Broken Hero (9 page)

I flap a hand at her to shush. She keeps a pretty tight rein on her expression, but I’m not sure if she’s more unimpressed by Hermann’s reaction or my own.

“See, Hermann,” says Volk, turning to his fellow Uhrwerkmänn, “this is why I need to explain.”

Hermann makes no more noise. Volk turns back.

“Lang—he needed many of us to invade Russia. The war there had not gone well for the Germans. The winter had killed so many of their men. Lang believed that we, the Uhrwerkmänner, were the solution. We would not feel the cold. We would not need food. We could march on where men fell.

“He had originally planned to build ten thousand of us. The rebellion came before that. I do not know if he miscalculated our intelligence, if perhaps it was the simple arrogance of a creator, the assumption that we were lesser because we were made, or if he just was blind to the flaws in his ethos. But even though he made us, he did not make us hate. We saw what he wanted us to do, and we rejected him. We would not be tools for Lang and his Nazis.

“They kept us in a warehouse, packed together, one pressed up against the next. It was a night in December when we broke out. They did not seem to have thought of the possibility. We tore down the walls like they were paper. We tore out of their factories. Only a few of us fell. They were too slow to respond, too caught off guard. And we are hard to kill.

“But not impossible. Lang’s fury knew no limits. We had defied him. Our maker. He pursued us endlessly. Tank shells rained down upon us. We were twelve hundred. Then eleven. Then just a thousand.

“Most of Europe had fallen by then. Russia believed us invaders. We could find nowhere on the continent to hide. Only England was free. So we fled here, across France, traveling only at night, Lang still behind us. By the time we reached the coast, Lang had cut down a full third of us. Only eight hundred still lived.

“He caught us there, as we fled into the water. We fought, finally face-to-face. Another hundred of us fell.

“So did Lang.”

Volk cannot wrangle much expressiveness out of his metal face, but it’s impossible not to hear the grim satisfaction in his voice.

“I took him apart with my bare hands.” To my surprise it’s Hermann who picks up the tale. “He broke so easily in them.”

Volk nods to Hermann, a sign of deference perhaps. That seems to fit with the tone so far. I am hearing the legends of a people only seventy years old.

“When we came to England,” Volk picks up after Hermann’s brief, somewhat graphic interjection, “we did not dare reveal ourselves. Only a little over half our original number remained. We simply wanted to hide and not be hunted. We slipped underground. We hid away. We have remained there ever since.”

He rumbles to a stop, the sound of his voice echoed by the churning gears of his chest. And it’s a good story. A persecuted people. A boo-hiss villain. The rejection of their maker’s philosophy. They come out of it well. But something definitely seems to be missing.

“So,” I say slowly, “how exactly does this lead to your friend, Nils,” I look over to Hermann, attempt to judge his reaction, “trying to kill us all yesterday?”

Volk hesitates. I can feel the weight of my pistol hanging just below my armpit. I glance over at Kayla, but there’s no need. I sometimes think it’s more of a struggle for Kayla to sheathe her sword than it is for her to pull it out. A moment later I realize I should have checked Hannah but I forgot.

“When we came to England,” he says, his accent momentarily thicker, sounding more like Hermann, “our total number was six hundred and seventy-eight. Today we number one hundred and forty-two.”

He lets the numbers hang there. That sounds a lot like calamity.

“The hell happened?” Tabitha is the first of us to find words.

“We are breaking down,” says Volk. “Our gearwork misses its steps. And as it does our sanity slips. We lose our reason and our path. Nils was not the first to be consumed by madness. We have managed to keep so many quiet. Some, it is not as bad as Nils. They turn within themselves. Their madness eats down into their core rather than bursting out. Some we have killed ourselves out of mercy. Others have raged in places devoid of people, their fury gone unnoticed. Some we have managed to restrain and confine where they could do no harm in their final thrashings. And some…” He hesitates, glances at Hermann who shakes his head. But Volk turns back to us and finds words. “Some have left no survivors and we have cleared away the evidence.”

OK. An army of Nazi clockwork robots, and now they’re all getting an extra-violent version of Alzheimer’s. Fantastic. Just…

“What exactly do you expect of us?” Felicity makes the collective question audible. Or maybe she’s just trying to cut Tabitha off before she asks how this is her problem.

“Nothing,” snaps Hermann. “People have never helped us. Never will. You are useless and we are wasting time here, while our people die. This is a mistake. I have always said so.” He puts a hand on Volk’s shoulder. “Let us go now before you tell too many other secrets and doom us all. Already they want to kill us so we are no longer problem for them. It is the way of their species.”

Volk hesitates. I want to speak into the silence, refute Hermann’s claims. Except the thought really had crossed my mind. Old age is taking them in an ugly way. Why not just ease the passing?

“Wait.” Every eye turns to Hannah as she speaks up. I try to suppress my wince. “I mean, two things. First off that’s a touch judgmental coming from a robot created to shit all over Russian soil, so, you know, whatever. But, like, what about repair… I don’t know, repair protocols or something. Like, you must have some idea of how you all work. I mean, just take one of you apart, figure it out, put them back together so they’re all tick-tock and not cuckoo-clock again, or whatever.”

My wince is no longer suppressed.

Hermann stalks a step forward. “Do you think we are children? Do you think you can lecture us? Do you think you are so much smarter and so much more invested in our fate that you can snap out ideas and we will be so grateful for your great human thoughts? You are children to us. You have no conception of what we have been through, of our pain, our fate. You have not watched hundreds of your siblings, your loved ones, just die. No. So you be quiet, and you leave us alone.”

And there’s something in the way he says it. Something that suggests that there is something they don’t want to say. Some hole in the conversation.

“You fucking came here!” Hannah looks outraged. “You asked for help.”

“Maybe we should all calm down,” I suggest.

Hermann ignores me. “He came.” He stabs a finger at Volk. “I came to stop him from making situation worse. I am doing so now. Volk, come.” He turns his back on Hannah, and slams his hand down on Volk’s shoulder.

“No,” says Volk, even as Hermann spins him toward the elevator, “they have a right to know.”

And there it is again—that hole, that avoided topic. And now it has a little more shape and purpose. And I like it even less.

“You, shut up,” Hermann says to Volk, marching on.

“Know what?” I ask.

“Nothing,” Hermann snaps, still dragging Volk.

“If you think I am just going to let you walk away—” Felicity’s voice is flat and hard in the room, cutting through the metallic crunching of the Uhrwerkmänners’ movements, “you have sorely underestimated MI37.”

“You think you can stop us?” Hermann’s voice is as coldly mechanical as his innards.

Felicity smiles. “Actually yes. I do think we have a chance.”

Hermann stops. Kayla’s sword slides from its sheath as if she has a soft-eject button programmed into it. And then I find my pistol is in my own hand. That’s a worrying reflex to have automated.

Volk pulls himself away from Hermann. “This is madness. We need their help. On our own we stagnate and die. You know this.” He turns to us. “We need your help, yes, but you too need to help us. There is another of us. He thinks he has found another way to save our race. But he is wrong. I think perhaps the madness has him already, is misguiding his thoughts.”

Hermann shakes his head. “Do not tell them. You will only bring our deaths quicker, and now at their hands.”

The jury may still be out on Hannah, but she was right, Hermann is a terribly judgmental old bastard.

“What other way?” Felicity is leaning forward. “What is this… other Uhrwerkmänn doing? It’s a threat to us, that’s what you’re saying, isn’t it?”

Volk hangs his head. “It is Friedrich. He has taken on the sins of our maker.”

“Lang?” Clyde checks.

Oh crap. One of them really
is
a Nazi. This is going to suck.

Volk hesitates again, but refuses to look at Hermann, who fumes silently at his back. Then Volk takes a step forward, crouches down toward our height. “The Uhrwerkmänner are not Lang’s only creation. Not the only aspect of his plan. There is also the Uhrwerkgerät. We do not know it. We never saw it. But we heard of it. It was the fail-safe to Lang’s plans. If our invasion of Russia failed. Victory at any cost. Even the cost of the earth itself maybe. We do not know for sure. We never have. But it is dangerous. Terribly, horrifyingly dangerous. A bomb out of all proportion with anything created before or since. A tool to make the Americans’ atom bomb look like a child’s toy.”

“Where is it?” Felicity knows how to cut to the chase.

“We do not know. No one does. Not Friedrich either. But he searches. And there is a chance he will find it.”

I’m about to pick up the line of questioning, when Hannah cuts in. “And what will the bastard do when he finds the bloody thing?”

Subtlety was apparently not part of Hannah’s job at MI6. Which aligns with my experience. And I’d always assumed spies would be sneakier bastards.

Volk glances back at Hermann. The grumpy Uhrwerkmänn looks defeated, his cloak hanging about his frame limply. “You have told them now.”

“Friedrich believes the Uhrwerkgerät can save us. He believes it will reset our souls. Many believe him. Many side with him. Because they are desperate, because they will look anywhere for salvation.”

Hermann grunts. “We are no bigger fools than they.”

“You don’t believe what Friedric does, though,” I say before Hannah can cut me off. “What do you think will happen?”

“If he finds the Uhrwerkgerät? If he sets it off?” Volk shakes his head. “In that case, I believe he will kill us all, robot and human alike.”

Help save a species from going violently insane. Or one of them will activate an ancient Nazi doomsday device. Carrot, meet stick. And once more, the role of the mule in the middle will be played by MI37. But now the scenario is laid out before us, I don’t see a way to side-step this disaster.

“So,” I say, “what stops Friedrich?”

“A cure,” Volk says without hesitation. “If you can stop our decline, then Friedrich has no reason to look for the Uhrwerkgerät. No one has a reason to side with him. All the madness stops. All are cured.”

And again, despite his inexpressive features, emotion shines out of Volk’s face. Hope, faith. He has seen the light. All he needs now is for us to deliver it to him.

Hermann, however, is the piss in Volk’s holy water. “You will not find a cure,” he says. “We have looked and we have failed. You will not succeed.”

I wonder if a cure would remove the stick from Hermann’s arse or if Lang just built him that way.

I look around the collected members of MI37. Felicity looks pensive, playing with the arm of her glasses. Kayla’s jaw is set. Clyde actually looks excited, bless his poor deludedly optimistic heart. Tabitha looks pissed off, but that’s to be expected. And Hannah… Her expression lies somewhere between Felicity’s and Kayla’s. Worried but ready. I have an unsettling feeling it might mirror my own face slightly too closely. She should look far more scared.

I’m going to have to look out for her during this. I’m going to have to be looking over my shoulder to make sure she’s keeping up with the slurry of insanity this job pours on us. And that means taking my eyes off what’s right in front of me. And far too frequently these days, the thing in front of me is looking to turn my spleen into a piñata.

“You will help us, won’t you?” says Volk. “Please?”

Hermann’s gearwork manages to make a dismissive noise.

Felicity looks at me. I shrug. What else can we do?

“Of course,” she says. “You are safe with us.”

Hermann starts to laugh. “With you? We will not stay here. I have my people to worry about. I have the disappointment of the false hope you offer to prepare them for. I will waste my time here no more.”

Volk shrugs, almost as apologetically as Clyde can manage. “His words, his sentiment, it differs from mine, but the truth is the same. We cannot stay here. We must help guide our people in this time. But we will be in contact. We will help you as much as you help us. I promise.”

“How?” Felicity asks. I suspect her job breeds suspicion of empty promises.

“We have a functional radio transmitter,” Volk says. “We broadcast on 157.836 MHz and receive on 289.650. We use the Enigma code. We know it is broken, but not many listen.”

Radio transmissions. Some black and white scene of a man wearing a flight suit hunched over a vast box of dials as it emits a series of pops and cracks plays out in my head. Something snagged from one of the World War II movies my dad used to watch on Sunday afternoons.

“Excellent,” Hermann says, “one more secret given up.”

“Fucking radio transmissions?” Tabitha spits, her bile rivaling Hermann’s. “We even have a set?”

“Oh yes!” Clyde cuts into my reveries. “There’s a set in the third archive room. The one with the taxidermied kraken spawn from that 1963 Pacific mission. The Galapagos Island one. You remember?”

Tabitha arches an eyebrow at him. “I mean, yes,” Clyde says.

Volk nods, as if this is the sort of help he’s used to receiving, and if it is I really do feel bad for his plight.

“Thank you,” he says. “I thank you. Every one of my people thanks you.”

Hermann grunts. “Not everyone.”

Volk turns to him, a quick twist of the waist, accompanied by a slick whir of gears and a pneumatic hiss. “They do us a great service. Your actions are beneath you.”