by Al Ewing
Above, the wingmen flew in small, terrified circles, still reacting to what was, for them, an unparalleled tragedy. It was the perfect time to make his escape, just as soon as he knew that -
- Der Zinnsoldat had survived!
It stood, with its remorseless blazing eyes turned towards El Sombra, as though carefully examining him for injuries. The masked man had known that there was little chance of crushing the monster beneath the falling statue - but he had hoped. Der Zinnsoldat could not be allowed to survive. The machine had done far too much damage already.
The great mechanical beast watched the target closely. Destroying the human's hiding place had injured it, but not critically. From the previously gathered data, the computer underneath the metal shell made swift calculations of the target's future intent. It would attempt to escape the Square first of all, most probably heading towards the dilapidated shack where Der Zinnsoldat had encountered the secondary target earlier. Once the target had confirmed his intent by riding in a particular direction, Der Zinnsoldat would move to give chase, using the knowledge of the town layout that had been programmed into its memory to cut him off from his goal. Then the target would be destroyed.
Patiently, the machine stood waiting for El Sombra to make the first move. Had the monster been capable of expressing surprise, perhaps a gasp of shock might have emanated from the blazing furnace mouth, borne out on a tongue of flame. As it was, the monstrosity let off a vast burst of steam from the pipes jutting from its back, a sign of the sudden frenzy that its many cogs and gears had been thrown into. The target was acting in a way that defied probability, in a manner contrary to the dictates of survival. The numbers had been utterly wrong.
El Sombra had circled Karsten around and was now riding the horse at full gallop towards the waiting arms of the machine.
Der Zinnsoldat modified its stance, moving forward on its tireless metal legs, picking up speed. The most efficient course of action would be to drive one of its huge digger-hands into the rider, scooping him off the animal and then applying pressure sufficient to burst him.
Above, the wingmen held their fire, circling like vultures. It would not do to startle the horse at this stage. It might prevent the metal behemoth from making its kill, and then blame would be apportioned and punishment would be served. The best thing to do was to simply wait for the metal creature to act.
Karsten's hooves thundered in the dirt. If El Sombra had underestimated the metal monster, it was all over and done with. He swatted Karsten's backside again with his sword, focussing all his attention on the robot.
Der Zinnsoldat, in turn, watched the masked man approaching, the massive grabber flexing, pistons sinking into place. Then the target came within range, and the arm lashed out, lightning-fast, to snatch the rider from the horse.
The metal scoops clanged together on empty air.
El Sombra had launched himself from the saddle, turning a forward somersault in mid-air as the crushing, killing machine arm sliced the space less than an inch below him. Karsten, trained to ignore shells whizzing an inch from his flanks, paid no heed to the metal brushing his back, not stopping or even slowing as the masked man completed his flip and landed back in the saddle.
Der Zinnsoldat whirled, one arm whipping around in an attempt to connect, but the target was already beyond his reach. Deep in the mass of cogs and wheels that formed its clockwork mind, something very much like anger was building.
El Sombra leant sideways in the saddle, reaching for his own target - a metal bucket that was half-full of muddy water. It had been part of the construction equipment, abandoned in the workers' rush to evacuate. Now it was a weapon. The masked man gripped the handle and carefully eased himself around on the saddle, facing backwards at the metal giant lumbering after the horse. He grinned, a slow easy smile.
"Getting a little tired, amigo? Need a tasty snack? Lookie lookie! Delicious wood! Get it while it's broken and scattered around!" He laughed. Not the great, rich, booming laugh which the occupying force had learned to fear, but a soprano cackle like unto a castrated hyena. Had the machine been gifted with understanding of such matters, it may have taken offence at the mockery.
But der Zinnsoldat had no understanding of mockery, of course. It had no understanding of anything that was human, or warm, or alive. Perhaps it took the suggestion at face value, but more likely it was only coincidence that the creature chose that moment to lean one of its massive grabber-arms down and scoop up a shattered length of wood, the furnace-door mouth yawning wide to receive the offering. El Sombra grinned and gripped the metal of the bucket, readying himself to hurl the water and put out the flame -
- and that was when the bullet grazed his shoulder.
Fire tore through the muscles of his left arm, the bucket jerked, and the payload of water splashed harmlessly into the dirt. El Sombra cursed himself. Overtaken with the triumph of bringing down the statue, of being alive to see it happen, he'd forgotten the wingmen circling overhead. Just because they hadn't fired yet didn't mean they weren't ever going to. Stupid, overconfident pudrete... that could have been your head!
He flipped back and jerked the reins as more bullets streaked down from above, impacting against the ground all around him. Small arms fire, but undoubtedly the big guns were on their way. The question was, would they follow him and pick him off once and for all? Or stay in the Square and take control of the citizens? There was quite a crowd now, creeping back to examine his handiwork. And were those cheers he was hearing?
Herman Becker, a mere private in the great and powerful army of the Ultimate Reich, heard the cheering and knew that his time had finally come. He was a small, withered, timid man of forty-seven years, who could barely do two push-ups and needed glasses to read with. Originally a book-keeper from the small, sleepy town of Delmenhorst, he had woken at the same time each day to a grey sky, taken the same bus every day to his grey job, utilised the same half-hour every day to eat his grey liverwurst sandwiches and drink a cup of grey tea, and walked back in at the same time to kiss his grey wife. And then he had seen the posters advertising a career in the Ultimate Reich, and colour had come to his grey little world.
The recruitment officer had attempted to impress in him the need for book-keeping in the Reich, the subtle glories of the administration posts, which kept the Fatherland running smoothly. Becker would have none of it. He wanted action! Adventure! Excitement! Heroism! He wanted to be able to stand in front of the Führer and say that he had done his best for the great dream of German purity! And then perhaps after that he would be able to summon the courage to tell his grey and fleshy spouse that he was finally leaving her for good.
The opportunity came sooner than expected. Herman Becker had a choice of whether to serve in his sleepy home town or to take the great zeppelin across the sea to the faraway town of Aldea, to keep the peace among subhuman savages. An adventure in far off lands - the great white hero taming the mud people, like a story from one of the chapbooks Becker read when he was a child. Becker would be like his boyhood hero, Nick Führer, Agent of S.T.U.R.M., a jet-setting secret agent who fought against the coloured and the subnormal in far off climes, consorting with beautiful Aryan women. So he rode that great zeppelin to the new world.
And what did he find?
He wore grey clothes, and carried a grey pistol that he never fired, and a little grey hand grenade allegedly of the incendiary type, and he stood in a desert of grey under another grey sky and watched grey people build a grey statue. And every day was the same.
Until El Sombra had arrived.
Suddenly here was a villain to match those in the chapbooks of his youth - evil men like Lex Luthor and the Red Rabbi - an enemy feared and despised by his fellow soldiery, a foe worthy of the man of adventure and passion that Herman Becker knew he really was. The lowly private had come running from his post at the thunderous crash of masonry and wood, and now stood ready at the edge of the Great Square to meet the foe.
The villain t
hundered towards him on a stolen horse, sword in his belt, clutching an empty bucket in one hand - liberated for some nefarious purpose that could not be guessed at - and pursued by a massive mechanical marvel, doubtless a secret gadget created by a weapons specialist working for his beloved Führer. He had outwitted the machine, but he would not outwit Herman Becker. Herman Becker had an answer to villains of his shadowy stripe! Herman Becker did not believe in the half-measures adopted to mollycoddle those who would attempt to poison the values of the Ultimate Reich!
And with that thought, Herman Becker pulled the pin on his hand-grenade and attempted to toss it into the bucket that El Sombra was carrying.
It missed, of course. A swaying bucket held by the rider of a charging horse is a notoriously difficult target, and Herman Becker's hands were shaking with the nervous tension that is all too common in the dangerously unhinged. The grenade banged against the side of the bucket and rebounded to fall at the luckless private's feet.
El Sombra saluted as he charged past on Karsten, and the booming joyous laugh filled Herman Becker's ears. He stared for a moment, dumbfounded, and then drew his Luger, pointing the pistol at El Sombra's back, mouth opening to shout something about destiny and heroism and righteousness. And then the swinging claw of Der Zinnsoldat smashed into the side of his head, knocking him against the wall and fracturing his skull. All of his noble dreams of heroism and chapbook nobility, every second of his grey little life, all of it was boiled down in that instant to one simple truth: Herman Becker was in the way.
The grenade exploded at the machine's feet.
Carina had been lucky. While she'd seen soldiers in both the streets and the sky, they'd all been too preoccupied with the falling statue to take much notice of her riding her father's horse. She was controlling the old white stallion more through luck than good judgement, but still she had managed to avoid drawing too much attention, although it would be difficult to draw a great deal in the current situation. The soldiers of the Ultimate Reich were responding to an emergency unimagined since Pasito had been claimed by the Nazis. With the statue fallen every soldier was needed to restore order and get the citizenry away from the Great Square by any means necessary. To stop for anything less than that would not be conducive to their continued health. Still, she kept to the alleyways. There was no need to take unnecessary risks.
She considered her next move. To head towards the Square would be to invite disaster. But that was where El Sombra had been. He might be dead now, crushed beneath tons of stone, or in the grasp of the robot. She had no choice but to...
The sound of hooves filled the little alleyway. Hooves and the thunder of iron feet.
Carina's eyes widened as she saw El Sombra gallop past the end of the alley on a brown charger, decked out with the livery of the Ultimate Reich, his sword seemingly replaced by an old tin bucket. She was on the point of calling out to him when she saw what followed.
It was the monster. The machine-thing with its furnace jaws and its terrible slitted eyes, enshrouded in fire. The inner workings of the beast were far too well shielded to feel the blaze, but the incendiary gel from the grenade clung to it like a cloak of flame, making it even more terrifying. Before, it was fearful in its inhumanity, in its crushing power. Now, as it surged forward inside its own inferno, it looked like a creature crawled up from the depths of hell.
Carina gasped as her father's white horse reared back, away from the threat. She swallowed hard. El Sombra would have no chance against that. No chance at all. Her own words came back to her.
"I'm going to save you. It sounds like somebody has to."
No time like the present.
She shook the reins and sent the white horse forward, following the trail of smoke and destruction.
Karsten's hooves bit into the earth. The animal was tiring now, barely keeping ahead of the monster's paws. In front of him, the desert stretched out, a vast expanse of sand and rock. El Sombra knew the desert like the back of his hand, and he'd taken this direction for a reason. The sand was thick here, almost forming dunes. There was enough of it for what he had in mind. And then Karsten's hooves were thudding hard against the sand, and there was less traction for them to grip on. And Karsten slowed by a fraction of a second.
The sound was like a sledgehammer bursting a watermelon, but magnified a dozen times and flavoured with the stench of blood. The heavy digger-hands, closed into clubs, crashed together, catching Karsten's rear between them. The impact shattered both hips, bursting the fragile meat between. Karsten shrieked and El Sombra came flying off his back, crashing into the dirt a metre away. Then the robot dealt a second hammering blow to the animal's skull and it fell silent. The legs and hooves of the beast continued to twitch for several minutes, writhing obscenely in the bloody sand. Even dead, it still ran.
El Sombra picked himself up from the ground, grasping the hilt of his sword in both hands, steadying himself for the battle to come. Then he turned to face the music. The monster stood in front of him, looking at him almost quizzically with those burning headlamp-eyes, huge arms readying themselves for the final strike, the flames enshrouding it beginning to die down.
The moment stretched. Time stopped.
And then the creature moved.
It swung one paw in a semicircle, aiming to slam it against the masked man's head, then swung the other a half-second later and three feet lower. Like a chess player, it thought several moves ahead. El Sombra could not launch himself backwards out of the monster's reach, nor could he duck the first blow without being hit by the second. And he had less than a fraction of an instant to dodge the attack.
Any other man would have died, skull split and smashed, brains spattered and flung across the sands, ribs crushed, body caved in and distorted by the force of the blow. But El Sombra was standing on desert sand. This was his place of power, where all the things he had learned and stored away were fresh in his mind and waiting for their moment of use, bubbling just under the surface. He did not need to think. His mind was stilled, reduced to the simple mechanics of reaction. In his own way, he had become as much a creature of efficiency as Der Zinnsoldat.
He threw himself forward, inside the reach of the metal arms, then gripped the hot pipes and gears that made up the monsters body, scampering up its face and flipping over its back. The flesh of his hands were burned by the flames and the heat the creature generated, but he did not feel pain. As the monster swung around to face him, arms swinging around to cave his skull and crush his bones to powder, the masked man dived between its metal legs. It was a game - a merciless game of tag, where the opposing player had the power to cripple or kill with a touch. And El Sombra was the loser before he had even started to play.
A robot would not tire. A man of iron and steam would not flag, or stumble, or make any mistake. Out here there was nothing to distract the monster from his business, nothing to disrupt the efficient schedule of murder it had charted in its clicking, ticking brain.
Until a white horse ran into its field of vision, the rider leaping from the back of the beast to run in front of the target, shielding him with her own body.
Carina looked into the headlamp-eyes. "Stop! Stop right there! I am the daughter of Master Plus and in the name of the Ultimate Reich I order you to shut down!"
Der Zinnsoldat's clockwork mind clicked and whirred furiously. While most of the words flowed over it without recognition, the distinctive syllable clusters of Master Plus and the Ultimate Reich were enough to get its attention. It processed the new data.
Carina swallowed. She had made the monster pause. She could not back down now. "Do you hear me? I said shut down! Now!"
Carina's plan was sound. She had a connection to the Ultimate Reich, perhaps one that was important enough to stall the creature, but almost certainly a connection that would protect her. If she could put herself in harm's way - make sure that there was no way the monster could kill or injure El Sombra without hurting her - then she could stop it. It was a sound pl
an, but a risky one. If Der Zinnsoldat had not been programmed to consider Master Plus, or the family members of the Reich, or if it had been instructed to take orders from only one source, she would be dead. It was a gamble.
And she lost.
Der Zinnsoldat examined her closely. She was of almost no consequence... however, it would be foolish to simply crush her when there was one role she could still perform. The firebox that powered the mechanical monster was dangerously low, the chase through Aldea had exhausted the bulk of its power.
It needed to eat.
One arm snapped out, the grabber taking hold of Carina's waist, the pressure enough to make her cry out as the great furnace clanged open, revealing the leaping flames within. El Sombra knew what was about to happen and knew that he had perhaps a second to react before Carina was stuffed alive and screaming into the firebox.
His hand reached out and grasped the bucket, still lying where it had fallen. He filled it with the desert and then charged at the machine.
Der Zinnsoldat registered El Sombra's approach. The target was once again rushing towards him, but this time on foot, and lumbered with a heavy weight. It paused in its business, waiting for him to come close enough for its empty grabber to slam shut on his neck and sever his head. It did not lower Carina to the ground.
Nor did it close its firebox.
El Sombra hurled the bucket with all of his strength. It described a short and graceful arc in the air before striking the open firebox and jamming there, the sand within cascading out to cover the burning embers. The flames were already low, but it still took all of the sand to smother them completely. The furnace died, leaving only smoke and smoulder.
