Against the Steam Wolves
[The Tenku Knights approached the shack with caution. It sat in the middle of a particularly barren stretch of ground, with no stumps for several meters in any direction and a wide path leading off through the stumps to the west. The fine layer of ash covering the ground left small clouds of dust behind the Knights’ feet as they walked. The shack itself was made from rough-cut lumber and tin that looked as if it had been corrugated by hand, with a single dusty window on one side. It didn’t look very sturdy. Either it was put together quickly, for limited use, or its builders weren’t used to putting up this kind of structure. Golf guessed that it was a little bit of both. This place had obviously served as a central hub and loading station, and now seemed abandoned.
Shiba led the way across the open ground, with Tank close behind him. Golf followed off to one side, to better see around Tank’s bulk, while Harvey and Sakura brought up the rear. Shiba advanced slowly toward the door. Meeting no resistance, and seeing no signs of life, he raised his bat to knock.
“Wait!” Golf hissed. The bat stopped mere millimeters from the door. “Do you hear that?” The other Knights paused, listening. A low clicking could be heard from inside the shack, along with a slight, rhythmic hissing.
“Something’s in there,” Golf whispered. “Harvey, go check out the window.”
“You got it, boss.” Harvey, moving silently, gracefully sidled up to the shack’s one dusty window. Crouching so as not to be seen, he slowly raised a hand to the glass and dusted off a corner, raising an eye to peer in. He started, then swiftly withdrew, motioning the others to follow him out of the shack’s earshot.
“There’s wolves in there,” he whispered in disbelief.
“Wolves?” Shiba said sharply. Harvey jumped.
“Keep it down, brother! They’re not just normal wolves! There’s some kind of machinery attached to ‘em, on their shoulders. They got...boxes on ‘em, with all sorts of pipes and tubes. And exhaust pipes. They were all givin’ off these little puffs of steam.”
“Hmm,” Golf pondered. “Steam-powered wolves. What are we up against here?”
“I don’t know,” Shiba said, “but I have a feeling we’re going to have to bash its head in.”
Golf raised an eyebrow, annoyed. “And what makes you think that?”
“The Steam Wolves pouring out the door and heading right for us.”
The Knights turned around just in time to see six Steam Wolves, all snarls and teeth and mottled grey fur, exit the shack. The boxes Harvey mentioned were indeed placed over their front shoulders, with tubes running to every major muscle group. Dual exhaust pipes ran at sleek angles from the rear of the boxes, white steam fairly whistling out in clouds over the barren landscape. The clicking was almost deafening now.
The lead wolf, larger than the others, had another unusual feature: its brain was visible beneath a glass dome, a tiny antenna protruding from the dome’s center. Under the glass, wires ran from the antenna down into various parts of the wolf’s brain. As if it were an opposing linebacker and not a horrible scientific monstrosity, Tank leapt forth to meet the lead wolf hand-to-hand. After a brief struggle he wrestled it to the ground. The wolf growled deeply.
Golf restrained the rest of the team from action. “Hold on,” he said, pulling out a golf ball and a tee. “I think that, with skill and a little bit of luck, I can take care of this problem.” Tossing the tee and ball into the air, Golf pulled back with his club and quickly sized up his foes. They were running in a geometric attack formation, and their steam boxes seemed to have a certain fragility that ought to be taken advantage of...
The tee stuck unerringly into the ground at his feet and the ball fell perfectly onto its top. Swinging with strength and supernatural precision, Golf let fly. The ball glanced off a particularly poorly-placed coupling on the first wolf’s steam box, loosening a tube which flapped loose and sent a scalding blast of steam into the back of the wolf’s head. The ball, further propelled by the steam blast, ricocheted off the wolf’s skull and continued on, doing the same thing to the next wolf in formation, and the next, until the entire Steam Wolf squadron had been hit. The first wolf, yelping in pain, had time to snap ineffectively at Golf’s elbow before falling to the ground, dead. The others fell behind him in the dust.
Golf brushed a small bit of wolf spittle from his sleeve, and smiled. “Piece of cake,” he said.
A loud clanging from the team’s left signaled the end of Tank’s struggle with the lead wolf. He stood, shaking his bloodied knuckles. Beneath him, the wolf’s steam box was flattened and half-removed from the body. But the brain-case had been left intact...
...and, many miles to the west, a shadowy figure sat back from a domed glass screen gone cloudy. “Well,” it said, “perhaps these Tenku Knights are the ones I need after all...”
