain more. “The old witch had a walking house, right? Chicken legs? You've read the legends, apparently. Even wherever you come from?"

I nodded.

"Well, about 200 years ago, somebody stole her house."

My eyes widened. “Stole Baba Yaga's house?!”

Everyone else was nodding. Alexander picked up the story. “And they figured out how the legs worked. Where do you think these mech suits come from?"

My mouth fell open. The suits were magic. I guess I'd known that. The girls used magic too. It all started making sense now. The history of this world was obviously different from my own. I had wondered idly where it had diverged. Maybe that was it. Someone had gotten their hands on magic technology and turned them into war machines. My mind was spinning ahead.

"But you and the Russians both have mechs.”

Alexander waved a hand. “Oh, everybody has them now. Once the secret was out, it wasn't long before the rest of the world had it."

“I bet there were some wars as that happened.”

Hannah chimed in, "Oh yeah. Big ones. That's when Poland re-formed."

That made sense. I vaguely remembered from my high-school world history that Poland had not existed as a separate state until after WW1. It had been a republic then, while these guys were the royal hussars. Kingdom of Poland. Got it.

Angelica seemed to think that was enough explanation. Her hands went back to her hips. “We will divert up the pass and head for Dukla. If we keep moving, we can get there before the Red Widow. And if we don't, we'll just have to hope that the fortress holds out long enough.”

"I can help," Tamara chimed in.

Angelica eyed her suspiciously. I expected her to flat-out refuse, but she hesitated. Perhaps the intelligence Tamara had shared really made an impression. If they weren't just all blowing smoke at me, then it made sense that learning Baba Yaga’s secrets was the kind of thing that could shift the balance of power.

Alexander stood up from examining Tamara’s mech, wipe his hands on a rag.

"It's fixable, especially if we use the other downed air mech we brought in. I think I can get her up and running."

Tamara's face lit up. “Oh good!”

"We don't have ammunition for that rifle of hers, but we can always re-outfit her mech with one of our Maxim cannons. The mech’s hands work like ours. It should have no problem."

Tamara was nodding. "I've used Maxim cannons before."

I assumed by Maxim cannon they meant some combination of the old Maxim repeating gun, which was one of the first machine guns, scaled up and made into a cannon. Maybe the Maxim company had actually made a cannon. I didn't know. I was no expert on old weapons.

And of course, the mech suits in this universe would have changed how people developed firearms. Heavier hand-held weapons would have been developed a lot sooner. I was only somewhat of a gun buff, but I didn't think anti-tank hand-held rifles had existed before World War I. The anti-tank rifle had been a short-lived branch in the tree of weapons development. Tanks quickly got too big for a man-portable gun to be effective. They switched to using things like bazookas and Panzerfausts, all precursors to our modern anti-tank missiles.

Tamara and Alexander had put their heads together and were discussing how they might fix up her mech.

I moved closer to Angelica. "You really believe all that about Baba Yaga? She's real here in this world?"

"Well," she said, "everyone believes she is. And everyone says that's where we got this mech technology. And it certainly is magic. Is she still alive?” she shrugged.

"But you believe it enough to risk our force.”

It wasn't really a question. She nodded.

"Okay. Good enough for me."

“The real question,” she said, “is what we’ll find at Dukla fortress.”

I awoke in the maintenance hangar, laying on the pallet in the corner. The rest of the ship had bunks. Tiny bunks, for normal-sized people. I wouldn't fit. I asked about it, and Alex pointed me to the pallet, bemused. He disappeared and came back after a while with a couple of much-too-small blankets, which was kind.

Everything was still. It struck me as odd. After the fight, we'd been traveling for hours straight before I went down for a rest. There was no reason to stop unless we'd arrived at Dukla. But if that was the case, there ought to be people unloading our hauler, setting up, doing something. If we were still in transit, the winding mountain roads should leave the hauler swaying and lurching.

I got up, stretching more out of habit than necessity. The hangar had four exits. One in the front, which led to the gangway towards the hauler engine. The big roll-up door in the back, where mechs could be moved in and out. There were two side doors, each leading to a ladder which went up to the roof and down to the ground. I cracked one of the side hatches and looked outside.

I was expecting to see another forest clearing, or an idyllic mountain village. Instead, there was an eerie green fog stretching in every direction. I knew fog in mountains was not uncommon at night, so it didn't strike me as odd at first, even with its unnatural stillness.

The ground caught my attention. It wasn't a flat clearing, but a rocky mountain slope. Pine trees peeked out of the fog in all directions. It was like we had been transported directly into the side of a mountain, where there was only just enough flat space for the hauler to sit level.

I looked forward and backward and saw no sign of a road. To the front, the hauler disappeared into the fog. It was thick, and the trees were close. I could have ducked back inside to head for the bridge, but the unnatural strangeness of this place pulled at me, and instead I climbed down.

The air was neither cool nor warm. It just was. That was strange. The mountains at night should have been chilly. It was deathly still until I heard a voice, almost a whisper, from the trees.

I took a step and then another, brushed past some pine trees, and stepped out into an open space. Something loomed out of the fog, and lights glowed from it.

I took another step, and the shape resolved into a building. Another step and it emerged from the fog. Thatched roofs and windows. It looked like a shack, except it had another shack on top of it and another on the side of that, an insane pile of rickety buildings jam-packed together.

It was strange. For a moment I couldn't make any sense of it, and then I saw the chicken legs tucked up under it.

Closest to me, a doorway stood open a few feet off the ground at a haphazard angle, pouring light out into the clearing. Up above were windows, also at crazy angles on the side of the rickety shack.

I suppose it was a hut. Isn't that what everyone always said? Baba Yaga lived in a chicken-legged hut.

I heard the barest whisper of a voice calling to me. Without consciously thinking about it, I was walking up the wooden stairs and climbing through the door.

The walls were rough wood, but the interior was warm. A thick rug sat in the middle of the room, high-backed over-stuffed chairs on either side of it, facing a fireplace.

From a chair facing away from me, a hand lifted. "Come, come," a wizened voice called.

The ceiling was low but somehow was just high enough for me to not hit my head. I took a step forward and then another. I loomed over the chair and looked down. Just as I had expected, there was a wizened old lady sitting in it. She wore a faded but serviceable gown with a shawl pulled around her.

"Sit, sit, don't loom at me."

I settled into the chair opposite her. Even as I moved to sit, I thought the chair wouldn't fit me, but somehow, as I settled into it, it was the perfect size.

"Well," the old lady said, studying me intently, "look at you."

It must have been my southern upbringing, but all I could think to say was, "Ma'am.”

“You got here all right. I admit I had my doubts.”

"How did I get here?" I looked around at the room. "What's going on? Is this a dream?"

"Oh, he's a quick one, isn't he?" She nodded to herself. "I chose well. Yes, this is a dream. You're still rumbling up my mountainsides.”

“But it's real. I mean, you're real."

She nodded again. "Yes, yes. Even in your world I'm real, in a way, but here I most definitely am." She rapped her knuckles on the arm of her chair as if to demonstrate how solid it was. "Me and my sisters. Real as you are. Although not everyone wishes it was so. Still, I didn't bring you here to talk about that. We haven't much time.”

“I have questions."

"Oh, no doubt you do. And when now you realize I brought you to this world, you'll no doubt have even more."

"What? No, it was a malfunctioning machine."

The old lady leaned back and laughed. "All of your machines malfunction. Unless they’re based on my magic. We haven't time for that now. You need to listen. You're looking for me, but you won't find me.”

I shook my head. “The Red Widow is looking for you."

"Natasha? She's not actually looking for me. She's looking for something I left behind. I need you to take it.”

“I don't understand."

"It's simple enough. I left something at the fortress up in the pass. Or near there, but that's where it is now. And I need you to take it with you. To keep it away from Natasha. She won't understand what it's for, and she'll take it to him. I can't have that. You must take it with you and keep it safe."

“What thing, anyway?”

"Oh, you'll know when the time is right." She waved a hand at me. "Now, now. No more questions. I'm sorry. Tell me, how do you like your body?"

I looked down at my hands, turning them over, as if to see something I hadn't seen there before.

"It's fine, ma'am. I'm getting use to it."

"Hmm..." She studied me further, tilting her head from one side to the other. "True, but perhaps with a little help, you would blend in better.”

She waved a hand at me, and suddenly my jaw started itching. I rubbed it and was surprised to find stubble there. I hadn't grown a beard or any trace of stubble on my face since coming here. Even my eyebrows had been thin, almost non-existent. As I thought that, I ran a hand higher on my face and found that they were thick now, as they had been before I died. "Perhaps that will ease your transition a little."

"Thank you?"

"And now you should get back. You're not far away now." She waved her hand towards the door. Without willing it, I found myself standing and moving towards the door.

She called after me, "Say hello to my daughter when you see her."

I meant to ask her who she meant, but as I stepped through the door, the world faded into darkness.

I woke with a jerk in my bed in the corner of the maintenance hangar. I looked around and saw two soldiers that were stacking crates of ammunition. They froze for a second, looking at me with wide eyes, and I nodded in their direction. "Carry on!"

When I was in the army, I would have never in a million years dreamed of telling a commanding officer what I had just seen. But here in this place, in a world that apparently had magic, things were different. I stamped into my boots and went to find Angelica.