by Brett Patton
He glanced back at the others. Two of the Mecha took uncertain steps. One crouched on the ground. The last twitched and shuddered.
And Major Soto was staring at him. Straight at him, with an expression of openmouthed amazement. As Matt concentrated on him, the scene zoomed in and an overlay appeared :
SENSORY ENHANCEMENT MODE
In the sudden close-up, tags identified MAJOR GUILIANO SOTO and SERGEANT LENA STOLL. It was like he was standing right in front of them.
As he watched, Lena’s slate chimed. A voice barked:
“What is that cadet’s Mesh effectiveness?”
Matt recognized the voice. It was the same one he’d heard coming out of Mind Raze: Dr. Roth.
Sergeant Stoll looked right at Matt. “Candidate Lowell’s Mesh effectiveness is eighty-seven percent,” she said.
“Stable, resonant, or sliding?”
“Stable.”
The slate chimed as the connection terminated. Stoll and Soto shared a glance. “He’s the highest yet,” she said.
Soto nodded. “Amazing.”
A Mecha started to scream. Jahl’s Mecha. It had never gotten out of its crouch.
Fear twisted Matt’s guts. His POV snapped back to normal as he sprinted back to Jahl.
“Hit the release!” Major Soto said.
Matt knelt in front of Jahl and scrabbled at the hard metal of the other man’s cockpit. There had to be some way to open it! Waves of fear and pain washed over Matt as Jahl fell deeper into reverse Mesh.
Of course! They were all connected. Matt felt all the cadets’ panic, not just Jahl’s. It fed on itself, spiraling up and up.
Matt’s Mecha went dead. Matt yelped in surprise in the sudden darkness. Then his cockpit opened. Brilliant artificial sun seared his eyes.
In front of him, Jahl’s Mecha yawned open. Jahl flailed at the control cables, then slumped forward in his harness.
Matt tried to jump out of his cockpit, but the harness held him back. Peal tore off his connections and charged up the stairs to his brother. Major Soto followed close behind. The two men pulled Jahl free by the time Matt reached them.
Jahl gasped and convulsed. His eyes were like black pools. Peal held him down until the seizure passed. Jahl tried to raise his head. Peal and Soto helped him stand and shuffle down to the blacktop.
“Is he okay?” Matt asked.
“He’s alive,” Soto said. “But he won’t ever be Mecha Corps.”
In the end, it was Matt, Kyle, Michelle, Ash, and Peal. They stood in front of Major Soto in their Hellions. Matt quivered in excitement. Despite the horror of the day, just being inside a Hellion was a wonderful feeling. He wanted to run up the sides of the city chamber, leap off, and swing from the buildings, charge up his weapons, raze an entire battalion of Corsairs.
“What are your orders, sir?” Michelle said. A comms icon appeared: CADET M. KIND ➙ MAJOR G. SOTO: PUBLIC.
“Systems drills, reaction timing, and fine motor control exercises.” Another comms icon lit: MAJOR G. SOTO ➙ ALL. “You have a long way to go. Well, most of you do. Before that, half hour free exercise. Don’t break anything.”
“Yes, sir!” Michelle’s Hellion snapped off a shaky salute. She spun and puttered down the field, calling, “Race ya!”
Matt laughed and gave chase. The others followed.
It was like nothing Matt had ever experienced. Just running across the concrete, feeling every impression in its grooved surface, was pure pleasure. No endless loop of Perfect Record. No muttering voices in the back of his head. In Mesh, he was free.
Matt flashed by Michelle. His ground-speed indicator rose quickly: 100, 200 kilometers an hour.
“Hey!” she yelled. Matt laughed and came to a skidding stop at the edge of the city chamber, where concrete pylons held back the native rock. Above them, the blue-green light of the Atlantic shone in through the chamber’s transparent wall.
Michelle came to a stop beside him. “How are you so fast?” Michelle said, out of breath.
“I don’t know.” Matt frowned. Running the Mecha took no effort at all.
“You . . . aren’t . . . even tired,” Peal said through whooping breaths, as he clumped up to join them.
“No.” Matt shook his head.
“Fricking Superman or somethin’,” Ash said.
“Let’s see how Superman fights,” Kyle said, balling his Hellion’s hands into fists and dropping into a boxer’s posture.
Matt backed away. The best way to win a fight is to avoid one. That’s what Pat used to say. Matt had used it to good effect in bars on Aurora, where bragging got heated and tempers flared. He’d always been able to talk the other guy down.
“Scared?” Kyle said, advancing. He moved jerkily, nowhere near as fluid as Matt.
“No.”
“Then why are you running away?”
The women stopped to watch in that universal, hip-cocked posture that said Boys will be boys. Peal stayed off to the side, as if to say I don’t want any of this.
“Cadet Candidate Peterov, stand down,” Major Soto interrupted them over the comms.
“Yes, sir!” Kyle said, snapping to attention.
“All of you, come on back for drills,” Soto said. “There’s a time for this, but not now.”
Matt jogged back with the others, wondering, If not now, when?
The systems drills consisted of Sergeant Stoll on a screen running them through the three major Mecha systems: comms, weapons, and sensors. It was all pretty straightforward, controlled by thought through the neural interface. Still, everyone had to run through it again and again.
Matt’s Perfect Record picked it up immediately, so he turned his attention to the city and played with the limits of sensory-enhancement mode. There didn’t seem to be much it couldn’t do. He read the menus at Il Trattoria like they were in his own hands. He overhead conversations between anxious Auxiliaries as they talked about the pressure of their new schedules.
In the city, one building stood out from the rest: a sleek, mirrored monolith that twisted gracefully as it reached upward to touch the sky. At the top, glass balconies protruded, offering a vertiginous view of the city below. Matt zoomed in on the balconies and followed them up.
On the very top balcony, two men shook hands. Tags flickered over them in Matt’s sensory-enhanced viewscreen. One man was DR. S. ROTH; FURTHER CREDENTIALS REDACTED. The other was CONGRESSPERSON S. TOMITA, CHAIR OF UNION ADVANCED TECHNOLOGIES COMMITTEE.
Matt felt a shock of recognition. Dr. Roth. Dr. Salvatore Roth. The voice on the slate. The father of modern Mecha. The man who’d asked about him.
Dr. Roth and Congressperson Tomita shook hands, but their expressions were set and grim. Matt’s sensory enhancement brought him in at midgreeting.
“—san, it is a pleasure to receive you at our humble facility,” Dr. Roth said. His voice was thin and reedy through the enhancement, but intelligible.
Congressperson Tomita frowned. “Spare me the pleasantries. And spare the suffix as well. Japan was three hundred years ago. We’re all Union now.”
“I only want to make your visit as productive as possible.”
Tomita shook his head. “Productive for you, or for the Union?”
“For both of us.”
“You know we have grave concerns about your procedures and outcomes. You are deviating significantly from standard military training. Many feel there should be more oversight, including Prime Haal,” Tomita told him.
Dr. Roth nodded. “The new obedience, physical, and psych tests have led to only a single death in first Mesh.”
“It is still a death!” Congressperson Tomita hissed. “How many are actually usable?”
“We have over ten percent full-capability”—the audio dropped out momentarily—“on first Mesh. With additional neural conditioning, we expect to drive final full-piloting candidates into the twenty-percent range.”
“Terrible numbers!”
“Much higher than the two to f
ive percent previously.”
Congressperson Tomita said something lost in the garble. He finally came back with, “—leadership believes the nature of your biomechanical—”
“The Union believes they need more Mecha pilots.” Dr. Roth cut off Tomita, his voice guttural and deadly. Then he softened. “You are within grasping distance of wiping out the scourge.”
Congressperson Tomita nodded, but he didn’t look at Dr. Roth.
“Would you prefer Rayder take another colony world?”
Matt started. Another colony world? Rayder had already taken a Union world? That never hit the news.
“Of course we must continue the campaign,” Congressperson Tomita said.
“Good,” Roth said. “I am delivering on my objectives. Now you must deliver on yours.”
Congressperson Tomita looked up at Dr. Roth. Heat-distortion of the image made his face into a writhing mask of pain. Audio garble ate his words.
When the audio came back, Dr. Roth was talking again: “—or you won’t get the Demon you most desperately crave.”
6
WITHDRAWAL
The next morning, Matt’s head felt like it was stuffed full of knives, and the shrill alarm was like someone pushing them deeper into his skull. He groaned and reached to turn it off. Even that slight movement sent crescendos of pain through his entire body. His digestive tract roiled and churned, filling his mouth with bile.
Sick. Great. What new torture did Major Soto have planned for them today? Even the thought of getting in his Hellion again did nothing to rouse him.
When Matt finally levered himself up, he noticed his door screen had changed. It now read: OPEN: STANDARD CADET PRIVILEGES. RETAIN ACCESS CARD AT ALL TIMES.
Matt forced himself to shuffle to the door. A thin slot at the top of the screen held a small card, engraved with a realistic hologram of his face. It read: MATT STANDFORD LOWELL. MECHA CADET. INDUCTION GROUP 715.
Cadet? No longer cadet candidate? Matt managed a weak grin. He’d piloted a Mecha. He was a full cadet now.
He flipped the card over, where it displayed an interactive map of the city, with the following tag: REPORT TO CADET HOUSING CAFETERIA.
Matt retched at the thought of food, but he followed orders and went down to the cafeteria. There, a smattering of men and women wearing gray cadet uniforms sat in groups of two or three. Some looked up when he walked in. Fresh meat, their smirks said. One guy nodded at an empty table, where a small, hand-lettered card read CADETS, GROUP 715.
Matt went to the table and sat. He didn’t want to get anywhere near the food. His head radiated pulses of pain as he slumped in a seat.
Above him, wall screens showed a live session from the latest Union Congress on Eridani, while a scrolling ticker reiterated the important points. Unicrats had maintained their slim margin over the Freecycles. Augmented Union Services were promised for outlying colony worlds. Talks proceeded with Percy’s Folly, an independent world considering Union membership after repeated Corsair attacks.
In an inset close-up, a talking head was jabbering Uni-cratese : How immensely valuable every habitable planet was, no matter how far toward the edge, or how young its charter, or how marginal its ecosystem. How Unification under standardized laws and practices promoted stability and growth, and how any other policy encouraged factions like the Corsairs.
“Did you get the number of the monster truck that hit me?” a familiar voice said. Matt jumped. It was Michelle. She slid into a seat and put her head in her hands.
“Monster truck?” Matt asked.
Michelle looked up at him. Her normally rosy complexion was pale, and dark circles nested under her eyes. “Old Earth expression. You know, ‘Don’t let the door hit ya where the dog shoulda bit ya’? ‘Easy as pie’?”
Matt shook his head.
Michelle sighed. “I forgot you aren’t a real silver-spoon type. They’re all into Earth culture.”
Matt suddenly realized what she’d been saying. “You’re sick, too?”
“More like a hangover.”
Things clicked into place in Matt’s aching, slow brain. Hungover. We are hungover.
“From the Mecha?” he asked.
Michelle looked up, surprised. She nodded. “It is a helluva rush.”
Matt remembered the intense feeling of Mesh. Now just thinking about it made his agony fade. Maybe that’s what he needed—to get back in the Mecha. A strong pang of desire shot through his body.
“Do you think we’ll pilot Mecha again today?” Michelle asked.
“Not a chance,” said Peal, dropping into another seat. His dark complexion had an almost greenish cast, and his black hair stuck out in big spikes.
Michelle’s expression went from hunger to annoyance in an instant. “Why not?”
“It’s clear the neural interface is physically addictive,” Peal said. “Party line is that it’s only mental, though.”
“How do you know that?”
Peal extracted his slate and waved it at them. “If it wasn’t physical, they wouldn’t have extensive documentation on the treatment of MUNS, or Mecha Utilization Neural Syndrome.”
“You’re hacking training camp?” Matt asked.
Peal nodded, looking smug.
“Is that . . . uh, safe?”
“I don’t think it matters,” Peal said. “This city is a roach motel.”
“Roach motel?” Matt said.
Michelle nodded. “More old Earth slang. It means, ‘It’s a trap. Roaches go in, but they don’t come out.’ ”
“What does that have to do with—,” Matt began. More memories fell into place. The empty-looking cadets and corps. The throngs of Auxiliaries.
Peal nodded. “They’re pushing real hard for Jahl to join the Auxiliaries. Really hard.”
Michelle looked horrified. “And if he doesn’t?”
Peal shrugged. “I don’t think he’s going to disappear or anything cloak-and-dagger. But I wouldn’t be surprised if he ended up with a job on a colony world that makes Hyva look like Eridani.”
“What about you?” Matt asked.
“Everything has an angle.” Peal waved his slate and tapped his head. “You just have to figure out what it is.”
Matt didn’t know what to say. What were they up to now? A sudden memory of the conversation he’d overhead yesterday came back to him unbidden.
“There’s a lot of stuff going on here that we don’t know about,” Peal said, through a grin.
Ash slipped into a seat next to them without a word. She put her head down on the table and groaned.
“And a rousing ‘good morning’ to you too,” Peal said.
“Screw you,” Ash grumbled.
Peal just laughed. Ash flipped him off.
“What a fine group of cadets we have here!” boomed a familiar voice—Major Soto’s. He wore uniform-casual again: Corps pants and tight-fitting T-shirt with major’s stripes. Beside him stood Sergeant Stoll, looking impossibly crisp and perfect in her Auxiliary uniform.
Michelle sat up straight. “Good morning, sir!”
“Can it.” Soto pulled up a chair to the head of the table and sat in it backward. “I know how you all feel. Like shit. The good news is, we’ll run a dozen laps of the city now.”
The silence was so total you could hear a pin drop. Ratcheting laughter came from a group of cadets at another table. Peal went even greener.
Soto chuckled. “I’m joking. You aren’t in any shape for that.”
“What about—,” Michelle began.
“And you’re in no shape to be running Mecha,” Soto said, talking over her. Michelle sagged, defeated. Matt knew exactly how she felt.
“Who’re we missing?” Soto said, scanning the table.
“Cadet Peterov, sir,” Lena said.
“When he gets here, let him know it’s a free day.”
“Free day?” Ash asked.
“Yes. Congratulations, cadets. You earned it.”
Matt felt a rush of pr
ide. He sat up straighter. They all did. Even Ash lifted her head off the table and gave everyone a wan grin. They were cadets now.
“Free, of course, is relative,” Soto said. “If you’re up to it, I’d recommend the Strategic Archive, where you can review Mecha battles and deployment, or Mecha Interface Training, where you can improve your fine motor skills—”
“Found it last night,” Kyle said, walking up. Except for the bags under his eyes, Matt had to begrudgingly admit that Kyle didn’t look that bad off.
“Last night?” Michelle asked.
“Yeah, I’ve got to catch up with Superman.” Kyle nodded at Matt.
“Does it work? Does it feel like being in a Mecha?” Michelle asked, leaning forward.
“I got my Mesh percentage up by nine points. But, no, it doesn’t feel like being in a Hellion. I can show you, if you’d like.”
Michelle nodded eagerly, a spark in her eyes for the first time. “Yeah. Please.”
Under the table, Matt clenched his fists. And there she goes with the golden boy. So easy for him.
When Soto had gone and they’d choked down some food, Kyle stood up. “I’m going back to Interface Training. Who’s coming with me?”
“I’ll go.” Michelle said.
Ash shook her head. “I’m goin’ back to my room.”
“I’m working.” Peal poked at his slate.
Michelle and Kyle looked at Matt expectantly. Matt held up his hands in surrender. “I think it’s the Archive for me.”
He watched them leave, thinking, You’ve just blown it.
Maybe he had. And maybe that would have to be okay.
The Strategic Archive was a long, broad room full of privacy screens in the Mecha Corps Administration building two doors down from Cadet Housing. Matt’s access card granted him BASIC LIBRARY RIGHTS, according to the screen.
Matt found it pretty amazing. They had video and transcripts from every major Mecha battle from Pellham’s Front and New Jericho to the present day, together with battle strategies describing how to deploy Mecha for typical situations : a single Mecha with low-power rounds and extra Fireflies to go into a colonial city to take out a single terrorist with no casualties; a two-pronged drop from orbit with fast land assault on a ground space port held by a Corsair force, using Aliancia mortars and tanks; coordinated multidrop assaults with Mecha Flight Packs designed for planetary occupation.
