Mecha Rogue (17 page)

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 Displacement 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.

The camera's opalescent glass lens didn't even twitch. But somehow, somewhere, Matt knew he was being watched. He had to be. They wanted him for something.

“What do you want?” Matt asked.

Still no response. Matt's cell was almost deathly quiet. Even the hiss of the ventilators only echoed in from the corridors outside.

“Come on!” Matt said, and slapped the wall next to the camera.

But its glittering eye just stared back at him.

* * *

Many hours later, as Matt was drifting off to uneasy sleep, they came for him.

Matt heard them coming down the corridor outside long before they arrived. Ten fingers, four hands, two strong men slapping on the hollow aluminum railings outside. They didn't chatter as they came closer, and their handgrips were paced in a regular, metronomic pattern, as if they were machines programmed for a job rather than human beings.

Men acting like machines. Men become machines. The thought was sudden and certain.

How can I know this?
Matt wondered.

But he was sure of it. Since he had woken, his thoughts seemed to rush at light speed. He could take tiny fragments of data and correlate them with the experience stored in his Perfect Record to understand things in a flash.

Dr. Roth's words came back to Matt: enhanced inference to the point of precognition.

Was that what this was? Matt had never felt so clear. Every small sound spoke volumes. Even the lack of sound. The men outside didn't speak to each other at all. They didn't tell jokes, or talk about last night's game, or even complain about the job.

They weren't here just to do a job. They were controlled. Mind-controlled. And in a gut-churning instant, that reminded Matt of someone else from his past.

But that was impossible—

Shadows fell across the slit in his door. Matt flattened himself against the wall next to it. Maybe he could surprise them as they came though.

A small fish-eye lens poked through the slot in the door and turned to regard Matt.

“Prisoner away from the door,” a man's voice said, in a bored monotone.

Matt didn't move.

“Prisoner away from the door, or incapacitating spray will be used.”

Shit.
Matt pushed himself away and turned to face the circular orifice.

The door clanked open and folded outward. Two men peered in at him. Both wore tightly tailored dark gray shirts and pants, with no decoration other than a small silver bar on their chests. One man was dark-haired and slim; another had mousy, receding hair and an average build. Their eyes were odd—not HuMax, but simply notable by their lack of engagement. The men looked through Matt, rather than at him.

Mind control. Like with Kyle Peterov, the Mecha pilot captured by Rayder, the general in Shadows. The man Matt thought he had killed.

“Take me to your leader,” Matt said, suddenly sure who it must be.

* * *

He followed the human drones down corridors lined with cell doors. Not a sound came from within any of the cells, but dim shadows moved behind many of the grim slits.

Were these people from Esplandian?

What had happened to Captain Gonsalves? Ione?

Eventually they came to a longer hall, where sparse traffic moved along the handrails. Most of the Last Rising crew were clad in the same dark gray outfit as Matt's guards. Some wore a more decorated version, with two chest bars.

A few wore civilian clothes like Matt. Only the ones in civvies paid him any mind as he passed. A startling number of them had yellow-and-violet HuMax eyes.

A caste system where the more valuable members were under less mind control. Matt's mind raced. His future was clear. Accept or be forced to accept.

The men escorted him to a heavy steel pressure door marked
BRIDGE
. There were no door screens, no palm-print-based genetic access locks, just a camera eye like the one in his cell.

The two guards paused and waited. After a few moments, the door groaned as its locks were retracted, and it swung inward on a small, featureless chamber with another pressure door on its opposite side. A protective air lock.

Matt barked a laugh. “Can't be too careful, even with mind control.”

The two men didn't answer. Matt waited as the first door shut behind them and the other door cycled.

It opened to reveal a conventional bridge: nonphysical displays over multipurpose consoles, with people hunched over systems diagrams. All of the console wranglers wore a different uniform, sleek deep black with a single red stripe on their chest. Aluminum handrails ringed the displays and consoles. A single captain's chair rose above the level of the ship's functional controls. It was currently unoccupied.

Slit windows at the front of the bridge showed a star field and the glittering lights of Esplandian. The residential blocks appeared to be largely intact.

Matt sighed in relief. The giant asteroid hadn't been completely destroyed in the battle.

“Matt!” a familiar voice called. Matt turned to see Captain Hector Gonsalves entering the bridge from a small room off to one side.

“Hector?” Matt asked. The man looked exactly the same as he had when Matt last saw him. He still wore a casual gray suit. Not a single hair was out of place.

Gonsalves grinned at his reaction. “Yes, of course, who else would it be?”

Matt's heart skipped a beat. There was no way Gonsalves should be smiling. He was already under their control.

“Hector—but—what about Esplandian?”

Hector laughed. “It's all a big misunderstanding.”

“Misunderstanding?”

“Yes.”

“But they attacked your asteroid!”

Hector waved a hand, as if batting away a fly. “You have to keep an open mind.”

“And you chose to join them?”

“Of course.” Hector's expression was open and childlike. “You will too, once you understand what they're trying to accomplish. They're going to unify all the Corsairs. Exactly what you were beginning to talk about! Take on the Union.”

Matt only half heard Hector. “What about Ione?”

“The girl is fine,” said a new voice. “Except for the genetic rewrite your Union has inflicted upon her.”

Matt looked up to the source of the familiar voice. It was exactly what his accelerated Perfect Record had told him. Anger rose, twisting his guts and reddening his face.

“You should be dead,” Matt said.

* * *

It was Rayder.

Two meters of perfect HuMax, with dark, close-cropped hair and a chiseled face like something off a classical sculpture. He wore an all-black uniform devoid of any decoration, under a simple gauntlet of dark body armor. His belt held a small dagger and a Taikong P-06 pistol. His intelligent yellow-and-violet eyes fixed Matt with an unflinching stare.

The HuMax who had killed his father. The man whom Matt had cast into the molten core of Jotunheim.

“Dead?” Rayder said, smiling, amused. “More a ghost, soon to return to my old haunts.”

“I killed you.”

Rayder chuckled. “You forget the first rule of dueling: always ask to see the body.”

“I—how—” Matt stumbled over his words as his Perfect Record fed back a thousand painful images. The day Rayder struck Prospect, where Matt's father worked for Union Advanced Research Labs. Rayder accepting Matt's father's data slate, then killing him in cold blood. Matt's ill-fated charge in the powerloader.

Rayder's one chilling line, as he spared Matt's life:
“Bravery must have its reward.”

And those years, all those years, Matt had spent plotting to avenge his father's death. In the instant that Rayder spared him, he'd made Matt what he was. He'd twisted Matt into a machine, bent only on revenge. A broken machine once that revenge was accomplished.

But his father hadn't been avenged. Rayder still lived!

Rage spiked in Matt. He screamed and lunged at Rayder. His guards caught his arms and held him back.

Rayder didn't even flinch. If anything, his sardonic grin widened. “I expected a warmer welcome. You seem to have embraced the HuMax, if your companion is any indication.”

“Where is she?” Matt struggled against his captors, but they held him tight.

“Safe for now. That is, until the Union's genetic rewrite works its way through her system.”

“Cure her!”

Rayder laughed and came to sit at the edge of the captain's platform, as if he and Matt were having a friendly chat. “She's that important to you?”

“Yes!”

“You side with HuMax now? With Corsairs?”

“Yes!”

“Then it will be only a small step for you to join me.”

“I—” Matt began, then shut his mouth so hard his teeth clicked together. Join Rayder? How could he even think that?

“I know you're confused,” Rayder said, his voice almost kind. “But you'd be joining Captain Gonsalves, who voluntarily joined us, when we explained to him what we plan to do.”

“Rayder's going to unify the Corsairs,” Captain Gonsalves told Matt. “If we're unified, we're the balance to the Union.”

“You're mind-controlled,” Matt cried.

Captain Gonsalves chuckled, as if amused by the suggestion. “Of course not!”

“Why don't you just mind-control me?” Matt asked Rayder.

Rayder looked away briefly. “Programming is for lower-level functions. I want your willing cooperation.”

But something in his tone wasn't right. Matt's accelerated thoughts matched his tones to ten thousand individual memories in an instant. Rayder was lying.

Maybe he's already tried,
Matt thought.
Or at least tried as much as he trusts. He doesn't want to spoil you.

Yes. That headache wasn't just Mecha hangover. It was Rayder's programming as well. Whatever was behind Matt's Perfect Record might have given him some immunity to Rayder's mind control. It might even have triggered his ability to infer and understand at a glance.

“I don't believe you,” Matt said. Best to play the game. Get more info. Compute the probabilities.

A momentary flash of anger passed through Rayder's eyes. “Why not? You are the only person ever to fight me to a draw. You have extreme innate talents, especially with respect to Mecha.”

Matt frowned. “You have your own Mecha now.”

A nod. “We've taken Dr. Roth's work much further than he anticipated.”

“You or the Cluster?” Matt asked. They had the same Mecha on Tierrasanta.

Rayder shook his head. “The Cluster are good for only one thing: intelligence. Our people there helped determine your whereabouts.”

“They work for you?”

“They work for me, whether they know it or not,” Rayder said, sounding bored. “My informants exist throughout every Corsair faction, and our strength grows in the Taikong and Aliancia domains. My unification is unavoidable.”

“Keller. That was you.”

Rayder nodded. “By proxy, yes.”

Matt's racing mind laid it all bare. Rayder's programmed minions existed throughout the Corsair factions, an invisible network of power. Eventually they would rise, as one, and change the face of the universe.

“Is joining me so different than the changes you have already undergone?” Rayder asked. “You've turned your back on your Union. You've embraced HuMax as human. This is simply the next logical step.”

It all sounded so reasonable. So compelling.

“You killed my father,” Matt told Rayder.

“And you yourself have made no mistakes?” Rayder asked.

People did make mistakes. Matt made tons of them. And what happened in the past shouldn't define the future.

But it was also completely wrong.

Joining Rayder wasn't the same as joining Captain Gonsalves. It was like joining the Union again. The Union held HuMax against their will and did terrible experiments on them. They had no choice in the matter.

Rayder was the same way. His programmed masses didn't choose to be that way. There was no way Gonsalves chose mind control, and Matt didn't believe that any rational being had ever chosen to have their will controlled by another person.