by Brett Patton
Michelle looked back up at him, her expression suddenly grim. “Not even to orbit.”
Instantly, Matt wanted to take her on a Displacement Drive ship. He wanted to lie out on its surface and watch the stars change with her. “What’ll you do when you’re out there?”
Michelle’s face compressed in concentration, and she looked at Matt for several long moments. For the first time, Matt thought she really saw him.
“You think I’ll make it.” A statement, not a question.
“Yes.”
“Don’t feed me bullshit.” But her tone was neutral.
“I’m not,” Matt said. Thinking of Kyle, of his calculating words.
Michelle swallowed and looked away. “Gotta get through this first.”
“We will,” Matt told her.
“You can’t say that for sure.”
Matt nodded. Three others had walked out after the Eels. There were eleven cadet candidates left. Only about a third of their original group. And they still hadn’t gotten in a Mecha.
“Yes, I can. So can you.”
Michelle nodded, but her expression went tight-lipped. She looked back out over the city. Matt let the silence stretch out. After a while, Michelle waved and went back into her room. Matt heard the door slide open and shut.
“Good going,” said another voice beside him. Matt leaned farther out of the balcony to look. Ash was two doors down from him.
“Thanks,” Matt said. “I think.”
Ash nodded. “She’s skittish. Got lots of walls up.”
“I’m not . . .” Matt trailed off. He wasn’t what? Human?
“Problem with the skittish ones: sometimes they don’t get close enough to make the right choice. Y’know?”
“No,” Matt said, laughing. “I have no idea what you mean.”
Ash laughed with him. “Lotsa folks say that. Well, g’night.” Matt heard the sliding door again.
After a while, he went back in. His room was tiny and severe. A single bed done in three shades of gray covers. Two bare shelves beside the bed. A table and chair built into the wall. There was a single button on the desk marked EMERGENCY COMMS.
Matt went to the door and twisted the knob. It didn’t turn. A small screen above the knob flashed bright orange words: ACCESS TO TRAINING CAMP SUBFACILITY IS LIMITED AT CADET CANDIDATE LEVEL. THIS ROOM IS SEALED FOR YOUR PROTECTION.
Matt nodded. Everything they’d been through so far made sense. Minimize the budget while weeding out the incompatible candidates. Invite the remainder into an exclusive club. Then ensure they can’t do anything stupid if they got second thoughts.
Yeah. It made sense. It was also scary as hell.
What had he gotten into?
The next morning, Soto and the Auxiliaries made the cadet candidates put on their interface suits before transport through the city. The Auxiliaries and Corps on the avenues watched them pass with knowing smirks.
But when the transport pulled up to the blacktop practice field, suddenly it didn’t matter.
On the field, five Mecha stood at ready. Five times the height of a man, they were made of something like black chrome, sculpted into fluid equations of power. Legs bulging with metallic muscle supported a massive, ridged torso pockmarked with shuttered, carbon-burned apertures.
Powerful arms serrated with razor-sharp protrusions terminated in skeletal talons that looked like they could rip through steel as easy as paper.
A spiked head with mirrored visor reflected the crawl of white clouds in the artificial sky above. They looked more alive than mechanical, more grown than made.
Matt shivered, his heart racing. This is why I’m here.
“Hol-ee shit,” Ash said, jumping off the transport. Murmurs of appreciation rippled through the ranks of cadet candidates as they lined up in front of the Mecha. Michelle looked up at the Mecha in raw hunger. The Khoury brothers were silent, and even Serghey seemed at a loss for a dickish comment. Only Kyle seemed unimpressed. He stood with his arms crossed, his expression relaxed and almost a little bored.
“These are Hellion-class Mecha,” Major Soto said. “They are not trainers or simulators. They are exactly the same as the front-line units.”
Major Soto nodded at Sergeant Stoll, who held a small slate. She keyed a long sequence into the device.
The Mecha closest to them crouched down in a fluid, organic motion. Unlike a Powerloader or an Imp, it made almost no noise, save for a faint metallic squeak. The Mecha’s chest unfolded along invisible seams and opened in six sections like a flower. One of the sections touched the ground, providing steep stairs up to the cockpit.
The cockpit itself was like nothing Matt had ever seen. There was no seat. The only thing inside was a simple body harness, fashioned of the same metal-veined silicone as their interface suits. The top of the harness formed a silicone cap, almost completely shot through with metallic fibers. The walls were plain metal, sculpted into organic forms and striated like muscle.
“In a Hellion, a Corps member is completely encased in the chest cavity. There are no viewports or windows, which provides a high level of protection in combat.”
“How do you see outta it?” Ash asked.
“Nonphysical Projection, or NPP, provides a three-hundred-sixty-degree view from within the cockpit,” Soto said.
“All screens, bad design,” Serghey muttered.
Soto’s eyes rolled heavenward. “Any of you have experience with mechanical Mecha? Imp or Villain class?”
Matt remembered his tiny cubicle on the Rock, where his model Imp-class Mecha had kept him company, Velcroed to the wall above his sleeping bag. Compared to the Mecha standing in front of him now, an Imp was laughably old-fashioned. But there were still a few on Aurora, loading and unloading large cargo shuttles.
Serghey and Kyle raised their hands.
“Powerloaders?”
Matt raised his own.
Soto shook his head. “Don’t count on your experience. You can’t run a Hellion like a mechanical Mecha.”
“Principle same. No difference!” Serghey yelled.
“This isn’t force feedback,” Soto said. “The neural interface establishes a direct mind-body connection with the Hellion. It may take days for you to have fine control.”
“I’m quick study,” Serghey said, crossing his arms.
Major Soto nodded. “You’ll get your chance soon. For now, let’s talk sensors and weapons.”
At the mention of weapons, cadets snapped to attention.
“First, the sensor arrays. If you’ve been in Union forces, you already know most of this. Standard visible light, with IR, radar, EM, light amplification, thermal, and compositional overlays. Sound with amplification, rectification, and augmentation. Detection of all known languages, automatic translation. Best you just run through all of those once in the cockpit; we’ve set aside time for that.
“Weapons are different. Standard handheld weapon is an MK-15, 15mm, depleted-uranium slug gun, strong enough to pierce a half meter of carbon-fiber/steel-laminate armor. The MK-15 is plenty for most everything. Corsair fighter on the ground, MK-15. Corsair transport on the ground, MK-15. Corsair in an Aliancia tank, MK-15; Corsair in a Taikong—well, maybe then you gotta move up to short- and medium-range ordnance. Those are your Fireflies and Seekers.”
Major Soto pointed at the small apertures on the Hellion’s chest. “Fireflies are small, semismart rounds closely coupled with the Hellion’s sensor systems. Sweep the area, map the unfriendlies, send out Fireflies, and, bam, no unfriendlies. Or no slow ones, anyway.” He pointed at the larger apertures near the Hellion’s shoulders. “Seekers are larger missiles that have limited steering capability—think armored carriers and Taikong tanks.”
“Second, close-quarter combat. Every once in a while, you’ll come across something that’s really tough. Corsairs dig in, put up all the armor they got, you’re not getting through. For that, we have the Close-Quarters Fusion Pulse, CQFP, or, as we like to call it, the Fusion
Handshake.” Major Soto gestured at the Hellion’s hand, where a lam-preylike aperture was visible on the palm. “Grab on, trigger the Fusion Handshake, and that’s pretty much the end for whatever you’re holding on to.”
“Finally, we have the weapon of last resort.” Major Soto nodded at Sergeant Stoll. A compartment unfolded from the side of the Mecha, revealing a dazzling, mirror-plated gun. “The MA-ZERO matter-antimatter rifle, or, as corps call it, the Zap Gun.”
Some gasps and mutters from the cadets. Kyle continued to look unimpressed. An act? Matt wondered. Or is he so high up in government, he’s seen it all?
“Don’t use the Zap Gun unless you really need it. The Corsairs drop an entire battleship on you. You’re out in free space and you’re completely out of ammo. You’re stuck on a rock with a fighter that has zero-permeability coating. Situations like that. The Zap Gun just makes really big things disappear. Forever. Got it?”
Matt grinned and nodded. How could any Corsair stand against that, no matter how superhuman?
“Finally, don’t ever underestimate the power of a Hellion. We’ve disabled all weapons systems for the purpose of today’s test, but even without them, Hellions are one of the most powerful machines ever created. Don’t push it.”
“No sufficient Mecha for all,” Serghey bleated. “How we choose—flip coin?”
Soto nodded. “We go in shifts. Serghey, you can be in the first group.” Soto pointed out four more cadets. Ash and Michelle were the ones Matt knew by name.
“Here’s what you’ll do,” Soto said. “You’ll get in the Mecha. You’ll put on the neural interface and Mesh.”
“What’s Mesh?” Ash asked.
Soto’s mouth twitched and his eyes darted sideways, as if he were uncomfortable with the question. “It’s the connection between you and the Mecha. No Mesh, no Mecha Corps.”
Soto nodded at Sergeant Stoll. Mecha unfolded like gargantuan metallic flowers, and cadet candidates climbed inside. Soto went to each in turn, explaining how to connect their interface suits. Cadets fumbled with silicone cables and, one by one, the Mecha folded up again.
Nothing happened for a long time. Sergeant Stoll watched the slate intently. Matt caught a glimpse of a slice-’n’-dice video feed of the five cadets.
One of the Mecha suddenly moved. It took one wavering, uncertain step backward, swaying like a drunk. Some of the cadets laughed nervously, but Major Soto paid no attention to them. He seemed unconcerned about the Mecha toppling, but his jaw was still set, hard and grim.
What’s he afraid of? Matt wondered.
The Mecha that Michelle had chosen stood and took several jerky steps forward, then stopped and opened and closed its hands, as if testing their function. Another darted forward and fell to its knees with a great metallic clang. Serghey’s Mecha wrapped its long, skeletal fingers around its head and rocked back and forth. Ash’s Mecha raised and lowered its legs smoothly, then did a juddering sprint around the rest. Matt laughed. She literally ran a circle around them.
Michelle watched Ash complete her circle, then took off in pursuit. The two Mecha headed down the blacktop field at a shambling run. Ash reached the edge of the field first, where the blacktop gave way to grass and concrete of a simulated town.
Soto told Sergeant Stoll, “That’s enough. They don’t have enough control yet.” Stoll spoke to her slate, and Ash and Michelle started back to rejoin the group.
Serghey’s Mecha started screaming. A high-pitched, ululating sound, half-animal, half-metallic. It ricocheted throughout the facility like a banshee howl. Serghey’s Hellion clawed at its head, as if it wanted to rip it off.
Major Soto grabbed the slate from Stoll’s hands. “Don’t fight it!” he yelled at the device, trying to be heard over the rising squeal of agony. “Hit the release! Now!”
The Mecha’s scream rose up and up, echoing from the one side of the giant city cavern to another.
“Think emergency release!” Soto’s face was red and panicked. “Hit the physical switch!”
Sudden silence.
The Mecha twitched and went limp, its chest unfolding to touch the ground. Serghey slumped forward in the pilot’s harness. Gray-brown puke dribbled down the front of his interface suit, and the sharp smell of stomach acid wafted over to the cadets.
“Fuck!” Soto ran up the steps and tore Serghey from his harness. Soto shook him like a rag doll, his face contorted in fear. Matt’s guts did an uneasy twist. It was the first time he’d seen the major scared.
Sergeant Stoll joined Soto with the cadet. She showed him something on her slate and shook her head. Soto cursed and let go of Serghey. Only the silicone connection cables kept him from spilling out of the cockpit.
Sergeant Stoll spoke to the slate. The rest of the Mecha stopped twitching, formed lines, and opened up. Cadets blinked in the bright, simulated sun. They all stared blankly, as if interrupted from a deep sleep.
Matt couldn’t stand it anymore. “Is he all right?” he called out.
Soto looked at Matt, then stepped back to address all of the cadets. “I’m sorry. He’s dead.”
Silence, like a lead hammer, dropped over the field. Peal was the first to speak. “Huh,” he muttered. “I thought the assholes always lived.”
Soto glared at Peal. Peal swallowed and said, “I’m sorry, sir. Jest is an inappropriate antidote to pain.”
Soto looked across the cadets. Suddenly he looked ten years older, his eyes sunken and sad, deep-set in age-scarred sockets. “Very rarely, we have an extreme reaction to Mesh. I have to stress, these incidents are rare. We test extensively, but . . . it happens.”
The wail of a siren swelled. A HMLV sped across the blacktop toward them, marked with the red cross of an ambulance.
“What do we do now?” Ash called.
Soto looked at her, as if seeing her for the first time. “Nothing. You and Earth girl passed already.”
Ash blinked. “But he’s dead!”
“Yes, and Corsairs look down jealously at the Union and continue to plot,” Soto said. “And every day brave colonists die on frontier worlds.”
Ash swallowed and said nothing.
Soto nodded, as if he’d come to a decision. “All cadets, out of the Mecha. Next group is up.”
“What about us?” one of the other cadets in the Mecha asked. “We never got it working.”
“You’ll need additional simulation training,” Soto said. “Medical will pick you up after the first Mesh is complete.”
The ambulance arrived. Two Auxiliaries unhooked Serghey’s harness and dragged him into the back of the HMLV. Matt felt a strange sense of disconnection. He’d come down with Serghey. It could have been him in there.
I could’ve died. I could still die.
“You,” Soto said, pointing at Matt. Peal, Jahl, Kyle, and another cadet Matt didn’t recognize filled out the group.
Kyle looked at Matt. “Good luck,” he said.
Matt started. Kyle’s eyes were serious and he sounded sincere. “Ah . . . good luck to you too.”
“Luck and skill to us all,” Jahl said, nodding at the other cadets.
It wasn’t until Matt approached his Hellion that he realized This is the one Serghey died in.
Matt climbed into the Hellion. Inside the hatch frame a small metallic plate read:
UNIVERSAL UNION SPECIAL FORCES
ADVANCED MECHAFORMS, INC.
HELLION SN00183 REV A
“IMPULSE”
The cockpit stank of panic sweat and puke. Matt pushed away the thought of Serghey. He couldn’t think about that. It didn’t help. It didn’t help one damn bit.
Inside the cockpit, silicone cables dangled, smudged with greasy handprints. The close-set walls were solid metallic muscle. Matt ran a hand along them. They were hard as steel but felt warm to the touch, as if the Mecha were alive.
Matt put an ear against the metal. He heard nothing except a faint ticking.
Even inside the cockpit there were no visible contro
ls, just the webbed harness hanging from an anchor at the top. Matt got in the harness and pulled the straps tight. He slipped the silicone cap over his head and plugged the interface cable into his suit.
The forward hatch folded up in front of Matt. After a moment of complete darkness, the NPP lit around him in a 360-degree panorama. Matt blinked at the sudden light. The illusion was amazing. It was almost as if he were hanging in space over the concrete. Only the faint glints of screen light on metal hinted at the shapes of the cockpit beyond.
On the screen, an overlay appeared:
INITIATING PHYSICAL SYSTEMS: DONE
INITIATING WEAPONS SYSTEMS: DISABLED
INITIATING NEURAL MESH: DONE
As the word “done” flashed, Matt’s world exploded. In a sudden rush, he fell into darkness.
Past a static-dusty thing, past a hail of voices raised in pain, past the feeling of a grand hallway where unseen things churned and flopped—
Into something that felt like that last morning with his father. Something idyllic. Like the first kind words from Pat on the Rock. Like the first time he’d taken a drag of an illicit cigarette in a dump-and-dip frontier town. Like the first time he’d drunk vacuum-distilled whiskey. It was what Matt imagined killing that Corsair would feel like.
The painful tear of the interface suit fell away. He felt nothing but pure elation, pure power. He could do anything.
Matt opened his eyes. He was no longer inside the cramped pilot’s chamber. He’d stepped through. He hung in space, suspended by his will, seeing the world only through the Hellion’s eyes.
I would do anything to feel like this, he thought.
Matt raised his hand. The Hellion responded seamlessly. He marveled at every fiber of biometallic muscle tensing; he watched the perfect articulation of his fingers. There was nothing tentative about it.
He took a step. It was like a dream, perfect and fluid. He ran a short distance. His Mecha didn’t rattle or shake. It fairly flew over the test court. It was amazing. Matt felt the chill underground on his metallic skin, smelled the sharp tang of the grass, heard the thrum and chatter of the city in the distance.