Mecha Corps

by Brett Patton

  And in that moment, Matt felt something almost like sympathy for the HuMax. Like Stoll and like him, they hadn’t chosen their genes. They’d been made. They’d been used like pawns in a much larger game.

  But they’d also attacked their creators.

  Another gravity wave hit the Helios. Matt’s comms icon lit: CAPTAIN J. IVERS.

  “Who’s attacking us?” Captain Ivers asked.

  “We’re not under attack,” Matt told him. “It’s gravity waves from the sun.”

  “Where’s Rayder?” Ivers asked. “The planet’s a cinder.”

  The Helios’ sensors fed him images of Jotunheim, the system’s single planet. It was a hell of freezing plains and boiling lakes, alternating with jagged, kilometers-high mountain ranges. Deep fissures revealed angry red magma, venting sulfuric acid clouds.

  A deep-sensor diagram told the story: Jotunheim, torn between the gravitational pull of the sun and the black hole and wracked by gravity waves, was at the very edge of its structural integrity. The entire core was molten and ready to erupt over the surface at any moment. The atmosphere itself was hardly breathable, at least by normal humans; with several percent carbon dioxide, huge amounts of ozone and carbon monoxide, and a soup of sulfuric aerosols, it would kill them in hours.

  But at the same time, the planet was also covered with life. Strange, twisting black plants that tracked the feeble sun with mirror-coated leaves, focusing the pale white light into something that could sustain life. The plants coiled over the peaks and out of the atmosphere into raw space. They snaked along the frozen plains. They writhed in the boiling lakes.

  Like the plant in my father’s lab, Matt thought, wondering what they were. Why had his father brought one back? What magic technology did they contain?

  And then there was the city. The HuMax city. Situated in a deep, dark crater and pounded to ruins by the long-ago war, it was still grand and beautiful. Rayder’s broadcast had given no sense of scale. The largest buildings towered more than two kilometers into the sky, stubbornly refusing to disintegrate despite the tremors and gravity waves. The arched walkways connecting them stood a kilometer high, with not a guardrail in sight. The colossal statue of a man and woman reaching toward the stars was itself more than a thousand meters high. It shamed humankind’s most monumental architecture.

  And the city still lived. Green-white light pulsed from the buildings, painting the broad avenues a sickly mint color. Rayder’s base? Or something left from hundreds of years ago, still working after all these years?

  “Screens are still clear,” Captain Ivers said.

  “He’ll be here,” Matt growled.

  But the system remained silent. There was nothing there.

  Was it possible Rayder had fled?

  Suddenly, Matt’s screens lit with brilliant icons and screaming yellow tags. One, two, three, four, five, six, ten, twelve Displacement Drive ships appeared simultaneously, in a perfect ring around the Helios.

  Then, a moment later, a thirteenth Displacement Drive ship appeared. UUS Atlas.

  “Displacement detected! Ship de—multiple ships detected ! Heavy-matter weapons lock!” shouted the babble behind Captain Ivers’ comms icon.

  Battleships and cruisers poured out of the Displacement Drive ships. Matt’s screens became a cloud of yellow and red tags, like a swarm of bees in the Rock’s gardens.

  “Heavy-matter gunners, fire at will!” Captain Ivers said. The Helios thudded with the force of the heavy-matter gun.

  “Orders?” Soto snapped on the public channel.

  That’s right. They were waiting for him. Matt’s blood boiled. This was it. This was his time—

  BOOM! Brilliant light flashed all around them. Armor, girders, and boulder-sized rocks flew from the surface of the Helios. Antimatter-annihilation beams flashed, tracing molten lines on the Helios’ armor. Apparently Rayder didn’t have any reservations about using his own version of the Zap Gun.

  The Helios leapt violently, throwing Matt off the surface. The only chance they had lay in getting out of range of the antimatter beams.

  “Shelter!” Matt yelled. “Get in back of the ship!”

  He lit thrusters and dove for the lee of the ship, Michelle and Soto close at his heels. But there was no shelter. Metal melted and buckled under the brilliant onslaught of antimatter energy. The Helios’ only battleship nosed out of the tiny dock, its front section disappearing in the blaze.

  “Displace!” Matt shouted. “Get out of here!”

  But from Captain Iver’s comms, there was only static.

  Michelle and Major Soto caught up with Matt, off to one side of the flaming Helios.

  “Why aren’t they shooting at us?” Michelle asked.

  “They’re cutting us off,” Matt said. If Rayder wanted to capture the Demons, he had to disable the Helios, so they had no chance of escape.

  As if on cue, the antimatter weapons stopped firing. The Helios slowly tumbled, red and smoking.

  “Heavy-matter weapons disabled,” Captain Ivers’ voice came through the comms, ragged with emotion. “Deep-sensor arrays damaged. Cannot Displace.”

  As Matt watched, a Corsair battleship nosed up to one of the shattered docks. Space-suited troops poured out of it.

  “You’re being boarded,” Matt told him.

  “We’ll fight them off!” Ivers said. “You go take care of Rayder!”

  “Yes, sir!” Matt said.

  “Acknowledged, sir,” Michelle said, her voice thick with emotion.

  “Immediately, sir!” Soto snapped.

  ANTIMATTER WEAPONS LOCK

  Matt’s screens screamed at him.

  Matt thrust away from the Helios, twisting and turning at lightning speed. Even submersed in the magnetorheological fluid, his vision went alternately dark and red from the g-forces, and his space suit bit painfully into his body. Michelle and Soto were two flickering blips close behind him.

  But the ANTIMATTER WEAPONS LOCK didn’t drop on the display.

  Matt pushed his Demon even harder. It transformed from its Mecha shape to its streamlined spaceship form, then into a slim arrow of metal flaring into the void. G-forces slammed him into a netherworld between consciousness and insensibility, and he cried out from the pain. His world collapsed to a tiny tunnel of vision, fixed firmly on that one tag.

  But even here, at the edge of his capability, it remained:

  ANTIMATTER WEAPONS LOCK.

  Matt’s battered brain knew a moment of pure defeat. Rayder’s troops could blast their Mecha to atoms at any moment.

  A glimmer of hope: so why didn’t he?

  Matt managed a grim smile through the battering pain. Of course. It was all about the Demons. Rayder wanted them, no matter the cost. He wouldn’t simply blast them out of the sky. He’d do anything to capture them intact.

  But what would Rayder do?

  A flicker of movement, lightning fast. Matt didn’t even have time to glance at it before—

  Bang! The pilot chamber rang like a bell, and Matt grunted with the shock of a physical blow. Through the interface suit, he felt the chill touch of long, bladelike talons. There was a dark gray, quicksilver shape clinging to him: a Hellion.

  Matt almost laughed. Rayder’s captured Hellions. But Hellions against Demons was like pitting slingshots against atomic weapons. Matt’s Demon transformed back into a humanoid Mecha shape, and he reached out to swat it aside.

  The Hellion zipped out of reach, so fast it actually seemed to disappear. Matt’s eyes couldn’t track it. Matt grabbed at it again, and it blurred away from his hands. He never even got near it. The thing was insanely fast. Faster than any Hellion he’d ever seen before.

  “Rayder’s released the limiters,” Major Soto said, his voice thin and strained.

  “What does that mean?” Matt yelled, as the Hellion continued to evade his grasp.

  “With no limiters, Hellions are blazing fast. But they were so addictive, we could never use them that way.”

 
Matt grabbed at the Hellion with both hands. It was like trying to catch a dragonfly. Every time he came at the thing, it jumped effortlessly out of his way. Matt thrust back, then swatted as it came at him. The Hellion grabbed onto his hand, its claws cutting into Matt’s biometallic flesh.

  Explosive pain struck Matt’s arm. A shock wave enveloped Matt’s hand, and his Demon’s fingers blew off into space. The dreaded REGENERATING clock began counting down: 800, 799, 798 . . .

  “What was that?” Matt yelled.

  “Fusion Handshake,” Major Soto said. “But residuals show it using heavy matter. Gives it a ton more power. Nice trick.”

  “Nice?” Matt said, as the pain ebbed. The Hellion scrambled up his arm and wrapped around his helmet. Its hands glowed. The damn thing was going to Fusion Handshake his head right off!

  Matt scrabbled at it with his one good hand, but it twisted its body out of the way.

  Matt’s vision went completely white as the pilot’s chamber rocked with the force of an explosion. An overlay showed Seekers coming from Michelle’s Demon and intersecting the Hellion. It fell away from Matt’s head as the brilliant blue flare of its Fusion Handshake sent him reeling. Matt’s screens went dark and pixilated for an instant, then snapped back to full clarity. It hadn’t blown his head off! He could still see!

  “Thanks, Michelle!” he called.

  Two more Hellions blurred up to Matt. They latched on to his leg and triggered their Fusion Handshakes. Pain rocketed up his body, and his leg fell limp. His first REGENERATING clock was joined by another countdown:

  REGENERATING (LEFT LEG): 200, 199, 198 . . .

  Through the pain, Matt saw the same thing happening to both Michelle and Major Soto. Hellions swarmed their bodies, triggering blue-white shock waves. Michelle’s arm flashed orange, then fell useless like Matt’s leg. She thrashed at the Hellions, but they simply scrambled away. She triggered more Seekers, enveloping herself in brilliant explosions. Her Demon rocked with the blows, as the Hellions dodged the missiles. She was hurting herself more than the Hellions.

  Soto’s Demon disappeared in a cloud of Firefly explosions, but the Hellions that surrounded him just jumped out of the expanding cloud before descending on him again.

  One of the super-Hellions wrapped itself around Michelle’s visor. Matt screamed and charged, holding his Mecha’s arms out and triggering his own Fusion Handshake. The thrill of power surged through his arms as the shock wave blew the Hellion off of Michelle’s head.

  The Hellion only tumbled a moment before recovering and coming back to the fight. It joined two others and came at Matt. Before he could trigger the Fusion Handshake, two had latched on to his arm and a third had covered his head. And he wasn’t the only one in trouble. Another super-Hellion took Michelle’s good arm, and Major Soto was still beating at the ones on him.

  Major Soto fired a cloud of Fireflies and Seekers at both Michelle and Matt. The super-Hellions spun away, overwhelmed by the sheer barrage of weapons. One Seeker must have found its target, because a Hellion was shattered, twitching, its pilot’s chamber venting gas and its left arm missing.

  The Demons had a moment now to take stock. Soto’s voice cut in over the comms. “Out of ammo. Regenerating.”

  Matt looked at his own stores of Fireflies and Seekers. He was running less than 20 percent, and the regeneration time stretched out into long thousands of seconds.

  “Michelle?”

  “Thirty-seven and thirty, Fireflies and Seekers,” she rasped out.

  Matt clenched his fists and groaned. He’d never thought their weapons were expendable. Like a stupid kid raised on videos where the brave Union heroes never ran out of ammo, and the Corsairs were always terrible shots.

  And they had no real chance during training to run up against Mecha limits. If they’d gone through the full Training Camp, if they’d had more practice time, maybe they would have known. Instead, they were out here, unsupported and alone, against the most powerful Corsair fighting force in the universe.

  The super-Hellions came at them again like shooting stars, so fast Matt almost couldn’t follow them. Their swept-up visors reflected the dead gray light of the white dwarf sun, glittering like jewels on velvet.

  We are going to lose. To Hellions.

  Unless. Matt grinned. There was one chance. Matt hit his thrusters hard and grabbed Michelle with his good arm as they passed. Michelle’s Demon tensed, but she got in only a single yelp before Matt reversed course and aimed at Major Soto.

  “What the hell are you doing?” she asked, as Matt brought all three Mecha together.

  “Merge,” he said.

  Michelle’s terrified thoughts sped through his mind. No, no. Crazy, never worked. Unstable. The major isn’t ready.

  And yet she reached out to touch Major Soto, completing the circuit. The major’s terrified thoughts added to the cacophony: No, can’t work. Won’t work. Not now!

  The Hellions hit them like bullets and scrabbled over them like roaches, looking for the best places to destroy. One wrapped around Matt’s visor. They had only moments to—

  Merge, Matt thought.

  Matt dove into a bottomless gray space that smelled of dust and prickled like static. Thoughts battered his consciousness as the distant explosions of the Hellions’ Fusion Handshake echoed off his biometallic skin.

  First, Michelle. She was back at her home on Earth. Mom was plugged into the global net. Dad was passed out on the back porch, looking across the swamp at a golden sunset through black, moss-hung trees. Her bag sat beside her, and the dying echoes of her voice told the tale: she’d just said good-bye. But this wasn’t her departure for training camp. This was the first time she’d left. This was when she’d hitched over the heaved roads to Orlando. Thirty miles on the back of a truck, to end up in a crumbling city of hopeless kids slumped over games in grease-stained diners that hadn’t changed in a hundred years. Walking into the recruiting center for the Displacement hospitality trade. Then walking out. Going back home defeated. Her parents never noticed she’d left. And lying awake that entire night, knowing, I won’t end up here. I’ll be the first. I’ll be a Mecha pilot. That’s my only chance.

  And I am here now, Michelle thought, her mind kaleido-scoping through their days at training camp, the rush of first Mesh in the Hellion, the first dizzying look at Mecha Base, Ash’s death, their escape from the maelstrom. Respect and love, desire and hate colored reflections of Kyle’s face. And Matt’s face as well.

  It’s all right. Time to Merge, he told her.

  Hurting, Major Soto thought. But the thought was fleeting. Major Soto’s memories were much more immediate. His first time in the Demon, the time when it tried to rip him out of its chest. The amazing feeling, the amazing feeling of Mesh as it should be. But also the pain like a dagger in his heart. Cutting out what he was. He’d lost a huge piece of his memories on that day. They’d simply been ripped out of his head. Major Soto’s mind was an echoing room, furnished in sparse determination.

  But I will do this, Soto thought, sudden and strong. He reached out to Matt. Matt took his hand.

  Searing static exploded in their minds. For a moment they simply ceased to be. No thought. No desire. No need. Just blinding static and unending pain.

  He realized Michelle and Major Soto were screaming alongside him. The brilliant light of reality was close, so close.

  Just a little more, he thought.

  Gathering their strength, they shoved upward toward the light. Their skin flayed from his body in his mind’s eye. Tendons and muscles tore to shreds. His organs streamed out behind him.

  Not much longer, not much longer, Matt’s mind chanted madly.

  We can make it, Michelle thought.

  Together, Soto thought.

  Together, they said again in unison.

  For endless moments of time, Matt saw everything as if from outside himself. He watched as the three Demons flowed together, forming a gleaming, seamless red ball. The Hellions’ Fusion Handsh
akes bounced off the smooth sphere, causing only tiny ripples in its surface.

  The Hellions unleashed a fury of Seekers and Fireflies. Their impacts were tiny vibrations, faraway and unimportant. They didn’t even scratch the perfect surface of the Merged Demon. The Hellions paused in defeat, then withdrew to observe the sphere.

  The Merged Demon took form. The sphere elongated and streamlined to form the sleek space shark they’d glimpsed in the first Demon Merge. It fired maneuvering thrusters to face the waiting super-Hellions.

  Before the Hellions could react, they transformed again. Arms cleaved from the merged body. Its tail thrusters split to become legs. A head and up-slanted visor grew from its front section. Veins of orange fusion power glowed all over it body as the transformation continued. Arms bulked out with biomechanical muscle. Legs elongated and gained form. Thrusters appeared on the Merged Demon’s back, exhaling wavering heat and white fusion exhaust.

  The Merged Demon’s form locked down with a shock Matt felt all the way to the core of his body. He had one last glimpse of it in his all-seeing point of view: a towering red statue of cruelly perfect curves, streamlined beyond measure, striated with muscle that glowed bright orange with power.

  Matt opened his eyes. His body thrummed with energy, as if it were filled with the furious power of the Merged Demon. The super-Hellions weren’t even worth considering. Rayder was only a minor distraction. Matt, Michelle, and Soto were all-powerful, gods themselves.

  To one side of Matt lay Michelle, suspended in her interface suit. Her hair floated free in the magnetorheological fluid, like a halo. Her face was covered by the opaque mask, but he knew she was smiling at him. She felt it too. This was it. This was all. They couldn’t lose.

  To Matt’s other side was Major Soto. Like Michelle, his face was covered. But Matt knew he wore the same crazy grin. The rictus of power.

  Super-Hellions swarmed toward them. Matt raised an arm and brushed them off effortlessly. No longer did the super-Hellions blur with speed. They seemed slow, lumbering. How could he have ever thought them fast?