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

Angelica sat in a cramped wooden tube deep in the bowels of the Russian bomber. The roar of the engines rattled her teeth. If she hunched forward on the uncomfortable cloth chair, she could just peek out of the tiny window in the fuselage beside her. It was dark, and she could only see the next bomber in the formation by the occasional glint of starlight off glass or metal.

The hatch below her in the floor also had a little window. Below, almost directly against the glass, was the armored back of her mech, slung below the bomber. She resisted the urge to reach for it. She could feel it there. The airplane's vibration shook herself and her mech and sent her nerves jangling from two sources.

The interior of the aircraft was hollow. As she looked behind her in the dark, crisscrossing beams of wood and wire stretched away to the tail. The radio operator was perched on his own tiny bench, hunched over his set. He looked up, one hand pressed to his earphones.

"Fun ride, isn't it?" the man quipped.

Angelica just glared at him. She shifted uncomfortably and felt the straps of the parachute on her back dug into her shoulders and thighs. With the man sitting right a few feet away, she resisted the urge to reach down and adjust the straps around her thighs. She glanced out the window again and caught a glimpse the bomber flying in formation to their left. Tamara's mech was slung underneath.

What had Angelica gotten her team into? Veronica was no doubt relieved to be flying back towards her own country. Angelica herself was relieved that her gamble on going to the Russians had paid off. Well, maybe not paid off, but at least they weren't in irons, waiting for execution by a Russian firing squad. Everything had happened so fast, and Angelica had barely had time to regret her decision to trust the Widow before they were on their way back toward allied lands. Even if they were occupied by hostile forces.

What did it all mean? Her homeland was still fighting for its very existence from the Russian invasion. Last she heard, there was a risk of Prussia joining in. She was hundreds of miles from home, fighting the enemy of an enemy, to save someone she had met along the way. Did Eva even count as a Polish?

It didn't matter. She was a part of Angelica's team.

She could justify all this by her orders, which had been to support the Hungarian defense of their country in whatever way possible. Colonel Mazur had ordered them to the front as a a gesture of goodwill, and hopefully to fend off the Russian attack. Anything they could do to keep Hungary secure would allow the Hungarians to come to the aid of Poland against their mutual Russian foe. Now she was helping Russia to defeat somebody who was a resident of Hungary? It seemed insane.

But they knew from intercepted radio communication that Frankenstein had attacked numerous Hungarian forces in the area. He was carving out a country for himself in Greater Transylvania. The man was audacious enough to think he could fend off both the Russians and the Hungarians. Whether he could do it or not didn't matter to Angelica. She was here to save her friend. The fact that doing so would help the Hungarians meant it was well within her orders to do so.

She pushed the doubt and fear from her mind. Now was the time to focus on the mission at hand. They would find Eva and deal a crippling blow to Frankenstein. After that, they would just have to play things by ear.

She knew the Russians could not be trusted. General Morozov would betray them as soon as it was convenient. While she thought she understood the Red Widow's motives, Angelica didn't trust her either. They would have to watch their backs from their so-called allies even as they were fighting Frankenstein and whatever tricks he still had to reveal.

The radio operator turned to her and yelled to be overheard over the engines. "The pilot says there's plumes of dust and smoke ahead. He says phase one looks good."

Angelica nodded.

"The phase two force says they're on the ground,” The man continued. "Airship Glory of Novgorod landed on the east side of the ridge."

Angelica frowned. That wasn't the plan. The airship was supposed to land on the west side of the bridge. Why had they changed their landing point?

Was Sergeant Golem okay? His force might have taken out the gun emplacements, but that didn't mean he had survived. She couldn't worry about that now. She had to focus on her own objective. Did the airship's new landing location matter to her team?

She tried to think; the briefing had not included this contingency. She didn't think it mattered. They were going to drop at the power station and destroy it. That would be a necessary step for any assault. If the overall attack wasn't called off, then they needed to proceed as planned. Hopefully, the Widow's forces with the airship would still be able to continue Phase 2, their assault into the valley. Otherwise, Angelica's secondary objective would be difficult, if not suicidal.

After the power plant, her team was supposed to continue with an assault on the main fortress. If they were doing it alone, they were as good as dead. The Widow's force was supposed to assault across the valley from the east to put pressure on the fortress while a force of gunships made a direct attack on the battlements.

If everything happened as planned, Angelica's team would be just one piece of a three-pronged attack. Alone, they would be plunging headfirst into a meat grinder. She would have to cross that bridge after they assaulted the power station.

The general's plan of attack was overly complicated and did not address things that could go wrong. The fear and worry were coming back. She had to focus.

“Coming up on the drop zone, ma'am. You'd better get ready." He pointed to the hatch in the floor. Now Angelica's fear transformed into something much more real and terrifying. The radio operator reminded her where to attach her parachute ripcord. Was she really about to jump out of a perfectly good airplane?

The cord was a strap attached to the back of her parachute, low down. When pulled, it would yank out the chute, or rather, some smaller chute that was supposed to yank out the bigger chute. She hadn't understood the whole description of how this thing worked. The cord was attached to a sturdy loop of metal on one side of the fuselage near her feet. Angelica was supposed to drop through the hole, and the cord attached to the plane would yank her chute out before she had dropped very far. The entire concept was utterly terrifying.

What was she supposed to do if the cord had become unattached? What if it broke without her chute coming out? What if the parachute tangled or tore? Her briefing had been short and extremely vague. Someone had mentioned a reserve chute, but no one had explained what that was or how to use it.

"They're coming!" the radio man shouted over the roar of the engines.

"What?" she yelled back.

Somewhere above her, a machine gun clattered to life, and then another, adding its staccato to the deafening cacophony. Angelica hunched forward and peered out of her little window. The bomber to their left was flying behind and to their side, but from this angle, she couldn't see much. The nose hatch of the aircraft opened, and the head of a gunner poked out. The long snout of his machine gun swiveled, and she saw puffs of smoke as it opened fire. It was shooting upward. What was attacking them?

In her briefing, they had mentioned Frankenstein had an aerodrome at the south end of the valley. They had not been sure whether or not he had any pursuit aircraft there. Now they had their answer.

When she had been a little girl in her rural village, the kids had often played down by the river. The boys would throw rocks at an old barn. The sound of them hitting made the old barn boom like a drum. Now, the airplane’s fuselage rang with the sound like a hundred rocks rattling off it in rapid succession.

The radio man cried out. Angelica looked, thinking he was going to say something, but the man's mouth opened and closed soundlessly, and then he slumped over his radio set. That was when she saw the stain spreading on his back and the tear in his flying jacket. Light shone through holes in the side of the plane, all down the length of it. Angelica realized there was a hole less than a foot from her head and another one on the opposite side where the bullet had gone completely through.

The plane lurched in the air. Had the pilots been hit? Were the engines damaged? She had to get out of here. The aircraft lurched again, shoving her upward. Light flared at the window between her feet. Angelica glanced down and realized with horror that her mech was gone. It had dropped early. Or was now the time?

She didn't know. But what she did know was what they had told her in the briefing: if she didn't jump the moment her mech was dropped, she could land hundreds of yards or even miles from her charger. She had to go now.

Angelica yanked at her lap belt. Panic gripped her as her first tug failed to release it., then it came away. She leaned over and grabbed for the handle in the floor. She lifted and twisted. The latch stuck. In a panic, she reached for her magic. The latch broke under her hand, but the hatch came open. As it yawned wide, revealing the ground impossibly far below, panic clutched at her heart. Beyond the panic was something else: the fear of her mech falling away into nothing far below, gone forever, and the fear of the unknown foes swooping in, machine guns flashing.

Angelica stuck both of her feet through the hole and shoved off the chair, falling into the void. The lip of the hatch caught her chute and sent her tumbling; her head banged into the other side of the opening, but her leather helmet took the brunt of it. Then she was in open air, tumbling and falling for what seemed an eternity.

The chute didn't open. She was going to fall forever. She was going to hit the ground and make a crater. Just as she was absolutely certain that she was going to die, the hand of a giant grabbed the back of her jacket and yanked. The force of it slammed through her shoulders and into her thighs, jarring her to her bones. She hung there, suspended from her harness, as realization slowly dawned.

Her chute had opened. She looked up, and a dome of white rippled in the breeze above her. Then she looked down, and her fear returned. She was impossibly high and still falling terrifyingly fast. Far above, she saw the cross outlines of the bombers rapidly fading away. The ground below loomed. She looked around. Where was her mech? There was no sign of it at first. Then she caught a flicker of white moving across the land far below. Its chute was open, and it was drifting to the ground what seemed like miles below and behind her, but couldn't possibly be that far.

The harness holding her up was strong and stable, and despite the dizzying height, she started to calm down. She turned her attention to the valley stretched out below her. Frankenstein's fortress was huge. It felt like she was coming down right on top of it, but as she studied the situation, she realized that wasn't the case. They were coming down to the north of the fortress and east, almost in the center of the valley. They would be well short of their objective and have to cross open land to get there.

To the eat the valley was a flaming hell. The burning wrecks of zeppelins raged. Other plumes of smoke rose from several points. The Russian assault was in shambles.

Angelica looked up, searching for the other bombers or any sign of her compatriots. She spotted one parachute and then another, both high above. Was one of them the smaller chute of a Hussar, or was it just much farther away? The larger one was definitely a mech. The form suspended underneath the white chute was big enough for her to make out. Its arms and legs were hunched together.

With the shock of memory, she realized her mech looked exactly the same. She couldn't let it land like that. She looked below again as she reached through her bond. Her mech was there, still crouched in the position it had been when slung underneath the bomber. The big parachute below her blocked her vision of it, but she could feel its posture through the bond. She strengthened her bond and commanded it to straighten out. Its legs didn't want to move, and she remembered the straps wrapped around it, holding it tight. The Russians really hadn't thought this through. Those straps should have separated when the mech was dropped. A big robot hitting the ground curled into a ball risked damage, he same as a human doing the same thing. It needed to land on its feet.

She pushed harder and felt the strap break and the legs straighten. The mech was hunched forward. Its parachute was attached to its back in such a way that its torso was horizontal, instead of having its whole body upright like she herself was dangling from her harness. She got her mech's arms and legs extended, joints bent ready to absorb an impact. She thought about reaching up to grab the parachute harness and try to adjust its angle, but she didn't dare risk snapping something and having her mech fall free, plummeting to its demise.

She peered down, trying to judge how far her machine was from the ground. It was getting close. She bent the arms and legs a little bit more, not wanting to risk the joints being shattered by the impact with the ground. With the limbs bent at generous angles but extended below, she stiffened everything.

Her mech slammed into the ground, first its feet and then its hands, tumbling forward and falling onto its side. The sensations dizzied Angelica, and it took her a moment to get her bearings. She deepened her bond to make her machine stand, just as the straps of its chute pulled tight and started to drag it backwards across the ground.

In a panic, she rolled over, reaching for the straps. With her bond so deep, she could see through its eyes. She grabbed the chute strap again. It was twisted around the body, but she managed to get her hand around it and tried to pull it free. The strap slipped between its fingers. Finally, she was able to twist her hand around the strap, getting enough purchase to yank and break the cable. The chute caught by the wind partially deflated, and the force yanking on her mech slackened. Finally, she was able to get up on her hands and knees and turn her attention to the second chute.

The risk of deepening a Hussar's bond was to get caught up in the sensations from the charger's body. Angelica realized she'd been linked too deeply for too long and yanked her awareness back as the ground rushed up to meet her. She barely remembered to bend her own legs slightly before the ground slammed into her.

Her legs collapsed like noodles, and she hit heavily, crumpling forward and then onto her side. Her bones and muscles screamed from the impact, and her breath was knocked out. As she tried to breathe, a little voice was screaming in her head. "Get up before the chute starts to drag you!"

She struggled over, limbs protesting, and tried to grab for the parachute. What had they said about gathering it up? She couldn't remember. She grabbed one of the cords and yanked on it desperately. Despite the wind fighting against her, she was able to pull it in. She remembered they had told her something like she needed to collapse the chute and get the wind out of it. Angelica continued hauling on the cord up past the point where it broke off into many lines. She gathered them in her hands and pulled them towards her. The bell of the chute collapsed as the wind spilled out of it.

She was down.

But where was she? And where were the others?