Mech Wars: The Complete Series

by Scott Bartlett

  I shouldn’t be too hard on them. They’ll play their part. Just so happens we’ll be ten times more effective, at least.

  He expected so, anyway. The fact that Darkstream was sending both Oneiri and the Force Multipliers meant the company considered Ingress very important. Which made sense: not only was it their main gateway to the planet, given the elevator terminated there, but it was one of Eresos’ two major human cities. Losing it would mean losing an essential foothold on the system’s only planet with a breathable atmosphere.

  Oneiri Team didn’t intend to let that happen. And neither did the five armored personnel carriers, three tanks, two mortar teams, fifteen snipers, and four platoons of battle-hardened infantry that comprised the Force Multipliers.

  None of the MIMAS pilots strayed far from their mechs to make small talk with the other soldiers. Probably because they coveted their new war machines, each feeling a certain sense of ownership over their respective mechs, which made sense, given how hard they’d worked to earn the right to pilot them.

  For Jake’s part, he just wanted some peace and quiet, to find focus before his first actual battle.

  His eyes met Gabriel Roach’s, who leaned against his mech’s legs, arms crossed. They exchanged nods.

  Jake had half-expected Roach to pilot the alien mech into battle, but it turned out Darkstream’s board considered that way too dangerous. He’d already taken a tremendous risk by climbing into it in the first place, which they’d forgiven him for since it had led to such a breakthrough in the company’s development of MIMAS mechs.

  But actually taking the thing into battle—they weren’t okay with that. They much preferred him to pilot their mech, whose designers had left out the feature where the mech folded inward to kill its occupant.

  “Ingress will end up much deeper in debt to Darkstream after this,” said Ash, stepping up beside Jake.

  “You figure? Their current contract doesn’t cover siege-busting?”

  “I highly doubt it. I mean, look at the scale of this operation. Also, word is the Quatro have figured out how to disrupt the flow of Gatherers to the city.”

  “Wow, really? We haven’t even been able to do that.”

  “I know. And if Darkstream can manage to fix the Gatherers after the battle…well, they’re going to want expanded resource rights in return, aren’t they? Hell, I’d say signing over those rights is the only way Ingress can afford to pay for all this. The city’s already stretched as thin as it can go.”

  “How do you know all that?”

  Ash met his eyes. “My father was mayor of Northshire. He had friends in almost all of Eresos’ sitting councils.”

  Roach appeared to be subvocalizing with someone over his implant. He held a hand to his ear as he spoke, which a lot of the old-timers did, even though it wasn’t necessary. When he was finished, he locked eyes with Jake.

  “Everyone meet next to Price’s mech,” Roach’s voice said into his ear. “There’s been an update. Double-time.”

  The rest of Oneiri jogged over. “What up?” Richaud said as he neared.

  “Wait till everyone’s here,” Roach said.

  Henrietta was last to arrive. “What’s the word?” she asked. “Let me guess—the other soldiers have started asking for mechs of their own?”

  Roach didn’t even crack a smile. “The Quatro have started to tunnel.”

  “But Ingress’ walls extend down almost two hundred meters, don’t they?” said Marco. “We’ll get down there in plenty of time to stop them.”

  “The Quatro are proficient diggers, and the tunnel entrance was only just spotted by satellite—we don’t know how long they’ve been working on it. They could emerge inside of Ingress any minute. The higher-ups are worried. They don’t think the elevator will make it in time.”

  “So…what’s the solution?” Ash asked.

  “We engage the elevator’s emergency stop. Then Oneiri Team jumps, landing in the hills directly behind the Quatro force. We’ll rain hell on them from the hilltops.”

  “That’s insane,” Jake said. “We haven’t even tested the reentry tech.”

  Roach shrugged. “The physics check out, and the engineers seem confident in their design. We have our orders, Price. I’ve already sent the elevator operator the command to stop.”

  “I told you, Jake,” Ash subvocalized over a two-way channel. “Ingress is too important to Darkstream. They probably see this as a calculated risk.”

  I wonder if the calculus would be different if it was their lives on the line.

  The nanoribbon emitted a deep groan, then, and the elevator slowed to a stop.

  “It’s time,” Roach said. “Everyone inside your MIMAS.”

  Chapter 34

  Stars

  The door sprang open without notice, slamming against what Lisa had come to think of as the bulkhead.

  Starting from her sleep, Lisa gasped as the invisible force seized her once more, yanking her from her giant hanging basket and into the corridor.

  As the Quatro spirited the trio through the underground vessel, she noticed something odd: none of the hatches they passed appeared to have opening mechanisms of any kind. That perplexed her for several seconds, distracting her momentarily from her panic, until the explanation dawned on her:

  The Quatro used whatever strange force they wielded to manipulate their ship as well.

  Something else about the ship had become quite apparent to all three of them as they attempted to rest: it was freezing. They were forced to keep their pressure suits on, for fear of hypothermia. It was even colder in here than it was on Alex’s surface at night. Whenever Lisa’s helmet was off, her breath fogged in front of her.

  How can they live in such frigid conditions?

  The Quatro did not seem interested in providing her with that information. Instead, they carried the mystified trio deeper into the ship, until they arrived at a chamber that was much less accommodating than the first one.

  Lisa, Tessa, and Andy were thrust inside, and the hatch squealed shut, as though on rusty hinges.

  “I guess they thought we were too comfortable,” Tessa said, glancing around at their new room.

  “You call that comfort?” Andy said with a terse laugh. “Maybe Lisa was comfortable, after claiming the only piece of furniture remotely hospitable to humans.”

  But Lisa barely registered the jab. Their new accommodations had her attention, and there was something even stranger about them than the rest of the ship.

  “Check out that fountain,” Andy said, pointing. “That Quatro looks ready to tear someone’s head off.”

  Lisa followed his finger to the sound of burbling water. A metal sculpture of a Quatro spewed the liquid from its mouth, into a tiny hole, where it presumably got recycled.

  “I guess they don’t want us dying of thirst,” Tessa said. “Although, what I really want is a slice of cheesecake.”

  “Cheesecake?” Andy said, looking at her strangely.

  “What? It’s just what I’m craving.”

  “Fair enough. I guess.”

  A strange basin projected from the bulkhead across the chamber, directly opposite the Quatro-head fountain. Drawing nearer, Lisa discovered that the bottom was uneven, with a convoluted pattern of dips and swirls. It wasn’t attractive by any measure, and she was sure it had a purpose of some kind, though she couldn’t sort it out.

  Not far from the basin, what was unmistakably a computer console rested inside a hollow.

  As with the rest of the ship, beautiful artwork covered every bulkhead of the room.

  But what seemed most important, for some reason, was the fact that this room reminded her of going lucid.

  She approached a panel in the bulkhead that appeared to depict an alien landscape. It had rolling hills that exhibited a strange symmetry, foreign to nature. Above, twin moons hung in place. The whole scene had a dreamlike, watery aesthetic.

  Lisa knelt in front of the panel, pushing against it.

 
; Nothing happened.

  “Lisa?” Andy said. He’d ceased chattering with Tessa, and now they both studied her, wearing twin expressions of mild concern. “What are you doing?”

  Lisa tried to slide the panel left, then right. Still nothing.

  Then, she tried to slide it up. As she pressed upward against it with her palms, the panel rose an inch, but fell again when she lost her grip on the smooth surface.

  “Help me lift this.”

  Tessa stepped forward, kneeling beside Lisa, and joining her in attempting to push it up. This time, the panel rose several inches before hitting a barrier inside the bulkhead with a thunk.

  “Come and search underneath it, Andy,” Lisa said, her voice a little strained with the effort of keeping the panel raised.

  “What in Sol for?” Andy said.

  “Get over here, boy,” Tessa barked. It was the first time she’d called him that, though she’d called Lisa “girl” plenty.

  When Tessa spoke like that, people moved, and Andy was no exception. He knelt between them.

  “Don’t drop that thing,” he muttered as he ran his hand over the ledge they’d revealed, as well as over the bulkhead behind the panel. “There’s nothing here.”

  “Try gripping the bottom of the panel and pulling it out,” Lisa said.

  With a sigh, Andy positioned his fingers on the bottom of the panel. “I can’t—” he said, but then he found enough purchase, and the panel lifted away from the wall by barely an inch.

  It was enough. When Lisa and Tessa lowered it, the panel slid from its casing, till Andy dropped it. It came to rest on the deck, still partially locked in the twin runners that held it in place.

  Above, in the space that had been revealed, was a grid with symbols along the left and bottom sides, which corresponded with the various rows and columns. Lisa picked at the edge of the grid with her finger, and it peeled away from the wall with ease.

  When it did, she saw that the grid’s squares were transparent, and so were the symbols themselves. The horizontal and vertical lines, as well as the edges, were opaque and purple—the same shade as the Quatro.

  “Congratulations,” Andy said. “You found a stencil.”

  “It’s not,” Lisa said, her tone level. She poked her finger at one of the squares, and it encountered a barrier. “There’s something there; it’s just see-through.”

  Lisa walked around the room with her discovery, peering through it and ignoring Andy’s ongoing commentary.

  She stopped in front of a mural depicting a starry sky. It had the same dreamlike quality as the panel. “I think it goes with this.”

  Suddenly, five of the stars twinkled, which only strengthened her convictions. When she looked at them with her naked eye, they did nothing, but they twinkled when viewed through the grid.

  “It’s not a painting,” she went on. “It’s a mostly static display, but some of the stars twinkle when you use this.”

  A quick study of the floor revealed a faint black line, and she held the grid directly above it, squinting through it at the stars.

  “Check that console across the room,” she said over her shoulder. “See if the symbols are the same as the ones along this grid.”

  “Do it, boy,” Tessa said, and Andy did. Then he returned to study the grid, recrossing the room once more to stare at the console.

  “They’re the same,” he said at last. “I’m sure of it.”

  “All right. I figured out something, too. I’m pretty sure these symbols are supposed to be numbers. The same ones are in the same order going up as well as across.” After another moment’s study, she said, “There are five rows and five stars. I bet if I go up row by row, describing the symbol of the column each star falls, and you punch them into that console…”

  “What?” Andy said. “We’ll win a prize?”

  “Something will happen. I’m sure of it.”

  Looking back, Lisa saw that Tessa was frowning. “As strange as Quatro on Alex is, this feels even stranger,” the former Darkstream soldier said. “It’s like they’re making us play some weird game.”

  “They’re not making us do anything,” Andy said. “Lisa is. And you’re making me follow her orders.”

  “I rank higher than you, anyway, Andy,” Lisa said.

  “What does that matter, anymore? We’re prisoners.”

  “That’s when it matters most. Now, are you ready to punch in these symbols? The first star falls in a column marked with a sort of crescent moon with a line through it.”

  Andy sighed. “All right. I see it. There.” He punched a button. “What’s next?”

  Lisa continued to describe the symbols, one after another. Andy entered the fifth, and after a few suspenseful seconds, something happened: two slim metal drawers sprang open from the bulkhead next to the panel they’d moved. Both drawers were empty, but before long, Lisa discovered that the bottom one came all the way out.

  She set it on the floor, and was able to reach her arm through the hollow the drawer had left behind, at the back of which she found a metal receptacle, like an extremely narrow drinking cup with a rim that was ridged unevenly along its circumference. Near the bottom, it was circled by a rubber-like black band covered in evenly spaced dots.

  Together, they worked through puzzle after puzzle, almost all of which required plenty of cooperation and communication. The cup allowed them to transport water across the room to the strange basin, and when they filled it up, the water took the shape of three more symbols.

  After several minutes of wondering over that, Andy discovered another panel that could be pulled away from the wall to reveal three concentric wheels covered in symbols. When they lined up the three symbols from the basin, another drawer sprang open nearby.

  Twenty minutes later, after assembling an image from six pieces collected from various hidden compartments around the room, accessed by solving yet more puzzles, an entire wall lifted upward—the one that bore the stars from one of the first puzzles—revealing a long, dark tunnel.

  Lisa looked at Andy, who looked at Tessa.

  “We’re not actually going down there, are we?” Andy said.

  “What else can we do?” Lisa asked, shrugging. Then she took the first step into the tunnel.

  The others followed. Her heart beating a tattoo in her chest, Lisa tried to focus on her exhilaration over her fear. What might their reward be for their work on the puzzles? Assuming there would be a reward, and not a punishment. Every lucid sim she’d ever played had trained her to expect the former, but this wasn’t lucid, was it?

  It would make a lot more sense if it was.

  Without warning, the invisible force seized her once more, followed by three Quatro stepping out of the shadows, piercing lights clicking on behind them to blind her.

  The Quatro dragged the three humans the rest of the way down the tunnel and into the brightness of the rest of the ship.

  After whisking them through a series of corridors, the Quatro deposited them in the first room they’d stayed in—the one with the strange furniture.

  The hatch screeched shut once more, closing with a clang.

  Andy was shaking his head. “What just happened, exactly?”

  “We were played for fools,” Tessa said with a drawn-out sigh. “We just don’t know what kind of fools yet.”

  Chapter 35

  Miscalculation

  Though he’d put on a brave face for his young team—or, possibly, an indifferent face—Gabe wasn’t thrilled about dropping through a wide section of Eresos’ atmosphere using untested technology.

  Well, the tech itself is pretty old. It was using it to send mechs hundreds of kilometers to the ground without killing their occupants that was new.

  The fact that, in order to interface with the mech, he would also technically be asleep…that didn’t help his composure very much.

  He felt a bead of sweat creeping down his forehead, but he refused to wipe it away. It wouldn’t be good to let the team see
that.

  Before his stress could show through in other ways, he popped a sedative and placed his hand over the sensor pad on the mech’s calf, long enough for it to read his biometrics. A section of the mech’s backside folded down, becoming a ridged ramp for him to climb.

  The designers had seen an opportunity in the fact that each pilot would go lucid for the entire time they spent inside their mech. In other vehicles meant for battle, it was necessary to allow for some room in the cockpit, to give occupants space to stretch their limbs, shift their weight, and so on. Otherwise, panic-inducing claustrophobia could easily set in.

  Not so with lucid-controlled mechs. The space could be devoted instead to more artillery and more fuel.

  Slipping into lucid, Gabe didn’t just interface with the mech—he became the mech, standing just as tall as it did, and feeling just as powerful.

  He would also feel what it felt. The designers had decided to render damage to the mech as physical pain to the occupant, which was easily accomplished using lucid.

  That had been a controversial decision, and it almost hadn’t happened, except for Gabe’s ardent support for the idea.

  A good soldier knew how to use pain to stay aware—of their situation, and also of their limitations. Plus, the knowledge that actual pain would accompany damage to the mechs would also force the pilots to use them as judiciously as they used their own bodies.

  Which was good, because right now, the mech was Gabe’s body. Its wicked artillery protruded from his metal flesh. And when he stepped toward the space elevator’s opening aperture, toward the widening slice of star-speckled space, it was Gabe’s heavy metal foot that moved.

  Standing on the edge of the platform, looking down on the world, he felt like a god. All-powerful. Invincible.

  He leapt. Which quickly reminded him of his humanity, and the accompanying mortality.

  At first, there was barely any sensation, as he hadn’t entered the atmosphere yet and so there was no air resistance. The planet also didn’t seem to get any closer. He was so high up, it didn’t feel like he was falling at all.