Mecha Corps (20 page)

Matt looked over at the other table. Michelle stared out the window, oblivious to his gaze. But she did look remarkably comfortable. As if she would never want to be anywhere else. Her first time off Earth and under such duress. She was handling herself with uncanny class. How could he not be a little jealous?

“The real question is whether or not we’ll survive the boredom on the way to Mecha Base,” Jahl said.

Jahl was trying to change the subject.
Fine.
He’d go along with it.

Matt pulled out his access card. “Well, we could go to the utility dock, whatever that is.”

“What?” Peal grabbed the card out of his hands. He frowned at it and showed Jahl, who shook his head. “Look at this. Wonder kid gets to go somewhere we can’t.”

“What do you mean?”

Peal showed Matt his access card. The only green areas were the mess hall and his quarters. No utility dock.

Matt took his card back, his fingers numb.

“Sounds like it’s time for you to do a little exploring,” Peal said.

 

The utility dock turned out to be a large, pressurized space adjacent to the UUS
Ulysses
’ landing bay. Steel shutters covered its observation windows. Red NO ADMITTANCE indicators glowed next to the shutters.

Matt stopped at the air lock. Its door screen showed nominal air pressure inside the dock. So it was technically safe to enter, but did that mean he should just barge in?

A powerful vibration rattled the air-lock handrail, and a metallic buzz filled the air. A series of sharp bangs followed, echoing through the chamber. Matt lost his grip on the rail and had to grab for it again.

Then the buzzing morphed into a keening ululation that was all too familiar: a Mecha scream.

Matt swiped his card and shot through the air lock. Inside the utility dock was a thrashing Demon. Thick alloy shackles at its right wrist groaned and bent, pulling head-sized mounting nuts off their secure bases on solid-steel deck.

Another tug and the Demon’s forearm popped free. It whistled through the air only meters from Matt and carved a bright gouge in the stainless wall. Matt caught the inner handgrip and ducked back into the safety of the air lock.

He risked another look. The Demon’s heels beat thunderous metallic music on the steel floor. Its free arm clawed at its own chest, as if in agony. Strips of red biometallic metal flew. It was tearing itself apart.

What the hell is happening? What should I do?
The airlock’s comms panel read SECURITY HOLD.

With a final groan, the Demon tore off a roof-sized piece of its chest. Red biometallic shards, gray optical cables, and blobs of clear fluid flew outward, spinning wildly in the microgravity. The Demon gave a final convulsion and lay still, its visor rolling over to look at Matt.

A body drifted above the Demon. Tiny and gray with death in its interface suit, it was clearly a pilot.

Matt shoved off the air lock and flew above the Demon. He intercepted the pilot, and his momentum carried them both toward the walls of the dock.

The pilot was soaked with sweat, his just-starting-to-gray hair slicked back as if with pomade. His mouth hung open, his face slack. Matt jumped in recognition. It was Major Soto.

Matt felt for Soto’s pulse. It was strong and fast.

“Major Soto?” Matt asked.

Soto didn’t respond.

They reached the far wall. Matt pushed off and guided them back to the air lock. He reached it in time to meet Sergeant Stoll and an Auxiliary carrying a zero-g stretcher.

“What happened?” Matt asked.

“You should not be here!” Stoll snapped as they started strapping Soto to the stretcher. “Go back to your permitted area.”

“I am permitted, ma’am.” Matt showed her his access card.

Sergeant Stoll shook her head. “They’re all fools.”

“Who is, ma’am?”

Sergeant Stoll pressed her lips together and looked away.

“Damn it, what’s going on here?” Matt yelled.

“I shouldn’t tell you anything,” Stoll said. Then she softened. “That’s not entirely accurate. I don’t know what to tell you.”

“Tell him the truth,” Soto croaked. All three snapped to look at the major. The whites of his eyes were bloodred, and one side of his face twitched spasmodically.

Stoll sighed. “Major Soto is using his authority to self-train as a Demonrider candidate,” she said.

“Training authorized by Dr. Roth,” the major croaked.

“He’d be happy to see you die, as long as he got his data!” Sergeant Stoll snapped. Her face registered a brief moment of surprise, as if she’d never expected to be so frank.

Major Soto managed a coughing laugh. “I’ll pilot that Demon, and it won’t be the last thing I do.”

But it just tore you out of its pilot chamber,
Matt thought, looking at the floating debris. The Mecha had tried to destroy itself to get rid of him. Why would a machine reject its pilot? That wasn’t like a machine; that was like . . . something alive.

Soto coughed again. Bright red bubbles of blood flew in the air, drifting off into microgravity.

“Get him to the infirmary,” Sergeant Stoll said. She and the other Auxiliary pulled the major away.

When they were gone, Matt pushed off and floated up to the Demon. The hole in its chest exposed gleaming bunches of metallic muscle, intermittently flickering optical fibers, and strands of wet, dark-red fibers that looked almost organic. The pilot’s chamber interior was featureless and dark.

Matt reached out to touch the Demon’s chest, half expecting it to come to life again. The beast was entirely still, but its metal flesh was warm. Like an animal’s.

Like a living thing’s.

Matt shivered. What were the Mecha, and why had they granted him access? To see Major Soto fail?

Or maybe . . . to bond with it?

 

Mecha Base was a hidden place buried in bedlam.

Matt knew the moment they arrived.
Tick
.
Tick-tick
.
Ping! BANG! Tick
. The mess hall crackled like an old Geiger counter, punctuated every few moments by a deeper
BOOM
.

Matt’s Perfect Record took him back to the time the
Rock
had Displaced into the edge of a planetary ring. It sounded something like this. Of course, the
Rock
wasn’t armored. Back then, every ping or tick was followed by the sharp hiss of air jetting into space and the shouts of repair crews rushing to patch the damage. They Displaced out as soon as possible—right into orbit around a planet held by the Corsairs. The tribute they asked was a small price to pay for their lives, but the
Rock
’s citizens had been forced to half rations for the next six months.

But why would the
Ulysses
Displace into a ring system? Matt hurried to the slit windows, followed closely by Peal and Jahl. The rest of the cadets weren’t around.

Above the pockmarked armor of the
Ulysses’
surface, the velvet darkness of space was replaced by layered, brown-red clouds of dust, like a sunset sandstorm on Prospect. Far off, a pinpoint of brilliant blue-white light glowed, haloed with sun dogs.

POCK!
A pebble bounced off the armored deck just outside, leaving a ten-centimeter divot. That explained the ticking. It also explained the beating the
Ulysses
’ armor had taken in the past.

“Perfect,” Peal said in a reverential tone.

Something rose over the
Ulysses
’ horizon, and Matt gasped. It was the largest structure he’d ever seen in space: an asteroid fifty times the size of the UUS
Ulysses
, covered by massive scaffolding supporting spalled, pockmarked armor shields.

In the shade of the armor, two Displacement Drive ships nestled within. Both were built to the same insane level as the
Ulysses
, with thick armor, heavy guns, and maneuvering thrusters like a battleship. Sunlight glinted off an armored protrusion on one of the ships, highlighting its name: UUS
Vulcan
. The other ship’s bridge was hidden in darkness, its name unreadable.

Based on the size of the Displacement Drive ships, the giant asteroid had to be at least ten kilometers in diameter. Not a single light shone on it, but the black barrels of heavy weaponry poked strategically from its surface, and swarms of space-suited humans, small as dust motes, surrounded the Displacement Drive ships.

A large rock glanced off the asteroid shields, soundlessly spinning off into space. Matt swore he saw the scaffolding flex.

Peal grinned. “Perfect location.”

“You know where we are?”

“Unless I’m mistaken, we’re in the middle of a solar system in the process of formation. Most likely within an agglomeration of matter that will someday condense into a planet.”

“Why?”

“Where else would you hide the most strategic military base in the Union?”

Matt stared, openmouthed.

Peal shrugged. “It’s not like this mud will condense into a planet overnight. There are undoubtedly orbits here that will be stable for decades. The trick is finding them—”

“—and not getting destroyed when the condensation takes place.”

Matt nodded. “So why is this perfect?”

“First, there’s no reason to ever look here. Extrapolating travel time and number of Displacements, we’re at least eighteen thousand light-years out. Beyond the edge of the Union. Maybe even beyond the edges of the First Expansion. What’s out here? Nothing.”

“Unless they’re aliens.”

Peal gave Matt a don’t-be-stupid look. “Video-melodrama aliens don’t exist.”

“What about Centauri B?” Jahl said.

Peal crossed his arms. “Floaters? They’re just plants.”

“They sing.”

“Pattern making isn’t necessarily intelligence,” Peal told him.

Matt nodded. Even though there was a lot of alien life, it tended toward the simpler end of the spectrum: seaweeds, mosses, grasses, simple flowering plants, scaled reptiles and amphibians. Some of it was even recognizable by human standards. Some was just downright strange. But it wasn’t like humans had to worry about getting eaten by the alien equivalent of saber-toothed tigers, or dying of some alien plague. The worst humanity had encountered were some funguslike organisms that grew in the warm, moist environment of the human lung. But even the fungi didn’t grow well in an alien host. It took years to die of Green’s disease.

And humanity didn’t have to worry about war or trade with another intelligent species. The universe was empty and quiet. It was one of the things his xenology professors on Aurora argued about constantly: Why were there no other intelligent species? There were dozens of theories, shading from scientific to theological, but none of them had ever been proven.

Of course, when you went digging into whys, you ended up with a lot of them. Why didn’t Displacement Drives work on ships of less than a billion metric tons? Why did they only work in a range between two and twenty light-years ?

“Second,” Peal said. “Who’s going to pay attention to a system that doesn’t even have planets? It’s worthless. Not even a gas giant to dive into for volatiles.”

Matt nodded as Michelle and Kyle joined them at the window.

“What the hell?” Kyle said, pressing his face against the pane.

“Please do not interrupt the lecture,” Peal said. “Third, even if you dropped into the system for a quick look-see, what are you going to find? Nothing. You’re not going to take chances Displacing into the mud. Not without armor like this tank. Even if you did, what would you find? Nothing. Unless you’re right on top of the base, you’d never see it. Absolutely perfect location.”

“What the hell is he jabberin’ about?” Ash said, rubbing sleep out of her eyes.

Peal was all too happy to explain it again. Matt tuned them out as they neared the asteroid.

The moment the
Ulysses
reached lee of the shields, the Geiger counter ticking stopped. In the darkness, details emerged: a giant wall of metal set into the side of the asteroid, punctuated by air locks. The comforting glow of light from hundreds of windows.

And a giant insignia, etched a hundred feet tall into the metal: MECHA BASE.

 

Inside Mecha Base, the first stop was Colonel James Cruz’s private quarters. Intricately patterned carpet provided grip for the cadets’ Velcro soles. Rich wood shelves held protective racks for ancient books. The colonel, a man in his midsix-ties with charcoal-gray hair and a slim, ascetic face, squatted behind a mahogany desk. Whip-thin, he gave the impression of wiry, tense muscle wrapped in a crisp uniform that only barely held him back. His chest carried many colorful bars.

Colonel Cruz waved the cadets to soft leather chairs with discreet lap belts. Sergeant Stoll and Major Soto remained standing.

“So this is the hope of the Union,” Colonel Cruz said, his eyes piercing each cadet in turn. He didn’t sound happy.

Stoll and Soto stood rigidly at attention and remained silent. Matt waited for Ash or Peal to say something dumb, but they remained quiet as well.

“You realize this operation won’t remain secret for long,” Cruz said. “As soon as you fire up the red skyscrapers, jaws will wag. And Corps members get jealous.”

“We understand, sir,” Major Soto said.

Cruz blew out a breath. “I still say go in with a full battalion of Hellions. Unfortunately, I am not the sole decision maker in the Union.”

“No, you aren’t,” said another man as he slipped in through Colonel Cruz’ office door. He was fiftyish, chunky, just starting to go gray, and dressed in a severe gray suit with a small Union star pinned to the lapel.

Matt jumped with the electric shock of recognition.

“Yve?” Matt asked. “Yve Perraux?”

The new guy turned to look at Matt. For a moment, a flicker of unease passed over his face, but he hid it in a broad smile. “Matt Lowell? I heard the name, but I never thought it could be Matt from Prospect.”