Mecha Corps (22 page)

No!
Matt thought, recoiling. The thing laughed and pulled him closer.

No, no, NO!
he thought. Each thought like a hammer blow. The thing fell away. His mind sped from thought to thought.

How had he ever felt any pain? This was wonderful!

Matt laughed. Meshing with the Demon was more than a high. It was the perfect feeling of well-being distilled into its essence. This was how he’d wanted to feel his entire life. Weightless. Carefree. Like a perpetual Sunday morning. He wanted to spend his life in here.

Senses came back to him. He hung suspended in the lee of Mecha Base, watching wan sunlight make the dust and rocks sparkle like diamonds. He was completely present, completely there. There was no difference between his body and that of the Mecha. The rush of energy, power, and strength reverberated through him, thrumming with more life and consciousness than he ever thought possible.

Matt raised a hand and flexed it. The Demon’s sharp, precise fingers flashed in the light of the young sun. He was ready. And in that moment, he knew:
I can do anything!

Matt grabbed the edge of Mecha Base’s armor and hurled himself out into the maelstrom.

In the hail of dust and rock, Matt’s Demon automatically adapted. His arms fell to his sides, merging with his body to form a continuous, streamlined shape. His legs flowed together. Matt’s Demon was now a giant red shark looking for prey.

Inside, the ping and tick of hundreds of rock fragments filtered through the suspension gel. Matt laughed at the tickle of smaller grains and winced as larger shards stung. Tags floated in his vision, identifying dangerously large pieces of rock and the different kinds of spiraling gasses. A conic of the maelstrom showed increasing density down by the protoplanet’s core, where space rocks had ground smooth like river pebbles in a constant ebb and flow of tide with gravity.

Let’s see what’s up above,
Matt thought, exhilarated in the wonder of exploration. He’d never felt so free!

Brilliant white matter-antimatter jets flared on his backside, rocketing his Mecha up through the dust and gas. Red-brown clouds gave way to the blackness of space.

Icons flashed in his POV:

More data overlays tagged the stars. The sun closest to him was labeled 09-428A.56.182.10. The orange cloud of condensing matter below him was labeled 09.428A-02- (FORMATIONAL). Other stars were tagged with their names. The only one he recognized was Rigel: 10,870 LY MEAN DISTANCE.

Rigel was almost nine hundred light-years from Earth. Which meant they were nearly twelve thousand light-years away from humanity’s first home. Matt shivered. The brilliant pinpoints of light seemed so distant, so incredibly unattainable. Space itself was quiet, like 3:00 a.m. on a frontier world, where nothing and nobody was moving. Anything could happen.

A comms icon flickered: K. PETEROV ➙ ALL.

“Help.” Kyle’s voice was soft, almost a whisper.

Kyle? In trouble?
A sudden thought overwhelmed Matt, amazing in its intensity:
He deserves it! Let him struggle!

But it wasn’t Matt’s thought.

Get off me!
Matt yelled in his mind. Again, something recoiled from him, receding far away into the darkness.

Michelle’s comms icon lit. “Kyle, are you all right?”

“It’s too close,” Kyle’s voice quavered in fear.

“What’s too close?” Michelle asked.

“I don’t know!” A scream.

Matt powered back down into the maelstrom. In his POV, tags identified Mecha Base and the rest of the Demons. All three still huddled under the protective armor. Kyle’s Demon was doubled over, twitching. Its tag read:

Matt jetted to a stop in front of Kyle, briefly lighting his Demon with dazzling antimatter exhaust. Kyle reached out as if for help. Whimpers came through the comms.

Dr. Roth’s words came back to him:
It’s more challenging than Meshing with a Hellion. Don’t expect your previous experience to be a guide.

Matt gritted his teeth. He knew what Kyle was cowering from. It was the same thing he was barely controlling.

“Push it away,” Matt told him.

“No! I can’t! It’s . . . like something alive—”

Finally, Dr. Roth broke the silence. “Figments of your own mind. Subconscious feedback is a by-product of the Demon’s enhanced neural Mesh. Cadet Peterov, you have thirty seconds to complete Mesh.”

Matt grinned. Suddenly, he knew exactly what to do.

“You aren’t going to let me win this one, are you, Kyle?” Matt gloated.

“What?” Kyle’s voice, suddenly sharp.

“I’ve already flown the Demon. Hell, I’ve been out of the dust cloud. I’ve seen the sun. It’s easy. Easy as pie.”

Kyle growled.

“I mean, come on. Next you’ll let me steal your girl.”

With a roar, Kyle’s Mecha rocketed at him. Matt’s screen showed new status:

Kyle barreled into Matt, raking the Mecha’s sharklike form with his long claws. Matt rocked from the impact, but Kyle’s sharp-bladed fingers only scrabbled for purchase on Matt’s seamless hide.

“Okay, Kyle, that’s enough. You’re fully operational.”

Kyle kept clawing at him, growling unintelligibly. He brought his hands together in a familiar gesture, and brilliant yellow warnings lit on Matt’s screen:

Oh, shit
.

Matt slithered out from Kyle’s grasp just as the shockwave hit. Expanding ripples of fusion power roiled the dust and gas. Matt and Kyle went spinning away in opposite directions.

“Cadet Peterov, cease weapons use immediately!” Stoll yelled, angry as all hell.

Kyle’s Demon lit attitude jets and stopped its spin. For a long time, it didn’t move. Finally, its visor snapped up to fix on the other Mecha.

“Sorry. I—I lost control,” Kyle said, through a ragged breath. “I’ve got it now.”

“It’s all right,” Matt told him, as he stopped his own spin. “I know what you were fighting.”

“Thank you,” Kyle said, softly. His comms icon read K. PETEROV ➙ M. LOWELL.

Matt turned his own comms to the private channel. “You’d do the same for me.”

“Of course,” Kyle said, his voice strengthening. “We’re Demonriders.”

 

They started with basic piloting exercises, diving deep within the gas clouds, down to the core of the protoplanet. Building-sized chunks of rock churned within a hailstorm of smaller boulders, hidden in a fog of pebbles, dust, and gas. Huge shapes rolled out of the mud like juggernauts, passing within meters of the darting Mecha.

Each Demon had become a streamlined, sharklike shape. Each slightly different, as if reflecting the rider inside. Matt’s was the sleekest and most pure. Kyle’s was covered by swept-back spines, like a porcupine. Ash’s was long and narrow, a pure thunderbolt of energy. Michelle’s was shapely and smooth, but her arms were still separate from her body. She used them to push off a caroming ball of rock, changing direction in an eye blink.

“Michelle, did you do that deliberately?” Matt asked.

“Do what deliberately?”

“Keep your arms out to push off rocks.”

“I didn’t really think about it.”

Matt decided to try it himself. He shot at an asteroid-sized chunk and imagined vaulting off of it like a pole-vaulter. His arms separated from his body, and one of his fingers transformed into a long, thin pole. The pole touched the asteroid and bent. Matt felt it shivering as tension mounted. He slowed, stopped, and then rocketed forward from the force stored in the pole. As he shot off the rock, the pole and his arms melted back into his sides.

Matt laughed like a maniac. It was incredible! He raced through the mud, caroming off house-sized boulders.

A skyscraper-sized rock loomed in front of him. Matt yelled and hit the thrusters, but it was too late. He crashed right into the asteroid.

The Demon’s pilot chamber reverberated, and Matt gasped for breath. His viewpoint spun. Arms appeared and flailed. White-hot jets blasted to regain his balance.

Two asteroid-sized rocks came right at Matt, threatening to crush his Demon between their bulk. Matt fired every thruster full on, trying to get away. But the asteroids clapped together behind him, spraying his Demon with shards from the impact.

Matt flipped over and put his hands out in front of him, triggering a Fusion Handshake. The shock wave vaporized the sharp rock fragments and pushed him back like a rocket.

“Hell, yeah!” he yelled. This was the best feeling in the world.

“Enough play,” Dr. Roth’s voice cut in, his comms icon lighting in Matt’s POV. “Sergeant Stoll, have the cadets begin their exercises.”

They were asked to play a coordinated game of hide-and-seek, deep down in the core. Hiding in the dark, caroming off giant asteroids, weapons lighting the darkness. For a short time, it was like being a kid on Prospect again, playing Union and Corsairs. Set against the most mind-blowing backdrop in the universe.

Suddenly, Matt’s backside exploded in heat and fire. He screamed loud enough to rattle his face mask. Bright light blinded his rear sensors. He whirred around and caught a glimpse of a tiny metallic sphere whizzing by him.

“Weapons drones,” Sergeant Stoll said over the comms. “Consider them adversaries.”

Matt grinned. So it
was
Union versus Corsairs! Again, the feeling that he was born to do this came over him.

Bright laser light flashed behind Matt and Ash yelled in pain. Matt turned and triggered Fireflies. A short burst annihilated the silver drone.

“Thanks, kid,” Ash said.

“No problem.”

It was amazing, like being let loose in a zero-g arcade with unlimited credit. Hell, with artillery! The drones would hide behind rocks and attack in small groups. As soon as Matt and the others learned to anticipate them, it was easy to dispatch the drones. He rushed ahead of the others, a hell storm of annihilation.

“Leave some for us!” Kyle cried.

Matt laughed. He’d do it all! No need for the others! He plowed through clouds of drones, and Kyle, Michelle, and Ash followed.

Matt pulled back from a cloud of drones rounding an asteroid and let the others take them on. Michelle and Kyle tumbled through the drones, clumsily shooting in little bursts. Ash barreled right in, cutting a swath straight through.

I’m still better than them,
Matt thought. Another alien thought. He pushed it to the back of his mind.

“They hit me side-on, but there wasn’t any Control Nexus fault,” Kyle enthused when the sky was clear.

“Demons don’t share that Hellion weakness,” Dr. Roth told them.

How comforting,
Matt thought.

“Enough of the drones!” Kyle yelled. “Send Hellions. Let’s have some real action.”

“No,” Dr. Roth said. “From what I see of your progress already, you’d kill the Hellion pilots instantly.”

 

The Decompression Lounge was a small space carved out of the solid rock of Mecha Base. Along one side, a floor-to-ceiling wall of glass looked out over the Hellion docks, where dozens of Mecha stood at ready. A polished aluminum bar ran along the opposite wall, with a pressure door behind it that opened on a small kitchen. Matching minimalistic aluminum tables and chairs were anchored to both the ceiling and the floor to maximize the available space, like they did on an independent Displacement Drive ship. Still, the modest crowd stuck mainly to the “down” side of the bar, seemingly reluctant to give up their illusion of gravity.

Matt grabbed a handrail just inside the Decompression Lounge, surveying the crowd. It was mostly men and women in Mecha Auxiliary uniforms, with one trio of Mecha Corps captains talking about the “giant new red Mecha.” They only glanced at Matt as he entered. The news about the Demon pilots must not have made it out yet.

On one of the inverted tables, a single man in a dark gray suit sat with an empty coffee bulb, staring out over the Hellion docks. Yve Perraux.

Matt launched off, flipped over, and stopped himself at the seat opposite Yve.

Yve looked up at him, his brown eyes tired, almost resigned. “I figured I’d see you sooner rather than later.”

“I’ve been busy.”

“I know. Training seems to be going well, from what I hear. Dr. Roth almost smiled.”

Matt laughed, but quickly sobered. Roth might be an odd duck or an insane toymaker, but he was also one of the most powerful people in the Union.

“I didn’t think . . . I didn’t think you survived back on Prospect,” Matt said, to fill the silence. “I didn’t think anyone made it.”

Yve sighed. “I never expected to see you again either.”

Silence for a time. Matt’s mind raced.
I saw your transport blow up,
he wanted to say.

And even if Yve had made it to orbit, it wasn’t like there would be a Union Displacement Drive ship waiting for him. He’d have to wait for pickup. He certainly didn’t go out on the
Rock
. Did he throw in with the Corsairs?

“What happened to you?” Yve said finally.

“A refugee ship picked me up. The
Rock
.”

Yve nodded, his face crumpling into a deep frown. “I’m sorry.”

“What about you?”

Yve’s expression cycled from sadness to ironic humor. “Like many things your father worked on, I can’t talk about it. It’s cliché to say, I know.”

“My father was working on HuMax technology.”

A surprised nod. “I didn’t think you knew.”

“How long has the Union been working on HuMax technology?”