Infliction (Mech Wars Book 4)

by Scott Bartlett

  An airlock opened, and Lisa flashed back to getting carried through underground tunnels on Alex by the invisible force wielded by the Quatro. Back then, in the darkness of the tunnel, she hadn’t registered the airlock’s color, but now she saw it matched the rest of the hull.

  Inside, she immediately saw that here, away from the corrosive effects of a planet’s atmosphere, this ship had been better preserved. It lacked the aged look that Rug’s subterranean ship had. The swirling colors that covered the walls, deck, and ceiling were more vibrant, and the prevalence of that royal purple was even more striking.

  “It will take some time for life support to come on,” Rug said. “But I have sent the command.”

  Back on Alex, the beautiful artwork adorning the interior of the Quatro ship had seemed a bit off, yet comforting. Here, it seemed perfectly appropriate, probably because of how much time Lisa had spent around the thoughtful, gentle Quatro.

  They’re gentle to their friends, anyway.

  There was more than enough room for the trio of mechs to walk side-by-side as they traversed the wide corridors that sloped gently downward, occasionally joining with other corridors, all which seemed to point in the same direction—toward the heart of the vessel.

  “How will we get free of the ice encasing the ship?” Lisa asked.

  “It should be simple enough,” Rug said. “I can have the computer analyze it for weak points, and after that, a few well-placed kinetic kill-masses should cause the shell of ice to shatter.”

  At last, they came to what had to be the ship’s bridge. It took the shape of a sphere, with wide platforms featuring seats that reminded Lisa of the odd furniture she’d encountered on the other Quatro ship. These seats were sleek and metallic, and provisioned with straps that poked up from one side, no doubt used to secure a Quatro in place during battle.

  Each “chair” was completely surrounded by a circular console with movable metal parts, and the highest platform bore the largest console. Rug went to that one, and at her approach, a portion of it slid aside to permit her access.

  Judging by the temperature readout from Lisa’s HUD, life support had succeeded in warming the ship with surprising speed, though not by very much.

  That makes sense. Quatro ships would be kept at below freezing, to allow the aliens to manipulate objects as needed. That must make running water a challenge. They probably have to keep their pipes heated.

  Rug’s chair rotated, seemingly unbidden, and she lowered herself onto it, flipping several of the console’s bulky metal switches.

  Next, the walls themselves came alive with what Lisa recognized as readouts from critical systems, visual feeds, and…

  …and a tactical display, which showed them surrounded by over a dozen Meddler ships.

  Swarms of Ravagers had already been fired, and were crossing the distances between the enemy and allied ships with alarming speed. The UHF ships’ turrets were working overtime, but Lisa was far from certain that they’d be able to hold out much longer.

  “It seems kinetic kill-masses will not be necessary to free ourselves from the ice,” Rug said, and less than a second later, Lisa watched as the ice surrounding the Quatro ship shattered with the impact of the first Ravager wave.

  “Is there anything we can do about that?” Arkanian asked, her voice strained.

  “I have slaved tactical functions to my console and ordered our automatic defenses to neutralize as many Ravagers as possible, but some have already made it to the hull and are burrowing through it as we speak. The enemy struck when we were most vulnerable—the ice made it possible for them to get close to the hull without fear of reprisal.”

  “How many Ravagers can we expect to have to deal with inside the ship?” Arkanian asked.

  Rug paused for a moment, then she answered: “Many.”

  Chapter 40

  Detach Parachutes

  Habitat 1 sat on a sharp rise, commanding a view of the surrounding terrain for kilometers.

  Jake had sent the most talented shuttle pilot from among the five warships to perform a recon flyby, and from that, he’d learned that a ground assault from the bottom of the hill would prove tedious.

  Luckily, Jake and the other four mechs accompanying him were dropping in from space instead.

  The recon run had also told him that Quentin Cooper was almost certainly inside this habitat. The pilot had spotted twenty-one beetles tricked out with plated armor and swivel-mounted heavy machine guns sitting in strategic spots all around the hillside. There were also over a hundred fighters positioned on the habitat’s roof, most of them carrying rocket launchers, though some of them had assault rifles. He spotted a handful of snipers thrown in the mix, too.

  Cooper’s here, all right. And he knows we’re coming.

  Jake’s mech didn’t need the ablative heat shield, parachute, and aerospike thrusters that the MIMAS mechs used for reentry. His biggest challenge involved slowing his descent enough for the others to keep pace.

  “Tessa,” he subvocalized. “You keeping up?”

  “You know I am, boy.”

  “Stay ready to peel away if the heat’s too much. I mean it. If you’re in danger of losing shuttles, let us mop up some of the resistance and then come in after us.”

  “All right. But I’m not letting you hog all the fun.”

  The other mechs’ ablative heat shields had disintegrated several minutes ago, and as Habitat 1 resolved below, becoming a growing silver mass glinting amidst Alex’s sapphire landscape, their parachutes deployed.

  “Be ready to cut your chutes loose and coast in on aerospike,” Jake ordered over the team-wide. “I expect this to get interesting fast.”

  “You kidding?” Maura Odell said. “This’ll be just like Habitat 2. Might have a few more dents in my MIMAS to show for it, that’s all. If…”

  Odell trailed off as something strange happened with one of the lower hills nearby. The blue surface seemed to peel back, exposing a flat plane underneath lined with white lights.

  “What the hell?” Odell said.

  “That’s a landing strip.” No sooner than Marco had spoken the words, a fighter jet burst from the opening in the hillside and flung itself into the air. A second one followed hot on its heels, then a third, and a fourth. Soon, a squadron of eight fighters were in the air, spreading out and heading straight for the five mechs.

  “Detach your parachutes!” Jake yelled. “Detach your parachutes!”

  Chapter 41

  The Lie

  Lisa charged through the Quatro ship in her MIMAS, following the solid bar of light that Rug had activated for her, which led her up and up along ramped, curving corridors.

  She came to a dead end, where the glowing white bar terminated abruptly.

  But only for a few seconds. The wall where the light ended rose into the ceiling, and the glowing bar extended for a few meters more.

  Lisa dashed forward, and the wall where the dead end had been closed behind her. The one in front of her opened, then, revealing the inky black of space. Out here in the Outer Ring, the stars were the clearest she’d ever seen them. Clearer even than back at Hub.

  She threw herself from the ship, twisting as her hands split apart and drew back to rest against her wrists.

  There. She fired, picking off a Ravager before it could burrow through the Quatro ship’s hull, which Rug had said was called the Morning Light. Her HUD highlighted a second Ravager for her, making it glow red in her sights, and when she took that one out it showed her a third.

  Using the thrusters built into her arms and calves, Lisa soared past the purple hull, fighting the vertigo that tried to twist her stomach into knots.

  She encountered a patch of five Ravagers working together to tear a massive hole in the Morning Light.

  Whipping the heavy machine gun from her back, Lisa lined up her shot. A short burst across the hull took out three of the Ravagers at once, and the fourth fell just as quickly, but the fifth robot scurried through the hol
e they’d created and disappeared.

  Cursing, Lisa used her calf thrusters to propel her farther along the hull, to deal with the next group.

  The heavy machine gun neutralized the Ravagers in less time than her autocannons, and she was able to take out a dozen more in the space of two minutes.

  It wasn’t nearly enough. All over the hull, Ravagers were disappearing through the holes they’d made. It would be everything Rug and Arkanian could do to prevent them from tearing the vessel apart from the inside. Lisa knew the Ravagers would have the advantage—whereas her allies would have to obey the layout of the ship, the murderous robots could tear through bulkheads at will, making their way toward vital components in a more or less straight line.

  She replaced the heavy gun on her back, deciding she could get more work done by targeting two Ravagers at a time with her autocannons.

  The first two went down quickly, but as she lined up her next shots, her vision went snowy, and a frenetic hissing noise blocked out all other sound.

  Is something wrong with my sensors? She tried firing her autocannons anyway, but she found that she had no control over them.

  Gradually, the snow cleared. Instead of the battle outside the Quatro ship, green fields stretched before her, crisscrossed with roads and fences, and dotted with houses and trees and livestock.

  As her eyes followed the terrain to the horizon, she blinked, shaking her head. There was no horizon. The land curved up and away, and…

  …and circled back overhead. Up there, there were also houses and tree and cattle—hanging upside-down.

  She was in Hub.

  But Hub was exactly like she remembered it. Not overrun by Ravagers. Not overrun by anything.

  “Lisa,” a warm voice called, and she turned to find Jake, ambling across a field toward her, hands stuck into the pockets of a pair of blue jeans.

  “Jake?”

  He drew near enough that he had to crane his neck to look at her mech’s face. “Hi.”

  “This is Hub, isn’t it? And it’s…it’s okay. It’s just like I remember.”

  Jake’s smile widened. “Oh, yeah. I lied to you about the attack. That never actually happened. Kind of ridiculous to think it would, when you think about it.”

  “Why would you lie to me about something like that?”

  Jake shrugged.

  “I don’t love you anymore, Jake,” Lisa said.

  He nodded. “Andy will be relieved to hear that.”

  Chapter 42

  Do Not Think

  A Ravager tore into the corridor ahead of her, and Rug barreled toward it, up the gentle incline until she was upon the foe.

  A swipe of her mechanized paw was all it took to send it flying into the bulkhead, where it shattered.

  The ship sent the closest Ravagers’ locations to her HUD, which then painted a glowing strip over reality that would lead her along the quickest route to the robots.

  Rug galloped along that strip for everything she was worth.

  When she’d finally boarded her ship, which she and her people had so carefully hidden in the Outer Ring, it had filled her with blissful relief—only to be cut short by the arrival of the Meddlers.

  Had the enemy inferred the ship’s existence from the fact that the UHF warships had headed toward it, or had they known about it all along? Neither possibility was comforting, but the latter implied disturbing things about the nature of the Meddlers’ interactions with humanity and the Quatro.

  The Meddlers have already taken everything from my people once. I will not allow them to take my ship!

  She reached the next group of Ravagers just as they were burrowing through an inner bulkhead. Two of them fell to energy blasts, but a third squeezed through the rent it had created before Rug could take care of it.

  No!

  Burrowing through that bulkhead would take it near one of her ship’s primary engines. That could not come to pass.

  Rug turned and ran back the way she’d come, headed for a corridor closer to the engine, in the hopes of intercepting the metal beast. Her quad’s speed was such that her momentum nearly took her past the required turn, and her left side slammed into the bulkhead as she veered, leaving a shallow dent.

  Nothing compared to what the Ravagers are doing to my vessel.

  “Beth Arkanian,” Rug subvocalized as she ran. “How are you faring on the starboard side?”

  “As well as can be expected,” Arkanian answered, her voice strained. “I think the rate of infiltrations has slowed—the ship’s arsenal must finally be having an effect, now that the ice isn’t blocking it. But, Rug…I think there are too many of them already inside.”

  “Do not think,” Rug said as she caught up with the Ravager who’d been headed toward the engine. She blasted it to bits. “Only help me save my ship.”

  They both fell silent as they waged their separate battles against the endless metal marauders. The ship began directing Rug to the Ravagers who were closest to vital systems, and whose trajectories were likely to take them there. It seemed that each Ravager she destroyed had made it closer to a critical ship component than any before it.

  Soon, they will dismantle her. And I doubt we’ll have time to effect the necessary repairs.

  She rounded a corner to behold five Quatro battling with an equal group of Ravagers. One of the robots tore a wicked gash in the side of the Quatro closest to Rug, and Rug overcame her shock in order to take the bot apart with high-velocity rounds.

  “Brothers and sisters!” she yelled. “I did not think the humans would manage to get a shuttle through the onslaught they’re suffering.”

  “Three shuttles have made it through,” the wounded Quatro answered. “Two more have docked on the other side of the Morning Light.”

  “Then perhaps there is hope for her.”

  A transmission came through, then—from Stephanie Yates, captain of the McDougal. Her likeness appeared in the corridor beside Rug.

  “I have some bad news for you, uh, Rug,” the captain said, seeming to stumble a little on the name Rug had chosen for herself in order to interact properly with humans.

  Somehow, Rug knew what Yates was about to tell her, even thought she’d yet given no indication of it.

  Even so, she asked: “What is it?”

  “Your friend, Sato…her mech went strangely immobile, and we could do nothing to get in contact with her. A group of Ravagers descended on her.”

  “Has Lisa Sato been killed, Stephanie Yates?”

  “I don’t know. But she seemed alive when we saw her last. The Ravagers didn’t kill her—they engaged thrusters and took her inside one of the enemy ships.”

  Chapter 43

  High-Risk

  The squadron of fighters sent kinetic impactors screaming into all five mechs, though the MIMAS didn’t weather the storm nearly as well as Jake’s alien mech did.

  I need to do something. As he slowed his descent with streams of fire projecting from his calves, he turned his arms into energy cannons that he swept across the aircraft, fragmenting their formation and causing five of the eight jets to peel away.

  Three continued on, though, and now Jake was their primary target. They each sent two missiles at him of unknown make, following up with guns.

  The fighters started to launch another missile salvo, but Jake was ready for it, having ignored the initial one. He directed his steady stream of energy bolts along a downward diagonal, intersecting with the rightmost jet and exploding one of its missiles as it left the tube. The jet flew straight into the explosion, shearing off one of its wings.

  Jake rocketed downward sharply, narrowly evading the first volley of missiles. The five jets that had peeled off were coming around for a pass at the MIMAS mechs, who they’d probably figured out were easier prey.

  “They don’t look like any jets I’ve seen,” Marco said. “At least, not any meant for combat inside planetary atmospheres.”

  But in this area, at least, Jake’s knowledge exceeded
Marco’s. He’d always been fascinated by the history of jet and space fighters, and he knew almost every model that had ever been constructed, all the way back to the Me 262.

  To Jake, these fighters looked like F-22 Raptors, but with longer wings and a much more spherical body.

  “I think those wings retract,” he mumbled as the wind whipped past him on his way to Alex’s surface.

  “Why would they be designed that way?” Marco asked, and Jake blinked. He hadn’t realized that he’d broadcasted his muttering.

  Clearing his throat, he said, “To allow them to compete in space.” Clearly, Cooper wasn’t content with dominating only Alex. These space fighters meant he had designs on the entire system, and with Darkstream in decline, that made a lot of sense.

  “Target those things with your rockets and be ready to use autocannons to take apart any missiles they send back at you,” Jake said.

  They were closing with Habitat 1’s roof, but that brought its own host of challenges. Suddenly, they were within rocket range, and missiles started streaming up from below as well.

  He shook his head to clear it, and then he started speaking rapidly, in order to deliver his next orders fast enough to allow time for their execution:

  “Change of plans,” he spat. “I want the four of you to aim for spots on the hill where you’ll have plenty of cover. You’ll need to play a stealthy game in order to take out all those armored beetles without getting taken out yourselves.”

  “What will you be doing?” Ash asked.

  “Taking the roof.”

  “All by yourself?”

  He took a deep breath. “The alien mech is the only one versatile enough to have a chance. They’ll have twenty clear firing lanes at anything that lands there. I’m calling off the shuttles until we can deal with this mess—there’s no way anything’s getting through, as-is.”