The Phaeton turned a corner on the bumpy road, probably too fast, the back wheels skidding out behind us. Ahead was a long straight stretch, and in the distance, floodlights and motion. A long siren sounded.
"Stop, stop," Tsar Alexander said. “Stop the car. Now.”
Colonel Mazur braked the car to a screeching halt. I peered down the road to get a better look. There was definitely some kind of checkpoint up ahead. I could see soldiers moving about, backlit by the lamps at their post. Mazur killed the headlights. I couldn't tell if we'd been seen, but no shots rang out.
"What is it?" the colonel asked.
"That alarm means they're raising the drawbridge over the canal. We are trapped. They'll be raising all the bridges and sending out patrols. I had hoped, perhaps, that the Admiral would have come to his senses, but it seems he and my beloved wife are committed to their treason."
"You mean all the bridges around the entire canal perimeter will be raised?" Mazur asked. I didn’t know the landscape; it was news to me there was more than one bridge.
The Tsar nodded. "That's the protocol. I've only seen it done twice before. Once all the bridges are up, the estate grounds and the surrounding couple of miles become an island. The Admiral is… hmm, I would say paranoid but this is Russia. He is sensible of his own safety."
Piotr leaned forward, "Can we swim across?"
I was pretty sure golem bodies could swim, but I hadn’t tried it. I had a sudden fear – what if my built-in programming conflicted with my own old memories again? The moment or two it took to integrate my knowledge and skills could be fatal. I didn’t like the idea.
The Tsar was shaking his head. "No… There are things in the water." His tone conveyed disgust and more than a little fear.
Mazur threw the car in gear and started turning us around. "We'll have to link up with the mechs and have them ferry us across." He executed a clean three-point turn. As Mazur got the car completely turned around, he added, "We have to get out of here before they bring up enough troops to sweep this whole place. Let’s hope they have to row them over one boat at a time."
Tsar Alexander’s tone was dry. “Knowing the Admiral, he'll just bring out his pocket battleship and march it around until he finds us.”
Everyone in the car turned to stare at him.
“March?”
Angelica and Hannah's diversionary attack was going smashingly. They had broken into the perimeter around the shipyard on the far side of the island from the estate. They came from the inland side, where there were only token defenses that amounted to little more than a fence line and guard shacks. Alarms blared, soldiers ran about, but they didn’t do more than make a lot of noise. Between Hannah’s shields and Angelica’s skillful command of her mech, they plowed through the defenses like they weren’t even there.
Angelica checked her chronometer. "That's time," she called to Hannah. “We need to retreat if we’re going to make the rendezvous.”
"Just a little more," the other girl shouted. There was an uncharacteristic tone of glee and bloodlust in her voice. As they had made their way to the attack, Angelica had asked Hannah if anything was wrong. Her longtime compatriot had not been herself since…
Angelica frowned. How long had it been? Sometime after the mountains? Or did it go farther back than that? Back to Rezcow? War did strange things to people, and Hannah had always been a tender soul. But this transformation into a bloodthirsty killing machine was not what she would have expected from shell-shock. She had seen girls fall apart so many different ways. One might retreat into herself until you found her huddled in her bunk, arms around her knees, rocking and whispering to herself. Another would be wild, slipping out of the barracks to party and carouse with the infantrymen, until she got caught or pregnant. Angelica remembered her predecessor, Captain Elizabeta. She had prayed after every battle for the souls of the men she killed and the girls she led to her death. Angelica wished she’d thought to pray for Elizabeta herself after the battle of Rezkow, but there had been so much to do, and she’d forgotten about it afterward.
Hannah’s autocannon roared. A heartbeat later, a large storage tank four hundred yards away erupted into a fireball.
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"Ha ha! I nailed it!" Hannah cried.
"Very nice, now let's get out of here!"
"Oh, all right!" Hannah sounded genuinely disappointed to break off the carnage.
A bullet ricocheted off the armor of Angelica's mech. She remained crouched, clinging to the back hand and footholds to keep out of the line of fire from any defenders. Hannah was standing on the shoulder of her mech. She waved a casual hand to summon a rippling shield which caught several bullets.
The light of burning oil tanks and warehouses lit her face with an evil light.
"Oh no you don't!" she said just barely loud enough for Angelica to hear. Her mech shifted its aim and sent a round down the long loading dock area towards the enemy position. A parked lorry blew apart, sending bodies and flaming debris into the air and running soldiers scurrying in all directions.
Hannah laughed again.
Angelica started marching her mech backwards to keep it between her and more shipyard defenders.
“Come on Hannah, let’s go! That’s an order!”
Reluctantly, her friend turned her mech and started after her. The ground trembled. Angelica almost missed it over the thudding steps of her mech and the roar of fires in the area. A moment later, it trembled again.
Hannah's head was up as she searched the area like a dog trying to catch a scent. "What’s that?"
"I don't know," Angelica said, "but I don't want to wait around and find out. We're done here." She turned her mech completely away from the flames and picked up speed, heading away from the destruction they had wrought. As she did, she climbed up onto the shoulder herself. It was no more exposed than being in the middle of the robot's back, and incoming rifle fire was likely to be aimed for the center of mass. She kept low as the machine picked up speed, keeping herself locked to the mech with handholds and an istota lashing through her boots, locking her onto the shoulder of the robot as surely as if she had been riveted in place.
She passed through the hole they had made in the perimeter fence on the way in, and then turned back. Hannah was right behind her. In the distance, above the flickering flames of burning buildings, something moved.
"What in the name of all that's holy is that?" At first, she thought it was an antenna or a crane toppling over, but while the spiky structure wavered, it didn't fall. Instead, it moved with a peculiar up-down motion. She watched as it repeated two more times. The timing of the motion was similar to the tremors she was still feeling through the earth.
Something was walking. Something huge.
"I think we need to move faster."
"Uh, yeah," Hannah agreed.
Both women turned their mechs and took off running into the dark.
Eva and Tamara were having fun staging a mock battle. They had started their distraction with Eva's mech stomping up to a guard shack and smashing through it. It proceeded to rampage around the area, roaring and breaking things but avoiding killing the guards. The mech gave them time to scurry off and summon help. Tamara wasn’t sure if Eva had to work to keep it from going after them or if it liked playing with its prey.
Soon, a truckload of more soldiers arrived. They kept taking potshots at the mech, but their weapons were unable to penetrate it. It seemed almost gleeful as the bullets spanged off its chest.
When the squad pulled a machine gun out of the truck, Eva’s mech had stomped over and broken them up, crushing the weapon and sending them scattering. Then it went back to its rampage by crushing the vehicle itself, bit by bit.
When Tamara swooped out of the sky and landed near them, the faces of the Russian soldiers showed such relief it was comical. Tamara's mech had been repainted in Russian colors. She shouted “Invader! Face me, for the glory of the Motherland!” in Russian for the troops’ benefits, and they let out a cheer.
Tamara had only been to the theater one time, to watch a silent film out of America's Hollywood, but she thought the battle she and Eva now staged would have been worthy of the silver screen. Eva's archaic mech roared and swung at her machine, and she danced nimbly aside. When she tried to bring a cannon to bear on it, it pushed the barrel away, and she made a big show of accidentally dropping it. Then the two robots sparred unarmed for a while.
The hardest part was keeping Eva's mech, which was only somewhat under her control, from smashing Tamara's own with one of its ponderous attacks. Fortunately, Tamara's mech was nimble, and she wasn't actually trying to win. That let her stay two steps ahead of the big swings. It took a bit of concentration. She couldn't be sure the robot would pull its punches, no matter what Eva commanded it through the link.
All the while, Tamara shouted dramatic instructions to the Russians, things like "Take cover!" or telling them to open fire when she was out of the way of the other mech. They obliged with such a hail of bullets that she had to keep her head low in the cockpit until their rifles ran dry.
It was an impressive performance, and Tamara was having a lot of fun with it until the giant spotlight from the sky speared them. Both mechs froze for a moment and then broke apart, running in opposite directions for cover.
Light flashed, the air screamed, and a colossal fountain of dirt jetted skyward as a cannon shell blasted a chunk of the Crimea into the sky. The ground trembled as something huge and heavy shook the earth.
"Oh crap, oh crap, oh crap," Tamara muttered as she dove for cover. She dodged through the trees of the garden as the spotlights danced around searching for them. There was another roar and explosion, but it didn't land anywhere near her. Hopefully, Eva's mech was evading as well.
She couldn’t see what was attacking them, but there shouldn’t have been any cannons in that direction. Her initial surveillance hadn’t seen anything but the ships at anchor, and their guns couldn’t reach this far, she didn’t think.
She considered quickly. If she converted to airplane mode and tried to fly away, would it target her while she was lifting off? How close was it? How would Eva get away if Tamara abandoned her?
The ground trembled, stronger than before. Enormous footsteps were shaking the landscape. It was getting closer.
What was it?