Infliction (Mech Wars Book 4)

by Scott Bartlett

  She’d arranged to meet her pilots-in-training in the same green space where Jake had taken down a simulated Quatro, right before one of them had killed him—in the dream, anyway. But they’d all thought it was real, and Jake had sacrificed himself to save Marco.

  Ash found the three trainees underneath an oak with branches that swept up toward the overhead display panels, which joined together seamlessly to give the illusion of a sapphire sky.

  Maura Odell was one of the three she’d identified as likely to join her, which was lucky, given her proficiency. Ash was pleased that Benny Cho was another. Zed Gifford was a somewhat less fortunate addition. He was generally lackluster as a soldier, and Ash wasn’t sure how he’d made it past training to be selected as one of the eight to form the next team of MIMAS pilots. She’d decided days ago that she had no desire to meet the trainees who’d washed out.

  All three of the pilots-in-training before her had seemed pessimistic about Darkstream’s chances of holding the station. Cho had even advocated surrendering, despite Ash’s feigned discouragement of that conclusion.

  “You must be wondering why I only asked you three to meet me here, and not the whole team,” she said. They offered only blank expressions in response, so she continued. “To answer that, there’s a lot to unpack. But first, let me give you access to a Red Company data dump, which I was strictly forbidden to share with anyone…”

  It took her around a half hour to get them up to speed on her decision, as well as her reasons for it. For the most part, they responded with agreement—nodding heads, murmurs of assent.

  For the most part.

  Benny Cho only maintained his blank expression, barely blinking, even as she outlined her plan.

  “Releasing Roach will cause the station to erupt in chaos,” Ash said, “which will make it much easier for the resistance to come aboard and take control. Setting Roach free is a risky play, but I see it as much less risky than letting Darkstream marshal an orderly defense.

  “I need you to meet me outside Alpha Quadrant at eighteen hundred hours, each of you inside your MIMAS. People on Valhalla are used to seeing the mechs walking around, by now, so you shouldn’t raise too many eyebrows. Once we’re all assembled, we’ll bust Roach out together.”

  They all agreed to her plan—verbally, anyway. But Cho’s eyes stayed blank and empty, in stark contrast with the set jaws of Odell and Gifford.

  Chapter 24

  Early Arrival

  The space elevator arrived, but Lisa still wasn’t confident she’d make it on. The mechanized army had pushed through the city streets with alarming speed, taking square after street after alley with a level of efficiency and coordination that the combined Darkstream and resistance armies simply weren’t prepared for.

  They’d retreated far enough that their backs were almost to the base of the elevator, and though her army had already begun loading aboard, the elevator only had one entrance. It would take time to get everyone on, and that was assuming the battle didn’t leave the elevator with holes big enough to destroy its spaceworthiness.

  “Tessa, how are things looking on your end?” Lisa asked over a two-way channel. She’d assigned Tessa to command the forces guarding the other side of the elevator.

  “Not great,” Tessa answered. “I give it twenty minutes before they break through to the elevator, and that’s an optimistic projection.”

  Captain Arkady Black had been ordered to hold the city, and that’s what he seemed determined to do, or at least to attempt. Lisa’s respect for the man became less grudging with each passing minute. Black’s suicidal last stand was the only reason the resistance army’s mission was still possible.

  She noticed shuttles approaching overhead; black specks that quickly became recognizable as spacecraft.

  “Clear some space for those shuttles!” Lisa yelled over a wide channel, and the soldiers behind her responded just in time.

  The shuttles swept overhead, following hair-raising trajectories that saw them barely clear the tops of some of the buildings. A couple of the shuttles performed landings that were closer to crashes, but all of the craft remained intact, proving that the pilots knew a lot more about flying than Lisa did.

  “Everyone nearest the shuttles, pile on!” she ordered, speaking over a channel restricted only to members of the resistance. It felt odd to use the Darkstream soldiers as effective meat shields, when they’d been the enemy so recently.

  Nothing about this war is conventional. And it seemed it would only get more unconventional as time went on.

  At last, enough of her soldiers were on either the elevator or the shuttles for Lisa to feel justified in finding a place herself.

  She encountered Jake and Rug at the elevator’s doors, standing guard.

  “Good thinking, calling for the shuttles from the refugee fleet,” Lisa said, nodding at her childhood friend.

  Jake nodded back in a way that looked weary even though it was the alien mech doing the nodding. As his gaze seemed to drift past Lisa, his entire body stiffened, and she turned to see what had caused the reaction.

  Beth Arkanian was standing there, metal hands dangling at her sides. At least, Lisa assumed it was Arkanian. Marco piloted the only other MIMAS on Eresos that was still operational.

  Jake seemed to have arrived at the same conclusion, though Lisa assumed he had means of identifying the MIMAS pilots that were superior to hers.

  “What are you doing here?” he asked, his tone icy.

  “Getting on,” Arkanian said.

  “You are, are you? So you’re loyal enough to Darkstream to try your best to kill me, but not loyal enough to stay and die with them.” If Jake hadn’t been inside his mech, Lisa felt sure he would have spat.

  “I want to see Ash,” Arkanian said. “Do you really plan to try and stop me?”

  “No,” he said. “You’re my teammate—at least, you were—and I’ll honor that. I won’t consign you to death, like you were so ready to do to me.” With that, Jake stepped aside stiffly.

  Arkanian walked onto the elevator, avoiding eye contact with everyone. She disappeared inside, to make herself as small and inconspicuous as she could while still inside a MIMAS, unless Lisa missed her guess.

  Behind her, the thunder of war crescendoed. “We’re the last ones,” Lisa shouted over it. “Let’s go.”

  Jake and Rug waited till she was aboard, and then they stepped on themselves. The elevator’s operator stood next to the door with a meter-long tube of some sort of sealant, which he applied to the door’s gaps while Jake held them closed.

  “Hopefully that holds,” the operator said, grimacing. “It’s meant as an emergency measure, and you’ll have to blow the doors open to get out again.”

  “Shouldn’t be a problem,” Jake said. “Now, get this thing off the ground.”

  Apparently, the operator didn’t require further urging. He’s probably just as eager to leave Eresos as we are.

  Within thirty seconds, the elevator had begun its ascent, with the planet dropping away beneath them.

  The inside of the elevator was crowded, but not unbearably so. Through a gap in the throng, Lisa watched Rug edge her way toward one of the floor-to-ceiling windows, which were made of silicon nitride—the same material used in beetle windows back on Alex.

  Inching through the crowd, Lisa joined her old friend, who was resting on her haunches.

  We’ve been through so much, she and I. Lisa placed a hand on the Quatro’s enormous flank, and they looked out on the planet in silence, where so many suffered and died.

  “Do you think they have any chance at all of survival?” Lisa asked.

  “I do not,” Rug said.

  “You truly have no hope for them at all?”

  In answer, the Quatro raised her gaze. Lisa followed it, inhaling sharply at what seemed like tens of thousands of meteorites streaking across the dawn-lit sky, hurtling toward the surface of Eresos. “Ravagers,” she said, breathless.

  “The Med
dlers have arrived early,” was all Rug said in reply.

  Chapter 25

  MIMAS Sim

  Lisa became lost in foreboding thought as she watched the plummeting Ravagers, and she felt grateful when Rug finally broke their silence.

  “Do you recall the secreted ship I told you about when we were still on Alex?”

  “Of course. The one you concealed in the Outer Ring.”

  “Yes. There is something I did not tell you about that ship.”

  Lisa studied her friend, eyebrows raised. Her comprehension of Quatro body language still had a long way to go, but she thought that Rug looked sad. “What is it?”

  “She was my ship. I was her captain. I volunteered to relinquish command of her, until such time that she might be needed.”

  “That…must have been hard.”

  “It was.”

  Footsteps sounded behind them, and Lisa turned to see Bob O’Toole approaching. He stepped between Lisa and Rug at the space elevator’s windows, folding his hands behind his back and squinting out at the thousands of Ravagers screaming toward Eresos.

  “You can say what you like about life on Alex,” he said, “but we never got weather like this.”

  Lisa turned to face O’Toole. “You were just walking among the troops?”

  “Uh, yes…”

  “What’s their mood? Are they anxious?”

  O’Toole nodded with seeming reluctance. “They’re worried one of the Ravagers will hit the elevator cable and snap it. Or that the mechanical army that chased us onto this thing will manage it.”

  Nodding, Lisa said, “The cables are strong. Hence their name, ‘super-strong nanotethers.’” Despite her cavalier words, Lisa shared the fears of the others. She also knew there was nothing they could do about them but hope.

  “Lisa,” a second voice said from behind her, and she turned to behold Andy leaning on his crutches with his hands curled at his sides and his jaw set.

  “Yes, Andy?”

  “I’d like to talk.”

  “About what?”

  Andy’s gaze flitted to O’Toole, then back to Lisa just as quickly. “I’d like to talk in private.”

  O’Toole had adopted a concerned expression, which looked a little foreign on his face. Lisa tried to find the irony lurking beneath it, but couldn’t.

  “Don’t you have family down there, son?” O’Toole said, sweeping his hand toward the planet below.

  “I do,” Andy said.

  “Aren’t you concerned for them?”

  “No. They can burn.”

  Eyes widening, O’Toole turned back to the window, clasping his hands behind his back once more.

  Meeting Andy’s stare, Lisa tried to decide whether she should honor his request to speak in private. For one thing, she had a suspicion as to what their conversation would be about. For another, she wasn’t sure there was any privacy to be had aboard the packed elevator at all.

  Finally, he seemed to tire of her hesitation. “Do you love me?” he asked.

  Lisa blinked. This was in the neighborhood of what she’d anticipated from him, but she hadn’t expected him to be quite so direct. “Andy, I…I’m not sure what to say.”

  “Really,” he said, his tone flat, and his body somehow going even more rigid. “We started something, back on Alex. Are you going to abandon it? After everything we’ve been through?”

  “I’m not abandoning anything, least of all you. But I would remind you of a time when you abandoned me. We had some good times together, Andy, and then you cut me off completely.”

  He nodded. “I’m not denying that. But this, right now, this is different. Back then, that was just stupid dating games. It was before we survived together for months out on Alex. Before we embarked on a war against Darkstream. Everything is much realer, now.”

  Twisting her head for a glimpse of the Ravagers streaking through the sky, she returned her gaze to Andy. “It’s basically the apocalypse, right now. This is no time to use the word love.” With that, Lisa turned to find a place among her army.

  “It’s exactly the time!” Andy yelled after her.

  “Now is the time to prepare for battle,” she said without turning. With that, she began transmitting to Andy the MIMAS training sims that Marco had broken into for her. “Prepare well, Andy.”

  She reached a group of Quatro standing near a window, and she asked them to remain nearby and make sure no one tripped over her as she lay down to go lucid.

  Minutes after taking a sedative, she found herself in the first sim, already inside a mech.

  The experience was nothing short of astonishing.

  Chapter 26

  Worthy First Targets

  Ash walked her MIMAS outside of Alpha Quadrant and onto the giant plaza that formed Valhalla’s core.

  The scene she found there made her draw up short, retracting the fingers of both metal hands to rest against her wrists, revealing the rotary autocannons underneath.

  Two of the three pilots with whom she’d shared her plan—Maura Odell and Zed Gifford—were outside of their mechs, kneeling on the ground with hands clamped to their heads.

  Behind them, closest to Ash, stood the other six pilots of the team, all inside their machines. They’d arrayed themselves facing away from Alpha Quadrant, since that was the direction Ash was supposed to have come from…at least, according to the plan she’d fed them.

  Their enhanced auditory sensors picked up the sound of her fingers clicking into place, and all six mechs turned, facing her and away from their pair of hostages. That might have given Gifford and Odell an opportunity to sprint toward their open mechs, except their captors were likely monitoring them through rear sensors.

  “I see that you’ve deviated from my plan a bit,” Ash said, her voice level.

  “Wait,” Benny Cho said. “What are you doing, coming from Alpha Quadrant? Didn’t you want our help breaking Roach out?”

  Ash shrugged, a gesture that was somewhat awkward to pull off inside a MIMAS, but she thought she managed it all right. “Oh. Well, see, I deviated from my plan a little, too.”

  “Why?”

  “Because the purpose of my plan wasn’t actually to get your help freeing Roach. I didn’t need your help. The purpose was to find out which of you I could actually trust. And now I know.”

  “Take her down,” Cho said.

  Tremors reached Ash through the station’s deck, and she leapt aside as all six mechs opened fire on where she’d been standing.

  Their bullets hit Gabriel Roach instead, who was charging out of Alpha Quadrant. While the ordnance introduced a stutter to his step, it didn’t slow him very much, and his right forearm sprouted a wicked, curved blade as he closed the distance with Benny Cho.

  Cho extended both his bayonets—too late. Roach’s sword found the mech’s torso, exactly where Cho’s unconscious form was nestled, and the blade impaled the MIMAS with ease.

  The great machine slumped, lifeless, and Roach stepped clear of it, turning to face the closest opposing mech.

  Four of the five remaining pilots confronting Roach trained their lasers on him, perhaps remembering the class when Ash had taught them that lasers had proved most effective against the alien-made mechs. The remaining MIMAS was otherwise occupied, though— with the high-velocity rounds with which Ash was perforating his mech.

  Roach was too fast for the pilots to maintain a bead on him long enough for the lasers to do meaningful damage. Dancing backward, he widened his arms in a sweeping gesture. Almost too quickly to register, those arms became long-barreled energy cannons, which blasted holes clean through the mechs they were aimed at. Both of those mechs slumped to the deck, joining Cho.

  The remaining three mechs, of which Orson Cole was one, raised their metal hands. “We surrender,” Cole said, his voice laced with panic.

  “Roach, heel!” Ash commanded.

  Roach whirled toward one of the mechs, both arms becoming broadswords angled to slice through the MIMAS.

/>   “Roach!”

  He paused abruptly, his blades suspended inches from his target’s neck and shoulders.

  Ash wasted no time. “Out of your mechs,” she ordered the surviving enemy pilots. Their backs popped open instantly, and the human pilots clambered out as soon as they emerged from their slumber, blinking groggily. Cole fell to his hands and knees.

  Ash initiated a protocol she’d been given access to as the team’s primary instructor. It allowed her to order the empty mechs to walk to a destination of her choosing. She instructed them to head for a location deep inside Omega Quadrant, which she’d identified in advance. It was one she would have full access to, but also hopefully the last place Darkstream would think to look in the chaos that would soon seize Valhalla Station.

  The clatter of the mechs’ footsteps as they jogged across the Core created a frenetic staccato.

  “Get inside your mechs,” she barked at Odell and Gifford, and they wasted no time in complying.

  Next, she turned to Roach. He still had his broadswords extended…and now they were angled toward her.

  “You shouldn’t have released me,” he rasped. “Don’t you get it? I have no defenses against the whispers, anymore.”

  The whispers… “What are they telling you to do right now?”

  “To kill,” Roach said, taking a step toward her. “Everything.”

  Ash stood her ground. “Then why don’t you go take out your angst on Darkstream? If you’re supposed to kill everything, they’re worthy first targets, aren’t they? I’m sure you’re not very happy with them, and I doubt the whispers are, either.”

  Roach didn’t budge, and for several long moments, Ash was convinced he would strike.

  Abruptly, he charged across the Core, angling in a direction that should take him clear of the elevator.

  Guilt racked her, and she realized this must be how Roach felt all the time. But she’d done what she needed to do. Wasn’t that the essence of being a soldier?

  Chapter 27

  As Anticipated

  Rather than a smaller chamber that let onto the station, the space elevator’s airlock enveloped its entire structure. The elevator was designed to ascend directly into the airlock, which sealed underneath it.