Mecha Rogue (27 page)

“Roth was right,” Soto said, after the research lab had been secured.

“You don't sound very happy,” Matt told him.

“When you make a deal with the devil, do you smile when he delivers?”

Matt frowned, nodding his head in silent assent.
No. You start worrying about the bill.
Just because Roth didn't want anything up front didn't mean there wasn't going to be a cost.

“I'm just sorry I wasn't able to be there with you,” Matt told Soto.

Soto shook his head. “Don't be. You'll soon be taking a much bigger chance.”

* * *

The tearful Auroran scientist, with his authenticated credentials and unassailable records, was what sold it.

“When I found out HuMax still existed, I took this assignment for revenge. Everyone knows those monsters almost destroyed the human race. But I discovered they were people. And what we're doing to them is more terrible than anything they ever did to us. We're the monsters now.”

Shot with the HuMax survivors still cowering in the background, it was a powerful image. One the Union had never seen.

The Union mass media tried to play it off. Just another violent Corsair attack, they said, emphasizing the loss of property and speculating on loss of life. Terrible hit on the home worlds, worse than Rayder. The Corsairs planted the evidence. Everyone knew the HuMax were an evil superrace bent on universal domination.

But that one scientist, that one video—it bounced through the UniNet FTLcomm links beyond the speed of thought. In one hour, as Matt's forces were fighting their way back to their rendezvous points, it had gained ten million views. In an hour and thirty minutes, it had hit a hundred million.

From there, the walls crumbled. Fast.

More UARL research personnel stepped forward. One quietly removed all the security from the Union's HuMax historical archive. In it, the creation, usage, and management of the HuMax were recorded in painstaking detail.

Ideal tool for use on desert planetoids,
one report said. Where humans struggled to survive for weeks, HuMax had an “acceptable” average life span of fourteen years.

Petition for Entry into United Planets,
was another popular document. More than a hundred and fifty years ago, a provisional HuMax government had gone through proper channels and tried to join the United Planets, which was the precursor to the Union. The United Planets had responded by dropping nuclear weapons on the most populous HuMax world, Prospect. When the HuMax fought back—harder than the United Planets had expected—they took over several of the Core UP worlds. Desperate, the UP absorbed several new neutral worlds and transformed itself into the Universal Union. The promise: eliminate the HuMax menace and usher in a supposed new age of peace under enlightened leaders.

In the end, nothing had changed. The Union monsters just wore new masks.

All fabrications! the Union media shouted.

But the damage was done. What had been set in motion by Matt's awkward transmissions now overflowed the banks. Hundreds of thousands poured out of the cities to see the remains of the breached labs on Geos, Utopia, and Aurora. They sent their own video and photos onto the UniNet, confirming the “Corsair” transmissions.

Aurora was the first world to burn.

At the office of the supreme chancellor of Aurora University, students flowed in, took over the hallways, and pressed close around the building by the tens of thousands. They yelled for explanations. They demanded all the archives be opened. Sprinkled throughout the crowd were the characteristic violet eyes of genemod. A tearful interview with a pretty blond genemod woman put words to fears ricocheting throughout the UniNet:

“If they torture HuMax, what's to stop them from doing the same thing to me?”

The chancellor appeared briefly to tell the students to go back to their classes. His voice could only barely be heard above the chanting of tens of thousands of students, despite the powerful public address system.

Tell the truth! Open it up! Tell the truth! the crowds chanted.

Five minutes after the frustrated supreme chancellor left the stage, the Aurora University Security forces came out. Except they weren't dressed in their friendly gray-blue uniforms, and armed only with stun sticks. They marched in behind carbon-composite shields, dressed in formfitting black body armor. There was no negotiation, no demands. They simply sprayed aerosol incapacitator into the crowd and marched forward, pushing them away from the chancellor's office. Video of writhing students being trampled by heavily armed police joined the media on the UniNet.

It was probably a student who lit the first match. Analysis of satellite images, in some future time, might pinpoint it. But it didn't matter. Less than five minutes after the Aurora Security force waded in, the chancellor's office was burning.

Raging flames shot out of the tall, first-story windows, curling outward in streamers of destruction. Cheery banners reading
AURORA UNIVERITY/UNIVERSAL OPPORTUNITY
caught fire and disappeared in the blaze. More windows blew outward as the fire grew.

For a moment, students and security both paused to look at the burning building. And, at that moment, one of the last images to run across the Auroran FTLcomm link was taken: a group of bloody and bruised students, their eyes reflecting the light from the fire, their expressions a mix of uncertain triumph.

Then the Union began taking big steps.

It severed the UniNet FTLcomm links to Aurora, Utopia, and Geos. Takedowns hit hundreds of tertiary media sites screaming about the Union's deception. The primary media started running nonstop refutations and propaganda. Union loyalists came out to fight with the millions already in the streets, on all twelve Core Worlds.

But the word was out. Views on all media of the HuMax liberations kept climbing—to the billions, then tens of billions, then hundreds. Messages poured into the Senate on Eridani, overloading their capacity. And, as on Aurora, crowds began to gather. Their chant reflected the students:

Open it up! Tell the truth!

But they added their own spin on it too. A spin fueled by the violet-eyed among them.

Open it up! Tell the truth! Right the wrongs!

Matt smiled. Right the wrongs. People's faces burned with rage or crumpled in confusion. Until this day, they'd known the Union only as a force for good. They
knew
they were on the right side, fighting the evil Corsairs.

How was it, then, that the ones labeled “Corsairs” had exposed the Union's own terrible experiments, its own buried secrets?

Matt remembered his amazement at
El Dorado
, Captain Gonsalves's Corsair ship. Full of people. Normal people. Just doing their jobs. Some nice. Some dicks. The Union had never seen the Corsairs as people.

Just like themselves.

Outside the Senate Building on Eridani, black-armored Union Security forces appeared, trying to push the growing crowd of citizens back. In the bit-rotted FTLcomms view, it looked like a razor-thin line of black ants, trying to hold an opposing army at bay.

And this citizen army wasn't like the Aurora students. Eridani was the oldest world in the Union, fiercely proud of its customs. Many of its citizens were heavily armed.

It wasn't long before shots rang out. The security line parted, and the masses stormed the Senate.

Matt nodded, still deep in his Demon, deep in Mesh. It was time. Time to join the fight.

“Displace!” he barked.

* * *

Despite the chaos outside the Senate in the city of Newhome, the hills above Eridani rose peaceful and yellow-green, carpeted in the alien spring flowering of the world. The bay was calm and glassy, deep blue under a clear sky. Local time was fifteen thirteen, and the sun was falling toward another perfect sunset. Pleasure boats still churned the canals, full of eager Union citizens out for one of the first warm days of the year.

In the hills above Newhome, a kilometer-wide, silvery planetoid snapped into existence.

The thunderclap of displaced air echoed across the valley, reducing windows in Newhome suburbs to shards. Far away, panes rattled in the mirrored high-rises of the city proper.

Dirt and rock fountained outward from the bottom of the planetoid, where it impinged on the crust of the planet. The roiling dark cloud of debris charged outward toward the city like a deck of thunderclouds. Immediately the surface of the asteroid sprang to life. Tens of thousands of Lokis scrambled down the dark armored surface, their auxiliary thrusters flaring to drive them ahead of the onrushing debris.

Matt smiled as he watched on his Demon's screens. The hundred thousand Lokis came from former Last Rising worlds, now part of the Free Stars Alliance. His whirlwind tour of the last weeks had paid off, even though some of Rayder's worlds remained loyal to his memory—and some had rebuffed his diplomatic overtures with antimatter force.

The Mecha Dock hatch sprang open in front of Matt, revealing flattened grassland and a chaos of dust. Through the miasma, the silver spires of Newhome were just visible. The Loki barrier was already falling to ground and swarming toward the city.

“Only overwhelming force will work,”
Dr. Roth had told Matt
. “Your proof may win the rest of the Union, but you won't win Eridani without Arcadia.”

Arcadia. Roth had referred to it both as the “lab of labs” and the ultimate stronghold of the Union's deepest secrets. Located directly below Newhome, it was also the most heavily guarded. An orbital approach wouldn't work. A deep atmospheric insertion might not even give them enough time before the Eridani defenses countered. Only dropping
Helheim
down right on the surface of the planet had any chance.

Matt's viewmask lit with vector outlines reaching toward Newhome—his guide toward the hidden shaft leading down below the city.

On this point, Roth had been completely clear:
“only you can win Arcadia.”

Matt leapt out of the Mecha Dock, firing his thrusters in furious pursuit of the Lokis. Above him, the first missiles from Eridani defenses were streaking in across the clear blue sky, leaving bright white contrails. They arced down toward
Helheim.

“Displace!” Matt shouted.

Helheim
disappeared in another furious thunderclap. Now the only thing behind Matt was a shallow crater and flattened grassland. Ahead of him, Lokis, suburbs, and the city. Less than five kilometers. All he had to do was maintain course, find the shaft, and descend into Arcadia. Mesh high filled him as he shot forward over the narrow streets and single houses of Newhome suburbs.

Conquer these people,
he heard a voice inside the Mecha command him.
Rule them. Make them what they could be.

Matt ignored it, knowing it was the Mesh speaking. He was here to bring justice, not more tyranny.

Firefly missiles flared at the edge of the city, impacting harmlessly on the Loki storm. Bright explosions sparked off Newhome's tallest, glass-walled skyscrapers, like gigantic camera flashes.

Sidewinders quickly followed. As they found their targets, Lokis flared in dirty orange explosions and fell out of the sky, crippled or destroyed. Other Lokis dove toward the weapons emplacements, switching seamlessly to their segmented, insectlike forms. They flowed over the broadening avenues like a carpet of angry centipedes, surrounding the Sidewinder arsenals before they had a chance to retarget. Reinforced concrete exploded upward as the emplacements fell to the Lokis' missiles, opening a path into the city.

Matt's Demon passed over into the city proper. The late afternoon sun cast his shadow ahead of him, like the form of an avenging angel.

Sidewinder fire fell away behind him. Lokis swarmed on the roads, over ground cars, past terrified pedestrians, well in advance of Matt.

On the stone facade of a building ahead, doors opened to reveal a Hellion. Down the city's main street, more doors snapped open. Hellions stepped from their hiding places and launched Sidewinders at Matt.

Matt swore and dodged, firing his own missiles at the closest Hellions. Stone and tarmac disintegrated as the Hellions took direct hits.

A splash from the city's broad canals made Matt look. Something speared up, impaled a Loki, and took it down into the water. Bubbles boiled up as dozens of dark shapes roiled just below the surface of the canal.

Eels
, Matt thought, as more of them leapt out of the canals to strike at the Lokis. The small semi-Mecha were only armed with pikes and depleted-uranium slugs, but the meaning was clear: Newhome would do everything in its power to stop them.

The Lokis separated—some fighting the Eels, and some moving farther ahead of Matt. They hit the emerging Hellions and immobilized them long enough for Matt to put strategically placed Fireflies in their visors. Even if they could regenerate, it would take many minutes—and he'd be at Arcadia by then.

It looked as though they were past the defenses now. An endless carpet of Lokis surged ahead, straight down the vector pointing at Arcadia. The stronghold was now less than a half kilometer away. Matt arrowed along the glowing green line, his lips skinned back in Mesh high. Nothing could stop them! Not unless the Union wanted to fire an antimatter weapon at their own capital city. And they weren't that crazy, no matter how incensed they were.

Matt's grin grew wider as they rounded the last curve toward Arcadia. Directly ahead of him was the Capitol Complex he'd visited with Michelle, its vast parklike grounds unchanged, dotted with timeless neoclassical buildings and monuments to battles long past.

Directly ahead of him lay the Senatorial Apartments, set just below the Prime Residence. A grassy hill rose behind those buildings, dotted with native Earth oak trees. Beyond were the Plaza of Technology and the Expansion Museum. Farther off, a thin streamer of smoke rose from the Senate Building itself.

As they passed over the ring road surrounding the Capitol Complex, three Lokis suddenly shot skyward, disintegrating into shattered segments. Matt pulled back on his throttle, looking for their attacker. There'd been no Mecha, no missile flash.