Mech Wars: The Complete Series

by Scott Bartlett

  “Who’s that?”

  “The leader of Red Company, as near as we can tell. Our command structure has been almost totally wiped out, and everyone above DuGalle has been either confirmed or presumed dead. Saul was the last one to rank higher than him, but now that Saul’s dead, DuGalle leads Red Company.”

  “Saul…” The name certainly rang a bell. Ash racked her brain, and finally she hit on it: he’d been the one in charge of the mercenaries at New Gower, back when Oneiri had first encountered Red Company. “He died? How?”

  The woman raised her eyebrows. “As far as I know, you killed him. Outside Ingress. He was the one piloting the MIMAS we took off you.”

  So that’s who that bastard was. Saul was the one who took Tommy’s mech.

  “Where’s DuGalle, then?”

  “Village green, last I knew.”

  “Thanks.” Ash turned to stroll in that direction. Inside the MIMAS, even a stroll meant moving at a fair clip, and she took care to ensure she did no harm, either to property or to humans.

  Without turning back, Ash said, “Saul deserved to die.”

  A brief pause. “Probably true,” the woman called after her.

  DuGalle was leaning against a fence, staring into space, looking just as lost as the rest of his comrades. A faded jean jacket hung over his thin frame, too large for him, and he had a thick French accent.

  “How can I do for you, mech?” he asked, not bothering to look up at her.

  The way he’d phrased his question threw Ash off for a second. “Let me start by letting you know that Darkstream owns Peppertree’s contract again. Are we going to have any problems over that?” Ash gestured with her right hand as she spoke, which was pretty significant coming from a MIMAS. It certainly drew DuGalle’s gaze.

  “No problems,” he said. “Red Company is done, now, anyway. I don’t see how we can recover.”

  “Done? You’re giving up?”

  “It’s not a matter of giving up. Call it what it is: defeat. We overplayed our hand. Saul is dead, I’m in charge, and I can see that we’re done. Quatro in their own mechs, the Quatro in general, rumors of Gatherers turning against the very villagers they made prosperous—if anyone can protect people from all that, it isn’t us. Maybe Darkstream can.”

  “I see.” Ash tilted her head back slightly, and the servomotors in her neck emitted a soft whine. “Well, I want you to know that I agree completely. You’re totally ineffective, and I support you in acknowledging your uselessness.”

  She turned to leave, about to open a coms channel with Bronson to tell him the good news about Red Company.

  “Darkstream overplayed its hand too, you know,” DuGalle said. He hadn’t bothered to raise his voice, but the MIMAS’ enhanced hearing had automatically jacked up the volume for her benefit.

  She stopped, glancing over her shoulder at him.

  “You—how do you say—bit off more than you can chew. Much more.”

  Sighing, Ash turned and walked back to DuGalle, on the verge of plucking him from the fence he reclined against and shaking him till his teeth rattled out of his skull. “If you don’t start saying something relevant within the next five seconds, you’re going to seriously regret wasting my time.”

  “Certainly, mech. Darkstream deliberately started this war. Okay? Does this do anything for you?”

  “The war started when Quatro attacked Northshire. That’s the village I’m from, mercenary. They killed my family, and Darkstream has been working ever since to make sure they can never do something like that again.”

  DuGalle held up a finger. “First of all, you too are a mercenary, are you not?” A second finger went up. “Second, you are a very naive mech. Darkstream is not the noble victim in this conflict. As I said, they began this war themselves, on purpose. How do I know this, you should probably be asking? I’ll tell you: Darkstream paid Red Company to put on company uniforms and attack the Quatro in their homes. After almost two decades of peace, give or take, Darkstream hired us to stir things back up again. To anger the aliens—by killing their families, and prompting them to seek revenge against all humans.”

  “Ridiculous,” Ash said, though the dream had begun to pulse with her quickening heartbeat. “That doesn’t even make any sense.”

  “Why, it makes perfect sense. Have Darkstream contracts not flourished? Have company profits not soared? They are back to their own tricks, is Darkstream—the tricks they first began to learn in the Milky Way. They’ve mastered them, by now. Would you like to know what Darkstream hired Red Company to do next?” DuGalle snickered. “Probably you would rather not know, because of how it will hurt your stupid head. But I’ll tell you all the same. Once the Quatro were nice and pissed off, Darkstream paid us to go to the Quatro again—but not in company uniform, this time, and not to attack them. Instead, Darkstream gave us crates and crates of weapons. All kinds of weapons: medium machine guns, heavy guns, rocket and grenade launchers—all kinds! And what did Darkstream tell us to do with all that? They said, ‘Give these to the Quatro and let’s see what they do with them.’”

  “I thought you said Red Company was over,” Ash said, her tone indignant even as her voice wavered with uncertainty. “Yet here you are, trying to sway me with your propaganda.”

  Something pinged on Ash’s HUD—a file transfer.

  “Here is everything to back up what I’m saying. Copies of our orders from Darkstream, which the company demanded we destroy. Footage of conversations with company executives. And footage of the encounters with the Quatro; both the attack and the giving them the weapons. Why do I have all this neatly packaged together? Because Red Company’s next step was to leak these documents, to delegitimize the company forever, in the eyes of everyone. But it is too late for us to do anything now. So here it is, for you to do with what you will.”

  As Ash stared at the transfer, afraid to open it, DuGalle pushed off the fence and began to walk away.

  “Where are you going?”

  He turned, a sneer twisting his mouth. “I am leaving this place. Feel free to stop me—imprison me or kill me. It doesn’t matter. This planet goes to shit right now, mech, and my money rests on everyone who remains dying within the year.”

  Chapter 31

  One-Note Dirge

  The landing bay of the next comet over had engaged Lockdown Mode when the Ravagers had breached it, and Jake ordered the outer airlock open using the Hub-wide security clearance Pichenko had given him.

  As he exited the airlock into the landing bay, his eyes fell on something that made him draw up short and stare, with the minor violin note rising again, keening shrilly until he wanted to claw at his ears.

  Several residents of this comet, Comet Three, had attempted to reach a shuttle to escape. That shuttle had been blown apart, with a jagged hole yawning in its hull.

  As for the people who attempted to flee…

  Jake tried not to look at them as he walked by their ripped clothing and torn bodies, but he couldn’t help it. He didn’t recognize any of them as people he’d known growing up, but he wasn’t sure he would’ve, even if they had been. Most of their faces had been pulped beyond recognition.

  He progressed to the inner airlock, ordering it open to admit his mech.

  This airlock was smaller than the outer one, which had been designed to admit small spacecraft. The inner airlock was meant mainly for people, as well as the occasional speeder or farm equipment that would have been brought through. As such, Jake would need to crawl through it, ignoring the voice that whispered for him to just blow a hole through it instead.

  You’re strong enough, the voice said. Aren’t you? Don’t let them make you bow like this. Show them your might.

  Jake got to his knees and shimmied through the opening, trying to picture how ridiculous he must look: this huge, badass mech wiggling through a puny airlock.

  It made him smile, and he needed that.

  Even though this comet’s integrity had remained intact, meaning it retain
ed both atmospheric pressure and oxygen, its condition was far worse than Jake’s home comet.

  Here, every copse of trees had been put to the torch, and no structure had been left standing. Where the Council Chambers had once been, a crater stood in the ground.

  From where Jake stood, the former site of the Chambers hung over his head, and the hole looked so deep that it seemed a miracle that whatever had created it hadn’t blasted through the ice beyond.

  Most of the homes hadn’t received quite so thorough a treatment, though no matter where Jake looked—right, left, ahead, or up at the fields that served as his sky—he couldn’t find a single one intact. The comet dwellings tended to take the shape of domes, but now they reminded him of cracked eggs.

  He thought back to the shuttle inside the landing bay, and the damage that had been done to it.

  Didn’t seem like the work of the Ravagers, did it? he asked himself, and then he answered his own question: No. Whatever did that was much bigger.

  And yet, he still hadn’t spotted any enemies. Unlike his home comet, which had swarmed with Ravagers, this one was devoid of anything that moved.

  He might have used his rockets to search the comet quickly, but he wanted to conserve the alien mech’s fuel. He could replenish that with ease, but that would take more time, and time was an even more valuable resource than fuel, especially for any survivors still trying to hold out against the robot invasion.

  So instead, Jake jogged across the terrain as it curved gently upward. Inside the alien mech, running still provided a fast way of getting around.

  Before long, he happened upon a fenced-in field of livestock.

  At least, that’s what it used to be. The cows were all butchered, but not in a way that was useful to anyone.

  Jake slowly shook his head. Senseless.

  The ever-present voice had another thought, though: Perhaps not—perhaps this slaughter did have a purpose. Perhaps this was the work of a weapon maintaining its edge.

  After ten minutes of fruitless searching through the countryside, Jake decided to head directly for the emergency shelter.

  It opened for him without hesitation, the grassy halves parting with barely a whisper.

  He’d just begun to lower himself down into the airlock when something surged up from below, knocking Jake backward to crash to the ground. The insects instantly returned, crawling all over Jake’s body, a sea of skittering limbs and writhing carapaces and sharp pincers.

  There’s no one left alive in this comet…is there?

  The violin resumed its one-note dirge.

  He flipped over, regaining his feet to face his attacker—an alien mech that might as well have been a mirror image of the one he piloted.

  The minor note turned into a minor chord, and the dream directed his attention upward, where something glinted in the artificial sun.

  A second alien mech, hurtling through the comet under the power of its rockets, headed straight for him.

  There was no time for Jake to form a plan. No time for him to think at all. The first mech charged.

  Chapter 32

  Charred Roots

  When Lisa woke, the pain from her wounded shoulder had dimmed to a dull but steady throb.

  She had to admit, Tessa had done a good job of dressing it, and it would probably heal up fine. In the meantime, Lisa refused to let it affect her performance.

  Not that she had much cause to perform, right now.

  Looking around using the dim light produced by her jumpsuit, she saw that the Quatro who’d captured them had converted one of their subterranean caves into a makeshift jail.

  At least the cave’s roomy. Lisa could give them that, but not much else.

  There was nothing in the way of bedding, here. The floor was uneven, and attempting to sleep on it would be torture, if they were left here for that long.

  The hours crawled by, and their Quatro captors treated them coldly. At first, they gave their prisoners nothing to eat. When a meal did come, it consisted of nothing more than a pile of charred roots, which Lisa ordered her militia to gnaw on nevertheless.

  “We need to keep up our strength for when we escape,” she told them, earning a grim smile from Tessa.

  Their treatment seemed unnecessarily cruel, but then, when Lisa cast her mind back to when Rug’s drift had captured and imprisoned them back on Alex, she supposed their treatment then had been similar to what they endured now.

  Maybe this impersonality is simply what the language barrier leads to. That said, Rug had never knocked Lisa unconscious—she’d fainted upon capture on Alex, but the Quatro there had not been violent toward her. These Quatro had. Her aching head was evidence enough of that.

  Either way, Rug and the other Quatro of Lisa’s militia had not been imprisoned, and that gave Lisa hope that maybe an escape attempt would not be necessary.

  That hope was soon dashed.

  A Quatro Lisa didn’t recognize soon appeared at the mouth of the cave, its body segmented by the crude metal bars that overlaid it.

  Next to her captor stood Rug, though Lisa quickly noticed that she no longer wore the translator wrapped around her neck. Instead, the other Quatro wore it.

  At that, a sweat broke out all over Lisa’s skin. To lose the ability to speak to Rug, who had become such a dear friend after everything they’d endured together…it felt worse than if her jailor had struck her.

  “Allow me to conjecture,” the Quatro said, in a voice deeper than Rug’s, which was already quite deep. “You’re about to tell me that the Gatherers have attacked you and that we are all in very great danger.”

  Lisa cocked her head to the side. “Rug has already told you, then? Don’t you trust her?”

  “No. I am not quick to trust anyone, not even a fellow Quatro. This mistrusting is what has kept my drift alive for so long. Except to natural death, we have lost no members since being stranded on this wretched planet.”

  Lisa shook her head. “We came because we hoped to get your help. Your people are fighting and dying, far to the west of here.”

  “That may be true,” the Quatro said, its orange eyes boring into Lisa’s. “Or, it may be a two-leg trick, just as I suspect your tale about the Gatherers is.”

  Shooting a meaningful glance at Rug, Lisa said, “Rug has four legs. And she backs me up.”

  “She could easily be conspiring with you to trick us. I view everyone—Quatro or two-leg—who approaches us as potential Meddler agents, and you are certainly no different. This Quatro, who someone has apparently christened ‘Rug,’ is far from the first Quatro to come to us, seeking to ‘unite the drifts.’ She is, however, the first Quatro I’ve seen with access to the technology we all once wielded. I find it…interesting that the Meddlers did not take hers as it took ours.

  “But I digress. We have heard about what the two-legs have done to the drifts that seek to unite with us, and we don’t consider it in our best interests to unite with them, since we’d likely end up sharing in their suffering. And so we have prevented every single Quatro who came to us from ever returning to their original drifts, for fear that doing so would reveal our location. We will do the same with your friend, here, as well as the other Quatro who accompanied you. The entrance to these caves where we have made our home is also covered in bars. We have no wish to share in the suffering of other Quatro.”

  The line of argument that now seemed logical to Lisa was also one she’d vehemently argued against in the past. Unable to quite believe she was about to make this case, she said, “But…but that sounds nothing like the Quatro way, as Rug has described it to me. The Quatro way is to look out for the larger group, even if it means endangering one’s self.”

  “The Quatro ‘way,’ as you describe it, is over and done with. We left it behind in our Home Systems, where the Assembly of Elders used it to justify their attempts to control every aspect of Quatro life.” The Quatro’s lips drew back as it talked, to reveal a mouthful of great fangs, which Lisa took as an expres
sion of disgust. “In exchange for our freedom, which we gave up willingly, they promised to feed us. But shortages were many—not just of luxuries but of the basics for life. In exchange for our dignity, they promised us the ability to believe what we wished. And yet they expunged the parts of reality they did not want us to see. They told us we would have peace, even as they spent heavily on war. They told us we would have the future, even as they expected us to make do with the past. Have I told you enough? Have I delivered a sufficient elegy to the Quatro ‘way?’”

  Lisa opened her mouth, then closed it again. Her captor had just articulated every problem she herself had with the way the Quatro lived, far better than she ever could have.

  This is an argument I won’t win, especially since I don’t believe in my own side.

  “The drifts are splintered,” the Quatro said. “And we must look out for ourselves.” Deliberately, the alien turned and began to pad down the tunnel, away from the jail. “We have not yet decided what is to be done with you,” it said as it departed.

  With that, the jailor was gone, and only Rug remained outside the cell.

  Her eyes met Lisa’s, and the pain of being unable to communicate returned. Lisa and Rug had once again become members of two very different species—aliens to each other, in every way. Their drift was broken.

  Except, something in Rug’s midnight eyes told her she was being foolish. Something in them comforted Lisa, and she felt a smile blossom on her lips.

  Rug inclined her head, and with that she padded after the other Quatro.

  Chapter 33

  Simpatico

  Jake charged at the first alien mech, which also served to take him out of the second mech’s attack vector.

  He put everything he had into the attack, and it seemed his target didn’t expect such instant decisiveness. It gave way before it, and together they sailed into what remained of a barn, obliterating the one wall still standing.