Mech Wars: The Complete Series

by Scott Bartlett

  Why didn’t I ever think about that, before? Why wasn’t it foremost in my mind, every second of every single day?

  It felt incredibly irresponsible that he hadn’t constantly dwelled on it, now. Maybe, if he had, his family wouldn’t be in the danger they were currently in.

  It’s possible they’re already dead. Have you considered that?

  Of course he’d considered it. But he didn’t dare think about it.

  Other than the fact that it was all he could think about.

  Something collided with his face—the mech’s face—clinging to the metal skin, rending it with tiny claws. Within seconds, scraps of Jake’s face floated through the void, streaming behind him, and that caused him alarm. He aimed his jets forward, to arrest his momentum, to try and reclaim the pieces of his face.

  Oh. Probably he should deal with the little creature trying to penetrate the mech and access his flesh-and-blood body, as well.

  He reached up and plucked it off, which cleared his vision sensors. The moment he did, he recalled that he could probably patch through the feed from anywhere in his body, just as he had in his MIMAS.

  He held his attacker in front of his face, studying it. It was a robot identical to those that had attacked the Javelin and then headed for Eresos, and it writhed in his grasp, trying to free itself.

  It wouldn’t have stood much chance of doing that even if Jake had still been piloting his MIMAS, but in the alien mech’s grip, its probability of escape was exactly zero.

  He’d used his MIMAS to tear one of the robots in two, but now he simply clenched his fist, and the robot fragmented.

  We should call them Ravagers. It suits their behavioral patterns.

  “Wait,” Jake muttered. “We?”

  His thoughts had already seemed detached, from both reality and from himself, but he’d chalked that up to the fundamental strangeness of this new mech dream.

  Now, he began to wonder whether those thoughts had a source outside himself. Either that, or I’m going crazy.

  That thought had been his. He felt pretty sure of it.

  Pretty sure.

  “Ravager is a good name, though.” He thrust backward gently, and as he did, the shreds of his face reunited with his body, to become part of his shoulders and neck.

  Another Ravager crashed into Jake’s back, sending him forward.

  Acting solely on instinct, Jake inverted, so that his feet pointed in the opposite direction, along with his face. His arms and legs and torso all switched around so that he about-faced without actually turning.

  That done, he plucked the Ravager from his new chest and crushed it.

  That’s two, now.

  Far behind him—ahead of him, now, rather—something gleamed dully in the dim sunlight that reached this far into the outer system.

  Is that another—?

  A third Ravager charged into him from his right, making him jolt to the left, and a fourth and fifth collided with his lower back, while a sixth landed on his head.

  His four new visitors started to tear at the surface of his mech right away. Three more impacts followed, jerking the alien mech this way and that in the inertia-less void. Then five more impacts, all in quick succession.

  I need to act.

  And he did act, tearing the Ravagers from his body as fast he could manage it, all while the remaining creatures burrowed deeper, inching closer to the cocoon where Jake’s unconscious form was nestled.

  More of them arrived, hitting him with various degrees of force. One connected with such speed that it sent Jake hurtling backward, end over end, and though there was no gravity the sight of the system’s ecliptic plane spinning so frenetically made him feel nauseated, even inside the dream.

  This mech dream had new ways of communicating negative emotions—of maintaining his immersion in the battle and of communicating the danger he was in. The temperature seemed to skyrocket, and he felt like he was cooking. A minor note began to play: an eerie, one-note ballad performed by a violin in need of tuning. The volume ratcheted up quickly.

  His fear and rage reached a crescendo, and his fight-or-flight instinct took over.

  Until he did it, he hadn’t known what he was about to do:

  Jake exploded.

  Jagged spires erupted all over his metal skin; one for each Ravager.

  Most of the smaller robots ruptured, sending dozens of fragments sailing through the void in dozens of directions, but a few of them stayed intact enough to remain impaled on the tips of the spires.

  The spires slowly retracted into him, although Jake wasn’t sure he’d willed them to. He wasn’t sure he’d willed them to emerge in the first place.

  Could it have been my subconscious?

  He didn’t know. At any rate, no more Ravagers attacked. Either that had been the last of them, or the feat he’d just performed had convinced them to retreat.

  Trying to still his racing heart, and to lower the furnace the dream had continued to simulate, Jake continued his voyage through the Belt, toward Hub.

  He was attacked again by Ravagers less than ten minutes later. They quickly covered him, making alarming progress in their efforts to infiltrate the mech and rip Jake from it bodily.

  At first, he couldn’t replicate the trick with the spires. But when his aggravation peaked, it happened once more, destroying his enemies in one fell swoop.

  Ten minutes later, they attacked again.

  Bronson had said that clouds of the robots had set a course for Eresos, but here more were, out in the Belt. With that in mind, as well as the attack on Hub, Jake realized that something fundamental had changed. Not just for the Belt, but for the entire Steele System.

  It wasn’t safe here, anymore. And based on Bronson’s actions, the only military in the system was no longer devoted to the safety of the population.

  If it had ever been.

  Chapter 17

  Avalanche

  Lisa wiped a bead of sweat from her brow as she pulled herself up yet another sharp rise.

  Navigating is brutal, here.

  A few meters to her left, Rug easily stepped onto the rise, pulling herself up with her front paws. The rise was even steeper where she climbed it.

  Helps to be a giant alien, I guess.

  Fan, the Quatro acting as their guide on the journey to find the distant drifts, had said those drifts were “across the Barrens.” That had made Lisa expect a dramatic change in scenery—from desert to jungle, maybe, or lush wetlands.

  But they’d flown a long way in the shuttles, and so far the terrain seemed basically indistinguishable from the Barrens. It was just as dry, just as uneven, and just as treacherous.

  Andy probably would have made fun of her for not knowing much about Eresos’ geography and what to expect from it. But these lands reminded her of Alex’s landscape, and as they followed the Gatherers through them, she wished for a beetle.

  The only reason she didn’t order a return to the shuttles was the fact that the Gatherers were clearly heading somewhere with purpose. And if they could make it wherever they were going, then so could whoever lived there, and so could the soldiers of Lisa’s militia.

  “Careful, Vickers,” she called ahead. “Take that corner carefully.”

  “Yes, ma’am.” Rodney Vickers was on point, and currently he was about to enter a ravine with steep, dusty-brown walls.

  He crept forward, rocket launcher at the ready, and quickly scrambled back, falling on his backside as heavy machine gun fire tore up the ground where he’d been standing. The shoulder-fired rocket launcher fell to the ground with a wince-inducing crack.

  “It’s an Ambler, ma’am, headed toward us!”

  Lisa cursed. “Everyone, full retreat, now! Double-time!”

  Exchanging glances with Tessa, she could tell the other woman grasped the situation just as well as she did, which wasn’t a surprise.

  They’d just finished crossing a craggy, open expanse, which had been treacherous to traverse but which o
ffered inconsistent cover.

  There was no way they could take out the Ambler, not without losing most of the militia. She’d only heard reports of two ever being taken down in the history of Eresos—one by three full platoons of Darkstream soldiers, and another by Quatro, which had resulted in dozens of them dead.

  There was a good chance that, if they tried to take one on here, they could all die.

  That meant…

  “We need to stay and hold it off if we can,” Lisa said. “Try to give the others time to cross that open terrain.” Just before the expanse, there’d been another ravine, narrower than the one ahead, which the Ambler would not be able to chase them through.

  But traveling back to it is another matter altogether.

  It had taken them ten minutes to cross the open region, while taking their time, and it would take at least five to do so again at a run—providing no one suffered any injuries.

  “We have other problems,” Tessa said, pointing.

  Lisa followed the gesture to a cliff face on her left—which their shuttle pilot was in the process of scaling.

  “Incredible,” she muttered, then turned back to Tessa, eyebrows raised. “You got that?”

  “I can shoot him down.” Tessa hefted her assault rifle. “Making the shot from here will be easy.”

  “Tessa, will you cut it out?” Ever since Rug had learned about her past, Tessa’s unflinching bravery had turned into a recklessness that had Lisa constantly on edge. “There’s no way we’d get him across that terrain with a bullet wound. We sort of need him.”

  The white-haired woman scowled, lowering her SL-17. Then she raised it again and shot the cliff just above the pilot, raining dirt and rock fragments down on his head. “Any higher and I’ll shoot you off that rock!” she yelled.

  “You’ll never do it!” the Darkstream pilot shouted back. “You need me!” He kept climbing.

  “Damn it,” Tessa spat, tossing her gun onto the ground.

  “You need to climb up after him,” Lisa said, her words clipped.

  For several long seconds, the older woman held her gaze, her face hard. Finally, she muttered, “Yes, ma’am,” and jogged stiffly toward the cliff.

  Most of the militia had followed Lisa’s order to fall back across the open terrain, but Rug remained, as well as Rodney Vickers.

  The Quatro stepped forward. “I will help you protect the others, Lisa Sato.”

  Nodding, Lisa said, “Thank you, Rug.” Her gaze drifted up to the alien’s shoulders, where her energy weapons were still mounted.

  “Can you use those things in this heat?” she asked. The Quatro lacked hands, but their brains were laced with superconducting fullerenes, allowing them to manipulate metals. Their power weakened dramatically as the temperature rose, however.

  “I have turned down the pressure required to depress the trigger to the minimum setting possible,” Rug said. “I do not know for certain, as I’ve never attempted to operate them in this level of heat. But I will try.”

  “Okay.” If Rug could make the weapon work, it could actually make a difference in holding off the Ambler. It would be the first time she knew of that energy guns had ever been used on one.

  “It’s coming!” Vickers said.

  Lisa looked. The Ambler was indeed stalking into view, swiveling, no doubt seeking its prey.

  “Get back down to the lower level!” she yelled, scrambling back over the rise she’d recently climbed. The others followed. Rug had to crouch quite low to the ground to avoid exposing any part of her to the Ambler’s weapons.

  Lisa could hear it as the giant mech strode toward them, sending a tremor through the ground with every step.

  “Give me that,” Lisa said, nodding at the militia’s only rocket launcher, which Vickers had insisted on carrying from the shuttles.

  The man frowned. “But…”

  “Give it to me, Vickers. Now!”

  Reluctantly, he handed it over, and Lisa gave him her SL-17. That done, she inspected the rocket launcher and saw that it seemed intact, even after Vickers had dropped it in his panic to escape the Ambler.

  “Okay,” she said. “Here’s the plan. Rug, you pop up and distract the Ambler with your energy gun. Fire, duck, change your location, and repeat. Vickers, you fire on it if Rug is taking too much heat, and switch up your location, too.”

  “What will you do?” Vickers said.

  “The Ambler’s sticking close to the cliff on our left, and the way that cliff tapers outward at the top looks pretty unstable. I’m going to see if I can dislodge anything with a rocket, send it down on the Ambler’s head. Got it?”

  “Got it!” Vickers said.

  “I understand,” Rug said.

  “Then go. Both of you!”

  They spread out, firing on the Ambler from spots far enough away that Lisa wouldn’t get hit by errant shots from the mech.

  Looks like Rug’s gun is working after all. Thank God.

  But she couldn’t execute her part of the plan just yet.

  She opened a two-way channel between her and Tessa. “Tessa, report!”

  “He made it up the cliff, but I caught up to him. It’s pretty flat up here, so if you can make it back to the shuttles, you should be able to land one here to pick us up.”

  A wave of relief washed over Lisa. “Excellent. How far away from the cliff are you?”

  “He made it twenty meters before I caught up to him.”

  “Drag him farther away from it, if you can. Sato out.”

  She waited for Rug to unleash her next energy barrage, and when she did, Lisa popped up over the rise and scanned the cliff above the Ambler.

  As she’d hoped, the energy weapon was doing some damage to the great war machine. It recoiled a little with each shot, and much of its front was singed from the hits it had already taken.

  It staggered backward as Rug hit it again—right underneath a boulder that loomed overhead.

  Lisa lined up the launcher and took her shot, aiming for the cliff just under the boulder and praying for it to collapse.

  It did. The large rock tumbled down, connecting with the Ambler’s giant dome of a head and sending it stumbling into the open.

  That was good, but the Ambler was far from finished, and now it had moved away from the cliff. As promising as Rug’s success with the energy weapon was, Lisa knew it couldn’t neutralize the enemy robot by itself.

  “Rug, we need to drive it back to the cliff!”

  “I am trying,” the Quatro shouted. “However, whenever I fire on it, the return fire forces me to stop. I need a bigger window.”

  Racking her brain for a solution, Lisa glanced at Vickers. Then she shoved the launcher at him.

  He accepted it, eyes gleaming. The assault rifle clattered to the hard ground, and Lisa picked it up.

  “I’m going out there,” she said. “To distract it, and to take some pressure off Rug. She’ll use the opening to force the Ambler back against the cliff, and when she does, I need you to make it collapse on top of it. Think you can do that?”

  “I was born to do that,” Vickers said, sounding breathless.

  “Good.” She raised her voice. “Rug, you’re about to get your window!”

  Lisa moved.

  The Ambler seemed to notice her the moment she appeared above the rise, and it swiveled to turn autocannons on her.

  Sprinting as hard as she could, Lisa felt shrapnel biting into her ankles as the enemy tore up the ground directly behind her.

  I need to keep moving. If she didn’t, the Ambler would have the opportunity to cook her with its lasers. If it doesn’t decide to simply rip me apart with its autocannons.

  “Rug!” she yelled, and it was all she had the breath for.

  At last, the energy weapon started firing, and the Ambler was not in position to return fire. Instead, it sent random shots zipping through the air over Lisa’s head, and she fell into a prone position, scrambling to turn herself around and fire on the mech.

&nb
sp; Her SL-17 probably didn’t contribute much, but the energy weapon was doing enough work for the both of them. The Ambler fell back, still trying to reorient itself to fire back at its tormentors.

  Then, Vickers’ rocket hit, and it did exactly what Lisa had hoped. The top of the cliff gave way, sending a cascade of dirt and boulders crashing down onto the Ambler.

  A particularly large boulder connected with its head, denting it and causing the massive machine to collapse. The avalanche soon blocked it from view.

  “This is the best chance we’ll get!” Lisa screamed over the tumult. “Move, you two. Move!”

  They turned to flee over the uneven terrain as fast as they could. Behind them, Lisa was sure she heard the pile of rocks shifting as the Ambler struggled to regain its feet.

  Chapter 18

  The Glades

  He really needs to slow down. This is getting ridiculous.

  In the thirty minutes Roach had given her to gather Oneiri Team, Ash had tried to get some additional Darkstream forces together for the mission to the Glades.

  She’d failed, though, and it wouldn’t have mattered either way. The moment the five remaining MIMAS mechs of Oneiri Team gathered together outside the city gates, Chief Roach took off without another word, pounding across the grassy plains—far too fast for any ground unit that wasn’t a mech to keep up.

  He’d barely altered his pace at all since then, and at some point Ash realized that he meant to reach the Glades today, and probably to engage the Quatro if he could find them before nightfall.

  It took everything Ash had to keep up with Roach as they pounded through dense woods, dodging around massive trees, leaping over jagged stumps.

  Even though it was the MIMAS that actually endured the strain of running this fast for this long, the mech dream translated the exertion into a visceral experience, so that it felt like she was the one whose endurance was being taxed.

  It amounted to the same thing. With every mile, it became harder and harder to continue the breakneck pace, and it took just as much will for her to continue running as it would have if she’d been running in her own body.