Broken Hero

by Jonathan Wood

  How Hermann and Volk even knew the location of a ridiculously secure British government agency headquarters is a problem I’m going to leave until I have less pressing concerns.

  “It’s Uhrwerkmänner?” I ask, taking hold of one side of Lang’s desk and starting to heave. I wince at the scraping it raises as we drag the thing’s bulk across the floor.

  “Either that or there’s another group of giant clockwork feckin’ robots running around Oxford today.” Then, with an intake of breath, “Jay-sus feck. One of them is feckin’ huge.”

  So it is Uhrwerkmänner. Not a wonderful moment for the Trust-Hermann-and-Volk team, but on the other hand they did mention another faction working against them.

  “The big one doesn’t happen to have a name tag labeled Friedrich, does he?” I ask.

  Kayla doesn’t bother replying.

  Still, this could just be a case of MI37 being in the wrong place at the wrong time. It wouldn’t be the first time that’s happened to us. But it’s an ugly coincidence.

  With a grunt, Clyde and I get the desk in place. He hunkers down beneath it, then pops back up, and snags the oblong oddity that Hannah was fiddling with off its surface. He shoves the thing deep into a pocket. “There’s something up with it,” he mutters by way of explanation. “I mean, I couldn’t tell you exactly what. But if I was a wagering man I would lay money that it’s no objet d’art. Not that I am a wagering man. Bad experience with racehorses at the age of sixteen, not an age when I was flush with cash either. Requires a lot more investment of time than people give it credit, if one’s to do it right anyway. Not that any of that is relevant, but there’s this whole imminent death thing going on and that tends to make me ramble. Probably noticed that.”

  I don’t comment. I’m having trouble keeping my attention focused. My heart is racing again, and my control slipping away like sand between my fingers.

  There is a crash from the downstairs hallway.

  “First one’s in,” comes Kayla’s voice. “Bit bigger than the frame.”

  More architecture crunches. The floor shakes. A smell like gasoline seems to be mixing with the room’s funeral-parlor scent.

  “So,” Clyde says, still hunkered below the desk, “sort of wondering what the plan is here?”

  A plan. God, I need to come up with… I put my thoughts under hard rein, force myself to run through my mental inventory of options. We don’t know about back doors or windows. That leaves the front door and a handful of windows. Our parked cars represent the fastest way for us to get away, but they were probably a decent clue to the Uhrwerkmänner that they are not alone here. Assuming that they didn’t already know that from the mouths of Volk and Hermann.

  So, limited ways out, and the Uhrwerkmänner know we’re here to take them. Which means there is no element of surprise. In fact even if there is a back door hidden somewhere here, there’ll probably be someone there to cover it.

  There is a resounding crunch from the back of the house.

  “Going to guess that’s the back feckin’ door,” comes Kayla’s voice.

  Goddamn it. OK, think.

  I look to Clyde. “We have about thirty seconds. Grab everything from this desk that you can.”

  Clyde starts rattling drawers.

  OK, that’s the primary objective. Now for secondary concerns.

  God, I hate that our exit strategy is a secondary concern.

  “Kayla,” I say, touching the earpiece once more. “I need you to draw them away from the front of the house, toward the back.”

  “All of them?” Normally Kayla is up for any fight. Her hesitation is not helping with the panic at the back of my brain, barking to be let in.

  “As many as you can. You’re superwoman, remember?”

  “Go feck yourself.”

  OK, that’s the distraction taken care of.

  “Hannah,” I say, “you and I are going to try to defend Clyde as long as Kayla needs to rustle up a decent distraction. Then you, Clyde, are going to blow apart as many walls as it takes to make us a new exit hole. Then we head for the cars and we run like fuck. You too, Kayla. Sound good?”

  “Sounds feckin’ insane.”

  Hannah nods. “Affirmative.”

  So there is something to be said for MI6 professionalism.

  “OK,” I breathe. “Kayla, wait until—”

  There is a crashing sound, and then the scream, “Come get some, you motherfeckin’ trash cans!”

  Or we could do that.

  Chaos erupts beneath us. The room starts to vibrate. Walls crunch, metal screams. There is a grinding like an entire industrial complex coming online. The sound of wood splintering. Harsh German consonants barked out with military precision.

  The panic is no longer a dog barking in my head, but one clawing down the walls. It’s breaking in to my calm. Sweat soaks my forehead. I palm it away from my eyes. I still don’t dare pull the gun up from where I’m holding it firm next to my hip, because the shaking will not exactly inspire confidence.

  Clyde is still rattling drawers. He looks up at me, eyes stretched wide. “They’re all locked!”

  I try to keep a grip on myself but lose it somewhere along the way as the words head from my brain to my mouth. I seize a fistful of his shirt. “You’re a fucking wizard!” I yell.

  A crunch, louder and closer than the rest.

  “They’re on the stairs!” Hannah yells and then she opens fire. The whine of ricocheting bullets joins the cacophony coming to meet us.

  I move, snap my gun up, taking a shooter’s stance, aiming through the doorway. Suddenly my hands are still. This is it, the moment of truth. And for a moment conscious thought flees the building, leaving me blissfully calm and cold, in the grip of muscle memory and routine. Hannah is to the doorframe’s left, the muzzle flashes of her pistol lighting the landing in strobe flares.

  I catch a glimpse of bronze. I squeeze the trigger.

  And then Hannah is in my line of fire, whipping across the doorway, gun clasped to her chest.

  I pull my shot at the last moment, desperately aiming upwards. The bullet slams into the doorframe above her head. Pressed to the doorframe’s far side, Hannah stares at me wide eyed.

  My breath catches. The hollow emptiness of routine falters.

  “The fuck?” she breathes. “You weren’t counting my shots?” She fumbles the pistol magazine to the floor, pulls out a fresh one.

  “How many do you have?” My mouth is on autopilot, filling in requisite bits of conversation. I almost just shot her. Holy hell.

  Hannah’s professional exterior finally crumbles. She looks like I just broke part of her.

  And then the Uhrwerkmänn comes through the door.

  Plaster fragments. The wooden latticework of the wall’s underpinnings snaps and breaks. Twigs and splinters fly through the air. A beam gives way with a crunch. Cracks tear through the ceiling. The shelving detonates, the crumbling books becoming powder in the air.

  It gleams, a bronze and steel monstrosity in our midst. The head is lower than the others I have seen. Its jaw is large and heavy, jutting forward from a pinched face, small dark lenses for eyes. The shoulders are massive, forming almost a complete hemisphere over its shrunken metal skull. The arms are short, but its fists massive. The legs are similarly stunted, a thick mass of pistons and levers.

  It plunges one massive fist toward Hannah. She leaps back, slamming her new magazine home as she does so. She brings her gun to bear.

  I am one step ahead of her. My pistol booms, loud, despite the concert of chaos expanding beneath me. Shots ping off its massive shoulders, dent the casing about its small eyes.

  “Clyde!” I shout. “Time to leave!”

  Then I’m leaping out the way, as the Uhrwerkmänn pivots at the waist, feet still planted solidly, and the fist that was aimed at Hannah swings through the air at me. I fall back, slam into the desk, and sprawl back as the fist whips above my head. I go with momentum, roll back over the desk, land beside C
lyde in something that is almost a crouch, but slightly more of a pratfall. He fumbles through his pockets, spilling batteries.

  “They are surprisingly large up close, aren’t they?” he says. “I mean, this Lang chap wasn’t one for subtlety. Not that subtlety is probably a huge thing people are looking for in their army of robots. History isn’t full of subtle armies. Though I’ve got to imagine there was one at some point. Stands to reason. Rules of probability and all that. You probably just don’t hear about them because of, you know, the subtlety. Maybe ninjas—”

  The rest is lost to mumbling as he works a couple of AAs into each cheek.

  I leave him to his ramblings and decide to see if Hannah’s still alive. I pop my head up above the desk. Then I dive backwards. An Uhrwerkmänn’s fist comes down and the desk becomes matchsticks.

  “Shit!” I hit the threadbare rug hard. Clyde sprawls. The Uhrwerkmänn’s fist continues its downwards trajectory, through the desk, down into the floor, tears through it, opens a great gash in the room.

  Hannah is behind the robot, still taking potshots. Then a second Uhrwerkmänn decides that doors are unnecessary, simply plows ahead through the plasterwork. The wall behind Hannah detonates. She joins us on the floor.

  Compared to its companion, this new Uhrwerkmänn’s head is massive—a giant wrecking ball of a thing, dripping plaster and wood, eyes placed wide. Aside from that the framework of bronze, the gears, and the sheer abominable size are becoming worryingly familiar.

  Hannah manages to turn her tumble into a roll, comes up close to the first Uhrwerkmänn’s foot. From where I’m lying on the floor, I take aim at the robot’s eyes, try to distract it. One eye shatters as it raises a foot to ponderously kick at Hannah. She rolls back, but only gets herself in the path of the oncoming second robot.

  Damnit. If I survive this and Hannah doesn’t, Felicity will make sure that I don’t live to have my life threatened again. Anyway, it’s not like I’m in cover anymore.

  “Clyde! The hole! In it!” I bark, and then take off for Hannah.

  And somehow as I’m fighting for my life, I find myself hearing Kayla saying, “That’s what she said.”

  A fist comes for me. I dance sideways. Hannah is on her back, crab-crawling away from the second Uhrwerkmänn. It raises a foot, stamps down at her. She pistons her legs, manages to leap back in what resembles a remarkably complicated gymnastics maneuver, landing on her feet. The machine’s leg plunges through the floor up to the knee. For a moment it is pinned there by its own misplaced weight. I yank my pistol up, take aim—

  And then Hannah is moving, spinning around, up, aiming her pistol and I am in her direct line of sight, and she in mine.

  For a moment we are frozen, like two old-school gunfighters in the most messed up standoff of all time. Holy crap, I almost just killed her again. She almost just killed me. I see my own panic reflected in her eyes.

  Then she swallows it, goes to her right. I go to mine, and even with my mind battering at the walls of adrenaline and training, screaming on and on about how messed up this, and how it’s going to end in my imminent death, I open fire and pour hot lead into the Uhrwerkmänn’s gut. My clip goes dry. I slam in another, keep firing.

  The Uhrwerkmänn fights gravity and its own leg as my bullets smash concavities and tears into the metal. Its attempts start to grow jerky and uncoordinated.

  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.

  15

  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.