Meltdown (Mech Wars Book 3)

by Scott Bartlett

  He thought back to the shuttle inside the landing bay, and the damage that had been done to it.

  Didn’t seem like the work of the Ravagers, did it? he asked himself, and then he answered his own question: No. Whatever did that was much bigger.

  And yet, he still hadn’t spotted any enemies. Unlike his home comet, which had swarmed with Ravagers, this one was devoid of anything that moved.

  He might have used his rockets to search the comet quickly, but he wanted to conserve the alien mech’s fuel. He could replenish that with ease, but that would take more time, and time was an even more valuable resource than fuel, especially for any survivors still trying to hold out against the robot invasion.

  So instead, Jake jogged across the terrain as it curved gently upward. Inside the alien mech, running still provided a fast way of getting around.

  Before long, he happened upon a fenced-in field of livestock.

  At least, that’s what it used to be. The cows were all butchered, but not in a way that was useful to anyone.

  Jake slowly shook his head. Senseless.

  The ever-present voice had another thought, though: Perhaps not—perhaps this slaughter did have a purpose. Perhaps this was the work of a weapon maintaining its edge.

  After ten minutes of fruitless searching through the countryside, Jake decided to head directly for the emergency shelter.

  It opened for him without hesitation, the grassy halves parting with barely a whisper.

  He’d just begun to lower himself down into the airlock when something surged up from below, knocking Jake backward to crash to the ground. The insects instantly returned, crawling all over Jake’s body, a sea of skittering limbs and writhing carapaces and sharp pincers.

  There’s no one left alive in this comet…is there?

  The violin resumed its one-note dirge.

  He flipped over, regaining his feet to face his attacker—an alien mech that might as well have been a mirror image of the one he piloted.

  The minor note turned into a minor chord, and the dream directed his attention upward, where something glinted in the artificial sun.

  A second alien mech, hurtling through the comet under the power of its rockets, headed straight for him.

  There was no time for Jake to form a plan. No time for him to think at all. The first mech charged.

  Chapter 32

  Charred Roots

  When Lisa woke, the pain from her wounded shoulder had dimmed to a dull but steady throb.

  She had to admit, Tessa had done a good job of dressing it, and it would probably heal up fine. In the meantime, Lisa refused to let it affect her performance.

  Not that she had much cause to perform, right now.

  Looking around using the dim light produced by her jumpsuit, she saw that the Quatro who’d captured them had converted one of their subterranean caves into a makeshift jail.

  At least the cave’s roomy. Lisa could give them that, but not much else.

  There was nothing in the way of bedding, here. The floor was uneven, and attempting to sleep on it would be torture, if they were left here for that long.

  The hours crawled by, and their Quatro captors treated them coldly. At first, they gave their prisoners nothing to eat. When a meal did come, it consisted of nothing more than a pile of charred roots, which Lisa ordered her militia to gnaw on nevertheless.

  “We need to keep up our strength for when we escape,” she told them, earning a grim smile from Tessa.

  Their treatment seemed unnecessarily cruel, but then, when Lisa cast her mind back to when Rug’s drift had captured and imprisoned them back on Alex, she supposed their treatment then had been similar to what they endured now.

  Maybe this impersonality is simply what the language barrier leads to. That said, Rug had never knocked Lisa unconscious—she’d fainted upon capture on Alex, but the Quatro there had not been violent toward her. These Quatro had. Her aching head was evidence enough of that.

  Either way, Rug and the other Quatro of Lisa’s militia had not been imprisoned, and that gave Lisa hope that maybe an escape attempt would not be necessary.

  That hope was soon dashed.

  A Quatro Lisa didn’t recognize soon appeared at the mouth of the cave, its body segmented by the crude metal bars that overlaid it.

  Next to her captor stood Rug, though Lisa quickly noticed that she no longer wore the translator wrapped around her neck. Instead, the other Quatro wore it.

  At that, a sweat broke out all over Lisa’s skin. To lose the ability to speak to Rug, who had become such a dear friend after everything they’d endured together…it felt worse than if her jailor had struck her.

  “Allow me to conjecture,” the Quatro said, in a voice deeper than Rug’s, which was already quite deep. “You’re about to tell me that the Gatherers have attacked you and that we are all in very great danger.”

  Lisa cocked her head to the side. “Rug has already told you, then? Don’t you trust her?”

  “No. I am not quick to trust anyone, not even a fellow Quatro. This mistrusting is what has kept my drift alive for so long. Except to natural death, we have lost no members since being stranded on this wretched planet.”

  Lisa shook her head. “We came because we hoped to get your help. Your people are fighting and dying, far to the west of here.”

  “That may be true,” the Quatro said, its orange eyes boring into Lisa’s. “Or, it may be a two-leg trick, just as I suspect your tale about the Gatherers is.”

  Shooting a meaningful glance at Rug, Lisa said, “Rug has four legs. And she backs me up.”

  “She could easily be conspiring with you to trick us. I view everyone—Quatro or two-leg—who approaches us as potential Meddler agents, and you are certainly no different. This Quatro, who someone has apparently christened ‘Rug,’ is far from the first Quatro to come to us, seeking to ‘unite the drifts.’ She is, however, the first Quatro I’ve seen with access to the technology we all once wielded. I find it…interesting that the Meddlers did not take hers as it took ours.

  “But I digress. We have heard about what the two-legs have done to the drifts that seek to unite with us, and we don’t consider it in our best interests to unite with them, since we’d likely end up sharing in their suffering. And so we have prevented every single Quatro who came to us from ever returning to their original drifts, for fear that doing so would reveal our location. We will do the same with your friend, here, as well as the other Quatro who accompanied you. The entrance to these caves where we have made our home is also covered in bars. We have no wish to share in the suffering of other Quatro.”

  The line of argument that now seemed logical to Lisa was also one she’d vehemently argued against in the past. Unable to quite believe she was about to make this case, she said, “But…but that sounds nothing like the Quatro way, as Rug has described it to me. The Quatro way is to look out for the larger group, even if it means endangering one’s self.”

  “The Quatro ‘way,’ as you describe it, is over and done with. We left it behind in our Home Systems, where the Assembly of Elders used it to justify their attempts to control every aspect of Quatro life.” The Quatro’s lips drew back as it talked, to reveal a mouthful of great fangs, which Lisa took as an expression of disgust. “In exchange for our freedom, which we gave up willingly, they promised to feed us. But shortages were many—not just of luxuries but of the basics for life. In exchange for our dignity, they promised us the ability to believe what we wished. And yet they expunged the parts of reality they did not want us to see. They told us we would have peace, even as they spent heavily on war. They told us we would have the future, even as they expected us to make do with the past. Have I told you enough? Have I delivered a sufficient elegy to the Quatro ‘way?’”

  Lisa opened her mouth, then closed it again. Her captor had just articulated every problem she herself had with the way the Quatro lived, far better than she ever could have.

  This is an argument I won’
t win, especially since I don’t believe in my own side.

  “The drifts are splintered,” the Quatro said. “And we must look out for ourselves.” Deliberately, the alien turned and began to pad down the tunnel, away from the jail. “We have not yet decided what is to be done with you,” it said as it departed.

  With that, the jailor was gone, and only Rug remained outside the cell.

  Her eyes met Lisa’s, and the pain of being unable to communicate returned. Lisa and Rug had once again become members of two very different species—aliens to each other, in every way. Their drift was broken.

  Except, something in Rug’s midnight eyes told her she was being foolish. Something in them comforted Lisa, and she felt a smile blossom on her lips.

  Rug inclined her head, and with that she padded after the other Quatro.

  Chapter 33

  Simpatico

  Jake charged at the first alien mech, which also served to take him out of the second mech’s attack vector.

  He put everything he had into the attack, and it seemed his target didn’t expect such instant decisiveness. It gave way before it, and together they sailed into what remained of a barn, obliterating the one wall still standing.

  Landing on top of his opponent, Jake headbutted it, his forehead sprouting a rotating auger as he did.

  His aim was to end this fight instantly, so that he only had one opponent to face. But he should have known from his first fight with an alien mech—the one he currently piloted—that this one wouldn’t go smoothly, either.

  As the auger connected with his enemy’s face, that face simply split into two, and the auger hit nothing but the barn floor.

  Twin spires shot up from the alien mech’s torso, digging into Jake and suspending him over his adversary by several feet.

  Dangling there for a moment, he began to panic, and the insects covering his skin multiplied in number and size.

  Then, he inverted, just as he had in the Belt while fighting Ravagers. Now he faced the barn’s ceiling, or at least where the ceiling once had been. That done, he rocketed away, loosening the parts of his mech that had been punctured in order to free himself.

  A blast of energy caught him midair, dramatically altering his trajectory and sending him toppling end over end to land in a pond that neighbored the barn.

  Use this, the dream-whispers suggested, and Jake instantly knew how. Drawing the water through vents that took shape atop his shoulders, the mech separated the water into hydrogen and oxygen, using the hydrogen to propel itself through the surface.

  But Jake continued to rocket through the air well after breaking out of the pond, sketching a steep parabola. At its peak, he used his thrusters to keep him aloft while ordering his arms to become energy cannons.

  It took him less than a second to locate his targets on the ground.

  There. They were standing next to each other, seeming to stare up at him.

  He loosed bolt after white-hot energy bolt at them, forcing them to scurry across the terrain like mice.

  That emboldened Jake, and he altered the angle of his thrusters while sprouting new ones, the result being that he screamed toward his opponents, intent on ripping them both apart.

  That turned out to be a mistake. The mechs turned as one, aligning their forearms, both of them pointing at Jake.

  Then, the alien mechs did something unexpected. Their forearms melded together—one mech’s right arm joining with the other’s left—to become a single, massive energy cannon.

  That cannon unleashed an immense blast of energy at Jake, scoring a direct hit.

  After that, all was nothingness. Dim impressions of…something…reached him through the void he inhabited, but they didn’t seem to affect him. Not really.

  Whatever those vague sensations signified, whatever events they provided an outline for, they were happening to someone else.

  Jake was apart from it all, a spectator, and one who wasn’t paying very much attention.

  Then, gradually, he returned to consciousness—or at least, the facsimile of consciousness offered by the mech dream.

  The darkness began to lighten, and he became aware of great pain, as well as the insects that dug into his flesh, bloodying him, gnawing on his organs.

  The alien mechs had set him against the base of the spire atop which perched the artificial sun, and the way they pummeled him against that black obelisk without breaking it was a testament to its exquisite engineering, not to mention the nanocarbons that had been used in its construction.

  Jake’s head lolled down, and he became aware of the rough shape his own mech was now in. The front of his torso was splayed open in several places, and one of the enemy mechs continued to slam its fists into him while the other cut him with the blades its hands had become.

  Submit to me, Jake’s mech whispered to him. Let us make our union permanent, so that we might become simpatico and gain the power to vanquish these interlopers.

  “Submit…” Jake muttered.

  It was tempting. He wasn’t sure what the mech was proposing, exactly, except that it would almost certainly cost him, probably dearly.

  But if sacrificing himself was what it took to save Hub…to protect Sue Anne…

  Embrace destiny and become one with this conduit to the void and to the universe, to the true oneness, yes, this will take us to heights greater than we could ever achieve alone. Good, we must seek the good, and the path to good is through unification. Our union is that which nullifies, that which makes the same, but to nullify we must unify and to unify we must—

  “Sue Anne,” Jake said, speaking with conviction, now.

  Did Sue Anne want her brother to return to her, or did she want whatever he’d turn into after accepting the alien mech’s proposal?

  Would it even be worth surviving if survival meant living on as whatever creature he’d need to become?

  Jake decided it wasn’t worth it, and that he would sooner die.

  Looking down at himself again, he watched as the blades wielded by one of the enemy mechs laid him open completely. A final cut revealed the cocoon where Jake’s dreaming form was curled, exposing it to the air, as well as to the mech’s sword.

  That sword darted forward, and in that instant, which seemed to stretch on for an eternity, Jake decided that death was also an unacceptable outcome. He needed to return to his sister.

  A blade sprang from his mech’s ravaged stomach to parry his enemy’s thrust, and Jake’s left arm became a cannon which swung up to blast the mech who’d been pummeling him.

  That only succeeded in driving the mech back a couple of meters, but it gave Jake enough space to do what needed to be done.

  He seized the mech who’d nearly killed him, digging razor-sharp metal claws into its front. Then, Jake rocketed upward, carrying his adversary along for the ride.

  As he flew, up and away from the central spire, he commanded the front of his mech to continue knitting back together, increasing the shielding that protected his human frame.

  That was good, because his captive continued to employ its blades in a desperate attempt to escape.

  It would not escape. As they drew level with the artificial sun in the comet’s center, Jake threw the mech toward it, blasting it with energy to ensure it didn’t alter its own trajectory in time.

  Jake made sure to line himself up with the landing bay before tossing the mech, and as he fired at his enemy, he also thrust toward the airlock, sending it the command to open for him ahead of time.

  The mech collided with the artificial sun as Jake passed through the hatch. A blinding explosion erupted, spreading rapidly outward, and Jake commanded the inner airlock door to close while rocketing straight through the outer one, tearing it from its casing.

  He didn’t stop, instead using his momentum combined with the mech’s thrusters to rip through the closed outer airlock.

  Jetting away through space as fast as he could, he patched the visual sensor feed from his feet through to his HUD
so that he could watch the entire comet rupture, great gouts of flame flickering all across its surface.

  The entire edifice became a ball of white light before winking out to reveal the void beyond. Jake’s implant tracked the trajectories of thousands of pieces of shrapnel, but he was already over a thousand kilometers away, and none would hit him.

  Chapter 34

  Sea of Blades

  The hours crept by inside their rocky prison, and Lisa dreaded the idea that she would have to attempt sleep on the jagged, uneven cave floor.

  This far underground, her implant’s signal was blocked, and so there was no hope of calling for help. She also had no way of checking on Andy, and that upset her just as much.

  Their guns had been taken, but their jumpsuits had lights, and they used those to suffuse the cell with a uniform blue murk.

  Looking around the cell, Lisa’s chest ached to think of how many good people she’d lost since first forming her militia back on Alex. She’d lost many Quatro, too, but it wasn’t until now that the alien soldiers were gone that Lisa realized how few humans remained.

  The fight to escape Habitat 2 had taken all but nine humans, and now they’d lost Rodney Vickers and Beatie Anderson too. With Bob O’Toole and Andy back with the Quatro drift near the space elevator, that left only four militia members inside the cave with her.

  Something creaked near the mouth of their cave-cell, and Lisa whipped around to see a Quatro standing behind the bars.

  When she crept closer, the lights of her suit revealed that it was Rug.

  “What are you doing?” Lisa hissed, but of course the Quatro couldn’t answer.

  Instead, the alien held her stare for a long time, and Lisa got the impression she was trying to communicate something.

  At last, she walked backward into the cell, picking her steps carefully across the uneven rock floor.