Starkindler (MechaVerse Series Book 1)

by Jeremy Cunkle

  The second round of battle lasted less than a minute in the span of time of someone who never had to desperately fight for their right to live, but an eternity to him. The Reaper’s second approach left him sweating; exhausted from the fear and stress of continuous battles. His proximity to death had never been such a close call, not even during the mass murder of his friends and family. He recovered painfully slow as the drone turned around in a wide, effortless mile-eating loop for a third pass.

  Barely twenty minutes elapsed since Aurora first detected the incoming Reaper, and yet Mikkhael began to doubt he would live to see another twenty minutes as once again incoming fire klaxons sounded in the cockpit. At that moment, Aurora completed her hack of the drone, creating a firewall between its processing units and rudder fin, blocking communication between the two parts. Unable to divert the drone’s course through her limited hack or perform any other significant damage, Aurora locked the Reaper into its current course, headed straight towards Starkindler.

  Command and Control back at PDF headquarters still maintained control of the Reaper’s altitude, reacting to the hack and the threat it represented by pushing the drone into a dive, hugging the ground low as it approached at speeds so fast the drone threatened to break apart mid-air.

  “Mikkhael! They are probably going to suicide the Reaper into you!” Aurora cried out.

  As the Reaper approached, a warning on Mikkhael’s HMD showed the Reaper mistakenly locked onto the rail guns position, only able to see its heat and energy signature through the nearly impenetrable cloud of dust.

  Lying by itself, dozens of feet from where Starkindler hid momentarily forgotten, the rail gun lit the surrounding area with the warm glow of infrared heat housed within its unprotected electro-magnets. The Reaper committed everything, targeting the rail gun with range-finding and target acquisition lasers as well as individual weapon radars, homing in on the one point of reference it had.

  Anticipation twisted the corners of his mouth into a feral expression. A few more seconds passed as the Reaper approached at maximum velocity. A simple beeping tone sounded in Starkindler’s cabin, a signal to Mikkhael who selected a trigger labeled remote activation. Forgotten, and in perfect position, the unused rocket drone ambushed the Reaper directly from below it, firing three rockets in rapid succession in an arcing wave, all of them passing on the right side of the drone, as Aurora dropped the firewall locking the Reaper’s fin in place. Suddenly, with the ability to dodge and only one direction available, the drone heeled over hard to avoid the rockets, directly in line with Starkindler’s main cannons lined up for this very shot.

  Algorithms reacted instantaneously, the Reaper loosing the last of its missiles at the combination of targets; splitting them evenly between the drone, rail gun, and Starkindler. Aurora and the anti-battery drone she controlled went to work defending him from any near-hits as detonations yet again rocked the surrounding area. She left Mikkhael and the rail gun to fend for themselves. For his part, he ignored the missiles heading his way, trusting in Aurora to handle them, tuning out the bleating klaxons within the cockpit. With everything on the line, he relied on the drones capabilities, blocking everything else out. The noise of the various sirens faded from his perception, the warnings becoming irrelevant as his vision narrowed, focused only on lining up his cannons with the Reaper’s path, relying entirely on the sensor readouts being shown to him via the HMD. Even with the advanced technology, he still had to lead the incredibly fast drone as if he were using an old-fashioned cartridge based rifle that he was aiming down-range at a moving target. His survival depended on making the shots count; otherwise he would not live to get a second chance.

  The Mech killer occupied the full display of the HMD, filling his vision with its bulk, desperately climbing in order to avoid striking the massif. Mikkhael watched in amazement through his hyper-focused state, seeing the still open doors of the bomb bay, its wings bending under the enormous strain of the g-forces trying to pull it down to the surface to hold forever within its cold, permanent embrace.

  Through the video fed to him via the HMD, the drone blurred before his eyes, fighting for every desperate inch as it climbed just enough to avoid suiciding itself on the mountain. Target lock-on symbols flashed as Mikkhael pulled the triggers for both cannons, simultaneously using the sub-projectile cannons to pour strafing fire into the bomb compartment of the drone.

  Starkindler’s left cannon fired ahead of the drone, coughing out a cone of super-heated white flame; the projectile striking the Reaper head on, collapsing the shields and exploding in a ball of fire as the Reaper bent, wrapping itself around the projectile as if striking some all-powerful and immutable object. As that occurred, the laser cannon firing milliseconds after the projectile cannon punched a hole into the Reapers fuselage halfway between the nose cone and the bomb bay. An image flashed through his head of a dog jumping to slit the throat and rip out the jugular of a bear while the rest of the pack distracted the wild animal. The sub-projectile cannons detonated the bombs still held within the now-dying Reaper’s opened belly, causing secondary explosions.

  Whether it was his imagination or not he would ever know. The Reaper appeared to swell as the bombs that were about to be released detonated inside the compartment. The front of the Mech killer folded in on itself from the expanding forces of the high-explosive shell. The drone’s wings, stressed beyond their limits, sheared off and struck against the mountain like two angry fists attempting to pummel their opponent with their last energy before coming to their final resting place buried underneath a tidal wave of dust. A column of fire reached towards the heavens as the Reaper ripped itself apart from the inside out, emitting a keening death knell that rippled for miles, kicking up dust for miles in every direction.

  Mikkhael’s world flashed white as one last missile from the Reaper struck the kite shield, somehow still wedged between the pair of boulders. The most powerful Mech-killing missile in the PDF arsenal detonated with vengeful fury. The massif buckled under the onslaught, the rock wall that his back had been up against sheared off, splitting into various sized chunks that were sent soaring through the air.

  The kite shield absorbed the full capacity of the explosion that it could handle, then disintegrated. The rolling ball of kinetic fury and chemical vengeance struck Starkindler’s overcharged frontal shields with the force of Titan’s hammer, collapsing them catastrophically as they too overloaded. The explosion raged around them, lashing against exposed armor with unrestrained fury, shearing chunks off nearby mountainsides while turning the surrounding slopes to glass from the heat of the chemical fire that flash cooled in the brutally cold Martian temperatures.

  Starkindler stood defiant through the rain of hell, the best the PDF could throw at it, remaining rooted in position on the ledge as the massif groaned, shifted, and morphed through tens of thousands of years’ worth of evolution in the span of a few seconds under the punishment of chemical explosions. Radiating white, Aurora turned the outer shell into a single giant heat sink in an effort to fend off heat extremes found on the surface of the sun. Circulating coolant boiled off as the reactor emergency cut off engaged.

  Inside the cockpit, alarms blared in warning as the environmental controls struggled valiantly to keep Mikkhael alive. External temperature readings displayed error warnings as the cockpit temperature blazed. Inside the environmentally controlled suit designed to withstand the extremes of outer space, Mikkhael flushed with fever, sweating desperately to cool himself as he gasped for breath, ripping off the HMD and quickly replacing it with his helmet. Aurora emergency-dumped the cockpit’s air, using leftover power to vent it through the engine fans while vacuuming in new atmosphere from directly behind Starkindler that was hot, but still cooler than the atmosphere in front of them.

  Mikkhael watched in amazement as the dead Reaper’s momentum carried the explosions out of sight, finishing in a finale of one single blast that shook the mountain range with the force of its death rattle.
He weakly stared at his monitors, scanning them intently for more threats, hardly believing that he had indeed defeated enough enemies to be left alone when the world went black.

  Chapter 10 – Allies

  “We few, we happy few, we band of brothers. For he today that sheds his blood with me,

  shall be my brother, be ne’er so vile, This day shall gentle his condition.

  And gentlemen in England now abed, Shall think themselves accursed they were not here,

  and hold their manhood’s cheap whiles any speaks, that fought with us upon Saint Crispin’s day.”

  --William Shakespeare (Quote from King Henry V)

  A knock at the door interrupted Commander Ultor’s reverie. “Enter” he barked gruffly.

  Dr. Hesken strode in before he finished giving permission, always a bad sign. She was tired but animated, her undone hair signaling that she had been awake and too busy to deal with keeping the unruly strands in their proper place for quite some time. He sighed quietly; whatever she had come to say was going to ruin his day.

  She wasted no time in doing exactly that. “The Earthling isn’t normal.”

  Commander Ultor could only blink in surprise at her generic statement. Someone who traveled from Earth to Mars in order to fight another man’s losing war would never be considered normal. “From a medical perspective, you mean?”

  She told her tale from the beginning, starting when Mikkhael collapsed after first appearing at Mount Olympus, and then through when Aurora stole command of their life support systems, taking the entire base hostage. She retold the part he was already aware of, where the good doctor administered a drug concoction Aurora prescribed for him while he was unconscious. Where her story deviated from previous telling was she found an I.V. insertion point set permanently into his forearm. At the time, Aurora did not allow her to examine him or ask questions about either the insertion point, or the drugs being administered; which only served to make her more curious about what the pair must be hiding.

  Dr. Hesken had performed a cursory examination of the insertion point, finding it to be an entirely custom device of medical grade quality. The device had been implanted into his forearm for long enough that the skin had grown around the device, holding the insertion point permanently in place.

  “Odd to say the least, but something that insignificant would not be a major event in and of itself. Surely, you have more? Speaking of the IV point, do you believe he’s he an addict, then?” Commander Ultor asked her.

  “Yes and no.” Dr. Hesken began pacing, a clear sign she was upset, still developing her conclusions. “The Earthling was having a night-terror when I entered his quarters to administer the prescribed drug cocktail.”

  “Night-terror?” The Commander asked.

  “Night-terrors are similar to a nightmare in the way a lake is to an ocean, a terrible level of nightmare, which someone typically remembers for many years afterwards. He had also clearly experienced the same terror before based on his utterances during the episode, possibly quite frequently. I was unable to analyze the drugs themselves, but the AI allowed me to take a blood sample from the Earther. She wanted me to see what he was, likely so that we would have this conversation.

  “From a clinical standpoint, the Earthling likely suffers from a form of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, or PTSD. His particular case seems intense enough to require frequent intervention.”

  “What sort of intervention?” Ultor asked.

  “Evidently, in the form of drugs. Within his blood were clear buildups of anti-bodies to dopamine and opiate products, suggesting past administrations of suppressants and narcotic pain relievers that were either recent, or fairly regular. However, his blood was clear of recent drug evidence that would have been administered while piloting his Mech armor, meaning that those drugs had not been administered in the last week prior to his mission. This reinforces my theory that the night terrors probably occur after he performs a mission, but not while he is piloting Starkindler. I took into account certain factors that have convinced me, the Earther isn’t formerly military. It’s possible, but he doesn’t exhibit that kind of bearing.” She paused her pacing, reaching for the next link and failing to find it.

  “As in… he is a survivor you mean?” Commander Ultor asked, the answer appearing to him suddenly. He knew he was right but could not explain what made him leap to that conclusion.

  Dr. Hesken turned towards him, a euphoric expression crossing her face. “That’s it! All the signs are there; but there’s more. His DNA; what is there is not remarkable, but what is missing took me a bit to realize.”

  The Commander sat silently behind his desk waiting for her to deliver her coup de grace, but she clearly wanted to be asked for her conclusion before delivering the result. He gave in and obliged her, he was curious as to the answer himself and knew better than to argue with a woman who set her mind upon obtaining something she wanted. “What is missing, then?”

  The good doctor nearly squealed with excitement, bobbing around the room with nervous excitement to give herself an outlet. “His DNA is missing what makes most of us mortal. Susceptibilities to cancers, any number of diseases, hell, even color blindness. Those can be passed down from generation to generation via DNA, except his DNA shows absolutely no sign of inheriting any of those disease tendencies.

  “This is really high-end work, too. The mutation rate on the cells for what I am seeing is lower than even in healthy adults. Whoever did the retroviral DNA scrubbing knew enough not to try making him stronger, or better in the sense that you would imagine someone with those resources would. Instead, they focused on eliminating inherent weaknesses that were already present. The Earthling will still get old and die, but it won’t be from hereditary genetic diseases. This also accounts for his fainting episodes, his body’s way of cleansing the toxins from his system.”

  Commander Ultor put his hand up to stop her for a moment. “Wait a moment. Gene therapy? Really? That’s been a scientific holy grail for a hundred years, and there’ve only been limited successes. Nothing at least on the scale you are insinuating.” Dr. Hesken was still pacing around the room, her excitement infectious. He wanted to join her, but forced himself to remain clear-headed and logical.

  “That is exactly my point. According to Thorsten, the Earther’s Mech armor is every bit as advanced as his biological and chemical resources seem to be. The best labs in the galaxy don’t have most of these capabilities yet, let alone the ability to put together such a real world success.

  “Put all the pieces together and you could figure out who this kid is without much effort. We know he’s from Earth by his own admission, and there’s no reason to doubt him on that point. He had access to more money and resources than all but a very few select humans in the entire galaxy; meaning that he was probably involved in a U.N. government run skunkworks lab, or some kind of corporate equivalent. Based off his access to that significant level of bio-medical technology as well as the super-advanced Mech armor he brought with him, there can be less than half a dozen labs equipped like that in the entire galaxy. In addition, based off his age, it is likely the access to the lab was not his own, but someone close to him, such as his parents, or he happened to be a suitable test subject. Take into account his PTSD, and we can assume his motive for fighting is based off revenge or a survivor mentality.

  “Ultor, this kid is legitimate, the real deal.” Dr. Hesken stopped pacing, meeting the Commanders gaze, her eyes reflecting her conviction.

  Seemingly from out of nowhere, Aurora’s voice came booming over the viewing screen speakers inset into the far wall. An electronic representation of her face filled the viewing screen covering three-quarters of the wall. “Well done, Dr. Hesken. I commend your womanly intuition. Yes, you were intended to learn of Mikkhael’s origins under your own deductions in order to set aside your doubt in regards to his dedication to your mutual cause.

  “Unfortunately, I am going to have to block you from investigating your th
eories further, both for your safety and his. There will be no repercussions so long as your investigation stops here and now, and what was said does not leave this room.”

  Reacting poorly from being interrupted, immediately Dr. Hesken erupted. “You can’t just tell me what I can and can’t do!”

  Commander Ultor remained silent through the back and forth tirades as the pair of woman continued arguing in the background, evaluating the situation, realizing that as long as the AI had control of their artificial life support systems, they would be forced to do as she said unless they were willing to call her bluff. She probably would not, but even the minute possibility that she would kill them all if needed forced him to stay his hand out of responsibility to those he led. They had so far chosen not to test whether or not the AI was bluffing, and in return for their faith the AI performed small acts of generosity around the base; speeding up processes and identifying infrastructure problems the Rebels had been otherwise unable to. The current relationship was tense, but came with enough benefits to the StormCrows that he continued to evaluate the situation as a necessary evil, looking ahead to what the newcomers promised as much as to what his own morals dictated was an acceptable level of control on their home by an outside force.

  “Like hell are you going to dictate what we can and can’t do! You’re nothing more than a stupid computer program holding us hostage.” Dr. Hesken screamed at the wall. If in that moment someone had entered Commander Ultor’s office, they would have been sorely tested not to question the doctors’ sanity. Her frustration at being denied when so close to an answer overwhelmed her professional stoicism.