Broken Hero (12 page)

I turn. The other Uhrwerkmänn is more recalcitrant about being disabled. It’s turned a massive shoulder guard to Hannah and her shots around the edges hit thick armor plating or whine off at awkward angles.

Clyde has disappeared, which means he listened to me, which means right now he’s downstairs with the majority of the machines, and without any help. Major artillery with two legs though he may be, I’m not sure Clyde should be left to his own devices in a fire fight. Or crowds. Or anywhere sharp objects aren’t carefully tended.

“Forget it. Get through the hole!”

Hannah moves slowly. Too damn slowly. She has her gun still trained on the Uhrwerkmänn that isn’t spasming and steaming in the corner. Keeps taking shots to keep it at bay as I cover the distance.

“Come on!” I yell, two paces away.

“After you.” She looks calm now, or at least as calm as her gritted teeth will allow.

And now perhaps is the time for militaristic yelling and the obeying of my field directives, regardless of whether they’re crap or not. “Get through the goddamn hole!”

She blinks once. “Ladies first?” She snaps off another shot.

“Just—” I start and then she casually steps back and plummets down a story. I have time to shake my head before I follow her into the madness below.

My first thought is that I should have stayed upstairs. Clyde is hunkered down on the floor, one hand outstretched, head ducked, not looking, eyes pressed tight. An Uhrwerkmänn lies splayed out on the floor, legs wide, its chest crushed. But there are five more in the room, crowding it, encircling him. Hannah is beside him, standing over him, gun held in two hands, arms outstretched. I hear the pistol’s report as I land next to her, have a moment to wonder if I’m going to fall into the line of her bullets. That seems to be the order of the day.

Then I’m firing too.

“Come on Clyde! Come on!”

I let go of my gun with one hand, sacrificing some accuracy to make sure I don’t sacrifice him. The Uhrwerkmänner are too big to miss anyway.

“I’ve got satellite.” Tabitha’s voice is barely discernible over the gunfire, over the grinding of advancing gears. “Uhrwerkmänner in the street too.”

“You know what,” I say, trying to get Clyde to his feet, “wait until you have good news.”

My earpiece crackles again. “Cowa-motherfeckin’-bunga!”

That wasn’t Tabitha.

One of the Uhrwerkmänner is standing before a wide archway that opens onto the hallway, just before the stairs. It tips back its head, lets out a grinding roar. Then a sword juts from its mouth, a blade where its mechanical tongue should be. It spits sparks and metal shards, the roar becoming a clacking stumble of sound. The sword rips sideways. The thing’s jaw sways loose.

Kayla straightens, standing on its shoulders.

“That’s you in your—” she starts.

Then the Uhrwerkmänn backhands her, sends her flying. Advances with its fellows, its ruined head leaking oil that dribbles down its face.

Oh shit. Their anatomy is not ours. They are inhuman. I glance over at Kayla. She has bounced off one robot’s leg, is lying dazed on the floor. But the Uhrwerkmänner are ignoring her, are focused on the rest of us.

The howling Uhrwerkmänn lets out another roar, harsher, half broken, sprays more oil.

Oil.

“Tabitha!” I snap. “Get Clyde a spell that’ll set fire to things.”

I have Clyde on his feet now. I shove him toward the Uhrwerkmänn he felled before we arrived on the scene. I shake him.

“Focus!”

“What? Where?” His voice is slurred.

I point with my pistol at the leaking Uhrwerkmänn. “There.”

Tabitha starts rattling off syllables that make no sense. Clyde blinks several times.

Hannah ducks a blow, rolls back, and I have to jump to avoid her tangling with my feet. She comes up. “Can you get Kayla?” I ask.

Our swordswoman is on her feet but still looking dazed. She stands between two of the menacing Uhrwerkmänner.

Hannah stares at me. “Are you bloody insane?”

I shove Clyde at her. “Then make him work.”

And then I’m launching myself toward the Uhrwerkmänner.

They move faster than they should. Faster than I can react to. I try to throw myself sideways mid-stride, but then I need to be ducking too, and I can’t because my feet are off the floor, and unlike Clyde I am physics’s bitch.

A fist catches my shoulder, a glancing blow that makes me think of irreparable joint damage as I spin through the air like a top. I land, still spinning, grind my tailbone into the ground. I howl, smash into something towering and bronze. It comes up, looking remarkably like a foot.

It comes down, still looking like one.

I roll, desperate. And the rabid dog of panic is loose now. He runs, ripping and howling and biting through my mind. I try to get to my feet, but the foot comes down again.

—
coming down—

I leap forward, roll, awkward, land flat on my back. Bullets raise sparks above my head. And that’s just perfect, even Hannah is trying to kill me now.

I am too deep in my own head to recognize the paranoia even as it taunts me. I want to curl up in a ball. But I can’t. I have to keep moving. That’s why I’m alive so far. Continual movement.

I’m on my feet, running, not sure if I’m screaming or not. And then there’s Kayla, standing right in front of me, her sword swaying in front of her. I swing around her, bounce between a bronze leg and her trim frame.

She rubs her forehead, blinking. “Feck me.”

An Uhrwerkmänn stomps toward us. A full-blooded charge. It raises its arms about to bring them down, double-fisted.

—
coming down—

Now and then collide. Memories of a ruined Scottish bar overlaying the scene before me. I am frozen. I can’t move. I can’t do anything.

No. That was then. Not now.
Then.

I smash Kayla sideways, send her flying. In the corner of my eye I see the fall become an acrobatic tumble, almost a cartwheel, her systems coming online. But I have already disarmed her, have already snatched her sword from her grasp as I sent her sailing. And now I grasp her katana as the fists swing down. I try to use the momentum of our collision to send me back toward the bronze leg.

And I don’t have Kayla’s strength, or her speed, but I do have a little of her skill. Clyde, when he was an artificial intelligence, downloaded an encyclopedia of sword moves into my brain, and Kayla has drilled me until that knowledge is not just in my head, but in my muscles. I keep the blade tucked into me, let one fist slam down, missing me, then I lunge. I thrust the point of the blade deep into the joint, twisting, ripping up as hard as I can.

Without Kayla’s strength I cannot tear metal sheets, cannot split armor, but even in the thin wiggle room I can lever the blade through, I can feel gears crunching, wires snapping. I wrench the blade free and oils spurts wildly about. The Uhrwerkmänn bellows, and as it raises its arms back up, both fists hang loose. I allow myself a brief moment to cheer.

The Uhrwerkmänn kicks me.

It does not kick me in my ribs, or my legs, or even my groin. It kicks me in
all
of me. My entire body is mashed by the pistoning limb that lifts me across the full length of the floor.

Kayla’s sword spins out of my hands. Spittle and most of my sense flies out of my mouth. I almost fly out of my shoes. And then I come down. A crunch and a bang, my mouth snapping open and shut, mashing on my tongue, blood filling my mouth as colored lights fill my vision.

I feel as if I’ve come apart. I am still legs and arms, hands and feet, head and torso, but the order of things no longer makes sense. I am a jigsaw puzzle scattered across the floor, and my head is spinning far too hard for me to have a chance to solve this problem.

If I work out how my stomach and mouth connect, I think I’m going to vomit again.

My vision is the first thing to come back. I kind of wish it hadn’t. An Uhrwerkmänn standing over me. Foot raised.

At least it’s not a fist this time. No flashbacks.

Fuck.

The foot comes down.

And then the foot comes loose.

A line of white fire slices through the limb, smashing through armor sheets, metal buckling under the fury of the impact. It drops to the ground less than a yard short of me, the impact jostling my assorted limbs. The Uhrwerkmänn staggers, stumbles, sits down next to me. Kayla stands where it did, oil-soaked blade in one hand.

She holds the other one out to me. “There,” she says, “that’s how you take off a feckin’ limb.”

I fight for control of my body, find it enough to reach out my hand to her. She grabs it, hauls me to my feet.

“Spending too much of this job knocked on your feckin’ arse,” she says. “Going to end up dead that way.”

I can’t even laugh. I just can’t.

Kayla drags me to the Uhrwerkmänn that Clyde felled before we entered the room. Hannah stands there, shooting with one hand, shaking Clyde with the other. “I can’t focus,” I hear him saying. “Say it one more time.”

“Concentrate, damnit.” Tabitha eschews encouragement in favor of castigation.

“Oh for fuck’s sake.” My voice is thick thanks to my bitten tongue. But I’m done trying to communicate. The room stinks of gasoline. My pistol is still clenched in a death grip in my hand. I point it at an advancing Uhrwerkmänn, dripping black oil from numerous gashes. I aim at its bleeding head. The first three shots go wide, the next two hit armor, raising sparks. The third shot raises enough to do what I’m looking for.

Flame encases the Uhrwerkmänn’s head. It bellows, flailing. Its hemorrhaging arm catches fire, slams into one of its cohorts, forced next to it in the tight confines of the room. Fire rips from one Uhrwerkmänn to the next.

With Kayla still propping me up, I turn to Clyde. “Can you at least blow a hole in that wall?”

He seems to understand me, despite my mangled tongue. At least, he turns, stretches out an arm, and mutters. His arm jolts and bricks spray out into the Oxford street.

“That bloody way!” I am done with this mission. Bloody done.

At least Hannah doesn’t question the order. Or try to shoot me in the legs or something.

We careen over the fallen Uhrwerkmänn. Kayla still half carries me. I have a feeling I’m not going to like it when the adrenaline wears off and I can feel all of this. But for now I let the madness of it all carry me along. If I can just keep moving, find my way back to the status quo.

Brick dust clogs the world, and then a cool breeze is sweeping it away. The world is clear and we are free. We skid to a halt, out in the open Oxford street.

Except, no, not quite open.

“Told you,” comes Tabitha’s voice in my ear. “Street is not a good idea.”

And no. No it was not.

The Uhrwerkmänn is monumental. A literal monument to Joseph Lang’s genius and madness. He stands at least twice as tall as the largest Uhrwerkmänn I have seen before. His head is only a foot or two shy of the windows on the second story of Lang’s house.

While the other Uhrwerkmänner gleam bronze, this mechanical man has been painted a flat black. They reflect the light; he absorbs it. Interlocking plates of armor coat his gargantuan form. Not a single gear is exposed. No weak point. No chink to exploit. His head is low-slung, angular, shaped like a knight’s helmet of old, a dark narrow slit for his eyes. The armor on his shoulders and chest is worked in fancifully decorative scenes depicting armies marching, tanks rolling, and enemies being crushed to a thick meaty paste. In the center of his chest, a large circular disk bears the likeness of an eagle, its mouth open in a scream. In its claws it grasps a swastika.

This is it. Lang’s
Meisterwerk
.

“He’s Friedrich, isn’t he?” I say.

“I’d guess so,” Clyde says. He seems to be recovering himself.

“Fuck me,” I hear Hannah whisper. “This job is bloody mental.”

That realization, I feel, marks the end of Hannah’s orientation period. She gets what the job’s about now.

“Oh buggeration,” says Clyde. Which is when I notice that one of Friedrich’s feet is planted on top of Clyde’s Mini. It no longer resembles a car so much as it resembles the sort of mechanical pancake Joseph Lang might have made if he’d been of a more culinary bent.

“All right,” I say. “We need to get to Hannah’s Renault, and then we need to drive away very fast.”

As plans go, I am pleased with the fact that it gets everything into one sentence. The only potential flaw is that it ignores the issue that Friedrich is between us and the car.

Behind us, I hear bricks collapse, heavy mechanical footsteps. The other Uhrwerkmänner have not stopped their pursuit just because we have left the building. We are caught between the metaphorical rock and death-dealing automaton.

“Any suggestions on how the feck we’re going to do that?” asks Kayla.

I put my finger to my ear. “Tabitha, find Clyde the biggest spell we have in the database and make it goddamn rain.”

There is a pause, and then a malevolent cackle.

Behind us the footsteps grow louder. Before us, Friedrich spreads his arms. “Welcome, little ones,” he booms, accent so thick that I can barely make out the words.

“Two car batteries,” Tabitha’s voice cuts in. “Got access to them?”

I scan the street fast. Clyde’s car is totaled, and if we take the one out of Hannah’s then our escape plan is buggered. But the Uhrwerkmänner did come here in three large trucks, also parked down the street.

“Maybe,” I venture.

“Wait,” says Clyde, “you’re not thinking about the Viennese Pike are you?”

Again the malevolent chuckle.

Hannah has her gun out again, is pointing it behind us at the encroaching machines. Before us, Friedrich’s bulk blocks the street.

“Would you deny us life, little ones?” asks Friedrich. I think he’s trying to croon, but the syllables are too harsh, tearing through any pretense of softness.

“Remember how I said I never wanted to try that due to the high likelihood that I would fry my liver inside my body? Which, while it sounds academically interesting, and as if it would make for a fascinating autopsy, is less the sort of thing I’d like to do to myself on a Wednesday morning,” Clyde continues.