Starkindler (MechaVerse Series Book 1)

by Jeremy Cunkle

  Everything had come together, and now they assembled one last time in the ready room just underneath the space launch tower at the far end of the base. All the pieces of their plan waited to be thrust into action millions of miles away. They waited silently, sitting with Mikkhael, relying on their physical proximity alone to serve as any solace he required before leaving. He would be the only one of the five to leave for Mars, piloting their shared creation, carrying their combined hopes and dreams with him. The window of opportunity for a launch was fast approaching, and then it would finally be time to enact his vengeance, his friends staying behind trusting him to fulfill their wishes for them. The four would stay in Alice Springs, continuing their parents’ research as well as designing replacement parts and fabricating more munitions that could only be created back on Earth in order to avoid starting an arms race.

  Count-down clocks inexorably finished ticking down, and as they did so, Mikkhael met the gaze of each of his friends one by one. No words were said. None were needed. They had all been said hundreds of times already. No one shed any tears, there were no polite sniffles. An onlooker would have been surprised at the lack of emotion in the parting taking place. Their bond was far too strong to need the reinforcement of a dramatic farewell that would only serve to cheapen the moment. As one, their resolve held.

  Mikkhael gave one final nod and then donned his helmet, sealing it against the rest of the custom suit that had been found on the base, the suit sealing with a quiet hiss. The atmospheric suit he would wear during the trip pressurized quickly from a small dedicated station manned by Kiryl. He monitored the various gauges and then disconnected the tubes when appropriate. Without looking back, he left the room, turned the corner, disappearing from view. An underground concrete encased blast proof tunnel led to the prepped and waiting shuttle, Starkindler already loaded into the cargo bay, waiting for its moment of release.

  Shuffling slightly due to the suit, he gained entrance by entering a maintenance elevator that noisily carried him to the shuttle’s entrance. The shuttle lay on its belly, nestled carefully into the sling of an electro-magnet based catapult that would launch it down the runway to a ramp and then into the air at phenomenal speed. He entered through an open side hatch without looking back. He had his last minute doubts, having to take a minute to calm his racing heartbeat, but his resolve held firm, and he disappeared from the sight of his friends, swallowed whole by the large grey metal tube that would soon transport him to another planet. The hiss as the hydraulic door closed was his last goodbye.

  Vera, Alyona, Kurtis and Kyril moved to the control tower set at the near end of the launch system for the shuttle; the four that would remain on Earth, continuing their research and support from a galactic distance. The room they found themselves in had been recently cleaned; layers of dust had coated the long unused banks of monitors sitting underneath large tinted windows, but now the banks of computers and displays stood ready and waiting for commands. They stood, too nervous to sit in the seats in front of each of the monitors, waiting impatiently for Mikkhael to check in from the pilot’s seat. They did not have to wait long. Soon a brief staticy hiss sounded from the speakers inside his helmet. Computer equipment within the tower automatically adjusted the signal; the feed coming in crystal clear as he announced the all clear from his seat in the cockpit. They watched him closely through the monitors; both an audio and a visual feed of the cockpit were available to them while the shuttle remained within Earth's atmosphere, after which the feeds were programmed to cut off to avoid alerting not one, but two planetary militaries which they were attempting to outwit.

  Mikkhael spent ten minutes strapping in, flipping switches, scanning gauges, and checking computerized reports about the shuttles status that were all duplicated in the control tower, where the four also monitored the various statuses. He then looked up at the camera, giving a thumb’s up that the system check was good to go.

  Alyona whispered softly into her mic, “Launch window is all clear.”

  The group sucked in their breath as one; unintentionally holding it as Mikkhael’s voice came over the intercom, “Initiate rocket boost sequence,” Verbally commanding the onboard computer to initiate the launch.

  A loud rumble shook the empty base from one end to the other. Notice had been sent to all base personnel that it would be off-limits for the day, there would be as few witnesses to the five’s act of treason as possible. The control tower shook violently from Newtonian forces as the shuttle’s engines ignited with chemical violence. Kurtis keyed in the command for the sling the shuttle lay on to activate. The brake release decoupled, and then the shuttle hurtled nose first down the runway powered by both rocket engines and the sling. The runway tilted upwards at the end, veritably throwing the shuttle into the brilliantly clear blue sky pointed straight towards heaven.

  Together, the remaining group of friends stared at a wall-sized monitor as a panned-out ground-based camera tracked Mikkhael’s progress. The shuttles scram-jet engine ignited in the lower atmosphere; speed continuing to increase exponentially as the combined engines effortlessly lifted it into the upper atmosphere where spent pieces separated, falling back to Earth to land forgotten for the rest of eternity at the bottom of the oceans. Compared to earlier iterations of space flight, the combination of rockets and other technological advancements would see him reach the Mars jump gate, located almost halfway in between the moon and Earth’s atmosphere, within a matter of hours.

  The flight had been cleared ahead of time as an ordinary civilian rocket launching a satellite into Earth’s upper orbit so that the UN security forces would not shoot down an unannounced orbital launch. UN security forces closely monitored all atmospheric passage; however, once outside of Earth’s orbit, very little attention was paid to anything in transit. Interstellar travel was still a rare and highly controlled process. The group was relying on this hole in the security routines remaining vulnerable.

  The shuttle cleared the atmosphere within moments, and then the video feeds cut out in the Earth-based control tower with an oppressive finality. The friends’ responsibility ended as soon as the shuttle left Earth’s atmosphere. Every minute detail of the mission had been planned out months before the launch took place; down to the millisecond that each event should occur.

  As soon as the shuttle left the atmosphere, Mikkhael watched out the small cockpit window as pre-programmed commands ejected the spent fuel tanks as well as the now useless scram jet engine where they burned up in the atmosphere as they fell back towards Earth. The shuttle proceeded straight past their declared destination, the Orbital Space Elevator that serviced the Lunar Space Station, where all of the automated mass cargo freighters arriving from Mars docked in order to transfer their cargos down to Earth. There they exchanged their goods for new migrants that would then be transported back to Mars in a never-ending cycle of consumption and colonization. However; the shuttles real destination was the jump gate located farther out in the dark between the stars.

  Kurtis worked with Alyona back in Alice Springs to obtain a roster for automated mass cargo ships making their way to Mars via the Jump Gate System. As permits to travel using the gate system were vetted months in advance after thorough examination by the UN, via a large payment anonymously made to offshore accounts; it would have been unlikely for the unregistered shuttle to obtain legal passage through the jump gate. The group intended that as little information as possible about Mikkhael’s origins be available to his enemies for when the time came that they would investigate, so they forged their documentation on anything official. Alyona devised a plan that would allow the shuttle to link up with, and then attach itself to, one of the automated mass cargo ships on its way to the jump gate, thereby bypassing the potent security measures in place.

  The gate system was the culmination of nearly twenty years’ worth of concerted global effort to create a nearly instantaneous form of travel between Earth and Mars, as well as a few other select destinations within the
galaxy as mankind continued to slowly spread out into the stars. The overcrowding of Earth, combined with the dangerous depletion of natural resources had created a crisis that resulted in an urgent need for the mass migration of billions of people to the nearest planets. People were shipped out like cattle on mass freighters, and the minerals and resources they were sent out to mine were brought back to be sold for exorbitant profit by the mega corporations.

  Almost a billion people now lived on Mars, culminating in the single largest human migration ever; one that was still ongoing. Once having arrived on Mars, the vast majority of those migrants were then considered to be little more than indentured servants at best, or slaves at the worst. The lucky ones were forced to work for a period on average of ten years depending on the level of their skills; mining, growing food, and creating other manufactured goods to send back to Earth, or that was what was supposed to happen.

  Mars Industries had been created from a conglomerate of the largest, most powerful corporations that ever existed on Earth. Over the years, the mega-corporations became so powerful; they steadily supplanted the role of governments on Earth. Finally reaching a tipping point where their continued existence was in doubt, the weakened governments banded together under the once anathema UN in order to push the mega-corporations off planet in a move that had been widely heralded at the time.

  For their part, the corporations saw the opportunity for what it was, laughing at the meaningless gesture of the newly retrenched UN. Established on Mars as the only legitimate source of governance, they now had free reign to chart their own destiny. Instead of weakening themselves through infighting, already possessing a spirit of merger and acquisitions, the corporations banded together to form Mars Industries, a truly indomitable force. With an insatiable demand for resources of every kind needing to be fulfilled back on Earth, they vowed to do anything needed to provide the supply. Their mutual interest was unparalleled greed and the corporations operated with impunity so far removed from the rules and established powers.

  For their part, the citizens who remained on Earth convinced themselves of the need to continue receiving the raw materials they used up at prodigious rates regardless of the cost, forcing themselves to ignore the perpetual rumors of inhuman conditions and modern day slavery in exchange for the stuff that made up the totality of their continued way of life. On Mars, the massive conglomerate hardly pretended to trump up penalties in the form of additional time required for their enslaved workforce to serve the greater good. The byzantine system of rules was intentionally obtuse, serving to enslave billions for life as there were no jails; all penalties were paid in the form of years spent working for the system. It was only through the sheer audacity and scale of their corruption that a rebellion in the form of open revolt formed from the people of Mars themselves, desperate for better circumstances.

  It was to this world that Mikkhael found himself literally rocketing towards in search of personal redemption. Now, simply a passenger for this next portion of the trip, he found himself looking through the small cockpit window at the beautiful blues of Earth’s infected oceans, landmasses tainted by smears of brown where humans crowded in amongst themselves not dissimilar from cockroaches. The blue pearl of his home delicately floated through the darkness surrounding it, encased in white swirls of nature’s cumulous, futilely attempting to wash away humanity’s poison.

  Earth rapidly faded from view as the shuttle continued on its pre-programmed path. After an hour, the Mars Jump Gate automatic defenses spooled up as the shuttle approached and then attached itself magnetically to the hull of an unmanned mass cargo freighter with a resounding ka-thump. They were just outside the range of the gates weapons, but rapidly approaching the decisive moment. Kurtis chose the pre-selected freighter that the shuttle was fast approaching in order to couple with and hitch a ride to Mars on. The entirely automated freighter remained entirely unaware of the drama unfolding, unworried and unable to care. Seconds later, the jump sequence for the gate system fired before the defenses could eliminate the parasitic shuttle attached to the freighter, leaving Mikkhael breathing heavily, his heart momentarily dropping down into the pit of his stomach at the short window of time with no room for error Kurtis allotted. The jump sequence stopped firing seconds later as together, the odd pair of mass cargo freighter and tiny attached shuttle exited into Mars outer orbit.

  Still shaking, Mikkhael entered the needed commands, causing the shuttle to disengage from the still oblivious automated freighter. The shuttle fired its maneuvering thrusters, automatically continuing on a pre-determined course, seemingly to slowly drift towards the massive red ball that was now overwhelming his small view screen. The main thrusters did not fire until they were well out of the gates detection range, avoiding alerting the defense forces on the Martian side. The automated route steered him away from the Martian Orbital Space Port located on the moon Phoebe where more of the freighters docked. He stared in awe as he saw yet another space elevator reach grandly towards the heavens, feeding the insatiable appetite of the freighters docked at the space port before he lost sight as they headed towards what looked like uninhabited territory down on the surface.

  Mikkhael panned one of the external cameras towards the space dock, and another to the jump gate before realizing that the Mars side of the gate would not know about his illegal use of the gate system until the next freighter would be shipped from Earth in a few days’ time. He scanned his data feeds, and sure enough, the ever thorough Kurtis included an information tab that opened automatically once identified. He would have several days as an escape window before the Martian authorities realized a violation occurred and began searching for his shuttle, which would be more than enough time. Kurtis had done his research well, intentionally using the communication breakdown between jumps to their extreme advantage.

  Regardless of the assurances Kurtis provided, Mikkhael needed to reassure himself as well as do something that occupied his time; the waiting was threatening to make him spontaneously combust. “Aurora, perform a proximity and signal scan for any hint of detection from the Martian Planetary Defense Forces.” The last thing they needed was for some random patrol to detect the shuttle after they had made the perfect infiltration of a hostile foreign planet. Several minutes passed as he impatiently read data feeds she collated onto the displays before she concluded the scans without any signs of detection by the PDF. He had not realized he'd been holding his breath while the scans elapsed, nearly gasping for air as he finally let out a huge sigh of relief when they concluded. Taking a moment, he focused on the breathing exercises he learned for sustained combat, incrementally regaining control of his panic, allowing him to breathe normally again. The full realization of what he was attempting finally landed.

  Crisis over, he relaxed the constraints binding him to the flight chair, marveling in the feeling of weightlessness as he drifted around the cockpit for a few brief moments before Aurora broke his reverie. “Twenty minutes remaining until the next stage. Please move to Starkindler and begin landing preparations.”

  “Killjoy,” Mikkhael muttered as he pushed off a wall, drifting down the only corridor to the cargo bay where his destiny laid resting in a dormant position, deadly and menacing even while at rest. He paused, taking in the sight of inanimate death dominating the constricted space with its silent promises of swift release. Even while crouched, the massive bulk of Starkindler filled the cargo bay to near capacity.

  Starkindler camouflaged itself with the use of light-bending metamaterials. Wings on the back folded protectively down over the engines, serving as an additional layer of armor to protect the engines when not in flight mode. Starkindler bore no crest, symbol, or even a paint scheme to give their identity away visually, the goal was to remain an unknown element for as long as possible. Together, the trio, including Aurora, would rely heavily on their abilities to stay unnoticed until the proper time came to reveal themselves in full.

  The hiss of hydraulics announced that A
urora finished migrating her consciousness to the Mech armor and was now opening the hatch for Mikkhael to enter the nerve center of the sleeping beast. As he entered, the hatch shut behind him with a sense of finality, and then she began pressurizing the cabin so that he could remove his helmet and life support equipment. She went about the start-up sequence, simultaneously moving the rest of her programming over from the shuttle to the Mech, leaving the shuttle with only a line of sight laser communication link and pre-programmed instructions.

  As Mikkhael removed his helmet, he felt, more then heard the fusion reactor initiate its firing sequence and he finally felt truly afraid. The realization that from here on out that his actions could not be taken back, and he would hereafter be labeled as an enemy combatant and terrorist by the most powerful military in the galaxy added a profound sense of weight to his actions. Aurora let him have his moment; her ability to monitor his thoughts and actions and interpret them was near psychic.

  He looked around the cockpit, lost for that brief moment, and then when he refocused he was staring at the seat where he would pilot Starkindler from. He was in the seat almost out of habit before he realized it. Aurora fed his HUD two words. Yes. No. He exhaled loud and slow and then it was done.

  Yes.

  Mikkhael Dreyfus -- Manifesto