Mecha Rogue (31 page)

Merge,
Dr. Roth thought, sending his will through the biometallic nerves of the Omphalos.

Matt's and Michelle's consciousness came with Roth. Their minds expanded into vast new dimensions. For an instant, the secrets of the universe appeared to be laid bare ahead of him. So much technology! So much capability! With this, humanity could be as gods.

But down deep, the Omphalos had buried their mysteries. Things they didn't want to examine. The very nature of causal influence. The principle behind humankind's Displacement Drive. The (meaningless sounds) direct mental connection, without physical intermediation. The Omphalos had disregarded the deepest secrets, the most baffling principles. At their core, they were a race of convoluted mental games, infinitely recursive, like two pedants arguing over the proper use of a comma. But the Omphalos took it to a universal scale. So many minds, raised in chorus of argument. No wonder they felt like static to him.

A force like a Fusion Handshake knocked Roth, Matt, and Michelle out of Merge. He came out, hard whooping air through his viewmask in the Demon. The Omphalos still held them all fast.

You will probe us no more,
the Omphalos said.
You will simply submit.

In that moment, every fragment of anger in Matt assembled into a painful, vibrating whole. The Omphalos were no better than Rayder and his mind control, no better than Union politicians and scientists and their genetic modification experiments on the HuMax. They were the ultimate expression of power, the ultimate suppression of choice.

“I won't let you win,” Matt said, out loud.

Amusement from the Omphalos washed over him.

Who/what are you to refuse?
they asked him.

“I'm Matt Lowell,” Matt said. “Mecha Cadet. Mecha Corps. Corsair. Esplandian. Free Stars Alliance Leader.”

Static laughter shuddered in Matt's infinite virtual space.
You are a broken/fractured thing.

Broken and fractured. In the Omphalos' mind, the thought carried with it a feeling of disgust.

Matt's speeding Perfect Record assembled the pieces. The Omphalos were all about order and perfection. About control and ultimate union. Even their technology pushed toward Merge.

But what if they turned the tables?
Matt thought. It was like the Lokis' simple minds. When hitting a problem head-on didn't work, they'd invert the logic and try again.

And conventional logic said that their only way out of this was for Matt to find a giant, well-armed Mecha to Merge with. One with weapons powerful enough to launch an attack so massive the Omphalos couldn't calulate all the probabilities.

Which meant—

Understanding hit Matt like a giant hammer. Inversion. Not big. Small.

Not one path. Many.

Roth and the others heard his thoughts, through the connecton with Omphalos. Roth sent waves of doubt.
Mecha were never intended to support a sharded operational mode,
he thought. It would take an amazing mind to control each piece effectively—

Roth suddenly stopped himself. Inference to the point of precognition. Matt's Perfect Record might be able to integrate and control a sharded Mecha.

Shard,
he thought, imagining his Demon shattering into a thousand pieces, ten thousand. Each not much larger than a man. Each with a tiny fusion thruster on its backside, and a tiny antimatter torch at its front.

Matt's Demon dissolved. Matt's entire body screamed. His Mecha wasn't just falling apart; it was being sectioned, piece by piece, by atomic lasers. Intense agony shot through every inch of him, until it was his entire soul.

You are not permitted,
Omphalos boomed.

But Matt's Demon dissolved and flowed through the tendrils like sand in the wind. Ten thousand tiny shards darted in a constantly shifting pattern to avoid the tendrils.

Matt's shards found Michelle. “Join me,” he said. One touch, and her Mecha dissolved into ten thousand more.

And Roth. His Demon also joined the ranks. The swarm of shards shot for the entrance to the cavern, seeking escape. Omphalos' tendrils shot out of the walls on all sides, weaving together into an impenetrable wall. The leading edge of Matt's shards impacted the wall and were caught and held by Omphalos. Their way out was blocked.

And now something new was happening, deep in the cavern. The Omphalos' Interstructure Suits were powering up. Glowing orange eyes and razor-sharp limbs unfolded from their mirror-smooth surfaces. Wriggling free of the walls, they fired their own fusion drives and accelerated wildly toward the intruders.

Matt grinned. A cloud of enemies. No exit. Hopelessly overmatched. Impossible odds. This was what he was meant for.

* * *

Matt turned to meet the Omphalos, shard versus Suit. He barely knew where he was within the cloud of Mecha shards, but he knew the rush of Mesh, the feeling of being able to do anything. Suddenly everything was completely clear. He knew what he had to do.

The Omphalos fired. Bright antimatter flashes brightened the walls of the awakening cavern, and Matt felt the hot pinpricks as his shards were destroyed. Matt's own antimatter weapons sought, targeted, locked. Matt grimaced in the moments before firing. If the Omphalos were able to shift probability on more than a single attack, they were done.

Fire,
he thought.

Five thousand beams lanced out from Matt's shards, turning the cavern interior into day. They touched the Omphalos' Interstructure Suits—

And where they touched, orange blossoms bloomed, reverberatingly loud in the giant underground space. Rolling bass booms echoed up and down the cavern.

The Omphalos screamed, a silent wave of hate and pain.

Matt grinned. The Omphalos' probability disruptor couldn't counter his masses all at once. Some Interstructure Suits survived, but over half of them were destroyed. Michelle's and Roth's shards shot forward to meet Matt and began lancing the Omphalos with their own energy. Interstructure Suits exploded by the thousands.

“How does it feel?” Matt asked Omphalos.

You will stop! We prevail!

But the Omphalos' Interstructure Suits were no match against Matt's shards' antimatter blasts. Where they touched, Omphalos blossomed in deadly fire. Where they passed, only carbonized biometal was left in their wake. The only advantage they had was in numbers.

The cavern came crawlingly alive as Omphalos disengaged en masse from the biometallic matrix and launched their Interstructure Suits at Matt's Mecha shards.

Soon there weren't just thousands, but millions.

And the battle turned. Antimatter blasts from the Omphalos cut hot swaths in continuous waves. Matt's shards exploded as the Omphalos pressed them deeper into the cavern. Matt increased the speed of his retreat and dove down into a lower mezzanine.

“We're going the wrong way!” Michelle yelled, over the comms.

“I know!” Matt said.

“So, what's the plan?”

“Find a way out!” Matt yelled. That was the only thing they could do. Trapped down here with the Omphalos, they'd eventually be cut down by sheer numbers.

“Our opponents know this,” Roth grated. “They're massing above us.”

Matt's viewmask confirmed Roth's words. The space above their shards was a virtual cloud of tags showing
UNKNOWN MECHA
.

“Did you get a map of this place when you were digging into their mind?” Matt asked Roth. “Any directions?”

“No,” Roth said, and then fell silent. But his comms icon remained lit. Finally he continued. “I believe we may need something more than bravado.”

“It's what I have,” Matt said, grimacing as the Omphalos' Interstructure Suits annihilated even more of his shards. Only about half were left, and his sensors showed no upward-turning caverns ahead.

Matt shot downward again, to a cavern where a giant red-hot column, a full kilometer in diameter, thrummed with power. Around it clustered millions of the nodules and crystals of the Omphalos, all of them coming to life. Matt recognized the column as part of the Omphalos' power network that reached down to the planet's core.

“Attack the column!” Matt yelled. “Maybe we can take it down!”

Matt's, Michelle's, and Roth's shards unleashed sheets of antimatter fire at the column. Vitrified rock melted and flowed in orange rivers.

But the column was simply so massive it was like shooting a pistol at a Displacement Drive ship. Their beams had little effect. And a new swarm of Omphalos were on them.

Matt and Michelle turned to face their attackers.

But Roth didn't. His shards recoalesced into a Demon, or at least something very much like one. He'd lost a lot of mass to the Omphalos' Interstructure Suits attack. He perched on the smooth edge of the glowing power column, clinging tight with his Mecha's talons.

“What are you doing?” Matt yelled.

“Providing something more than bravado,” Roth said.

Snaking biometallic tendrils caught Roth's Demon and bound it down to the column. Roth struggled against them, but couldn't escape.

A new icon flared in Matt's viewmask, one he'd never seen before. It showed a bright red Mecha, like a Demon, with a warning triangle and exclamation point within it.

ANTIMATTER POWER SYSTEM OVERLOAD
, the icon read.

“I'm nothing here,” Roth said, before Matt could ask. “I will carve my sphere out of the Omphalos mind.”

“By blowing yourself up?” Matt yelled.

“By Merging, then eliminating any place for my mind to live afterward.”

Matt rocked back, as if struck. This wasn't a sacrifice. This was Roth, trying to extend his empire inside the Omphalos' own universe-spanning network.

He'd given up on humanity.

Matt grimaced and ran his thrusters up to redline, yelling for Michelle to follow. The cloud of Mecha shards arrowed away from the radiant column, toward the masses of Omphalos in Interstructure Suits.

“If you have a plan . . .” Michelle trailed off.

“I have hope,” Matt told her.

Because even if Roth's action wasn't really a sacrifice, maybe it could disrupt the Omphalos long enough for them to get out.

Maybe.

Behind Matt, the chamber lit in perfect incandescence. Yellow-white clouds of vaporized rock and biometal engulfed them in a turbulent wave. Matt's shards tumbled uncontrollably into the middle of the hordes of Omphalos.

But the Omphalos faltered too. Some sputtered and fell dead. Some went in wild corkscrews. Some fired randomly, cutting down their own comrades.

“Come on!” Matt yelled at Michelle. “Go up!”

They pushed through the last of the Omphalos and into empty caverns. Behind them, the giant column of power had been half destroyed. It flickered dull red as it struggled to provide power to the remaining Omphalos.

So not a mortal hit,
Matt thought.
But a solid one. Hopefully it would be enough.

We prevail,
the Omphalos said. But the voice was weak, and pain came in waves.

Matt's and Michelle's shards flew up through the chambers. The Omphalos still came at them in their Interstructure Suits, but there were only a handful of them. Matt and Michelle picked them off with relative ease.

Their position tag slowly moved upward toward the corridor where they'd entered.

At the original cavern, the archway was no longer netted with biometallic cords. Some waved weakly at Matt and Michelle as they passed.

Up and up, they went through the corkscrew and out into the Capitol Park. At the fallen Expansion Monument, Matt and Michelle reassembled into tiny red Mecha, the only thing their Demon could create from the few shards they had left. In the distance, night was falling over the city. Union Mecha strafed the biometallic tendrils and transformed buildings.

“It's not over,” Michelle said.

“It may never be over,” Matt told her. They'd dealt a hard blow to the Omphalos on Eridani, but what about their other caverns buried on humanity's worlds? And how long would it take the Omphalos to recover from the damage they'd done here?

“Then why do you sound so cheerful?” Michelle asked.

Matt said nothing for a long time. Because they overcame impossible odds. Because the cloak has dropped. Because nothing will ever be the same again. Those were all things he could say.

But he knew there was something more. And it was finally time to say it.

“Because I'm here,” Matt said, eventually. “With you.”

Michelle's Mecha turned to look at Matt, its visor almost questioning. “Are you serious?”

“Yes. I am.”

Michelle said nothing for a long time. Finally her Mecha's hand reached out and took Matt's own talons. It felt almost warm through the force-feedback.

“It's about time,” she told him.

For a while, they stood there, content. But there was still a job to do. Matt nodded at Newhome. “Should we go help them?” he asked.

“You'll be arrested,” Michelle told him.

“After all this?”

“You know the Union,” Michelle said.

Matt laughed. “I'll take my chances.”

Two small Mechas ascended into the sky, toward Newhome.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Brett Patton
, in the words of a friend, “was watching Evangelion while you were reading Heinlein.” Actually, don't tell anybody, but he was doing both. And actually, don't tell anyone, but he's also taking liberties with the quote. He's been writing fun, action-oriented science fiction for years, and currently in Los Angeles, California.

CONNECT ONLINE

www.brettpatton.com

Novels of the Armor Wars

Mecha Corps

Mecha Rogue