She attacks with a fluid ferocity that is staggering to behold. I have always thought of Kayla’s sword as a natural extension of her body. I never considered that it might actually be getting in her way.
The Uhrwerkmänn flails at her, its fist raising dull echoes as it smacks at its own skin. But Kayla is like mist, or some particularly violent Highland monkey. She swarms over it, flinging herself out of the way of its fists. Her slender hand plunges into exposed joints, comes back stained black, ragged cogs and pipes clutched in her fist. First one arm is disabled, then the other.
The others start to converge, but Kayla is beginning to enjoy herself now. With no arms to defend itself the Uhrwerkmänn is largely at her mercy. It thrashes about, trying to dislodge her, but Kayla could teach bull-riders a few lessons on tenacity. Before the others reach her, she’s already managed to rip her way into the thing’s neck, and some fairly vital looking gears are finding their way to the floor.
I remember I’m meant to be sneaking, that Kayla is raising a distraction for my benefit. There is something hypnotic about her expertise at this, but now is not the time to succumb. I turn away, stay close to the wall.
“Hands off, you cheeky metal feck,” echoes after me. The noise of tearing steel follows.
I feel like things should be easier for me. I have the lesser task. But considering I’m in a tunnel buried deep below ground, there’s a distinct lack of shadows for me to sneak through. The damn workmen’s lamps cast zebra stripes of light every twenty yards or so. I’m safe for a moment then horribly exposed. All it’s going to need is for one Uhrwerkmänn to have decided to hold back.
Like that bastard.
I freeze, letting the breath tremble in and out of me. It’s standing in one of the dark patches, almost hidden because the lamps keep destroying my night vision. I’m only thirty feet away. If the German robot wasn’t so intent on the fight with Kayla, I would already be only so much meat paste. But apparently watching Kayla go a few rounds with six Uhrwerkmänner all at least twice her height is pretty entertaining stuff.
I shuffle one foot forward, then the other. I feel like I’ve barely moved. This is just giving it more time to look around and see me. And it didn’t notice me when I was moving fast a second ago. Maybe Lang designed their eyes differently from ours. Less sensitive to movement, but more to… Something else, I guess.
I just need to keep bloody moving.
I accelerate. Just a little.
Its head snaps round.
Shit and balls.
Before the Uhrwerkmänn has time to fully register what it’s seeing, I launch myself at the thing. Kayla’s sword feels right clenched in my clammy fists.
I bring the blade down on the upper thigh, and it skids off the metal. Just like I was expecting it to. As the Uhrwerkmänn lunges left to swipe at me, I go with the momentum of the rebounding blade and jam the point into the ankle joint of the opposite leg.
I duck, roll past the swatting hand, between the legs, rip the blade free.
The Uhrwerkmänn goes to turn to chase after me, feels its ankle giving way, tries to correct, and goes down on one knee.
I scramble to my feet. I’d been hoping the bastard would go fully down, and give me a good angle on its neck. As it is, I’ll have to make do with the one I’ve got on its waist line.
My sword hacks into the seam between gut and hips while the Uhrwerkmänn pistons its arm trying to regain its balance. I tug sideways, enjoying the satisfying feel of resistance giving way.
This is so much better than fighting people. I can’t imagine I’ll have half so many bad dreams afterwards.
Then the blade sticks. Because the one problem with fighting giant robots is that they have giant chunks of metal inside them.
Damnit. I heave on the blade. And superhuman strength would really come in handy right now. Kayla makes this sort of thing look so easy.
The Uhrwerkmänn growls. A low, slightly slurred noise. It’s hurting, but it is decidedly not dead.
I heave again. Nothing.
“Stupid renaissance fair piece of shit!” I yell. Hopefully Kayla can’t hear me over the sound of six Uhrwerkmänner trying to stomp on her head.
A fist comes at me. I abandon the sword, roll. It swipes over my head. I get my bearings just in time to see the other fist coming down, palm flat, looking to crush my chest. I roll back the way I came.
With a roar the Uhrwerkmänn brings down both hands, a vast plain of steel, too big to roll away from.
I do a backwards tumble instead, feel the wind of its fingers graze down my back.
I scramble to my feet as it recovers its balance. For a moment we just stare at each other. It’s still on its knees and we are almost eye-to-eye. This is an impasse. It can’t pursue me, but I really need to get Kayla’s sword back.
It cocks a fist.
God, I’m going to have to get the timing really right on this.
I dart forward, seize the handle of the blade.
The first flies toward me, too fast to dodge.
I push myself sideways as fast and as hard as I can, still hanging onto the handle of the sword.
The fist hits me. A great heaving impact that makes my whole body ring with pain, barely mitigated by my attempt to roll with the blow.
Pain shoots down my arm, flares into my fingers, and for a moment I fear I’m going to lose my grip on the sword, but I hang on. And it comes free. The momentum of the blow sends me and the embedded blade skidding sideways. There is an ugly ripping sound, and whether it comes from the Uhrwerkmänn’s guts or my shoulder is unclear for a moment.
I lie on the ground and ache, trying to bite back a scream. Doing stealthy ninja shit definitely does not involve screaming.
After a while I become aware that I am still not dead yet. At great personal expense, I lever my head up and look around.
The Uhrwerkmänn is lying on the ground. One leg spasms slightly. A gentle kick repeated over and over. Some gears lie in a pool by its side. The gash in its gut appears almost insubstantial. Still, it seems to have done the job.
I glance over to the other gaggle of machines. Waiting for one to look my way, to start shouting. But Kayla is doing a very good job of capturing their attention. Apparently, constantly punching people in their vital parts tends to really focus them.
Using the sword, I lever myself to a standing position. After a moment’s contemplation, I decide to transition from careful stealth to a more sort of desperate hobbling.
It strikes me that there’s been no sight of Hannah yet. Did she get past the sentries? Did she turn around as soon as she saw them? It would be pretty typical of this entire endeavor if she showed up on MI37’s doorstep just as we plunged into the hornet’s nest.
The alternatives are, I suppose, that she was taken prisoner for some reason I can’t quite fathom, or the slightly more likely dead-as-your-favorite-type-of-nail theory.
Slowly I approach the place where the door should be. The makeshift office we set up with all of Lang’s papers is nowhere in evidence. Does that mean it’s been cleaned up, or that the reality key isn’t turned? That Hannah is trapped somewhere and I can’t get close?
I paw my way along the wall. Behind me I hear a sharp cry. Not a mechanical shout. Something very human.
Kayla.
The texture of the wall changes beneath my hand. A slight indentation. Rough concrete giving way to battered metal. The loose crackle of rust beneath thick layers of paint.
I glance back. The Uhrwerkmänner are in a tight knot now. I see fists rise and fall. I can see no sign of Kayla. She must be in the thick of it.
I have her sword. I’m using it as a damned walking stick.
Forward or back. Save or sacrifice.
Except I’m committed. And Uhrwerkmänner or bomb, it’s almost certain Kayla will die today. She may not have had the time to think that through. She may still be stuck on hope. But basically the only choice is whether her death will be meaningful or not.
God, I fucking hate saving the world. It sucks every goddamn time.
My hand finds the door handle. I push, and I’m through.
70
I brace for an angry roar, for impact, for the inversion of the curves of my face.
But nothing. Nothing at all. The room is not stuffed full of Uhrwerkmänner. It is, instead, pretty much exactly as I remember it—an elongated egg shape, walls lined with books and papers, floor littered with the detritus of academic obsession. I step past a box of curling brown sheets of paper, squeeze between a moldering blackboard and a stack of textbooks five feet tall.
It’s empty. The whole place is bloody empty.
“Hannah?” I hiss as loud as I dare. Approximately as loud as a mouse with a mild anxiety disorder.
There is no answer.
“Hannah?” I hiss again, this time perhaps hitting the volume of a slow puncture in a bike tire.
No answer.
I feel suddenly ridiculous, whispering inaudibly in a self-evidently empty room.
“Hannah?” I say a third time. This time actually putting a little lung power into the word.
And still no answer. Where in the name of all the hells—and from what I now know of the world there are probably many of them—is she?
I kick in irritation at a stack of paperback books. It topples. It turns out not to be a fabulous idea. I watch as it topples, collides with a bunch of poorly stacked picture frames. The stack slews sideways, old wood clacking together. The topmost frame spins to the floor. It’s enough to bring an end to the long-standing fight between a freestanding chalk board that leant against them and gravity. I watch in horror as the board topples.
“No,” I whisper, a small useless sound. “No, no, no.”
The board pays no attention. It slams into a small plaster statue of a cherub. The statue’s shards rocket like shrapnel into a crate of rolled sheets of paper, send it skidding across the floor.
At a certain point you just have to give up and facepalm.
The crate slams into another stack of books. They fall. Take another one with them.
Slowly, piece by piece, it all comes down. It’s as if I stand in the center of some giant godawful Rube-Goldberg device. And one domino push was all it took. The delicate equilibrium of the room collapsing. A small wheeled table loaded with books careens across the room, crashes into a seven-foot-tall mirror that shatters, spilling shards of glass as it tumbles backwards, slamming into the far wall.
A shelf gives way. And then another, and another, and another, and another, and another. Shelf after shelf, reaching up to the distant ceiling. They each give way. Books fall like dead birds. An avalanche of arcane knowledge. Dust fills the room, obscures everything. I hack, and splutter, and stare in horror.
Finally it is over. About a sixth of the shelves on the wall have collapsed. Books make a small hill against one side of the room.
I stare. Jesus.
“Hannah?” I venture one final time.
And nothing. Of course nothing.
And then not nothing. Something… an ugly twisting sensation in the region of my central cortex. Some violation of reality snapping at the heart of my brain.
Oh shit. Shit and balls. A reality key. Someone is using a reality key.
I spin around, trying to blink away sinus pain. What just changed? It must have been out in the corridor, outside this room. Some Uhrwerkmänner finally breaking from Kayla’s onslaught long enough to think about cutting this reality from the main one. They heard the goddamn noise and they trapped me here.
But, no. There is the door. There is my way out.
So if that didn’t change…
A noise. From behind me. A harsh mechanical sound.
Grinding gears.
But I am still alone here.
“Vas?” A word. A German word. From…? From…? I scan the room again.
From behind the goddamn pile of books.
Oh shit and—
The mountain of books bulges. Explodes.
A shape bursts from the pile of books. It flings them aside. Leather-bound grenades, shedding white shrapnel as they detonate against wall and floor.
I stagger backwards, the back of my knees colliding with drawers protruding from a writing desk.
The Uhrwerkmänn tears out of the spilled books. Like some great piston-powered knight of old. It has something vast and steel clutched above its head. “Schänder!” it bellows. I get the impression that’s not a good thing to be called.
Behind it, I can now see an archway has appeared from nowhere. The reality key unlocked it. The books hid it. And I gently positioned my paddle-less canoe directly for shit creek.
Part of my panicking mind, trying to step away from the moment, is happily going, a pocket reality inside a pocket reality! over and over.
However the larger, more sensible part of my mind is running along lines that more closely resemble, oh shit. Oh balls.
The Uhrwerkmänn looms over me. It brings down… whatever the hell it is that it’s wielding in a massive, two-handed arc. I lunge awkwardly sideways, caught flatfooted.
It’s a girder, I realize. A steel girder that plows through the desk, less than eight inches from my skull. Shards of wood send me sprawling. I land on my arse, sit there stupidly, looking up at the towering machine.
“Heide!” it screams. The girder goes up again.
Oh God, it’s happening again. I’m sitting on the fucking ground and something’s going to cave my head in. It’s the moment when this all started all over again. That fucking Scottish bar. I am bathed in sweat. My limbs suddenly drenched in sweat. And my muscles feel like they’re made of water. And Clyde isn’t here to save me. Clyde’s not even in the same reality as me.
It seems apropos to say, “Scheisse” as the girder starts to descend.
A blur of motion to my right. Glimpsed from the corner of my eye. I start to twitch my head toward it, a futile end to a futile fight.
Someone crashes into me with considerable speed and force. I slam back across the floor. Something… someone… is on top of me, barreling over me. A spinning fury of legs and limbs.
The girder cracks the flooring of the room, a thunderclap that rips through me dropping the bottom out of my stomach.
My stomach that has not just had my head caved into it.
And someone just saved my life.
Who the hell just saved my life?
I blink my vision back into focus. They’re off me now. Standing, arms outstretched. Firing a gun.
Wait… Hannah?
She empties her magazine at the Uhrwerkmänn’s head. It’s the shape of a ship’s prow, tall and sharply angled. Iron gridwork gives the slightest impression of eyes lurking deep in the skull. Bullets ping and whine between them, raising a fleeting patina of white sparks.
The Uhrwerkmänn growls again, unintelligible this time. It swings its girder in a flat horizontal arc.
If I had the breath I’d yell out a warning. She’s leaving it too late. She’s going to get hit. I am going to lie here and watch as Hannah Bearings’ midriff is put on the extreme crushed-to-a-narrow-pulp diet.
Where did she come from? What the hell is going on?
The air screams as the girder whips around. The Uhrwerkmänn pivots back on its heels to compensate for the momentum.
Hannah flings herself backwards, her whole body collapsing back above the knee. She fires as she goes. The same tight pattern of sparks around its eyes.
The girder whistles over her, over me. A deadly blur that fills my world for a fraction of a second, leaving nothing but sheer terror in its wake.
Hannah is lying next to me, flat on her back. Still firing.
The Uhrwerkmänn grunts in frustration, abandons its girder, raises a foot to stomp down.
Well, it was a noble effort, and I suppose this means I won’t have to die alone.
And then… Maybe it’s the shift in weight that does it. Tilts the head back at just the right angle. Ma
ybe it’s just a random fluke. Maybe it’s the universe saying, “Not yet, I’ve got plans for you.”
Hannah’s bullet finds its home.
71
There is a noise not entirely dissimilar to a pebble rattling in an empty paint can. The Uhrwerkmänn freezes. Hannah lies flat, the robot’s foot poised above her.
Its shadow looms. The moment hangs.
I lie there, breath coming in short sharp gasps, waiting for the foot to fall, for Hannah to be reduced to nothing more than an abstract stain on the floor beside me.
Another breath wheezes in. I reach out, push at her shoulder, but my hand is too weak to move her. She doesn’t even look at me, just at the Uhrwerkmänn tottering above her.
And then, slowly, the Uhrwerkmänn reaches the tipping point. It crashes back into the books, posters, papers, and shit that litter the room around us. Dust blooms, forms a dry dirty fog.
We lie there, both of us staring at the empty space the Uhrwerkmänn used to occupy. I haven’t a clue what to say.
“Holy fuck balls.” Hannah breaks the silence.
Breath manages to make its way back into my lungs. It comes back out in something that sounds a little like a chuckle.
“Jesus,” I manage. And then, “What…? Where did…?”
I look at her. She turns, looks at me.
“Thank you.” That’s where I should have started. Because I really, genuinely mean it. Honestly, in this moment, I could not be more grateful to see Hannah Bearings. “Thank you,” I say again. “Holy shit. I… I thought it was going to… just… going…”
“It’s OK,” Hannah says. “That’s…” And then she stops. There are words for this moment, but not for us in this moment.
So I abandon words and pick myself up so I can reach down, help her up too. It seems the best fit for the moment that I can manage.
“I was calling out to you,” I say, still trying to make sense of events. “You weren’t answering. You weren’t… You couldn’t hear me?”
Hannah shakes her head. She looks as confused as I feel. “I came here, trying to check things out like, you know, you asked. And there were Uhrwerkmänner in the corridor but they’re not the most observant bloody lot. Not that hard to sneak past.”
Broken Hero Page 36
