MECH

by Tim Marquitz

  We connect our minds into Mission Control for New Boston, New Houston, and New Phoenix. We know what each city knows: how to heal, how to build, what to destroy.

  I send nano-jaegers to New Boston, to join with their fighters, to make them stronger. They return to me swiftly, strengthened and reinforced, with New Boston’s fighters as one with the rest of us. There are no more kaiju around New Boston, and we have many new nano-jaegers because they stopped along the way to join New Houston into our jaeger collective.

  But I have one last test.

  “Sector One is in trouble,” James says calmly, as I combine all my nano-jaegers into one, into the largest jaeger ever seen. We tower over the world, bigger than any kaiju could ever hope to be. We are no longer individual teams or individuals at all, we are now fully jaeger. One mind, one body. We are Jäegermeister.

  Then we separate, still connected, but apart. For now.

  We turn as one towards the ocean.

  It’s time to take back our world and remake it in a new image.

  The fingers and thumb stuck out of the desert, unmoving, waiting.

  Antiquity Grey bit her lower lip—a habit her grandmother scolded the fifteen-year-old about daily. It was a dangerous situation. The enormous hand was more than just some slag the wind had brought to the fore. It had likely been buried during Grandmother’s childhood, since the Splinter War, when mechs had battled over the planet’s ore reserves.

  Chekker said shattered metal had fallen from the sky like meteors during the most violent battles, burning Hellfire that pockmarked the desert with glass. The wastes were once a graveyard of broken mechs and plating, but no longer; those who pirated the past for profit had scavenged them over the decades, leaving almost nothing behind. Metal arms, metal legs, metal weapons, to be melted down and reconstituted on-world, as well as off.

  Still, no one had discovered her find. This steel was hers.

  When she returned with it, the people of Solomon Fyre would sing her name long into the night, this treasure worth all her years of rummaging the sands.

  And, buried beneath this horrible desert, who knew what else was attached to the hand?

  An arm?

  Illustration by MARC SIMONETTI

  A shoulder?

  A torso?

  Dare she hope for an entire mech?

  Excitement moved Antiquity toward her airbike. She would ride down to the hand, blast away the sand, and see for herself.

  “Wait! You are not going down there, Grey-child.”

  Antiquity stopped. She glared at CHKR-11, the spherical bot spinning in the air, safe behind the giant outcropping of rock that hid them from the sands.

  “You don’t even know what I am going to do, Chekker.”

  “Grey-child, I know you.” CHKR-11 whirred, slowly spinning. It stopped and considered her, its soccer sport-paint once proud, now faded with decades of time. “The moment you came upon this detritus, I knew your actionable intentions.”

  “But there is no one around, Chekker!” She pointed in all directions, to the High Dringlam Mountains and across the entirety of the desert, north, east, and south. “Look to the wastes! I see no dust movement. None!”

  “That is true. For now.” The bot flew nearer for emphasis, his voice the static of his kind. “However, I have been privileged to teach the children of your family for more than a century. None of them have possessed your proclivity for attracting danger.”

  Anger rose up inside. She no longer needed a nursemaid. “Do you see what’s down there, Chekker? Are your sensors shot? Look!”

  The bot was unimpressed. “I do. I see trouble.”

  “Trouble finds me all by itself, you old bot!”

  The ancient floating ball did not reply.

  “What do you think we should do then?” she asked, waiting for the fight.

  CHKR-11 wasted no time. “We return to Solomon Fyre, and inform the Elders.”

  “No!” Antiquity argued, wanting to hit the bot. She had done it before. It had been like punching a rock face. “No. No. And no! Why should they take what I have found? Why should they get to own what I find?”

  “Because of your family’s past. And they are the Elders.”

  “Thieves!”

  “Maybe,” CHKR-11 said. “But your family is no longer in the position they once were, Grey-child. Grey has become your surname. And Grey is your legacy now. We will return to Solomon Fyre. If not the Elders, we will certainly tell the matriarch.”

  “We will not,” Antiquity declared.

  Before Chekker could respond, she gained the airbike’s seat, released the grav-stabilizers that kept it from floating away, and punched the throttle. No electric tase from Chekker stopped her, as she thought it might; he obviously did not think leaving her immobile would be safer than letting her reach the mech. Instead, the old bot followed as he was programmed, intended to teach, yes, but also to safeguard its charge. She did not know how he arrived at his decisions, though she was glad he’d not stopped her.

  A final scan of the wastes revealed no evidence of scavengers, so Antiquity rocketed down the mountain and pulled her airbike up next to the hand in a swirl of sand. The fingers were higher than she was tall.

  Up close, she could see there might be more of it beneath the desert surface, lumpy hills of sand that could be other parts of the giant. Using her airbike’s thrusters, she began blasting away the desert, revealing a forearm, an elbow, a shoulder.

  The sun beat down on her, blisteringly hot, yet she kept at it, excitement fueling her, even as her own sweat became the glue that adhered a layer of grit to her browned skin. The shifting of the sands over time had reduced the mech from a painted dark blue to a grayish one, but the metal retained its make, unmolested.

  Her work continued through the afternoon and, with enough desert removed, Antiquity realized the mech lay on its front, although head upturned. The white-tinted faceplate of its massive head stared at her.

  “Help me, Chekker!” Antiquity could not see beyond the glass. “Run a diagnostic.”

  The bot hovered over to where she stood. “Are you feeling ill, Grey-child?”

  “Not on me! On it.”

  “I cannot.”

  “It’s dead, then?”

  “Quite the contrary,” Chekker answered. “The cells are depleted from decades in the sand, however they are not extinguished. It lives.”

  “But…? Then why not?”

  “It is blocking my attempts.”

  Antiquity stood stunned. The mech still had power! What mystery caused it to come to rest here decades ago? If it hadn’t been for lack of power, what then?

  “Can you access its recorder?” she asked. “Maybe see why it’s inert?”

  “I can try, Grey-child. Security will have been one of its primary functions. It is technology not unlike my own, built at the time of my creation. There is always a chance however, no matter how poor the odds.”

  CHKR-11 began spinning this way and that, each change in direction accompanied by a click as if unlocking a multi-number lock.

  While she waited, Antiquity ran her hand over the smooth glass of the faceplate, wondering how the ancient treasure had been brought low. After more than an hour—and Antiquity’s patience with the bot all but spent—a series of clacks reverberated through the glass. She jumped away from the mech, stumbling in the sands. An explosion then hurtled her through the air.

  Antiquity came to a stop some yards away, the loose sand cushioning her landing. Fighting the darkness swimming before her eyes, she blinked up at the massive head. The faceplate had shot open. That’s what had batted her aside.

  She rubbed grit from her eyes and squinted into the darkness.

  At the mech’s cockpit.

  And a corpse.

  “Grey-child?” Chekker swiftly came to hover over her. “Are you harmed?”

  The heat of surprise still coursing through her, Antiquity waved the bot away. She warily approached the giant. Its driver was
strapped into a harness, twistedly slumped to the side, long hair pulled back into a single platinum braid akin to Antiquity’s own. She had seen dead bodies before, though not like this; the skin of the driver had sunk inward, paper-tight over its skull. Mummified, like one of the horrors told to scare children.

  Antiquity half-stepped into the cockpit.

  “Grey-child?” CHKR-11 levitated behind her, its static voice sounding leery.

  Her gaze paused on the crest emblazoned into the driver’s dark uniform.

  “Grey-child, before we venture further, you should know I had to duplicate and insert my system into the mech’s alpha program to infiltrate its security protocol and…”

  She barely heard him. “What?” she asked absently, mind a swirl.

  “Are you not listening, Grey-child? I had to copy my system! A duplicate. I could glean that immeasurable talents went into this mech’s construct. It belonged to someone of high import. Its systems mirrored that. The security features are an antiquarian cypher, although a top-level dichotomous analog, therefore it required duplicating my system. Two against one are better odds, as you know…” Chekker went silent, a shadow at her shoulder. “Grey-child, if the deceased organism has left you unsettled, perhaps we should vacate the vehicle. Of course, it is my opinion you should have been prepared, as it is largely understood these machines did not operate autonomously. All had drivers. You know this.”

  “It’s not that, Chekker.” Antiquity pointed at the crest. The insignia featured flame between unfurled angel wings.

  “Grey-child, danger finds you much too easily.”

  Antiquity thought Chekker meant their find—and maybe he did—but he had already disappeared from her side, flying toward the edge of the wasteland where the desert met vast distances. She scrambled over the sands, fearing to see what she already knew was there.

  Dust rising! She growled, barely able to breathe. “Scavengers.”

  The robot gained altitude, just enough to get a better view without compromising their whereabouts. “Approximately 6.9 leagues and closing.”

  “Shut the cockpit, Chekker,” Antiquity ordered, already moving to bury the giant mech again with her airbike. “And mark this location! Let’s get out of here.”

  “I could not agree more, Grey-child.”

  Antiquity went to work.

  With hope, her find would remain hidden.

  Eyes thought unseen watched Antiquity as she returned to Solomon Fyre.

  She knew whom they belonged to. This was not the first time. The Dreadth boys, who thought they were already men, who thought she was lesser than sand for being a Grey. She cursed inwardly as they darted from alley shadow, to second-story broken window, to burned-out machinery. The road bristled with Dreadth, more than a dozen. It was not the beating they might try to give that worried Antiquity. How long had they been watching since she realized they had been following her? Did they know where she had gone? If so, her find and its relevance for her family were not safe. If not, they knew the direction she had returned from and were just curious enough to track her grav-trail into the wastes to possibly discover and steal her mech away.

  She slowed her airbike, bringing it to a stop, touching the ground to observe a desert flower that had broken through the shattered streets of the once bustling desert city. She pretended not to notice their presence.

  If she could surprise them, even a little, there was a chance for escape.

  She needed that surprise.

  “Dreadth are watching,” her bot stated, hovering near her shoulder.

  “Shut it. I know,” she growled, viewing the tiny purple petals, using her side vision while trying to come up with something.

  As if they sensed her thoughts, four airbikes, larger and more powerful than hers, glided toward her, two from in front of her and two behind.

  She looked up then, the ruse done, and brought out her best two weapons.

  Her fists.

  It would not be the first time she brawled with the Dreadths.

  The airbikes in front of her parted to let a third through, this last finer than the others. Manson Dreadth sat its seat easily, large blue eyes piercing her like a hunting desert hawk. Antiquity stared back; she would show no fear. Manson was the oldest of the group, tall and rangy. Soon he would join his father, Jackson Dreadth, as a vice-Elder, to one day take his father’s place as an Elder of Solomon Fyre.

  Today, that did not matter. The sinking sun highlighted Manson’s smug smile.

  She was trapped. And he knew there was nothing she could do about it.

  “Where you been, Antiquity Grey?” the seventeen-year-old Dreadth questioned, his last word a drawn-out sneer.

  “None of your concern,” she said, anger rising.

  “With you Greys, it is always my concern.” Manson looked around at his kin slowly emerging from the city to surround her. Made stronger by numbers, the coward got off his airbike and strolled toward her with that maddening smile. “You must be watched. You cannot be trusted. It was your great-grandmother who failed to protect Solomon Fyre when it needed it most. It is the reason even speaking your family’s old name is punishable by death. Or have you forgotten history?” He smiled without a hint of humor. “Tell me. What have you been up to? Jak over there saw you leave this morning. And you’ve been gone all day, outside the city. So where? Where did you go, little Grey girl?”

  “Dreadth-child, halt your advancement,” Chekker ordered, still at Antiquity’s shoulder. “It would be wise.”

  “I am no child, bot,” Manson spat. “But, you are right to worry.”

  When Manson would not stop his approach, Chekker flew between the boy and Antiquity. Manson did not slow. Just when Chekker was about to tase him, rocks thrown by the other Dreadth boys slammed into the bot.

  He went spinning through the air, giving Manson the space he needed to lunge.

  Antiquity was ready. She threw the contents of her right fist—gritty sand she had gathered while looking at the flower. The boy fell back and raised his arms up. Manson roared in surprise, momentarily blinded. His Dreadth family members froze, not knowing what to do.

  Antiquity hit the throttle on her airbike.

  Manson was faster. Before her airbike powered up, he grabbed Antiquity’s wrist and flung her off it. “Grey bitch!” he yelled, standing over her, eyes red from sand. The Dreadths cheered. “You have no power over me. Not anymore. Your family is dust! Just like you are going to be if you don’t tell me what I want to know.”

  “I will never tell you,” Antiquity hissed from the street.

  “We will see.”

  Manson grabbed her again, grip like steel. She fought and kicked and spit, yet it did her no good. His fist punched into her midsection, sending her back to the ground, gulping for air.

  “Desist, Manson Dreadth,” a voice boomed, powerful and unmistakable as a desert storm. “Now!”

  Manson stood over Antiquity, fists clenched. He looked for the source of the command. Antiquity knew it all too well.

  Grandmother.

  Matriarch Vestige Grey came slowly toward Antiquity and Manson, as if she had all the time in the world. She strode by a pair of overgrown Dreadth boys on their airbikes like they didn’t exist.

  Grandmother’s eyes, blinded since her childhood, surveyed the scene with the intent of a thundercloud, her lips deepening, her wrinkles already aged craggy furrowed deeper, as three tiny balls of white light hovered around her, navigation bots, touching her lightly when obstacles entered her path. The leader of the Grey family did not deviate, each step prepared, methodical, precise.

  To those who did not know her, she would seem serene as she glided down the ruins of lower Solomon Fyre. To Antiquity, her grandmother had never looked so angry.

  “Manson Dreadth, you and your family will leave with the faculties that brought you to this moment,” Vestige said coldly. “If not, you will find it difficult to do so. Once your father hears of this, I doubt he will be pleased.”


  Manson did not move despite Antiquity crawling back toward her airbike. “You have no power over me, you old crone,” he laughed. “My fathe—”

  “Your father knows I see beyond my lost sight,” Vestige said. “If I stand before the Elders, especially at a time so close to your ascendance into their ranks, and reveal the video record of your assault upon my granddaughter, you will lose favor among many. Worse, you will be attached to your father by name, weakening his standing as leader. Are you willing to risk that and your future over so pert a girl?”

  Manson looked at Chekker, who floated nearby. The bot did possess the ability to record events. The Dreadth boy gauged the blind woman. Were her words true? Antiquity did not know. It did not take long for him, though. He grinned. “I will be watching you, Antiquity,” he said, pointing at her. “And watching for your secret out there in the waste.”

  He whistled at the Dreadth boys and, in moments, they were gone.

  “I am fine,” Antiquity said, dusting herself off while Grandmother came to stand before her. The punch to the gut lingered.

  Matriarch Vestige Grey gave a disapproving scowl. “You are a Grey. You have to be.”

  “How’d you know they’d attack me? Know where I was?”

  “Know? The blind always know.” Vestige took a deep breath. “And I worry about you constantly, Antiquity. You are the last of us, our family buried beneath the power of the Dreadths.” The old woman paused, hands behind her back. “I worry because I know of your forays. I know you yearn.”

  “Yearn?”

  “For something more. Like I did, in my own youth.” Frowning, Antiquity turned away, preferring the ruins to her grandmother’s discerning gaze. The wasted city, after all, could not judge her.

  A century earlier, Solomon Fyre had been a bustling community, its roots deep, with expansive mech eyries rising high above. These lower levels of the city had since been abandoned, much of it destroyed and left to decay when the Splinter War had come. Now, most inhabitants lived above, away from the numerous dangers prowling the desert. The ruins they both stood within were more graveyard than city, its ghosts silencing all.