I jumped down out of the window and landed in the courtyard, 4 meters feet out and 3 down. Tamara jerked back, startled. Veronica looked me over, her face sullen. Her whole body was wilted, her expression downcast. What had happened to her mech clearly had hit her hard.

"Did you get taller?” Tamara asked. “You look different."

I smiled. "Would you believe it? I actually got a new body."

Her eyes widened, and she looked at me askance. "A new body. You're kidding. From Frankenstein? How can we be sure..." She trailed off, suspicion and a hint of fear flashing in her eyes.

"Don't worry, it's still me. I'm still the same old rogue golem that thinks he's a reincarnated sergeant."

She opened her mouth and then closed it again, her expression still full of questions and confusion.

"I'll explain more when we get the chance, but I think we need to get out of here." I looked around. "Where are the others?"

Tamara shook her head. "We split up when we got into the castle. Hannah and Angelica went down, towards the dungeons."

I frowned. "Do we need to go in after them?"

Veronica spoke for the first time as she shook her head. She sounded weak and tired. "No, they're not in the basements anymore."

"How do you know?" I asked.

Veronica shrugged, an I-don’t-care-if-you-believe-me sort of futile gesture. “I felt their mechs wake up and leave. They went out the front entrance a few minutes ago and headed around the castle to the east."

I guessed that made sense, although I hadn't known she was able to sense other mechs like that. But I still really had no idea how Hussar magic worked. Fortunately, accepting shit that doesn’t make sense was part of being a sergeant.

Tamara looked relieved. "Then we need to go find them." She glanced at her mech. "I could probably carry you, but it won't be comfortable."

"I left a gunship up on the roof. If you can just give us a lift up there, I think I can get it running."

“A gunship?” Tamara grinned and shook her head as she looked up. “That sounds like a story for later. I can get you up there, but you owe me the tale over a beer if we ever get out of this place.”

“Deal.”

She stepped over to her mech and clambered up before calling down. "Climb on."

Veronica and I hung from handholds on the side of Tamara's mech as she lifted it over the battlements to where I had left the gunship parked.

Inside, it was scarred by lightning, but it otherwise looked functional. The two big side compartments were configured with collapsible chairs along the walls for troop deployment. With them folded up, there was enough space to stow a mech curled into a ball, which Tamara did with practiced ease.

I took her up to the cockpit and showed her the control layout so she could act as my co-pilot. The desh flight and propulsion controls were similar enough to a flying mech that she picked them up immediately, chattering excitedly about trim and lift.

I was still pointing out the indicators when the entire world shook. We were parked on a wide-open space high on the battlements, next to where I had encountered Frankenstein. There was only one tier of castle above us, which I knew contained his private offices and cloning machine. The wall of this castle tier was next to us, the armored shutters still closed except for the place where I had forced an entrance earlier.

The whole section of the castle shifted and shook. At first, I thought it was an earthquake or that the structure of the fortress was coming apart. Typical megalomaniac move, to have a self-destruct button on your evil fortress.

I was half right. The entire section of the castle started to lift. Tamara and I sat and gaped as the upper tier of the stepped ziggurat that was the fortress simply lifted up and started to fly away from us. As it cleared the battlements, we could see desh-powered luff engines set into the base of the upper structure. The entire top of the castle was a flying machine.

"It's Frankenstein!" Tamara gasped. "He's getting away!"

Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.

I realized she was right. This was Frankenstein's escape pod. As bizarre as it seemed, he was going to fly away with the entire top of his citadel.

"We have to stop him!" I muttered, but that wasn't really true. We had done what we set out to do, or at least I hoped that Angelica had rescued Eva. Still, the idea of that psychotic madman escaping to wreak more havoc on the world and unleash more nightmares infuriated me.

The castle fragment was already 10 meters above us and lifting rapidly. I moved to the engineer station and threw the switches that would activate the luff engines.

"Let's get up there," I told Tamara. "You're going to drop me on the top of that thing so I can end this."

“Shouldn’t we just try to get away?” Veronica asked from behind us. She was sitting at the flight engineers station, huddled in on herself. Tamara and I didn’t answer.

Tamara was an instinctive pilot. She effortlessly matched our climb in the abused Russian gunship to that of Frankenstein’s flying citadel.

From the air, his escape plan looked even more absurd. It was a big square chunk of castle, complete with crenellations and guard towers at every corner. And it was flying through the air. Tamara swung alongside, matched the steady climb of the fortress fragment, and then swung our gunship to bring the cargo hatch over the roof of the fortress.

I jumped.

It was slightly under a four-meter drop to the roof of the fortress, and I landed easily, instantly regretting the stupidity of my plan. I was starting to lose track of how many times I had charged straight into the teeth of danger without due consideration. How was I going to get off of this thing? Well, first things first. It was time to go put an end to a mad scientist.

Tamara veered off, and flew the gunship away, as I looked around. The roof was a featureless slab of reinforced concrete. It swayed like the deck of a ship as the building rose into the air. It also didn't have any doors or skylights. The stubby towers at all the corners had doors which were sealed shut slabs of steel.

Oops. But there was a way I knew I could get in, through the hole I'd made last time. All I had to do was lower myself over the edge of the parapet until I could get finger and toe holds on the armored slats and then work my way through the hole I had left in the window. It was a terrible plan, so that's what I did.

The crazy thing about being an artificial man with muscles of a world champion bodybuilder and the reflexes of an Olympic gymnast was it gave you an undue feeling of invincibility that would make you consider courses of action that would normally be absolutely ridiculous. But the cool thing about being me was being able to make it work.

I slipped over the edge of the roof, hung from the crenellations, and then worked my way down with fingertips jammed in cracks as I dangled from the side of the flying structure and made my way to the hole in the armored window. A moment later, I was inside.

I made my way through the small room adjacent to the armored shutters, then stopped at the door of Frankenstein's inner sanctum to do something that I should have done before. I checked my weaponry, swapping mostly empty magazines for full ones and topped off what I could. I ended up with two 1911s with full magazines, and another magazine and a half of ammunition, plus my combat knife.

After taking stock, I tried the door. It swung under my touch.

"Come in, come in," Frankenstein called. "I was half expecting you."

He was on the other end of his room behind the big wooden desk. He had a radio earpiece pressed to his ear.

"You're just in time for me to witness me undoing the rest of your plans."

"My plans?" I asked mildly. I hadn't drawn my gun yet as I took stock of the room. The smell of burning cloth and flesh was the thing that struck me first. The next thing was what I could only describe as a lightning pistol.

Now I know any sane person would tell me such a thing is impossible. But the gleaming silver handgun on his desk had the distinctive ball and rings of the lightning cannons that I had dealt with earlier. But what really clued me in, apart from its looks, were the smoking bodies of two ninjas laying on the floor in front of me.

I couldn't help but stare when I noticed them. They were tiny, like children, but proportioned like Oompa Loompas, or whatever the politically correct term for dwarfism was these days. They were dressed head-to-toe in black, and the straight-bladed ninja katanas laying on the floor next to them made there be no doubt what they were.

"I'm sorry, did you already have guests? I didn't mean to interrupt.”

Frankenstein shook his head but kept listening to the headset. "No, no, I'm through with them."

One of them was still moving, but I didn't point this out to Frankenstein. From his vantage point past the desk, with the sofa and coffee table in the sitting area between, there was no way he could see the bodies sprawled on the floor. One lay completely still, but the other one was still twitching. I could hear rasping breath from the sprawled form.

"You'll pardon me if I don't stand.” Frankenstein said. “I was just taking care of destroying the last of your pathetic allies’ feeble attempts on my secrets."

"My allies?" For a second I felt panic. Did that mean he had cornered the Polish Hussars? I tried not to let emotion show up on my face even though he wasn't looking at me.

"The Russians are sending more Zeppelins through the pass. Their overconfidence will be their undoing."

This man sure did love to hear himself talk, and everything he said made him sound like a classic storybook villain. It was more than a little ridiculous. If I knew my supervillain tropes, all I had to do was keep him talking, and he’d give me an opportunity. Since he’d already recovered from my killing him once, I wanted to make sure it worked this time.

"Ah," I said in a non-committal tone, "so they're doomed, are they?"

"But of course," Frankenstein turned his head to look at me, keeping the speaker of the headset to his ear. "As soon as I give the word, their Zeppelins will be destroyed by storms of lightning. Are you here to beg for your allies' lives? Because if so, I'll listen."

"No, no, I hate those assholes," I waved a dismissive hand in the air. "Let'em have it."

Frankenstein looked at me for a long moment, a puzzled smile playing across his face. And then he lifted a microphone to his lips.

"Turn up the generators," he said in his imperious tones. "Engage the coils!”