Powered (Mech Wars Book 1)

by Scott Bartlett

  “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 for 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’v
e 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 obviously 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.

  Now that he knew there was no apparent danger, Jake stood outside with him, both of them in pressure suits, all but gaping at what they’d uncovered.

  The question of where the mech came from ate at him, too. Everyone knew the surrounding stars showed signs of harboring life, though no one spoke of it. Life could easily mean intelligent, hostile life. Had another species been the ones to plant the mech here, and if so, why? Peter didn’t trust anything about this situation.

  When he’d contacted a Darkstream executive about the mech, she’d ordered him to immediately cease using company equipment to develop the comet until employees arrived to inspect the strange discovery for themselves. But Peter and Jake had kept plenty busy unearthing the thing—or un-icing it, more accurately.

  Now that they were finished, they kept themselves occupied by brushing away the remaining flecks of ice, and studying the mech. A process that mostly amounted to staring.

  The soft beep of an alert made Peter glance at his HUD’s information window, and he saw that the Javelin, Bob Bronson’s destroyer, had arrived at last.

  “They’re here,” Jake said over a two-way.

  Bronson’s voice broke into Peter’s helmet a second later. “Hi, Peter, Jake. I see you there, next to the mech. I’ve ordered my Nav officer to trail your comet in heliocentric orbit, and I’m coming over there via shuttle. Peter, I’d ask you to join me aboard the Javelin to discuss how we’ll proceed.”

  “What about me?” Jake’s voice cut in.

  “This is a conversation for your father and I to have, son. I’d ask you to remain inside your comet hopper, well away from the mech, if you please. That’ll be enough poking and prodding it.”

  “It’s our mech,” Jake said. “We found it. I don’t want to wait inside the Whale, and I don’t have to.”

  “Jake,” Peter rebuked his son harshly over the wide channel.

  That was enough. Gloved hands balled, Jake stomped across the comet’s surface toward their ship’s airlock.

  Peter waited out on the ice. It took fewer than twenty minutes for Bronson to arrive in what was once a UHF combat shuttle. Now, it belonged to Darkstream. They’d stolen it, essentially.

  “Why can’t we have our discussion right here?” Peter said once he was aboard, dispensing with formalities. He settled into a crash seat across from Bronson’s and looked the man in the eye.

  Bronson shrugged, the interior lighting playing across his shiny bald head. “We can, if you want. I thought you might prefer the comfort of the Javelin’s lounge.”

  “This is fine. Right here.”

  “All right, then.” Bronson cleared his throat. “Darkstream intends to take the mech, Peter.”

  “Is that right? What if I won’t allow it? The company’s entitled to sixty percent of whatever I find. That was the deal when they leased me the equipment. The rest is ours to keep.”

  “Well, we can hardly take sixty percent of a mech, can we? Not without rendering it useless to either of us. Besides, what use will you have for what is clearly a war machine, Peter? Do you plan to wage a war against someone? You and your son?” Bronson laughed. “Darkstream, though…we can use this. If we can learn its secrets, it could help us protect people from the Quatro. It could save lives, Peter.”

  Now, it was Peter’s turn to laugh—much more bitterly than Bronson. “Darkstream’s suddenly become so noble. Fine. You can have the mech. But I expect to be reimbursed for my forty percent.”

  It’s hard enough to make a profit, with the insane portion they take. Both Ingress and Plenitos, Eresos’ major cities, had plenty of homeless and starving people as a testament to that fact. Unless you were well-off enough to operate on a medium-to-large scale, it was difficult to prosper when you could only benefit from forty percent of what you produced.

  Raising a hand to his stubbled chin, Bronson scratched. “Reimbursing you could prove difficult. When you think about it, the mech is priceless. Considering it has value for system security, it’s impossible for anyone to calculate its true value. Tell me, are you always this hard-nosed when lives hang in the balance?”

  “Cut the crap, Bronson. Hearing a Darkstream executive trying to tell a sob story is like watching a mortician attempt vaudeville. “


  “All right, all right. You can’t blame me for giving it a shot. Tell you what. I’ve been authorized to offer you up to two billion credits, and I’m putting the entire amount on the table right now. You can use it to grow your comet development business exponentially, maybe someday buy the equipment you need outright. Then you wouldn’t have to give Darkstream their cut. The board has just one condition, though—you have to let me talk to Jake. One-on-one.”

  “Out of the question.” Peter stood from the crash seat, glaring down at Bronson. He was about to leave.

  “Now, hear me out, Peter. We know you’ve been filtering out the recruitment material from Jake’s feed. And we’ve never said anything about that, because it’s your prerogative. But I know what this is really about. We consider it unfortunate, what happened to you on Eresos. What you went through. But just because you went through a thing like that doesn’t mean Jake will. I only want the opportunity to offer him the opportunity of a lifetime. Your son tops the system leaderboards in three different divisions of lucid wargaming. Darkstream has had its eye on him for a long time. I only want the chance to talk with him.”

  “He’s too young, Bronson, not to mention too headstrong to follow orders. And he has too much life to live. He’s not ready to have his innocence stripped away by the likes of you.”

  “Don’t be so dramatic, Peter.” Bronson sighed, and he actually looked regretful—as though every emotion he’d ever displayed hadn’t been an act. Then, he sighed. “All right. If that’s the way it’s going to be, then we take the mech. No reimbursement. There are clauses in our contract that could easily be interpreted to entitle us to it, anyway. We don’t have to interpret them that way, but if you won’t play ball, the mech’s too important to system security to just leave it languishing on this ice ball.”

  Peter’s fists tightened. He continued to glare at Bronson, saying nothing, because he knew more would be coming. Darkstream always had another play. Always.

  “It’s too bad, really,” Bronson went on. “I understand your daughter is very, very sick. Sue Anne, isn’t it? I know she’s the reason you do what you do out here, alone in the cold. Two billion could have made sure she got the treatment she needs.”