Sgt. Golem: Royal Mech Hussar - Books 2 & 3

I hung back slightly as the men exited the gorge, fanning out across the road and ditches into the forest beyond. I studied the area. There was no sign of enemy movement. Our men moved in pairs, haphazardly trying to cover each other, but frequently both of them moved at the same time, or the two got completely separated from each other. The battle buddy system was tried and true, but not in this world yet. I sighed. I guess it took more than a few comments around a campfire to revolutionize small unit tactics.

Something bothered me about the message Angelica had sent. When Private Gorka passed me, I stopped him. "Hey, do you remember that message we got from the captain?"

"Yes, Sergeant.”

“What was that bit about a fortress?”

"Yeah, I think she was talking about a mobile fortress, in the town up ahead I guess. The Russians must have sent one."

Private Gorka trotted away to catch up with his battle buddy. I frowned. A mobile fortress? What the hell was that?

I went looking for Sergeant Wysocki. The town was still more than a mile ahead, so I was able to catch up and talk with him as we moved. We both hung slightly back from the group so we could observe the men.

"Hey Sergeant, do you know what a mobile fortress is?"

"Oh yeah, a big nasty thing. Giant wheels with cleats on the bottom. It's kind of like our hauler, only a lot bigger and heavily armored."

Well, shit. His description jogged the knowledge in my brain and caused images to float to the surface. They weren’t pleasant images. My knowledge base also seemed to be distinctly lacking in details like “how to destroy”.

“And if the Russians have one,” I pointed down the road, “waiting up ahead? What then?"

He shrugged. "I hope the captain has a plan. Not much we could do to it with just rifles and grenades. I'm surprised they could get one up the pass this quick.”

“Is this some kind of new weapon?" My implanted memories were filling in details about how a mobile fortress was built and powered, but not where the concept came from.

"Oh no, not really. I mean, they've been playing around with the idea since the Desh engine was first invented. Everyone realized how much better than steam it was and they've been playing around with forts on wheels ever since. Never were much use though. Too slow and too easy to shoot with artillery. If the Russians got one all the way up here in the mountains, they must have a hell of an engine in it. Hopefully, that means it's not well armored."

That’s all we needed, more Russian wonder weapons. Hopefully, they were as poorly thought out as the Wraith soldiers.

We continued up the road. The troops walking along the sides in pairs, rifles ready. A few times we held up as the point men spotted something, but we made good time. The rumble of guns in the town ahead grew steadily louder as we approached. We passed a couple of houses along the river and finally came to the start of a village.

We brought our group to a halt at the edge of town, back in the woods and outbuildings, far enough to avoid contact with the Russians. Then, we sent scouts ahead to get a look at this thing. I went with them. I knew I was never going to be able to develop any kind of coherent plan until I knew what this thing was. Every description I had got so far didn't make sense. When I finally got a look at it, I realized why.

The thing was a monster. It looked like a four-year-old's drawing of a tank. It was massive, even bigger than our hauler, and festooned with guns of every size and description. The body of the machine was bulbous metal with blisters of turrets and hatches distributed seemingly at random. Instead of treads, it had huge steel-spoked wheels, like solid metal bicycle wheels with a series of pivoting metal plates around the rim. Whatever point of the wheel was touching the ground, it was sitting on a flat metal plate which distributed the weight. It had three wheels to a side. They looked like they might be the machine's weak spot, but they were thick metal. I wasn't sure our infantry had anything that could damage them.

It was stopped in the center of town. The top of it came up to the level with the peaked roofs of the taller one-story structures in town.

One of the privates with me fell back and pointed. “Look, sir, they’re focusing fire on that tavern there and I’ve seen a couple of returned shots. There must be Hungarian troops holed up in there.”

“Good eyes,” I told him, and studied the holdout. It was near the middle of the village, across from the church, and probably once been the life of the town. Half the building was caved in now.

The mobile fortress was sporadically peppering the ruin with machine gun fire in short bursts, while other Russian troops around town took pot-shots with their rifles. As I watched with the scouts, the fortress turned one of its large guns toward the ruined inn. The big lumpy turret swung around slowly and lined up a cannon. It belched flame. An instant later, the rolling thunder washed over us. The shot blew through one corner of the inn, but since the structure was already heavily damaged, it didn't have a lot of effect.

Someone in the ruin was returning fire. But we couldn't tell how many of them there might be, and we didn’t have a way to take the fortress on yet. Not without a plan.

"We gotta help those guys," one of the scouts said.

I nodded. "If we can."

"What can we do against that thing?" the other scout asked. Both were Hungarian troops we had recruited along the way. I remembered them as some of the most eager to get back into the fight, clearly unhappy with retreating and leaving their comrades behind.

I had seen enough. “Let’s get back and tell the others,” I said. We worked our way steadily back to where Sergeant Wysocki and the others waited. When we described what we had seen, he just shook his head. "Damn."

"Can we lure it back into the gorge? Maybe bring the cliffs down on top of it?" I suggested.

Wysocki seemed doubtful. "Doesn’t seem likely. Maybe we should go around.”

"But what about those Hungarians in town?"

We were silent for a moment. Nobody liked the idea of leaving anyone behind.

"What about satchel charges?" the Hungarian Sergeant suggested. "We could send some troops in close and try to blow its wheels off."

"We don’t have any of those,” I said.

While we were discussing, a runner came up from the rear. When he caught his breath, he said, “Captain Lewis is coming up in the truck with the others.”

“Right,” I said. “Wysocki, you hold position here. I’ll meet up with Lewis and find out what he thinks.”

I worked my way back up the canyon the way we'd come. While I went, the firing in town increased in intensity. It sounded like our troops were engaging the Russians. I didn't have time to worry about that right now. I needed to get back and see what Captain Lewis needed. Hopefully, he had a plan for how to deal with that tank.

300 yards from town, around two more bends in the road, the truck and car had pulled up. Apparently, they had cleared the road of the shot-up Russian truck.

Frank was behind the wheel of the car. He didn't have a plan, but he had been in contact with Angelica. "They were covering you when you came through the gorge, but after that, they came back down and met us. Then Angelica and Veronica swapped their cannons for howitzers and went back up in the hills.”

"So, what's their plan?"

"Tamara and Eva are going to engage from the north."

"I doubt their guns will do much to that thing."

"The goal is to distract it, maybe even draw some of its fire, and then Angelica and Veronica are going to light it up with howitzers from the south. And then we'll move in and sweep the town of Russian infantry."

"That'll be a tall order." I didn’t quite want to come out and say that’s got about as much chance of working as us throwing rocks at it. We didn’t really have a choice. That thing was in our way and we had to get through.

"We're going to have Hannah shielding the men. We'll flank them with the troops and then bring up the car at point-blank range. This machine gun will give us covering fire, and we'll push them out of town."

I didn't like the plan, but I didn't have a better one I asked Frank about several contingencies, should things not go quite as easily as he was suggesting, and he didn't have much else to offer. "If they can't damage that thing, we'll be ready to fall back. If Angelica sends up a red flare, then we all fall back to the gorge."

That seemed reasonable enough, as long as the Russians and their monster tank let us fall back.

Hannah brought her mech up to meet us at the edge of the forest, where the trees thinned out. Any closer, it would be difficult to hide her robot. Frank and the vehicles waited with her for Angelica's signal. I went back into the outskirts of town to rely the battleplan.

“Wysocki, report?”

“Another Russian patrol tried to move up the road about half an hour ago. We shot ‘em full of holes and sent them back east with their tails between their legs. Since then, they’ve been probing our positions.”

We dispatched a couple corporals with orders and formations to relay to our troops scattered around the nearby buildings. A few minutes later, we were as ready as we were ever going to be.

"I think I saw something up on the mountain," one of the soldiers near us said.

"That's probably the signal. Should we move in?" the Hungarian sergeant asked.

I shook my head. "No, we're waiting for-”

Boom! Boom.

The tank had been firing into the inn at a slow but steady rate. These shots came from up on the mountain and were much sharper. Dirt and bricks geysered in front of a building 20 yards from the mobile fortress. Another shot went into a house beyond. The attack had begun.

From far above me on the mountainside, Eva and Tamara sent shells down on the mobile fortress. The first shots missed, but as they walked their range in, they started to connect. Each metallic prang made my ears shiver. Two of the mobile fortress’s turrets swiveled upward and started spraying the mountainside with bullets and cannon fire indiscriminately. About the time their shots started landing close to where I thought the girls were, Tamara and Eva stopped firing, to reload or reposition or both.

The deeper roar of the howitzer came from the south. I turned my head and caught the puff of the second shot. Angelica and Veronica were much further down the slope than I’d expected. They must have been working their way closer to the town. A building behind the fortress exploded in a shower of flames and wood. It was well down the street from any of our people, but it made me glad that none of the cannons had been directed towards us yet.

The big-wheeled slab of armor shuddered and started backwards towards the south end of town. Two more howitzer shots rumbled through the valley. This time I saw both puffs of smoke. As soon as I saw the shots, I was able to make out one of the mechs. It was working its way between the trees, headed lower. As I spotted it, the fortress opened fire. Two different calibers of machine gun turret opened up, spraying bullets in their general direction.

I heard the thud, thud of mech footsteps coming up the road behind us, and the chugging engines of our two vehicles. "Now's the time," Wysocki said.