Mech Wars: The Complete Series

by Scott Bartlett

  “What’s going on?” Sweeney asked.

  “Some idiot parked in the middle of a Gatherer route. Right now, their speeder’s getting shredded.”

  “Let me see.”

  Gabe used his implant to summon footage of the incident, then flicked it over to Sweeney’s.

  The mayor frowned. “That’s Randy Bradshaw’s. Damn idiot was probably drunk when he got here.” Stuffing the keys back into his pocket, the mayor jogged back into Northshire. “Let’s track him down.”

  They found Bradshaw snoozing in one of the vegetable gardens. The robot in charge of planting, watering, and weeding was gently jabbing him in the abdomen over and over, its servomotors whining and beginning to smoke as its entire frame shuddered. Bradshaw showed no sign of registering the machine’s efforts.

  Without a word, Gabe walked over and grabbed Bradshaw by both arms, dragging him through the garden between two furrows and throwing him against the fence that ran around the perimeter. That done, he proceeded to slap Bradshaw’s fleshy face until he began to blink and sputter.

  “Wha? Whaa!”

  Gabe grabbed the man by the front of his beige jacket and shook him. “Your speeder’s obstructing one of the Gatherers, jackass!”

  “My speeder?”

  “It’s getting totaled. You need to move it, now!”

  Bradshaw began to panic, patting his pockets and shaking out his pant legs. “Can’t find my v-lenses!” he moaned.

  The mayor picked up a pair of glasses from the spot where they’d found Bradshaw sprawled. Dirt tumbled from the v-lenses to the ground.

  “You’d better hope these still work,” Sweeney growled. He tossed them toward Bradshaw.

  Gabe caught them, certain the whining cretin lacked the motor skills to do so. Then he slapped them onto Bradshaw’s face, who began to wave his hands in the air, tapping an invisible interface and then moving his open palm as though guiding something.

  “Okay,” Bradshaw said. “Okay. I got the path cleared.”

  Resisting the urge to punch the man in the gut, Gabe turned to the mayor. “We’d better go confirm.”

  Sweeney nodded, shooting Bradshaw one last glare before turning to leave the garden.

  They passed the collection facility just as the automated bay door was admitting the Gatherer, which looked undamaged after its tussle with Bradshaw’s speeder. That was to be expected. The speeder, on the other hand, would almost certainly have to be written off.

  The Gatherers morphed into whatever shape best suited a given task, their gleaming exteriors a fluid surface of blades that spun, shifted, retracted, and jutted, depending on what the situation called for. They could become an impenetrable, seamless shell, or they could turn into a lance capable of running a person through.

  They weren’t weapons, though, and they used their diverse abilities only to gather Eresos’ many resources and bring them to preprogrammed deposit sites, which was where the colonists had originally set up their villages.

  The Gatherers’ behavior was highly predictable. They mined the planet’s various ores and minerals, bringing them to preset destinations, where vast underground chambers waited to receive the payloads. And when you put a speeder in front of one of them, that speeder got wrecked.

  The Gatherers were well beyond humanity’s ability to manufacture. No one knew who’d built them, and no species had ever returned to claim the resources they’d collected—not in the two decades since Darkstream had arrived.

  The only certain thing was that without the Gatherers, the Steele System’s economy would not have ramped up nearly as fast as it had.

  After double checking to make sure Bradshaw’s speeder was truly out of the Gatherer route, Sweeney exchanged glances with Gabe. “I’ll have a talk with Bradshaw. Tell him if he wants to attend future events in Northshire, he’ll have to get with the program.”

  “Sounds good.”

  “Hey, Pioneer!” a voice shouted.

  Gabe turned. “Pioneer” was the nickname the others in his unit had given him.

  Seaman Sawyer dashed toward them across the village green. It always seemed odd to Gabe, using the “Seaman” rank when basically all their contracts took them planetside. But Darkstream had decided to use naval ranks across the board.

  “What is it, Horse?”

  “It’s Allendale, sir. Word just came in that they were attacked overnight.”

  “Attacked? By who? Quatro?”

  “No. An Ambler.”

  “What the hell.” Amblers were two-legged war machines, ten meters tall, and clearly made by whoever had made the Gatherers. They patrolled the Gatherer routes, meaning you had to watch out for them whenever you left a village in a speeder. But they never came near the deposit sites. Not till now, apparently.

  “Is there anything left of the village?” Gabe asked.

  “The Darkstream unit stationed there managed to drive it off before it could wipe out Allendale completely. That’s Chief Banks’s unit, right? Most of Allendale’s residents were here during the attack, thank God. But there’s no guarantee the Ambler won’t come back to finish the job. It must be malfunctioning.”

  Gabe nodded, swallowing. “We need to put it down.” He’d only fought an Ambler once, and the price paid in human life had been heavy. Since then, no one had taken down another one, mostly because Darkstream judged it was not worth the damage to company assets. Such as its employees.

  Until now, probably.

  “What do the higher-ups want?” Gabe said. “Have we heard from them yet?”

  Sawyer nodded. “They want us to deal with it.”

  “Figures. Tell most of the boys to gear up. You stay here with Robinson and guard Northshire, all right?”

  “Got it.”

  Gabe exchanged looks once more with Mayor Sweeney. “Good luck, Gabe,” the man said.

  “Thanks,” he said, turning toward the barracks, to figure out a credible story for Jess to tell her father about where she’d been. That done, he’d have to successfully smuggle her out, before heading out to Allendale. “I’m going to need it.”

  Chapter 4

  The Crazy Part

  Habitat 2 raced past them as Andy gunned the hoverbike’s engines, the ground falling farther away as the bike’s energy cycle spiked.

  Lisa’s head crept toward the overhead parallelogram lights, designed to simulate sunlight shining through skylights, and she subvocalized to Andy using her implant.

  “I didn’t know hoverbikes could do these kind of speeds.”

  “They can’t. Technically. I modded mine, for situations like this.”

  “Responding to shootings?”

  “Uh…yeah. Stuff like that.”

  “I see.” Lisa knew that before today, it was unlikely Andy had ever had a job urgent enough to warrant the mods. But she had no desire to use the knowledge to put him down. That’s something like he would do.

  Habitat 2 was a network of passages through sealed-off dwellings, shops, and storage units. Each structure’s walls stretched from floor to roof, but if you peeled off the ceiling and studied Habitat 2 from above you’d see a giant honeycomb of passages and closed-in spaces.

  It was in those spaces that crime took shape, spilling out into the passages like so much toxic sludge.

  Lisa had been lucky, so far. She’d only had to deal with petty thugs who didn’t put up much of a fight when faced with a Darkstream soldier.

  Clearly, her luck was about to turn.

  They arrived outside the collection node, and Andy engaged the forward propulsor to slow them. The bike whipped around in a wild arc, and Lisa’s heart leapt into her throat. Instinctively, she clutched Andy tighter.

  But he clearly had the bike under control, as he’d activated the rear propulsor the moment they’d spun. He turned to grin back at her once they came to a stop.

  “Jerk,” she said, sliding off the bike and drawing her pistol, willing it not to shake in her grasp.

  A technician waited fo
r them outside the collection node, his eyes slightly wide at the sight of Lisa’s drawn gun. Clearing her throat, she put it away.

  “Is the shooter gone?” she asked, trying to sound authoritative.

  The technician nodded. Lisa’s implant had automatically booted up its facial recognition function, identifying the man as Ned Stevens, one of four Darkstream employees in charge of the southern collection node. His shift had ended nearly two hours ago, but he’d received the same alert she had, requiring him to come back and ensure resource collection continued smoothly.

  “Is there footage of the murder, Stevens?”

  “It’s fried, ma’am,” the man mumbled.

  “Fried? Fried how?”

  “Just fried.”

  “Show me.”

  The man nodded and fumbled a pair of v-lenses from his breast pocket. He put them on, and following a couple sweeping gestures he flicked the footage over to her implant.

  Fried is about right. First, the murdered woman, who Lisa’s implant identified as Colleen Jensen, was shown approaching a Gatherer after it finished struggling against the thick titanium wall designed to prevent its entry into Habitat 2. Then the picture went snowy for several minutes.

  Once it cleared up, Jensen lay dead on the collection chamber’s floor, her blood speckling the metal. The Gatherer had already departed through the airlock.

  “Someone got to the footage. How could that happen? Who would have access?”

  Stevens shrugged.

  “I need your help, here, Stevens. There’s been a murder, and right now you’re the closest thing we have to a witness. Who has access to the vid stream?”

  “I dunno.” Stevens stared at the ground and refused to look up. “You’ll have to ask Darkstream.”

  Lisa squinted at him. She was sure the man was being intentionally obtuse. Why wouldn’t he give her what she needed?

  A doctor pulled up on a hoverbike, with a long, rectangular container in tow. That would be the cooler, for transporting Jensen’s body.

  “Doctor Yetman,” Lisa said, sticking out her hand once her implant had IDed him. They shook, brief and perfunctory. Glancing at Stevens, she turned back to the doctor and said, “Give me a moment to take a pano. Then we’ll help you load the body aboard.”

  “By all means,” Yetman said.

  She peeled her spherical pano-camera from her belt and then had Stevens let her into the collection chamber. When the heavy door rose into the wall, Lisa tossed the camera into the room. It flashed once, near the chamber’s center, before clattering against the far wall.

  As she crossed to collect it, she gave quiet thanks that the Gatherer had long since departed. The things gave her the creeps, and she’d always found it weird how everyone just accepted their presence. Just because their efforts had become so important to the system’s economy didn’t mean they should escape closer scrutiny. Who had built the Gatherers? Why had they abandoned them here? And what would happen once their creators found out humanity had been stealing the fruits of their labor for almost twenty years?

  “All right,” she subvocalized to Andy as she retrieved the camera. “Get the doctor in here.”

  They loaded Jensen’s body into the cooler-trailer, and then they used Andy’s hoverbike to follow Yetman deeper into Habitat 2, until they reached a structure no bigger than a shed.

  “This is the autopsy room I share with two other doctors. They both have Q-level security clearances from Darkstream, so there should be no issue bringing Jensen here. If you’ll help me carry her body inside, I’ll begin my examination.”

  “Not you,” Lisa said as Andy positioned himself near the trailer’s rear. “You only have K-level clearance.”

  Andy bristled, clearly not thrilled to be reminded his clearance was lower than hers. “I have things to do, anyway.”

  “Sure. Thanks for your help, Andy.”

  “Yeah.” He climbed onto his hoverbike and sped off.

  “All right, doctor. Let’s do this.”

  Yetman keyed open the entrance, and together they slid Jensen’s body out of the trailer, carried it inside, and laid it on a sterile metal table.

  Before today, the only dead person Lisa had ever touched had been her grandmother. Somehow, this wasn’t as bad as that. Kissing her grandmother’s powdered, ice-cold forehead had made her sick to her stomach, but she found herself feeling fairly clinical about handling Jensen.

  The doctor began inspecting the corpse. First, he studied the bullet’s exit wound, through Jensen’s face, and then he had Lisa help him flip the body over so he could scrutinize the entry point for several long moments.

  “This has premeditation written all over it,” Yetman said at last. “With a spontaneous crime of passion, committed by a jealous lover or unhinged coworker for example, you’d typically see several gunshots. But Jensen was shot once. This killing was efficient. Professional, almost.”

  “Professional,” Lisa said, the word twisting her mouth. “The only professionals who use violence work for Darkstream. I sort of doubt any of our soldiers would do this.”

  “The murderer is clearly very familiar with firearms. That’s all I can say.”

  Lisa shook her head slowly. “If this wasn’t a crime of passion…what could the reason possibly be for killing Jensen? She was a low-ranking Darkstream employee. She only operated a collection node.”

  “The nodes are fairly important, when you think about it,” Yetman said quietly. “One might say they form the basis of our entire society.”

  “Sure, but I checked the records, and nothing was taken from the zinc shipment that Gatherer brought in. We received exactly the expected amount.”

  Yetman cleared his throat. “Perhaps you’re missing something about the shipments themselves.”

  “I’ve already said we weren’t missing any zinc.”

  “Yes, but clearly someone considered that shipment important enough to murder someone over. It likely wasn’t about the zinc itself.”

  Lisa stared at Yetman, blinking. The doctor was clearly getting at something, but Lisa was drawing a complete blank.

  “Listen,” Yetman said. “What’s the main source of crime, around here? What do Darkstream’s constables mostly find themselves policing inside Habitat 2?”

  “Drugs.”

  “Exactly.”

  Lisa glanced to the side, then back at Yetman. She shrugged. “And?”

  “Where do you think the drugs come from?”

  “They have to be made in a lab. But we’ve never been able to find one.”

  “Which is unusual, isn’t it? Considering that every square inch of Habitat 2 is accounted for.”

  “Yeah…”

  “Darkstream knows what every chamber is used for. They also know where every kilowatt of energy goes.”

  Lisa nodded, continuing to stare at Yetman, trying to encourage him to go on. When he didn’t, she said, “You’re going somewhere with this.”

  Yetman squinted. “You seriously aren’t putting this together?”

  “I wasn’t trained as a detective.”

  “Neither was I.”

  She sniffed. “Fair point.”

  “The labs must be outside of Habitat 2,” Yetman said. “And their operators must have figured out a way to smuggle the drugs into Habitat 2 using the Gatherers.”

  “Yes,” Lisa said nodding. “That makes, uh, a lot of sense. Thank you.” She grinned, feeling thoroughly sheepish.

  “Sure.”

  “I’d better go, um, continue investigating things. If you find anything else, or come up with—”

  “I’ll IM you.”

  “Good. Thanks. Thanks again.”

  Lisa left the autopsy room, immediately opening a channel with her direct superior, Chief Lannon. As she walked toward her dwelling, she subvocalized a report.

  “Thanks, Sato,” he said once she was done. “I’ll take it from here.”

  “All right. What do you plan to do, though? Someone’s obvious
ly messing with the Gatherers. That’s really worrying.”

  “I agree. I intend to handle it.”

  “How, though? Do you see a lead we should follow first?”

  “Just leave it to me, okay?”

  “I can help, sir.”

  “Sato, you’re in way over your head. What I need you to do is keep your nose clean and leave this alone. All right?”

  “Y-yes, sir.”

  “Good. Lannon out.”

  Lisa stopped walking, staring into space. A crazy thought had just dawned on her. She had absolutely nothing to base it on, other than a feeling of certainty seated deep in her gut. Lannon knows something about the murder.

  But there was something else, and this was the crazy part:

  Lisa felt sure her boss had been involved with the crime somehow. Which was deeply unsettling, considering Lannon was head of all security for Habitat 2.

  Chapter 5

  Clearly a War Machine

  As Peter inspected the mech, running his gloved hands over its ridged surface, his mind mostly drifted to Hub, where his wife and daughter lived.

  Hub was the largest settlement out in the Belt. It consisted of several comets strung together with super-strong nanotethers, and its inhabitants hopped between those comets at will, using craft much smaller than the one he and Jake had spent so many months aboard.

  The mech put him in mind of the machines Darkstream employees had first encountered on Eresos, and then on Alexandria—the two planets capable of accommodating colonists of any stripe. Those machines had the same scale-like skins of overlapping metal.

  Except, internal energy sources animated the machines on the two colony planets, keeping them constantly moving. Peter had been afraid the mech would start to move once they freed it of its icy prison, but it remained inert.

  He’d unburied the mech despite that concern and fear for his wife and daughter had made him do it.

  What if the Belt holds others mechs? Who knew what they might be capable of, or when they might decide to activate and turn on humanity?

  He’d needed to know. So he’d ordered Jake to remain inside the comet hopper, ready to flee at the first sign of danger. And he’d used the excavating equipment they leased from Darkstream to dig up the hulking machine.