MECH

by Tim Marquitz

  White Fang. The most-decorated Beast of the Grand War. Survivor of seven combat missions. Perhaps the one machine responsible for humankind’s survival. Debatable, sure, but Fang had been the one to hand-carry a nuke into the middle of a Squid bubble, the last Squid bubble.

  Machine? No. A soldier.

  A warrior.

  Kyle’s friend.

  Or at least he had been, when Kyle hadn’t been crippled by flashbacks and by the guilt of knowing he was responsible for the extermination of an alien race. The fact the squidly-diddlies weren’t as extinct as he believed didn’t assuage that guilt. At least, not yet. Three hours of knowledge doesn’t instantly unwire thirty years.

  “Jesus,” Theo said. “The fucking dump. This ain’t right.”

  “You could have come to visit him anytime,” Marian said. “You never left the goddamn diner.”

  It was the truth. Theo didn’t flinch away from it. Kyle had his problems, sure, but Theo had it so much worse. The man had tried to kill himself. Twice. Once upon a time, the diner had been decorated with images of Beasts and other war memorabilia. Theo’s intervention had been different from Marian’s method of losing herself in the bottle. His involved throwing out everything associated with the war.

  Had that worked? Well, he was still alive. Wasn’t he? At least for another three months.

  White Fang came closer, his six limbs drawing him out of the sea of garbage.

  Even covered in trash, streaked with rust, his armor and belly gone, the sight of the glorious old soldier took Kyle’s breath away. Most of the wolf’s snarl had chipped away, but there was enough of it left to see the teeth, the curled lip, the bit of pink tongue. Kyle had spent years inside that cockpit. The armored behemoth had been his home, and the home of Theo and Marian and Sherry and the others. Together, they had travelled a hundred million kilometers. Waged war. Made history.

  “Fuckin’ garbage dump,” Theo said.

  Sure. Like it was right for Theo to spend his life flipping burgers. Or right for Marian to look in the mirror every day and see the inexorable crawl of death creeping up her arm. Or right for Mitchell Goggins to be homeless, living in gutters and alleys. Or for Claudia Brown to eat the barrel of a .45.

  It wasn’t right. And life wasn’t fair.

  Fang crawled to a stop. The three humans gazed up at the ninety-nine-foot-tall Beast. A quarter of Lady had been hidden by water. No so with Fang. Four legs supporting the thin spine-trunk. The long arms, the big shoulders, the wolf-smile head. Ten stories of bad-ass.

  Ten stories, speckled with wet paper, coffee grounds, rotten food, used diapers, ripped garbage bags.

  A hero’s hero.

  Beasts didn’t have a sense of smell, per se, but their onboard detectors could identify the presence of rot, of decomposition, of shit both animal and human.

  “Hello, Captain,” Fang said.

  Kyle started to tremble. That voice. Stripped of armor or not, the sight of the machine brought back an uncontrollable flood of memories. The battles. The blood. The fire.

  A hand took his. A gloved hand.

  “Take a breath,” Marian said softly. “Like it or not, Dogman, you’re back in the shit. You’re needed.”

  Her voice calmed him, at least a little. Some of the raging memories ebbed away, like a tide going out quick. The sea was still there, though, waves lapping, threatening to submerge him without warning.

  He did as he was told. He took a deep, slow breath.

  “Hello, Fang.”

  The entire scene, so awkward. Every instant a reminder that Kyle had failed in his duties as a psychologist. More importantly, as a comrade. As a friend.

  “You haven’t been here in months,” Fang said.

  “It hasn’t been that long, has it?” Kyle said. “I was here—”

  “Four months, three weeks, seven days, and six hours ago,” Fang interrupted.

  Kyle felt ashamed.

  The big machine lowered, let its empty ribs rest on the ground. Meter-wide curved bands of metal pressed into packed garbage. “Did you come to ask me if I want to exterminate myself?”

  Kyle stared, dumbfounded. Fang didn’t know? Shanda must have wanted the captains to tell their Beasts. It was the perfect way to get long-ignored relationships off on the right foot. “I’m not here for that, no.”

  Fang waited, yet Kyle couldn’t find the words.

  “Well, thank you for the visit, Captain. Theo. Marian. I have work to do,” the war machine said. “All this garbage isn’t going to move itself.”

  White Fang had fought in Earth orbit, and won. He’d fought in deep space, and won. He’d fought in Mars orbit, and won. He’d fought on the surface of the Red Planet itself. The Squids had thrown everything they had at the Beast Legion. Many machines had been destroyed, along with their crews, but the all-white mech with the wolf’s snarl painted on its head had survived. Survived and inflicted horrible damage on the enemy.

  Like Lady in Red, White Fang was a warrior. When the war was over? When the C-Class came online? Those warriors were put into mothballs. And when the D-Class entered active service? Those warriors were decommissioned, a fancy word for sold to the highest bidder. The machines that had saved humanity were put to work anywhere a massive, powerful, tireless machine was needed. Mining. Shipping. Construction. And, yes, moving garbage.

  For seven years, the dauntless weapon had spent eighteen hours a day moving garbage. That all was about to change. For better, or for worse.

  “Hold on, Fang. You heard about the Squids? The Venutian attack force has been destroyed. We’ve been recalled. We’re going back to war.”

  White Fang said nothing. Kyle waited, as did Theo and Marian.

  “Is Sherry coming?”

  Kyle didn’t have to talk to Sherry to know what she would do. If Fang was going to war, she would be there. Kyle would be in close quarters with the woman who had given birth to his daughter, then cheated on him. Repeatedly. He hated her. He still loved her. One emotion making the other more intense. His feelings toward her didn’t matter, though. She was his co-captain, and a damn good one.

  Father, mother, and daughter, all together again. A happy little family reunion sponsored by an interplanetary war.

  “She’s coming,” Kyle said. “Everyone that can serve, will.”

  The roar of rockets, faint at first, but only for a few seconds as it grew louder and louder until Kyle and the others covered their ears.

  She came in like a blur of grandeur. The Lady in Red touched down upon the sea of filth, surprisingly gently and disturbing very little for such a huge machine.

  “Hello, Fang,” she said. “Have you heard?”

  Her voice was nothing like it had been at the docks. Night and day difference.

  “I have just been informed,” White Fang said.

  Excitement, importance, the thrill of life thrummed through every centimeter of her scarlet and steel frame. “Aren’t you excited?” she asked. “We get our armor back. And our weapons! We are going to war!”

  White Fang turned his head to face Kyle, Theo, and Marian. No need for that, just as Lady had no need to look where she was talking, but in the odd culture of the Beasts this was how they applied extra importance to what they had to say.

  “We get our armor?”

  Kyle nodded. “Of course.”

  “I will join you then, on one condition.”

  Kyle had no idea if he could grant any request. No, scratch that, whatever Fang wanted, Kyle would make it ha ppen.

  “Anything. What do you want, old friend?”

  Fang’s big left hand reached up, swept down his right arm. Bits of wet garbage scattered in all directions. “A paint job,” the machine said. “And make sure they get my snarl right.”

  Kyle smiled, but without joy. He’d hoped the machine would say no. He should have known better. Beasts were built for one thing only.

  “Absolutely,” he said.

  The giant machine set its big hand down on t
he packed ground, palm up.

  “Captain Dahlquist, I have missed you so. Please, come aboard.”

  In retrospect, meteor showers are best viewed from the ground. The year I was sixteen, the Perseids were predicted to be the most visible they’d ever been. At least, that’s what my boyfriend told me, but he got most of his information from the Glass and quick, faked sound clips that sounded too cool to question. Still, whether it was true or not, I wasn’t averse to throwing down a couple of sleeping bags and making out while we watched the stars and pondered at the vastness of the universe for an evening.

  So, on a hot summer night, we drove to up to one of the highest hills we could find. It was right in the middle of an affluent suburb, and I was honestly surprised no one called the bots on us since we just sort of threw down some blankets and slept outside all night. In fact, there were a lot of things that could have gone wrong, and didn’t. I didn’t even wake up with any bug bites.

  We did a lot less making out than I’d expected. To my surprise, he was actually interested in watching the meteor shower, and—even more to my surprise—so was I.

  It was breathtaking. We lay together on our backs, holding hands, staring up at the streaks of fire across the sky. We looked at each little pinpoint of light and guessed as to whether it was a star, satellite, station, or colony. There was no real way to tell, but we made up facts and sources to impress each other with our knowledge. Turns out I was a lot better at bullshitting than he was, and I still remember the note of awe in his voice as he finally said, “Wow, Eliza. You sure know a lot about space.”

  Illustration by NICOLÁS R. GIACONDINO

  I didn’t, really. Still, that was the moment I realized I wanted to. Humans had been staring up at these stars for thousands and thousands of years, and while we knew more about them than we ever had before, there was so much more. The existential coming-of-age what am I going to do with my life question that had been looming on the horizon of my eighteenth birthday had an answer. I wanted to go to space.

  I was regretting that decision pretty heavily, now. As I said, meteor showers are much better seen from far away.

  “Fitz, shut down all unessential processes,” I told my HUD, pressing my right knee against the pressure-plate inside my mechasuit. The thrusters reacted with a puff of nitrogen, propelling me sideways as a rock the size of a small building hurtled past. The larger ones were easy enough to avoid, it was the tiny ones I was having trouble with.

  “Shutting down,” Fitz said, his artificial voice sounding quite calm. “Would you like me to save your progress on Solitaire Saga?”

  “Not a priority right now!” I bent my knees and brought them up towards my chest, the thrusters again responding with a release of air, no more than a deep sigh, that moved me upwards about two feet. A little went a long way, out here. Just like me.

  If I turned to look back, Earth would be but a tiny dot in my vision, indistinguishable from any other planet or star and only visible at all thanks to the zoom on my visor. I didn’t really have time to risk a glance, though. I was more focused on not getting beaned by tiny space rocks.

  Now, don’t get me wrong, the chances of getting hit by an asteroid in the middle of space were (pardon the pun) astronomically slim under normal circumstances.

  These were not, however, normal circumstances.

  “Once I get through this field, you and I are going to have a long talk about how I wound up here in the first place,” I said. The way was clear for now, so I shifted to the right again, making as much progress as I could before having to dodge another one. I could see it coming in the distance, the span of it about six times my size, so I launched upwards. These things were coming fast, faster than my reflexes could ever hope to be; I was mostly relying on Fitz’s navigational system and the telescoped lens of my suit. If I’d had to avoid these with just my vision, I’d be dead before I ever saw one. It’d be like trying to dodge automatic gunfire from about five feet away.

  Luckily, though, I had Fitz.

  “Oh, I suppose you’re going to blame me for the nav system’s failure,” he replied.

  “You ARE the nav system! It’s one of your primary functions!”

  “I control the nav system, yes, but I’m a completely separate AI. Don’t lump me in with the base programs just because we’re all processing units, that’s machineist as—”

  “Disable patches,” I said, navigating my way around the giant rock.

  “Including my personality patch?” Fitz asked, tone of voice completely neutral.

  “Yes!” I didn’t like doing it, but honestly, I usually programmed my HUD as kind of uppity. My grandmother used to watch all these really old shows and movies about superheroes with high-tech gadgets and gizmos—most of which are pretty basic now, but back then audiences ate it up. The AIs in those shows were always dry and snarky, which I liked. Unfortunately, it wasn’t the best mod to have when you needed to avoid being smashed into space dust. I didn’t need Fitz talking back to me every time I asked him to do something.

  My mech jerked to the side as something whizzed by me, way too fast to see, and I felt my heart lurch into my throat. I hadn’t done that, the autopilot had, and I was damn lucky for it. Something that small going that fast probably would have shot right through me, even with my shielded, reinforced one-man vehicle. Despite all the technology and precautions, I was still pretty much an egg in a really high-tech carton.

  “Fitz,” I said shakily. “Divert all memory and thirty-five percent power to the nav and autopilot.”

  “Done,” his toneless voice said, and I felt bad. Attaching human emotions to artificial intelligences was normal, and honestly kind of healthy if kept in moderation. You couldn’t get too attached, of course—there were still news stories every so often about someone falling in love with their housebot—but a little bit of affection didn’t hurt anything.

  “I’ll turn your personality mod back on once we get out of here,” I told him, but he didn’t respond. I hadn’t really given him anything to respond to with the mod off.

  Without Fitz’s personality activated, I usually defaulted to thinking of him as an it. He had a gender only because I’d chosen the male voice. Without the quirks of his personality, his identity went away. It made me feel uneasy. Fitz had been my only company for the last hundred-and-twenty-five days or so, after I’d gone out of easy satellite signal. I was still doing intermittent weekly check-ins now that I was out past Jupiter, but it wasn’t as easy to contact people anymore. I hadn’t spoken to my mother in over a month.

  “Expand radar screen,” I said, and the small square in the top right of my vision doubled in size. There were several more red dots heading rapid-fire in my direction, though I was clear of any immediate threat of impact. At least, I thought I was.

  I didn’t even see it coming. The advanced radar screen was good, but this little chunk of rock was maybe the size of a dime and moving at about thirty thousand miles per hour. At least, in relation to me. After the explosion, the best thing for me to do had been to move in the same direction they were, trying to approximate the same speed. Still, they weren’t all going the same speed, so…

  The left side of my vision went staticky as the space rock cracked into my helm. For the briefest instant, I thought that was it—my mission had failed, all because of a minor miscalculation.

  The static cleared, but it didn’t help my vision any. I was spinning rapidly, propelled in a random direction by the force of what had hit me. I heard the hiss of air as the stabilizers went to work, smelled acrid chemicals as my screen released self-repairing liquid plastic on both sides. It hadn’t cracked, thankfully. The rock had barely glanced off me.

  Still, it was enough force to send me spinning off into the abyss. There were still asteroids coming at me and I wasn’t oriented yet.

  “Eye-tracking on,” I yelled (yelling was the only way I trusted my voice right now), and fixed my gaze on the largest of the red dots that had just passed me.
It was above me, orbiting around me on the radar map like a small moon as I spun around and around. “Analyze!”

  The stats for that particular chunk of rock came up on the screen. I fixed on the first plausible number I found. “Lock on, match speed!”

  The thrusters in my feet engaged, the stabilizers in my hands flared again, and I rocketed upwards towards the rock. “Increase speed thirty percent,” I said, struggling to keep my voice steady. Adrenaline was screaming at me, and I’d broken out in a cold sweat. If another one of those little things came at me…

  I tried to calm myself with logic. That explosion was huge, it happened far away, and the debris went off in all directions. The chances of you getting hit again are only a little higher than getting hit by one on Earth. It didn’t do much to comfort me. After all, I’d already had to dodge three of them, and people back home got hit by space debris far more often than you’d think.

  I’d almost caught up to the building-sized asteroid I’d avoided earlier. “Increase speed ten percent,” I said. I pulled up alongside it, reaching out with one hand. “Match speed and Velcro!”

  The thrusters slowed, and the outside of my glove fastened to the side of the rock. I was immediately moved again, since the thing was rotating, and hastily deactivated my stabilizers. Then I stuck my other hand to the asteroid and pulled myself as flat as I could against it. Spider-man, eat your heart out, I thought. I didn’t bother saying it aloud for the recording. Very few people would have gotten it; it was a reference to one of those old superhero shows my grandmother watched.

  Now that I was effectively stuck to a spinning asteroid hurtling through space four times faster than an old-fashioned airplane, I felt a little safer. The irony wasn’t lost on me.

  “Fitz,” I said shakily. “Damage rep—no,” I changed my mind, abruptly. “All mods on,” I said instead. I had no idea how bad this was, and I didn’t want to find out from an emotionless computer-generated voice. Fitz was the closest thing I had out here to a friend, and it was always better to get bad news from a friend.