by Tim Marquitz
MECH: Age of Steel
Ragnarok Publications | www.ragnarokpub.com
Publisher: J.M. Martin | Creative Director: Jeremy Mohler
All stories within are copyright © their respective authors. All rights reserved.
The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious or fictitious recreations of actual historical persons. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the authors unless otherwise specified. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
Published by Ragnarok Publications
206 College Park Drive, Ste. 1
Crestview Hills, KY 41017
ISBN-13: 9781941987858
Worldwide Rights
Created in the United States of America
Editor: Tim Marquitz and Melanie R. Meadors
Editorial Assists by: N.X. Sharps & J.M. Martin
Cover Illustration: Victor Adame Minguez
Interior Illustrations: Nicolás R. Giacondino, Frankie B. Washington, Robert Elrod, Oksana Dmitrienko, Marc Simonetti
Cover/Interior Design: Shawn T. King
“When I, who is called a weapon or a monster, fight a REAL monster, I can fully realize that I am just a human.”
—Hiromu Arakawa, Fullmetal Alchemist
“Gigantor, the space-age ROBOT!
He is at your command.
Gigantor, the space-age ROBOT!
His power is in your hand!
Bigger than big, taller than tall,
Quicker than quick, stronger than strong.
Ready to fight for right against wrong!
Gigantor! Gigantor! Gigaaaaa-a-an-torrrrrr…”
—Mid-sixties animated Gigantor cartoon based on Mitsuteru Yokoyama’s “Ironman 28”
CONTENTS
FOREWORD
MELANIE R. MEADORS
INTRODUCTION
MATT FORBECK
PROJEKT: MARIA
PETER CLINES
ALL TOGETHER, NOW
RAMEZ NAAM AND JASON M. HOUGH
TOY SOLDIER
JAMES SWALLOW
TRAVAILIANT
KEVIN J. ANDERSON AND DAVID BOOP
EASY AS PIE
JODY LYNN NYE
THESEUS IV VS MECHA-MISHIPESHU
C. L. WERNER
JÄEGERMEISTER
J.C. KOCH
THE TEMPERED STEEL OF ANTIQUITY GREY
SHAWN SPEAKMAN
AFTER THE VICTORY
M L BRENNAN
THE COLD AND THE DARK
JAMES R. TUCK
OF THE FIRE
PAUL GENESSE
MACHINE HEART
PATRICK M. TRACY
FADEM
ANTON STROUT
I. AM. THE. PILOT.
JASON M. HOUGH AND RAMEZ NAAM
VULTURE PATROL
JENNIFER BROZEK
INTEGRATION
STEVE DIAMOND
HERE WE GO! FIGHT!
KANE GILMOUR
LADY AND THE WOLF
SCOTT SIGLER
THE STARS SHINE HOME
MALLORY REAVES
THE BONUS SITUATION
JEFF SOMERS
A SINGLE FEATHER
MARSHEILA ROCKWELL AND JEFFREY J MARIOTTE
BIRTHRIGHT
MARTHA WELLS
ROGUE 57
JEREMY ROBINSON
ALL FOR ONE
MARK TEPPO
ORDO TALOS
GRAHAM MCNEILL
Growing up, I had three passions: monsters, machines, and princesses. And if there was any way to combine them together, all the better. At age three, every weekend I was glued to the television to watch Creature Double Feature, where a local station would show two monster movies back to back. Godzilla, Rodan, Ghidorah, Gorgo, Gamora, Mothra, King Kong. I could not get enough of them.
Then when I was just a little older, I discovered Voltron. And no day was complete for me unless I got my fix. I’d run home from school and obsessively watch five mechanical lions combine to become one super mech, the defender of the universe. One of the pilots was even a princess. There was an evil prince, a snarky pilot named Lance (yeah, I’ve always gone for the snarky one, even back then), and aliens. Everything a girl could want!
After that came multiple Robotech series, and the various Gundam series, and Neon Genesis Evengelion. I devoured Transformers, Jet Jaguar, Mechagodzilla, and countless other robot/mechasuit shows and movies. When Pacific Rim came out (monsters AND mech!), I was in heaven, because suddenly all these things were back in style and weren’t so hard to find. My house is full of models of giant robots and mechs I’ve bought, built, and collected since childhood and continue to enjoy to this day.
Humans are fragile, and the world out there is big. There are creatures in reality that are so much larger than us, that have so much more brute strength and sharp teeth and claws, against which, physically, we stand no chance. If these monsters from our imaginations came to reality, we’d be crushed.
That, however, is where our intelligence and our spirit of endeavor comes in.
Where humans lack in size, we more than make up for it in determination and our will to survive. We have big brains and we aren’t afraid to use them. Mech tales champion science and technology. Instead of musclebound heroes, these stories have heroes who are makers, tinkerers, and thinkers. It’s a chance for nerds to shine in fiction.
No one can make a giant robot completely on their own, however. Mech tech symbolizes not only our best human qualities as individuals, they also bring forward our sense of community, our willingness to put differences aside to fight together to save our planet and ourselves from an outside threat. It takes more than a village to design, engineer, machine, build, test, weaponize, and pilot giant robotic armored suits. While often there is just one person in the cockpit of these machines, it takes a world of working together to make the mission possible. I think that’s something as relevant today as it was when Jet Jaguar first appeared on the big screen.
When Ragnarok Publisher Joe Martin and Editor Tim Marquitz invited me to co-edit this anthology, I was absolutely over the moon. What project could better encompass what I was all about than an anthology about people piloting giant mobile suits duking it out with monsters and other threats in order to save the world? Not only that, but with so many awesome authors involved with the project, I could barely take time away from my Godzilla roar of excitement to say yes.
Mech: Age of Steel picks up where its predecessor Kaiju Rising: Age of Monsters left off. In these pages, there is heart-pounding action, thrilling adventure, and nail-biting suspense. You’ll find stories of hope, of taking chances, of fighting when the odds of success are slim. But behind all the steel, the gears, the pistons and hydraulics, these stories are ultimately stories of humanity.
So suit up, Mech-Heads!
The first published novel I wrote, which came out way back in 2002, was actually a mech story. It was a tie-in novel based on C.A.V. (i.e., Combat Assault Vehicle), a tabletop game published by Reaper Miniatures. In the game (and the book and in most other mech-related things), you pilot a giant machine of war that walks on legs and has gigantic weapons for arms.
That’s the basic appeal of all mech stories right there, the ones you might have seen in things like Robotech, BattleTech, Pacific Rim, Alien, Avatar, Robot Jox, and Neon Genesis Evangelion. They represent humanity’s ability to build technology monstrosities that enhance an individual or team’s power to ludicrous levels. If they were nothing more than adolescent power fantasies, though, there wouldn’t be much to them, and they certainly wouldn’t have the staying power they’ve
shown since being introduced to the world back in the 1950s. They’d simply be relegated to cool model kits you could build based on their novel designs.
There’s more to mechs than their technological power though, and that feature (not a bug) sits in the pilot’s seat.
Mechs are not giant robots. As much technology comprises them, they’re still not operated by computers or AIs—although they’re sometimes enhanced by such things. They’re driven by real people, just like you and me, and so have all of our same flaws despite having orders of magnitude more physical and destructive power.
As the tech-support acronym PEBKAC (Problem Exists Between Keyboard And Chair) implies, the issue with most technology doesn’t spring from the technology itself. It arises from the hands into which that technology is placed.
Similarly to borrow from the National Rifle Association, mechs don’t kill people. People kill people. This is true in the fact that mechs (which often feature massive arrays of various kinds of guns) don’t destroy anything of their own volition. That requires action on the part of their pilots.
But that’s not all there is to the story. It might be ordinary people pulling the triggers on those weapons, but those same weapons help those people do a massive amount of damage they couldn’t come close to managing on their own. They become faster, more powerful, and far more lethal. In this way, the weapons magnify the issues of their operators, both in terms of problems made and solutions offered.
Of course, the kinds of problems that weapons like mechs get into are, by their nature, much larger and more violent than the sort you might run into with a pistol or your personal computer. That’s what makes mech stories so much more dramatic, entertaining, and—honestly—fun. They’re problems not just writ large but writ stamping across the blasted horizon in steel symbols that can reach hundreds of feet tall.
That’s also the job of fiction, of course: to amplify conflicts. Fiction manages that by putting a spotlight on a situation and explaining the context so you can know exactly what’s at stake in such clashes and why. It lets you get inside the heads of the characters so you can figure out not just what they’re doing but, far more importantly, why.
Mech fiction, as you might imagine, does that brilliantly by amplifying both the stakes and the action to apocalyptic levels. It puts you not only inside the minds of people piloting gigantic machines of war but also inside the cockpits of those same machines. It turns everything up to eleven—and then breaks off the knob, stomps on the gas, and spins the rotary cannons up to speed.
Hold on tight. You’re in for some wild rides.
Professor of History and Folklore Ken Kraft flinched as the airman yanked the door open. “Are we sure this is the best way?”
“Positive,” said the airman. “After the massacre taking the island, the Heinies wouldn’t expect anyone to do the same thing.”
“With good reason,” Kraft shouted over the engine.
On the other side of the airman, Dar Carter smirked. “If you’re having second thoughts,” he called out, “you should’ve mentioned them sooner.”
“I did mention them sooner. I’ve been mentioning them for six days now.”
Carter’s grin got even wider.
“Once you two are gone,” yelled the airman, “we’re going to make some noise, convince the Jerries this is a nuisance bombing run. Should buy you an hour or so.”
Carter nodded.
“I’m still not feeling very confident about this,” Kraft shouted.
“Relax,” Carter stepped forward and set his hands on the professor’s shoulders. “You’re going to be fine. Take a deep breath and hold it.”
Kraft sucked in air until his chest swelled against the harness.
“Let it out. Take another one.”
Illustration by NICOLÁS R. GIACONDINO
He held the second breath until his lungs burned. It trailed out between his lips and his shoulders sagged.
Carter gave him a punch on the arm. “Feel better?” he asked, reaching up to grab one of the dangling straps.
“Yes. Yes, thank you.”
“Good,” Carter said. “See you on the ground.”
His foot came up and kicked Kraft out the plane’s open door.
Kraft had been surprised when the car appeared with the summons to the Pentagon. After the Raider X affair with the Argo and the Sisters, Kraft had assumed his II-A status—important to the war effort—was given to him by the War Department as a small reward for his service. An assurance he wouldn’t be sent off to the South Pacific or worse.
It hadn’t occurred to him they might be serious about it.
He’d been escorted to a small conference room, where Commander Finch stood. Finch always looked like the model for a Navy recruiting poster. Narrow hips, broad shoulders, square jaw, perfect hair. His tan uniform actively repelled lint and wrinkles.
Across the table from him, leaning in a chair and sipping from a flask, sat Dar Carter. Carter, sometimes known as “The Roman,” looked like Johnny Weissmuller’s older brother. A tougher, more ragged brother. A single scar marred his good looks, a thin line starting at the top of his high cheekbone, just by his left eye, and running down his neck and beneath his collar. Kraft had never asked how he’d gotten it.
In certain circles, Kraft’s peers and contemporaries referred to Carter as an aggressively active historian. In less polite circles, they just called him a mercenary treasure hunter. Regardless, the man knew Europe, Asia, and a large part of Africa better than Kraft knew his faculty library.
Trapped in a room with the two of them always made the professor self-conscious about his academic build and eyeglasses. He was Clark Kent bookended by a pair of Supermen.
“Kraft, you bastard,” Carter called across the room. “Good to see you.”
“How’ve you been, Carter?”
“Surviving,” he said. He took another swig from the flask, then capped it and tucked it back into his coat.
“Thank you for joining us, Professor,” said the commander, sticking his arm out.
“Anything to help,” said Kraft. The commander’s handshake was firm. Solid. Precise.
Finch, done with pleasantries, opened his files. “The Nazis took Crete last May. Bloody as hell. Over six thousand dead, all told, and they’ve had a few mass executions since then. Two months ago, the resistance there got word to us of a big construction project going on, just east of Rethymnon and two miles inland. If our English friends have the chatter right, the Germans are calling it Project Maria.”
Kraft furrowed his brow. “Maria like…a woman?”
Finch nodded. “No idea who, though. There are a few German chemists and mathematicians with the name, but no one we know of involved in engineering or weapon design. Might be a reference to a family member, but we still don’t know most of the players behind the project. We sent some men in to meet up with a resistance cell. Last week they got these to us.”
Finch spun one of the photos, then another. They showed distant crisscrosses that Kraft recognized as some sort of superstructure. He’d seen newsreels of planes being built, with shots of them before the plates went over everything. In the second picture, he could see a welder working on one of the intersections.
“There are three of them so far,” said Finch. “Getting underway on a fourth when these were taken. Our people give them a diameter of seventeen feet and a length of thirty-five.”
Carter tapped his chin. “Are those exact numbers?”
“Best estimates, going off the welder’s equipment.” Finch tapped the man in the photo.
“That’s… an odd size, isn’t it?” Carter turned the photo to get a better angle on it. “Too big for a fighter, too short for a bomber.”
Finch nodded. “It doesn’t match up with anything we’ve seen from the Germans before.”
“Maybe it’s not complete? The pieces might join together.”
“Bad construction method, if that’s the case.”
“
Something new then?”
“Perhaps,” said Finch, “but if it’s a plane, why go all the way to Crete? Hitler’s got dozens of factories in Germany churning out planes and tanks.”
“Maybe it’s not a plane,” mused Carter. “Some kind of ship?”
Finch shook his head. “Two miles inland? And as far as we can tell, the Germans haven’t been bringing in engines or fuel.”
Carter shrugged and pulled a flask from inside his coat. “Maybe they’re manufacturing it all there?”
“I’m sorry,” said Kraft. “I don’t mean to interrupt…”
Finch’s gaze locked onto the professor like a targeting system. “Yes?”
“Well, why am I here? I’m willing to help in any way I can, of course, but I don’t see how any of this would involve me.”
Finch nodded. “Going off some of the preliminary work they’ve done, our current theory is that the Nazis might be using resources there on Crete. They’ve looted museums across Europe, and some of our boys thought they might just be pulling what they need for raw materials from archeological sites. And Carter here thought you might be able to give us some insights in that area.”
“Ahhh,” said Kraft. “Well, then, to be honest, that doesn’t make a lot of sense.”
The commander’s jaw shifted. “Why not, Professor?”
Kraft gestured at the map. “There are dozens of archeological sites across Crete. Maybe hundreds, depending,” he added, glancing at the Roman. “But even if you ignored proper techniques and just ripped everything out of the ground as fast as you could find it, there just wouldn’t be that much. Not compared to what you need for a plane or a ship.”
Finch’s brow furrowed. It always did when the professor shot down his theories. “Are you sure of that?”
Kraft nodded. “Absolutely,” he said. “It wouldn’t even be steel. It would all be bronze and some iron…”
Carter glanced up from the photos. “Kraft?”
The professor frowned. “I think I might know why they’re building this on Crete.” He looked at Finch. “None of your intelligence people are film buffs, I take it?”