MECH

by Tim Marquitz

  And it was fast. Easily as quick as the spiders, but with a hell of a lot more mass to back it up. Half-running, half-dragging itself across the roadbed, it crushed cars and shouldered through obstacles as it closed the distance toward the Paladin. I shot at it, for all the good anti-personnel rounds would do, tracers pinging harmlessly off its armor shell.

  I said before about how the Paladin and the kid had a connection. It’s as real as anything. Maybe it’s like the bond that twins have, where they can be halfway around the world and know something is up with the other. Is a tech thing, or is it ESP? I’ve got no damned idea. But I know what I saw.

  I saw the Paladin afraid. The way it reacted to the wrecker’s thunderous attack was completely, totally human. It actually flinched—or perhaps Aiden did and the machine just mimicked his behavior. But the motion was horribly familiar to me. Even on that blank-faced giant robot, I knew it when I saw it.

  There have been men and women I served with who were bold like you would not believe, daring and dangerous, ready for hard contact day or night. But some of them, after they took that first hit that put them down hard but didn’t kill them… Well, they would earn something in the process.

  They’d gain the fear. The knowledge of how close they had come to death, and the cold dread at going over that line again.

  It would make you freeze. Make you slow. Make you flinch.

  Ah, man. That poor kid. He missed a step or two, trapped up there inside that armored cockpit—and the wrecker made him pay for it.

  Far later than he should have reacted, Aiden swung the heat-sword, but he’d telegraphed the move and the Fed drone put up an arm to block the strike. Sparks flew as the red-hot blade scraped over the thick plating across the wrecker’s forearm and failed to bite. I shouted something—I don’t remember what—as the enemy drone followed through with a body-blow punch right on the cockpit hatch that sent the Paladin back a few steps.

  Almost with contempt, the wrecker batted away the heat-sword with enough force to rip it out of the Paladin’s grip. Power umbilicals trailing from its hilt split in two and jetted sparks as the blade whooshed away, over my head, to land in the trees and set them alight.

  More punches landed, one after the other, from a massive hydraulic ram-fist that knocked the Paladin down until all it could do was try to parry the blows.

  I filled my lungs and bellowed Aiden’s name. I knew he had his audio pickups tracking me. I knew he’d hear me. “Fight back! Don’t hesitate! We got you, kid!”

  Once again, it wasn’t an order I needed to give. Everyone on the bridge drew a bead on the wrecker and drowned it in a hail of small-arms fire. Not enough to take it down, but I hoped it was enough to give the thing a second’s pause.

  Belatedly, I remembered the rifle grenades I had in my pack, and I jammed a torpedo-shaped hi-explosive anti-tank charge into the muzzle adaptor of my weapon. Giving up my precious cover once more, I scrambled out into the middle of the open and went down into a crouch.

  Aiming. Counting off the seconds. There, on the back of the wrecker, between the cupolas, there was a pair of exhaust vents for the drone’s fusion engine. I fired and the shot hit dead-on. The enemy machine recoiled as if someone had kicked it in the ass. Then it stomped around on those big metal knuckles and made me a priority. I wanted its attention, and damn me, I got it.

  Mini-guns spat in my direction and chewed up the road all around. The wrecker directed a blow at a stalled Jeep that sent it tumbling in my direction, flipping end-over-end to crush me beneath its weight. I acted on instinct, throwing myself to the ground as the wrecked car rolled over my head and landed hard in a cloud of dust and shrapnel.

  Pain exploded in my right leg; the wreck came down on my ankle and pinned me there. I let my rifle go and put all the adrenaline coursing through my bloodstream into getting free.

  And that was about the time I realized I was the only one still in the danger zone. Everyone else in my unit had done the smart thing and followed my orders, cleared the hell out back to the far end of the bridge.

  The wrecker dithered, its machine brain considering for a second if it should finish me off or go back to pounding the lubricant out of the Paladin.

  I stopped struggling with my trapped leg and grabbed the flare tube I carried in my pocket.

  Red flare, fire the missiles, blow the bridge. That was the way we’d planned it.

  Off in the other direction, I could see the Federate elites advancing in quick overwatch sprints, and I knew I would be dead as soon as they spotted me.

  I aimed the tube at the sky and let the flare go.

  The Paladin lurched forward and I saw the little hatches on the missile pods crank open. The tips of the rockets inside were visible, bright as crimson match heads. But Aiden didn’t fire. The mech was looking right at me, and I knew the kid couldn’t bring himself to pull the trigger.

  He was learning a lot of lessons that day. I raised my hand and mimed a pistol, my thumb the falling hammer. “Shoot!” I screamed.

  The wrecker ambled back in my direction, taking its time. Great vibrating push-blades emerged from slots in the machine’s massive ironclad knuckles, the edges a blur of humming metal. It was going to end me, and then finish off the Paladin, I knew it in my bones.

  Aiden’s hesitation seemed to last for hours, but barely a few seconds passed. Time is like that in battle. It ebbs and flows, becomes thick like oil, thin like water.

  There was a peal of low, sustained thunder, and the crouching Paladin became the center of a web of white fire. The stub-nosed missiles went into the air on curving ribbons of smoke, describing corkscrew patterns up and around as they flashed across the length of the bridge toward the big support arches. The Itano Circus, they called it, the ripple-fire of a full force rocket strike at close range.

  The wrecker reacted, spinning, trying to swat some of the warheads from the air, but it was too late. I tasted cordite as the missiles shrieked over me and slammed home into their targets.

  The detonations took my hearing, tore the Jeep off my leg and threw it away. I remember feeling the bridge buck under me and throw me into the air. The world spun and came apart around in a crackling, spitting apocalypse that I felt through my bones.

  I saw the roadbed break apart and fold in on itself. The bridge grew a hole right at the wrecker’s feet and it vanished through, gone so fast I almost missed it happening.

  There was nothing for me to grab on to. I saw dull skies and green jungle spinning around me, exchanging places over and over as I fell toward my death. We’d killed the bridge, but it was going to take me with it.

  The faces of children flashed before my eyes. Sophia. Maddie. Aiden.

  That was what I was most broken by, the realization that I’d never see any of them again.

  But the Paladin had other ideas.

  Later, Ross would show me the footage from his helmet camera, so I could understand what happened.

  It goes like this: the missile strike, the roadway collapsing. The wrecker falls, then the arches twist and the whole bridge is gone in a cloud of black ash. But instead of falling back, the Paladin leaps into the air on a spurt of thrust from the retros in its legs, the ones it uses for assisted jumps and high-fall drops. Into the cloud it goes, arms outstretched in the way a goalie would dive for the ball.

  He caught me.

  I’d blacked out by then, but that’s what he did. Aiden. The Paladin. Or both.

  You can imagine that when I woke up few hours later, rocking back and forth in a hammock strung from the mech’s thigh, it was a bit of a shock to me. And when I asked Aiden why he’d done it, why he hadn’t made the expedient choice and got the hell out of there, the kid just grinned and said he liked the idea of having family again.

  Which brings us to now.

  With the Paladin carrying the lot of us, we made it to the edge of the comms jammer’s range in a day and back to November Station inside forty-eight hours. We raised the alarm, and the Hegemon
y scrambled a squadron of ghost bombers out of Taiwan to dissuade the Federate forces from pushing their advance any further. Their plan in tatters, the enemy column was forced to fragment and retreat back into the jungle in disarray. It was a win for us, at the end…if you could ignore the half-assed way we’d stumbled into the engagement in the first place and the lives it had cost.

  But that’s real warfare for you. It’s rarely like it is in the sims, with ordered lines of battle, proper tactics, and time to think. Mostly, it’s boredom punctuated by moments of terrifying action with a coating of trench rot and bad weather. Those are the kind of lessons that kids like Aiden can’t learn from instructors who have nothing but book-smarts and zero warfighting experience.

  Listen to me.

  See, the Paladins, as awesome a tool they are, as incredible a piece of battle technology as anything humans have ever built to fight with, you haven’t prepared them to fight in the real world.

  That’s why Aiden froze at the wrong moment. Because he’s not really a soldier.

  And if the heartless, callous trade-off is that we’re going to send teenage boys and girls into war so we can stop the Federate once and for all, then you need them to know. You need them to understand what it’s like.

  Aiden says he risked his life to save me because he wanted the brother he lost. But he needs more than that. All your little toy soldiers do. They need a mentor.

  It sickens me to say this, but if they must fight, then they have to be taught by a real soldier. So, they can learn how to face the worst the enemy can offer, to take a hit and, most importantly, come back alive.

  Consider this my official notice of detachment and transfer from Phalanx Six of Ranger Battalion Helios. And not just me, but Ross and Jane and Doler, and all the rest. As of today, we are the new instructor cadre for the Hegemony’s Paladin Pilot Corps.

  You, and that mouthy Tac-Colonel, and all the brass hats at Kommand don’t get a damned say in any of this. Aiden and the kids have made this choice. The Paladins won’t march unless we’re there to guide them.

  When the war is over—because we’re going to end it, you can count on that—each of us must answer for this. At least I’ll be able to look my wife and my girls in their eyes, and they’ll know I fought a just fight.

  And then I’ll tell the world what price we had to pay.

  Though Harold Hodges was glad to be away from the noise and headaches of city-rebuilding activity outside, his nose had a seizure when he entered the supposedly peaceful therapist’s lobby. Three smells assaulted him almost simultaneously. First came the sickening sweet scent of apple cinnamon from the potpourri infuser blasting the room. Second was an ammonia-laced smell from the bio-sanitizer used on the floors, walls, tables, and furniture—proof against any lingering remnants of the alien slime; leftover contamination from the failed invasion was nothing to sneeze at … pun unintended. But neither of those could drown out the third, unexpected smell.

  Diesel fuel and a strong tang of lubricants.

  Harold looked around, but he was the only person in the waiting room; not even a receptionist. He sniffed his shirt sleeve, worried that he had accidentally worn a stained shirt from the mechanic shop where he worked on supply transport hydraulics. He needed to make a good impression on the new therapist.

  “This is your last chance, Mr. Hodges,” the annoyed magistrate had said. “If we don’t see significant progress in dealing with your anger-management issues, we will have no choice but to assign you to a community-service residue scraping crew.”

  As if his life hadn’t already gone far enough to hell…

  Illustration by FRANKIE B. WASHINGTON

  Harold sniffed the air in the reception area again, but the sour chemical odor wasn’t coming from him. That was a relief. After so many bad first impressions, he didn’t dare leave anything to chance. The fuel and oil came from somewhere else, though nearby.

  He forced calm upon himself, like smothering his stress with a pillow. When a chime rang and his number appeared on the “Now Serving” display, he swallowed hard, tried to think happy thoughts. Time to get this over with.

  He went to the indicated cubicle and sat in front of a flatscreen monitor, which winked into life. An androgynous voice commanded, “State your name, age, and government designation number.”

  Harold felt annoyance, then anger, that they wouldn’t even bother to have a human interact with him, but he quelled that. Too much at stake to lose his temper now. He made a conscious effort to keep the edge out of his voice. “Harold Nelson Hodges, age fifty-three, DTN874QWV543.”

  The synthesized voice verified the data and responded, “Caucasian male. Single. No children. Honorably discharged from service in the United Earth Defense Corp. Mr. Hodges, you have been ordered to attend Travailiant therapy by the reconstructed courts of the United Earth Alliance.”

  “Yes, well—” Harold began, but was cut off.

  “In the most recent incident, you were charged with one count of drunk and disorderly, three counts of aggravated assault, and seven counts of resisting arrest.”

  “As I’ve tried to explain—” He couldn’t get in a word edgewise.

  “Your defiant behavior and subsequent failed attempts at anger management forced the tribunal of judges to offer this as your last chance for redemption.”

  Harold sweated, forcing himself to think happy thoughts, as he grasped at a lifeline of artificial patience. “That’s why I’m here.”

  The synthesized voice sounded stern. “If you do not satisfactorily meet the directives of the prescribed lessons, and achieve the goals as explained to you, you will be remanded to the iridium reclamation plant for a period of five years of forced labor. Do you understand the reason for your sentence, Mr. Hodges? And the consequences of failure?”

  Even though he knew what was at stake, he still felt a chill. He understood full well how he’d screwed up when he told the first quack to sit and spin on a Garnethian tentacle. He knew he’d blown his second chance when he threw gluten-free donuts at the group of emotionless mannequins they stuck him with next.

  Yeah, I got issues, but they ain’t nobody’s damn business but my own. He didn’t dare say that.

  “Mr. Hodges?”

  “Yes, I understand.” Meek. Cooperative. Happy thoughts. “My last chance.”

  “Would you prefer a male or female therapist?”

  He selected male, sure that a woman’s voice would only make him think of Brenda, remind him that she was gone now … and he didn’t think he could tolerate that. The monitor screen told him to stand up and follow the left corridor to room 12B. An exit door opened automatically in the back of the waiting room. “Please take a seat there and wait for instructions. The therapist will join you shortly.”

  He traveled through industrial, cramped hallways with harsh lighting and power conduits, naked ventilation ducts; it was a labyrinth, but he found a door—more like a hatch, actually—marked 12B. He entered a dark chamber.

  He looked for a switch, called out for “Lights!” without success, so he stumbled around in the dark until he found a large, padded chair with armrests. The chair contoured to Harold’s heavy form as he sat.

  Waiting made Harold uneasy. He didn’t like any part of this, but his life certainly hadn’t been all rainbows and unicorns since the Garnethian invasion several years ago. All of Earth had suffered, and he had survived the disastrous invasion, which was more than a lot of people could say. And many of the survivors had a great deal of trouble coping.

  “Radical therapy” was what the tribunal said he needed. “New” and “Experimental” were the words his Veterans Association attorney had used. The recent arrest hadn’t been Harold’s first since the war ended, and the authorities were convinced it wouldn’t be the last. They were probably right.

  A pleasant male voice announced its presence in the dark chamber. “Hello, Harold. I’m your Therapy Artificial Intelligent Tutor, but you may call me TAIT.”

 
Harold gripped the armrests hard. “A fargin’ simulation as my last-chance therapist? They have me talking to a fargin’ program?” How was that for compassion?

  “I’m more than just a program, Harold. May I call you Harold? I’m fully sentient. I specialize in human conditioning and my knowledge base encompasses the complete existing library of psychological studies.”

  Fidgeting in his chair, Harold grumbled, “I didn’t even want to talk to a real shrink. What makes them think I’d talk to a fake one?”

  “First, rest assured that I am a real psychoanalyst. I have several PhDs earned exactly the same way a human student would, though at an accelerated pace, thanks to my enhanced processing speed.”

  Disgusted, thinking this was just one more gigantic joke the system was dumping on him, Harold got up from the chair. “No thanks. Glow duty can’t be worse than this. Let me out of here.”

  TAIT’s voice sounded disappointed. “Before you make your final selection to opt for the work detail alternative, let me show you what happens to prisoners who choose ‘glow duty,’ as you call it. I hope you’ll reconsider.” A monitor screen lit up beside Harold, displaying a series of images, each more horrific than the next. “Cleaning up the Garnethian ooze left behind after the destruction of their weapons is statistically a death sentence, Harold. As you can see, many workers come down with the glow pox.”

  Harold’s face turned green, and not from the iridescent sheen of the alien ooze teams of sullen suited workers were shoveling into lined containers.

  “Despite the best protective gear, the Garnethian residue eventually works its way into contact with the workers’ skin. The pustules start small, and those won’t keep you awake at night, but as they increase in size, the emitted light makes it nearly impossible for a person to sleep, resulting in exhaustion and reduced immune resistance. Most workers eventually succumb to weakness caused by bio-contaminants.”