Mech Wars: The Complete Series

by Scott Bartlett

His team of mechs had assembled directly behind him, at the very front of the Darkstream reserve forces.

  They surged forward as one, a single fist of steel and death that swung forward to smash the Quatro apart.

  “Grenades first,” Gabe subvocalized. “Then bayonets, once we’re among them.”

  The volley of grenades sailed overhead in a wide arc, creating a crescent of explosions deep within the Quatro ranks.

  The enemy enveloped Gabe’s team, then, surrounding them, swarming between them.

  That suited Oneiri well. It gave them room to bring their bayonets to bear. Soon, each mech was covered in fur and flesh and blood.

  Driving his blade into hide after hide, opening wound after wound, sending arc after arc of scarlet spurting into the air, Gabe lost himself in the dance of battle.

  The roar of the remaining tanks’ guns, the mortar shells, the automatic gunfire…it sounded muffled, to him. Everything did. His world was made of his blades and the Quatro flesh they found and the sky that flashed over and over with his rage, in colors that matched the viscera covering everything.

  Soon, the mortars and tanks stopped firing, since to do so would endanger friendly units, locked as they were in close combat with the aliens.

  Gabe wouldn’t have been able to say how long it lasted. Hours, days, minutes.

  At any rate, it ended. He whirled to find his next target and found nothing but a square littered with corpses, both Quatro and human.

  Other than his team of mechs, Darkstream’s reserve force was significantly diminished. The tanks remained, but few soldiers were left, and that included the mortar teams’ numbers.

  Gabe strode over to a petty officer he recognized. “Where’s Commander Clifford?” he rasped.

  “Dead, sir,” the petty officer said. His name was Hayworth, if Gabe remembered correctly.

  Nodding, Gabe turned, striding through the sea of bodies to reach the massive fountain in the center of the square. Without ceremony, he mounted it with a single step, turning to face what remained of his forces.

  He spread his metal hands wide, taking in the entirety of the square, which soon would acquire the stink of death. Insects had already begun to light on the bodies.

  Soon, they’ll cover them.

  “These beasts are evil,” Gabe said. “Plain and simple. Today, we beat back evil—barely. We prevented them from taking what was most dear to us—barely. But they’ll come again. They’ve tasted success. They’ve tasted human blood. And now that they have the taste, for as long as they live, they’ll never stop hungering for it.”

  “So let’s make sure they don’t live much longer!” shouted Hayworth.

  “I agree,” Gabe said, nodding at the petty officer. “Let’s.” He swept those gathered with his gaze, metal head creaking softly as it turned. The battle haze was still leaving him, which the dream rendered by making the faces of his audience shimmer slightly. “Let’s hit the Quatro in their home, now, with everything we have. Let’s do to them what they just tried to do to us. Let’s make it so they can never hurt us again.”

  That was it—all he had. The speech brought ragged cheers and a grim resolve, which Gabe could see etched in the face of every soldier. He could even see it in the posture of his team members.

  Since before the battle, he’d suspected that the Quatro must have had a reason for hitting Plenitos. Possibly, they’d been provoked—they’d certainly been provoked twenty years ago, when Darkstream’s forces had first driven them deep underground, using the most devastating weaponry they had access to.

  He no longer cared. Provoked or not, the Quatro had taken everything from him that had given his life the paltry meaning it had had. His love, as well as his pride.

  They’d taken everything that had driven him. And now, nothing drove him, except his desire to kill every last Quatro on Eresos.

  The sky stopped flashing, settling into a red the color of blood.

  That seemed fitting. The sky mirrored the ground, and soon the ground itself would be soaked through.

  Chapter 57

  A Troop of Giant Aliens

  The Quatro couldn’t fit through the regularly sized airlocks, and so Lisa had to order the vehicle bay airlocks opened for them.

  Normally, the decision whether to open up the vehicle bays for a troop of giant aliens would have fallen to Chief Lannon, head of security for Habitat 2, but unfortunately he was unable to dispense his usual duties due to languishing in an eight-by-six cell. As for the other Darkstream employees, it turned out the company had negotiated with Daybreak for their release from Habitat 2, and they were long gone.

  So Lisa had made the call, and now forty-two Quatro roamed Habitat 2’s wider streets, leaving narrow lanes on either side of them—enough space for little more than a hoverbike to pass.

  The aliens seemed totally unconcerned about blocking traffic, unless it was the part of traffic that consisted of Lisa, Tessa, and Andy, and the vehicles they drove.

  Before the Battle for Habitat 2, Lisa had doubted whether the Quatro had it in them to be as vicious as battles tended to require.

  Now, they surprised her in the opposite direction, with their cold demeanor toward every human that wasn’t one of the first three they’d spoken with.

  The communication barrier wasn’t the problem. The Quatro translator had progressed to the point where their speech was basically indistinguishable from colloquial English.

  Basically.

  No, the Quatro simply didn’t seem to like the majority of the human species. Or at least, the majority of the portion they encountered.

  When she asked Rug about it, the alien paused pensively. “How best to explain,” she muttered, midnight eyes staring into the distance. Before she spoke again, those eyes locked on to Lisa’s, unwavering.

  “In providing you succor while you were stranded on the barrens of Alex, we signaled that you were part of our drift—to you, and to ourselves. As far as we are concerned, you, Andy, and Tessa are Quatro as well as human.”

  Lisa blinked. “What is everyone else in Habitat 2, then?”

  Rug snorted, sounding like a horse, or at least like the recordings of horses Lisa had heard. “They are potential Meddler agents.”

  “But…they’re humans, too. They’re my neighbors, friends. If they’re agents, then wouldn’t we likely be agents as well?”

  “We have already taken that gamble, Lisa. It was a necessary one, and there is no going back.”

  “Then why not take it with the others?”

  “That would represent a foolhardy risk.”

  Frowning, Lisa took a turn to stare into space. There was a gap in either Rug’s logic or her own, and the Quatro’s circuitous semantics had her doubting which it was.

  Of course, there were other reasons for the Quatro’s distress. Soon after the surviving Daybreak fighters were squared away in holding cells, along with the few Three Points members they’d kept alive, Lisa and her companions had learned of the war on Eresos, which seemed to shock the Quatro.

  “Our species does not engage in gratuitous conflict,” Rug said, flanks heaving. She was the only Quatro in sight at the time, and Tessa and Andy stood nearby as well. The Quatro were too large to fit inside most Habitat 2 structures, so they mostly remained in the climate-controlled out-of-doors. “They would not have engaged without provocation,” she said.

  “The reports say they attacked two cities, Rug,” Tessa said, her tone gentle. “And that they killed hundreds of innocent civilians.”

  “Plus, you are pretty lousy to humans who aren’t us,” Andy chimed in. Lisa glared at him, which he studiously ignored.

  “It is one thing to regard someone with suspicion,” Rug said, sounding scandalized. The translator was pretty good at converting Quatro inflections into spoken English, too. “It is quite another to do them harm.

  “After the Meddler attack, we lost contact with the other Quatro that accompanied us to this system. We feared they had died. But this is a
lmost as concerning as that prospect. If they’ve strayed so far from Quatro norms…” Rug shuddered, also like a horse, a gesture Lisa had come to think of as equivalent to a human shaking their head. “It is difficult to countenance.”

  Lisa felt for the Quatro. And whether they came to trust more humans or not, so long as they did no harm, they were welcome to remain in Habitat 2 indefinitely, as far as she was concerned.

  That said, she didn’t have the time to play therapist to them. The social fabric of Habitat 2 had been damaged badly, and now it fell to Lisa to ensure that damage got repaired.

  “You’ve come a long way,” Tessa said to her, without prompting, as they both worked through damage claims made by residents of Habitat 2. “I’m prepared to consider you graduated from my training program. Congratulations.”

  “Wow. Thank you.” It truly did mean a lot, and it elevated Lisa’s mood, which she sorely needed.

  “Just don’t put too much pressure on yourself. Right now, everyone’s treating you like you’re the city council and Darkstream’s physical incarnation all wrapped up in one.”

  “It’s just until a new council is elected, ma’am.”

  The older woman smiled. “You can call me Tessa again, Lisa.”

  It was good to have her old friendship with Tessa back—surprisingly intact, despite the rigors the former soldier had put her through.

  She wished she knew where she stood with Andy, though. They’d been through a lot during their journey across Alex, and they’d even seemed to bond a little at the end of it. But now that he was back in Habitat 2, he seemed just as smug as ever, and possibly even more aloof than before. Lisa told herself that she didn’t really care about that, but still, it would have been nice to think what they’d endured together had meant something.

  Tessa was right about the pressure Lisa was under, and they couldn’t hold elections for city council soon enough. Cooper had executed the entirety of the old city council on his way to seizing control.

  With the exception of one man: Councilman Leonardo Fiore had not been executed, which Lisa found highly suspicious. It probably meant he’d been corrupted by Daybreak all along, but there was no actual proof of that—just some pretty damning reports of special treatment during Cooper’s occupation.

  I guess I should just be grateful that the drug problem isn’t likely to resurface anytime soon.

  Tessa had her own view on that, of course.

  “The drugs will come back,” she said. “They’re a factor in every human society. Besides, Darkstream needs them around, so that they can continue policing the populace. Controlling them.”

  That had made Lisa repress a sigh. The star of the company she worked for had certainly fallen somewhat in her eyes, but she still had trouble swallowing Tessa’s endless conspiracy theorizing.

  And then, something happened that lent a level of credence to those theories that Lisa would never have anticipated.

  Part of repairing the social fabric inside Habitat 2 involved investigating exactly what had led to Daybreak’s insurrection, and then to putting on trial those who’d been involved. It would likely take months, but she figured that to properly recover from the crisis, they had to figure out exactly what had happened.

  To speed up that process a little, she floated the prospect of leniency for any prisoner that offered information that either led to a conviction or was judged significant in uncovering the truth.

  She wasn’t sure how well that would work, since she didn’t have the authority to decide on how much leniency could actually be given, or whether any could be given at all. A message she’d sent to Valhalla requesting guidance on the matter had not yet received a reply.

  So it surprised her when one of the prisoners came forward, a man named Samuel Dalton, almost immediately.

  He claimed to be a high-ranking member of Daybreak, and citizen reports seemed to confirm that—he’d been seen giving orders and generally bossing around some of the Daybreak underlings.

  The guards brought the man before Lisa in shackles, inside her temporary office in the Constable Station near the center of town.

  “Well?” she said, eyebrows raised, trying for a mix of skepticism and cool disinterest.

  “Darkstream willingly allowed the takeover by Daybreak,” he said. “Encouraged it, even.”

  That shattered Lisa’s mask of detachment. She furrowed her brow and stared at the man. “Why would they do that?”

  “Because they knew Daybreak would take away everyone’s assets, along with their rights. They’d be slaves, basically, and that’s what they were until you came back here with those savages.”

  Lisa’s head jerked back, as though she’d been slapped. What the man had just told her almost perfectly mirrored what Tessa had said on the day all of this had happened.

  That doesn’t make it true, she tried to tell herself.

  But the thought rang hollow, and she began to sense that something fundamental had changed in her little world. Something that couldn’t be repaired or put back in place.

  Chapter 58

  Retreat

  Bronson lent his full approval to Gabe’s crusade against the Quatro dens, sending most of Plenitos’ garrison to accompany Oneiri Team, along with what remained of the reserve force the company had sent down the space elevator. The captain also gave command of the battalion to Gabe, given Clifford’s death.

  The fact that Plenitos was being left with a skeleton force of defenders bothered Gabe, on some level. It reminded him too much of Northshire.

  But on another, more immediate level, he couldn’t care less. The extermination of the Quatro was what mattered, and everything else was subordinate to that.

  Everything.

  The entrance to the Quatro tunnels was comprised of solid rock, and too tiny for the mechs to enter. They might have blasted it wider, but the claustrophobic conditions persisted for half a kilometer, and it would have taken them days to finish the job, possibly weeks.

  The tunnels probably narrow again farther in, anyway.

  It didn’t matter. Each member of Oneiri was trained in every weapon Darkstream had ever made, along with several it hadn’t. If the lucid network was good for anything, it was that. Preparing players in the basics of combat, priming them for being trained and molded by the company later.

  In particular, Oneiri had focused on drilling dozens of scenarios it was likely to encounter on the surface of Eresos, over and over again, until they were etched into the surface of their brains. As a result, their instincts would guide them through much of any engagement, and training and conditioning would see them through the rest.

  So when Gabe ordered his pilots out of their mechs, no one complained. No one even blinked.

  They’re ready. After Ingress and Plenitos, he doubted there was much they weren’t ready for, actually.

  The dead Force Multipliers had left behind plenty of weaponry, with which he outfitted his team now. Shotguns for Marco and Beth, assault rifles for Gabe, Ash, and Jake, a flamethrower for Richaud, and a heavy machine gun and tripod for Tommy and Henrietta to operate.

  Hopefully we won’t have cause to set that up. It would mean they were in the direst of straits, and frankly, Gabe did not expect to enter those.

  Most of the Quatro are already dead. They have to be, after the battles we just waged.

  Either way, the heavy machine gun was the most powerful artillery Darkstream had signed off on for this mission. Mortar shells would be useless in the caves. Rocket launchers and grenade launchers were invitations for friendly fire. And fuel air explosives…

  Well, they weren’t approved for use at all anymore. They’d been meant for clearing out the Quatro en masse, before any of Darkstream’s noncombat personnel had colonized Eresos. The same personnel who had later mostly quit the company to become the planet’s citizens, unaffiliated with their former employer, except via the equipment they leased.

  Now that Eresos was more heavily populated, the Darkstream boar
d considered the use of fuel air bombs too…“sensitive for the current environment,” was how Gabe remembered it being put.

  Oneiri Team led the way into the tunnels, scouting ahead for the rest of the force. They were the best-trained and best-prepared out of everyone on the mission.

  And yet, outside of his mech, Gabe felt incredibly vulnerable. Incredibly small.

  Not to mention, he suddenly felt somewhat divided about what he was about to do.

  There’s no going back now, he told himself. This isn’t the time to cut and run. You’re the one who orchestrated this. See it to the end.

  Remember Jess, he told himself.

  He did. And he advanced.

  His body was somewhat stiff as he did, probably from being inside his mech for so long. He tried to work it out as he walked, as best he could, taking overlong strides to stretch his muscles a bit.

  The implants had night vision capability, obviating the need for lights. The Quatro would have no warning. And Oneiri would give no quarter.

  Tommy and Henrietta were on point. At the first sight of Quatro, they would begin setting up their tripod and gun while the others charged ahead to engage, seeking to push the aliens back. If things went south, they could fall back behind the heavy machine gun, which would tear the beasts to shreds.

  The tunnel they walked along continued for fifteen minutes without splitting, and barely changing direction by more than a few degrees here and there.

  “Contact!” Tommy shouted after twenty-five minutes of walking along the same tunnel, his voice cracking, and he began fumbling with the tripod.

  Gabe, Jake, and Ash surged forward, raising their SL-17s to sight along the barrels, firing at a pair of Quatro standing side-by-side fifteen meters in. The gun muzzles flashed, creating a strobing effect in the gloom.

  Nothing happened. The Quatro stood there, completely immobile.

  “Wait,” Jake said. “Are they, like, statues?”

  They weren’t. A series of clattering noises followed, which Gabe quickly realized was the sound of bullets falling to the rock.