Giant Robots of Tunguska: Doc Vandal Adventures, #4

By Dave Robinson

When Vic's cousin appears on Doc's doorstep, it's not long before the team is plunged into an adventure that will take them half way around the world on a mission of life and death. 

Vic's reaction to a strange alien mineral has made her the strongest being on Earth. It's also killing her. Her only hope lies underneath a Soviet labor camp deep in the Siberian wilderness. Driven by a need she cannot comprehend Vic leads the team into a war zone with the fate of the very planet on the line. 

Meanwhile, Doc and the rest have to try and save Vic without sparking a world war. 

and what about those Giant Robots?

• Language: English
• Publisher: KEH Publishing
• Release date: Apr 23, 2023
• ISBN: 9798223119739

Dave Robinson

I’m Dave, and I write. I’m also a father, a reader, gamer, a comic fan, and a hockey fan. Unfortunately, there is a problem with those terms; they don’t so much describe me as label me, and the map is not the territory. Calling me a father says nothing about my relationship with my daughter and how she thinks I’m silly. It ignores the essence of the relationship for convenience. It’s the same with my love of books, comics, role-playing games, and hockey; labels only say what, not how or why. They miss all the good parts. If you want more of a biography: I was born in the UK, grew up in Canada, and have spent time in the US. I’ve been freelancing for the last seven years. Before that, and in no particular order, I’ve managed a bookstore, worked in a pawnshop, been a telephone customer service rep, and even cleaned carpets for a living. As a freelancer, I’ve done everything from simple web content, to ghostwritten novels. I’ve even written a course on trading forex online. I’ve also edited everything from whitepapers to a science fiction anthology. Right now, I'm working on the next Doc Vandal adventure.

Book preview

DOC VANDAL

in

Giant Robots of Tunguska

by Dave Robinson

A Doc Vandal Publication

Copyright 2017 by Dave Robinson

Cover Illustration by Carlos Balarezo

Cover Design by Queen Graphics

This is a work of fiction. All similarities to any persons living or dead is purely coincidental. All events, locales, and incidents are either purely the product of the author’s imagination or used for fictitious purposes.

The Doc Vandal Series

Against the Eldest Flame

Air Pirates of Krakatoa

Attacked Beneath Antarctica

Giant Robots of Tunguska

The Sunkiller Affair

The Ziggurat of Doom (forthcoming)

Collections

The Doc Vandal Omnibus: Volume One

This work is dedicated to the memory of Kim, sadly gone all too soon, without whom I would never have written a word; to Kyrie, and to my brother Neil, who always believed I was a writer even when I didn’t. Also thanks to the memory of my parents, Lyn and Clive Robinson.

I would also like to thank everyone who has helped me on this writing journey from the moment I first decided I wanted to create my own pulp heroes to the last word I typed; especially those who have read my works and given the kind of feedback you need to get the best out of a story: Brittany Maresh, Jules Ironside, S.L. Huang, Vincent Collins, Jaap Geluk, and Ian Gill.

Any errors are mine alone.

Table of Contents

An Unexpected Visitor

Rocksferatu

Manchukuo

Tunguska

Ascension

Afterword

Cast of Characters

Doc Vandal

James Clark Vandal, born January 1st, 1901 in a 43rd Archonate observation post on the near side of the Moon. Raised by alien AIs, Doc has been enhanced well beyond normal human capabilities. One side effect of his upbringing is that he has difficulty understanding some elements of human motivations. He arrived on Earth on January 1st, 1919. In the eighteen years since then, he has become the foremost scientific adventurer in the world. His most famous invention is an artificial aerogel called lyftrium which has made safe lighter-than-air travel a worldwide phenomenon. He lives with the rest of the team on the 87th floor of the Republic State Building in New York.

Victoria Vic Frank

Countess Victoria Catherine Elizabeth Marie Frank, born March 23rd (March 10th according to the Julian calendar), 1909 in Saint Petersburg, Russia. Conceived aboard an airship flying over Siberia at the precise moment of the Tunguska Event, she is the youngest of the core four. After her parents vanished during the Revolution she escaped to England by way of China with her grandmother. Taken in by Doc after her grandmother’s death, she’s a daredevil who serves as the team’s pilot. She’s very much an act first, think later, kind of person.

Augustus Gus Q. Ponchartrain

Gustar was on born October 1st, 1901 in Pongo City West Africa. He walked out of the rainforest after the War and made his way to the United States where he met Doc Vandal at Arkham College in 1921. A polymath, Gus jokes that he has more doctorates than he can count, though in actuality it’s only twelve, and is an expert on hundreds of subjects. In addition to his intelligence and education, Gus also possesses the tremendous strength of full-grown silverback gorilla. He is known to be fond of Earl Grey tea.

Gilbert Gilly Chanter

Gilbert Chanter, born December 17, 1903 in Kitty Hawk, North Carolina. The son of a Baptist preacher, Gilly is Doc and the team’s driver, mechanic, and photographer. He’s also a huge fan of pulp magazines like The Shadow. For the most part he tends to sit back and quietly do his job.

Kehla Ponchartrain

Kehla was born on June 22nd 1906 in Pongo City West Africa. Raised to be the First Hand of Vel, a sacrificial priestess of the Eldest Flame, she was also Gus’s childhood sweetheart. After Gus escaped from Pongo City, she rebelled against her fate and joined a guerilla movement, quickly rising to the position of leader. Following the destruction of Pongo City in Against the Eldest Flame, she finally married Gus and relocated to New York.

Li Ming

Li Ming, M.D., born February 10th, 1910 in Semarang, Java, Dutch East Indies. The daughter of a revolutionary known only as Tigress, Ming graduated from Batavia’s GHS medical school in 1933, the first Chinese woman to do so. Trained in both Western and Chinese medicine, she acts as the team’s primary physician, taking the role from Doc. She joined the team after Vic was forced to take refuge from attacking robots in her store. The store was ruined, she wanted to be paid back, and eventually fell in love with Vic.

CHAPTER ONE

An Unexpected Visitor

Ming smiled broadly and laid out her hand with a flourish. Fifteen-two, fifteen-four, fifteen-six, fifteen-eight, and a quadruple run for twenty-four points.

She reached out and moved her peg, setting it in the final hole.

Vic looked at her own hand, four even cards plus the four in the cut for no points. Skunked again. She shoved her crib aside without even looking at the cards. Maybe teaching Ming to play cribbage hadn’t been such a good idea after all.

Another game? Ming was still smiling all the way up to her eyes. What do you call it? ‘Mugs away’?

Vic chuckled and took the cards from her girlfriend. Pushing them into a single pile she began her regular shuffle routine. At least now she had someone to play cards with. Doc, Gus, and Kehla all played chess but the game was just too damn slow for Vic. Even backgammon was better.

As she shuffled, Vic let her eyes wander around the lounge. It was just another family night at home on the 87th floor of the Republic State Building. It was funny, but this was the first place she’d really called home since she was a little girl at her parent’s dacha outside Petrograd. It was all gone now, even the city had a new name since she was a girl, but at the time it had been home. If nothing else, her new home was very different than anything the Russian aristocracy could have imagined. Then again, her family would have expected her to be married with children of her own: not a spinster romantically involved with a Chinese doctor, and a woman at that.

Over in the corner of the lounge Doc Vandal, the unofficial head of the family, was playing chess with his best friend, a gorilla named Gus. Augustus Q. Ponchartrain was no ordinary gorilla though; he had more doctorates than some small college departments. Gus’s wife Kehla, also a gorilla, alternated between kibitzing the game and doing a crossword. The last member of the family, a black man named Gilly Chanter, sat in front of a large cabinet radio with their latest guest: a being called Shard.

Tonight was supposed to be the first episode of a new radio drama featuring one of Gilly’s favorite pulp characters: a masked vigilante known as The Shadow. Gilly seemed to be doing a surprisingly good job of explaining murder mysteries to an alien who had spent the last several million years in a lost city buried on a lakebed, miles beneath the Antarctic icecap. Shard was even more alien than the artificial minds that ran the lunar base where Doc was raised; she came from outside the Universe itself. Considering that Gilly had narrowly escaped being transformed into a similar creature, Vic wasn’t surprised that he had developed the strongest connection with Shard.

Vic’s fingers had kept busy while her mind was wandering, and she finally finished shuffling the cards. After passing the deck over for Ming to cut, she started her deal. She grinned: she was going to win this time.

The chime from the elevator interrupted her deal and she turned to see a bloody figure stumble out of the car and collapse on the floor in front. Ming dropped her cards and ran to the stranger, driven by more than just her Hippocratic Oath.

Vic sighed, and dropped her own cards before rising to go help Ming.

The stranger lay face down on the carpet outside Doc’s private elevator. He was about six feet tall, with red hair the same shade as Vic’s own. Following Ming’s gestured instructions, Vic rolled him over. He was light, maybe a hundred and twenty pounds soaked in blood. Once she had him on his back, his eyes opened and fixed on hers.

Ekkie? That one word was enough to send a dagger into Vic’s heart.

Doc reached the elevator lobby moments after Vic had rolled their unknown visitor onto his back; just in time to hear the man call her Ekkie.

The word seemed to hit Vic like a poleaxe, almost stunning her in place; Doc was going to have to find out what it meant, but for the moment he had a patient to deal with.  Kneeling down, he picked up the injured man and carried him into the infirmary. The man was so thin that his suit hung off his body. Once Doc had him on the surgical bed he began stripping the man’s clothes off while Ming reached for a stethoscope.

With a whole floor to himself and his friends, Doc had long ago found it useful to keep an infirmary on the premises. Over the years what had been a single small room had grown into something closer in concept to a small hospital. With three beds and a small but very well equipped operating theater, he and Ming could handle almost any medical problem.

His heart’s strong, Ming said, after listening through the stethoscope. I don’t think all this blood is his.

Doc finished stripping the man down to his underwear, and had to agree. Most of the blood was on his suit and trousers, obviously someone else’s. He took a deep breath; not someone else’s something else’s. It was pigs’ blood.

Now that they had a chance to properly examine the patient it was clear that he was suffering more from malnutrition and exposure than any sort of attack. Although he was a good six feet tall, the scale built into the surgical bed gave his weight as one hundred and eighteen pounds. Meanwhile, Ming was continuing to check his heart and lungs.

Is he alright? Vic had come up behind them, and was leaning against the infirmary doorway, looking surprisingly subdued. Will he be alright?

Ming looked up from her patient and nodded. He’s about sixty pounds underweight, but that’s nothing a little good food and exercise can’t fix. He might need a week in bed, but after that he should be fine in a month or two.

Thanks. Vic hugged her chest, her eyes still fixed on their patient.

Doc raised an eyebrow. Vic wasn’t usually this quiet when something happened. Do you know who he is?

I think so. Vic stepped further into the infirmary and leaned over the patient. Reaching forward, she carefully moved a lock of hair away from his eye.

Now that he had a good look at the two of them, the resemblance was remarkable. Not only was the man’s hair exactly the same shade of red as Vic’s but he also had a similar cast of features. He had the same nose and chin as Vic, once you allowed for the generally heavier features of a man.

Who is he? Ming asked, taking the stethoscope out of her ears.

I think he’s my cousin Viktor, Vic explained. He always called me Ekkie when we were children because he was Vic so I had to be somebody else.

You think? Ming asked. Don’t you know?

As far as I knew, the Bolsheviks shot Viktor in 1918. He was only ten years old. Vic’s face was a mask. My grandmother and I were the only members of our family to get out of Russia alive.

It’s alright Ekkie, Viktor opened his eyes and reached for her hand, his voice barely above a whisper. You couldn’t have known.

I can understand why you didn’t want her to use your name, Ming said, but why Ekkie?

It’s my middle name: The Russian form of Catherine is Ekaterina. Vic shrugged. No one’s called me by the Russian form of any of my names for years.

I like it. Ming grinned. I wonder what else he has on you?

Doc wasn’t quite sure of the point of the exchange, but the fact Ming was willing to joke told him that her diagnosis was the same as his cursory inspection. Vic’s cousin was going to be all right. Unfortunately, that still brought up more questions than it answered.

Grabbing a stool, he moved it over beside the surgical bed and sat down on the other side of the patient from Vic. I know you must have been through a lot, but you have to admit that when someone shows up at my door covered in pigs’ blood it’s bound to raise a few questions.

"Da, Lyushkov, Viktor struggled to speak. NKVD after me. Had to hide in slaughterhouse."

NKVD agents are here? That surprised Doc. He knew the Soviets had spies everywhere, but usually they didn’t send people after escapees unless they were very important.

Lyushkov agents, Viktor whispered harshly. Trying to keep his secrets. Talos army.

What do you mean? Talos army? Doc knew the name from Greek Mythology, but surely Talos was just a story.

Giant iron automatons. Viktor coughed, and Vic quickly gave him a glass of water, holding it so he could take a few sips. He gave her a quick nod and then cleared his throat.

"Blagodarya Ekkie."

Doc gave him a few moments to recover and then gestured for Viktor to continue.

"Was in gulag near Irkutsk when giant figures fifty feet tall stomped camp flat. Barely escaped with life. While was lying half-dead in remains of camp people got out of giants and talked. Far East head of NKVD, man called Lyushkov, sent them to test machines by destroying camp. Giants burn most of camp with flamethrowers but I fell in well.

After giants left, I climbed out. Made way to China. Russian community in Shanghai told me where Ekkie was. They got me on freighter and I worked my way to New York. Am here now.

Doc let out a long low breath. That sounds like quite a trip, but it doesn’t explain the pigs’ blood.

NKVD had agents in Shanghai; must have found me from camp records. When when ship reached New York were waiting for me. I snuck off ship and hid but they found me. Men in iron suits chase me to slaughterhouse district. I hide in trough of pigs’ blood until dark then make way here.

From the look of things Vic believed everything her cousin was saying, but Doc didn’t feel so trusting. The man was probably her cousin, but his story was more than a little thin. Oh well, the man was likely to be staying around for a while, so he was sure they could find answers soon enough. The real question was the men in iron suits.

Iron suits weren’t something he expected from the Soviets; they were more likely to throw numbers at a problem than technology. That is, if they were anything more than suits of armor. It was a puzzle, but not enough of one to catch his attention for now.

If you don’t mind, I’ll go back to my chess game. Without more information, he wanted something more to hold his attention so he didn’t worry away at a problem that might not have a solution yet.

Ming waved him off, while Vic and her cousin were deep in a whispered conversation in Russian.

Back in the lounge he had almost reached the chess table where Gus sat waiting patiently, when the radio interrupted his concentration:

We interrupt tonight’s broadcast for this breaking news brief. More than two hundred people are trapped inside Saint Nicholas Orthodox Cathedral on 97th Street by a gang of men in black armor. Police are on the scene as we speak. Stay tuned to KNYC for updates when we have them. Now, back to our regularly scheduled program.

Gilly, get the suits. We’re going to church.

Vic hung on for dear life as Ming dumped the clutch of the panel van. Normally she or Gilly would be driving, keeping Ming safely away from the big straight eight with three hundred supercharged horsepower under the hood. That wasn’t an option tonight, because