The Havoc Machine by Steven Harper Page A

brain for my work, the work you want to steal, and I do not take kindly to thieves.”
    With a series of clicks and whirrs, an enormous pistol emerged from Havoc’s forearm. Thad scrambled to his feet and dove behind the worktable with the ten-legged spider on it just as Havoc fired. A spray of bullets chittered across the floor right behind Thad and pinged off the equipment piled on and around the table. Thad glanced up. The ten-legged spider sat on its pyramid of junk, just another piece of paraphernalia. Thad could almost touch it. Glass shattered as bullets zipped around for several seconds like deadly hummingbirds. Then they stopped. Thad risked a peek around the table. The fluid jars near him had been shattered, the gory contents pulped. Thad smelled sharp formaldehyde. Havoc, still sitting on the ground, was feeding bullet cartridges into his arm. Thad whipped his pistol around, then realized that from this angle, the boy on the table was partly in line of fire.
    “Damn it,” he muttered.
    “I hate it when people make a mess in my laboratory,”
Havoc said, the words rippling endlessly from his mouth.
“Especially thieves like you. It will take hours to clean this up, though I can use automatons to help me, but lately some haven’t been so cooperative, which is why I had to put some of my work aside, though this new breakthrough is very promising and I don’t appreciate that you have interrupted me, little thief.”
    He fired again, and Thad ducked back behind the table. Bullets pocked and pinged all around him. A red-hot line scored his forearm and he snatched himself farther back. Blood trickled down the inside of his sleeve.
    “I hit you, little thief. I can smell the blood. It’s funny how these days I can sense so much more than I could before I contracted this wonderful disease—”
    “Dante!” Thad shouted. “Shut it!”
    “Applesauce!” Dante’s interjection was followed by a scream from Havoc. Thad shoved himself away from the equipment pile and slid sideways on the floor. Dante was at Havoc’s shoulder, his sharp beak piercing Havoc’s ear as his needle claws dug into Havoc’s neck. Blood flew in all directions. Havoc’s metal arm fired wildly into the ceiling. The boy huddled on the operating table, but Thad’s slide across the floor had changed the trajectory so that the child wasn’t in the line of fire. The pistol barked three times in Thad’s hand. All three shots went straight into Havoc’s upper body. His arm gun went silent, and the clockworker toppled backward with a burbling gasp. The smell of gunpowder hung in the air.
    “Olga!” Thad shouted at him.
    “Bless my soul,” Dante said, hopping free of Havoc. His claws were red. “Doom!”
    Thad glanced over at the ten-legged spider crouchedatop the pile of equipment across the room. What about that thing was worth so much? In any case, it would keep for now. He ran to the table. The boy lay huddled on his side, shivering in his rags. For a terrible moment Thad was back in Poland looking down at David. But this wasn’t Poland, and this boy wasn’t David. There was no sheet, no blood, and Thad had arrived in time.
    “It’s all right,” Thad told him, then cursed himself for speaking English. He switched to his heavy Lithuanian.
“I’ll get you out of here. The bad man is dead. He can’t hurt you.”
    The boy didn’t respond. Dante hopped up to Thad’s shoulder, blood still staining his beak and claws. Thad touched the boy’s shoulder. It was warm.
“My name is Mr. Sharpe,”
he said.
“I’ve come to take you home. Can you sit up?”
    A soft sound from the rags, like the sound of someone trying not to cry. Thad’s heart half broke.
    “I’m going to pick you up,”
Thad said.
“I won’t hurt you.”
    “But I…will…little thief.”
    Thad spun in time to see Havoc slap a button on the back of his mechanical hand. It pulsed red, and a high-pitched sound squealed through the room. Havoc was gasping, and blood