Mecha Corps (7 page)

The Powerloader jerked to life. Matt lost his balance and fell against the Hedgehog. The ship slid sideways on the steel grate with an incredible screech. Matt levered himself upright and finally dared to look.

The Corsairs had stopped to watch. One had stepped forward to the front and opened his helmet. He wore a thin, sarcastic grin. Flanking him were two Corsairs. Both pointed their weapons at Matt. Bright orange fusion flares glowed deep in their barrels.

It was over. There was nothing he could do.

Matt didn’t care. In four shambling steps, he placed himself between the Corsairs and his father. He held out his big, steel-tube arms, blocking their way.

The lead Corsair laughed. “Should I shoot through you, child?”

“No!” Dad screamed. “Don’t hurt him!”

The Corsair leaned down to look at Matt’s dad through the frame of the Powerloader. “Then let’s talk.”

Silence for a moment. The wind howled louder outside, bringing the rattle and ping of sand against the steel walls.

“What do you want?” Dad’s voice was a little more than a whisper.

The Corsair reached out a hand. “Your slate.”

Dad hugged the slate closer to his chest. “Never.”

“We already have most of your data. Give me the slate, and you and your son may go free, and you can continue your archaeological adventures with the Union.”

“No.”

“I don’t like that word, ‘no.’ Wouldn’t you like to run with your son on the beaches of Eridani?”

Matt jerked back, surprised. He heard his dad gasp. How did the Corsair know about that?

And suddenly, Matt saw exactly what would happen. His father was dead, no matter if he gave them the slate or not. It was how Corsairs worked. They weren’t just boogeymen conjured up to scare kids like him. They were absolutely, totally real. They took everything. Even lives. Especially lives.

Matt screamed and charged at the Corsairs. Pistons fumed and pumped. His arms reached out to crush them.

But the Corsairs just watched him. Matt’s Powerloader was powerful, but it wasn’t fast. He bumbled toward the enemy, the two Corsairs with fusion rifles taking their time as they rose to track him.

“Don’t hurt him!” Dad screamed. He took the slate and slung it low over the hangar deck.

It skidded to a halt a meter in front of the lead Corsair. He leaned down and scooped it up. “Thank you.”

The Corsair nodded at the two with fusion rifles. “Kill the archaeologist.”

Weapons swung toward Matt’s dad. Matt dug in his heels and tried to put himself back in the line of fire. But the Powerloader’s clumsy legs just wouldn’t move fast enough.

The Corsairs fired. Bright orange fire exploded from their weapons, and his father disappeared in a blast of light.

Matt felt nothing. He was nothing. He was going to die like his dad. He knew that. In pure rage, he launched himself at the Corsair leader.

He expected to explode in a burst of orange fire. But he was just fast enough. He barreled into the Corsair leader with the three-ton Powerloader and drove him up against the hangar wall. Tears streamed down his face and spattered on the controls.

They were suddenly face-to-face. The Corsair was young, not much more than a teenager. He gave Matt a bemused grin and looked up at him with oddly calm eyes.

Odd eyes. One eye was bright violet. One eye was an intense golden color.

Matt gaped. That was impossible. Violet and gold eyes. HuMax eyes. But the HuMax were dead. Everyone knew that. The Union had been formed just to wipe them out, and that was more than a hundred years ago.

Matt remembered watching an entertainment video, late at night when he wasn’t supposed to. It was set on Eridani after the HuMax invasion. Violet-and-gold-eyed people swarmed over the verdant colony, while nuclear mushrooms blossomed. His dad had come in and turned off the video, saying, “You don’t need to watch stuff like that.”

Something exploded on Matt’s chest.

He flew out of the Powerloader cockpit and fell on the expanded-steel hangar deck, skidding to within ten meters of the Corsair troops. Smoke curled off his jumpsuit, and the acrid smell of burnt hair filled his nose. Fusion weapons swiveled to target him.

The Corsair leader pushed the dead Powerloader off himself with superhuman strength.
Like a HuMax,
Matt’s terrified brain told him.
But he can’t be.

The front energy cell on the Powerloader gaped open, black and smoking from the explosion. But the Corsair leader’s weapon was also twisted and broken.

He dropped it on the floor and came to examine Matt. His violet-and-gold eyes were heavy and unmoving, like lead. He looked at Matt for a long time.

Matt wanted to scream at him,
You killed my father. I’ll kill you. I’ll rip you apart. I hate you.

But all he could do was stand there and tremble, tears streaming down his face as little sobs escaped from his lips.

Finally the Corsair leader smiled again. The chill, alien expression never touched his eyes. Those strange orbs didn’t move a nanometer.

“Sometimes, courage must have its reward,” he said.

He walked past Matt and joined his fellows. They sauntered out through the shattered hangar doors. Shortly, there was the scream of ramjets. A craft lifted into the sky.

Matt sat alone in the broken hangar. Slow realization crept over him, like a chill fog.

His dad would never return. A Corsair had killed him.
A HuMax Corsair.

Chill turned to heat, and heat turned to rage. Matt stood up. He ran out into the sand. He wanted to leap up into the sky and chase the murderer down, smashing and burning everything in his way. But there was nothing he could do. He looked up at the blank yellow sky and screamed, without a sound escaping his lips.

 

“I’ll find you!” Matt yelled.

Bright medical lamps glared down on him. He lay on his back on a warm, hard surface. White-suited doctors and gray-uniformed Mecha Auxiliaries leaned over him. Some of them winced or recoiled as if in shock. Matt realized he’d yelled out loud.

He was back at Mecha Training Camp.

On the Mind Raze machine.

Fresh, hot memory beat at his mind. Talons raking through his brain. That memory, that terrible memory, in full 3-D glory, brought back sharper and stronger than in even his Perfect Record. He’d lived the death of his father all over again.

That HuMax—that impossible HuMax. How they’d laughed on the
Rock
when he told them that. HuMax were extinct, they said. You’re just a little kid, they said. You’re too young to remember clearly, they said. Eventually, he’d stopped talking about it. Eventually, he’d started doubting even his own Perfect Record.

But he never lost the need for revenge. He would find that Corsair, no matter what it took, and courage would have another reward. One that might finally heal his terrible pain.

Matt scrambled off the machine, nearly falling. He took several steps away from it. He drew in ragged breaths, almost panting.

“Are you . . . all right?” Pechter asked.

Matt realized the room was full of cadets too. Kyle stood with his arms crossed at the edge of the curtains. Michelle leaned against a tent pole on the opposite side of the room, watching him. Sergey sat on a bench, looking at Matt with bored eyes. The Hyva twins leaned over the shoulders of the Auxiliaries for a closer look.

“What happened?” Matt asked.

“Damn machine locked up. You’ve been out half an hour.” Pechter’s wide eyes alternated between the slate and Matt. “How do you feel?”

“I . . . I’m okay.”

Pechter shook his head. “Well, if that’s true, you’re holding up the line, rich kid. If it wasn’t for you, we’d all be at chow.”

“Is he out of interface state?” a voice said from Pechter’s slate.

Pechter jumped and fumbled with the pad, then addressed it. “Yes, sir.”

“What is his final test result?” said the voice.

“Passed. Though I have no idea how.” Pechter gripped the glowing green slate tightly.

“Your ideas are not important,” the voice said.

“What, uh . . . what should we do with him, sir?”

“Proceed as with any other passing candidate.”

“Yes. Understood.”

Pechter’s slate displayed the END CONNECTION icon. He stood there, staring at it for a time.

“Who was that?” Matt asked.

Pechter swallowed. “That was the general manager, Dr. Salvatore Roth.”

Matt started. Dr. Roth was the person who’d perfected biomechanical technology, the father of all modern Mecha. Everybody knew that, but little more. His company, Advanced Mechaforms, Inc., wrapped itself deep in Union state secrecy. He didn’t give interviews. He didn’t do press tours explaining his technology. Armchair speculators loved to guess at Dr. Roth’s secrets, when they’d never seen a Mecha at all.

“Why would Dr. Roth—,” Matt began.

Pechter held up a hand. “Doesn’t matter. The machine had a little problem. You passed. All is well. Gold stars for everyone. If we had gold stars.” He turned to wave at Kyle. “You’re next. Come on up!”

Matt wasn’t ready to be dismissed. He got in front of Pechter. “How many times has it malfunctioned like that?”

Pechter looked away. “Not too often.”

“Like, how many? An estimate?”

“Like, never,” Pechter said, through clenched teeth.

Matt shivered.
Never.
What did that mean? Was it because of his father’s gift? His Perfect Record? Did other cadets experience the same flashbacks he did, or was that something special? Was that why Michelle looked so disturbed ?

Pechter pushed Matt aside. “Now, if you’ll get out of the way, I can get on with testing.”

Matt nodded and stepped away. Kyle took a seat on the machine and lay back. The helmet went down. Pechter’s slate glowed green. Then, only moments later, Kyle stood up and looked at the machine uneasily, like Michelle.

Uneasy. Not screaming in vivid memory. Just like Michelle. What had happened to him?

They cycled through the cadets quickly. Nobody took more than a few seconds to complete the test. Everyone showed some degree of unease or revulsion when coming off the machine.

Until the sixth cadet. A thin woman in her early twenties, her hair still caked with swamp mud. She lay back underneath the hood. It came down over her, and her expression didn’t change. When she stood up from the machine, she didn’t recoil from it.

Pechter’s slate flashed bright red.

“I’m sorry,” Pechter told her. He motioned for the Mecha Auxiliaries to step forward.

“Sorry?” she asked, looking at the Auxiliaries who flanked her.

“I’m afraid you’re gonna need another career,” Pechter said. “If you don’t make it through Mind Raze, you don’t make it to training camp.”

“What?” she said. The Auxiliaries clamped down on her arms. She struggled, but they held her.

“I’m sorry,” Pechter said as they led her out of the tent. “I know it’s hard to take. But it’s an honor just to be here. I’m sure you’ll still get plenty of job offers.”

 

After Mind Raze, they were fourteen.

Matt’s mind churned the simple arithmetic. Eighteen cadets lost the first day. Eleven washed out in the live-fire exercise. Seven rejected by the Mind Raze machine.

Arithmetic was better than letting his mind wander. He’d spent every moment of his life trying not to think about that day back on Prospect. He’d spent countless hours trying to trick his Perfect Record. Anything to erase that one memory. Anything to forget.

But the Mind Raze machine had brought it back, more vibrant than ever. Now all he could think of was that day, his father, and the HuMax Corsair. Matt clenched his fists.

Dinner was Union Army Insta-Paks on mess-hall tables in the medical tent, under the watchful eye of the Auxiliaries. Michelle took hers and walked all the way over to the edge of the tent, where she crouched and ate.

Matt wanted to pick up his Insta-Pak and go over to her. But Michelle clearly wanted to be alone. And she wasn’t why he was here.

Kyle grabbed the Insta-Pak next to Matt and headed toward Michelle. A flush of hatred nearly pushed Matt up from his seat, but he caught himself and eased back. That stuff didn’t matter. At least, it wasn’t supposed to.

Kyle crouched next to Michelle. She looked up, frowning. Kyle smiled and said something that Matt couldn’t hear over the murmur of the other cadets. She shook her head, stood up, and walked away. Kyle stood there for a while, shaking his head and whistling. Then he came back and sat across from Matt.

“That’s hot,” he said, nodding at Michelle. She was now looking pointedly away from them.

Matt said nothing.

“Make no mistake,” Kyle said. “That one’s mine.”

“Uh-huh,” Matt said, pushing down his anger.

Kyle watched Michelle for a while longer, then turned to Matt. “So, what family are you from? Tortelli? Bryce?”

“Family?”

“You’re an Aurora kid. I saw the blazer. Who’s your family ? We’re the Peterovs of Eridani.”

“Peterov, as in Senator Peterov?”

“That’s Dad. Also have Secretary of Education, Undersecretary of Unity, a couple other UniGov staff members. You know how it goes—it’s hard to keep track.”

Matt closed his eyes. “I don’t have a family.”

“Are you part of the Fragmenting Phillips?”

“Nope. I’m a refugee. No family,” Matt continued as Kyle tried hard to hide his shock. “I got into Aurora U on merit, not on connections. Just like I’ll get through training camp.”

Matt turned his back on Kyle and went to grab his own space by the edge of the tent. Kyle just sat at his table and kept smirking.