Meltdown (Mech Wars Book 3)

by Scott Bartlett

  He’d believed that everything would always be simple, that he would always consider himself good and his enemies evil.

  But as he sat here with his hands wrapped around a cup of cold tea, it wasn’t like that at all. He felt empty, with nothing but the blood on his hands and the indoctrination Darkstream’s training had left him with.

  The handful of crewmembers that were inside the lounge kept their distance from Jake. He could tell they considered him an “other”—a mech pilot, who’d been given a shiny new toy, and who’d recently done battle with a fearsome alien robot.

  If he were to guess, he’d say the crews’ feelings toward him entailed a mixture of fear and resentment. The way Bronson lavished praise and privilege on him didn’t help. Possibly, that was an innocent impulse on the captain’s behalf, though Jake doubted it. Nothing was ever innocent with Bronson. More likely, he did it to keep Jake apart from the crew.

  Divide and conquer. That was the secret Darkstream mantra, he’d come to realize.

  He decided to browse the system net, to see whether he could find any news about the situation on Eresos.

  Scrolling through one of his social feeds, amidst the posts about everyday life, he saw a smattering of rumors that Quatro in mechs of their own were approaching Ingress. Because of the signal delay, that news would be several hours old, and it would be some time before he’d find out how Ash and the others had truly fared.

  That killed him—the not knowing.

  Idly, he refreshed his feed, and the post that appeared at the top caused him to bolt up from his chair, eyes riveted on the rectangle in the upper right of his HUD, which displayed the social feed.

  A few of the crewmembers glanced toward him before returning to their drinks, but Jake ignored them, rereading the post:

  “Attention to anyone near Hub: we are under attack. Strange robots have infiltrated our comets and have begun attacking us. We’ve contacted Darkstream but haven’t heard back. If you’re reading this and are able to help, please, please come.”

  Willing the social feed to dissolve, Jake tore out of the Starlight Lounge and sprinted toward Bronson’s office, which was just a short distance down the corridor. He pounded on the hatch while sending Bronson IM after IM.

  Finally, the hatch opened to reveal Bronson, whose eyes were underscored with black patches. “Price. What can I do for you?”

  “Hub is under attack.”

  Bronson inclined his head. “I’ve heard. It’s unfortunate, but sadly we can’t alter our itinerary.”

  “Our itinerary? People are dying!”

  “I’m afraid it’s out of the question, Price. We need all hands on deck back on Eresos. The situation there has gone completely to pot.”

  Jake squinted at Bronson, unsure whether the captain had gone mad or he had. “To pot…?” He shook his head to clear it. “My family is in Hub, sir!”

  Shoulders rising slightly before falling again, Bronson said softly: “This is what it means to be a soldier, son.”

  “I see,” Jake said, and suddenly, he felt totally at peace. Something had fallen into place, and with it, everything had begun to make a lot more sense. Amazingly, the captain’s words had soothed many of his woes, and they’d done that by simplifying things for him. He knew exactly what he had to do.

  “Are you going to be all right, son?”

  “I’m going to be fine, sir,” Jake said.

  “Okay, then. Well, if you ever need to talk, we have a fine doctor aboard.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Good man.” Bronson cleared his throat. “Dismissed, Price.”

  But as the captain was saying the words, Jake was already turning to leave.

  Chapter 7

  Sucker Punch

  It’s beautiful.

  Lisa had heard a lot of old-timers say that Eresos came nowhere near the custom-tailored planets of human space back in the Milky Way, and certainly it would have paled beside the natural beauty of Old Earth, though no one alive had ever seen that, outside of ancient photos.

  Lisa didn’t care what people said, anyway. For someone who had lived most of her life in the Belt, and then the rest of it on barren Alex, Eresos seemed downright lush—even with its leafless trees, its mildew smell, and the sweeping Barrens she’d heard about but hadn’t seen yet.

  Of course, Hub does give it a run for its money. Like the terraformed planets back in the Milky Way, Hub had also been carefully designed and cultivated to please the eye, using plants cloned from heritage seeds that had been salvaged from humanity’s homeworld.

  But Eresos was…natural. Natural, which was supposed to be the reason for Old Earth’s striking beauty. She’d read once that humans had evolved to find the landscapes of Earth’s savannas appealing, with their winding water sources; their open plains that had enabled ancient humans to run down prey; and their scattered copses, perfect for hiding from predators…

  “Tessa,” she said, and the older woman’s gaze drifted toward her slowly, as though she’d been expecting to be addressed.

  “Yes, Lisa?”

  “The man inside the alien mech—Roach. What did he mean when he mentioned the ‘evil’ you helped to bring about? Why did he call you duplicitous?”

  For a long time, Tessa returned her stare in silence.

  Next to Lisa, Andy’s shallow breathing was ragged though steady, and the two Quatro on the floor—Rug, and one who’d chosen the name Nail—seemed to take little interest in their conversation, though Lisa had a hunch that Rug, who she knew best, was in fact listening.

  When Tessa’s reply came, it was subvocalized. “Let’s meet in lucid.”

  Lisa nodded, maintaining eye contact while she slipped out a sedative and ingested it. In the crash seat across from hers, Tessa did the same.

  The dream soon enveloped Lisa, and she found herself in the lobby which she’d set her implant to put her in by default. She accepted Tessa’s invitation when it came.

  An instant later, she found herself walking along a mountain pass, with Tessa beside her. They stood in the middle of a landscape filled with mountains that stretched from horizon to horizon. As beautiful as the mountains were in height and breadth, that was not their most striking feature: rainbows seemed to cover each mountain. Some mountains only bore two colors in alternating lines, and others had more. Lisa spotted one that had at least five distinct hues.

  Most of the colors were various shades of red and brown, though she also saw yellow, white, blue, gray, and black.

  “Did you…make this?” Lisa said, her voice hitching as her breath caught in her throat.

  “No,” Tessa said. “This was the Zhangye Danxia region, in ancient China. I don’t know what it looks like now, after the Degradation, but someone captured its likeness in virtual reality for all time, and now we get to visit it.”

  “How did you come to learn of it?”

  “I read about it in a book.”

  Lisa nodded. Of course. Tessa reads about everything in a book.

  Suddenly, she turned toward her friend as she felt a scowl tighten her mouth and brow. “Wait. I know what you’re doing, Tessa Notaras.”

  Tessa was ahead of her on the trail, and now she stopped walking in order to turn toward Lisa, eyebrows raised, her face the very picture of innocence.

  But Lisa wasn’t fooled.

  “You want me awestruck and lightheaded, don’t you? I can taste how realistically the dream has rendered this mountain air. This is the state of mind you want me in as you tell me what Roach was talking about. It must have been quite bad, if that’s the case.”

  For a few moments more, Tessa maintained her veneer of purity and surprise. Then, she dropped the act. “I should never have taught you as much as I have,” she muttered.

  “Enough stalling,” Lisa said. “Enough tricks. Tell me what he was talking about.”

  Shoulders rising and falling more quickly, now, Tessa said, “Yes. Okay. Do you remember all those times you asked me what, exactly,
Darkstream had done to make me mistrust them so?”

  “Yes…”

  “And do you remember how I’d always refuse to tell you?”

  “You said that you would, someday.”

  “Today is that day. And the reason I couldn’t tell you before what the awful thing Darkstream did was because I helped them do it.”

  Lisa crossed her arms. “Go on.”

  With a long sigh, Tessa continued: “Captain Bronson—Commander Bronson, back then—was in command of the first missions to Eresos, the stated aim of which was to secure a new home for humanity. Unfortunately, Eresos already had someone living on it.”

  “The Quatro,” Lisa said.

  “Yes. One of them attacked us, or at least, it seemed to. I now think that attack was provoked by Mario Laudano. Either way, it wasn’t enough to rile the troops like Bronson wanted them riled. So he enlisted me to help him create the fiction that the Quatro control the Amblers, and that they’d ordered one of them to attack us, killing some of our soldiers. It was only by chance that the Ambler attacked, of course, but I helped Bronson make the others think the Quatro ordered it.”

  Lisa uncrossed her arms, and now she let her hands dangle at her sides. Her shoulders slumped a little. “How did you do that?”

  “I lured one of the Amblers near the entrance to a Quatro cave, to make it look like it was defending them, just as three platoons led by Bronson were closing in. They defeated the Ambler, and we lost more soldiers doing so. After the deaths of their comrades, the rest were enraged enough to kill the Quatro in their homes.”

  Hesitating for a moment, Lisa said, “But…but no one thinks the Quatro control the Amblers, now.”

  “No. Eventually, the soldiers realized the truth. But by then, they had so much Quatro blood on their hands, they couldn’t look reality in the face. I think most of them suppressed the realization. And of the soldiers that survived the conquest of Eresos—the ones that didn’t commit suicide afterward, or consign themselves to reclusion in the Belt—I’ve never heard any of them mention that they once thought the Quatro owned the Amblers.”

  “Why did you do it, Tessa? How did Bronson convince you to help trick the others?”

  Now, Tessa’s gaze sunk, until it fell on the pebbled trail where they stood. “He convinced me that doing so would prevent more deaths, in the long run. That if we could rally the soldiers to attack the Quatro—who were clearly vicious, he said—then we’d stop them from hitting us when we least expected it. Bronson said that I needed to help him, in order to atone.”

  “Atone?”

  Another labored sigh leaked from Tessa’s lips. “Have you ever heard of the catastrophe that preceded the Battle for Larkspur-Caprice, back in the Milky Way? When hundreds of thousands of UHF members were killed by wormholes that were sabotaged by Ochrim, the Ixan?”

  “Yes,” Lisa said haltingly. “I’ve heard the story.”

  “Well, I’m the one who let Ochrim access the wormhole master control. I was head of security for Darkstream headquarters at the time. Ochrim was our Chief Science Officer.”

  “Tessa…surely you can’t blame yourself for what an Ixan set out himself to do.”

  “I’ve come to terms with my involvement. In a fashion. But that day still haunts my nightmares.”

  Lisa lowered herself onto a boulder at the side of the path, resting her hands on her knees, gazing out over the breathtaking landscape. What Tessa had just related to her had amounted to an emotional sucker punch. She’d known since their exchange with Roach in Ingress that whatever Tessa had been keeping from her, it had to be bad. But she hadn’t quite expected this.

  At last, Lisa peered up at Tessa, who was still standing. “How will we explain this to Rug?”

  “Well…I was hoping not to. At least, not until we’ve stopped Darkstream. This could drive a rift between us and our alien friends, Lisa—potentially one we aren’t able to close.”

  “Okay,” Lisa said, her voice coming out softer than she’d intended. “If you want to keep this from Rug, that’s your right. But you should know that I think it’s wrong.”

  With that, Lisa held Tessa’s gaze for several long moments before exiting the dream.

  Chapter 8

  Phantoms

  Gabe stalked through the streets of Ingress, casting his gaze into every street, alley, or nook large enough to hold a Quatro.

  An empty lot opened up on his right, and he turned abruptly, ready to unleash rockets he’d had the mech manufacture hours ago.

  Nothing. So far, anyway.

  “Sir…”

  Gabe whirled around to face Ash Sweeney, who trailed him inside her MIMAS a few meters back. “What?” he snapped.

  “We’ve been searching for hours. We already know from the spaceport footage that only one Quatro got off those shuttles, and the shuttles have long departed.”

  “There might have been others inside the tunnel the Quatro dug. They could be in hiding.” He turned, resuming his search. “And stop calling me sir.”

  At first, all five MIMAS mechs remaining on Eresos had followed him throughout the city. Eventually, though, they’d taken him up on his repeated invitations to go away. All except Sweeney.

  At the start of his search, he’d occasionally come across residents of the city, who’d just been starting to emerge after the quad’s attack.

  Now, he encountered no one. Word of his search had no doubt spread, probably via the system net, and the residents were staying indoors.

  He spared a moment to consider how he must look to them. A shape-shifting alien monstrosity, ranging up and down the streets, looking for…

  For what? A phantom. The Quatro are gone.

  Yet he kept looking.

  It occurred to him that if he could have gotten Jess back somehow—not as a hallucination, but as a flesh-and-blood woman—he would appear monstrous to her. It was ridiculous to entertain the idea that they’d be able to have any sort of life together, now. They wouldn’t be able to hold each other, or to express their affection physically in any way.

  It doesn’t matter. I’ll never get her back. The best I’ll get is vengeance, and this thing is what I’ve become in the pursuit of that.

  So he kept looking.

  “Sir,” Ash said, “what Tessa Notaras said about Darkstream…”

  “Notaras is a liar of the worst sort. She should be behind bars.”

  Ash didn’t answer right away, and for a time the only sound was the clank-clank of their metal feet on asphalt.

  “Even so,” she said at last. “It takes a lot of guts to tell a lie of that magnitude—to shout it with as much conviction as she did, in front of as many witnesses as were gathered. Have you considered that it might be true?”

  Of course it could be true. Like so many others in the Steele System, Gabe had been in denial for a long time about the company upon which their society was based. In order for people to confront the truth, they’d have to acknowledge that what prosperity there was wouldn’t have been possible without the crimes and atrocities regularly committed by Darkstream.

  Having parted ways with the company, Gabe was finally beginning to reckon with the crimes he’d enabled, as well as the ones he’d committed himself while in Darkstream’s employ. A little, at least. But ultimately, whether what Tessa had said was true didn’t matter, because it was irrelevant to his quest for vengeance. As long as Darkstream didn’t get in the way of that, they had nothing to fear from him.

  “Sir?” Sweeney said. And then, much softer: “Dynamo?”

  “Notaras is a liar and a criminal,” Gabe snapped. “That’s all I have to say on the subject. And don’t call me that name.”

  “You’re still a part of Oneiri Team, sir. Whether you like it or not. You created us.”

  He didn’t answer, though he increased his pace, hoping she would finally stop following.

  “I know you’re hurting,” Sweeney went on. “I’m hurting, too. What matters is that we work together…to wi
n. That’s the best way to honor the lives of the people we’ve lost.”

  Gabe drew to a stop, and he stayed there—completely motionless in the middle of the street.

  “Sir?” From the proximity of her voice, he could tell Sweeney had drawn close behind him.

  Whirling, Gabe willed his hands to become a single fist.

  He sent that fist straight into Sweeney’s solar plexus. Her mech’s feet left the ground, and she flew through the air to crash to the asphalt on her back, at least twenty meters away.

  “Stop following me,” he ground out. “And stop talking to me. Never do either of those things, in fact. Ever again.”

  He turned to march away, not looking back.

  Is our union that which nullifies? asked a voice whose tone dripped with hidden meaning.

  Gabe’s head jerked involuntarily, but he remained focused on his search.

  He hadn’t heard that voice since before the battle with the quads outside Ingress.

  It had returned, it seemed.

  You’re doing well, it said.

  Gabe ignored the voice, and it didn’t speak again.

  Chapter 9

  Sympathy for O’Toole

  Lisa felt like she had a lot to process, as she watched Eresos pass by on the viewscreen she’d made the pilot turn on for them.

  Learning the truth about Tessa’s past had messed with her head, and she wasn’t sure what bothered her more—the things her friend had done or the fact that Tessa had never told her about them, despite how close they were.

  But she had to shove that out of her mind. There were more pressing matters to consider.

  Like what the hell we’re going to do now.

  “We didn’t even come close to convincing those mech pilots to join us,” she said to the others in the shuttle, thinking out loud for the benefit of their commentary.