Mecha Rogue (2 page)

Too late. The first of the Sidewinders hit the ships. Actinic light burned Matt's retinas as the big freighters rocked. Corsair crew bailed out of the ships as they crumpled inward and collapsed.

That was way too easy, Matt thought. The Corsairs were as weak as they looked. Sending Demons against them was like using a nuke to kill a spider.

Michelle's Demon gestured frantically at the mine entrance, a hangar-style door set into the side of gray-brown cliffs. The name
PLACERVILLE
was laser-cut into the cliff face to the right of the door.

The door was slowly closing.

“Shit,” Soto cursed, diving toward the mine entrance. Matt and Michelle followed, zooming in sideways as the door slammed shut.

* * *

Matt, Michelle, and Soto landed just inside the door, Demon Mecha transforming seamlessly back into their basic humanoid form.

They stood in a vast, warehouselike space. Union shuttles and ancient Shark-class fighters stood to one side of the cavern, while stacked crates of refined metals and supplies towered on the other. Sunlight streamed down on them from dusty skylights cut through the stone ceiling.

Ahead, Placerville's living areas stretched on either side of a boulevard for more than a kilometer. Functional aluminum-and-glass apartments sat shoulder to shoulder with buildings constructed of native stone. Skinny trees grew in a row down the middle of the boulevard, each carefully placed to get the maximum amount of light from the skylights.

Matt turned on his Demon's Sensory Amplification. The city was quiet, seemingly deserted.

“Enable Fireflies, antipersonnel mode only,” Major Soto told them.

“Major, what was that out there?” Matt asked. “Uh, sir.”

Soto didn't answer for a long time. After a while, he said, “We can discuss that later, Captain.”

“Were the citizens helping the Corsairs?” Why would anyone help a Corsair?

“Proceed forward,” Ivers's voice boomed, cutting Matt off. “Escalate weapons to Sidewinders or Fusion Handshake if necessary. Do not, repeat, do not, use Zap Gun. It may destabilize the mine.”

Matt, Michelle, and Soto proceeded cautiously through the city toward a dark opening tagged
MINE ENTRANCE
. Heat signatures showed citizens watching them through windows as they passed, but nobody challenged them.

The three rode a massive platform down into the mine. Rough-hewn rock walls, pockmarked by inset lights and ribbed with scaffolding, passed swiftly by as they descended. The outside temperature reading dropped, then leveled off and began to rise.

“Out here on the frontier, Corsairs aren't as black-and-white as you'd expect,” Soto grumbled in grudging response to Matt's earlier question. “But that doesn't change anything. This isn't any different than Rayder and Geos. We're here to knock them down hard.”

Matt didn't respond, feeling his anger rise at the mention of Rayder and Geos. Five million dead. The biggest Corsair assault ever on the Union.

They continued to descend in silence. One thousand meters, two thousand, five thousand. The faint sounds of metal on rock came through the Mecha's enhanced senses. It seemed that even with the attack, the work in the mine went on.

When they reached the bottom, dust billowed ahead of them, coming from a new, jagged shaft that descended at a sharp angle even deeper into the planet. Matt's viewmask tagged the rest of the mine as
UNOCCUPIED
. Only the newly hewn shaft reverberated with the desperate grinding of steel through bedrock.

Was it the Corsairs who were digging? Matt wondered. If so, digging for what?

“Forward,” Soto said, descending into the shaft. Only a single climbing scaffold had been hastily welded in place; they were working fast and desperately.

Matt and Michelle followed. The clank of machinery swelled to a cacophonous symphony, hidden in the all-encompassing dust.

As they reached the bottom, shapes resolved. Giant mining machines, fronted by immense rasps, ground the shaft ever deeper, while men in battered PowerSuits cleared away the mounting piles of rubble.

Matt's viewmask tagged the workers as both
KELLER CITIZEN
and
INFERRED CORSAIR
. But they worked together seamlessly, again without guards or guns. There was no doubt now. The people in Placerville were actually helping these Corsairs.

Matt clenched his fists, fighting down the urge to fire every single one of his Fireflies and wipe them all out.

Finally the men in PowerSuits noticed them. One by one, heads rose, their dirty faces peering up at the hulking Demons above them. In his Demon's augmented senses, Matt saw frustration, anger, and fear—not even a tiny bit of relief.

“But we're Mecha Corps,” Matt whispered. “We're here to help you.”

“Captain—” Major Soto began. But before he could get any further, something struck him and took him down to the ground with a reverberating boom. Soto yelled in pain.

Crouched on top of Major Soto's Demon was a Mecha unlike any Matt had ever seen. Smaller than a Hellion and dull silver, with overlapping metallic scales covering a thin, whiplike body and long, multijointed arms and legs. Next to a Demon, it was a frail thing. How had it toppled the major? The giant red Demon spasmed and shook, but Soto wasn't trying to get up.

Michelle launched a small burst of Fireflies. They knocked the silver Mecha off its perch, and Soto started to get back on his feet.

The silver Mecha came back at them, blurring fast. Michelle moved forward to grapple with it.

“Don't let it touch you!” Soto hissed.

Too late. The silver Mecha impacted with Michelle, and she went down, groaning in pain. Like Soto, she made no move to get up.

“Michelle!” Matt cried.

“Get back!” she hissed. “Pain—it's got—pain!”

Matt ignored her. All he wanted to do was rip that spindly scaled Mecha apart. He ran at it, grabbed the thing with his Mecha arms, and prepared a Fusion Handshake to take it out for good.

Matt's world exploded in a burst of agony. Every muscle in his Mecha spasmed as pain arced through Matt like an electric shock. He collapsed against Michelle's Mecha hard, his visor banging on her chest plate.

Matt thrashed and tried to move, but he had almost no control over his Demon. The silver Mecha was doing something to his Mecha's systems! Boring deeper into its code, screaming feedback through every nerve of his interface suit. It had to be some kind of neural interrupter, bent on total domination of his Mecha. The feel of the Demon's own mind, the familiar prickle of dust and static, ramped upward as the multifaceted eyes of the silver Mecha peered down at him.

“Situation report!” Ivers barked.

“Down, sir,” Soto grated.

“I see that! Why?”

Soto's Demon gave a mighty push, but it wasn't able to get to its feet. The small Mecha held the giant Demon down effortlessly. Soto was in the grip of the same pain as Michelle and Matt.

Matt tried to aim his Fireflies at the silver Mecha, but his Demon didn't respond to his request. There was nothing in the system but reverberating pain. It was his entire world.

Can't . . . use weapons . . . either.
Michelle's thoughts came to him through contact with her Demon, amplified by the Mecha's neural interface.

Merge,
he thought.
Two minds are better than one.

The two Demons flowed together like drops of molten metal. Matt was dimly aware of the pilot's chamber re-forming to accommodate the two of them. He reached out and touched Michelle, feeling the smooth surface of her interface suit. The beating pain of the silver Mecha fell away, just a little.

The configuration diagram in Matt's viewmask showed the two Demons had become a completely new form, something almost wasplike. Matt grinned. He and Michelle did make a great team.

Matt didn't hesitate. He threw the Demon's body against the raw rock walls, knocking the silver Mecha off its perch. The stuttering pain left Matt/Michelle. They grabbed the silver Mecha before it could react, pinning it with sharp pincers.

Fusion Handshake,
Matt/Michelle ordered. Blue power rammed down his arm, and the silver Mecha exploded in a hundred shards.

Matt/Michelle went for the remaining silver Mecha on top of Soto. It turned and leapt at them, but Matt/Michelle loosed a volley of Fireflies, driving it back into Soto's own Fusion Handshake. The boom of actinic power shook dust from the rough tunnels, and rocks pattered down on the Mecha.

Sudden silence fell over the mine. Matt/Michelle and Soto turned to face the diggers, who'd powered down the mining machines. Keller citizens and Corsairs alike stepped away from their machines, raising their hands in the universal sign of surrender.

“What?” Matt asked. They were just giving up now? That wasn't how Corsairs acted.

Helping Corsairs wasn't how the Union acted. Who could side with them?

“Placerville Mine secure, sir,” Soto told Ivers.

“I see. Round them up, pull the mining gear out, and collapse the shaft they created.”

“Collapse the shaft? Sir?”

“Are you questioning my orders, Major?”

“No, sir.” But Soto's Demon stood tense, uneasy.

When they were back up top, Soto's Demon clapped Matt on the back. “Good thinking,” he told Matt. “That Merge saved our asses.”

“It was all of us,” Matt said, beaming with pride. “Sir.”

But through his happiness, doubts ate at Matt. Why had Union citizens been helping Corsairs? What were they digging for? Why had they gone in so hot, when this job was so easy? Was the Union trying to hide something?

And just how much more powerful were the Corsairs, now that they had their own Mecha?

2

CAPITOL

Matt didn't have time to stew on his questions. Less than twenty hours after their arrival at Keller, the UUS
Helios
Displaced for Eridani, the first planet in the Union and capital of the largest interstellar governmental organization of humankind. The official line was that the Mecha pilots were being shuttled to another stop on their scheduled R&R rotation.

But it felt undeserved. Yes, they'd destroyed the Corsair Mecha and the transports, and yes, Peal and his Hellion platoon had confirmed no Corsair presence in the other major mine cities. But that was it. They'd wasted far too much firepower on a tiny little job. Sure, it was a surprise that the Corsairs had Mecha, but they were weak and pathetic, except for the “corrosive system meme”—Peal's words—that disrupted the Demon's systems.

Why was the Union acting as if they had to pay them hush money?

“The heroes' reward,” Major Guiliano Soto said, sardonically, as he lounged with Matt and Michelle in a first-class cabin on the Eridani Space Elevator Transport. The curved room was a slice of a toroid-shaped passenger cabin riding a meter-wide ribbon of carbon nanotubes from orbit down to Eridani. Floor-to-ceiling windows showed the gentle curve of Eridani's surface, wrapped in a thick blue atmosphere and striped with bright white clouds. Eridani's oceans covered almost eighty percent of the planet, and their deep teal depths reflected sheets of brilliant sunlight.

As they fell toward the planet in the elevator, there was no vibration, no sensation of motion. Only a high, thin whistle of atmosphere confirmed what the room's status screen showed: they were descending toward Eridani at almost five hundred kilometers an hour. The eight-hundred-kilometer drop would take less than ninety minutes.

“Such luxury. They're showing off for us,” Matt said.

“Why shouldn't they? And why shouldn't we enjoy it?” Michelle asked, leaning over to look out the curved window at the ground. “We are the saviors of the Union, after all.”

“That pathetic fight on Keller?” Soto said.

“Not that.”

Soto frowned and nodded. He knew exactly what she was talking about. They'd killed Rayder together.

Matt sighed. HuMax. Genetically engineered superpersons who had almost destroyed the Union over a century ago. They were supposed to have been all wiped out in the Human/HuMax wars of almost a century past. But Rayder had somehow survived. And much of his crew was HuMax. It was entirely possible there were even more of them out there, hiding past the edge of the Union.

Michelle grabbed Matt's sleeve and pointed down at Eridani's surface. “You can see Newhome now. Come look!”

Matt shook his head. He was wiped out. His head beat like a drum, and his stomach still churned from Mesh hangover, the unavoidable effect of using a biomechanical Mecha. They were all suffering from it. Demons were the worst for Mesh hangover. It was amazing they weren't flat on their backs in bed.

At the same time, a constant chant repeated in his mind:
Get back into that Mecha. Mesh, and you'll feel fine. Mesh is the best thing in all the worlds!

“We're above the Union capital, and you don't even want to look?” Michelle looked at him incredulously. Even though she also had the well-used look of a Mecha pilot coming down from Mesh, her eyes sparkled.

“A planet's a planet,” Matt mumbled.

Michelle frowned and crossed her arms, turning away from him. “No, it's not. If each planet wasn't special in its own way, we wouldn't fight in Mecha to protect them. If a planet was a planet, we wouldn't have created Mecha at all! We would've just kept lobbing atomic weapons at each other until they were all dust!”

Righteously angry like that, she was even more beautiful than usual. The curve of her cheek was backlit by the teal-tinged reflected Eridani sunlight, and her face was lit like a halo. Her utilitarian blue Mecha Corps uniform didn't hide her generous curves. Matt remembered the first day he saw her, the lone Union Army recruit at Mecha Training Camp. Beautiful and deadly. If she hadn't known what she was doing, he might not have made it through the first mock battle.

And . . . she was right. Planets truly suited for human life were incredibly rare. Uninhabitable rocks or borderline wastelands like Keller were the norm. Eridani was special, one of four worlds in the entire Union that were truly Earthlike.

You should be making nice, not pissing her off,
Matt thought. Michelle was amazing, the kind of woman you could spend your whole life with. And she was a Mecha pilot. How could it get any better?

But when Matt tried to imagine a future with her, his vision blurred. Things wouldn't resolve. There always seemed to be something between them. First Cadet Kyle Peterov. Then Rayder.

No excuses now,
he told himself.

“I'm sorry,” Matt told her. “It's just that—”

“It's just that you're an asshole,” Michelle said, with real heat. She didn't turn around.

Matt felt a red-hot stab of anger, and he clenched his fists. He had to grit his teeth to keep from biting off a sharp comment. More Mesh hangover. It tweaked your emotions. Had to keep that in mind.

Soto went to the window to look down with Michelle. He held a small snifter of some golden liquid he'd gotten from the bar. Matt's gorge rose. How could he drink now?

But Soto was always like that. Soto didn't waver. Soto was tough, gristly, made of muscle and determination. Even in his forties, he was a pinnacle of fitness. Washboard abs showed even under his Mecha Corps uniform. Bulging biceps strained the limit of the fabric. Matt could see Michelle easily going for someone like him, even though he was twice their age.

Would that happen? On Eridani? They were supposed to be going to some Mecha Corps retreat overlooking Newhome Basin. And if not Soto, what about the other Corps who were undoubtedly there?

Always something in the way.

Matt sighed and looked down at the swelling city. It was late in the afternoon, and shadows stretched long from Newhome's concentric rings of brilliant chrome-glass and white-stone buildings. The Capitol Plaza was a hilly green park at the very center of Newhome, ringed by wide canals and dotted with neoclassical buildings housing the Universal Union Congress, its High Court, the Union's most important monuments, and the Prime Residence. It looked far too perfect and regular to be real.

Sudden vertigo made Matt sway, but he forced himself to stay there and look down.

“You're right,” he told Michelle.

Michelle said nothing. Her expression, visible in the reflection from the window, remained set and hard. After a time, though, her lips twitched into a smile.

“Yes,” she said. “I am.”

The trio watched the rest of the way in silence as the space elevator hurtled down toward Newhome.

* * *

A whisper-quiet electric shuttle took the Corps to a resort that sprawled atop a hill overlooking Newhome. In the gathering twilight, the city was a vision in porcelain white and green glass, towers soaring gracefully as they approached spires soaring nearly a kilometer high. At one edge of the city, Atlantis, Eridani's largest ocean, fed canals that snaked through the outermost concentric rings of Newhome, glowing a pale teal from artificial light. Small personal watercraft and larger yachts peppered the canals, lit with pinpricks of brilliant white light. Low, purple-tinted clouds stood in banks off the edge of the shoreline, as if politely waiting for nightfall to move in. Above the clouds, the first stars had begun to speckle the sky, and two of Eridani's five moons were visible as tiny crescents.

“It's beautiful,” Michelle said.

The resort itself was a collection of low, post-and-beam buildings of raw native wood and glass. A single stone slab outside read
MECHA CORPS 1: SHANGRI-LA.

“Not subtle, are they?” Soto asked, nodding at the sign.

It's not a heroes' reward,
Matt told himself.
It's a bribe. Forget your questions, here in the lap of luxury. Do your job, and you can live like this for a time.
They technically had an entire week off. Matt had no idea what he would do.

Inside, graceful, sculpted furniture and abstract art were the order of the day. The lobby looked out over carefully pruned grounds of Eridani's native, spiky, purple-tinged foliage, with a lighted turquoise pool the size of a small lake, dim-lit gazebos perfect for a romantic tryst, and an open-air bar at the edge of the hill overlooking Newhome.

On the grounds, figures moved here and there, dressed in comfortable, casual clothes. But the way they moved—the furtiveness, the caution—told Matt they were Mecha Corps like themselves, or high-ranking Union military.

An otherworldly beautiful receptionist greeted the trio and called a pair of friends to show them to their rooms. Matt looked disappointedly as Michelle and Soto were escorted away down separate wood-paneled halls, and he was directed down yet another. He'd hoped to have a room closer to hers.

At his door, Matt's host pressed a wood-and-aluminum access card into his hand, and invited him to call her personal number there for anything. She was a slim, blond-haired woman with sky-blue eyes, attractive in a mathematically perfect way. Matt was too tired to play to her act. All he wanted to do was sleep. He thanked her absently, and she gave him an understanding smile in return.

His room was huge, at least a hundred square meters in size. On one side, a wall of glass framed Newhome like a photo. Another wall of pale wood unfolded into a full bar, and an inset wallscreen showed neutral scenes of Eridani nature. The bed was so large that eight people could comfortably sleep in it, and the bathroom alone was larger than any quarters Matt had ever been assigned.

“Definitely a bribe,” he said to himself. But at the moment, it didn't matter. The bed was perfect, like falling into a cloud.

* * *

Matt woke the next day to his Perfect Record. His father's gift, and his curse—the ability to seamlessly recall every single moment of his life.

In his memory, Matt was grappling with Rayder on Jotunheim, the lost planet of the HuMax. Rayder held Matt's Mecha in an agonizing grip, dangling Matt over the edge of a chasm cut into the planet's burning core.
“Who made the HuMax?”
Rayder asked, his violet and yellow eyes burning with superhuman passion.
“None other than your precious Union.”

The Union hiding evidence of HuMax survival was one thing, but the Union creating HuMax? He couldn't believe it. The Union was formed as a response to HuMax aggression. The Union had saved humanity. Everyone knew that.

Just a trick to save himself, Matt thought. And it still didn't work. In his moment of triumph, Rayder had let his guard down. Matt Merged with Rayder's Mecha and toppled his adversary over the edge, ending the Corsair's dreams of Union domination. And avenging his father's death.

The memory should have been a happy one, but Matt sat up in the too-soft bed, shaking with angst. All that time chasing Rayder, intent on ending his life. That had given him clarity and purpose. Rayder's death had cast his whole future into disarray.

It was nearly noon by the time Matt made it to Pleasure Dome Restaurant. It was raised one story above Mecha Corps' Shangri-La, with a panoramic view from the gray-green sea to the broad, undeveloped valleys to the west of Newhome. Fluffy cirrus clouds cut broad swaths in the deep blue sky, making the whole scene look like an overly retouched image.

Around him, couples and small groups sat at tables and talked in low, polite tones. Matt was terrified. This was the kind of place he'd only read about. Where you had to have manners. Where there were protocols and pleasantries. He had no idea how to behave. He'd never been to a place like this before.

He picked up a leather-bound book and scanned a menu printed on real paper. He didn't know what most of the dishes were. What the hell was a club Reuben? Or steak Tataki? The brief descriptions below the menu items were flowery and vague. Coming from Union Insta-Pak rations and “what we got is what you eat” in his refugee days, it was overwhelming.

The pounding in his skull swelled to a new crescendo. Matt gripped his head, willing the Mesh hangover a swift exit. He didn't belong here.

A waitress came to take his order. Another pretty girl. This one less otherworldly, with close-cropped black hair and a single silver earring, in Eridani's sunburst crest.

“Coming down off Mecha high?” she asked, giving Matt a friendly smile. They were probably paid to be friendly, Matt thought.

“Mesh hangover,” he said.

“Is that what they call it now?” she asked. “We have some local herbal tonics that help ease the pain.”

“You're a Mecha pilot?”

The woman's eyes skittered away. “No.”

Then how would you know if they worked?
Matt wondered. But he didn't need to bite her head off. She was just doing her job. He let her talk him into an evil-tasting glass of bile-colored liquid, and sat sipping the awful stuff. He looked in vain for Michelle and Soto, but they never entered the lounge.

What he did see were other people, looking at him. At several tables, heads nodded in his direction, making their companions take quick glances at him. Some of them were assessing. Some of them were scared.

Matt caught fragments of conversation: “Mecha star.” “Big shot.” “Show-off.” They were talking about him. Despite the Union and the Corps' careful communications, word had gotten out about him—the first Demonrider.

After lunch, Matt made himself explore the resort. It was beautiful, in that parklike way that overly designed spaces have. It reminded him a little of Aurora, the planet where he had gone to school.

Matt ignored yelled invitations to join a half dozen others in the lake-sized pool, and walked quickly past the bar, where only the most hard-core drinkers sat in the middle of the day.