MECH Page 2
Kraft crouched on his hands and knees and let his head hang limp. The ground of Crete felt warm to his wind-frozen fingers. The hot air he sucked in just added to the nausea that churned his stomach. At least he hadn’t eaten in the past six or seven hours. His stomach had nothing to throw up.
He retched anyway, spraying yellowish stomach acid between his hands.
Then he retched a second time, just to be safe.
He straightened up and fumbled with the straps of his harness. Get loose, hide his chute. Bury it if possible. They’d drilled that into him.
He got himself free, gathered up armfuls of dark blue silk and cord, and shoved it between two sprawling bushes. A few rocks weighted it down. A few dozen handfuls of dirt and leaves made it vanish. Kraft had no idea how effective the camouflage would be come daybreak but, by then, he hoped to be many miles away.
Something scuffed the ground behind him. He spun and crouched at the same time. After a beat, he fumbled with the holster on his hip and tried to get the strap loose.
“Easy, Kraft,” murmured a low voice. “It’s me.” The big man stepped out of the shadows and into a dim shaft of moonlight.
“Thank God,” said the professor. “How’d you find me so fast?”
“I watched you on the way down. I landed about half a mile that way.”
“Yes,” said Kraft, “about that.”
Carter batted the fist away before it got close to his jaw. His expression didn’t change. “Feel better?”
“A bit.”
“You need to throw any more punches?”
“No.”
“Good. Next time, don’t put your thumb inside when you make a fist. Would’ve hurt you more than me.” He pointed at a dark ridge. “The plain’s about ten klicks that way, on the other side of the hills. We should be able to make it in two hours.”
“Wasn’t there supposed to be a resistance team meeting us?”
“Yeah. You want to wait around for them or get this done?”
Kraft snorted. “I want to be back in my office grading papers.”
Carter’s teeth gleamed in the night. “Let’s get moving.”
They made their way across wide fields and small groves of trees. Twice, Carter stopped them as a patrol of German soldiers wandered by. The second group, four men, paused to share cigarettes and mutter amongst themselves. Kraft and Carter stayed flat against the ground a dozen yards away, hidden among what looked like short, stubby orange trees. After fifteen minutes, the Germans crushed the cigarettes under their boots and moved on.
Kraft counted to twenty and let out a slow breath.
Carter sat up. “Well,” he murmured, “that bit into our schedule.”
“How long until sunrise?”
“It’s going to start getting light in about three hours. We want to be in our best position by then.”
They headed across the field, weaving between orange trees that grew larger and larger. Carter double checked his compass, pointed, and they made their way through the grove, over a low wall, and across a barren plot to where twisted trees grew more or less in a row.
“I still don’t understand why I had to come along,” Kraft said, pitching his voice low.
Carter glanced back. “You’re the expert.”
“A research expert. There’s no reason for me to be here.”
The Roman raised his hand for silence. They stood in the shadow of an olive tree for a moment while he cocked his head and listened. Then he gestured them on, adding, in a low voice, “I asked for you to be here.”
“Why?”
“Because, Ken, you’ve got the brains,” Carter said. “And I trust you over anyone Finch would’ve sent along.”
“They’re U.S. Marines. They’re completely loyal.”
“It’s not their loyalty I’m worried about,” said Carter. “I’ve seen some of the bravest, most loyal men crack when they’re confronted with the unknown. With something their minds just aren’t able to accept. You saw it happen on Paxos, and again on the Sea Ghost when we were heading home.”
“I recall,” Kraft murmured with a shiver. He’d never forget the Sisters they’d found beneath the island of Paxos. Or the things that had found them on their voyage back to England.
“Well, it didn’t happen to you,” said Carter. “Twice in a row you’ve faced the impossible, and you didn’t blink.”
“I blinked,” muttered Kraft. “I’m not ashamed to admit I pissed myself a bit when Scylla woke up.”
Carter snorted. “Didn’t say you weren’t scared. Everyone gets scared. You didn’t snap.”
“Sergeant Thater didn’t snap, either.”
“And if he wasn’t dead, I’d’ve asked for him, too. Face it, Kraft. You’re smart, you’re strong, and you’re a survivor. And if you’re right about what’s here…well, that’s who I need with me. Because if things go bad—”
Carter’s leg snaked out even as his arm shot up at the shadow’s throat. The figure spun in the air and crashed down to the ground with a grunt. The Roman dropped a knee on the man’s chest and a knife to his throat. “Talk quiet, talk fast.”
“Constantine Zaimis,” wheezed the rail-thin man. He had dark hair streaked with white, a thick mustache, and a stubbly beard. His voice strained as his chest tried to rise. “I’m your resistance contact.”
Carter’s knee didn’t move. He tipped his head to the bulging sack laying in the shadows. “What’s in the bag?”
“Iron rations. Thirty meals worth.”
“Because?”
Zaimis managed a sad smile. “Resistance members wandering around at night can get a bullet in the head.” He slid his arm along the ground to point at the bag. “With this, I’m just a low-end thief and black market smuggler who deserves a good beating.”
“Pleasant,” muttered Kraft.
“We all do what we must,” Zaimis said. “May I get up now?” Carter tapped the edge of his knife thrice against the man’s Adam’s apple. Then he heaved himself upright and extended his free hand down. “Sorry for the body slam.”
Zaimis gathered up the sack and threw it over his shoulder. “As I said, we all do what we must.”
“Why weren’t you at the drop site?”
“I was delayed,” said the resistance fighter. “Patrols have doubled over the past week since they got close to finishing their machine.”
“Close to finishing?” echoed Kraft.
“Yes. A ship came in yesterday with more workers. They have almost two thousand here now. Prisoners they’ve enslaved.”
“Two thousand? Are you sure?”
Zaimis nodded.
Carter pointed up at the ridge. “Can we still get to the plain where they’re assembling it?”
The resistance fighter shook his head again. “Not that way. They dropped an observation team right on the spot I had planned to take you. We’ll have to go to the far side.” He swung his arm and pointed at a steeper hill to the west.
“Can we make it by sunrise?”
“Maybe. It’s rougher terrain.”
“Well, then,” said Kraft. “Let’s get moving.”
Zaimis led them out of the olive trees and toward the rocky hills. He guided them across a field, then down a dirt road for half a mile. They hid in a ditch when a truck drove by.
“You know what they’re building?” asked Zaimis as they continued down the road.
Kraft and Carter exchanged a look. “We have a good idea,” said the professor
“What is it?”
“I think they’re not so much building as reassembling,” said Kraft. “And reinforcing.”
Zaimis glanced up at the sky. “Something crashed here during the invasion?”
The professor shook his head. “No, it’s been here longer than that.”
The resistance fighter furrowed his brow and gestured them off the road onto a path. “The Great War?”
“Much earlier,” Kraft said.
“I don’t understand.”
Zaimis nodded. “They all wear thin, gray uniforms. Most of them are chained together at the ankle so they can’t walk.” He shuffled along the path for a few feet with short, halting steps.
Kraft could see Carter’s frown in the dim light. “Is that a problem? I mean, aside from the obvious?”
“You don’t put slaves in chains that short,” said Carter. “Not if you’re expecting them to work.”
Zaimis snorted. “Have a lot of experience with slaves, do you?
“Enough to be ashamed of it,” Carter said without looking at the man. “So, if they’re not a workforce, what are they doing here?”
They hid behind some bushes as another patrol walked by. Five soldiers again. Much more disciplined than the ones Kraft and Carter had encountered earlier. One of them passed within a few feet of them, and Kraft found himself aware of the nervous sweat that had dried in his clothes.
The soldiers continued their route.
“This is the riskiest part,” Zaimis murmured to them. “After this patrol is out of sight, we’ll have fifteen minutes to make it up to those boulders before the next one comes by.” He pointed at a line of slab-like rocks up along the ridge line. “Once we’re there, we’re good. But the way up is open country, no cover, and the sky will be bright when we’re near the top.”
The soldiers vanished around a bend and the trio launched themselves at the slope. Zaimis moved with the casual grace of familiarity. Carter marched up, not so much climbing the hill as attacking it with non-stop downward kicks. Kraft trailed them, huffing out breath but somewhat proud that he didn’t lag too far behind.
Zaimis led them into a shadowy split in the hillside. The crevasse went almost thirty feet down into the hill, although it looked like centuries had filled the bottom ten feet with enough stones and dirt to make a crude floor. “Keep your voices low,” he murmured. He gestured at the stone walls on either side of them. “We’re distant and they’re making noise, but expect this to double the volume of anything we say or do.”
He guided them through the dark crevasse. Kraft could see a wedge of less-dark up ahead, growing brighter even as they got closer. They slowed as they reached the opening.
The plain spread out three hundred feet below them, twice the size of an athletic field. The whole area had been scoured down to bare soil and leveled out, like a construction site waiting to break ground. With the surrounding hills, it could’ve been an amphitheater. At this distance, most of the figures that moved back and forth were an inch tall.
They settled into position, using the boulders and scrub in the crevasse for cover.
At the center of the field, the construction stretched out. A few canopies and temporary walls shielded it from the elements and blocked their view. A hundred feet long. Forty across at the broadest point. At least fifteen feet high. The long superstructures jutted out from the center. Chains ran from the construction, over a series of A-frame structures, to a quartet of bulldozers.
A row of huge tents stretched along the far side of the plain. Towers carrying floodlights rose around the monochrome circus, each one with a two-wheeled generator at its base. A larger, block-like generator stretched most of its tentacles into the tents themselves. Its chugging, asthmatic growl rode up into the sky on fumes of oil and gasoline, lifting the scent of burnt ozone alongside it.
Carter pulled a small cylinder from his coat, extended it into a tarnished brass telescope, and gazed down at the field. “Something’s wrong here,” he muttered.
Kraft leaned to the left and tried to see past one of the canopies. “Wrong how?”
“Not sure,” Carter said. “At least a hundred guards. As many engineers and technicians.”
“What do you believe that thing is?” asked Zaimis. “Are those hulls or—”
“They’re not hulls,” said Carter. “They’re limbs. It’s a robot.”
“A robot?” The resistance fighter looked down at the huge form just as the sun hit it. Fresh steel gleamed across the various parts of the structure. Beneath it, lustrous bronze seemed to glow in the sunlight. “Some kind of mechanical man?”
“Project Maria,” said Kraft. “It’s a reference to a German futurist film from about ten years ago. Maria was a robot disguised as a human woman.”
Zaimis furrowed his brow. “But why build it here?”
“They aren’t building it,” Carter said. He didn’t take his eye from the telescope. “They’re unearthing it.”
“They’re just adding their own weaponry and armor over the original machinery,” Kraft explained. “That’s the disguise.”
“What?”
Kraft half-turned his head, his eyes still on the huge figure. “You know the mythology of your homeland, yes?”
Zaimis shrugged. “I was more interested in sports and girls when I was young.”
Carter snorted.
Kraft sighed. “You know Knossos?”
“Yes,” said Zaimis. “The old city.”
“City-state. It was the home of Europa, whom Zeus seduced in the guise of a bull.”
The resistance fighter nodded, although his expression slid toward puzzled. “The Minotaur story, yes? With the labyrinth.”
Kraft shook his head. “Different story, although she was the Minotaur’s grandmother. During their affair, Zeus presented Europa with three gifts. A javelin that hit whatever it was thrown at. A magical hunting dog. And a giant guardian to walk around Crete three times a day and protect it from invaders.” He turned his head full back to the metal figure sprawled below. “Talos. The bronze automaton made by Hephaestus.”
Zaimis laughed into his fist. “Talos?” He glanced down at the camp. “They dug up some old statue and turned it into a robot?”
“Not a statue. A mechanical man. An invulnerable defender.”
“One I’d guess will end up circling Berlin instead of Crete,” said Carter. “Assuming they get it up and running again.” He passed the telescope to Kraft. “Look at the head.”
Kraft set the lens against his eye and tried to line up on his target. The canopies and temporary walls hid most of his view. A German officer in a black uniform filled the lens, arguing with a man in a gray suit.
“Looks like they cracked it open,” mused Carter. ‘Replaced all the gears and chains with some kind of…cockpit.”
The telescope found the prone giant’s head. Almost a third of it had been cut away, leaving the face and the back of the stylized helmet. From his angle, Kraft could just see the chair and harness, the sets of heavy levers, and a panel of switches and gauges. “It makes sense,” he said. “They wouldn’t want it to be autonomous.”
“You two are serious about this,” Zaimis said. “You think they found Talos and turned it into some sort of…war machine?”
“Well,” said Kraft, handing the telescope back to Carter, “it’s not the first time.”
“But how would they know such a thing is even possible? What would make them even consider this?”
“As I said, it’s not the first time.”
Carter pointed the telescope down at the figure again. “MG 151 autocannons. Looks like they’ve got four of them on the left arm. Can’t tell if they’re 15s or 20s. Nasty things, either way, and I’d guess those drums hold at least five hundred rounds each. Four of those will tear up a tank, a fighter jet—pretty much anything.” His head shifted. He readjusted the telescope. “Hang on. Looks like a lot of activity starting up.”
Shouted orders echoed across the plain. Workers moved back and forth, dragging equipment away from the superstructure. Soldiers wheeled the walls away from the huge figure and pulled back the canopies. Two fuel trucks rolled forward, and new figures moved to connect hoses to the bronze giant’s armored shoulders. Shouts went back and forth, and the hoses began to tremble with flowing liquid.
The smell of wet rust drifted up to the creva
sse.
“What is that?” whispered Kraft. “That smell?”
A grim shadow passed over Carter’s face. “It’s blood,” he muttered. “They’re pumping it full of blood.”
The resistance fighter’s face wavered between shock and disgust. “Why?”
“Talos runs on blood,” said Kraft. “According to most legends, it’s filled with ichor, the blood of the gods, but a few just say it’s filled with blood.”
“Those trucks have to have two or three thousand gallons each,” said Zaimis. “Where did they get that much blood?”
Carter lowered his telescope. “That’s what’s wrong with the camp,” he said.
Kraft glanced at him. “What?”
“There’s not enough tents,” said the Roman, “for all the prisoners they brought here to work. Not even a holding pen.”
Down below, the pumps on the fuel trucks chugged away. The hoses swelled and pulsed like Vulcanized arteries. One figure leaned inside the head-cockpit and reached for one of the controls.
Zaimis muttered something in Greek too low and fast for Kraft’s out-of-practice ears, but the rhythm sounded like a prayer.
One of the men at the trucks shouted out. The other one echoed him a moment later. The hoses were disconnected and dark red splashed across the ground.
A trio walked out of one of the tents. The two on the sides wore the black uniforms of the SS. The one in the middle had on a leather jacket and tight leather cap. The pilot pulled gloves onto his hands as they walked. They reached the giant’s head and a group of technicians helped him into the chair.
Carter collapsed his telescope. “They’re starting it now.”
“But it looks like they haven’t finished their conversion,” Kraft said.
“I don’t think they care.”
Voices shouted back and forth. Men jogged toward the bulldozers. The reclining pilot gave a thumbs-up from inside his makeshift cockpit.
“Your plane,” said Zaimis. “They must believe it was the precursor of a full-scale attack.”
Craft nodded. “Makes sense. And now they’d rather have an incomplete defender than none at all. Good for us.”
“How, exactly,” asked Kraft, “is that good for us?”
The bulldozers coughed up smoke, growled, and began to pull on the chains. The A-frames quivered. The links rattled and formed a tight line to the giant’s shoulders.