Nemesis (The MechaVerse Trilogy Book 2)

by Jeremy Cunkle

  “Argos, power DawnsLight down into maintenance mode.” She ordered through the mic in her helmet before ripping it off and hurriedly placing her foot into the stirrup just outside of the still yawning hatch; lowering the harness to the hangar floor at the fastest setting possible in her haste to escape.

  She recognized in herself, that her need to separate herself from her Mech armor boiled down to her anger at nearly dying on the first mission as well as the currents of adrenaline and fear mixed with self-loathing from having killed another human. Upon landing, she tossed her helmet to the side where it landed in a pile of other gear from the shuttle that had still not been organized and stored, just missing the startled engineers lounging near the equipment waiting for their return.

  Alyona sat on top of a generator against the far wall of the hangar, a severe lack of amenities making it one of the few available places to collapse out of the way of the now buzzing support crews. She placed her face in her hands, unable to hold back any longer, sobbing quietly as she allowed herself to process the emotions that were bottled up until now. A range of intense feelings all coursed through her simultaneously. Rage at her herself for ignoring the command to avoid fighting, endangering her friends and the pilots under her responsibility, fear at nearly dying, disgust at having killed, and relief at still being alive. Her body shook with sobs as she wrapped her arms around herself, feeling deathly cold even in the temperature-controlled suit.

  Vera was next to cycle through the air lock. Without a maintenance bay in which to dock Atalanta, she began opening the cockpit hatch the second they cleared the air lock, leaving her Mech armor standing awkwardly in the middle of the cavernous hangar, waiting for instruction. She grabbed the stirrup with one hand, barely slowing her headlong descent from the cockpit to the ground before removing her helmet while rushing to the nearest trash bin; barely making it in time before dry heaving multiple times and then collapsing next to it, unable and unwilling to move further.

  Kiryl was the last of the three through the airlock, forced to stop with Atalanta blocking the way. “Argos, remote link me to Atalanta.”

  Argos replied through his helmet as the HUD re-organized itself to reflect Atalanta’s controls, “Handshake complete. Remote access granted.”

  Grimacing at the unpleasant task, Kiryl directed Atalanta over to a cleared space next to DawnsLight where a team of technicians gathered in preparation before releasing remote access and following with Intrepid. He manually switched over the command instructions from combat to maintenance mode, which left the reactor in idle and the technicians able to adjust the position of the limbs before stiffly making his exit. Once on the ground, he then had the good sense to leave the women alone while they grieved. Of the three pilots, he considered himself the most clinically detached, years ago having accepted the course of actions leading them to the current point in their lives. He had spent the interim steeling himself for this moment, using his rage at witnessing his friends, family, and loved ones murdered in front of him to dampen his guilt over killing men who were not responsible for that tragedy, but associated with them.

  He crossed the room, sitting heavily in the hangar’s only chair, closing his eyes while replaying the battle in his head, unable to associate the explosions of enemy Mech armor with humans piloting them, shaking his head in frustration as he closed his eyes, forcing himself to focus. Events had all happened so fast. He had been the fastest to recognize the danger of the situation. In so doing, he had not been afforded the luxury of holding back, relying on preternatural instincts as he fought to keep them alive. He felt the deaths of each pilot he killed; the fact that he had now taken human life weighed on him, but he weighed that burden against that of his past. The rage of vindication easily won that internal struggle. As he debated whether or not his response meant that he should seek someone to reach out to and ask for their opinion on his almost lack of response, he absently wondered if the fighting would haunt him more when he was attempting to sleep and decided to wait and see.

  Alyona and Vera were still silently processing their emotions, so Kiryl walked to a cabinet that housed a small fortune in varieties of alcohol. He methodically picked out a decent bottle of rum, setting out three glasses onto the faux wood bar counter. He poured liberal amounts of the alcohol into each glass, downing his own and then refilling it, before taking one to each of the women.

  They did not refuse; they also quickly downed theirs, but each refused a second drink. Some time passed, unnoticed, as they took comfort in each other’s presence, the shock wearing off, replacing itself with bone deep exhaustion.

  They could not help but better understand some of Mikkhael’s warnings now that they had fought their first battle, now that they had killed, and now that they had almost lost. Instead of giving up though, their resolve to continue fighting in his stead only hardened. All of them were unwilling to let him shoulder this burden alone any longer.

  CHAPTER TEN – WISDOM OF EXPERIENCE

  “The first lesson a revolutionary must learn is that he is a doomed man.” – Huey Newton

  “Come in.”

  Kurtis keyed the door release but did not look up from his workstation behind the custom rig. An intentional design choice rendered him physically unable to see the door, leaving him in the zone, ignoring unnecessary distractions. A camera pointed at the door notified him anytime someone came through the door, but the feature was currently toggled off, there was important work to do and not enough time to get it done. The interruption did not slow him as his fingers flew across the several keyboards, all of which were tied to separate terminals in front of him that comprised the computer rig brought from Earth.

  Alyona stood on the other side of the rig, watching him work for a few moments, master of his element. She did not want to disturb him; of the four new arrivals from Earth, his task might be considered the most important in the short term, but she needed to give him the bad news-they needed his help.

  After a minute when the guest did not speak, or leave, Kurtis finally stopped what he was doing long enough to turn on the camera and inquire about the disturbance. He found Alyona staring back at him, shifting nervously from foot-to-foot, clearly not wanting to meet his eyes, but forcing herself to do so. He stood up once he saw the expression on her face, looking at her over the top of the computer stations “What’s wrong?”

  She had to clear her throat before she could speak. “Have you… Have you heard about yesterday yet?”

  Kurtis nodded slowly as he mentally switched gears before blushing with guilt, recognition dawning. “Yes, I did. I am so incredibly sorry that I did not come find you and ask. I … I have … I lost track of time. I’m sorry. I know it’s an excuse… are you okay?” His voice trailed off awkwardly after the late question.

  She cleared a chair next to him covered in equipment, sitting down where they could see one another, as much to help change the subject as to draw his eyes and attention back to her and away from his guilt. Without any trace of accusation in her voice, she said, “I don’t know honestly. We are all starting to wonder just how right Mikkhael was when he tried to warn us about the danger. After associating ourselves with him and our Mech armor with Starkindler, I can see now how we suffer from undeserved hubris, which is the worst kind there is. On that rest run, we went out completely blind. Whether or not we were expecting a fight, that was a stupid mistake, and now the damage will be that instead of acting with confidence next time the PDF appear, we will be dealing with hesitation and the lethal side effects of self-doubt. That isn’t an experience that I can allow to happen again. We didn’t travel the entire way from Earth with the most technologically advanced war machines just to fight in the modern equivalent of a brawl battle. I need you to get Argos to take over some of Aurora’s information gathering abilities, and I need it done before our next mission.”

  Alyona took a deep breath. “Get me a satellite, Kurtis, please.”

  She was begging for his help. Kurtis kn
ew that whatever was bothering her, it had shaken her to her core. “I might be able to, but you understand what you’re asking right?”

  Alyona just nodded her head yes, not trusting herself to speak.

  Kurtis took her acceptance for a continued explanation as much as an understanding of the situation. “Aurora’s shells have clogged the entire interconnected network on Mars with their corrupted copies, exploiting every digital weakness they can find. The shells insert themselves and then are creating copy after copy until whatever space they infiltrate fills up. Everything from hard drives to communications are being overrun and compromised with corrupt data from the shells. No one can clear out the mess that the satellites have become because no one can reach them. I might be able to find one that has the ability to communicate with a line of sight laser, isolate it, and then debug it, but that is a lot of ifs. The data banks here don’t know which satellites have the necessary receiving dish, when to attempt communication or even what coordinates are needed to line up the lasers; attempting to do something like that manually has almost no chance of success.”

  Alyona was not ready to give up that easily. “What about one of the old weather satellites though? Weren’t they equipped with both digital and UHF radios? You could link up with one through radio waves, locate it with triangulation, and then use it as a bridge to reach a satellite that has a laser receiver.”

  “Hmm. That might work. I’m not willing to make any promises other than I’ll try, and I’ll let you know if I make a break through.” Kurtis said.

  Alyona smiled gratefully at him. “Thanks. By the way, how is the original Aurora’s code coming along?”

  With a deep sigh, Kurtis turned and vacantly looked at the rig where he had spent the last four days working nearly non-stop, attempting to find a way to explain to her what he found. “Short answer, I don’t know. Her programming has been absorbing immense amounts of data, but I still can’t fathom for what reason. She hasn’t been using it for anything specific that I can tell, just collecting it. And then as far as her programming goes, it’s hard to tell the difference between that which is the result of corruption and what is the result of her personal growth. You know that question all children ask their parents eventually… ‘What’s the difference between a weed and a flower? And the parent replies that it comes down to what people want to believe is pretty enough to be a flower? Well, I have no way to judge what she has needed to learn based off her experiences, what she expects to need in the future, and what is simply bloated code at this point. The only thing I know for certain is that she has managed to take care of Mikkhael extremely well, protecting him from impossible odds time and again, which gives her an amount of lenience that I am not eager to quickly make any judgement against her.”

  A few seconds of silence awkwardly followed as Alyona realized that was essentially a dismissal. “I … see. I’ll leave you to it then. If you make any breakthroughs let us know as soon as you can. And Kurt, get me that damned satellite, please.”

  * * * * *

  Kiryl was up to his armpits in mechanical intestines, Vera looking over his shoulder with a slate in her hands, guiding him with instruction when he caught sight of Alyona approaching through his periphery vision. She paused as Alyona approached, obviously debating whether her need justified interrupting them or not. He beat her to it, “Not like later will be any better. What’s on your mind?”

  Alyona gave a slight nod acknowledging his graciousness. “What’s the status of repairs to our Mech armor?”

  Kiryl grunted as he fumbled around for something, arm lost in the menagerie of parts comprising DawnsLight’s thigh, “We built these on Earth, with three times the gravity of Mars. Sure, they got a tune up once we arrived, but pieces are still shifting, expanding in the lighter gravity. Then, we took them on an extended mission with heavy fighting, during which our two units were rocked hard. Their frames are entirely fine. But if we don’t get the internal seals tightened down properly we’ll have problems later. If needed, we can head out in a few hours’ notice, but I could really use some time to get them tightened back down to their proper specs.”

  “How long will that take?” Alyona asked, as she warily eyed DawnsLight, still nowhere close to forgiving herself for nearly being killed on her first mission.

  “It will be at least a week before I can give you some kind of firm timetable. The technicians have had a lot of practice on Starkindler; we can thank Mikkhael and Thorsten for that. But I’m still not sure I want them working on the insides of our units yet. We may be in the beginning of an arms race with the PDF, but we still have limits on what technology we are willing to transfer to them, inadvertently or intentionally, which only leaves the three of us to handle this.” Kiryl said as he nodded his head towards the black expanse currently swallowing his arm. There was no bitterness or accusation in his matter of fact tone. He simply summed up the situation, accurately and to the point, as efficiently as any other pureblood German.

  Alyona thanked him and Vera for working on her Mech armor while she went to find Commander Ultor and report to him. She had been expecting his summons since the moment they arrived in communication range of the mountain, and now that it had arrived, the delay made meeting him no easier. As she made her way through the carved halls, she marveled at their sheer expanse, stretching for miles in every direction underneath the mountain. Arriving at the door to Commander Ultor’s office, she engaged the chime and waited for him to unlock it. Many commanders in a similar position would have made her wait, overtly displaying their power. She had barely resigned herself for the inevitable wait when the door slid open with its soft pneumatic hiss.

  Commander Ultor was strong enough that he had no need for foolish displays of power. His methods were both more subtle and straight to the point. There were going to be consequences for disobeying his orders, the matter was that simple. She wished she were anywhere but here to find out what they were.

  She took a deep breath and collected herself before stepping across the threshold. Marching in, she presented herself to the Commander. She did not salute, she was not military, but held to a close approximation of the military attention pose, saying nothing, forcing him to make the first move. She knew that anything she said would be wrong regardless; therefore, she remained silent.

  In the room with Commander Ultor were the newly promoted Colonel Mathias and Captain Leon Cartwright, commander of all external forces and operations and his subordinate ace pilot respectively. Colonel Mathias was clearly furious, red in the face before even saying anything as he stared at her with open hostility while Captain Cartwright looked bored. It was the Commander who held her gaze though, silently appraising her with those all seeing eyes of his, disapproval clearly reflected in them.

  Colonel Mathias must have been under strict orders to remain silent as Commander Ultor spoke first. “You disobeyed a direct command to not engage enemy forces.” The declaration was fact, accusation, and a clear summary of what happened all wrapped into one succinct statement.

  Alyona hated herself for being cornered into a role she did not want to play. “We needed a longer duration mission in order to better shakedown our units than originally anticipated. While we did not go out of our way to avoid a fight during that mission, we also did not intentionally seek one out either. My team wishes to express our condolences for the loss of three of your units as well as our gratitude for the professionalism shown by your forces.” She said, sounding properly contrite, as someone in her position who had been clearly wrong should be, not so subtly referring to professionalism on the part of the StormCrows. Her obvious hope being that they would continue such professionalism and not allow their emotions to get the better of them in the form of kicking the Omnos squad out of the mountain stronghold, or worse yet throw them in the brig.

  As if to illustrate the point, Captain Cartwright chose that moment to fix her with a stare as equally piercing as the Commander’s. “A professionalism clearly not displ
ayed by you and your team. Aye, ‘tis true that you didn’t seek out a fight, you did however just happen to head straight towards the one spot more likely than any other to have PDF though-over the clear objections of your minders.”

  Knowing that it was useless to deny it any further, Alyona dropped the act. Everything they said was true and they were not willing to let her go without some sort of concession on her part. The fact that she was not in the brig with the rest of the team meant there was room to negotiate. Behind closed doors like this, there was no need for either party to worry about saving face. “We cannot operate under the same constraints as the men and women under your command. The Omnos squad is here specifically to aid Mikkhael, which makes us temporary allies, but independent ones. Meaning that we can consider your opinions, but in the end, we have to make our own judgments in difficult situations. We wish to resolve this matter satisfactorily and then move on. Please, if you would state your demands…”

  Colonel Mathias wound up, beginning a tirade that surely would not end anytime soon, when with a grunt of respect and a bit of admiration in his eyes Commander Ultor cut him off. “If you were operating under your own power, then it would a different matter altogether. You were given an escort out of courtesy. The fact that you took advantage of that courtesy means that from now on you must operate on your own, as well as repay the debt that you now owe.” Without pausing to give her time to address the accusation, he offhandedly pointed to his subordinate as an introduction. “As such, Colonel Mathias is here to brief you on a new development that we feel would make amends for the breach of trust. Colonel?”