Mecha Corps (36 page)

Unless.
Matt grinned. There was one chance. Matt hit his thrusters hard and grabbed Michelle with his good arm as they passed. Michelle’s Demon tensed, but she got in only a single yelp before Matt reversed course and aimed at Major Soto.

“What the hell are you doing?” she asked, as Matt brought all three Mecha together.

“Merge,” he said.

Michelle’s terrified thoughts sped through his mind.
No, no. Crazy, never worked. Unstable. The major isn’t ready.

And yet she reached out to touch Major Soto, completing the circuit. The major’s terrified thoughts added to the cacophony:
No, can’t work. Won’t work. Not now!

The Hellions hit them like bullets and scrabbled over them like roaches, looking for the best places to destroy. One wrapped around Matt’s visor. They had only moments to—

Merge,
Matt thought.

 

Matt dove into a bottomless gray space that smelled of dust and prickled like static. Thoughts battered his consciousness as the distant explosions of the Hellions’ Fusion Handshake echoed off his biometallic skin.

First, Michelle. She was back at her home on Earth. Mom was plugged into the global net. Dad was passed out on the back porch, looking across the swamp at a golden sunset through black, moss-hung trees. Her bag sat beside her, and the dying echoes of her voice told the tale: she’d just said good-bye. But this wasn’t her departure for training camp. This was the first time she’d left. This was when she’d hitched over the heaved roads to Orlando. Thirty miles on the back of a truck, to end up in a crumbling city of hopeless kids slumped over games in grease-stained diners that hadn’t changed in a hundred years. Walking into the recruiting center for the Displacement hospitality trade. Then walking out. Going back home defeated. Her parents never noticed she’d left. And lying awake that entire night, knowing,
I won’t end up here. I’ll be the first. I’ll be a Mecha pilot. That’s my only chance.

And I am here now,
Michelle thought, her mind kaleido-scoping through their days at training camp, the rush of first Mesh in the Hellion, the first dizzying look at Mecha Base, Ash’s death, their escape from the maelstrom. Respect and love, desire and hate colored reflections of Kyle’s face. And Matt’s face as well.

It’s all right. Time to Merge,
he told her.

Hurting,
Major Soto thought. But the thought was fleeting. Major Soto’s memories were much more immediate. His first time in the Demon, the time when it tried to rip him out of its chest. The amazing feeling, the amazing feeling of Mesh as it should be. But also the pain like a dagger in his heart. Cutting out what he was. He’d lost a huge piece of his memories on that day. They’d simply been ripped out of his head. Major Soto’s mind was an echoing room, furnished in sparse determination.

But I will do this,
Soto thought, sudden and strong. He reached out to Matt. Matt took his hand.

Searing static exploded in their minds. For a moment they simply ceased to be. No thought. No desire. No need. Just blinding static and unending pain.

He realized Michelle and Major Soto were screaming alongside him. The brilliant light of reality was close, so close.

Just a little more,
he thought.

Gathering their strength, they shoved upward toward the light. Their skin flayed from his body in his mind’s eye. Tendons and muscles tore to shreds. His organs streamed out behind him.

Not much longer, not much longer,
Matt’s mind chanted madly.

For endless moments of time, Matt saw everything as if from outside himself. He watched as the three Demons flowed together, forming a gleaming, seamless red ball. The Hellions’ Fusion Handshakes bounced off the smooth sphere, causing only tiny ripples in its surface.

The Hellions unleashed a fury of Seekers and Fireflies. Their impacts were tiny vibrations, faraway and unimportant. They didn’t even scratch the perfect surface of the Merged Demon. The Hellions paused in defeat, then withdrew to observe the sphere.

The Merged Demon took form. The sphere elongated and streamlined to form the sleek space shark they’d glimpsed in the first Demon Merge. It fired maneuvering thrusters to face the waiting super-Hellions.

Before the Hellions could react, they transformed again. Arms cleaved from the merged body. Its tail thrusters split to become legs. A head and up-slanted visor grew from its front section. Veins of orange fusion power glowed all over it body as the transformation continued. Arms bulked out with biomechanical muscle. Legs elongated and gained form. Thrusters appeared on the Merged Demon’s back, exhaling wavering heat and white fusion exhaust.

The Merged Demon’s form locked down with a shock Matt felt all the way to the core of his body. He had one last glimpse of it in his all-seeing point of view: a towering red statue of cruelly perfect curves, streamlined beyond measure, striated with muscle that glowed bright orange with power.

Matt opened his eyes. His body thrummed with energy, as if it were filled with the furious power of the Merged Demon. The super-Hellions weren’t even worth considering. Rayder was only a minor distraction. Matt, Michelle, and Soto were all-powerful, gods themselves.

To one side of Matt lay Michelle, suspended in her interface suit. Her hair floated free in the magnetorheological fluid, like a halo. Her face was covered by the opaque mask, but he knew she was smiling at him. She felt it too. This was it. This was all. They couldn’t lose.

To Matt’s other side was Major Soto. Like Michelle, his face was covered. But Matt knew he wore the same crazy grin. The rictus of power.

Super-Hellions swarmed toward them. Matt raised an arm and brushed them off effortlessly. No longer did the super-Hellions blur with speed. They seemed slow, lumbering. How could he have ever thought them fast?

Matt batted the super-Hellions away as fast as they came. Or was it Major Soto? He didn’t know where he ended and Soto began. Or was it Michelle who thought,
Nice, nice, very nice,
as they plucked the Hellions off their Merged Demon?

ANTIMATTER WEAPONS LOCKED flashed a warning in Matt/ Michelle/Soto’s POV.

Blinding light lanced at them from Rayder’s Displacement Drive ship. Their Mecha hands came up instantly, triggering a Fusion Handshake like a shield. The antimatter annihilation passed over them without effect.

In the wake of the explosion, Rayder’s battleships came at them, a thousand dark gray, purposeful ships bristling with weapons and humming with death. There were hulking Union Rhinos, graceful Taikong Shui Niu and swift Aliancia Caballos. It was a force that could tear an independent Displacement Drive ship apart in seconds, a force to occupy a planet. The Merged Demon, even in its glory, was a glowing pinprick against the coming storm.

Matt/Michelle/Soto crossed their Mecha’s arms in front of themselves. The arms transformed and stretched hundreds of meters in length. Fusion ports opened on their sides, forming a glowing orange X like a shield.

This is the X weapon,
Matt suddenly knew. They hadn’t even had to think about activating it. It had just happened.

“Stop now, and you’ll live,” Matt/Michelle/Soto said, transmitting on all frequencies. “Continue and die.”

The Corsair battleships didn’t slow.

Matt/Michelle/Soto reached out. Their elongated arms stretched even farther to slice into the cloud of oncoming battleships. Their arms became only molecules thick, barely containing the radiant orange death within. Fusion ports spat fire into the cloud in all directions.

Where their arms passed, battleships and fighters flashed to vapor and destroyers wilted. Entire sides of ships disappeared, spilling Corsairs into empty space. Blackened hunks of steel and glass tumbled out of the sky, and the enemy’s remains pattered the skin of the Merged Demon like hail.

When the clouds of destruction parted, a handful of Corsair battleships turned tail and jetted away. Their drives were like white stars of victory.

Matt’s heart hammered in time with Michelle’s and Soto’s. A breathtaking surge of pure exhilaration passed through the trio. They’d done it! They’d turned the Corsairs back! Now all they had to do was—

HEAVY-MATTER WEAPON LOCKED, their screens screamed.

Their world rang like a bell. Matt/Michelle/Soto rocked back, screaming. When they came to and stopped their spin, the overlays showed what had happened: they’d just been hit by a series of heavy-matter weapons from Rayder’s Displacement Drive ships.

Pushing their thrusters past redline, they shot at the Displacement Drive ship. Their arms reached out, clearing the few remaining fighters and battleships out of their way. They hit the Displacement Drive ship like a hammer and it rang like a bell. The Merged Demon grappled with the giant ship, like Atlas lifting his globe. Matt/Michelle/Soto reached in through an open dock, pushing aside corridors, drilling through rock, probing deep to the core of the ship, where the Displacement Drive’s fusion core beat like a heart.

They squeezed. Flame erupted from every port on the Displacement Drive ship. Fissures opened in its surface. A deep rumbling built toward a crescendo.

Matt/Michelle/Soto leapt off the Displacement Drive ship, just ahead of the expanding explosion. House-sized chunks of rock and twisted steel ricocheted off the Merged Demon’s hide, but the pain was distant, unimportant. Matt/ Michelle/Soto turned to watch the expanding ball of gas, laughing at the insane power of the Merged Demon. They’d just crushed a Displacement Drive ship like a kid would crumple a piece of paper.

Matt/Michelle/Soto shared a moment of pure exhilaration.
This was what we’ve been striving for.
An irresistible force, one that no Corsair could stand against.

HEAVY-MATTER WEAPONS LOCKED, their screen said. A vector traced a line to two, three, more Displacement Drive ships.

Matt/Michelle/Soto turned to face the ships just as they fired. The Merged Demon instantly triggered a Fusion Handshake as it shot toward the two ships. On their armored sides, docks slid closed and weapons retracted behind protective shutters.

Closing up? That meant the Displacement Drive ships were getting ready to Displace. Sometime in the next few minutes, Rayder’s forces would simply disappear. And if the ships got away, they’d lost. Rayder would simply regroup again and hit the Union harder.

Matt/Michelle/Soto slammed a hand into an armored dock. The dock doors exploded inward, exhaling a single white puff of atmosphere. The Merged Demon’s hand flowed into the ship. This time, they didn’t immediately crush the enemy. Matt guided them toward the bridge, where Rayder’s information systems were located.

Merge,
Matt thought, and the Demon’s hand became one with the Displacement Drive ship’s systems.

Data flowed into them. Rayder’s orders. Details of what he’d done to the Hellions to unbuffer their neural interfaces and release all the limitations on their operation. The mind control that held Kyle and the other pilots in its iron grip. Relief poured off Michelle, but at the same time, there was an undercurrent of doubt.
What has happened between us?
she wondered.
What has Rayder changed in Kyle?

But there was more data. So much more. Gigantic chunks of seemingly magic technology. Mature nanotechnology. Precise control of genetics, to the point of building completely synthetic organisms. Communications systems that acted directly on the human brain, with no electronic intermediaries. Matt gasped at the expanse of it all. What had they lost in the HuMax war?

But there was no time to dwell on that. Milliseconds were ticking away. Soon Rayder’s ships would Displace away, and all would be lost.

Matt/Michelle/Soto triggered the Displacement Drive ship’s thrusters, driving it into the nearest of Rayder’s giant battleships. The Merged Demon reached through a closing port into the antimatter heart of the battleship.

This time, they didn’t crush it. They grabbed the antimatter core of the Displacement Drive ship and took it into themselves. Absorbing its power. Absorbing the very metal of the Displacement Drive ship. The ship shriveled like a deflating balloon. The Merged Demon surged in size and power. It glowed, blindingly luminescent orange against the blackness of space.

ANTIMATTER WEAPONS LOCKED showed on their screens.

HEAVY-MATTER WEAPONS LOCKED followed close behind.

A half-dozen tags showed weapons tracking them from the handful of open ports on Rayder’s Displacement Drive battleships. Rayder would sacrifice those weapons as they Displaced, for one last shot at the Merged Demon.

Which meant they only had seconds left.

Matt/Michelle/Soto gathered the antimatter power inside the Demon, concentrating it down to a point of pure radiance.

Now,
they thought.

Arms of pure light shot out of the Merged Demon and plunged into Rayder’s nearby Displacement Drive ships. From there, they gathered brilliance and lanced quickly from ship to ship. Glowing arms of power embraced eleven of the most powerful battleships in the universe. Data coursed into the Merged Demon; they had total control. Rayder’s forces weren’t going anywhere.

Except one ship: the
Atlas
. Far away. So far. Matt/Michelle /Soto gathered their strength and flung their X weapon at the
Atlas
. But even with the power of eleven antimatter drives in their control, they couldn’t reach it.

Shit!
Matt ground his teeth. He imagined Rayder’s laughter echoing in the cockpit.

It’s all right,
Michelle told him.
We have his fleet.

Yes. Time to end it,
Soto thought.