MECH

by Tim Marquitz

  Our enemies are on top of the Rockies, destroying them, and the haven beneath. Other than the Moth and the Thing, which seem to be fighting together, the others are attacking each other at random. Not for the first time I wish for a shrinking ray, something that could bring these monsters down to our size. But it doesn’t matter. I am jaeger now, and that means I am invincible.

  “Divide and conquer,” I say to the others. “This is Jäegermeister. I’ll take the Diamondback.”

  “Teams Marvel and Teen Titans has the Thing and the Moth,” Jackson, Team Marvel’s team leader says. Even though they’re in a Super-Giant, this is still going to be a hard fight.

  “Team Oreo has the Throwback,” James says.

  “Second to None takes the Dragon,” Beth offers.

  “That leaves Team Voltron the Hydra,” Carla, their team head says. “We’re on it.”

  No more time for talk. We’re here.

  I can’t pay attention to the others. Instead, I focus on making my arms into steel blades. Stingers are made of malleable metal and we can alter our shape within limits. I see my metal arms elongate and turn into hand-to-hand weapons.

  As this happens, I fly in between the heads of the Hydra and the legs of the Dragon. I don’t stop to engage them. There are too many kaiju here for any of us to divide our attacks. When we’re this evenly matched, to use the term loosely, we fight the kaiju we’ve called, only.

  The Diamondback is focused on the Dragon. I put my hands up over my head and dive for its eyes.

  It moves at the last moment and I miss, pull up fast and short before I slam into the mountains, do a back flip, and dive again. I miss its eyes, but stab into the top of its head. Not deep enough to stay in, though, and the Diamondback shakes me off.

  I almost fly into the Giant, but those on Team Voltron who are controlling the legs manage to jump just before impact, and I go flying into the Hydra’s body, bounce off, and sail through the air.

  As I recover and race back, I see the Thing is wrapped around the Super-Giant. They’re going to have to separate if they can’t break free. Dangerous because the Moth is hovering, waiting to slam down on whatever it can.

  The Diamondback strikes at me. I just manage to avoid its fangs by spinning towards the Legacy, which is on top of the Throwback, holding onto the sides of its shell and firing into the body as it does so. This is good, because it means they can’t be stabbed by the sharp legs. But it’s bad because there’s blowback from the explosions, and Throwback is flipping through the air, trying to land on its back to slam the Legacy against the mountains.

  I spin past, just missing one of Throwback’s legs, and recover just in time as Diamondback lunges for me. It misses and hits the mountain. I’m not in a good attack position, so I fly off. It follows.

  I take us under the Hydra as it slams its heads at the Giant, which fights back by spraying extinguishing fluid while slamming limbs into the body to make holes for incendiary projectiles. If they can get enough explosives inside Hydra’s dense body, they could destroy it. That’s our prevailing theory, anyway.

  I feel, rather than see, Diamondback gain on me. I flip into an aerial somersault to land on the side of one of the mountains. Diamondback pulls up sharply and I shove off, blades extended, aiming for its midsection.

  My kaiju whips around, aiming tail and head at me at the same time. I put on a burst of speed. I miss my mark, but so does the kaiju. I land on the top of a mountain as the Dragon sails overhead, Beth flying along its underbelly, her arms long, sharp blades like mine, digging grooves in its hide. The Dragon’s legs grasp at her, but she’s going fast enough that they only close on air. She spins just before the flaming head can hit her and goes back the way she’s come.

  Diamondback flips itself onto the eastern side of the mountain range, and I risk spinning around to see where it’s headed and if I can spot the convoy. The caravan is off in the distance, but it will be to us sooner as opposed to later. No one in those mechs is a jaeger. They’re transportation, not fighters. Meaning, if they reach us, they, and our new weapons, are likely to be destroyed.

  I fly at Diamondback’s head again, to keep its attention on me and, as it snaps at me, we both head back towards the main battle. I fly high to avoid other kaiju and jaegers, but Diamondback coils up on a peak, waiting.

  We do the dance again, me flying at its snapping jaws. I flip to the side, and it misses with its head and flicks its barbed tail at me. I spin, and the tail misses me, too. We do this over and over, Diamondback striking and me just missing its gaping maw and its follow up tail-strike.

  We need new thinking. We’ve all faced these kaiju before. Something has to change.

  “Mission Control, this is Jäegermeister. Need intel. Has anyone tried entering the Diamondback via its throat?”

  “This is Second to None, Jäegermeister,” Beth says. “Are you insane?”

  “This is Cookie, and she’s a jaeger,” James chimes in. “I think that answers your question.”

  “Cream concurs,” Carlo adds. “Get it done, Jäegermeister. We’re not going to hold on here very long.”

  “Jäegermeister, this is Mission Control. No, to our knowledge, that has never been tried.” Grandfather sounds calm and confident. This is his job, to not sound afraid, to keep us focused. “The interior is acidic, however.”

  “I’ll just have to be fast.”

  “Mission Control applauds your ingenuity. Good luck.”

  I know I’ll need to be going faster than I have been. I fly away from the fight. Diamondback doesn’t follow me, but it’s watching, waiting to see what I’m going to do.

  I fly miles out, then put my hands over my head, elongate and expand my blades, then dive back at the fastest speed a Stinger can manage, faster than escape velocity speed.

  It takes no time to return. Diamondback sees me, of course. It can’t be as fast as it is without exceptional sight or hearing—or whatever it uses to know we’re nearby. It lunges towards me, jaw gaping as always.

  This time, I don’t swerve. This time, I aim right for it.

  I’ve timed it right. I get inside the head, just before Diamondback slams its jaws down. As soon as I’m in, I release projectiles, triggered to go off on impact.

  I’m going so fast that I don’t stop in the head, I just keep on going, releasing bombs all along the way. They start exploding immediately. I can’t feel the heat at my feet, not really, but when I’m jaeger I can feel what the other half of me does, and the flames are already on me.

  I don’t stop. I fly on this way until I reach the end. I slam into it, blades so fast and hot by now that they actually slice through the Diamondback and slam into something else, something more solid.

  I think I’ve hit the mountainside. Meaning the Diamondback is pinned. But so am I. I try to retract my arms but can’t. Meanwhile, the Diamondback flops around, slamming itself against the mountains, trying to break free.

  It can’t.

  My headset crackles. I can hear sounds, but can’t make out the words. It won’t be long before the heat from my bombs and Diamondback’s acid dissolve my exterior. It will take far less to destroy my interior. To destroy me.

  I trigger the last of my bombs.

  Diamondback slams itself again. This time, it pulls us both free. The last explosions open it up, and I fall out. I twist and watch Diamondback rip apart, body raining down, head and tail gone.

  I expect to hit the mountain, but I don’t. I’m in just the right place to fall into a crevice. And fall I do. It feels slow after the speeds I’ve been going. Gravity is like molasses compared to what I’m used to.

  I look around to see the last things before I die. To see this part of the Rockies, somehow still beautiful and unscarred. Then I get lower, and it’s too dark to see anything. Maybe this is what death looks like: darkness.

  Self-preservation is an interesting thing. I don’t consciously try to do it, but I don’t want to die. The remaining jets fire. They’re on my ba
ck, which is good, and they slow my descent. I land hard, but not as hard as I’d been expecting, though all tubes disconnect and the remains of my metal body fall off.

  It’s dark down here, but I’m alive.

  I don’t hear anything, particularly Mission Control. “This is Jäegermeister. Come in. This is Jäegermeister. I’m at the bottom of a deep chasm, but I’m alive.” I repeat it several times. If they can hear me, I can’t say. I assume the others think I’m dead.

  I climb out of the wreckage slowly, and by the time I’m on the ground my eyes have adjusted. The crevice I fell through is too far above for me to climb out. I haven’t landed at the bottom of a ravine. I’m inside in a giant cave.

  My power gloves are intact. So is my bodysuit. I’m not harmed at all. My mech gave its life to keep me safe.

  I look carefully through the wreckage to see if there’s something I can use to make light or fire. There are a couple of internal elements that seem active and give off a glow. I don’t know what they are or how long they’ll last, but they’re all I have. The power gloves mean that I can bend the metal as if I were a jaeger still. I fashion a tray with a handle that allows me to carry the glowing elements, then I raise it up and look around.

  I’m at one end of the cave, as near as I can tell. So, I walk on. I have no idea what I’ll find, real diamondbacks, maybe. They aren’t worse than what I just destroyed, but they can kill me just as easily.

  But as I walk on, I don’t find anything living. Plus, this cave is too regular, too lacking in debris or rocks or animal life. The floor is smooth, and the farther from the wreckage of my mech I get, the smoother the walls get and the higher the ceiling. This is man-made.

  There are lost human underground outposts. They’re rare and hard to find, but they exist. We’ve found some. And I think I’ve found another.

  I continue for at least fifteen minutes, finding nothing. Another five minutes, though, and I’m rewarded. There’s something ahead. I move cautiously, just in case. I don’t want to trip any booby-traps. But as I take a step, I realize the ground feels different. At the same time, I hear a clanking sound.

  Before I can jump back the walls on either side of me light up. Nothing else happens. But I can see better now, and I’ve stepped from concrete onto a metal floor. I walk on. Every three steps I trigger something somehow, and another set of lights turns on. After a few more steps, I can see something. An advanced computer system and what looks like a mad scientist’s laboratory to my right, a mass of something still in darkness is ahead of me. To my left is what appears to be a makeshift living area.

  If this was an outpost, there are no signs of people. There are signs of a person, but just one. One cot, one chair at the computer, one privy.

  As I near the computer terminal, something else triggers, and the large computer screen comes to life. An old Chinese man stares at me. I stare back, but go closer. “There is a helmet,” he says as I reach the desk. Looking down I see that I’ve stepped on a pressure plate.

  I look around. Sure enough, a helmet sits on the desk next to the computer screen. I pick it up. It looks ordinary enough. I don’t see anything that would indicate it would link me to anything.

  “Put it on,” he says. Presumably to me.

  “Why?”

  “Put on the helmet and save the world.”

  “Who are you?”

  “If you are asking me questions, know that I cannot hear you. I am here to help you save the world, but I am long gone from it. Put on the helmet. Get answers.”

  Before I do that, I take another look around. Taking the helmet with me, I go investigate the part of this room that’s still in darkness. The lights go on as I walk closer. “My program tells me you haven’t put on the helmet,” the Chinese man says from the computer. Interesting programming. Meaning, there was an expectation of discovery and an expectation of distrust. Correct on both counts.

  I step onto another pressure plate and light beams down from above. I’ve reached what’s been in the dark and revise my thinking. There are many more than one here.

  There’s an army.

  An army of mechs. What looks like hundreds, maybe thousands, farther than I can see. The cave goes on and on, filled with their stationary forms, none like I’ve seen before. They’re man-sized. Big enough for a large human, but not even the size of Stingers, let alone Super-Giants.

  They don’t activate. They just stand there, still.

  “Do you want to save the world?” the Chinese man from the computer asks.

  I look down at the helmet in my hands.

  “…they will follow you,” Dr. Wong says.

  I’ve put the helmet on. The army is now mine. And, if this works, Dr. Wong will have achieved his life’s dream—take the history of the first Chinese emperor’s terracotta warriors and make it work. I’ll fulfill my life’s dream, too—to destroy all our enemies.

  The helmet is the key. With it, I control them. I can enter any of the mechs here and become jaeger. But more than that. Every mech will become jaeger with me. They will fight as I fight.

  We can combine as one, but Dr. Wong counsels we remain separate.

  “The mosquito can torment the elephant,” he says in my head. “Coyotes can take down a buffalo. Army ants can destroy and devour anything in their path.”

  The helmet, like the mechs, is made out of nanotech. Dr. Wong was working for the government on top secret weapons creation when the kaiju came. He was safe, had plenty of food and water replication, a separate power grid, and all the raw materials necessary. He spent his life creating this army, yet he was too old when they were finally ready. So, he prepared the helmet for whoever might find it.

  For me.

  The helmet has joined with me. I can remove it if I wish, but until I want it removed, or until my life will be in danger if the helmet isn’t removed, it will stay connected to me. All the knowledge Dr. Wong had has been downloaded into the helmet and, therefore, into me.

  I choose a mech. One is the same as another, and I control them all.

  Once inside, the mech conforms to my body, shifting, strengthening, protecting. The nanobots can alter, replicate, survive. And they can destroy. Each nanobot is stronger than steel, as fluid as water, and as sentient as whoever wears the helmet. They can learn, adapt, and what one knows is transferred to every other bot. A hive mind of the highest order.

  I am jaeger now, as I’ve never been before. I can feel the other mechs, all of them, each individual nanobot, waiting for me. For us. To fight.

  I jump into the air and I fly, because I want to fly and the nanobots shift and alter to enable this to happen. My first test is successful. I fly in patterns, the others trailing behind me, executing the same patterns, until I reach the wreckage of my old mech. I stop flying and give it one last look, then I instruct one of my nano-jaegers to envelop it.

  The nano-jaeger shifts out of human form to become like liquid. It covers the wreckage. The nanobots devour the remains, internalizing and combining what they can use, discarding what’s useless. In less than a minute, there is only a small pile of bits and pieces remaining, as the nano-jaeger reforms and returns to its place in formation.

  My second test successful, I fly up through the crevice, the nano-jaeger army right behind me. The speed is faster than ever before, and we reach the top of the mountains in seconds. To see chaos.

  The kaiju are there, still destroying, and the jaegers are still fighting, but it doesn’t look good.

  The Legacy is under the Throwback, pinned by its legs, metal being ripped off by the horrible mouth. The Super-Giant and Giant are in pieces, some dormant and scattered on the mountainside, some held in the kaiju’s limbs or mouths, some still fighting the Hydra, the Thing, and the Moth. All are losing. Some are dead. All will be soon.

  The Stinger is battered and, as the Dragon spots the shipment of reinforcements and goes to destroy it, it slams its tail against Beth’s Stinger. She goes flying, limp. Towards a sharp outcr
opping of rock. She’ll be impaled.

  But I’m faster than anything, even death, and I catch her. Her Stinger is almost completely destroyed. The beauty of Dr. Wong’s army, though, is that anyone can join. An equal opportunity jaeger outfit.

  I remove Beth from her mech and put her into a nano-jaeger. It wraps around her, strengthening, healing, restoring. Protecting. She’s alive, just unconscious. But I can control her part of the jaeger until she wakes up.

  Then I go, we go, after the Dragon.

  We quickly catch up to the kaiju, and my nano-jaegers swarm it, adapting, burrowing, covering its horrible body, ripping into it. Dr. Wong would be proud. We are Army Ants, insignificant as compared to what stands in our path, but more deadly.

  The Dragon disintegrates, destroyed and devoured by things too small to be given its notice. My third test is also a success. My nano-jaegers are stronger. And now they know what kaiju really are…and how to destroy them.

  Beth rouses. I can tell because the nanobots connect us like never before. I share the knowledge with her, and I hear her laugh. We fly to the battle, the nano-jaegers following us. I head for the Throwback.

  As the majority of our army swarms over the Throwback and the Legacy mech, Beth pulls James and Carlo out. Nano-jaegers envelop them, healing them, protecting them, just as they’ve done with Beth. James and Carlo are now connected to me, and I share the knowledge again, as we devour and destroy the kaiju and now-obsolete mech, taking what we can use from both.

  Beth, Carlo, James, and I go to our other fighters; first to those still fighting, then to the fallen. Nano-jaegers swarm the Hydra, the Thing, and the Moth simultaneously. We save the human fighters and, as we do, they’re encased in their new nano-jaegers, healed and, in some cases, resurrected. The kaiju and the obsolete mechs are devoured and destroyed, some of their life force and energy going to my fighters. Even mortal wounds heal, and all of us become stronger, better, than we have ever been.

  The battle is over in minutes.

  We swarm the shipment from New Houston, encasing the humans and joining them into our collective while we take what we can from these new yet insignificant mechs. Our knowledge base grows. The new additions now know how to be jaeger, and we fighters now know how to assemble a mech for maximum efficiency and destructive power. We create more nano-jaegers, ready to join with the rest of our fighters, the rest of our people.