Sgt. Golem: Royal Mech Hussar - Stubs Soon!

Tamara was in her element, sniping enemies and causing chaos. She was on the ground, so everything wasn't perfect. But her passions for flying and sniper rifles didn't always mix well, any more than her love of sabers went with either one.

The guard shack on the other side of the canal was burning merrily, as was a truck that had been patrolling the road along the perimeter of the canal bordering the Admiral's estate. Far in the distance, on the other side of the estate grounds, the shipyard was burning.

It was near midnight now, and all she could see of the shipyard’s destruction was the firelight reflecting on the bottom side of the smoke plumes along with and a few searchlights shining their fingers into the sky.

Searchlights indicated anti-aircraft weapons; hopefully, with those on high alert, the Russians wouldn't send up patrol fighters. When it was time to fly out of here, she could keep low and avoid the anti-aircraft guns, but patrol fighters might be trickier.

Something large moved in the flickering firelight around the guard shack, and only Tamara's sniper training to be sure of her target before firing kept her from lighting it up.

As it passed the burning guard shack, she could see it was an air mech. That would be Anastasia. Something must’ve gone wrong for her to be here instead of flying the Tsar to the rendezvous.

The air mech stomped across the bridge and stopped on Tamara's side of the canal. Tamara herself was well back into the trees, undercover. Anastasia’s mech stood still. It looked around but didn't make any move to seriously search out Tamara, even in the likely places she might be. Tamara hated revealing her position, but she needed Anastasia to stop sitting there being a target, so she finally called out. The other girl didn't respond. Tamara called louder, but still no response. Anastasia’s mech continued scanning around the area. There was something wrong about its movement.

Tamara realized that Anastasia wasn't in her mech. Where was she? Why had she sent her mech on alone? She sighed and started flashing her signal light. That got the machine's attention, and it stomped over to her. Tamara was pretty annoyed at having to compromise her position, but it was about time to leave anyway.

Fortunately, it wasn't too hard to get the mech to follow her. Together, they moved off into the woods, away from the canal. They skirted around a farm field, avoided a few huts, and made their way north toward the rendezvous with the gunship.

When they passed on the east side of a village, she got a clear view to the west. Something was moving on the horizon. At first, she thought it was a plume of smoke. But that didn't look right. The ground trembled. "What the hell was that?" She waited a moment, and it trembled again. And then again, footsteps. She hadn't noticed them while her mech was in motion.

What could be so big that its footsteps would shake the ground like that? Its stride was slower than her own mech. That only made sense if it was bigger, a lot bigger.

Admiral Karpov stood on the deck of the swaying ship with the confident experience of a veteran seaman. Far below, one giant foot thudded to the ground. He preferred not to trample through the grounds of his summer home, but this was an emergency, after all. He looked down at the trees drifting below. It always gave him a thrill to stride over the countryside from this high.

Some small part of his consciousness felt a pang of regret that below them weren't the rolling swells of the deep blue sea. When was the last time he'd been out on an actual ship at sea? He didn't remember, and he felt vague regret at that. But he had other pleasures in life now.

Waves of magic energy rolled off the walking ship's power supplies. Scaling up a desh engine to this size had consequences. He had to change the crew of the ship out regularly when the effects started to get to them. The Admiral himself wasn't affected in the same way. He relished in the feel of it flowing over him, tantalizingly close, like he could just reach out and grab the power. A small voice in the back of his head urged him not to. But the temptation was there, itching at his mind. He focused on the task at hand.

Far below his observation deck, the palace grounds gave way to farmland as the walking ship stepped over the canal around his grounds. Where were the intruders? The searchlights threw brilliant circles, dancing along treetops and farm fields. Here and there, the light caught a reflection of glass or metal. But there wasn’t much of either in the darkened peasant villages at this time of night. Something moved off to starboard, but when the light swung back to it, there was nothing there.

"There, off the port bow!" one of the lookouts yelled. Two of the lights swiveled around a few miles away. The light highlighted a flying machine a few miles away, nestled in a clearing between the trees. It was an unusually large one and looked like one of General Morozov's creations. Admiral Karpov felt a flash of anger. Was General Morozov moving against him?

Rage flared, but the tiny voice in his head said, No, General Morozov is dead. Focus. He felt his anger draining away. No, not the general, but almost certainly the interlopers.

He resisted the urge to order its destruction. The flying machine was well within range of his battleship's cannons. It was a bit of a misnomer to call the walking boat a battleship. It had actually been converted from a coastal monitor after an extensive refit. Its displacement, if it was ever in water, would only qualify it as a gunboat. But it boasted two 8-inch guns, and Admiral Karpov had declared it should be called a walking battleship.

A small pang in the back of his mind, the one that longed for the deep blue sea, told him this was all wrong, that ships should be called by their proper classification. He pushed that away. Battleship sounded so much more impressive.

A few hacks with my combat knife later, the last two zombies in the room stopped twitching. I needed a better weapon. Fortunately, in a cabinet in the side of the mech bay, there was a fire axe. I made a mental note to ask Frank where I could find another location of that weapons store we had visited in Budapest, Van Helsing and Sons. Maybe they had a location in Russia we could get to. Because if this world had werewolves and zombies, and fucking vampires, I was going to need a lot more specialized hardware.

The fleeing soldiers had said there were around a dozen of these things, and I had dispatched five so far. I made my way back out into the corridor. I passed another set of sealed doors that led to smaller spaces between the aft mech bays and the central cargo compartment. I left them closed. The hatch to the forward corridor was closed. I stationed myself next to it and listened for movement on the other side. Nothing. I cracked the hatch open. All the doors along the forward corridor were closed except the one all the way forward leading to the bridge.

I moved forward quickly. My plan was still to clear the bridge and then work my way back from there, one compartment at a time. I moved up quietly, knife at the ready.

The zombie on the bridge was waiting for me. Its rifle was leveled, and it didn't waver. A green light shone from the undead creature's eyes. Its mouth twisted in a very un-zombie-like sneer. "One of Frankenstein's little puppets. Is that really all this is?"

Whatever this zombie was, it had the drop on me, so I was more than willing to engage in a little chit-chat. "That's hardly all, but I find it amusing that you would look down on puppets." The zombie's green glowing eyes widened, and its sneer twisted into some caricature of a smile. "Oh, so it's not just one of his puppets. You must be that aberrant golem I've been hearing about. That does make more sense. Frankenstein has quite enough to worry about right now without meddling in my affairs."

"The last time I saw Frankenstein," I waved a hand dismissively, "was when I threw him off the top of his own fortress. I wouldn't worry too much about him right now."

The zombie laughed, a rasping, horrible sound. "Really. I suppose I should thank you. I've been wanting to kill him myself for years, but just didn't see the resource expense as being worth it. Still,” the smile twisted into a grimace. "I suppose we can't count out that little body hopper."

"Grigori Rasputin, I presume?” I said.

The maniacally grinning zombie stared at me. The smile on its face faded away to a look of confusion. "You know me? That's impossible!"

I shrugged. "No, no, if someone's using evil magics to control the Tsar of Russia, it's a given that it's the mad monk Rasputin. Honestly, I should have realized all along." The look of confusion on the glowing-eyed zombie's face deepened. "Impossible." Confusion was rapidly giving way to anger. "You have to be lying. My influence on the politics of Russia is entirely secret. No living soul knows what I have been doing. You're a liar. This is a trick." The zombie raised its rifle slightly, the muzzle pointed at the center of my chest. I knew this body had a backup heart, but that didn't mean I wanted the main heart to have a hole punched through it.

I thought rapidly. "Wait," I held up a hand. With my other hand, I reached slowly behind my back for my hidden .45. "I can prove to you I'm not lying or guessing."

"How?" The voice, now furious, drew the word out.

"You dabble in arcane magics, obviously. You're much older than an ordinary man. An easy guess, since most magicians are. You have your hooks in the Tsarina of Russia." That guess was based off of historical rumors. But even as I said it, pieces clicked into place. My hand slowly slipped my gun out. "Admiral Karpov is your puppet."

The force controlling the zombie, considered this. "Those could be guesses. But you have earned the right to live a little longer." I heard shuffling steps behind me. "Or rather, the right to die screaming in agony as I torture the secrets out of you!" The zombie's voice rose with fury until it shouted the last words.

And then its head exploded as my 45 caliber bullet punched through its nose and out the top of its head. I sidestepped quickly, pressing myself against the flight engineer's console as the twitching body of the zombie pulled the trigger on its rifle. The weapon roared. Muzzle blast slapped me in the face. The bullet whipped past and drilled a zombie in the doorway behind me through the chest. I turned and lifted my .45 to shoot it in the head, just for good measure.

There was another zombie behind that one. It stiffened and its eyes shone with a green light. "You'll never..."

Boom. I put a round of .45 between its eyes too. The zombie collapsed. It was interesting that the green glow filled not just its eyes but all the brain matter that splattered the walls behind. They trickled down the sides of the corridor like fluorescent slime.

There was one more zombie beyond that one. It had just stepped out of a doorway into the corridor and stood there frozen for a moment. Its face didn't glow, and it still had the proper slack-jawed zombie expression. I held my sights on its left eye. "What about it, asshole?" I called. The eye turned green.

Boom.

The final zombie slumped to the floor, but its left eye, its right eye was still glowing. "It's too late!" The floor under my feet trembled and the zombie's head lolled. Even with half its brains blown out, it still spoke. "You're doomed! My puppet has found you!"

The floor trembled again, stronger this time. Blinding light filled the cockpit from the outside. There was an electronic squeal of feedback and then an amplified but distorted voice rang out, speaking Russian. "Come out and surrender! If you attempt anything, we will fire!" The zombie gave a strangled laugh and then the green light faded. The body slumped as it died a second time.

I moved to the forward of the cockpit and looked out the window. A bright light was shining down from somewhere over the treetops. I didn't hear the thump of flying machine propellers, so it must have been something lifted by desh. Footsteps rang in the corridor behind me, but they didn’t shuffle like zombie feet.

"I thought I told you not to shoot them," Colonel Mazur said as he stepped into the cockpit.

I shrugged and holstered my .45. "I was careful. What's your plan for that?" I asked, jerking a thumb at the window. "Should we surrender?"

"No. How fast can you get this thing off the ground?"

"It'll take a couple minutes to fire all the engines up. Or we can just throw the luff engine into full lift. That would get us off the ground, but we still wouldn't be controllable until the propellers were running."

There were more footsteps in the hall behind the Colonel. Frank Lewis appeared at his shoulder. "If you want us to do that, Colonel, please step out of the way." They traded places.

"Do you want to fly or run the engines?" Frank asked me.

“I'll take the engines," I said, and then edged past Frank so he could get to the forward controls. I was confident in my flying skills, but I thought I was better on the engineer's panel than he was.

"If they hear the motors, they'll probably shoot. So give me full lift first, and fire the engines as soon as we're in motion."

"Aye, aye, Captain."