by Brett Patton
Dad laughed. They’d reached his lab, a small room with walls covered in copper mesh. On stainless-steel tables were pieces of twisted wreckage. They were tagged with holo-floats calling out atomic maps and carbon dates, as well as compositional analysis and genetic sequences. Matt didn’t know what they were at the time, but later on, reviewing his memories, he’d understood more and more.
His dad turned on the wall screen and leaned close to it. Cross-sectional views of Prospect’s tunnel maze rotated on the screen, bright with false colors.
“Be careful what you bury,” Dad said. “You never know what may bloom.” He wore that faraway look again.
He was probably thinking about Mom, Matt knew. He’d never known his mother. She’d died in childbirth. Matt’s Perfect Record didn’t reach back to the womb.
Footfalls echoed from the hallway. A man brought himself up short at the doorway and darted wide eyes from Matt to his dad. It was Yve Perraux, the head of security for Union-Prospect Research.
“We have to evacuate!” Yve gasped.
Dad frowned. “I haven’t heard the—” A warning Klaxon blared through the concrete hallways, cutting him short.
“Dad?” Matt said.
“Not now,” Dad said. To Yve, he asked, “Corsairs?”
“Maybe.” Yves eyes skittered to Matt. “Maybe worse.”
“No,” Dad said, toggling the wall screen to the security view. A number of multicolored dots descended toward the curved edge of a tan planet. They all converged on a single target: a green block labeled UNION-PROSPECT RESEARCH FACILITY 1.
Their facility. Matt’s guts clenched. He knew what Corsairs were from videos. They were the bad guys. They killed people. And they were coming here. What would they do then?
“Dad—,” Matt began.
“Matt, sorry, but not now.” Dad fumbled frantically with the mass-storage-system interface on one of the desktops. He slotted his slate down into it. Its screen showed it filling with data.
Dad pulled the slate out as soon as it was full, and typed in commands. Matt didn’t know what they were at the time. Later, he saw they were instructions to wipe and reformat their entire data system.
“I’m scared,” Matt said.
“Just a second, just a second. Gotta do this,” Dad muttered. “Just a second; then we go. I promise. You’ll see those beaches—”
The wall screen flashed a red warning dialogue. Even at six, Matt knew what it was. It was what happened when you wanted to make the data system do something that it couldn’t.
Dad pounded a fist on the table, making artifacts jump. “No, no, no, no!” he chanted. He pounded out new instructions on the keyboard. More red dialogues appeared.
“They’re already in the system!” his dad cried, turning to Matt with an expression of abject horror.
Matt’s stomach rolled over and he felt his bladder loosen. He’d never seen his dad look like that.
Dad scooped up the slate, grabbed Matt’s hand, and pulled him out the door. Matt’s feet tangled in the hall. Dad swept him up and carried him, like he used to when Matt was a baby.
Dad came up short at the lift. It was still crawling its way down the thousand-feet-deep shaft. It had never seemed so slow. Dad pounded on the control panel.
“We’ll make it,” he said. “We’ll make it.” It was as if he were trying to convince himself.
Corsairs. A thousand images from the news came to beat at Matt: scruffily dressed men in armored spaceships descending on a new colony town, pelting the rough concrete buildings with explosives. A shaft on a Displacement Drive ship, filled with bodies. Flickering red lights at the edge of the Union, like torches outside a castle.
What if the Corsairs were already on the surface, waiting for them? Matt whimpered and squeezed his dad’s hand tighter.
“We’ll make it,” Dad said.
Finally, the lift came. Dad slammed the door shut and pressed the button marked SURFACE a dozen times. With a groan, the lift began grinding upward.
“We will make it,” Dad repeated, his voice cracking.
Matt remembered the security display and the dots. He remembered how fast they had moved. He counted out the seconds. The dots should have already reached them.
An eternity later, the elevator socked into its cage in the surface hangar. The outer doors of the building were open, revealing a dry, sandy landscape under a beige sky. Wind howled outside, and dust swirled into the hangar, driven by Prospect’s seemingly endless wind. One of their three six-man Hedgehog transports rose into the sky outside.
The other Hedgehog sat on the steel-grate floor only fifty feet away, it’s cargo door open. A Powerloader stood like a sentry outside the Hedgehog’s cargo bay, clearly abandoned in the rush to leave. Its ready light still glowed.
Through his fear, Matt felt a strong pang of desire. Rex Cooper, the ops steward, had let him drive it once. Strapped in its battered steel-tube frame, he felt like a giant. Rex had to chase him around the hangar before Matt gave up the cockpit.
“See!” Dad said. “Close up the ’Hog, and out we go. We’ll make it!”
The screaming rush of missiles echoed through the hangar. A brilliant flash came from outside, followed quickly by a rolling crump of thunder. The rising Hedgehog was gone. In its place, a dark transport hung in the air. Figures dropped from it.
Dad punched the EXTERIOR DOOR button. The steel doors began grinding closed, laboring through layers of sand and grime.
“Come on!” He dragged Matt toward the ship.
They didn’t get far. Blue-white light flashed in front of them, and the doors buckled inward. Matt’s eardrums compressed painfully. Then he was flying backward, sliding along the expanded steel grate as pieces of the door flew overhead.
Matt looked up. His dad lay ahead of him on the ground, his leg bent back at a crazy angle. Red blood stained his khaki pants. Dad tried to push himself up off the ground and hollered in pain. His leg rolled limply. Even back then, Matt knew it was broken.
Something inside Matt snapped. Dad is hurt! His dad! Dads didn’t die, except in videos he wasn’t supposed to watch. Matt wailed. It was a shrill sound, echoing off the metal walls.
Through the door, black figures came. One, two, three, a dozen. They wore scarred, bulky black space suits and carried short, deadly looking weapons with gaping barrels and well-worn magazines. Their visors were mirrored, concealing the troops’ faces. They reflected only the steel girders of the hangar like a fun-house mirror.
On the suit helmets, Matt recognized the red, thousand-daggers insignia of the Corsair Confederacy. Back at the base circling Alpha Centauri A, he’d played Union vs. Corsairs with the kids. He never wanted to play as a Corsair. Never. He’d only play as Union. He wanted to bring people together. He wanted to save them. Why would anyone play as a Corsair? Hot tears streamed down his cheeks.
Matt’s dad groaned and tried to stand again. It was a terrible sound. Matt shivered, his mouth dry. Even without his Perfect Record, he knew he’d never forget this day.
“We’ll make it!” his dad said, dragging himself along the floor toward Matt. His limp leg trailed blood.
The approaching Corsairs looked at one another, as if in amusement. They didn’t hurry. They just sauntered. As if nothing could stop them.
A red-hot dagger of anger shot through Matt. He didn’t think. He just moved. He ran for the Powerloader.
He expected the Corsairs to yell or try to intercept him, but he didn’t turn around to check on them. He had to get in the Powerloader. Fast.
He scrambled up the steel tube and threw himself in the seat, punching the control panel for the smallest operator. The hand grips and foot pedals whirred closer. He strained to reach them. Slipped in a foot pedal. Caught a hand grip.
The Powerloader jerked to life. Matt lost his balance and fell against the Hedgehog. The ship slid sideways on the steel grate with an incredible screech. Matt levered himself upright and finally dared to look.
The
Corsairs had stopped to watch. One had stepped forward to the front and opened his helmet. He wore a thin, sarcastic grin. Flanking him were two Corsairs. Both pointed their weapons at Matt. Bright orange fusion flares glowed deep in their barrels.
It was over. There was nothing he could do.
Matt didn’t care. In four shambling steps, he placed himself between the Corsairs and his father. He held out his big, steel-tube arms, blocking their way.
The lead Corsair laughed. “Should I shoot through you, child?”
“No!” Dad screamed. “Don’t hurt him!”
The Corsair leaned down to look at Matt’s dad through the frame of the Powerloader. “Then let’s talk.”
Silence for a moment. The wind howled louder outside, bringing the rattle and ping of sand against the steel walls.
“What do you want?” Dad’s voice was a little more than a whisper.
The Corsair reached out a hand. “Your slate.”
Dad hugged the slate closer to his chest. “Never.”
“We already have most of your data. Give me the slate, and you and your son may go free, and you can continue your archaeological adventures with the Union.”
“No.”
“I don’t like that word, ‘no.’ Wouldn’t you like to run with your son on the beaches of Eridani?”
Matt jerked back, surprised. He heard his dad gasp. How did the Corsair know about that?
And suddenly, Matt saw exactly what would happen. His father was dead, no matter if he gave them the slate or not. It was how Corsairs worked. They weren’t just boogeymen conjured up to scare kids like him. They were absolutely, totally real. They took everything. Even lives. Especially lives.
Matt screamed and charged at the Corsairs. Pistons fumed and pumped. His arms reached out to crush them.
But the Corsairs just watched him. Matt’s Powerloader was powerful, but it wasn’t fast. He bumbled toward the enemy, the two Corsairs with fusion rifles taking their time as they rose to track him.
“Don’t hurt him!” Dad screamed. He took the slate and slung it low over the hangar deck.
It skidded to a halt a meter in front of the lead Corsair. He leaned down and scooped it up. “Thank you.”
The Corsair nodded at the two with fusion rifles. “Kill the archaeologist.”
Weapons swung toward Matt’s dad. Matt dug in his heels and tried to put himself back in the line of fire. But the Powerloader’s clumsy legs just wouldn’t move fast enough.
The Corsairs fired. Bright orange fire exploded from their weapons, and his father disappeared in a blast of light.
Matt felt nothing. He was nothing. He was going to die like his dad. He knew that. In pure rage, he launched himself at the Corsair leader.
He expected to explode in a burst of orange fire. But he was just fast enough. He barreled into the Corsair leader with the three-ton Powerloader and drove him up against the hangar wall. Tears streamed down his face and spattered on the controls.
They were suddenly face-to-face. The Corsair was young, not much more than a teenager. He gave Matt a bemused grin and looked up at him with oddly calm eyes.
Odd eyes. One eye was bright violet. One eye was an intense golden color.
Matt gaped. That was impossible. Violet and gold eyes. HuMax eyes. But the HuMax were dead. Everyone knew that. The Union had been formed just to wipe them out, and that was more than a hundred years ago.
Matt remembered watching an entertainment video, late at night when he wasn’t supposed to. It was set on Eridani after the HuMax invasion. Violet-and-gold-eyed people swarmed over the verdant colony, while nuclear mushrooms blossomed. His dad had come in and turned off the video, saying, “You don’t need to watch stuff like that.”
Something exploded on Matt’s chest.
He flew out of the Powerloader cockpit and fell on the expanded-steel hangar deck, skidding to within ten meters of the Corsair troops. Smoke curled off his jumpsuit, and the acrid smell of burnt hair filled his nose. Fusion weapons swiveled to target him.
The Corsair leader pushed the dead Powerloader off himself with superhuman strength. Like a HuMax, Matt’s terrified brain told him. But he can’t be.
The front energy cell on the Powerloader gaped open, black and smoking from the explosion. But the Corsair leader’s weapon was also twisted and broken.
He dropped it on the floor and came to examine Matt. His violet-and-gold eyes were heavy and unmoving, like lead. He looked at Matt for a long time.
Matt wanted to scream at him, You killed my father. I’ll kill you. I’ll rip you apart. I hate you.
But all he could do was stand there and tremble, tears streaming down his face as little sobs escaped from his lips.
Finally the Corsair leader smiled again. The chill, alien expression never touched his eyes. Those strange orbs didn’t move a nanometer.
“Sometimes, courage must have its reward,” he said.
He walked past Matt and joined his fellows. They sauntered out through the shattered hangar doors. Shortly, there was the scream of ramjets. A craft lifted into the sky.
Matt sat alone in the broken hangar. Slow realization crept over him, like a chill fog.
His dad would never return. A Corsair had killed him. A HuMax Corsair.
Chill turned to heat, and heat turned to rage. Matt stood up. He ran out into the sand. He wanted to leap up into the sky and chase the murderer down, smashing and burning everything in his way. But there was nothing he could do. He looked up at the blank yellow sky and screamed, without a sound escaping his lips.
“I’ll find you!” Matt yelled.
Bright medical lamps glared down on him. He lay on his back on a warm, hard surface. White-suited doctors and gray-uniformed Mecha Auxiliaries leaned over him. Some of them winced or recoiled as if in shock. Matt realized he’d yelled out loud.
He was back at Mecha Training Camp.
On the Mind Raze machine.
Fresh, hot memory beat at his mind. Talons raking through his brain. That memory, that terrible memory, in full 3-D glory, brought back sharper and stronger than in even his Perfect Record. He’d lived the death of his father all over again.
That HuMax—that impossible HuMax. How they’d laughed on the Rock when he told them that. HuMax were extinct, they said. You’re just a little kid, they said. You’re too young to remember clearly, they said. Eventually, he’d stopped talking about it. Eventually, he’d started doubting even his own Perfect Record.
But he never lost the need for revenge. He would find that Corsair, no matter what it took, and courage would have another reward. One that might finally heal his terrible pain.
Matt scrambled off the machine, nearly falling. He took several steps away from it. He drew in ragged breaths, almost panting.
“Are you . . . all right?” Pechter asked.
Matt realized the room was full of cadets too. Kyle stood with his arms crossed at the edge of the curtains. Michelle leaned against a tent pole on the opposite side of the room, watching him. Sergey sat on a bench, looking at Matt with bored eyes. The Hyva twins leaned over the shoulders of the Auxiliaries for a closer look.
“What happened?” Matt asked.
“Damn machine locked up. You’ve been out half an hour.” Pechter’s wide eyes alternated between the slate and Matt. “How do you feel?”
I feel like I just lost everything that ever mattered to me. Again.
“I . . . I’m okay.”
Pechter shook his head. “Well, if that’s true, you’re holding up the line, rich kid. If it wasn’t for you, we’d all be at chow.”
“Is he out of interface state?” a voice said from Pechter’s slate.
Pechter jumped and fumbled with the pad, then addressed it. “Yes, sir.”
“What is his final test result?” said the voice.
“Passed. Though I have no idea how.” Pechter gripped the glowing green slate tightly.
“Your ideas are not important,” the voice said.
“What, uh . . . what should we do with him, sir?”
“Proceed as with any other passing candidate.”
“Yes. Understood.”
Pechter’s slate displayed the END CONNECTION icon. He stood there, staring at it for a time.
“Who was that?” Matt asked.
Pechter swallowed. “That was the general manager, Dr. Salvatore Roth.”
Matt started. Dr. Roth was the person who’d perfected biomechanical technology, the father of all modern Mecha. Everybody knew that, but little more. His company, Advanced Mechaforms, Inc., wrapped itself deep in Union state secrecy. He didn’t give interviews. He didn’t do press tours explaining his technology. Armchair speculators loved to guess at Dr. Roth’s secrets, when they’d never seen a Mecha at all.
“Why would Dr. Roth—,” Matt began.
Pechter held up a hand. “Doesn’t matter. The machine had a little problem. You passed. All is well. Gold stars for everyone. If we had gold stars.” He turned to wave at Kyle. “You’re next. Come on up!”
Matt wasn’t ready to be dismissed. He got in front of Pechter. “How many times has it malfunctioned like that?”
Pechter looked away. “Not too often.”
“Like, how many? An estimate?”
“Like, never,” Pechter said, through clenched teeth.
Matt shivered. Never. What did that mean? Was it because of his father’s gift? His Perfect Record? Did other cadets experience the same flashbacks he did, or was that something special? Was that why Michelle looked so disturbed ?
Pechter pushed Matt aside. “Now, if you’ll get out of the way, I can get on with testing.”
Matt nodded and stepped away. Kyle took a seat on the machine and lay back. The helmet went down. Pechter’s slate glowed green. Then, only moments later, Kyle stood up and looked at the machine uneasily, like Michelle.
Uneasy. Not screaming in vivid memory. Just like Michelle. What had happened to him?
They cycled through the cadets quickly. Nobody took more than a few seconds to complete the test. Everyone showed some degree of unease or revulsion when coming off the machine.
Until the sixth cadet. A thin woman in her early twenties, her hair still caked with swamp mud. She lay back underneath the hood. It came down over her, and her expression didn’t change. When she stood up from the machine, she didn’t recoil from it.