Unexpected Contact: A Mechhaven Novella
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“More and more I’m stuck here on Frangellan-7 and can’t see the things I need to see. Both of you will be my eyes and ears in the field. TH3R, now that your therapy has ended, I need you to concentrate your full attention on perfecting the nano-particle techniques for locating SPDR mechs. Then I need you to share this with our security personnel at our most important installations. We need to keep this a secret for as long as possible, so you’ll need to do this in-person. Keep any electronic communication to a minimum and as generic as possible. Understood?”
“Yes, General Dirksen. Do you have any locations you’d like me to focus on first? Or shall I use our standard priority list?”
“The SPDR mechs have us jumping at shadows and looking over our shoulders. I’m getting paranoid. We can’t rule out that SPDR mechs won’t have figured out our priority list. Make a random selection from our list, but keep the new list in your memory matrix and nowhere else.”
“What would you have me working on?” Tala asked.
“Meetings and training,” General Dirksen said.
“More meetings and training?” Tala folded her arms.
“Now that you’re an officer, I can keep you closer to me and I can get you into more meetings. I need you to absorb everything you hear. When you’re not in meetings, you need to be training. I need you and TH3R to step into any situation and take care of business. And I won’t always be able to get Sigrid to back you up.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
General Dirksen brushed a stray lock of gray hair from her face. “Oh, one other thing. News of your run in with Fourth Lieutenant Treyvin came to my attention.”
TH3R and Tala looked at each other. “Sorry about that, ma’am.”
“Why are you sorry? You didn’t do anything wrong. The man was drunk, acted like an idiot, and to top it all off, he’s a bigot. As for how he got through our screening process, I don’t know.”
“What happened to him? Did you kick him out of the service?” Tala asked.
“As much as I would have liked to, with the war going on we can’t throw away any asset. His commander sent him to an intensive remedial training program. It won’t be short and it won’t be fun. If he can pass that program with the approval of the training staff, then he’ll have a nice assignment waiting for him on the moon of Zhander.”
“Isn’t that moon a military prison?” TH3R asked.
“Exactly.” General Dirksen folded her hands together and smiled.
TH3R prepared for his departure to the most secure bases of the AOIS and the TexaNova. It was his last day in the office for what could be several months, maybe even a year. Tala was attending an advance hand-to-hand combat seminar, so he’d catch up with her later and bid his farewell to her then. There were so many fresh faces in the General’s command staff that it made him long for the good old days before the bombardment. The faces were fresh, but they weren’t unfamiliar. He’d aided General Dirksen in recruiting and vetting each one. They were all competent and more important, loyal to the General. He wouldn’t need to worry about her while he was away. Tala, along with Sergeants Doone and Worth, would monitor the staff as well. General Dirksen wasn’t one to suffer fools either, but she had so much on her mind, someone always had to watch her back. The four survivors of the Battle of Frangellan-7 had an unspoken pact to make sure that was always the case.
TH3R’s communicator buzzed. It was a summons to the General’s office. He stood and straightened his uniform. He was glad to have two functional arms again and happy that he no longer had to bother Tala for help. General Dirksen had been in a good mood for the last several days. Once he’d solidified his plans for scaling up the deployment of the nano-particle detection system, she’d relaxed a bit. It was only a matter of time before some crisis or another ruined that good mood and put her on edge again. He’d be gone and unable to assist.
“Do you have any updates on M3CH-VN?” General Dirksen asked.
TH3R had almost forgotten about that, with all the other planning that he’d been doing. “Yes, General. The most recent report came in just a few days ago.”
When TH3R didn’t add any further information, General Dirksen asked, “Well, what did they have to say?”
He paused for a moment, accessed the report in his memory matrix, and processed the information much quicker than a human could. “The Astronomical Survey Society has sent a team of explorers to M3CH-VN. They’ve made landfall, and from all accounts, everything appears to be a routine expedition.”
“That’s good to hear,” General Dirksen said. “While you're away, in your spare time, please begin working on plans for how this Mechhaven of ours will work.”
The hot steam from the geo-thermal pool wafted into Sigrid’s face. She slid deeper into the therapeutic waters and sipped from a long straw. Her beverage of choice while soaking was a blended Hondaran Sunset. The blue, green, and yellow, multi-layered, chilled drink was one of her favorites. Enjoying the drink was almost as therapeutic as the mineral enhanced waters. It had been far too long since she’d treated herself to a nice drink and a geo-thermal soak. She was also getting used to her short hair. It was growing on her, so to speak, and it was a nice change of pace. Maybe she’d keep it that way for a while.
She spent a long time contemplating her hair, her last job, and what to do next. She still had some pretty good cuts and bruises from the fight with the SPDR mechs and the syrampa. That was something she hoped she wouldn’t have to do again soon — or ever. She hadn’t seen her family in a long time. It would be nice to see them again, but her chosen profession made that complicated. There’d be plenty of time to think about that over the next few days, so she was in no rush to come to a quick decision. She thought maybe she should review her rules. She hadn’t been following many of them lately. Perhaps it was time to rethink them.
Her communicator vibrated on the edge of the pool. Sigrid snatched it before it bounced its way into the hot water. The communicator was waterproof, so she wasn’t worried about that. No, she had no desire to waste even a single drop of her Hondaran Sunset. She should have ignored the call, but the only people who had that number were people who hired her for jobs, and they paid well. Very well.
“Hello?”
“Yes, this is she.”
“You want me where? How soon?” Sigrid did some mental math, calculating how long it would take for her to get to the location the caller identified. “I don’t know. That’s a bit far and not a lot of time to get there.”
Sigrid listened to the voice on the other end of the line. She shook her head and said, “I’m sorry, can you repeat that?”
She listened as the voice repeated their previous statement. “Thank you. Yes, that’s what I thought you said.”
Sigrid recalculated based on the new payment her client offered, minus the expense of getting to where she needed to be at the proper time. In the end, it would be profitable. Very profitable. “Oh, no. There’s no problem. I’ll be there.”
She terminated the connection on her communicator. Her new rule would be that a solid payday supersedes all other rules. Yes, that sounded about right.
Next Steps
If you enjoyed Unexpected Contact…
Order PAX MACHINA (Mechhaven Book 1) available on Amazon.
Pre-Order MECHS AND MACHINATIONS (Mechhaven Book 2) coming to Amazon on October 25, 2021.
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Acknowledgments
The cover you see on this book was the first cover I ever bought as an author. It was created by J Caleb Design and put on sale as a pre-made. Many cover artists create pre-made covers and put them on sale for very reasonable prices for authors starting out who can’t yet afford custom covers. When I saw the preview image a few days before it went on sale, I kne
w I had to have it.
I knew Sigrid was going to be a character in PAX MACHINA and would play a role in other stories. She intrigued me enough that I knew she’d eventually get her own story. After I finished Duel of Destiny, the first Mechhaven novella, and started thinking about what would come next, I wondered how I could connect a story with the mercenary Sigrid, and the relatively strait-laced TH3R and Tala. The result is what you read in Unexpected Contact. So I’d like to thank Jake Caleb for helping spark my imagination for this story.
As always, I want to thank my wife, Leilani, and my sons, Ethan and Logan, who patiently let me bounce ideas off of them at any random time.
Thank you to my Beta Readers, my wife Leilani, my sister Kristen, and friend Eric.
Finally, thank you to my editor, Steven Moore, for helping me polish everything up.
About the Author
Greg Sorber is a lifelong fan of science fiction, fantasy, and comic books. Some of his earliest memories are of Land of the Lost, Logan’s Run, and Lost in Space. Seeing Star Wars in the theater for the first time in 1977 was a life-changing experience. An avid reader from an early age, Greg always loved books that engaged his imagination. It was reading The Hobbit in 7th grade and writing a short story that same year that set him down the path of becoming a writer. Greg lives in Riverside, California with his family and two dogs, Orson a beagle, and Olivia a schnauzer mix.
Unexpected Contact
First published by Gregeration X Entertainment in 2021
Copyright © 2021 by Greg Sorber
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
Cover by J Caleb Design