Mecha Rogue (11 page)

Merge,
Matt thought, putting all his force into the command. His Demon quivered and pulsed, trying to comply, but Marjan's Mecha remained stubbornly separate.

Do you know where my hand is now?
Marjan thought, dry like dust and crackling like static.

DeMerge,
Matt thought, trying desperately to scramble away. But he remained stubbornly attached to Norah. He sensed her grim amusement. Behind him, Mikey finished wiping out the rest of the cells. All the HuMax were dead. Every single one.

My hand is wrapped around your pilot's chamber,
Marjan thought.
And my Fusion Handshake is charged and ready.

Surrender or die,
Matt thought. Except Marjan didn't expect him to surrender. Didn't want him to surrender.

It was over, no matter what he did now. He'd failed.

Matt caught the flash of a red shape out of the corner of his eye, blurring fast. His cockpit rocked as a new figure hit the three Mecha, hard. Marjan's thoughts went instantly from gloating satisfaction to immense surprise. His grip on Matt's biometallic innards slipped.

Desperately, Matt bucked as hard as he could, thinking,
DeMerge!
Norah's Demon melted away from him as Marjan's hand popped out of his chest, triggering a Fusion Handshake in free air.

Matt flew backward from the blast. He came to a clanging halt on the shattered wreckage of the south cell block.

Tags in his POV told the story. The thing that had bowled into them was Elize's Mecha, its visor still only half-mended. She'd turned to Matt's side!

Matt didn't have time to celebrate. Mikey came at Elize, pinning her with a grip around her neck. Norah and Marjan stood and fired thrusters, accelerating his way.

“Go!” Elize cried through the comms. Then she turned to her attackers and said, “I give up! Repeat, I surrender!”

Matt crouched, preparing to fire his own thrusters and head into orbit. But a new warning flared in his POV:
THRUSTER RECONFIGURATION INCOMPLETE: DISABLED (90 SEC).

What the hell? A leftover from his partial Merge? Matt didn't have time to think. He had to get out of there.

He whipped around. Behind him was the tunnel the Imps had emerged from. Too small for a Demon. But if he changed form, the way they did when they flew in space, maybe he could do it.

Transform,
Matt thought, charging at the tunnel. His Demon hunched over and changed as he moved, elongating and narrowing. His body streamlined, arms reaching out in front of him to become grappling hooks, head and pilot's chamber moving forward in his body. His legs melded into a sinuous tail that propelled him along like a snake.

Matt's snakelike Mecha shot into the tunnel, just as the other two Mecha came up short. Marjan beat the entrance to the tunnel and tried to ram through, but his Demon's bulk wouldn't fit. And, apparently, he couldn't transform as Matt had just done.

* * *

Two hundred meters into the tunnel, it terminated at a closed steel air lock. Its cycle light glowed red, indicating it had been depressurized. Matt's snakelike Mecha rose so he could peer through the window in the door. The air lock beyond was closed. He could see only hints of a larger space beyond through the tiny windows on the other side. His POV showed a significant heat signature from the room, though. That meant it was probably still pressurized.

Which meant there might be someone in there. Someone—or something.

Still, it wasn't as if he had a choice. The tunnel didn't go anywhere but to this air lock.

“Lowell, it's over,” Colonel Cruz's voice came over Matt's comms. “Return to the surface to be escorted back to the
Helios
.”

“So it's no longer ‘Major,' is it?” Matt asked.

Silence for a while. Cruz hadn't been expecting that. When he came back onto the comms, his voice was lower, more reasonable. “What are your other options? Stay there and starve? There's no other way out of this system.”

“Same for the HuMax,” Matt said.

“Return to the surface.”

“And have Marjan rip me apart?”

“That was regrettable. I'll ensure your safe passage back.”

“To a court-martial,” Matt added.

“For internal review. It would probably come to that, yes. But again, what else will you do?”

I don't know,
Matt realized. The thought was oddly freeing. Yes, he could go back. He could go through the trial. He could spend the rest of his life on Keller.

Or in a place like this.
You're a genemod too. What would the Union, or even Dr. Roth, give for carte blanche to study you?

Matt shuddered.

One thing he could do: investigate that room. He put Colonel Cruz on mute, wrapping himself in chill silence.

Matt opened the first lock door and nosed his Mecha in. The lock was just large enough to hold the giant Demon, with it curled in on itself like a boa. He started the pressurization cycle and waited for the interior doors to open.

They revealed a large, cylindrical space, with a high domed ceiling. Inside, chrome bars and green hospital curtains sectioned off the floor space, with the outer walls fronted by glass-walled offices.

A medical facility,
Matt thought. Probably where they did the genetic work on the HuMax. He could only imagine how nightmarish a place it must have been.

The problem was, this looked like another dead end. No corridors led away from the dome. There was no way out.

THRUSTER RECONFIGURATION COMPLETE,
Matt's POV showed. He sighed. A lot of good that would do him. He stood, transforming seamlessly back into the Demon's standard humanoid form.

In the chamber, the chrome tubes holding the drapes swayed slightly. An Imp burst out and ran at Matt. It carried an MK-14, but it didn't raise it to fire. Its antipersonnel missile launchers were empty, just gaping holes along the sides of its torso. It slammed into Matt's torso and beat his Demon with the MK-14. Through the tiny slit-window to the Imp's pilot's chamber, Matt saw the sketchy outline of a man's head.

The Imp was clearly out of ammo. Matt plucked off the struggling Mecha with one razor-taloned hand and held it out at arm's length. He let it struggle awhile longer; then when it was clear it wouldn't stop, he disconnected its fusion power pack.

The Imp stopped moving. Matt set it down on the floor as the lid to the pilot's chamber flipped open. Inside was a HuMax with graying hair. He glared up at Matt's Mecha with eyes that burned with murderous rage, then scrambled out of the cockpit and retreated into the drapery.

Matt followed. He found the man standing in front of a hospital bed where a young woman sat, shaking her head woozily. Even in a shapeless hospital gown, she was beautiful, with regally high cheekbones and short flame-red hair. Her eyes, like the man's, were gold and violet.

The woman was the first to notice Matt. Her eyes went wide and she scrambled off the hospital bed. The man turned and stood in front of her, his arms out in the universal gesture of protection.

Matt sighed sadly. There was nothing the HuMax man could do to save her, for all his superhuman abilities. Against a Mecha, he was powerless.

Matt triggered his external comms and said, “I'm not going to hurt you.”

The two winced at the booming voice of Matt's Mecha. The man didn't move or say a word.

And why would they have any reason to believe him? Everyone was dead. Everyone except these two. And as soon as the other Mecha came, they'd be dead too.

“Are there any other ways out of here?” Matt asked, gesturing around the dome.

“I'll not help you hunt the rest of us!” the man spat.

“I . . .” Matt trailed off.
I'm not like them anymore. I've gone rogue.
But how did he say that, in a way that would convince these HuMax?

“They're probably already dead,” Matt said.

“Monster!” the woman screamed.

Matt couldn't contradict her. He hung his head. “Look. I know you won't believe me, but I'm—well, I'm hiding too. Hiding from a court-martial. So if there's any other way out of here, I'd really like to know.”

The man bent low and muttered something to the woman. Something like
I think there was one fighting against the others.

“There's nothing except this lab,” the man said. “This is the end.”

Matt shook his head. Trapped. Until the other Mecha managed to transform themselves.

Bright light, like lightning, lit the duraplas dome. A pillar of flame traced a lazy figure eight in the ice outside the dome. A sound like distant thunder rolled over them.

“What was that?” the woman cried.

With a groan, Matt realized exactly what it was: his former team, probing the ice with their Zap Guns. They were out on the surface, shooting down into the ice.

“More Mecha,” Matt said. “Shooting at us.”

“Why?” she asked.

“Because I wouldn't kill you,” Matt told her.

As if in answer, another pillar of brilliant white light exploded, this one closer. Thunder boomed even closer as the ice outside the dome fractured, splintering the light into rainbows.

“What do we do?” the woman asked.

And that was the question, wasn't it? What could he do? Stand there and wait to be vaporized or try to take on three other Demons at once? Or—

“Get in the Mecha,” Matt said.

“What?”

Matt irised open the pilot's chamber and pushed himself through the magnetorheological gel. Surfacing, he pulled his viewmask aside and looked down at the two HuMax from his vantage point on the giant Mecha's chest. He thrust an arm out of the cockpit and waved.

“Get in,” he said, kneeling so his chest touched the floor. Handholds opened on the Mecha's skin, leading up to the cockpit access.

The two held back, leaning close to talk to each other. Without his enhanced senses, Matt couldn't hear what they were saying.

A third Zap Gun beam lanced the ice, even closer than the last two. Half the dome lit with the brilliance of an atomic explosion, nearly blinding Matt. Even the HuMax covered their eyes.

“Now or never!” Matt yelled.

The man pushed the woman ahead of him. She scrambled up the front of the Mecha with surprising speed. The man paused at the base of the Mecha's chest and looked up, as if suddenly uncertain.

The woman reached the pilot's chamber. She pulled herself over the edge and paused for an instant. Her gaze flickered from Matt to the depths of the magnetorheological gel, back to Matt. Her eyes were a little larger than a human's, and her violet-and-gold irises were intensely colored. A complex series of emotions passed over her face in a handful of seconds: relief, anguish, shock, betrayal.

“Get in!” Matt said. Calling down to the man: “Come on!”

“I'll drown!” the woman shouted, pointing at the gel.

Another Zap Gun beam hit, this one the closest yet. The entire dome went white and groaned under the close call. When the beam passed, the screech of escaping air filled the chamber.

“You'll be fine!” Matt said, and pulled her in. She splashed in the pink murk and spluttered.

“Respirator!” Matt said, pointing at the emergency air. Without a viewmask, she wouldn't see anything, but she'd at least be safe.

The woman pulled the respirator on and gave Matt one last distrustful look before pushing herself as far away as possible from him. The three would have a tight ride in the cramped pilot's chamber.

Matt looked down. The man was halfway up the Demon's chest, moving fast. Good. They'd both—

The world disappeared in light. Matt's eardrums popped, first inward from the pressure wave, then outward as the air exhausted from the circular dome in a terrific gust. They'd been hit glancingly by a Zap Gun beam, but that was enough—the chamber was compromised!

When Matt could see again, the man simply wasn't there. He caught a glimpse of something rising on the column of air through the Zap Gun's blasted channel. The woman next to him splashed and cried out, her voice almost ultrasonic in the thin atmosphere. Matt's eyes bulged as he whooped out all of his air. His head spun. Near vacuum. He'd be unconscious in seconds.

“Get down,” he tried to yell. The words came out as a single squeak. He pushed the woman down into the gel, snugged on his viewmask, and triggered the cockpit iris. Everything went dark, then lit in the Mecha's POV. Next to him, the woman thrashed and screamed through her respirator. Her fists beat at him, surprisingly strong in the viscous gel.

Matt turned and grabbed blindly, catching her by the shoulder and neck. She grappled with him, her hands finding his neck. Matt bent low near her ear and screamed, hoping she would hear:

“If you want to get out of here alive, stop fighting with me!”

The woman ceased struggling and sobbed something, maybe something about her father. Was that who the man was?

“There was nothing I could do,” Matt yelled.

The woman just shook her head and cried. Matt turned back to the front of the Mecha, where his POV showed Marjan's Demon emerging from the channel his Zap Gun had cut.

Matt didn't hesitate. He drew his own Zap Gun, aimed it at the ceiling, and triggered its irresistible force. The lab exploded in white clouds of water vapor. Behind him, Marjan tumbled backward into the channel he'd just cut.

Matt's Zap Gun blasted through the ice. Steam vented upward, clearing the remains of the dome.

Matt followed the steam upward, firing his thrusters full force. Up through the thin atmosphere, up away from the icy world. To orbit.

But where,
he wondered,
will I go from there?

7

EXILE

In orbit over Planet 5 of the nameless system, Matt's Demon transformed into a streamlined shape, a red arrow with thrusters on the back and Firefly ports forward. It looked like a pre-Expansion vision of a spaceship, a grand vessel for transporting passengers and cargo from star to star.

Except for one problem,
Matt thought.
Without a Displacement Drive, I'm not going anywhere.

Especially here. His POV showed no familiar tags, no named systems at all. Every star was nothing but a catalogue number, every planet just a numeric appendage. They were so far out none of the empires of humankind had claimed a single foothold.

Even if they were close to the Core of the Union, it wouldn't matter. The only interstellar travel humanity had was via the Displacement Drive, and the Displacement Drive required a mass of ten billion metric tons or more to work. So, unless Matt found a spare antimatter reactor, a Displacement Drive, and a convenient asteroid, his flight was soon going to end.

Behind Matt, new tags appeared, above pinpricks of fusion exhaust:

DEMON 021: AD. NORAH GRACIA

DEMON 007: AD. MARJAN VELUSZIK

DEMON 012: AD. MIKEY KERR

His adepts were coming for him. Worse, he was sandwiched between the UUS
Helios
and the Demons. They would soon be in firing range.

Could he hold the adepts off? Possibly. Maybe he could even defeat them. But then he'd have to conquer the entire
Helios
in order to make it home.

Do whatever it takes, make your own time at all costs.
The thought was like a whisper in his mind, only half heard. The scratchy voice of the Mecha.

I have to agree,
came another thought.

Where the hell did that come from?
Matt wondered. That other voice was clearly outside himself.

You can hear my thoughts?
Sudden panic overlay the second voice. It wasn't the voice of the Mecha. It was something new.

Who are you?
Matt asked.

I am 076-50-035A,
came a thought, sudden and crisp. Overlaid was an image of a woman's slim wrist and a 2D bar code tattoo.

You're the woman I rescued?

Yes.
Hate raged through her as flickers of those final moments in the dome came to Matt. Information unfolded: The man in the Imp was her father. Both of them were HuMax subjects. She'd lived her entire life in the Union's chill laboratory. He'd been trying to protect her as she had just been—

Matt cringed as the memories came, sharp and fast. This woman had been selected for one of the Union's genome-rewriting projects. She'd been injected with the reverse-transcription virus, and had been unconscious until Matt had arrived.

The genome rewrite had just started. She was changing now as she hung beside him in the Demon's magnetorheological gel.

Changing into what? Matt wondered.

Fear, overlaid with ironic mirth, was his answer.

I don't understand,
Matt told her.

I don't know how I will change,
the woman thought.
The Union doesn't give us a map to our new genetic code.

Matt bit his lip, imagining this beautiful woman turning into one of the four-armed monsters . . . or something even more terrible.

Don't pretend to care about me,
she told him.

I can't pretend,
Matt thought.
This is mind to mind.

In response, he got only chill suspicion. Of course. Why should she trust him? He was Mecha Corps, in service to the Union.

Or was he? How could he say he served the Union now? He sensed this woman, this 076-50-035A—watching him, observing his reactions.

What's your name?
he asked her.

0-76-50-035A
.

Don't you have a real name? I'm Matt. Matt Lowell.

We are forbidden to use informals.

Wow. How far did they go to dehumanize them?

It's okay,
Matt told her.

You're trying to trap me,
she thought.
You'll use this in my files when you take me to another lab.

Matt laughed out loud.
There's nothing left of the lab,
he told her.
And I don't have any idea where to go. Go ahead, take a look.

Matt opened his mind more fully to her. For long moments, something like a warm breeze flowed through his head. When it was done, the woman was still suspicious, but her fear had ebbed a little. She could see they were both outcasts now.

I'm Ione,
she told him.

Ione who?

Ione O-3-5-A.

Matt sighed. Ione would have to do.

He glanced at the three pursuing Mechas at his back. They were closer now. The tag for the UUS
Helios
was still over the horizon. He hovered in between destruction by Zap Gun and destruction by heavy-matter weaponry. Unless he simply surrendered.

If you surrender, they'll kill me.

Matt shivered. She was right. And more than likely they would kill him too. Cleaner than any court-martial. The valiant hero dying in battle, so sad.

Are there any other Union installations in this system?
he asked her.

We know only the Home,
Ione thought.

Matt nodded. How could she know? In any case, it was ridiculous to think there was any other place of refuge in the desolate system.

Helios
popped over the horizon of Planet 5, a dark speck against the distant sun dazzle. Tags in his POV tracked the tiny dot, calling out its distance in ever-decreasing numbers. At his current speed, he'd reach it in nine minutes.

A single bright thread flashed away from the UUS
Helios.
Matt jumped. Was it launching missiles at him? But his forward view was clear of tags. No missiles rocketed at him; no heavy matter was coming his way.

Another tiny flash, this one brighter. Matt frowned. What was happening? Was the
Helios
engaging another orbital emplacement? That didn't make sense. They'd captured those before the exercise even began. And there was no tag—

No. Wait. There was another tag in Matt's POV. It was simply buried behind the
Helios
. Matt used his Enhanced Sensory Array to zoom in. The speck of the
Helios
grew to the size of a coin, glittering in the chill sunlight of the unnamed sun.

Off the
Helios
's planetward side was another dark, lumpy disk, bristling with antennae. Its tag read
DISPLACEMENT DRIVE SHIP (ORIGIN UNKNOWN, WEAPONS UNKNOWN).

Another Displacement Drive ship? Matt's heart pounded. Was it a way out of here?

Missiles flashed from the unknown Displacement Drive ship and arced at the UUS
Helios.
At the same time, heavy-matter rounds from the
Helios
hit the Displacement Drive ship, rocking it visibly. Great gouts of gray dust fountained up from its surface. Unlike the
Helios
, this ship wasn't armored—it was just a simple converted asteroid. It wouldn't last long under the
Helios
's bombardment.

Why wasn't it Displacing out? Matt wondered.

Too old,
Ione thought.
Waiting to recharge.

What do you mean? You know this ship?

Called on FTLcomm. Friends finally heard us. But friends came too late.

Friends?

You know them as Corsairs,
Ione told him.

A Corsair ship? Matt's stomach turned over. Corsairs working with the HuMax? Like Rayder, all over again?

They didn't know of us until the revolt,
Ione thought.
But they know of HuMax
.

Matt's Perfect Record brought back the Union records from his Merge with the computer. The HuMax had used the FTLcomm. And they'd finally reached someone.

More heavy-matter rounds hit the Corsair Displacement Drive ship. Antennae and sensors vaporized, shards sparking in the sunlight. The poor ship wouldn't last long.

Would it last long enough to recharge its Displacement Drive and flee? That was the real question. It obviously didn't have a fast-cycle drive like the
Helios
. How long did it take to recycle? The older ships could take ten or twenty minutes.

Suddenly everything was completely clear. He tucked his visor down and pushed his aft thrusters into redline, rocketing at the Corsair ship. Hopefully it would last long enough for him to arrive.

* * *

As Matt landed hard on the Corsair ship's surface, he knew that one of two things would happen. Either his comms would light with Cruz's icon, for one last offer. Or they'd—

HEAVY-MATTER WEAPONS TARGETING
, Matt's POV screamed, in bright red letters.

—try to blow him out of the sky.

So that's how it is,
Matt thought. The Corsair Displacement Drive ship was still intact, but it had taken heavy damage. Its comms arrays were scoured off the surface, and its single heavy lock jetted wispy streamers of air.

Matt drew his Zap Gun and aimed it at the
Helios
.

HEAVY-MATTER WEAPONS LOCK
, his POV showed.

Alarms shrilled in Matt's ears as the
Helios
's went off. For a moment, Matt actually saw the hazy dark matter, rocketing his way. He fired his Zap Gun straight into the middle of the mass.

All of space went white around him. Shock waves battered his Mecha, and he tumbled over the surface of the Corsair asteroid in a haze of dust and rock shards.

But he'd hit the heavy-matter rounds and neutralized them. His Zap Gun beam had also sliced neatly through a section of the
Helios
's armor, exposing the shock-absorbing scaffolding beneath.

But now his adepts were less than a minute away from him.
ANTIMATTER WEAPON TARGETING
flashed from the three Union loyalists. No matter where he went, one of their guns would follow him.

Good run, almost made it,
Ione thought. At the back of her mind, she imagined a future where another Union rebel like Matt actually succeeded in freeing the HuMax and getting the word out.

“No,” Matt said. He scrambled toward a deep pit in the surface and aimed his own Zap Gun at the incoming adepts. Maybe he could take one of them out—

The stars changed.

Suddenly there was no UUS
Helios
. No Demons. Nothing in the star-speckled sky at all.

The Corsair ship had finally Displaced.

He was safe. For now.

* * *

Matt lay on the surface of the Corsair ship for long minutes, content simply to rest for a while. The close-packed stars above were still beautiful, even if they were half covered by red
REGENERATION
countdowns. Ione seemed content to leave him alone as well, though her mind still swirled with undercurrents of unease.

Matt jumped when a proximity alarm flared to life. New tags floated in his POV. Three people in mismatched space suits had come out to the surface of the asteroid and were approaching his Demon cautiously.

Corsairs.

They moved in the shuffle step of people familiar with microgravity. One carried a large weapon that was longer than the person was tall. Matt wasn't familiar with the model, but his viewmask tagged it as a
PORTABLE FUSION CANNON
.

That wouldn't be good. Assuming the guy could hit him, that is. The heavy gun fought the space-suited figure's every move. Shooting it would probably give him a one-way ticket out of the asteroid's gravity well into deep space.

Matt pushed himself up to sit so he could get a better look at them. The three men scrambled to hide themselves behind rocky outcroppings. Matt almost laughed. They'd thought he was incapacitated.

But how was he going to talk to them? He set his comms on
WIDEBAND
ALL
and opened his mouth.

And suddenly realized:
I have nothing to say
. What could he possibly tell them?

Don't shoot, I'm with you guys now?

Come on, we're all in this together?

Take me to your leader?

Matt toggled the comms off and sat in silence as the three figures struggled with the gun.

Tell them the truth,
Ione thought.

Matt sighed. She was right. He turned the mike on again and said, “This is Major Matt Lowell, former Universal Union Mecha Corps, surrendering.”

It was like taking a knife in the guts.

It's the right thing to do,
Ione thought.

And I made a vow to start doing a better job at doing the right thing,
Matt thought. That didn't mean it wasn't painful, though.

Matt jumped when his comms crackled to life. A new comms tag showed
UNKNOWN
M. LOWELL
.