Nemesis (The MechaVerse Trilogy Book 2)

by Jeremy Cunkle

  Mikkhael could only guess at what material the sword was made from, as indeterminate as the rest of the pitch-black Mech armor all but invisible in the inky darkness of the airship. Any light that fell on Nemesis seemed to be sucked in, devoured. Impenetrable darkness surrounded Nemesis, swimming and shifting poignantly in the faint glow of the bioluminescent strips and the wrist communicator.

  He looked up, trying to peer above and around him, searching for any other features of the machine, but Nemesis resisted light itself, denying him the opportunity. It was if Mikkhael had entered the lower depths of hell, having come to make a pact with the devil himself, offering his soul in exchange for power. He shuddered at the thought. In the cold grip of fear, the panic clutching his heart made the imagined scenario seem all too real.

  Mikkhael jumped nervously as the sound of hydraulics broke the silence, coming from above, announcing the opening of the cockpit. The lights inside the cockpit faintly glowed, barely illuminating what lay inside. Whether some divine entity truly watched over Mikkhael’s fate would forever be debatable, but at that instant, a massive rumble shook the mountain. Chunks of permacrete fell from overhead, skipping heavily across the roof of the airship.

  In that moment, Mikkhael’s entire world was reduced to shades of red and black as a blinding rage overtook him. The vitality that accompanies a sense of purpose coursed through his veins, the reason for his existence becoming blindingly clear. For his entire adult life, Mikkhael Dreyfus had lived in complete terror of the PDF, ever since that fateful day over seven years ago.

  Something made him pause, remembering the maxim “be careful of promises made in the dark.” Mikkhael smiled, a terrible grin painted his face, there in the blackness inside that airship, as he remembered the vow he had made before coming to Mars, promising that no matter the cost to himself he would protect his friends. He would do anything; become anything, to ensure that tragedies, like what had happened to his family seven years ago, never occurred again.

  Goosebumps broke out across his entire body as he stared at the open cockpit above him, shivering in anticipation. Adrenaline coursed through him, all-encompassing, in a way that he had never experienced before, muscles twitching as they clenched eagerly in anticipation, begging for swift and purposed release.

  Laughter echoed in the back of Mikkhael’s mind as he climbed into the cockpit, and again as he sat in the pilot’s chair. Straps automatically encircled his body; halfway up his thighs, around his calves, as a harness formed around his torso and shoulders. They would hold his body in place regardless of how much damage Nemesis sustained. The message was clear. There were only two ways to gain freedom from the pilot’s seat. He would have either to win, he would die trying.

  A helmet lay on one of the armrests. Mikkhael placed it on his head and then sealed it to his pilot’s suit, feeling complete for the first time since the tragedy so very long ago. As he made himself ready, the voice of death itself whispered in his ear, dry, cold, raspy, as if permanently on the edge of coughing. “I have waited so long for you. I can taste your hatred, your rage, your pain. I will take all of it from you and use it to make more.” The voice promised him softly.

  Chills ran down Mikkhael’s spine as the silence was broken by another mocking laugh, this time emanating from the speakers inside the cockpit. It was too late for him to turn back, too late to quit, and in that moment, he searched within himself and knew that if given the option he would not make that choice.

  The cockpit closed, entombing him. Mikkhael pushed everything from his mind, even feeling his anger that had become a constant part of him leave. He calmed his breathing, forcing himself to sit still with his eyes closed, breathing deeply, and waiting for his mind to settle into blankness.

  His was such a state of mind that nothing but the ensuing combat could reach him now.

  Without input from him, Nemesis fired its reactor. The intensity of the vibrations from the reactor starting up shook the airship, threatening to tear it apart, all while Nemesis remained at idle. Power surged through the war machine as the reactor output continued increasing. Under and around Mikkhael, Nemesis shuddered in anticipation as the boot-up sequence commenced.

  The HUD engaged, simultaneously lighting up arrays of computer banks and accompanying dedicated monitors on each side, illuminating the space around Mikkhael with their glare. The light, even muted as it was, hurt Mikkhael’s eyes. He had become accustomed to the darkness.

  The cockpit interior was similar to Starkindler, although somehow giving off a sense of overwhelming darkness. The layout was familiar, his feet fit perfectly in stirrups already sized to his exact specifications. The pilot’s seat had already been shaped to accommodate his body, unwilling to accept another. Likewise, the armrests were perfectly positioned to match his arms. The wrist enclosures at the ends of each armrest fit like gloves over his hands. The helmet, he found in the cockpit was an updated version of the one he used when piloting Starkindler. A few features had been clearly been upgraded.

  A needle pierced Mikkhael’s forearm, inserting itself into the IV slot permanently grafted in his arm. He hardly noticed as a dark viscous concoction forced its way into his body. Another echoing laugh bounced around inside the helmet. The automated start-up sequence continued….

  As he tested the interfaces, Mikkhael looked around, searching for something. He did not even know what he was searching for, until he glanced down to his right, recognizing the missing component. The lack of Aurora’s self-representation staring back at him caused him a brief, sharp, pang of nostalgia. The moment passed as he remembered he was in this position because Aurora and Starkindler were not capable of accomplishing what he needed. Only Nemesis could deal with the PDF armies assaulting the mountain, stemming and then ultimately turning the tide.

  The moment of loss passed as the HUD and other monitors flared into life. Mikkhael’s breath caught again as for the first time he saw the odds he was up against. The StormCrows were fighting desperately, overwhelmed on every front, trading ground for a few extra minutes to live as PDF Hunter drones, Stridents and Steyrs pushed their attacks.

  Mikkhael was not sure what triggered the memory. He was completely focused on what was happening outside the mountain, prepared for battle. And yet in that moment he found himself guiltily performing a self-evaluation, confirming that he was doing the right thing as the memory washed over him. He attributed its sudden appearance to a side of him fighting for what was left of his humanity, against Nemesis’ whispered promises of freedom through his abandonment of that humanity.

  In the memory, he was alone with Commander Ultor after having just arrived at Mount Olympus. The Commander had asked Mikkhael for a reason to trust him. He had replied the only way he knew, honestly, saying “I have made the decision to protect the people of Mars who are unable to protect themselves from the tyrants that abuse their power. Starkindler is the sword and shield that I will use to accomplish that goal. I simply am who I am and nothing more.”

  The flashback was immediately followed by another that had occurred while he lived on Earth. He had been speaking with Vera about leaving for Mars, to seek revenge for the murder of their parents and friends. Vera had pushed him to envision a more substantive reason instead of simply leaving on an impossible quest for revenge, which from her point of view was a suicidal quest, steeped in folly. She had challenged him to come up with a better, clearer motive for leaving Earth than to simply join the miner’s rebellion against an evil corporate government. After he had been given time to consider his answer, he met her, in her quarters, aboard the SkySail.

  The night had gone differently than either of them had anticipated. They somberly shared a few drinks together, angry at one another and yet somehow still comfortable in each other’s presence. Hours before, Kurtis had been forced to reveal the concepts behind Aurora, and their now realized Mech armor, designed by their murdered parent’s. Vera’s arguments caught him off guard by the tack she chose. Her arguments were
centered around the limits of his humanity, and the realities that imposed on an individual’s ability to influence a war that involved millions of people that had been raging for nearly a decade.

  Somehow, after all of that, the night had ended up with Vera finally making peace with the fact that he was already gone, despite anything she could say or do. By the end of the night, she caught him off guard once more. Vera decided that the best course available was for her to offer her unwavering support for him in his impossible task, ensuring that he had all resources necessary in order to ally with the rebels. She put aside her own feelings and chose to recognize what he needed to do instead of becoming yet one more obstacle in his path. Her faith, in him, and that of his friends, constantly amazed Mikkhael. Their trust had time and again proven his greatest asset, from which he constantly drew strength, whenever he felt weak or incapable.

  Back in the critical moment, inside her room, where just the two of them stood debating his future, she asked how he planned to accomplish his goal of finding the men who had murdered their parents. The corrupt police who had been charged for those murders had been given a criminally lenient sentence, shipped off world to the penal colony of Mars for the rest of their lives. However, upon their arrival to Mars, instead of being sent underground into the mines to die like many of the millions of other prisoners sent to Mars, their unique skills had been recognized by the corrupt corporate government of Mars Industries. Eventually, they had been inducted into the Special Forces Stryker Armored Battalion, the absolute best military force the PDF had. The Stryker Battalion, along with the elite Republican Guards, operated at the whim of the President of Mars Industries, free from persecution for the horrible atrocities they regularly committed.

  In her quarters aboard the Skysail, Vera had looked at him, piercing his soul with those knowing eyes and asked if he had a plan. He had returned her honest, realistic assessment of the situation with his foolish bravado, naivety and hubris. To this day, every syllable and nuanced tone of the line he had uttered still haunted him. “If necessary I will shed my humanity in order to become something else, whatever is necessary, something capable of protecting those who require it, and that I care about.”

  The memories left him feeling cold, alone, aching terribly for the comfort of his friends by his side. But he knew that he could never consider himself at peace while PDF armies stood outside his new home, doing their utmost to commit wholesale slaughter against all who opposed them, and that the Stryker Battalion still ran rampant across the red planet, continuing their atrocities.

  Mikkhael looked down at his hands, closing his eyes as he placed his hands wrist-to-wrist. He began straining as he struggled to pull them apart, fighting to break the mental shackles of unmitigated rage and pain that forever bound him to his past as a survivor of a horrible tragedy. Instinctively, he recognized that if he was to ever face his future, and rise to meet the challenges it would demand of him, he first had to confront, and resolve, his past.

  The veins in his forehead began to bulge with the exertion of separating his wrists. His arms began to shake from a combination of effort and extreme tension, and yet despite his best efforts, his wrists remained next to one another. He flexed the muscles of his arms, twisting and attempting through brute force to rip apart the mental shackles, focusing all of his being into the effort of separating his wrists. His arms began trembling as beads of sweat appeared on his forehead and then dripped slowly down his forehead and face, unnoticed, unheeded.

  He began screaming from the sheer effort, the primal scream of desperation and yearning filling the empty void of the cockpit with the hallow ring of defiance. He held nothing back, pushing himself farther than he ever thought possible as the focus of his world narrowed to encompass only his still-bound wrists. The darkness that he held inside of him for so long was finally released, flooding his body, flowing from him in a surging river of violent hatred and rage. Pain, sorrow, and the fear of being a survivor welled to the forefront of his consciousness, threatening to subsume him in its black tide of hatred, holding him from what he needed to become in order to save those whom he cared so deeply about and who relied on him.

  The pitch of his screams changed, rising in intensity as his throat became raw from the primordial cry of defiance, pain, and pure agony, combining into a single essence. His scream filled the cockpit, echoing off the armored walls of this prison surrounding him, inundating him with its overwhelming presence.

  The blackness of absolute despair helped him burrow deeper into himself than he ever had; finding buried within himself the purpose for his existence. He reached for the small, weak light hidden deep within, buried beneath all of that anger and pain, as he suddenly became afraid in the unfamiliar presence of hope.

  The screaming continued, unabated, as he frantically reached for that elusive light, grasping desperately for his self-purpose, finally grabbing hold of it and clutching it tightly. He let the fire of purpose fill him, felt the unconscionable well of power flow through him, engulfing his soul, reprinting the very fabric of his being. And then, in a glorious moment of self-awakening, he broke the mental shackles that had bound him ever since the moment his family and friends were murdered.

  The indescribable sensations as the walls of pain and rage in which he had wrapped himself gave way, crumbling underneath the immutable onslaught of purpose and hope. All this was accompanied by the motion of his mentally manacled hands suddenly flying apart.

  In that moment, a wave of peace washed over Mikkhael unlike any he had ever known. The feeling, that for the first time, he had set himself free from the shackles that had bound him for years had now fallen away, renewing his strength and vitality in a way that medicines and pharmaceuticals never could. Very real weights and chains seemed to fall from his shoulders and wrists, cast aside, never to be carried again.

  There, alone in the cockpit of Nemesis, Mikkhael breathed deeply of fresh air. His heart rate calmed and his hands stopped shaking as he achieved peace with himself, finally forgiving himself for living when so many others had died.

  The serenity enveloping Mikkhael Dreyfus, former pilot of Starkindler and current pilot of Nemesis, in that moment, would be taken as a sign of weakness by all but the most intelligent of enemies.

  When Mikkhael looked up at the HUD in front of him, truly seeing the path in front of him for the first time, he knew that it was time.

  CHAPTER TWENTY – AWAKENING

  “We all have darkness within ourselves,

  I am simply willing to project mine” – Mikkhael Dreyfus

  Kiryl was doing the best he could with what he had, but none of the odds were in his favor. After receiving command of a company of the new Salvatores, he led his small but powerful force out toward the plain where the main line of defense stood, the last major bulwark between the PDF and Mount Olympus.

  The eighteen Salvatore pilots followed closely behind Intrepid as they rushed from the mountain, out onto the plain, and into the hardened positions awaiting their arrival. At the start of the siege, the defensive salient, comprised of a wall of permacrete bunkers covered by ballistic glass and eagerly crackling energy shields, had been occupied by fifty MARS units broken into eight squadrons. They represented over half of the mechanized units available to the StormCrows, including all of the remaining Justice models. Now, barely a third of the original defenders remained mission-capable and the wedge of enemy armor, forming in the distance, would surely overrun the surviving defenders without further reinforcements.

  Kiryl and Lieutenant Jacobson directed the Salvatores into the least damaged of the hardened positions. Similar to the hides on top of the mountain, that Kiryl had sheltered in while fending off the drone attacks, the series of hardened bunkers were encased in walls of permacrete several meters thick, connected seamlessly with one another, forming a large, complete bulwark that obstructed outside access to the main gates. In order for the PDF to take the mountain, they first had to eliminate the defenders an
d reduce to rubble the series of hardened bunkers.

  Each MARS unit stepped inside its bunker, standing in a shallow trench cut through the terra underfoot. An adjustable section of the wall in front of each bunker allowed for different fields of fire while retaining the greatest amount of defensive capability. The entire setup inside each bunker proved well thought out, effectively serving its role as force multipliers for the meager number of defenders tasked with staving off the enemy army.

  Generators installed below each hardened position allowed the bunker to be self-sufficient. The units inside were protected by local energy shielding, ballistic glass, and thick coatings of energy-absorbing foam. Underground cables drew more power and resources from the mountain, providing auxiliary power and liquid coolant for their MARS units. Munitions were stored in heavily armored vaults buried beneath each trench, and on the sides of the bunker were automated feeders that attached to each unit, making resupply of missiles and rockets a matter of seconds.

  The capabilities of the armored bunkers explained why so few defenders had managed to hang on, until now, against the impossible odds arrayed against them, serving as incredibly potent force multipliers for each MARS unit. Infantry teams stood ready within the shelter of unused bunkers, ready to augment the defenses with shoulder mounted rocket launchers or provide covering fire while the MARS units reloaded. Lessons learned from historical battles meant this line of defense adjusted to the flow of battle as necessary, there would be no repeat of the old, French Maginot Line.

  As soon as Kiryl and the rest of his company entered their individual bunkers, technicians swarmed their units, attaching supplemental cables and munition feeders. If the bunker or the unit inside became damaged, the technicians would do their best to repair them in the field. For those protecting the main line of defense, there would be no retreat.