Mecha Corps (11 page)

“What’s Mesh?” Ash asked.

Soto’s mouth twitched and his eyes darted sideways, as if he were uncomfortable with the question. “It’s the connection between you and the Mecha. No Mesh, no Mecha Corps.”

Soto nodded at Sergeant Stoll. Mecha unfolded like gargantuan metallic flowers, and cadet candidates climbed inside. Soto went to each in turn, explaining how to connect their interface suits. Cadets fumbled with silicone cables and, one by one, the Mecha folded up again.

Nothing happened for a long time. Sergeant Stoll watched the slate intently. Matt caught a glimpse of a slice-’n’-dice video feed of the five cadets.

One of the Mecha suddenly moved. It took one wavering, uncertain step backward, swaying like a drunk. Some of the cadets laughed nervously, but Major Soto paid no attention to them. He seemed unconcerned about the Mecha toppling, but his jaw was still set, hard and grim.

What’s he afraid of?
Matt wondered.

The Mecha that Michelle had chosen stood and took several jerky steps forward, then stopped and opened and closed its hands, as if testing their function. Another darted forward and fell to its knees with a great metallic clang. Serghey’s Mecha wrapped its long, skeletal fingers around its head and rocked back and forth. Ash’s Mecha raised and lowered its legs smoothly, then did a juddering sprint around the rest. Matt laughed. She literally ran a circle around them.

Michelle watched Ash complete her circle, then took off in pursuit. The two Mecha headed down the blacktop field at a shambling run. Ash reached the edge of the field first, where the blacktop gave way to grass and concrete of a simulated town.

Soto told Sergeant Stoll, “That’s enough. They don’t have enough control yet.” Stoll spoke to her slate, and Ash and Michelle started back to rejoin the group.

Serghey’s Mecha started screaming. A high-pitched, ululating sound, half-animal, half-metallic. It ricocheted throughout the facility like a banshee howl. Serghey’s Hellion clawed at its head, as if it wanted to rip it off.

Major Soto grabbed the slate from Stoll’s hands. “Don’t fight it!” he yelled at the device, trying to be heard over the rising squeal of agony. “Hit the release! Now!”

The Mecha’s scream rose up and up, echoing from the one side of the giant city cavern to another.

“Think
emergency release
!” Soto’s face was red and panicked. “Hit the physical switch!”

Sudden silence.

The Mecha twitched and went limp, its chest unfolding to touch the ground. Serghey slumped forward in the pilot’s harness. Gray-brown puke dribbled down the front of his interface suit, and the sharp smell of stomach acid wafted over to the cadets.

“Fuck!” Soto ran up the steps and tore Serghey from his harness. Soto shook him like a rag doll, his face contorted in fear. Matt’s guts did an uneasy twist. It was the first time he’d seen the major scared.

Sergeant Stoll joined Soto with the cadet. She showed him something on her slate and shook her head. Soto cursed and let go of Serghey. Only the silicone connection cables kept him from spilling out of the cockpit.

Sergeant Stoll spoke to the slate. The rest of the Mecha stopped twitching, formed lines, and opened up. Cadets blinked in the bright, simulated sun. They all stared blankly, as if interrupted from a deep sleep.

Matt couldn’t stand it anymore. “Is he all right?” he called out.

Soto looked at Matt, then stepped back to address all of the cadets. “I’m sorry. He’s dead.”

Silence, like a lead hammer, dropped over the field. Peal was the first to speak. “Huh,” he muttered. “I thought the assholes always lived.”

Soto glared at Peal. Peal swallowed and said, “I’m sorry, sir. Jest is an inappropriate antidote to pain.”

Soto looked across the cadets. Suddenly he looked ten years older, his eyes sunken and sad, deep-set in age-scarred sockets. “Very rarely, we have an extreme reaction to Mesh. I have to stress, these incidents are rare. We test extensively, but . . . it happens.”

The wail of a siren swelled. A HMLV sped across the blacktop toward them, marked with the red cross of an ambulance.

“What do we do now?” Ash called.

Soto looked at her, as if seeing her for the first time. “Nothing. You and Earth girl passed already.”

Ash blinked. “But he’s dead!”

“Yes, and Corsairs look down jealously at the Union and continue to plot,” Soto said. “And every day brave colonists die on frontier worlds.”

Ash swallowed and said nothing.

Soto nodded, as if he’d come to a decision. “All cadets, out of the Mecha. Next group is up.”

“What about us?” one of the other cadets in the Mecha asked. “We never got it working.”

“You’ll need additional simulation training,” Soto said. “Medical will pick you up after the first Mesh is complete.”

The ambulance arrived. Two Auxiliaries unhooked Serghey’s harness and dragged him into the back of the HMLV. Matt felt a strange sense of disconnection. He’d come down with Serghey. It could have been him in there.

“You,” Soto said, pointing at Matt. Peal, Jahl, Kyle, and another cadet Matt didn’t recognize filled out the group.

Kyle looked at Matt. “Good luck,” he said.

Matt started. Kyle’s eyes were serious and he sounded sincere. “Ah . . . good luck to you too.”

“Luck and skill to us all,” Jahl said, nodding at the other cadets.

It wasn’t until Matt approached his Hellion that he realized
This is the one Serghey died in.

 

Matt climbed into the Hellion. Inside the hatch frame a small metallic plate read:

The cockpit stank of panic sweat and puke. Matt pushed away the thought of Serghey. He couldn’t think about that. It didn’t help. It didn’t help one damn bit.

Inside the cockpit, silicone cables dangled, smudged with greasy handprints. The close-set walls were solid metallic muscle. Matt ran a hand along them. They were hard as steel but felt warm to the touch, as if the Mecha were alive.

Matt put an ear against the metal. He heard nothing except a faint ticking.

Even inside the cockpit there were no visible controls, just the webbed harness hanging from an anchor at the top. Matt got in the harness and pulled the straps tight. He slipped the silicone cap over his head and plugged the interface cable into his suit.

The forward hatch folded up in front of Matt. After a moment of complete darkness, the NPP lit around him in a 360-degree panorama. Matt blinked at the sudden light. The illusion was amazing. It was almost as if he were hanging in space over the concrete. Only the faint glints of screen light on metal hinted at the shapes of the cockpit beyond.

On the screen, an overlay appeared:

As the word “done” flashed, Matt’s world exploded. In a sudden rush, he fell into darkness.

Past a static-dusty thing, past a hail of voices raised in pain, past the feeling of a grand hallway where unseen things churned and flopped—

Into something that felt like that last morning with his father. Something idyllic. Like the first kind words from Pat on the
Rock
. Like the first time he’d taken a drag of an illicit cigarette in a dump-and-dip frontier town. Like the first time he’d drunk vacuum-distilled whiskey. It was what Matt imagined killing that Corsair would feel like.

The painful tear of the interface suit fell away. He felt nothing but pure elation, pure power. He could do anything.

Matt opened his eyes. He was no longer inside the cramped pilot’s chamber. He’d stepped through. He hung in space, suspended by his will, seeing the world only through the Hellion’s eyes.

I would do anything to feel like this,
he thought.

Matt raised his hand. The Hellion responded seamlessly. He marveled at every fiber of biometallic muscle tensing; he watched the perfect articulation of his fingers. There was nothing tentative about it.

He took a step. It was like a dream, perfect and fluid. He ran a short distance. His Mecha didn’t rattle or shake. It fairly flew over the test court. It was amazing. Matt felt the chill underground on his metallic skin, smelled the sharp tang of the grass, heard the thrum and chatter of the city in the distance.

He glanced back at the others. Two of the Mecha took uncertain steps. One crouched on the ground. The last twitched and shuddered.

And Major Soto was staring at him. Straight at him, with an expression of openmouthed amazement. As Matt concentrated on him, the scene zoomed in and an overlay appeared :

In the sudden close-up, tags identified MAJOR GUILIANO SOTO and SERGEANT LENA STOLL. It was like he was standing right in front of them.

As he watched, Lena’s slate chimed. A voice barked:

“What is that cadet’s Mesh effectiveness?”

Matt recognized the voice. It was the same one he’d heard coming out of Mind Raze: Dr. Roth.

Sergeant Stoll looked right at Matt. “Candidate Lowell’s Mesh effectiveness is eighty-seven percent,” she said.

“Stable, resonant, or sliding?”

“Stable.”

The slate chimed as the connection terminated. Stoll and Soto shared a glance. “He’s the highest yet,” she said.

Soto nodded. “Amazing.”

A Mecha started to scream. Jahl’s Mecha. It had never gotten out of its crouch.

Fear twisted Matt’s guts. His POV snapped back to normal as he sprinted back to Jahl.

“Hit the release!” Major Soto said.

Matt knelt in front of Jahl and scrabbled at the hard metal of the other man’s cockpit. There had to be some way to open it! Waves of fear and pain washed over Matt as Jahl fell deeper into reverse Mesh.

Of course!
They were all connected. Matt felt all the cadets’ panic, not just Jahl’s. It fed on itself, spiraling up and up.

Matt’s Mecha went dead. Matt yelped in surprise in the sudden darkness. Then his cockpit opened. Brilliant artificial sun seared his eyes.

In front of him, Jahl’s Mecha yawned open. Jahl flailed at the control cables, then slumped forward in his harness.

Matt tried to jump out of his cockpit, but the harness held him back. Peal tore off his connections and charged up the stairs to his brother. Major Soto followed close behind. The two men pulled Jahl free by the time Matt reached them.

Jahl gasped and convulsed. His eyes were like black pools. Peal held him down until the seizure passed. Jahl tried to raise his head. Peal and Soto helped him stand and shuffle down to the blacktop.

“Is he okay?” Matt asked.

“He’s alive,” Soto said. “But he won’t ever be Mecha Corps.”

 

In the end, it was Matt, Kyle, Michelle, Ash, and Peal. They stood in front of Major Soto in their Hellions. Matt quivered in excitement. Despite the horror of the day, just being inside a Hellion was a wonderful feeling. He wanted to run up the sides of the city chamber, leap off, and swing from the buildings, charge up his weapons, raze an entire battalion of Corsairs.

“What are your orders, sir?” Michelle said. A comms icon appeared: CADET M. KIND ➙ MAJOR G. SOTO: PUBLIC.

“Systems drills, reaction timing, and fine motor control exercises.” Another comms icon lit: MAJOR G. SOTO ➙ ALL. “You have a long way to go. Well, most of you do. Before that, half hour free exercise. Don’t break anything.”

“Yes, sir!” Michelle’s Hellion snapped off a shaky salute. She spun and puttered down the field, calling, “Race ya!”

Matt laughed and gave chase. The others followed.

It was like nothing Matt had ever experienced. Just running across the concrete, feeling every impression in its grooved surface, was pure pleasure. No endless loop of Perfect Record. No muttering voices in the back of his head. In Mesh, he was free.

Matt flashed by Michelle. His ground-speed indicator rose quickly: 100, 200 kilometers an hour.

“Hey!” she yelled. Matt laughed and came to a skidding stop at the edge of the city chamber, where concrete pylons held back the native rock. Above them, the blue-green light of the Atlantic shone in through the chamber’s transparent wall.

Michelle came to a stop beside him. “How are you so fast?” Michelle said, out of breath.

“I don’t know.” Matt frowned. Running the Mecha took no effort at all.

“You . . . aren’t . . . even tired,” Peal said through whooping breaths, as he clumped up to join them.

“No.” Matt shook his head.

“Fricking Superman or somethin’,” Ash said.

“Let’s see how Superman fights,” Kyle said, balling his Hellion’s hands into fists and dropping into a boxer’s posture.

Matt backed away.
The best way to win a fight is to avoid one.
That’s what Pat used to say. Matt had used it to good effect in bars on Aurora, where bragging got heated and tempers flared. He’d always been able to talk the other guy down.

“Scared?” Kyle said, advancing. He moved jerkily, nowhere near as fluid as Matt.

“No.”

“Then why are you running away?”

The women stopped to watch in that universal, hip-cocked posture that said
Boys will be boys
. Peal stayed off to the side, as if to say
I don’t want any of this
.

“Cadet Candidate Peterov, stand down,” Major Soto interrupted them over the comms.

“Yes, sir!” Kyle said, snapping to attention.

“All of you, come on back for drills,” Soto said. “There’s a time for this, but not now.”

Matt jogged back with the others, wondering,
If not now, when?