by Brett Patton
Maybe it’s not a ghost in the machine at all, Matt thought. Roth insisted it was a reflection. And maybe it was—a reflection of himself.
Matt studied the Mission Brief projected in his viewmask, searching for meaning. Nothing had been added since they deployed from Earth. It still read:
ORIENTATION/MISSION BRIEF
Version 0.0.1, 22.04.2322
GENERAL INTELLIGENCE
System 0195-GX7A-1023 is (redacted).
ENVIRONMENT REVIEW
Planet 5 of System 0195-GX7A-1023 is semihabitable, with a frozen surface overlaying liquid oceans beneath.
OFFWORLD: (redacted)
ONWORLD: (redacted)
CURRENT SITUATION
Developing. Union military intelligence will advise as necessary.
OBJECTIVES
Deploy to specified markers and await orders.
KEY TEAM
COLONEL Cruz, UUS Helios Strategic Command
MAJOR Lowell, Mecha Corps Leader (Special)
And that was it.
Matt scanned the readings from his team. All were stable, with Mesh Effectiveness in the seventies and eighties. Marjan and Mikey were stable, not spiky at all. Was it possible they’d gotten past Cruz’s admonishment?
I hope they see some action, Matt thought.
“Prepare for final Displacement,” Colonel Cruz said on the public channel, his voice oddly hushed.
Matt switched the focus on his viewmask to the UUS Helios’s external sensors, which showed a close-packed star field with multiple tags indicating stars within one to three light-years. One of them had to be tagged 0195-GX7A-1023, but he couldn’t see it.
The stars changed. In front of them, a star jumped to the fore, shining with pinpoint-pure white radiance. That meant they were still far out within the planetary system. Cruz was really being cautious.
“Hold for spectral recon,” Cruz told them on the public channel.
Matt’s heart echoed in the gel-filled chamber of the giant Mecha, beating the seconds away. Ten, twenty, thirty. Nothing changed in the star field. No messages came from the bridge. Matt began to think this was just a formality, that they were just being overcautious.
“Prep for—” came an unfamiliar voice from the bridge, tagged COMBAT INTELLIGENCE. Before he could finish the sentence, he was cut off by a deep, reverberating boom from the comms.
Impact shock rattled through the Mecha Dock’s expanded steel decking. On Matt’s viewmask, the external view tracked several new objects, which moved blindingly fast across his POV. Each was tagged HEAVY-MATTER PAYLOAD.
Four more of the heavy-matter rounds hit the Helios. The ship reeled and sensors went offline, patchworking Matt’s POV. Damage assessments began scrolling on-screen.
“Orders to deploy, sir?” Matt shouted at Colonel Cruz.
“No! Hold! We’re not in close enough!” Cruz snapped. Then, off-mike, “Helios gunners, target at will with heavy-matter guns.”
The Helios hammered as its own guns came online. New tags swarmed outward in Matt’s POV. Small points of brilliance marked where they took out the enemy heavy-matter rounds. Others sped on, presumably toward the source of the bombardment.
“Hitting us so far out. That means they’ve compromised the deep-space defense systems,” Colonel Cruz told Matt, his PRIVATE comms icon flashing. “That means they have everything, planet on out. You should expect to take fire as we Displace into orbital deployment range.”
“Yes, sir,” Matt said. “Who are ‘they,’ sir?”
Cruz’s comms icon snapped off without an answer.
Tags traced the UUS Helios’s heavy-matter rounds to their targets. It was like watching the universe’s slowest virtuality game. Eventually red markers flared at the HEAVY-MATTER EMPLACEMENTS and listed them as DESTROYED.
“Targets eliminated,” Combat Intelligence told them. Hold for additional assessment.” Thirty seconds passed. Sixty. No other heavy-matter payloads came their way.
“System secure,” Cruz reported. “Prepare for planetary Displacement.”
* * *
As UUS Helios Displaced into orbit around Planet 5, it rocked under heavy fire. Matt’s Demon had to grab a railing to stay in place. Dust clouds filtered out from the raw stone walls of Mecha Dock, just beyond the expanded steel grating. The asteroid was taking a real pounding, despite its extensive armor.
Outside, Matt’s screens showed a crazed white snowball of a planet, together with a half dozen tags that showed orbital gun emplacements. Smaller, faster-moving tags tracked the assault coming at the UUS Helios: heavy-matter payloads, clouds of Sidewinder missiles, even the matter/antimatter beam of a Zap Gun, piercing dark space like a pillar of flame.
A Zap Gun? Matt thought. That was Union technology. Had the Corsairs captured a major Union base? Or did they have antimatter annihilation technology now too, as well as Mecha?
There wasn’t any time for that. “Permission to deploy, Colonel?” Matt barked into the comms.
“No! Hold!” Cruz said, shouting off-mike to get the heavy-matter artillery back online and rotate to target their own Zap Gun. “We didn’t expect—they moved the platforms—smarter than we thought.”
“We can help!” Norah said.
“Adept!” Matt cautioned.
“We’ll—” Cruz swore as the Zap Gun beam found the ship again. On Matt’s damage reports, armor plating evaporated, exposing the core asteroid. “We’ll soon have this under control.”
“Sir—” Matt began.
“No!” Cruz yelled. “They’re smart, Major. They’re hitting us hard, but they’re not targeting the Mecha Dock. They’re waiting for you to come out.”
“Sir, we can deploy through alternate—”
“Last time: No!” Then, softer: “Let us do our job. Then you can do yours.”
Raw black space lit with the fury of the Helios. Multiple antimatter beams speared out, cutting swaths through the torrent of destruction aimed at the ship. They converged first on one orbital emplacement, then another, turning each into a soundless orange fireball.
Soon there was only a single orbital platform left. It redoubled its Zap Gun fire, finally scoring hits on critical UUS Helios systems. The FTLcomm transmission array ablated in a blinding white firestorm. The maneuvering pits took a hard hit, blowing them out of shape as the surrounding ceramic exploded into vapor. Even the Mecha Dock doors were struck. The massive steel armor glowed dull red, orange, shading into yellow and slumping toward a molten pool, before the UUS Helios managed to focus on that last platform.
The Mecha Dock doors quickly cooled, groaning and squealing as their tortured shapes vented air into space. They were only orange-red when Combat Intelligence came back on the comms.
“Planetary orbit secure,” the bland voice said. In the background, Cruz cursed.
Cruz himself was soon back on the comms, feeding Matt a new set of coordinates on the planet’s surface. “Deploy as soon as Mecha Dock doors become functional. Assemble at the location provided. Wait for orders. If engaged, use all weapons to destroy the enemy.”
“They weren’t trying to destroy the Helios,” Matt said, spitting out the first thing that came to mind.
Cruz said nothing for a long time, but his comms icon remained lit. He switched to a private channel, CRUZ LOWELL. “I said they were smart.”
“They were trying to capture us?”
A pause. Then: “Yes.”
“How could they—even with Union weapons—how could they expect—”
“Prepare to deploy, Major,” Cruz interrupted.
Matt ground his teeth. “Who’s the enemy?”
Cruz growled, “Prepare to deploy.”
That’s all you need to know, Matt thought, anger rising. All the stuff ab
out the military he hated came rushing into his mind: drills, following orders, going in blind like this. Don’t worry about why they were trying to capture a Union warship, don’t think about who you’re fighting, just do what we tell you. Like a machine. Something to be turned on, used, and disposed of again.
He had graduated top of class at Aurora University. He could have been a top executive at one of Eridani’s largest firms by now—or at least on his way up. He didn’t need to be here. His father was avenged. His true mission was over. And he knew the Union hid the whole truth from its citizens.
So why do you keep doing it?
And in the yawning space of his mind, he finally admitted: I don’t know why I do any of it anymore.
When I get back, I’m going to find out, Matt told himself. He’d get with Peal and Jahl and investigate Keller. And 0195-GX7A-1023. He’d dig into the Union and the Corsairs. The Mecha. Even the HuMax.
That’s my new purpose, Matt realized. To find out what’s really going on in the Union. So there’d be no more of these crazy missions, no more Kellers, no more Jotunheims. Maybe that would be enough to fill the empty space where revenge used to be.
Matt forced himself to breathe deeply, calm and regular, as the Mecha Dock doors cooled. Because if his enemy was really smart, they’d be waiting when the Mecha came out.
Two minutes later, the Mecha Bay doors ground open. The last wisps of atmosphere exhausted into space, taking rock dust and haze with it. The raw metal of the doors framed the snowball world. Shades of white and blue mixed with off-gray, in feathery fractal patterns all over the surface of the planet. There was not a single mountain range, not a hint of vegetation. Just a frozen ball of ice.
Matt shivered. It wasn’t a human world. Not a place anyone would live. And yet the briefing hadn’t listed any resources or strategic importance. Why did the Union have such heavy artillery around it?
“Adepts Norah, Elize, and Jie, enable Zap Guns and deploy,” Matt said.
Matt pushed off the scaffolding and stopped himself at the edge of the door. Even with the power of the Zap Gun coursing through his Mecha’s arm, it would be stupid to just go charging out. The three others came up beside him, the jaunty visors of their Demons almost questioning.
“Sir?” Elize asked.
“If they’re smart, they’ll be waiting to slice us to bits.”
“Orbital space is secure,” Combat Intelligence droned.
Yeah, like they don’t know a trick like playing dead, Matt thought.
“Continue your mission, Major,” Cruz added.
Matt frowned. There was nothing he could do. It wasn’t as if he could rip a section of Mecha Dock scaffolding off the walls and wave it out the doors, trying to draw fire. The only thing he could do was try to ensure the success of his mission.
“Go out in twos,” Matt told the adepts. “Back to back, weapons ready.”
“What, sir?” Jie asked.
“In case one of us gets roasted,” Norah said. “Come on.” She grabbed Jie and turned him around so they were back to back. The two jumped off into space.
Matt half expected to see the two red Mecha disappear in the brilliance of a Zap Gun beam, but nothing happened. The bright white sun painted them in high contrast as they drifted away from the UUS Helios.
“I guess it’s us,” Elize said. She went back to back with him and they jumped off. Matt tensed as the UUS Helios fell away. With the wraparound perspective of the viewmask, it was as if he were floating naked in deep space. The close-packed stars were a gaudy display above the perfect white planet. Inside the Mecha, he heard nothing except for his mechanically assisted breathing and the faraway beat of his heart. It would have been a beautiful moment if he hadn’t been worried about being vaporized.
“What a place,” Elize said.
“Can the chatter, Adept,” Matt said.
“Oh!” Elize’s teeth clicked together.
As they fell toward the planet, Matt scanned his sensors. No enemy tags. The only thing in his POV was the coordinates he’d been given, another featureless point near the planet’s equator.
Just over the horizon from their target, local temperatures read twenty degrees C higher than the background. A power plant of some kind? A downed warship?
But if that was the case, where was the Displacement Drive asteroid that had brought it here? Warships didn’t end up in deep space by themselves. Matt strained with the Demon’s Sensory Enhancement, but even its magnification was far too weak to resolve anything at the hot point.
“I have some abnormal temperature readings on the surface, sir,” Norah said.
“Got it,” Matt said.
“Weapons, sir?”
“If so, they’re not firing at us.”
“It’s near our objective, sir,” Norah pressed. “Maybe at our objective.”
“Understood. Now please clear comms, Adept.”
Norah’s comms icon blinked out. Matt ordered the adepts to go into formation and prepare for reentry. He felt the powerful changes ripple through his own Demon as the thrusters re-formed along his back and the Mecha became a slim, delta-winged shape to help them down through the planet’s nitrogen atmosphere.
The four Mecha arrowed down. In the thin air, heating was minimal. It felt like a feather, brushing Matt’s chest, as they descended. Almost comforting. Toward the end, faint warmth lit his front side.
The four Demons used thrusters to slow as they descended: sixty thousand meters, forty, twenty. Details resolved on the surface: frigid blue channels, cutting deep into the white ice toward the hidden oceans, miles below. Fractal patterns radiating from the channels, slightly darker than the base ice. Here and there, wisps of methane clouds obscured the surface, as sharp winds scoured the landscape. There wasn’t a single living thing in sight.
Five thousand feet. Two thousand. All quiet.
“Prepare to land,” Matt told the adepts.
Their Demons unfolded, blasting thrusters to slow their descent. Clouds of white water ice blew up, instantly subliming to vapor in the blaze of the Demons’ fusion exhaust. Soon they stood on the surface ice, each in a little pit made by the heat of its thrusters.
“Team is down, Colonel,” Matt told Cruz. “Awaiting orders.”
Cruz’s comms icon lit, but before the man could say anything, a hail of Fireflies arced at Matt’s Demons—followed by their source, a battalion of Hellions.
Union Mecha. On this frozen world at the edge of nowhere.
5
HIDDEN
As the chrome black Hellions flickered at Matt and his team, his thoughts went into overdrive: Hellions? Union Hellions? Yes, they were unmistakably Union Mecha—Matt had trained first in Hellions, and he’d recognize them anywhere.
But Union Mecha weren’t just left lying around on any world, especially one so far out from the Core. Especially not a full battalion. That meant this was an important base. But did that mean the Corsairs had captured a strategic Union world, and compromised all of its technology? If so—
The Fireflies hit. Matt’s POV whited out as force feedback through his interface suit left him gasping for breath. He flailed as he flew backward through the air. His Demon crunched down hard on its back, digging shiny gouges in the planet’s surface ice.
Matt shook his head. Fireflies didn’t have a punch like that!
“Heavy matter,” Jie gasped. “They’re using heavy matter in their Firefly rounds.”
Matt scrambled to get up as his vision cleared. The Hellions were on them now, moving blurring fast, almost as if the Hellions’ Rayder had been modified to remove their limiters. Almost. They were damn fast, but not Rayder fast. It was almost as if they simply had very, very good pilots.
Matt barely got to his feet before three of the Hellions barreled into him, t
heir razor talons slicing painfully at his arms. Their fusion ports glowed dull orange as they charged Fireflies for another assault.
The rest of the Hellions attacked Matt’s team, clinging to them like lampreys. Norah screamed in frustration and tried to target them with the Zap Gun, but the big weapon was useless in close quarters. Xie beat at his attackers, trying to dislodge them, but the nimble Hellions avoided his grasping hands. Elize hit the ground and rolled, triggering her own Fireflies. The Hellions danced away from the smart rounds, which exploded harmlessly in the sky. Their brilliant light strobed the scene below, rendering the battle in jerky freeze frame.
Smart, Matt thought. Get in close so we can’t use our Zap Guns or Sidewinders. They moved too fast for Fireflies too. Which left—
“Fusion Handshake!” Matt yelled. “Use it!”
“What’s that?” Xie asked.
Ah, shit. They didn’t even know the slang yet. What the hell was it called? “CQFA! Close-Quarters Fusion Annihilator! Now!”
Matt’s vision went white as another round of Fireflies came down on him. This time it didn’t come back fully. Jagged pieces of his POV were covered in gray pixels, and the dreaded countdown began: REGENERATION COMPLETE IN 32 SECONDS.
The Hellions were on him again. Their fusion ports glowed in orange puzzle pieces in his POV. They’d wipe out the rest of his visual sensors, and then they’d take him apart.
Matt enabled his Fusion Handshake and grabbed for the Hellions. They skittered away like roaches, comfortably ahead of his grasp. He flailed again, but he simply wasn’t fast enough. Through the working parts of his visual sensors, he saw the others having the same problem.
He was going to be taken down by old-style Hellions!
Matt triggered his thrusters and leapt for the sky, but the Hellions only strengthened their grip as he ascended. Their fusion ports were angry orange now. Only a matter of moments before they destroyed the rest of his visual sensors. If he could only get ahold of them—