Natasha Popova stepped down from the mech and surveyed the battlefield. She signaled to the rider to move on. Two Russian mechs were crouched behind a shattered bunker, both survivors from one of the destroyed airships.
Natasha made her way over. One of the riders, a captain, stepped up to meet her with a salute. Natasha didn't return it. “No salutes on the battlefield, Captain. What’s the situation here?”
“We have six mechs still operational, ma’am. We’ve broken their line, but these golems just don’t know when they’re beaten.” She gestured at the convoy of burning vehicles to the south, then pointed out some damaged bunkers to the north. "They don't retreat, and they keep popping out of their bunkers behind us if we don't root each one out."
The woman had been pale and shaky when Natasha first arrived, but gained confidence as she spoke, apparently relieved to have a superior officer to take charge.
"Where is the colonel?" Natasha asked.
The captain shook her head. "He didn't make it off the airship, ma'am."
"Have you seen a strange mech, one with no rider?"
"An antique French mech?" the captain asked.
Natasha nodded.
"It came through a few minutes ago." The captain turned and climbed the rubble on the side of the bunker. Natasha followed. She was taller than the other woman and was able to get a look over her shoulder as she pointed to the east.
"There!"
The mech was crouched a couple hundred yards to the east. It seemed to be throwing handfuls of soil in the air.
"What's it doing?"
"Digging, ma’am," the woman said, and then hesitated. "I think. Its behavior is strange. Where's its rider?"
Natasha shook her head. "Now that's a long story."
"We were pushing up a few minutes ago when some reinforcements came out of the ground over there."
One of the Russian mechs, hiding behind the bunker, rose up and lifted its cannon to point off to the east. Natasha and the captain both quickly plugged their ears. The mech fired two shots from its autocannon before dropping back down.
Natasha’s ears still rang as the captain returned to the conversation. "I have a wing of mechs cleaning up the convoy to the south. My other wing was flanking north through the bunkers, but they've taken losses and retreated back here."
Natasha craned her neck and looked north. Several smoke columns rose from points in that direction, but she couldn't make out what they were coming from.
Natasha moved forward and climbed up on the rubble to get another look at the strange golem—Eva's golem. This time she pulled out her field glasses and studied it. It did seem to be digging in the ground.
"You said the reinforcements came from that direction?"
"Yes, ma'am."
"Did they come out of the ground? From hidden entrances or tunnels?"
"I don't know, ma'am. Maybe. They seemed to appear out of nowhere. They didn't march all the way down from the fortress. We would have seen them."
The concrete citadel itself stood several hundred yards farther away—close enough that underground passages could easily reach this point, and far enough that anyone coming out of it heading across the valley should have been spotted.
"Right,” Natasha said, stepping off the rubble pile. She had seen enough. “We’re going to move up and secure the area where that mech is.”
The captain frowned. It was easy to read her face. She knew that would be an exposed position, but didn't want to question a superior officer. It was both a blessing and a curse that the Russian army stamped that out so thoroughly. Sometimes Natasha longed for competent underlings. Other times, like now, the value of obedience was primary.
"My mechs will move in and we'll set up a perimeter," Natasha said. "If that is an open area, we'll have to secure it. If that is an entrance, I'm going in.
The eight remaining Russian mechs rallied at her signal as they moved forward together toward Eva's mech, which was still digging, sending great gouts of dirt skyward as it shoveled with its arms like an enormous metal dog burying a bone. Pillboxes, which they had thought destroyed earlier, opened fire, and the mech riders were forced to shield themselves until autocannons could be brought to bear.
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Natasha dispatched a pair of mechs to make sure the bunker was disabled. They moved forward in a pair, a shielder and a flanker. The shielder kept the machine gun fire off both of them until they got to point-blank range, and then the flanker cracked the bunker open with several well-aimed shots. Concrete chunks flew into the air as fire belched out and the bunker split apart.
Natasha smiled in satisfaction and turned to see what Eva's mech had been up to. As she did, a flicker of movement caught her eye. While the strange archaic mech was indeed digging at a hidden hatch, it was apparently not the only secret tunnel in the area. Fifty yards away, a hatch covered in grass swung up from the ground, revealing a dark opening from which golems poured. There were four, six, and then a dozen of them, all of them armed with heavy weapons, machine guns, or even autocannons.
Natasha swore. Mechs were not heavily armored. They relied on good tactics and shielding magic to ward off heavy weapons fire. Only the strongest shielders could absorb very many shots from a cannon or a sustained machine gun burst, and it was up to sound tactics to keep a group of mech riders from coming under sustained machine gun or cannon fire. They relied on speed and good flanking maneuvers to prevent that from happening. The sudden appearance of man-sized soldiers with such heavy weaponry was a severe threat, as bad as if an entire squadron of mechs had suddenly risen from the ground.
To make it worse, the golems seemed barely encumbered by their weaponry. They charged forward and spread out as they moved faster than the mechs could react. When they opened fire, their focus was the two mechs she had detached to take out the bunker. Bursts of machine gun fire poured in from all angles as the shielder desperately tried to keep the pair safe. The flanker got off several shots of her cannon, sending up plumes of dirt and grass and knocking golems flying.
The detonations would have killed ordinary men, but it remained to be seen whether these golems were rendered combat ineffective. “Pick them off one at a time!” Natasha ordered the riders still with her. She carried only a sidearm, ineffective at this range. The captain snapped orders to her remaining mechs.
Long before the bodies hit the ground, the shielding mech rider was overwhelmed by the other golems. Machine gun bullets rang off the mech's armor, denting it and, in places, punching through. The shielder ducked down between the shoulder blades of her mech to get a more covered position, but the damage was too much. Her mech fell over on its face, exposing her to enemy fire, and she was cut down. The cannon-armed mech had already taken off running back toward the main Russian mech force, the golems loping to keep up.
The units near Natasha were firing on the golems. They scored some hits, but the running figures proved hard to hit. Their machine gun fire continued, spraying over her group and the running mech in bursts from all across the golem line.
Some of the golems dropped down into the grass and provided sustained fire, while others continued moving forward, zigzagging as they ran and firing short bursts. Here and there, golems dropped to the ground to reload, and others were hit by Russian return fire. The volume of fire from the golems slacked but did not cease.
It was devastating tactics, not what she’d ever seen from golem before, but then, who could afford to field a golem army? The brutes were expensive, and better used in support roles. She wasn’t even aware that they had such advanced tactics available to them. Hell, these fought better than the average Russian infantryman. Not a very high bar to pass, perhaps, in a land where quantity had always trumped quality.
The running mech was almost back to Natasha's force when two golems, both armed with cannons, stood to get a clear shot. Natasha felt a ripple of magic as a shielder from the main force tried to extend her magic far enough, but the running mech was still out of reach. A cannon round hit its knee and another struck its shoulder, blasting a huge chunk out of the armor and leaving the right arm dangling by mangled actuators. The pilot must have been hit by flying shrapnel because she sagged on her grips. The whole mech staggered. The hit to its leg had only been a glancing blow, but still it stumbled, and a moment later another volley of cannon shots ripped it to pieces.
Natasha was already shouting orders. “Form up, on me! Over here!” She got her mechs into a tight formation near the hatch that Eva's mech was excavating. The antique golem had finished digging around the panel and was now trying to pry the hatch up. It roared as it struggled to gain leverage. Once again, Natasha was struck by just how bizarre the machine was.
She stayed low, keeping one of her mech units between herself and the golem force. The Russian units kept up a steady stream of fire, but the golems had become almost impossible to hit, popping up from the grass for short bursts and then disappearing with frustrating speed.
They were outnumbered and outgunned. Staying out in the open was suicide. The captain was shouting orders, but Natasha couldn’t hear them over the noise of battle. Somewhere, a girl was sobbing with pain. Natasha could do nothing. She had no mech, no istota, and a handgun that hit the golems about as hard as a pat on the face.
A mech off to Natasha's right exploded as a cannon round struck its shoulders and head. The rider went tumbling back with a scream, her body torn open. The golem was nowhere to be seen. The Russian mechs shifted, redeploying to bring another to fill her place. Natasha was suddenly concerned about how thin they were spread, with everyone's focus on the golem attack from the north. She lifted herself slightly and checked in the other direction. Was that a flicker of movement? Her heart seized as she confirmed her suspicions. Another group of golems was sneaking up on them from the south.
She yelled a warning, but it was too late. A wave of fire tore into the Russian line from behind. Some of the mech riders were hit, but others turned and got shields up to stop the incoming fire. At that same moment, the golems from the north rose up en-masse and charged. They were being overrun.
Natasha looked around desperately. Eva's mech had gotten the panel pulled up, the door coming to about waist height on the old-fashioned mech. Even as she saw it, the mech was ducking under the lip of the hatch and crawling through. Natasha broke out into a run and dove through the opening after it. Ahead in the darkness, metal scraped on concrete. Behind her, the light faded as a hiss of hydraulic pistons lowered the hatch, closing again with a thud.