Starkindler (MechaVerse Series Book 1)

by Jeremy Cunkle

  Aurora instantly resized the threat monitor in relation to their current position, duplicating the identified targets on the side of the cockpit to the main view screen. She overlaid the data she collated onto his HUD with a growing bank of identifying symbols, layering them on top of a real time generated satellite map.

  Long-range sensors linked to one of her hacked satellites detected a number of Mech armor still several hundred miles out. He cursed in frustration when he realized their location. As details appeared, the view showed two squads of Mech armor spread out in wide searching patterns in the rough vicinity of where the cargo pod lay hidden. The patrols were less than twenty miles away from the pod’s location, and, fanned out as they were, it was only a matter of hours until they found the pod.

  Signal analysis of their radio traffic revealed they were indeed PDF forces, while the satellite video feed showed three heavy Marauder anti-grav tanks accompanying a dozen Mech armor of mixed types. A trio of Chimera transports hunkered down a ways behind the formation, encompassed by an infantry screen. Closer examination showed the infantry were equipped with weaponized exo-skeletons, divided into rocket squads and anti-armor weaponry. Whoever ordered this force into action was not taking any chances; they came prepared for battle.

  Mikkhael cursed his luck. Individually the tanks were incredibly powerful, and three of them in combination with that many Mech armor as well as the infantry presented a dangerous, nearly unsurmountable challenge.

  For the next hour, he continued to close the distance to the cargo pod at full speed, thus far secure in their ability to remain unnoticed by the PDF’s underpowered sensors. Aurora updated him constantly on the enemy positions, calculating predictions of their future moves, steering him clear of their patrol patterns. The active camouflage and thermal masking system hid their presence, but that did not mean that he could afford to get sloppy either.

  Starkindler approached unnoticed at full speed, but he throttled down the engine output still twenty minutes out in an overabundance of caution, ordering a series of commands to Aurora to dump reserve coolant into the reactor system, instantly reducing its temperature by hundreds of degrees Celsius, reducing what little IFR output they had, watching on the dedicated monitor as the shadow of his Mech armor went from grey to completely black, unseeable by the enemies directly in front of him.

  Aurora charged the energy shields and began to cycle power to the weapons, charging their energy banks. He watched with satisfaction as their IFR signature stayed nonexistent while all this took place as he piloted behind hills, rock outcroppings, and through every gully and ravine he could find in an effort to reduce the chance of being sighted as they moved ever closer toward the cargo pods hiding place. With Aurora navigating, they slipped through the net of PDF forces with ease, anti-climactically arriving at their destination. By her estimate, they had less than an hour before their location would likely be compromised. He wasted no time, immediately getting to work, greatful to finally have something to do.

  He backed Starkindler up against the pod. Armored hatches across the titan sprung open as Aurora activated the pod’s automated loading system; mechanical arms began deftly replacing the empty rockets with new munitions, while conveyor belts whirred into action as they replaced spent magazines of all expended cannon shells. Belts of 50. caliber sub-cannon ammunition ratcheted into place as Aurora engaged the feeding system. The pod cycled Starkindler’s coolants and hydraulic solutions, flushing their systems and replacing them with fresh fluids.

  From the cockpit, Mikkhael arranged the HUD to display a list of inventory contained within the pod, and then selected an incredibly strong oversized kite shield composed of the same materials as his Mech armor, using a small crane on the side of the pod to attach the shield to the left forearm. After some deliberation, he selected a deployable electro-magnetic cannon equipped with its own tripod, equivalent to a tanks main turret cannon in size and caliber. The new cannon bolted on over the right arm, attaching at the shoulder, the muzzle extending nearly twice the length of the arm fully outstretched. It would override the high-energy plasma cannon housed along the right arm as the new primary weapon.

  If needed, he could explosively detach the auxiliary electro-magnetic cannon mid-battle with the flip of a single dedicated switch or a verbal command to Aurora, but while equipped, the powerful new weapon would serve as an oversized sniper rifle, better suited to stand off firefights then mobile combat. Thickly insulated electrical hoses used Starkindler’s reactor as an external power source. He would control the new weapon from the hand grips within the cockpit, same as the other weapons. Between the new cannon and the shield, Starkindler took on an entirely different appearance as well as combat capabilities, trading mobility for strong defensive and offensive upgrades and breaking the cardinal rule of armored combat, movement is life.

  Aurora used the automated loader system to remove four of the depleted external oxygen tanks, replacing them with RATO afterburners. Each RATO was a self-contained disposable rocket that could be used for a decoy, pursuit assistance, or additional thrust and speed as the situation demanded. Lastly, the two expended drones were replaced. Mikkhael performed one last systems check; everything turned green across the board, and then he mentally steeled himself for the fight to come, looking for and finding his center, the warrior’s calm where emotion and desires were ignored and only the necessity of flawless and unmitigated violence was recognized.

  He was prepared for what was to come.

  He checked the clock, counting the elapsed time since entering the cave; forty minutes had passed. Through the targeting computer, Aurora began to highlight a squad that was approaching dangerously close to their location, and then announced the resupply was complete. He spent the next minute memorizing as much of the local terrain and PDF locations he could.

  Aurora announced loudly over the cockpit speakers, “All systems prepped for combat,” as close to a sign of nervousness as he had heard from her. The warning of waiting too long was left unspoken.

  He exhaled, long and slow, placing his hands in a death grip inside the wrist enclosures that controlled the weapons and steering. Buckles automatically closed around his feet, locking them onto the pedals that controlled the wing flaps. When Starkindler was not in flight mode, the pedals controlled the leg movements. Until now, Aurora piloted for him during their combat action; this time, it would be up to him. Reactor power automatically throttled up when pressure was applied to the handgrips. Tactical displays showed the engines humming silently, weapons ready, initial targets already designated. Starkindler stood ready to hurtle him towards whatever destiny he chose.

  Mikkhael inhaled sharply as they exited the cave in a surge of violence and deadly promise. They flew barely thirty feet off the ground, the weight of the shield and new cannon having a significant impact on flight characteristics, forcing them to struggle in an upright position for nearly a quarter of a mile at full power just to stay aloft, continuing to accelerate the entire time as the afterburners screamed, wings partially extended and angled just enough to maintain course. Vortices of blood-red dust swirled violently in the wake of their passing.

  A minor traverse of the torso, and he lined up for the first shot. Directly ahead, an unsuspecting Slayer did not have its energy shields deployed, the pilot’s lax discipline while being surrounded by allies proved lethal; the irony of the moment was not lost on him. He triggered the left cannon as soon as the auditory target assist warbled a lock-on status. The tungsten slug leapt from the barrel, striking the enemy Mech armor in the center of its back, punching straight through the thrusters to the fuel cell reactor. The Slayer ceased to exist in any sense of form as the reactor suffered catastrophically failure creating a secondary explosion that sent out a shockwave of debris, sweeping the Martian plain clear for hundreds of yards in every direction, leaving nothing recognizable that merely moments before had been one of the most deadly war machines ever created. After the explosion cleared, a
large crater scarred the rocky surface, leaving no other evidence of what until then had been a human’s life.

  Mikkhael knew he needed to thin out the PDF in order to have a chance of making it out of the fight alive with his resupply materials intact. The various squads of the forces surrounding him were still spread out in a wide search pattern, not having expected to even find anything let alone any resistance, which for the time being left him able to engage them in small groups. For this fight, time was not on his side, meaning that if he allowed them to consolidate their forces and fire on him all at once, not even Starkindler would be able to sustain the damage from that kind of firepower. He knew that conventional military wisdom stated that on any sort of equal footing, a Mech armor facing off against an anti-grav tank would always lose, and the PDF would base their strategy around that theory. The key to the entire engagement rested on how he handled the tanks.

  Back on Earth, when Kyril submitted the final schematic for Starkindler based off the trove of data left from their parents, they learned that Mech armor borrowed most of their component ideas such as the type of armor they used, reactor size and type, and shielding capabilities from their less nimble forbearers-tanks. However, they traded the mobility that was so necessary on the craggy plains of Mars for armor that was half as thick, energy shields that did not have as many layers or recharge as quickly when depleted; and most importantly, they traded the heavy projectile cannon of the tanks for weaker laser based weapons. Their parents overcame those limitations using a limitless budget and technology that was still considered largely theoretical, giving Starkindler none of those drawbacks due to its massive bulk and advanced components. Mikkhael recognized that he was about to attempt to rewrite conventional wisdom.

  As soon as the Slayer exploded, the PDF recognized that something was wrong. Every unit was identified on a friend or foe threat monitor, and all local forces as well as the distant command instantly knew that one of their brethren had just been murdered by an enemy among them; and they were now looking for payback. They flooded the local area with pulsing waves of active radar beams, LIDAR, infrared sensor beams, and radio frequency jamming.

  Some pilots moved towards the crater that moments earlier had been a person. Drone’s launched to provide extra eyes while other pilots began trotting heavily towards the heavy Marauder’s, grouping into small task forces spreading out to patrol a perimeter, searching for their enemy. Their logic was simple; the Mech armor would flush him out and then hedge him into a killbox, the tanks would then move in and eliminate the threat. They never suspected he would do anything except run; they never contemplated that he would continue to seek them out whereupon he could directly engage them. They operated according to conventional wisdom and he was going to use that against them.

  Aurora temporarily guided him away from the still forming task forces, towards an individual Mech armor that had strayed far enough from its supporting allies that it was vulnerable and could be picked off without the other units being able to reach it in time. The unit was a Strident class, bulky and slow, equipped with thick armor and bristling with weapons.

  The Strident class of PDF Mech armor was the PDF’s most powerful main-line class. Built for going toe-to-toe in a dogfight, incapable of flight, the Strident class made up its maneuvering shortcoming with the ability to deal and receive damage better than any other class of Mech armor the PDF could mass produce. The Strident class of Mech armor was the prerequisite little brother of Starkindler; providing the basic concept and framework which it was built on, and would be Mikkhael’s hardest challenge to date. Little did he know that this particular unit was piloted by an ace pilot who had been granted a customized unit for his many battlefield successes and long service in the name of father Mars.

  Chapter 8 – Battle of the Earthborn

  “No man believes he shall ever die.” –William Hazlitt

  Daegot had been Earthborn, born into a slum world. What little chance anyone had to become any kind of decent human being was denied to him from the moment he entered the world kicking and screaming as a denizen of the lower wards of Rio De Janeiro, Brazil. Unwanted, born prematurely and sickly, raised in squalor and filth; it was no surprise to anyone that the man that child eventually became led a brutal life with no knowledge or use for mercy.

  If anyone wanted something in the lower wards, they had to fight for it--that was the life of the slum dweller. Daegot learned to fight from his earliest moments. First his siblings, then his neighbors, and eventually the corrupt police; survival meant being faster, meaner, and more clever than the competition. There was no such thing as a bully in the world of the slums; the game was survival itself. The strong survived, the weak perished, that was just the way things were. Life in the slums taught him patience, to think on his feet, and to act when weakness in others presented itself. His love was for himself and the sweet seduction of power that he gained from inflicting pain on others, it was all that he knew.

  It was no surprise that Daegot was hauled before a Federal Court at the ripe age of 16 for a series of offences that would make a hardened convict blush. Starting with being an enforcer for one of the major drug families, ending with a series of murders and including everything in between, the overworked judge handed down what became a standard judgment at the time for someone who was not worth the effort and cost of rehabilitation.

  Prisons the world over were overcrowded with all of the various dregs of humanity that should never again breathe free air, and the mass jump gate between Earth and Mars had just been completed. Mars had a sudden need for hundreds of millions common laborers, miners, and otherwise expendable labor in order to take full economic advantage of the gate system. Clever politicians plotted a way to remove a cancer threatening to overwhelm the very system it fed on. Jails across the world were emptied of prisoners deemed non re-habitable, violent, and finally just expendable, sending the overflowing effluent of society to Mars.

  What had previously been thought of as a cost to society was now seen as simply one more commodity to be cashed in on. The Mars Industries government was offering a flat fee per head for men and women. The packed beyond humane capacity jails full of inmates who either could not adapt to the modern world, or refused to for whatever reason were now seen in a new light, and even honest politicians viewed their deportation as a much needed boon to overwhelmed planetary governments. Governments and corporations across Earth wasted no time sending them to work on Mars. Initially, the inmates were sent to serve reduced times, miles underneath the Martian surface, where they could for the first time in their heretofore-miserable lives make a positive contribution to humanity. The little spoken reality was that they would all die on Mars, living out their lives in a manner dictated to them by the corrupt government, slaves to the corrupt corporations.

  Daegot had been offered a choice, which in reality was all an illusion anyways. He could plead for a reduced sentence and be sent to Mars for the next ten years of his life; or, be tried as an adult. If convicted, he would spend the rest of his life on an artificial prison island set in some tropical hellhole that had come to symbolize Earth’s anus before finally being executed.

  He never hesitated. He held eye contact with the overworked processing clerk, smiling as he ran a finger across his throat while verbally agreeing to go to Mars. A few days later when the clerk was found dead behind the courtroom, a murder investigation would be opened that would never be solved, and Daegot shortly found himself in a drug induced coma riding a shuttle from Earth to Mars along with ten thousand other convicted felons.

  When he arrived on Mars along with tens of millions of other transfers from Earth, the spaceport in which he found himself that they would call their temporary home for the next few months was in the process of expanding in every direction to add capacity as rapidly as possible, not only for them, but the tens of millions of more immigrants arriving on new freighters every week. He and the other prisoners found themselves herded into a processing
tent where they were given a series of skills assessment tests; the same tests given to everyone else. The fact that he was an underage convict, with murder, drug dealing, and racketeering charges sent to serve a life sentence in the mines was entirely irrelevant to everyone on Mars where a new reality had taken over.

  Even though no one promised anything one way or the other, Daegot recognized the assessment for what it was, and managed to score within the top 2% of all those who tested. He would later find out that everyone below his scores had been culled, regardless of why they had arrived on Mars. Sent into the mines and associated smelters for the rest of their now significantly shortened natural lives where they would work in a permanent drug-induced zombie state. Only the ones with certain sets of skills were being kept back for more tests.

  The ones who failed the first assessment were sent into the mines and given daily doses of mind-melting stimulants to help them work the long repeated hours in punishing low gravity, low oxygen, and often toxic environments that slowly destroyed their bodies. The drugs burned away any sense of individuality and independence in the workers, leaving their soulless husks with the nickname of drones. Left with only addiction and the promise of one more hit at the end of the day, Mars now had a workforce that no one would miss, fully capable of supplementing the demand for Earths depleted minerals. The average lifespan of those workers at the time was less than ten years.

  For Daegot, coming out ahead of those culled was simply further proof of his superiority to the rest of humanity. He was better than they were because he had been smart enough to recognize the opportunity when he saw it. Instead of being sent to the mines, he was one of many placed into the newly birthed PDF where he again found himself tested repeatedly along with everyone else who made it this far. His cunning and self-preservation helped him again score in the top percentages; and he soon entered into the infantile Mech armor pilot program, one of the many cogs in the intricate and expanding war machine taking shape.