“Accuracy seems pretty good. Are you sure you can’t guide the main guns yet?” I asked.
“We can’t, but we can make the bullets fly faster. We’ve carved alchemic writing into the rifles’ barrels. If we know our shots will fly straight, even an amateur can aim.”
The ladies’ faces lit up on the bridge, but it was too soon for joy. Even with its head gone, the golem remained upright, beginning to once again make great strides toward us.
Fear flickered through the room again, but Lt. Gandly had regained her composure.
“Hmph. I get it now. I’ve figured out the enemy’s plan. He likely thinks it brilliant, but this level of cheap theatrics is all he’s capable of. Did he learn nothing new back in Germany?” she muttered. Then she grabbed the mike. “The monster to our port side is not what it appears. It is simply standing on the shoulders of ordinary-size golems. Maintain distance and continue firing. Just in case, make preparations for direct engagement.”
Ah ha. Columbus’s egg: Stack golems like a human pyramid to make this one look gigantic.
“This German alchemist has been interested in mass production from the start. Keep moving and firing, and victory will be yours. However, lieutenant, it has no ranged weaponry. Would it not be better to use this ship’s speed to maintain a safe distance?”
“That thing absolutely cannot reach the Isle of Man. We must eliminate any chance of it escaping. May I remind you that you are a spectator, Sarge?” she snapped.
Her harsh tone made me cringe, but the enemy’s transformation quickly restored my nerve.
“This is not the time for spectating! Look at that!”
Something was happening to the golem. Though no bullets had hit it, its left side was melting. This wasn’t the only change: The right side began expanding like a balloon. The right arm was now several times longer, and when the headless golem swung its monstrous limb through the air…
It snapped off. Centrifugal force won out, ripping the arm out at the root. The dark brown lump soared through the air, landing in the center of the Princess of Wales. A dull thud echoed through the ship, shaking the vessel so hard everyone fell over. I’d reflexively leapt off my perch, so I escaped through a window. That was the only way to evaluate the situation impartially. I soon found the source of the impact: Behind the bridge, a sinister figure was clinging to the side of the smokestack.
The figure was roughly four meters tall, with a tiny head and long arms that nearly reached its knees. The monster had striking reddish-brown skin. Its frame was spindly, but it clearly didn’t lack for power. Gleaming eyes darted this way and that, and a moment later it vanished into the smokestack. I hastily flew back to the bridge.
“The golem’s after your engine! It aims to stop you from within!”
I knew I was right but had no countermeasures to propose. I could already hear screams coming up the speaking tube from the engine room. The silence on the bridge was shattered by the sounds of slaughter.
“Captain. Communications with the engine room have been lost.”
The ship came to a halt. The hideous giant golem, twisted as it was, strode inexorably toward us. The guns still fired, taking off more pieces of the damn thing, but even that did not slow its advance.
When it reached the Princess of Wales, the golem no longer looked human at all. On board, it split in four. Bodies like the one I’d seen on the smokestack dashed off across the deck, closing in on the bridge. They moved faster than seemed possible for their size.
“They’re attacking the bridge!” I cried.
Flapping my wings, I flew higher just in the nick of time. The four golems raced each other across the deck, clambered up the sides, and launched themselves into the lookout station. A whirlwind emerged, flinging me away.
I heard a number of short screams. I turned my eyes toward the lookout station; the women posted there were gone.
The four golems, their fingers sharp as any blade made by Masamune, had sliced through the lookouts.
I stared at the golems in horror. They were unnatural but not in a craggy fashion. They had no brows, flat noses, and their mouths were but a thin line. Their hair was the oddest part. They sported bowl cuts like kokeshi dolls, turned red with the blood of their victims. That detail aside, there was something Eastern about their look, something that reminded me of young Japanese girls.
Lacking expressions, their actions grew puzzling. As one, they began climbing the long, thin mast. I thought at first they were trying to destroy the communications antennae, but no. They formed a group at the tip and stood still.
A moment later, Lt. Gandly’s voice echoed in my mind.
“Sergeant Kirishima. They should be behaving quite oddly. Am I right?” she asked.
“As you say. It seems their master is having trouble giving orders.”
“’enrich is close by. I would like your help finding and eliminating him.”
“I thought I was an observer. Can’t you use your gremlin?”
“He’s always liked ’enrich. He might betray me. Grant my wish, and I’ll accept any one order from you.”
6
As the instigator of Project Golem, the creator of the Golem Squad, and the frontline commander of said squad, special technical Oberleutnant Henrich Hörbiger was well aware of his creation’s weaknesses.
They were sluggish and unresponsive.
He’d carefully combined the four elements—fire, air, water, and earth—then added the liquid metal with which German scientists had become obsessed. This addition had greatly improved the golems’ overall sluggishness, but he could do nothing about their feeble minds. Hörbiger intended to compensate for that.
The earthenware pottery was key to his planned golem operations. Like medicinal vials, he’d planted nine in each golem’s head. The alchemist controlling them could shatter a specific vial with long distance brainwaves, exposing the rock slab within and activating the command spell burned into said slab. It was impossible for golems to adapt to any given situation on the fly, but if the alchemist activated appropriate orders with the correct timing, they could dominate the field of battle.
To track the situation in real time, he’d added a TV camera to their chests. Hörbiger had fifteen monitors in his control room and as such knew exactly what was happening aboard that ship. This wasn’t advanced technology as Germany had already employed live broadcasts during the Berlin Olympics four years earlier and had recently begun experimenting with cameras on guided anti-ship bombs. Hörbiger had simply borrowed that tech.
He’d done everything he could, but the unexpected always occurred in actual combat. That’s where the golems’ stupidity was revealed.
The fifteen golems had left the Wieges, formed a pyramid, changed shape, and landed a solid first hit on the enemy vessel, all according to plan. One golem had gone down the smokestack and destroyed the engine room, stopping the Princess of Wales in her tracks, and Hörbiger had believed victory was in his grasp.
Enemy gunfire had destroyed ten golems. Only four additional golems reached the ship, but that was plenty. Hörbiger shattered the vials containing the ultimate order.
“Go to the highest place on the ship and kill the women there,” he said.
He’d wanted to specify they should take over the bridge and rip Lieutenant Rose D. Gandly’s head off, but that would be too complex a command. Considering how long it would take to teach them what a bridge was, it was better to simplify the order.
Unfortunately, the golems were quite literal. They swept right past the bridge, conquered the lookout post, then began climbing the mast. A mast was certainly the highest place on the ship but strategically useless to Hörbiger. The inability to reasonably deduce and infer was artificial life’s fatal flaw.
The golem that had gone in the smokestack also stuck to its order to “find the hottest area at the bottom of the ship and destroy everything.” It was now busy pointlessly pounding on the deserted machine room.
But he’d expected something like this. Without hesitating, Hörbiger broke the next vial which contained the following instructions:
“Enter the tower and kill the old woman you see.”
The golems quickly took action. They leapt off the mast and onto the lookout post, clung to the walls like monkeys, kicked through the glass, and entered the bridge. Surprisingly, there was no one there. Through the rough imagery of his black and white monitors, he saw only a dimly lit, empty room.
Just like six years ago. She’s already run for it.
No sooner had the thought crossed his mind than the images sent by the four golems grew much sharper. A light glowed on the floor.
“Oh, no! The seal of Camael!” he cried.
Camael was the archangel tasked with safeguarding happiness and Mars, the leader of 144,000 angels. A magic circle carved with his name brought cleansing, blessed fire.
Resignation was Hörbiger’s only option. There was no time and no means to order a retreat. He hadn’t placed any withdrawal orders in the golems’ vials.
The trap on the bridge sang a song of death. The circle’s heat and light pulverized everything around it. The Princess of Wales’s main tower exploded, along with the golems into which Hörbiger had poured all his effort.
His lips tightened, but the father of golems wasn’t yet ready to despair. His fifteen children hadn’t been entirely wiped out. The one rampaging through the machine room was still active. It was too soon to admit defeat.
“Climb to the deck. Find an old woman and kill her,” he ordered, the simplest directive possible. Just as his brainwave shattered that vial, a pounding echoed through the Wiege’s control room. There was no wall between the control room and the golem storage, just a flimsy sheet of plywood—and something was trying to break through it!
He glimpsed a fearsome beak, followed by a white face. A giant barn owl with a two-meter wingspan communicated telepathically with him.
“I’m the sage of the forest, and you’re making me act like a woodpecker!” the owl cried.
7
Using my superior eyesight, sense of smell, and perception, I located something floating on the ocean like a chikuwa fish cake, and plunged toward it.