“Mechs were made for war. They live for it. And don't tell me Fault came here to get away from the fighting, because I see it in his eyes: that lust for death. He's no different from the rest of them. And if he is, he won't be soon. They all go crazy in the end.”
“Not Fault,” Jaden said. “He's got our sixes.”
“He won't be able to help it. There's something wrong with the way they were built. No one knows how to fix it, and none of the mechs is immune to it.”
Even Fault? Garner looked at the man he thought of as a friend and for the first time wondered if what Ness said was true. If Fault went crazy–if he started attacking his allies–what would the rest of them do? Could they stop him without hurting him? And if they could, then could they then fix what was wrong with him?
Adam came over, grinning. He pointed his index fingers in the air, made a pew-pew-pew sound, then gave a descending whistle and imitated an explosion, drawing his hands wide apart to express the vastness of his defeat at Lanei's hands. At least he had a sense of humor about it. Garner would have been humiliated.
“I'm Bill Bergen,” Adam said.
“Who?” asked Garner.
“The worst baseball player in history. You know. Played from 1901 to 1911 and only got two home runs.”
“That was seven hundred years ago, man.”
“And yet it's still a worthy bit of information.”
Garner smiled and rolled his eyes. Things never changed.
“I wish the colonel would let us have more than two beers. I'm dry.” Adam looked forlornly at his empty glass.
Ness slipped her bottle out and gave him a finger's width of rum. “Try this.”
He did. He coughed so hard the tears ran down his face. Garner slapped his back, concerned, but Adam waved him away. “White rum,” he said once his breath had returned. “God, that's good. Best thing I've had in my mouth all day.”
“Don't tell your boyfriend that,” Ness said, smirking.
“Sorry to inform you, but he's standing right here.”
Ness stared at him for a minute, then burst out laughing. It was a raucous, hearty sound. It made Garner blush again, but he couldn't help being glad that at least Ness was laughing again. For such a long time after the mech attack, she had been dead to emotion.
He saw Jaden looking at Fault, who still had no company. Garner wanted to invite him over, but Ness wouldn't allow it. Jaden gave Fault a friendly smile; he saw, but looked away. Jaden returned her attention to her drink, her eyes downcast.
Fault leaned against the wall, crossing his legs at the ankle. He had just gotten settled when Lanei came up to him and said hello. Fault ignored her.
“Hey,” Lanei said, “I'm just trying to make conversation, here.”
“I'm not askin' for conversation.” He pushed off the wall and left her standing there, looking bewildered.
“She's not interested in him, is she?” asked Adam. “Tell me she's not interested in him.”
Garner shrugged. He honestly didn't know. “Lanei's the friendly type. She's probably just trying to make him feel like part of the group.”
“He is pretty cute, though,” Jaden said. “That is, for a guy with an attitude problem.”
Garner tried not to read too much into that. Ness snorted. “For a mech, you mean.”
Jaden made to reply when An showed up, his cheeks red and his eyes slightly glassy. “Guess what?”
“You got some rum,” Jaden said.
An nodded happily. He angled in to say something in Garner's ear, but spoke in a stage whisper. “I'm getting laid tonight!”
“Okay.” Garner pushed him away, recoiling from his alcohol-soaked breath. An beamed, waved, and wandered off into the arms of a somewhat more sober Emma Hepburn, one of Ilana's co-workers. Emma claimed Lakota ancestry; you could see it in her broad cheekbones, glossy black hair, and flawless brown skin. An had done well for himself.
“All right, listen up.” Colonel Lange stood in the center of the room, his voice carrying over the sound of the DMP and chatter. Someone turned off the music, and everyone went still. “We've just received the alien transmission we've been expecting. The aliens want us to believe they're going to attack Regem in one hour. So we've got one hour before the attack on Earth. Get to your stations and look alive.”
Everybody got moving. An wasn't going to like this, thought Garner.
As for himself, he couldn't wait to get his hands around a Snapper's neck. After what happened with Ilana, he thought he'd feel a little differently the next time he took a Copperhead out of the sky.
The trouble was, he wasn't sure that was a good thing.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Just outside Mars's atmosphere
The Takarabune lurked along with several of her fellows within shouting distance of the Red Planet, in anticipation of the Snappers' attack. Inside the human warships, every fighter squadron sat waiting for launch, and weapons masters readied themselves to fire laser cannons and forward guns.
Fault sweated in his helmet, tried to massage a cramp out of one leg. Damn cockpit was too confined—it didn't help that he was tall, but it wasn't just that. The cockpit was designed to be as efficient and as small as possible so that a single person could do everything needed to fly, shoot, or land. There wasn't any way to stretch or even change position, so if you were stuck in there for very long, it got so you could hardly stand when it finally came time to. And they'd been in there for . . . how long now? He checked his watch: an hour and forty-five minutes.
“God, how long are we gonna wait?”
“Shut up, Crewe,” Jaden said. “We're supposed to maintain radio silence.”
“What the hell for? There's nobody out there to hear us!”
“Jaden, I've got a creepy feeling he's right,” Lanei said. “I mean, what if the Snappers aren't coming after all? What if the intel was wrong?”
“Then we're in deep shit,” Fault said. “'Cause if the Turtles aren't here . . . they're someplace else.”
“Can the chatter,” Lange said over the comm. “Everybody out of your fighters. We've got new orders.”
They all climbed out, arching their backs and popping their necks, glad to be standing in the roominess of the docking bay again. Fault took his helmet off and rolled his shoulders, walking with the rest of the 15th to where Colonel Lange stood, hands on his hips.
“Don't get too comfortable,” he said. “You're going out there, just not right now.” He took a breath. “Plainly the aliens tricked us. Somehow they knew we'd already translated their language, and they planted that transmission specifically so we'd find it. This whole thing was a ruse to get us all in one place so they could attack some less-defended territory of ours.
“Our warships are splitting up to check on the Colonies. The Takarabune is headed to Osiris, along with four others: the Dronning, the Mare Cognitum, the Montauk, and the Queenstown. For now, take a break, get some rest. We'll be there in a few hours.”
“If the Snappers know anything about us,” Garner said once Lange had left, “they'll go to Osiris.”
“Or Lotan,” Ness said. “It's half demolished already.”
“Or someplace we're not expecting,” An said.
“Yeah, but Osiris has the best technology, the best weapons. If they destroy those, they destroy a lot of our resources for continuing the war.”
He was right, Fault thought. The humans would still have Earth and the remaining Colonies, but getting Osiris out of the way would be a major coup.
“Who says the Turtles know anything about us?” Lanei asked. “Maybe they're just as clueless about us as we are about them.”
“They know something about us,” Adam said. He switched his flight helmet from one hand to the other. “They knew we could understand that transmission.”
Fault scowled. “Yeah . . . How did they know that?”
An's dark gaze scanned his buddies. “Maybe one of us is really one of them.”
“Say again?” A
dam asked.
“Well, we don't know what kind of technology they have, apart from their weapons. What if they made one of them look like one of us and sent him to spy on us?”
Garner shook his head. “That's science fiction. There's no way to make a Turtle look like a human.”
“Maybe it's not one of them spying on us.” Ness glanced pointedly at Fault. “Maybe it's one of us.”
“You callin' me a traitor?”
“Are you a traitor?”
“You little—!”
Garner stepped between them. “Everybody calm down!” He turned to his sister. “Don't you think we've got enough problems?”
That shut her up for the time being, but she crossed her arms over her chest and belligerently stuck her chin out, still glaring at Fault.
“Seriously,” Lanei said, “who would do that? Who would betray not just their country, but the whole human race?”
An nodded. “Besides, how would the Turtles have contacted one of us without anybody else finding out? And how would they know who they could trust?”
“Yeah, it's pretty far-fetched.”
“What if this was a set-up from the start?” Garner asked. “What if the Snappers deliberately sent their ship-to-ship chatter out on a frequency they knew we'd pick up? Maybe they wanted us to translate their language all along, just so they could pull this stunt.”
“I don't know,” Lanei said thoughtfully. “Wouldn't it be a lot to risk, letting us decode their language?”
“Maybe it was a risk they were willing to take.”
Jaden shook her head. “Let the brass figure it out. Colonel Lange said to get some rest, and I'm going to. If the Turtles are after Osiris, we have a rough day ahead of us.”
They all seconded that and moved off to their bunks. But Fault couldn't help thinking about the planted transmission, and how the aliens had sacrificed one of their own to get the transmission in human hands. If they were capable of doing that to their own people, what would they do to humans?
He had a feeling they'd find out soon enough.
* * *
Fault shot out of the launch tube like a laser out of a gun, the g forces pushing on him so hard that his neck snapped back and the safety harness all but stopped touching him for a moment. As soon as they'd arrived, they'd seen that Osiris was, indeed, under attack, and that the aliens were pounding the living daylights out of it.
Osiris had lent all its warships to ambush the Snappers when they came to obliterate Earth—now the best it had to protect it were battleships, which were half the size of warships, had less firepower, and didn't carry fighters. Osiris owned plenty of battleships, though, all of which had more advanced shielding than any other Colonial vessels of the same or better make; they'd held up admirably, considering.
It wasn't enough.
Most of the battleships currently existed in a state of ruination, scarred and broken, bits of them blasted off, yet they fought desperately on, holding the warships back as best they could. Meanwhile, as many Copperheads as could get past the battleships strafed the planet. There were a lot of them, because the battleships had their hands full fending off the alien warships, so Osiris had acquired a cover of filthy smoke from all the destruction below.
Some of the Copperheads stuck around outside atmo, though, getting as many licks in as they could, helping to weaken the battleships. Fault didn't think they could bring down a battleship by themselves any more than they could bring down a warship—but they could make it easier for a warship to score a significant hit, and these were working hard at doing just that, battering the Osirian ships, wearing down their shields while the alien warships closed in.
Jaden led the squadron into the fray, and the Copperheads came to meet them.
Fault headed straight for the smoke, not bothering to wait for an official order, and started hunting Copperheads, the rest of the 15th directly behind him.
Beneath the smoke lay Fault's former home, now completely annihilated. Buildings had been razed, including the compound where Fault had trained, and the outlying neighborhoods; tanks roamed the clogged streets and fired at the Copperheads without much luck; the SAMs fared better, but only three remained, and Fault saw an enemy fighter take one of them out as he was coming in,
creating an explosion that Fault narrowly escaped; bodies and body parts littered the ground.
Fault sailed through the smoke and entered the fray.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Inside Osiris's atmosphere
Garner came out of a roll and shot another Copperhead, disabling it. Adam finished it off with a deafening war cry. The fight had moved down to a few hundred feet above Osiris, and Garner could see people in the city below, scrambling for cover.
“An,” Jaden said. “Bandits on your six.”
An's ship wobbled, but although he continued to successfully evade getting shot to pieces, he couldn't shake the Turtles loose. “Damn.” He had sobered up considerably since the battle had started, thought Garner, but his words still sounded a bit slurry.
Garner started in An's direction to lend a hand, only to have a bandit rise up in front of him, fangs out. It climbed over his fighter, shooting the while; he had to weave wildly, even then barely able to keep the enemy from turning him into a fireball.
“Don't get beaded up, An,” Lanei said. “We've got you.” She turned one of An's pursuers into so much useless debris. Jaden came right after, nailing the second Snapper.
“Whew! Thanks, guys.”
Garner brought his craft around in a circle, coming up behind and above the Copperhead that had fired on him. He shot the bastard out of the sky.
“Garner, on your three o'clock,” Fault said.
Garner looked, diving left at the same time. It was close–real close–and his fighter complained at the sudden, violent turn.
“I got him.” Fault dove towards the offending bandit.
“No, I'm on it.” But Fault ignored him and fired, wounding, but not destroying the bird.
“I'm on it,” they both said at once. Garner rushed to meet the Snapper, Fault doing the same; they nearly ran into each other.
“Dammit, Fault!”
“I told you I got it!”
“And I told you I got it!”
It was Jaden who got it. “Both of you shut up and go to opposite sides of the playground. For God's sake!”
“Hey,” said An. “Look down. The Snappers are strafing the city.”
“Dammit! An, Fault, and Garner, go stop them. And I'd better not hear any infighting.”
“I'll keep them civil,” An said. “Right, guys?”
Garner doubted anyone could keep Fault and himself from competing. It was like a weird compulsion or something; they just had a way of getting in each other's business. He decided to try and end the problem before it began this time. “Fault, you take the ones on the left, I'll take the ones on the right, and An can get the ones in the middle.”
“The ones on the left of what?”
Garner gritted his teeth. “Just stay out of my way.”
“Just so long as you stay out of my way.”
“Guys!” An sounded desperate. “We're on the same team, here!”
Garner went after one of the Snappers, who had just laid waste to a sidewalk full of people. The bandit swerved, keeping his guns from locking on. Garner stayed on the Copperhead's tail, not quite able to stay close enough to shoot, but able to match the fighter's moves. The Turtle made a break for it, darting around a building. Garner followed, catching up enough on the curve to open fire. The Copperhead banked headlong into a skyscraper, exploding, sending metal and glass shards everywhere. The building remained standing, but had a gaping hole in its side. Garner hoped it had been evacuated in time.
He turned around and went back to where the strafing party continued their attack. An had taken care of one opponent; Fault scored two kills at once by letting the pair follow him, then heading straight for a building. Fault's Banshee was
capable of peeling away from the skyscraper at the last second; the Copperheads were not.
More Snappers had come down to strafe Timaru City. Garner lined up alongside An, side-by-side at the same altitude, with around a mile of lateral separation. “An! Sandwich.”
“You got it.”
Together they drew in front of an oncoming Copperhead, letting it set its sights on Garner's tail. When it did, Garner made a sharp turn away from An; at the same time, An turned in Garner's direction.
Both fighters turned 90 degrees, coming into single-file alignment with each other, sandwiching the alien craft in the middle. Because it had been distracted in the chase for Garner, the Turtle had allowed An to move onto its six for an easy shot. “Ha!” said An. “Take that, asshole!”
Fault was heavy on another bandit, but the Snapper performed a break, turning sharply across Fault's flight path, to increase angle off tail. The Copperhead was exposed to Fault's guns for a brief instant, and Fault very nearly got the kill. But a target with a high crossing speed was extremely difficult to shoot, even for a mech.
“Damn!” Fault's voice was rough over the comlink. He coaxed his fighter into a roll and a loop, completing both at the same time–a spiral roll around a straight flight path. The barrel attack used a tight loop, one much tighter than the roll, the benefit of which was a ninety-degree turn in the direction opposite the roll. While rolling away from the Copperhead's break, Fault now completed the turn with his fighter pointed at the Snapper's tail. In short, he had once more gained the advantage over his opponent.
He didn't miss this time.
“Score one for the mech,” An said.
Garner would have added his congratulations, but just then another bandit came onto his radar, directly behind him and closing fast. In fact, it was practically on top of him. He decided to do a wingover even though he'd always had trouble with the flat turn at the top, figuring that this maneuver would get him out of his current predicament the easiest.
Colonies Of Earth: Unity War Book 1 Page 9