On Her Majesty's Behalf

by Joseph Nassise

  Suddenly Jones was there, hauling him to his feet and yelling something Burke couldn’t hear while the stink of cordite and burnt flesh washed over them both.

  Grenade, Burke thought absently.

  That was all it took. The events of the last few minutes came flooding back, and he realized they had to get out of there before they were overrun.

  As if on cue a German commando dressed in a black uniform came charging out of the smoke, gun blazing, and Burke reacted without thought, using the Tommy gun hanging at his side to snap off several shots that struck the commando in the chest and sent him to the ground.

  Burke didn’t wait to see if the soldier lived or died; Jones was pulling at him, trying to get him to follow, and Burke gave in, knowing that the enemy soldier was only the first of many. He knew there was nothing they could do for their comrades at this point but live to avenge their deaths at another time and so, with a final glance at their unmoving forms, he turned and raced after Jones.

  Bullets whined past them as they left that gallery and entered the next but Burke didn’t look back. He was entirely focused on reaching the mausoleum ahead of them; from there, they’d be able to fire back from a position of cover and, if need be, retreat through the door leading to the laboratory.

  The moments felt like hours as they raced ahead, expecting at any moment to take a bullet in the back. It was close, but luck was on their side; they reached the protection of the mausoleum’s marble structure just as a trio of hounds surged into the room, their handler mere feet behind. The German commando fired over the heads of his charges, and Burke threw himself behind one of the marble columns as bullets whipped through the space he’d been standing in mere seconds before, ricocheting off the marble to spin away into the shadows with a high-­pitched whine.

  Burke caught Jones’s attention, counted down from three on his fingers. On one, the two men popped up from behind the cover of the mausoleum’s front wall and began firing at the enemy, causing hounds and soldiers alike to scatter to the left and right looking for cover of their own.

  With Jones laying down cover fire, Burke crawled deeper into the reconstructed temple until he reached the wall that held the controls to the hidden door. The Queen’s party had closed it behind them, not wanting to provide access to any German troops that might have managed to flank Burke before he returned to that location, leaving Burke to manipulate the controls on his own. Thankfully, he’d been watching the Queen closely when she’d opened it the first time. He put his hand on the section of the wall she’d manipulated earlier, felt the slight indentations that signaled where he should put his fingers, and then gave a sharp twist.

  With the hiss of steam and the clank of metal, the stone slab beside him slid backward and then to one side, revealing the stairs down to the laboratory just as it had before.

  “Let’s move!” Burke yelled over the din to Jones.

  As the younger man began backing toward him, Burke sent a blistering wave of fire into the advancing enemy, cutting down two enemy soldiers who tried to leapfrog from the cover of one display case to the other, leaving them wounded and bleeding in the middle of the floor. Burke hoped concern for their comrades would slow the advancing soldiers down, but he quickly found out just how off base the notion was as the other soldiers completely ignored them. One man was crouched less than a yard away from an injured man and he never even bothered to look in that direction, his attention entirely on the retreating Allies. It brought the inhumanity of the foes he was facing into stark focus for Burke, renewing his resolve to get the Queen to safety.

  Burke waited for Corporal Jones to pass him and then he, too, backed through the doorway. Once inside he hit the switch to close the door, then stood facing the opening, ready to gun down anyone who showed themselves as he waited for the door to fully close. When it had, he turned and dashed down the stairs with Jones, their footfalls ringing in the confined space.

  Surprisingly, the door at the other end was open. He cautiously approached and peeked into the room only to find himself staring down the muzzles of several rifles and one Webley revolver.

  “Bloody hell, Major!” Sergeant Drummond exclaimed, as he recognized Burke and lowered his weapon. Behind him the others did the same. “Are you looking to get shot?”

  Burke was just as annoyed as Drummond. “I expected to find an empty lab. What the hell are you still doing here?”

  Drummond opened his mouth to reply, but the Queen interrupted, drawing Burke’s attention.

  “He was ordered to remain, Major,” Veronica said, her chin lifted slightly in what Burke was coming to recognize as an expression of stubbornness. “I will not abandon you, or any of my men, to the enemy while we run like frightened rabbits.”

  Burke felt his blood start to boil, but he did his best to keep a lid on it as he replied, “With all due respect, Your Majesty, Captain Morrison and Private Montagna just gave their lives in order to buy you time to escape! You should be long gone from here!”

  The Germans would be on them in moments. They didn’t have time to debate things any further. He turned to Jones.

  “Get that door shut and barricade it as best you can. Drummond, help him.”

  As they jumped to do his bidding, Burke turned back to face the Queen. He did his best to ignore her tears even as the voice in the back of his head was calling him an asshole.

  “Where is this exit?” he asked, in a gentler tone.

  “This way.”

  Veronica led him over to a corner of the lab and pointed to a steel plate set into the floor with hinges. Burke bent down, got his fingers under one edge, and hauled it open, revealing an iron ladder bolted to one side, leading downward. A horrible stench wafted up from below.

  “Ugh. What’s down there?”

  Veronica’s mouth tightened into a thin line. “Sewers. And before you ask, yes, we have to go down there. It’s the only way out, unless you want to fight your way through the German commandos you just left behind.”

  No, Burke didn’t want to do that. He glanced across the room, saw that Jones and Drummond, with Doc’s help, had stacked several lab tables and a ­couple of filing cabinets in front of the door as a barricade. It wouldn’t do more than slow the enemy down for a ­couple of minutes, but that might be enough.

  “All right,” he called to the others. “Let’s get out of here.”

  The automaton, JD, opened up a nearby cupboard and produced two lanternlike devices, each with a handle jutting from one side. When the handle was wound rapidly, the resulting electrical charge caused the lantern to emit a weak but steady light. JD handed one lantern to Sergeant Drummond and the other to the Queen.

  With the light in hand, the Black Watch sergeant nodded once at Burke and started down the ladder. He had only just disappeared from sight when a thunderous boom shook the room. The explosion threw Burke to the ground for the second time that day, but he was farther away from the actual blast this time and didn’t suffer the debilitating effects he had earlier. He quickly pulled himself to his feet and aimed his weapon at the door, waiting for the inevitable rush of the enemy.

  As the dust and smoke cleared, Burke saw that a large hole had been blown in the lab’s iron door. He could see a figure standing on the other side, a large, hulking man dressed in the uniform of a German commando. This didn’t surprise Burke, but the fact that he recognized the man, despite the ash-­gray skin and feral yellow eyes, did.

  Staff Sergeant Charles Moore lifted his head and his gaze met Burke’s.

  Recognition jumped between them.

  Burke couldn’t believe what he was seeing. Charlie? Here? Wearing a German commando’s uniform? The sight was so unexpected that it froze him where he stood, his feet weighed down as if he were wearing cement-­filled boots. Fighting was going on around him, the enemy soldiers shooting in their direction as Jones and the others returned fire of their own,
but Burke couldn’t tear his gaze away from the man across the room.

  Charlie raised his hand and Burke found himself staring down the barrel of the pistol the big man was holding.

  One shot was all it would take.

  Burke’s mind was screaming at him to move, but his legs weren’t getting the message. They held him in place, a sitting duck should Charlie pull the trigger.

  Distantly he heard Veronica scream his name.

  “Burke!”

  Time stretched . . .

  Charlie’s finger tightened . . .

  Burke’s mind yelled at him to move, move, move, but all he could manage to do was bring his hand up in front of him, as if warding off a blow . . .

  The shot struck the outside of his artificial hand and tore through it, the impact altering the trajectory of the bullet just enough to send it sliding past the side of his head and into the wall behind him.

  The near miss broke his paralysis, and he threw himself behind a nearby storage chest for cover, still stunned at the events unfolding around him. His thoughts seemed as thick as molasses, and he struggled to find some clarity, to understand the situation in which he suddenly found himself.

  Try as he might, however, he couldn’t seem to get his mind around one, simple fact.

  Charlie was one of them.

  Motion beside him caught his attention. The Queen was kneeling there, her hands already moving over his body, searching for injury.

  “Oh, my God! Are you all right?” she was asking, but to Burke it seemed as if her voice was coming from a long way away. He tried to say something, to answer her, but the words just wouldn’t come.

  Charlie was one of them!

  Veronica was still talking, but he couldn’t make sense of what she was saying. Something about his hand . . .

  He glanced down. The last two fingers on his artificial hand were missing, ripped free from his palm by the impact of Charlie’s bullet. Through the hole where they should have been he could see the miniature gears and clockwork mechanisms deep inside his palm and found himself wondering if the hand was repairable or if he would need a whole new one.

  Burke didn’t have time to think about it for long. His attention was drawn back to what was going on around him as Drummond appeared at his side with the injured Williams, the two men grabbing Veronica and dragging her, protesting, away from him and toward the safety of the escape tunnel as bullets whipped around them like angry hornets.

  Burke had one last glimpse of Veronica’s anguished face, calling out his name, and then she disappeared down the ladder and was lost to his view.

  Another thunderous explosion made him cringe, and when he looked up again, he found JD standing beside him, seemingly oblivious to the gunfire going on around him.

  “I’ll handle this, Major,” the automaton said in a calm, steady tone. “Please take yourself and Corporal Jones to safety.” With that he turned and walked into the fray, his arms extended straight ahead.

  Peering around the storage chest, Burke watched as JD’s hands folded out of the way so that the backs of his hands lay flat against his wrists and the stumps pointed directly at the enemy now trying to climb through the makeshift entrance in the ruined door. Without another word JD began firing the automatic rifles hidden inside his forearms, sending the German troops scurrying for cover as his highly accurate fire tore those in the front line to ribbons.

  Burke was still trying to shake off his mental fuzziness and might have sat there indefinitely if Jones hadn’t taken advantage of the cover JD was providing and come charging over to squeeze in beside Burke.

  “He’s not going to be able to hold them for long, Major.”

  Burke didn’t say anything.

  “Major?”

  Nothing.

  “All right, on your feet, sir. Let’s go!”

  The next thing Burke knew he was climbing down the ladder into the darkness and stink of the sewers beneath the museum, struggling to get his mechanical hand to grasp the rungs properly and only slowly coming to understand as he fumbled about that the last two fingers on that hand had been shot clean off.

  The light he was using to see his injured hand was suddenly cut off as Jones hauled the trapdoor closed above them. Seconds later he was at the bottom of the ladder beside Burke.

  “This way, Major,” he said and pulled Burke along in his wake as he hustled to catch up with the rest of their group.

  Above them, the firing continued.

  Chapter Twenty-nine

  In the Sewers

  London

  SOME TIME LATER, Burke stumbled along through the sewer in the midst of the fleeing squad, barely aware of those around him or the passage they were taking. He kept seeing Sergeant Moore’s face appear above the heads of the zombie soldiers in the German fighting unit, kept seeing the flare of recognition in the man’s eyes as Moore spotted him in turn. Burke had no doubt that Moore had known who he was; he was certain of that down to the depths of his soul.

  Burke had been wondering about Moore’s fate ever since their previous mission, when the big sergeant volunteered to lead the German pursuit away from the rest of the squad in order to give them time to get Major Freeman to safety. Burke had spent several long nights lost in anguish and regret as the mystery over Moore’s fate continued. Time and time again he’d second-­guessed his decision to use the sergeant as a decoy during their escape, wondering if they might have managed to break free of the rapidly closing German net even if they hadn’t split up at that fateful moment. Moore hadn’t been the only man lost from that decision, either; Clayton Manning, the big game hunter, had disappeared with him.

  Now, at last, Burke knew the truth.

  And the truth was worse than he’d feared.

  News of Moore’s death would certainly have been upsetting; there was no question of that. But he’d been preparing himself mentally and emotionally for that very thing for weeks now and knew he would have handled it just fine. He would have mourned and then moved on.

  Hell, he would have even done the same thing if Moore had died and then risen as a shambler, for there was enough evidence now for Burke to rest assured that nothing of the original personality remained behind in that reanimated husk of flesh. It was a walking corpse and nothing more.

  But this?

  This was different, so different that it was almost too horrifying to consider.

  Charlie clearly retained some memory of who he had been prior to being subjected to the transformation into one of Richthofen’s supersoldiers. That knowledge hadn’t seemed to stop him from trying to kill Burke or his companions, but at least the slate hadn’t been wiped totally clean. Maybe the transformation could be reversed.

  But what if Burke’s identity wasn’t the only thing Charlie retained? What if he remembered everything—­all the strategy conferences, the after-­action reports, the briefings on new gear coming out of Graves’s lab? He’d been Burke’s adjutant for several years now and had been privy to everything that had crossed through Burke’s hands during that time. Granted, there weren’t too many national secrets being bandied about in the trenches where Burke had spent most of his time overseas, but there was enough day-­to-­day operational information to give Burke pause.

  Had Charlie shared it all with his new masters?

  There was no way to know, and Burke knew that was the scariest part of all.

  His attention elsewhere, Burke stumbled over a piece of detritus on the tunnel floor and would have fallen if a strong hand hadn’t caught his arm.

  He turned to find Jones off to his left.

  “You okay, Major?”

  Burke nodded, then realized the other man probably couldn’t see him in the dim light.

  “Yeah . . . thanks.”

  “None needed.”

  Jones was quiet a moment and then . . . “You sa
w?”

  There could be only one thing Jones was referring to.

  “I saw.”

  Jones fell silent, no doubt lost in his own thoughts about their previous teammate, but the conversation was enough to drag Burke out of his reverie and get him focused on the situation at hand.

  He had no idea of where they were or of how far they had come since entering the tunnels. He wasn’t entirely certain any of the others did either, but he was willing to give them the benefit of the doubt. If it turned out he was correct—­that they didn’t know where they were—­that was okay, too, for anywhere was preferable to being trapped back in the lab with the German troops moments away from gunning them down where they stood.

  They were moving through a low tunnel that had them all stooping slightly as they pushed along. Dirty, brackish water—­Burke didn’t even want to think about what was floating there beneath the surface—­rose nearly to their knees and sloshed higher with every step they took. Sergeant Drummond led the way, the lantern in his hands illuminating the cracked and crumbling brick that lined the curved walls of the tunnel on either side of them and giving them minimal light with which to see. Behind Drummond was Doc Bankowski, helping along an injured Corporal Williams. Private Cohen came next, followed by Queen Veronica, Professor Graves, himself, and then Jones bringing up the rear. Burke glanced around, looking for Montagna, then caught himself, remembering how the young private and Captain Morrison both had sacrificed themselves so the rest of them could reach the temporary safety of the lab and hence the tunnels beyond.

  Coming to the museum had proven to be a costly detour, even if it had provided them with a way to get the Queen to safety once they reached the Gardens.

  If they reached the Gardens.

  Don’t think like that, he scolded himself. You’ll reach the Gardens and you’ll get the Queen out of here even if it’s the last thing you do.