by Brett Patton
It wasn’t a dream.
Esplandian was under attack.
* * *
“Mr. Lowell! Former Major! Wake up, it’s time to earn your keep!” Captain Gonsalves’s voice screeched through Matt’s flimsy apartment door, over the pounding of his fist.
Matt ducked as Captain Gonsalves’s security team exploded through the door, shattering the opaque plastic.
Gonsalves looked Matt up and down, noting his interface suit. His expression went instantly from total panic to serious concern, the chameleon feat of a man used to managing people.
“You need to be on a ballistic shuttle to El Dorado,” Captain Gonsalves said, pushing Matt out the door.
“Who’s attacking us? What do they want? How many are there?” Matt said as the rough stone corridors blurred past. They were heading down to the main docks. “I saw an armored asteroid! Is it Union?”
“Probably Last Rising, don’t know, the one you saw ain’t the only one, and probably not, in that order,” Gonsalves said. “So far, it looks like they’re just making sure we’re paying attention. I’m sure we’ll hear about the glorious opportunity to join their faction shortly.”
They continued down to the docks, taking a shortcut through a small tunnel bored perpendicular through the main shafts.
Matt’s Perfect Record parsed Gonsalves’s answer, and he shot back. “Last Rising? Are they like the Cluster? How many ships total?”
“First two questions: probably, and worse. We think there’s four ships. All armored.”
“Last Rising is worse than the Cluster?”
Gonsalves nodded. “The Cluster doesn’t go in for the big hammer so much. But I hear they like to brag. If they talked about you, Last Rising might have come around to see if our Mecha pilot came with a Mecha.”
“Who the hell is Last Rising?”
“A new faction. Real powerful. They move into a system, put the hammer down, and next thing you know, everyone’s singing their praises. Like they’re all brainwashed. Bad, creepy fuckers.”
Matt nodded. Corsairs, just like in the Union movies. It was almost a relief. “It won’t happen to us.”
Gonsalves laughed. “Love your spirit. But what’s one Mecha going to do against four Displacement Drive ships?”
Matt grinned. “You’d be surprised.”
“I’m gonna buy you lobster dinners for a year at Rodrigo’s if you can turn this around.”
They plummeted into the main dock. Matt and Gonsalves were packed into a small pod that looked almost exactly like a standard escape vehicle—except for the heavy-duty fusion rocket stretching five meters out its backside. Dense foam sandwich seats smothered Matt as the hatch closed.
The idea was to shoot the pod across to a matching fluid-damped receiving dock on the El Dorado, as fast as possible, so the Corsairs wouldn’t notice—or, if they did, they wouldn’t have a chance to react.
Acceleration slammed Matt back painfully in his seat. His skin stretched and puddled against the sandwich cushions. His vision went instantly gray, before he slid into the complete darkness of blackout.
Next he knew, the hatch on the pod was opening. His ears rang and his vision didn’t work quite right. It was like seeing through red haze. Captain Gonsalves’s sandwich cushions unfolded, exposing a bruised and unconscious man.
“Captain!” Matt yelled. Gonsalves didn’t respond, so Matt pulled him along out into the corridors. The lights were low; the El Dorado was still in idle mode.
“Did you get the number of that truck?” Captain Gonsalves said, rousing, as they reached the secure dock.
“What?”
Gonsalves waved a hand. “Old Earth saying.”
“We’re here,” Matt said, cycling the lock.
“Here where?” Gonsalves looked blank. The trip had hit the older man a lot harder than Matt. Matt made himself speak slowly and simply.
“We’re on El Dorado. I’m gonna go out in the Demon. When I use the Zap Gun, the EM noise will probably cover your powering up.”
Captain Gonsalves nodded, still looking confused.
“Power up,” Matt said. “We’ll need your firepower.”
“Esplandian has firepower too.”
“Call your brother. Get it online. All of it.” Matt shoved Captain Gonsalves toward the bridge and launched himself toward his Demon.
“Let’s turn this around,” Matt said, under his breath.
* * *
I’m home, Matt thought as the rush of Mesh took him. For long moments, nothing mattered—not the Corsairs, not Ione, not even his uncertain future. He was whole and complete, and the warm sun of Mesh illuminated every part of him.
An UNKNOWN comms tag flashed bright red as Captain Gonsalves’s voice took Matt out of his reverie.
“New info,” Gonsalves told him. “The Corsairs haven’t detected that damn ballistic shuttle we just took, or, if they have, they’re ignoring it. But now they’re jabbering the standard demands: join the party, you’re going to love being part of us, open your hatches to our boarding party, submit or die.”
“Sounds like a wonderful offer,” Matt said, still happily buoyant.
“I’ll stick to the little rock my grandfathers made,” Gonsalves said, his voice low and bitter.
Matt nodded. He understood that. Gonsalves just wanted to live a simple life, not hurting anyone. Didn’t he deserve, well, just to be left alone?
Unbidden, a powerful memory came welling up from his past. Running down the dusty corridors on Prospect as his father grumbled about his work. Work seemed so complicated. Impossible. Matt wanted nothing to do with it, ever. He just wanted to remain free the rest of his life.
But life isn’t like that, is it?
Matt switched his Demon to external sensors. New overlays appeared in his POV. They showed the relative position and mass of the El Dorado, Esplandian, and four UNIDENTIFIED MASSES. But that was all it could show him. Just a wire-frame view, a positional sketch.
“I’m going to take a direct look,” Matt told the captain. Using the Demon, he cycled the locks manually and crept out onto the surface of El Dorado.
The lock was positioned facing Esplandian’s dock, which meant he wasn’t immediately visible from the position of the Last Rising ships. Matt shuffle-walked over the surface until he could poke his visor over the horizon.
Two ships were immediately visible, both partially armored asteroids with massive scaffolding for strength. Neither bore any sigils, flags, or insignias. Presumably there were also two warships on the opposite side of Esplandian.
Total overkill. One would be enough to crush the asteroid if they wanted to. Which meant they wanted to capture it.
A whip-thin line of white light flashed from one of the ships to Esplandian. Vaporized orange-red dust clouds fountained up from the surface. One of the tallest buildings rocked visibly, shedding sheets of concrete and steel. When the beam was gone, a large crater glowed dully next to the building.
We can take this down anytime, they were saying. Give up now.
“They’re getting insistent,” Gonsalves said over the comms.
“Are you powered up?”
“Yes!” Gonsalves’s voice firmed.
“What about your brother?”
“Probably hiding under a desk,” the captain said. “For now, I have your back. Esplandian’ll come online when the firing starts, Federico or no.”
Matt grinned. So the captain was the real captain, and the mayor was the figurehead when the captain was away on missions. Gonsalves was a leader of more than he ever let on.
Two more lines arced out from the Corsair ships, cutting figure eights around a pair of tall structures. The brilliant beam glanced one of the residential buildings, which flickered and went dark. Air jetted from the damaged sid
e in snow-white jets.
Matt’s anger went white-hot. Enough screwing around! It was time to teach those Corsairs a lesson.
“Do it!” Matt yelled, leaping off El Dorado and pulling his Zap Gun in one smooth motion.
Matt pushed his thrusters to full, targeting the nearest Corsair Displacement Drive ship.
Fire, he thought.
The Zap Gun exploded with energy, erasing his view of the ship ahead. A wire-frame diagram showed deep hits on the scaffolding and armor. Matt kept shooting through the intense light, targeting the ship’s docks.
ANTIMATTER WEAPON TARGETING, his POV screamed.
Matt reversed thrusters and shot back beneath the bulk of Esplandian. On the other side of the asteroid, two more Displacement Drive ships drifted. Matt sighted down the barrel of the Zap Gun and squeezed the trigger as fast as it could recycle, laughing at the immense power shooting down his arm. Spaceship docks vaporized, scaffolding melted and ran like water, and deep gouges scarred the Displacement Drive ship’s armor.
This was it. He was invincible. He’d take them out all by—
ANTIMATTER WEAPON TARGETING. LOCKED, Matt’s Pov screamed, changing instantly from targeting to locked. Matt pushed his thrusters past redline, but it was too late. His world went completely white, and he roared in the electrifying pain.
RIGHT LEG FAULT. REGENERATING: 107 SECONDS.
Matt dove for the cover of Esplandian’s dock. As he popped out the other side, he had to smile. El Dorado’s heavy-matter guns were landing heavy impacts on two of the armored Displacement Drive ships. Armor dimpled and caved in as rock disappeared.
Esplandian’s own heavy-matter guns finally came online and pounded the armored Corsair ships. They actually heeled over from the impacts.
Bright threads lanced out from the Corsair Displacement Drive ships, hitting the El Dorado hard. Its unprotected rock melted to orange-red slag instantly as hot gas and vapor billowed up from the points of impact. Shiny new comms antennae and observation cameras sagged and disappeared in the blaze.
Matt went full-power toward the closest Displacement Drive ship. It swelled ahead of him as his POV screamed ANTIMATTER BEAM WEAPON TARGETING.
But Matt was too fast this time. He zagged unpredictably as he came closer, using all the g’s his side thrusters could give him. They never locked.
Matt fired his Zap Gun at point-blank range down the yawning mouth of a spaceship dock, grinning in delight as red-hot molten steel and stone exploded out its mouth in response. Matt kept firing deeper and deeper into the dock. Eventually he’d reach deep enough inside the ship to hit the Displacement Drive’s antimatter power supply, which would be its end.
Something moved in Matt’s POV. He turned to look. A swarm of bright, metallic objects shot at him from the other Displacement Drive ship.
Fighters, he thought. But they didn’t move like fighters. They moved sharp and fast. And the tags that hovered over the oncoming cloud didn’t say UNIDENTIFIED SPACECRAFT. They said UNIDENTIFIED MECHAFORM.
And for a moment he froze.
What was coming at him wasn’t a platoon. It was a swarm. A seething, hungry mass of Mecha, hundreds of them, in all shapes and sizes. Most of them were like the silver, segmented Mecha he’d seen on Keller and with the Cluster. The Loki. But Matt also glimpsed vaguely humanoid shapes, as well as wormlike and spiderlike forms. And they weren’t all silver. Some were dark and sleek, their reflective bodies and mathematically perfect curves recalling the design of a Hellion. Not quite a Hellion, though. Some were only three or four meters tall. Some were almost as big as a Demon. Some had multiple arms, legs, or wings.
Not just Mecha, but a whole plague of Mecha, Matt’s mind gibbered.
Only the Union has Mecha, a sardonic little voice retorted, smelling of dust, prickling like static.
Matt bit back manic laughter and moved. If those Mecha had the same system-scrambling algorithm he’d come up against on Keller, he was done. He didn’t have Michelle to Merge with. He didn’t have a team to lean on. It was just him.
Matt knew his only chance was to concentrate them in one area so he could take them out en masse. He forced his Mecha to redline speeds, shooting between the El Dorado and Esplandian. Glowing red craters pocked the surface of each rock.
“We’re getting hammered!” Captain Gonsalves cried through the comms. “Federico wants to surrender.”
“Do you?” Matt asked.
“Do we have a chance?”
“Maybe!”
“Maybe?” Gonsalves howled.
“Best I can do!” Matt yelled back.
The Corsair Mecha followed Matt down between Esplandian and El Dorado. For a moment it looked like a perfect setup. Matt flipped himself over to face his pursuers and aimed his Zap Gun.
That was when his rear POV lit with warnings.
More Mecha. Another swarm like the first. They’d already figured what he was going to do, and moved to hit him from the rear. He didn’t think he could take both groups out before he was engulfed. And he couldn’t get around them to target the armored Displacement Drive ships. He was stuck between two rocks and the Mecha swarms.
“What’s got more power? Esplandian or El Dorado?” Matt yelled at Captain Gonsalves.
“Esplandian has antimatter—”
That was all Matt needed to hear. He dove hard toward Esplandian, thrusters scorching and spitting molten biometal. The Mecha swarms followed.
It was a stupid idea, a desperate idea, but it was all he had. Matt hit the docks hard, instantly sprinting toward a control panel. Behind him, Mecha shot down from the star-studded sky. They hit the decking with hard clangs. Silver Lokis swarmed toward him, blindingly fast.
Matt reached a control panel. The closest of the Mecha swarm were only a hundred meters away. With one arm, he fired his Zap Gun at the horde, blasting Mecha instantly to incandescent gas. He thrust his other arm deep in the panel, thinking, Merge.
Matt focused his entire force of will on Esplandian. This was more than a Merge. This was his last hope. If he could reconfigure Esplandian’s systems to provide both raw power and processing capability, he had a tiny chance to win.
Matt’s mind expanded with Esplandian’s systems. Time seemed to slow as he became the semisentient processors beating at the core of the ancient asteroid.
Matt dove deeper, into the antimatter core of the asteroid. Huge power beat there, waiting to be unleashed. Matt closed circuits, forged new ones, and channeled the fury of the antimatter toward the surface, toward his Mecha.
But on the dock, his Zap Gun couldn’t vaporize all the Mecha; some were too fast, and some had zero-permeability coating. They pressed closer, even as he gunned more desperately. He had only moments before—
The first Loki impacted with Matt, almost knocking him away from the panel. Explosive images cascaded through his mind. His arms and legs jerked as if he’d touched a live wire. This Loki had the same system interrupter as the ones on Keller!
Merged with the semisentient processors of Esplandian, Matt realized what the system interrupter was. All he needed were the countercodes.
Matt caught a glimpse of mathematics, differential equations and probablisitic loops nested sixty levels deep. It was based on a pseudo-random spread-spectrum key. The other Mecha were immune because they could receive the key. Matt just had to tune in to the same transmission.
Paralyzing pain lanced through Matt’s chest. He screamed and beat at the raw rock of Esplandian. A single, javelin-sharp arm of a giant spider Mecha stuck deep into his chest panel, pinning him to the rock. He was lucky it hadn’t hit the pilot’s chamber.
Matt struggled through the pain and pushed the Loki off him. A new warning lit in his POV.
ANTIMATTER WEAPON LOCKED.
Matt glanced up. One of the armored Displ
acement Drive ships had repositioned itself to get a clear bead on him.
He hadn’t won. He’d lost. Everything. Again.
Just like that day on Prospect.
12
GHOST
Matt snapped awake, weightless and shivering. The shattering pain of Mesh withdrawal thundered through his head as he winced against the dim light.
He floated near the center of a small stainless steel cell. Tiny blue pin lights in one wall provided a chill glow, while the impassive eye of a camera lens reflected his every move like a fun-house mirror.
The door was a faint round line, with a three-centimeter-tall slot set into the middle of it. The slot gave Matt a view of a long, dark corridor, lined with many more of the slotted round doors.
Matt’s interface suit was gone. All he wore was a thin, bright red jumpsuit.
Captured, Matt thought. This was a Corsair brig. A Last Rising brig.
But that made no sense. He should be dead. There was no reason to keep him alive.
Unless they needed a pilot for the Demon.
Was his Demon still intact? Matt searched his aching memories for an answer, but his Perfect Record couldn’t reach beyond the moment he was hit dead-on with antimatter.
Matt’s breath quickened and his heart beat faster at the thought of his Demon being destroyed. How deep did his addiction go? Were there more stages to withdrawal? Could he die from it?
You should be asking yourself, “What happens if they have your Demon intact, and expect you to pilot it for them?” a little voice whispered to Matt.
Matt shivered. That was the real question. Would he fight for them, as he’d fought for Esplandian?
Could he flip sides again?
Can you afford not to?
Matt sighed and searched the surface of his tiny cell one more time, but it was as featureless as it looked. The only way out was through the circular door.
Matt sighed and turned to address the camera. “Okay, I’m awake.” His voice echoed hollowly in the metallic space.