Mecha Corps (3 page)

“Ha! Like hell you do!” Harper said. “Put Earth in your memory bank! You’ll be a digger the rest of your life right here on the ol’
Mercury
!”

Matt’s stomach flipped. His chance at being a Mecha cadet was flying away like a paper airplane in a zero-G hangar.

“But . . .” Matt trailed off. What could he say? How could he justify it? NO EGRESS AT DISPLACEMENT. Simple as that. Stupid.

“But what? What you gonna tell me I don’t already know?” Harper picked up a glowing slate. “Rich kid from Aurora U thinks the rules don’t apply. Well, money ain’t a get-outta-jail-free card!”

“Sir, I’m not—” Matt’s anguish made his voice crack. “Look, I have to get down there! I’m going to training camp !”

“I don’t care where you—,” Harper began, then stopped himself. “Wait. What did you say?”

“I’m going to Mecha Training Camp.”

Harper went beet red. “You’re a Mecha cadet?”

“Yes, sir.”

Harper glared at Matt, his expression shading to purple. “You got proof?”

Matt nodded. He reached into his breast pocket and pulled out the laser-etched holographic invitation. Gasps erupted in the room around him. Pete leaned over Matt’s shoulder to gape at the gilded e-sheet signed by Kathlin Haal, the Union’s Prime.

Harper snatched it out of his hands and ran it under a scanner. All color drained from his face as he read the screen.

“You’re a goddamn Mecha cadet,” Harper grated low and rough.

Matt nodded, afraid to say a single word. Was that good? Bad? Would Harper tear up his invitation and laugh at him? Would there be more penalties from the Mecha division itself?

Harper thrust the invitation back at Matt. “Go.”

Matt took the paper with numb fingers.

Harper nodded. “Get on the shuttle.” Then he blew out a big breath, all his anger gone. “Go save the Union.”

“Yes, sir!” Matt said.

“Just don’t pull any dumb shit like you did here,” Harper called after him.

Matt shook his head. No more dumb stunts. He smiled. He was a Mecha cadet, and the Universal Union needed him.

Matt’s invitation directed him down to UUS
Mercury
’s Auxiliary Shuttle Bay, where a small, delta-winged craft squatted. It bore both the Union’s concentric thirty-star insignia and the logo of Advanced Mechaforms: the shadow outline of a Mecha crouched to jump.

The pilot was a young woman with short-cropped red hair. She wore a simple gray uniform with three silver stripes embroidered into the sleeve. On the front of the uniform was a single black bar reading L. STOLL.

Stoll scanned Matt’s e-sheet invitation and nodded at the shuttle’s hatch. Matt started when he noticed that her eyes were a bright violet color. Violet eyes were a signature of genetic modification, and genemod was widely hated in the Universal Union. It was a holdover from the Human–HuMax war 150 years ago, when the genetically engineered “superhuman” HuMax laid siege to the richest human worlds. They’d almost won, too. Only the formation of the Universal Union and the eventual eradication of every living HuMax had ended it.

She noticed his stare. “What is it, cadet candidate?”

“I, uh, I don’t recognize your uniform,” Matt lied. “I was trying to place it.”

“Mecha Corps Auxiliary,” she said. Her face was unreadable, her tone all business.

“Gotcha,” Matt said. He tried not to steal a glance back at her as he slung his duffel bag over his shoulder. Most genemods wouldn’t openly display a hallmark like violet eyes in public. Was it just an Earth thing, or did it not matter in the Mecha Corps?

“Where is other cadet?” bellowed a voice from deep within the shuttle. “I am not wanting to miss opportunity!”

Matt jumped. Another cadet? He hadn’t expected that. He virtually flew through the hatch.

In the cramped interior of the shuttle, a large man slouched on one of the four bare plastic seats. A loud, shiny shirt printed with floral patterns and a pair of white pants hung loose on this thick frame. Crow’s-feet wrinkles nestled in the corners of his eyes, and his bushy beard was shot through with gray. A huge pile of matching leather luggage covered the seat next to him and spilled into the walkway.

“I not spent ten years struggling to miss cadet chance!” the man shouted, waving his invitation at Matt. “You see date and time? Sit in seat!”

Matt sat down and buckled himself in. “I didn’t know there was another cadet on the ship.”

The other man ignored him, his angry eyes fixing on Sergeant Stoll as she stepped in and pulled the hatch shut.

“HuMax pilot, you go now! Time ticking!”

Matt felt a quick stab of anger. She certainly wasn’t HuMax, and she’d probably had her share of taunts, insults, and outright beatings growing up.

“Hey, did you choose your genes?” Matt said, struggling to keep his voice even.

The other man’s eyebrows shot up in surprise. “I not genemod!”

“She didn’t choose hers either. Her parents did. So why don’t you stop trying to piss off the pilot?”

Out of the corner of his eye, Matt saw Sergeant Stoll turn to watch them. Her neutral expression didn’t change.

“Oh, HuMax apologist, yes. They did not choose their genes either?” the bearded man said, coming off his seat, but the seat belt held him down.

Matt clenched his fists, thinking of his father. His own stories. His own secrets. “HuMax chose what they did, and for that they are monsters.” His voice broke in anger.

The bearded man twitched a quick little smile, apparently satisfied.

“Some sense in you.” He looked up at Sergeant Stoll. “Freaky genemod pilot, please be going now.”

Sergeant Stoll didn’t respond or change expression. She just ducked through the door to the cockpit and slid the folding partition shut.

Moments later, the shuttle’s turbines spun up. Acceleration pushed Matt back in his seat. Through the small, thick window at his side, the raw stone of the UUS
Mercury
’s Auxiliary Shuttle Bay blurred past. Soon they were dropping toward Earth.

The other man looked straight ahead, his arms crossed, his jaw set tightly. Matt sighed. Even if the guy was an asshole, he should introduce himself. Hell, he might end up fighting next to him.

“I’m Matt Lowell,” Matt said, holding out his hand. “I didn’t expect anyone else from Aurora.”

Silence for a while. Then: “Not from Aurora! Not rich boy with too much books!”

Matt nodded. Displacement Drive ships couldn’t Displace any less than two light-years, or any more than twenty. That meant commercial ships had to hop from system to system in series, in a giant ring. This guy must have come from one of the worlds before Aurora.

“Are you from Eastern?” Matt asked. “Or Purchase?”

More silence. Finally, almost grudgingly: “Purchase. I am Serghey Anan.”

“Good to meet you,” Matt said.

“Now cease pretend interest, rich Aurora boy.”

Matt sighed. Maybe wearing his blazer with the Aurora University crest wasn’t the brightest idea. But it was warm and comfortable. And growing up he’d learned never to let anything go to waste. Not clothes. Not even food. Refugee ships were rough places. Everybody worked, even when they were eight years old. Sometimes Matt’s job cleaning corridors didn’t pay enough to buy dinner. Sometimes he’d get to mess and find one of his digger friends had been sent to the doc because of a crappy pressure suit. Sometimes his friends just stopped showing up at all.

What the hell does this jerk know?
Sudden irritation boiled Matt’s blood. Rich or poor, life or death, nothing should be taken for granted.

Matt forced his voice to be calm. “I’ll leave you alone.”

“Bah,” Serghey said. He closed his eyes and made loud snoring noises.

As the shuttle fell into the atmosphere, a high whistling filled the passenger compartment. Streamers of superheated orange air flickered outside the window as the air thickened.

Florida swelled quickly as they dropped. Brilliant white clouds had moved in over the coast, covering Cape Canaveral, and the green Mecha lightning no longer flashed.

When the shuttle finally descended below the clouds, the Cape lay just ahead. Green Florida grass and scrub alternated with mud-brown wetlands. Stubs of old, blocky buildings protruded from the greenery connected by broken blacktop roads. Just below them, a sprawling mass of concrete covered the land like a kilometers-wide spider. The center of the expanse was stained black-purple with multiple rocket burns, and the fading number 99 was etched at one side.

Matt felt a sudden shock of recognition. Launch Facility 99. That was something they taught in human history. It was the first of the heavy launch facilities used by the United States after the discovery of the Displacement Drive. The First Expansion into space had started here, more than 250 years ago.

Farther off, the Atlantic shimmered like polished aluminum under the bright, overcast sky. At the edge of the ocean, spindly structures rose from overgrown cement pads, mottled black and red. They had to be gantries. Leftovers from the first days of the Space Race.

A shiver of pride passed through Matt, and he drew a deep breath. This was huge. Even though the United States was gone, as all nations were, its Constitution had formed the basis of the Universal Union’s Articles of Unity.

But the farther they flew, the worse Cape Canaveral looked. Crumbling buildings overgrown with vines, blacktop slumped into sinkholes, rows of dust-streaked tents, trenches gouged in the Earth, rusted heaps of old cars—it looked like the setting for a postapocalyptic game. Matt turned to get a better look, but it flashed past too fast as they touched down. Matt couldn’t help wondering,
This is Mecha Training Camp?

When Sergeant Stoll opened the hatch, the heat and humidity hit Matt like a slap in the face. He gasped in the thick air. His Aurora University blazer was an oven, and sweat instantly coated his face.

And there was the smell. Swamp rot over salt tang and seaweed, wet cement and the bloodlike scent of rust.

“Propaganda about perfect Earth,” Sergey sneered, wiping his damp brow. Sweat had already stained the collar of his too-bright shirt. “All bullshit.”

Matt nodded. Tourists liked to talk about how oddly “perfect” Earth was. The cradle of humanity! The best possible combination of gravity, weather, and environment! No other world came close! But to Matt, Earth was like the hydroponic gardens on the
Rock
, where sewage cooked by the solar concentrators fed the crops.

Matt grabbed his bag. Serghey looked around unhappily. “Where is porter?” he cried, looking at his mountain of luggage.

Sergeant Stoll ignored him and pointed across the runway to a group of people standing near the edge of the wetlands. “That’s where you need to be.” Her carefully neutral expression never changed.

Matt nodded and hopped out of the shuttle, trying to avoid her eyes. Even though the sky was overcast, the ground gave off waves of heat. He took off his Aurora U jacket and carried it as he trudged across the runway.

Matt stopped five meters away from the group and put down his bag. There were maybe thirty people, standing singly or clustered in groups of two or three. A broad cross-section of the Universal Union, they reflected the Mecha Corps selection motto: “From the finest, the finest.” The Union selected precandidates from school and public records. From there, if precandidates passed the initial mental and physical exams, they were put into a candidate pool and their achievements and actions monitored for up to ten years. The invitation to Mecha Corps could come at any time in that decade.

They ranged from kids dressed in the raglike attire of the hot frontier world Hyva to young men and women wearing smartly tailored business suits, to thickset men in casual T-shirts and jeans who were seemingly ready for a construction gig, to rail-thin spacers in refugee jumpsuits. Most of them were young, but a couple were older, in their thirties or forties, like Serghey. The entire group had a tense, pumped-up feel, like a group of diggers waiting to try out for the single spacer job. Everyone was trying to look cool while at the same time sizing up the competition.

Serghey panted up, dragging his beautiful luggage and muttering curses. Unlike Matt, he bulled his way to the front of the crowd, drawing bemused glances from the other cadet candidates.

As they moved out of the way for Serghey, Matt noticed one woman wearing fatigues. She also stood apart from the main group, crouching at the edge of the wetlands to peer intently across the sluggish water at the low rise beyond. Her long blond hair was tied back in a ponytail and shoved into the back of her fatigue jacket. Something about her exuded utter strength.

A blond guy wearing a blue striped shirt and carrying a navy blazer over his arm came to crouch beside her. He said something that Matt couldn’t hear. The woman turned to look at him, her blue eyes like icy steel. Matt drew in his breath. Her face was like a fine art sketch, impossibly perfect and flawless. She stood, her full lips pursing as she studied the man. Even her baggy fatigues couldn’t hide an amazing figure. Matt wondered what it would be like to unbutton her fatigue jacket, then quickly pushed the thought away. He wasn’t here for that. He was here for the Mecha. To become part of the irresistible force.

But can’t there be more than that?
he wondered. For the first time since he got the invitation, the crushing loneliness of his life came down on him. He’d always been going at a dead run toward the next goal, toward the justice he needed because of that one day now so long ago. Matt shook his head. He couldn’t forget that Corsair. He couldn’t let it go.

Without saying anything, the woman walked away from the blond man, going fifteen meters down the banks of the wetlands. There she crouched, looking again out at the low rise.