Mech Warrior: Born of Steel (Mechanized Infantry Division Book 1)

by James David Victor

  Damn it! Dane couldn’t help but think.

  >OBJECTIVE 1: Secure Perimeter…

  “Williams! Varakis! Fan out!” Osgud was barking at them, making a gesture for the two AMP wearers to take up the three and nine o’clock guard positions.

  What? Dane looked at Osgud frankly. Who the hell died and made you king? he thought. Until he saw, on his own HUD, that the info for his Red Squad had been updated.

  >PVT. WILLIAMS…

  >PVT. VARAKIS…

  >PVT. GREENE…

  >PVT. OSGUD/ ACT. LT.

  You what!? Dane could have shouted. “Act. Lt.” stood for “Acting Lieutenant”—just a temporary field promotion that allowed Osgud to take point on decisions, but it felt like a slap in the face to Dane, who actually had the best skills of anyone here in a Mech suit.

  Yeah, but I’m also on Disciplinary, aren’t I? He suddenly realized that this was purposeful. This had to be Lashmeier’s way of trying to prove his point, wasn’t it? To make Dane have to operate functionally, at least, with Osgud, and perhaps even to soften the grudge that Osgud would have after Dane so thoroughly beat him in the challenge ring…

  This is not going to end well… Dane was thinking, and, as if to prove his point…

  “Private Williams—I said move your lazy ass!” Osgud snarled at him, and Dane groaned.

  Sir-yes-sir. He sighed, running a few steps to the edge of the roadway and crouching. He wished that he had a gun to sight down, but all he had was his arm-mounted light laser. He held his forearm, ready to throw a punch, knowing he could automate the laser at the same time.

  >OBJECTIVE 2. Activate Scanning Protocol…

  “Where’s the Scanning Protocol?” Dane mumbled for a moment, but as soon as he said the words out loud, the tiny icon of an eye in the corner of his HUD bounced, and his screen was overlaid with green, red, and purple images.

  >Sensing Lens: …

  >>Thermal…

  >>Radiological…

  >>Radio Frequency…

  >>Biological…

  Each different lens had a color associated with it, turning the ruins of New Sanctuary in front of him into a psychedelic dreamscape. Most of the rubbled hillscapes around him were cool, save for brighter patches of sunken warmth where the ruins hid subterranean fires.

  The city was mostly absent of radio-frequency chat as well, Dane saw, although when he turned his head to look around him, he saw the electric-purple haze concentrating around all of his teammates as their suits constantly chatted their subroutines to each other and the Marine mainframe.

  Radiologically, Dane was startled to see that the background radiation was up by a couple of points. Is that the Exin? Or is that what happened to cities when they got pulverized and broken?

  “Osgud, got something!?” he heard Varakis shout first, and when Dane turned, he, too, saw a collection of green blips in the distance. Biosigns. Life.

  “That’s sir, Private Varakis!” Osgud barked back at him, and the vehemence that Dane heard in his voice forced his heart to sink a little lower.

  Yeah, Osgud is going to be really hard to work with…

  “Well, come on! Move out!” Osgud was already standing from his crouch and moving in the direction of the four green blips. “On me, scout formation!” he bellowed, and Dane fell in on the extreme right-hand side, Varakis on the left, and Greene pulled up the rear.

  Osgud was crunching in front, bounding off the roadway to march up the drift of broken blocks that gathered between two broken-toothed buildings, heading straight for the signal.

  You have to hand it to the guy. He doesn’t mess around, Dane thought a little glumly as he followed.

  14

  Thank God for Over-Cautious Citizens

  “She’s near!” Sylvia could hear the grumble of the leading looter as they followed her down into the sunken parking garage. Shafts of light from their flashlights cut through the darkness like accusations.

  Don’t move, she told herself, crouched behind one of the heavy concrete pillars that still held up the sagging roof. Hopefully for a bit longer, too… she thought.

  “I don’t know why we’re even bothering. Dumb woman will probably get herself killed down here,” muttered one of the looter fellows, before adding, “if we don’t, too!” The man’s reinforced boots crunched on the debris.

  “You know why, Paxman!” snarled the main looter. “Orders are clear. No witnesses.”

  Orders? Sylvia noted. Does that mean that these looters are a part of a bigger operation? Some criminal gang perhaps, sneaking in to steal any valuables?

  The lead looter trudged ahead, his flashlight illuminating the crushed body of a car pinned to the ground by one huge plate of concrete.

  “Maybe she went up there…” The heavyset man paused, throwing a searchlight up the slanted plate to the next floor above, where it revealed another cavern of darkness.

  “No way she scrambled up that—we’d have heard her!” said a third quieter man.

  Damn, Sylvia had hoped that they would simply climb out and away from her.

  “Well, here’s the end. And the door’s locked,” one of the looters said, returning from the end of the garage. “She’s got to be in here somewhere…”

  Oh no… Sylvia saw the men fan out, each taking an avenue through the garage, and this time working methodically back to the broken-open entrance.

  Beside her was a car, thankfully not entirely crushed, but the windows nearest her had blown.

  Over? Under? Sylvia looked at the crawlspace underneath the car, and then decided. Neither. She waited until their flashlights swept away from her, and she carefully, quietly clambered into the passenger seat, hunkering down under the dashboard as well as she could.

  Why didn’t I bring the rifle! she cursed herself mentally.

  “Hey, did you hear that?” One of the looters was saying. “Over there…” A foursome of lights flashed in the direction of her car.

  Oh frack oh frack oh—

  Now, she had successfully managed to trap herself inside a metal box with only one way out, it seemed, and her scramble had been noticed.

  “Check it out,” snarled the heavyset lead looter, and she could hear the crunch of boots approaching, one from either side.

  Oh crap, oh—

  Sylvia pulled open the glovebox. You never know… But no, the citizen who had owned this SAAB had not helpfully left a spare set of keys or a pistol inside.

  The flashlights flared in the back window.

  “I see something, boss!” One of the looters shouted.

  No no no no…

  “Light her up!” Suddenly, the back window exploded with the thap of a bullet. Sylvia screamed, throwing herself down across the seats as the upholstery billowed in feathery foam-white—

  Thap! Thap-Thap! More bullets followed, ricocheting off of the car’s body and obliterating the driver’s side mirror.

  And there, as Sylvia expected her imminent demise, she could see that taped under the wheel was a car key.

  Thank god for over-cautious citizens! she thought, snatching the key and jamming it into the ignition, turning it…

  Rhud-udh-dhurr! The engine growled, but didn’t turn over. The SAAB had been down here too long in the dust and stone smoke…

  “We got her!” The looters were breaking into a run.

  Rhud-udhr-VRR! The engine turned over! Sylvia swung herself around to kick at the pedals and pull the wheel, for the SAAB to suddenly leap forward a few feet, and careen wildly, as the looters shouted behind.

  But now, of course, Sylvia was heading straight for another concrete pillar that held up the roof. With a shortened scream, she wrenched the steering wheel, turning just in time to break the other mirror from the passenger side as her trunk lit up with the ricocheting bullets.

  A parked car stood ahead of her—Sylvia swerved again. She was gunning a crazed circle around the parked cars, giving the looters a moving target—but not a retreating one. More of the windo
ws of the car burst open, showering Sylvia’s suit with glass fragments. It was only a matter of time before—

  POW! One of her tires blew, and Sylvia was skidding, sparks flying from the metal hub as she careened crazily…

  Ahead of her was the ramp that Sylvia had scrambled down to get in here… Or half-ramp, more precisely, as most of it was littered with concrete blocks and corrugated sheets and rubble…

  And there, at the top of the ramp, was a small square of daylight.

  “If I’m gonna die anyway…” Sylvia hit the accelerator, and the car tried to surge forward, dragging its punctured wheel…

  The doctor grabbed the seatbelt and threw it over one shoulder, not having time to secure it.

  The car hit the ramp. It threw itself most of the way up the ramp before it hit debris.

  “Argh!” Sylvia screamed as the car impacted, swinging as it turned, careening forward to the outside smoke-filled air.

  Pain wrenched at her shoulder and neck. Then Sylvia saw the ground in a picture-perfect still on her right-hand side before she was sliding and crashing against it. She was thrown forward, and the sharp crack as her head hit the dash instantly made everything turn black.

  15

  Sometimes You Roll, Sometimes You Bounce…

  “You hear that!?” Osgud shouted.

  Yes, Dane thought, turning in the direction of the muffled pops and bangs coming from up ahead of them. Gunfire.

  “We should call it in,” Dane said. There were two full other squads of AMP trainees out there, plus the very experienced Sergeant Lashmeier. If they had run into any trouble, then it would be better to coordinate…

  “Shut up, Private!” Osgud turned to glare at him through his faceplate. “This is my mission, get it? I’m the one who gives the orders!”

  “Okay, yeah, I know, sir,” Dane said exasperatedly. “But this is contact, and we’ve only got light lasers…”

  “Did I just hear you refusing an order, Private Williams?” Osgud snapped at him.

  “Well, grammatically speaking, no. Sir,” Dane responded.

  “Shut up!” Osgud snapped at him again. “What do the objectives say? Find Doctor Heathcote. Not ‘Start Whining Whenever Things Get Tough.’” Osgud sneered at him. “But you’re very good at that, aren’t you, Williams?”

  “You…” Dane felt his chest tighten as he rose from his crouch. The anger inside of him felt hot enough to burn right through the metal of his suit and out the other side—but it didn’t.

  But as Dane took a step forward, firmly believing that he was again going to pound Osgud into the dirt, he saw the vindictive, victorious flash in Osgud’s eyes.

  No. This is what he wants. Any reason to get me kicked out of the program… Dane took a staggering breath, so achingly wanting to smack the guy…

  “Sometimes you roll with the punches, son, but you bounce back up again after.” It was the words of his father, Bad Luck Hurricane Williams, rising in Dane unbidden. Maybe it was coming back to his old stomping ground of New Sanctuary that had summoned his father’s shade in him.

  “Osgud, sir…” It was Greene, nodding to where the sound of the muffled bullets was continuing.

  Osgud ignored him. “You got a problem with something I said, Williams?” Osgud snarled.

  “Pick your fights, son. Pick ’em well…” More words of advice from his father.

  “No, Acting Lieutenant, sir,” Dane said with some difficulty. “What are your orders?”

  Osgud’s face through the darkened, reinforced glass of his suit looked annoyed for a second, but then a glance to either side of him told him that both Greene and Varakis had converged, waiting for his orders, too.

  “On me,” Osgud said heavily. “Same formation. We’re going to be the ones to find Doctor Heathcote, you understand me? We are!”

  Osgud set off at a run, followed by the rest of Red Squad, and it was then that Dane realized that Osgud was actually just as hungry to be a Marine as he was. In Osgud, that hunger had turned into a fierce pride in what he did, and a bullying disregard of anyone he thought wasn’t worthy of the Corps around him…

  Their boots crunched into a half-destroyed park, where two large trees were still growing but surrounded by rubble drifts, a patch of green between them and more broken buildings on the far side.

  The gunshots had stopped, however, and now there was an eerie silence… Until Dane heard a low hum coming from the center of the park.

  “What’s this?” Dane was the first to see the out-of-place glint of metal. Maybe because he knew this district, Sanctuary Falls, and there was never any civic art in the middle of the park…

  “Sir,” he said (just a tad resentfully), as he hurried to the tripod of steel that whirred and vibrated on the ground.

  “What’s that!?” Osgud reached him, looking momentarily at the unit. “I don’t see no guns, and I don’t see no doctor, Private Williams!” he snarled, about to turn, when Dane pointed.

  “Look!” Dane was pointing at one of the blockier modules on the side of the steel tripod-contraption, where FED. MARINES was stamped on the side.

  “I’d say this looks like some kinda scientific instrument,” Dane said, and the conclusion was obvious.

  A scientific instrument like what a Federal Marine scientist might install?

  “Okay. Fan out and search the area…” Osgud nodded, and the four AMP suits broke away from the tripod-sensor, heading north, east, south and west.

  “I got shell casings, sir!” It was Greene, crouching by one of the trees, stooping to pick up the small glint of bronze that looked tiny in his giant suit gauntlets.

  “Well,” Dane called as he got to the top of the opposing ripple of rubble. “I got a shot-to-hell SAAB, sir.”

  There, lying in front of him and wedged on its side between blocks and rubble was a black SAAB. Its windows were blown and broken, no mirrors, taillights gone, one tire blown, and its front was crumpled. It was peppered with bullet impacts, and the wheel had a smear of blood, still fresh and red.

  16

  The Famous Doctor Heathcote

  “Not far now, over there…” grunted a voice, waking Sylvia up from a deep and dreamless sleep.

  What? Where am I? She groaned, seeing stars, and then seeing more darkness. Her visor was covered with some kind of cloth.

  “She’s waking up,” a voice above her said, and Sylvia suddenly realized that she was being held in a fireman’s lift, and the voice sounded quite a lot like one of the looters…

  No! Sylvia erupted in rage, jerking her body wildly and attempting to drum her legs and arms, even thrash her head back and forth.

  “Get off me!” she howled, muffled through both the visor of her encounter suit and the cloth mask that had been put over that, as well…

  “Hey—whoa!” She felt the man underneath her flinch as she kicked and bawled, and then the sudden lurch of momentum before she smacked into the ground. Hard.

  “Urgh…” she groaned, rolling over and attempting to kick her legs out.

  “Grab her, you idiot!” Suddenly, there were hands on her bound wrists, and the weight of someone kneeling on her legs as she was pinned to the ground. A blind, animal terror rose through her.

  “Get off, get off, get off!” She was screaming, attempting to push the man away, but he was too strong—

  “SHUT UP!” the brusque leader of the looters shouted, slamming her back into the rubbled ground of New Sanctuary. Then, snatching at the cloth covering, he pulled it from her face. The first thing that Sylvia thought was this: her visor was cracked.

  And if it’s compromised, then I might get infected with the virus! she was thinking.

  The next thought was that the man ahead of her had his face clearly visible behind his weaker emergency-responder visor.

  Oh no, she immediately thought. She could see his face clearly, rounded and stubbled, and with dark gray eyes. If the man didn’t care about being recognized, then the chances were that he didn’t expect
Sylvia to ever see anyone she could tell this tale to again.

  “HELLLP!” she screamed suddenly, before the man growled, and, using her bound wrists, slammed her once more into the ground.

  “I said shut up!” he snapped at her. “If I wanted, I could have put a bullet into you already, but I didn’t, okay?” The man’s eyes sparked with fury. “But I might just still do that, if you give me too much hassle!”

  Sylvia panted breathlessly, more from the pain than any desire not to scream again. There had to be other Marines or soldiers out in New Sanctuary somewhere, she thought. There were the salvage crews working day and night, weren’t there?

  Oh.

  And then she realized the extent that these looters had gone to. Each of them was wearing emergency-responder visors and various other paraphernalia—jackets, boots, flashlights…

  “You got yourselves jobs on the clean-up crews, didn’t you?” she whispered. Perhaps all of the clean-up contracts were being bought out by some criminal mafia or other…

  “Looks like you’re smart, lady,” the man grunted. “Or should I say Doctor Heathcote?”

  “What?” Sylvia froze, just as she was about to scream once again. She could see the ruined, torn-open sides of a building beyond the man’s shoulders, and the corridor of hazy sky behind his head. “How do you know my name?” she said.

  “Ha,” The man smirked, easing off with one hand to pull from his pocket Sylvia’s ID lanyard.

  “It makes my job a lot easier when all of you start wearing name tags,” he said, flapping the card of plastic back and forth in midair over her face.

  “And guess what?” he asked her. “It looks like you’re hot stuff to my employer. He says that it’s not good enough just putting a bullet in you and leaving you under a door like anyone else…” the man said ghoulishly.