Mecha Corps

by Brett Patton

  Of course, when you went digging into whys, you ended up with a lot of them. Why didn’t Displacement Drives work on ships of less than a billion metric tons? Why did they only work in a range between two and twenty light-years ?

  “Second,” Peal said. “Who’s going to pay attention to a system that doesn’t even have planets? It’s worthless. Not even a gas giant to dive into for volatiles.”

  Matt nodded as Michelle and Kyle joined them at the window.

  “What the hell?” Kyle said, pressing his face against the pane.

  “Please do not interrupt the lecture,” Peal said. “Third, even if you dropped into the system for a quick look-see, what are you going to find? Nothing. You’re not going to take chances Displacing into the mud. Not without armor like this tank. Even if you did, what would you find? Nothing. Unless you’re right on top of the base, you’d never see it. Absolutely perfect location.”

  “What the hell is he jabberin’ about?” Ash said, rubbing sleep out of her eyes.

  Peal was all too happy to explain it again. Matt tuned them out as they neared the asteroid.

  The moment the Ulysses reached lee of the shields, the Geiger counter ticking stopped. In the darkness, details emerged: a giant wall of metal set into the side of the asteroid, punctuated by air locks. The comforting glow of light from hundreds of windows.

  And a giant insignia, etched a hundred feet tall into the metal: MECHA BASE.

  Inside Mecha Base, the first stop was Colonel James Cruz’s private quarters. Intricately patterned carpet provided grip for the cadets’ Velcro soles. Rich wood shelves held protective racks for ancient books. The colonel, a man in his midsix-ties with charcoal-gray hair and a slim, ascetic face, squatted behind a mahogany desk. Whip-thin, he gave the impression of wiry, tense muscle wrapped in a crisp uniform that only barely held him back. His chest carried many colorful bars.

  Colonel Cruz waved the cadets to soft leather chairs with discreet lap belts. Sergeant Stoll and Major Soto remained standing.

  “So this is the hope of the Union,” Colonel Cruz said, his eyes piercing each cadet in turn. He didn’t sound happy.

  Stoll and Soto stood rigidly at attention and remained silent. Matt waited for Ash or Peal to say something dumb, but they remained quiet as well.

  “You realize this operation won’t remain secret for long,” Cruz said. “As soon as you fire up the red skyscrapers, jaws will wag. And Corps members get jealous.”

  “We understand, sir,” Major Soto said.

  Cruz blew out a breath. “I still say go in with a full battalion of Hellions. Unfortunately, I am not the sole decision maker in the Union.”

  “No, you aren’t,” said another man as he slipped in through Colonel Cruz’ office door. He was fiftyish, chunky, just starting to go gray, and dressed in a severe gray suit with a small Union star pinned to the lapel.

  Matt jumped with the electric shock of recognition.

  “Yve?” Matt asked. “Yve Perraux?”

  The new guy turned to look at Matt. For a moment, a flicker of unease passed over his face, but he hid it in a broad smile. “Matt Lowell? I heard the name, but I never thought it could be Matt from Prospect.”

  Matt couldn’t do anything except stare. Yve Perraux. Head of security on Prospect. The guy who that fateful day warned his father the Corsairs were coming.

  “How . . . did you . . . get all the way out here?” Matt asked, thinking, How did you survive?

  Yve glanced away before meeting Matt’s eyes. “I could ask you the same thing.”

  “Care to explain the connection, Mr. Perraux?” Colonel Cruz cut in.

  Perraux snapped to attention. “I worked with Matt’s father on Prospect. Union Advanced Research Labs.”

  Cruz’s eyes widened. “UARL. Understood.” He turned to Soto, Stoll and the cadets. “Mr. Perraux is the Universal union liaison to Mecha Corps and the Biomechanical Technology Group.”

  Yve smiled at them all. “That’s a fancy way of saying I’m the guy on the ground who gets to keep an eye on Dr. Roth for the Union.”

  Colonel Cruz grumbled, his words too low to be intelligible.

  Yve turned to Cruz. “It also means I’m the guy who talks sense to the Mecha strategic leadership.”

  Cruz’s jaw clamped down, and he didn’t say anything for several beats. When he spoke, it was as if he were struggling to keep his voice calm and reasonable. “I still insist Hellions are less risky than new, untested tech with raw pilots. If we hit him right, we have the lever to force a deal.”

  “Work with the Corsairs?” Kyle spoke up with his steady and proud voice. “Sir, I have a hard time with that.”

  “You’re putting words in my mouth. Deals can be unilaterally devastating.”

  “I’m sorry, sir,” Kyle said.

  “And what would you have us do, out of curiosity?” Cruz asked.

  “Wipe them out, sir. All of them.”

  Colonel Cruz shook his head. “You’re young. So young. Listen close. The Corsairs aren’t just people. They’re an idea. They’re the Freecycles with cutlasses, the Aliancia with atomic weapons. You can’t wipe out an idea. You can only hope to turn it sour.”

  “There are other considerations as well,” Yve said, sharing a long look with Colonel Cruz. “Odds for a decisive victory are much higher with the Demon-led strategy. Without that pivotal victory at this point in this conflict, there is the possibility the Corsairs could be forged into a single power block.”

  “And if that is the case,” Colonel Cruz said, “God help us all.”

  Yve Perraux begged off as soon as they were out of Colonel Cruz’ office, telling Matt to look for him in the Decompression Lounge after his commanding officers put some exercises with the Demon under his belt.

  Matt’s access card glowed almost entirely green. It was easy to see the path to the Decompression Lounge, a small space next to a red-colored area labeled MECHA HANGAR. Only half of Mecha Base asteroid was tunneled out; its far half showed completely dark.

  Matt wanted to head down to the Decompression Lounge immediately, if only to silence some of the voices ricocheting around in his head. What, exactly, had his father been working on? How did Yve manage to get away? And what was he up to now?

  But Soto warned them, Go exploring, expect to get hazed. Or worse. Mecha Base was already buzzing about the arrival of giant new Mecha, and everyone throughout the vast base was chattering, wondering who’d get first crack at them. Nobody was guessing it would be the newly arrived cadets.

  Matt made himself go down to his quarters. He was so intent on following the green lines on his card that he almost bumped into Michelle. He grabbed the corridor rail and squeaked to a stop not a meter away from her.

  Michelle stood by a pair of the tiny windows, her face painted in the orange-red light of the dust clouds outside. She wore a curious expression, as if joy and sadness warred in equal measure in her mind.

  “I never thought I’d see anything like this,” Michelle said finally. Her voice was soft and far away.

  The slit window revealed dazzling, layered, orange-brown clouds. Diffuse sunlight made individual pebbles and rocks glitter like metal chips. Far-off flashes arced in the clouds of dust and gas. Matt gasped as he saw a clearly defined lightning bolt slash through the murk.

  “Lightning?” he said.

  Michelle shrugged. “Jahl said it wasn’t surprising. Something about the friction and static electricity and power density in the dust cloud.”

  “Our encyclopedic brothers; so many factoids between the two of them,” Matt said. They both burst out laughing.

  “I’m sorry,” Michelle said, turning away from the window to look up at him. Her face was so close. Matt leaned down toward her.

  Michelle pulled back and turned away. Matt silently cursed. They both looked out at the maelstrom for a time, while rocks ticked off Mecha Base like rain.

  “Sorry about what?” Matt asked, finally.

  “For—,” Miche
lle began, then started again. “If it seems I’ve been avoiding you. I—I didn’t think you’d come back.”

  “Neither did I.”

  Another silence fell. Matt searched for words, but couldn’t think of anything. What could he possibly say to her?”

  “I’m jealous,” Michelle told him.

  “Of what?”

  “Stoll says you’re the prodigy. The way she talks, we wouldn’t be here except for you.”

  Matt’s face burned with embarrassment. “What does she know?”

  “I know she likes you.”

  Matt said nothing. There was nothing to say. I had my chance, Matt thought. And I blew it.

  Michelle turned and put a hand on Matt’s chest. He hoped she couldn’t feel the thundering gallop of his heart. “Look, I want you to know, since you’re the best pilot we have—”

  “You can’t say that.”

  “Yes. I can. And I want you to know that I’ll do everything I can to make this the best team possible. Whatever it is between us that we’re figuring out has to wait. There’s war first.”

  She was echoing what he had been telling himself since he first saw her that day in the marsh: This isn’t why you’re here. You have more important things to do.

  Still, something irked him. “What about Kyle?”

  She laughed. “For a richie rich, he turned out not to be so bad. He’s easy to be around.”

  “Easy?”

  “He’s helped me get through this. I’m not like you. It’s not so easy for me, and everything is so sped up now. In that meeting back there, I really wanted to say, ‘No, not yet. Let me be a Hellion pilot instead.’ But I just jumped up and said, ‘Yeah!’ You . . . I’m afraid with you and me, it’d be like that—”

  “Like strapping into a new Mecha?” Matt finished for her.

  Michelle nodded, saying nothing. She turned back to the window. He wanted to put a hand on her shoulder. But that would be wrong. The time had passed. They were as far away from each other as Earth and Mecha Base.

  “Not exactly a romantic place,” he said, looking out on the collapsing planet.

  Michelle pulled herself closer to the glass. “No,” she said, softly. “But it’s the perfect place for a Demon.”

  11

  DEMON

  “Aaah, gross!” Ash cried.

  Matt grinned. It was one thing to know the Demon used a new magnetorheological gel-suspension system to protect the pilot during extreme maneuvers. It was another thing to get into the Demon’s cockpit and slither past blobs of snotlike slime clinging to the biometallic muscles. Small globules floated in the middle of the cockpit, dropping slowly toward the floor in Mecha Base’s microgravity. The Demon’s cockpit was tighter than a Hellion’s, and it contained no harness. There was a single connector for the interface suit and cap, and a complex face mask made of opaque plastic.

  Matt’s body slid past the ID plate. This one read:

  ADVANCED MECHAFORMS, INC.

  DEMON SN00000 REV 0

  “GENESIS”

  Serial number zero? Was this the Demon Dr. Roth had rode into orbit around earth? Somehow that was more unsettling than getting into the Hellion Serghey died in.

  Matt shook his head. It didn’t matter who piloted the Demon before him. He’d ride it all the same.

  He plugged himself into the interface-suit connection and tentatively put the mask over his face. It was completely smooth inside. How was he supposed to see out? He shrugged and pressed it on. Warmth flared on his cheeks as the mask bonded tightly in place against the cap. Metallic-tinged air filled his lungs. For a moment, he was alone with the hiss of the respirator and the thudding of his own heart.

  Then the display lit, and Matt’s eyes widened. It was as if he was seeing the entire dock from a new vantage point, one that was a thirty meters above the deck. The Demon’s viewpoint.

  He turned his head, and his POV shifted fluidly. The mask display was much more realistic than NPP. The only thing that indicated he wasn’t seeing the scene firsthand were the data overlays that tagged every item in the dock: serial numbers of Hellions and Rogues, service dates for the same, names and ranks of Auxiliaries.

  Matt grinned. “Nice.” In his mask, the comms icon lit: DEFAULT: DC M. LOWELL ➙ ALL

  More icons lit. A sudden cacophony of voices. “Nice?” “What’s he talking about?” “The visual interface, I think.”

  A new icon lit: SGT. L. STOLL ➙ ALL.

  “If you have not yet fitted your visual-interface mask, please do so now. We are closing hatches and hardening the suspension gel.”

  Wet warmth touched Matt’s ankles and slowly spread upward. He looked down reflexively, but saw only the Demon’s chest and the expanded-metal floor of the dock.

  Stoll continued, her voice oddly tense. “I will serve as controller for this introductory exercise. Colonel Cruz, Mr. Perraux, and Major Soto are present as observers. Dr. Roth will give the mission brief.”

  Sergeant Stoll’s icon went dark, replaced by: DR. S. ROTH ➙ ALL.

  “You have two goals today.” Dr. Roth’s voice was flat, almost bored. “First, Mesh. Meshing with the Demon is more challenging than with the Hellion. Your Hellion experience will not be a guide. Recall you were chosen over many more qualified pilots specifically for this fact. Malleability is key.”

  Malleability? Matt wondered. What was Dr. Roth molding them into?

  “Second, following successful Mesh, you will move to general exercises. If there is capability, we will begin training for fourth-order Mesh.”

  “Fourth order?” Ash asked.

  Seconds ticked by, long enough for Matt to wonder if Dr. Roth would answer. Finally, Roth said, “Each Merge increases the power of the Demon’s configuration exponentially. Two Demons square power output, three cube it, and four raise the total output to the fourth power. Each Merge also enables additional operational configurations.”

  The warmth reached Matt’s neck, and it felt like slimy wetness touching his exposed skin. He shuddered. What happened if his mask failed? Did the Demon have fail-safes, or would he drown in the tiny, dark pilot’s chamber?

  “Will we Merge with flight components, Dr. Roth?” Kyle asked.

  “No. Unlike the Hellions, there are no external components. Note the thrusters along the aft side of the Demon.”

  Sergeant Stoll’s icon lit again. “Please note that all weapons systems will be enabled for this exercise. Use them with extreme care.”

  Matt’s gaze went to an overlay in his POV, listing out WEAPONS SYSTEMS:

  FIREFLY

  SEEKER

  HANDSHAKE

  ZAP

  X

  “What’s the X weapon?” he asked, smiling at the notion of the button.

  “It is not enabled in the base configuration,” Dr. Roth said, his voice hardening.

  “But what is it?” Matt insisted. Roth was like an insane toymaker. He’d know that X would be too tempting for them to resist, but he’d put it in there anyway. Just like he knew you didn’t put the Union over a barrel—but look at him; he had Tomita begging for more. What was the secret of his magic technology? What was he hiding?

  “It is an antimatter matrixing weapon capable of distributed annihilation of multiple targets,” Dr. Roth said. “It is only enabled in Merged configurations, as it can be destructive to the Demon.”

  Only in Merged configurations, Matt thought, disappointed. But even their base weapons were insanely dangerous with inexperienced pilots and with all the rock and gas flying around them. Why didn’t Roth just turn them all off? The most logical answer was also the most frightening: because they couldn’t.

  Because they rushed the Demons through to completion. Because Roth’s ideas and execution were faster than safety precautions could keep up with.

  He didn’t want to know the whys anymore. Maybe not ever. He was a Demonrider, and he was in the most powerful piece of fighting gear in the known universe.

  The ooze rose past Ma
tt’s forehead. He felt momentary pressure; then everything fell away and he couldn’t tell where his body ended and the Demon began.

  There was now tactile feedback. When the air lock opened, Matt felt the remaining air rush past his skin. When the powered cargo loaders came to drag him out, their serrated metal grips were cold on his arms. The coupling between man and machine was much more complete than with the Hellions.

  The loaders parked the Demons near the edge of Mecha Base’s armor. The maelstrom churned and flashed outside. Swirling bits of dust and rock glittered in the sun. Beside him, the soft light of the sun made the other Demons glow.

  “Beginning full Mesh,” Lena said.

  A new tag flashed in Matt’s POV:

  INITIATING NEURAL MESH: COMPLETED

  As the word COMPLETED flashed—

  It was like embracing an atomic explosion. Matt opened his mouth to scream, but nothing came out.

  This isn’t real, isn’t real, isn’t real! Matt’s thoughts ricocheted, rising toward a shrill panic.

  Far away, something like scratchy laughter broke the silence. A thing that smelled of dust and crackled like static gibbered in the darkness. Rusty talons reached out for him, clawing though his mind.

  No! Matt thought, recoiling. The thing laughed and pulled him closer.

  No, no, NO! he thought. Each thought like a hammer blow. The thing fell away. His mind sped from thought to thought.

  How had he ever felt any pain? This was wonderful!

  Matt laughed. Meshing with the Demon was more than a high. It was the perfect feeling of well-being distilled into its essence. This was how he’d wanted to feel his entire life. Weightless. Carefree. Like a perpetual Sunday morning. He wanted to spend his life in here.

  Senses came back to him. He hung suspended in the lee of Mecha Base, watching wan sunlight make the dust and rocks sparkle like diamonds. He was completely present, completely there. There was no difference between his body and that of the Mecha. The rush of energy, power, and strength reverberated through him, thrumming with more life and consciousness than he ever thought possible.