Stars & Empire: 10 Galactic Tales

by Jay Allan

  This story was published at the end of November, 2013, one month before the publication ofATLAS.

  I hope you enjoy it!

  —Isaac Hooke

  ----o0o----

  The ATLAS mech glanced skyward as the thermobaric warheads dropped.

  “Mason, we gotta get out of here, now!” the mech pilot transmitted over the comm.

  Never open a story with a battle scene, the editors used to tell me. You have to give time for the reader to get invested in the characters, time to care about them.

  All right.

  I’ll give you some background first, then.

  My name’s Mason.

  I was born in Knoxville, Tennessee. Got my Bachelors of Science in Engineering from the University of Tennessee. I’m a mechie. That’s mechanical engineer. Got my girlfriend from the same University. She’s one of them artsy types, but I love her to a fault. Well, when I’m actually in town that is.

  Yeah.

  I used to build remote-controlled model mechs when I was a kid. Ah, the flighty days of youth. I squandered more than one summer locked away inside a shed building those mechs. Once I was done, I’d send them out exploring. Empty culverts, tight crevices, underwater passageways—if it was some hard-to-reach place, sooner or later I’d be sending my mechs in, just for the challenge of it, the feeling of exploring some place no one else could. I even installed miniature jumpjets on the things, which helped me get to some even harder-to-reach areas, plus it was great for spooking the neighbor’s dog.

  Fun times.

  I kept building those mechs throughout my youth, and they kept getting bigger and bigger, so that by the time I graduated high school I had put together a mech that was almost as tall as me, coming in at 134 cm (that’s 4’5” for you metrically challenged—yeah I’m short). That mech got me a full University scholarship by the way.

  One of my best friends through high school and University was Lui. (Well, Lui was his callsign. He’s still on active duty so for obvious reasons I can’t give you his real name. Sorry about that.) He took Mechanical Engineering with me. I met him in Grade Eight. I don’t know, I guess we kind of had the same interests. He built model mechs too, and we had some great fights with them. We could’ve played in the virtual worlds like so many others our age did of course. But honestly, there was just something about having a real live mech, even if it was miniature, fighting in the flesh for you and only you. Hearing those servomotors whirring, hearing the satisfying sound as you bashed your opponent’s metallic head in, you just couldn’t replicate that in the virtual world. Course, repairing them was a bitch afterwards.

  That’s why you always wanted to win.

  After graduating from University, Lui and I decided we wanted more out of life. We wanted to explore the galaxy. Inside mechs, of course. Oh, you know, we could have lived the comfortable life of an ordinary citizen, a life where all our needs were provided for. Robots did most of the blue-collar work. The government provided room and board. Work was entirely optional. Great, right? Problem was, if you didn’t work, you were stuck where you were. You had to rely on public transportation for everything, and that never took you further than the city you lived in. If you wanted to see the world, or the colonies beyond it, you had to get a paying job—and those were hard to come by, let me tell you. As I said, the robots had a lockdown on the blue-collar industries, and there was no way I was going to become an accountant or something silly like that just so I could save up for a trans-solar flight.

  So Lui and I joined the military. Navy branch. Special Warfare Operator rating. Free ticket to the world and beyond.

  Nice, huh?

  We went to BSD/M together. That’s Basic Space Demolition / MOTH training for all you laymen out there. We graduated, one thing led to another, and we ended up assigned to MOTH Team Seven together. MOTH stands for MObile Tactical Human by the way. We’re jacks-of-all-trades—snipers, astronauts, commandos, corpsmen, et cetera—with a heavy emphasis on the commando side of things.

  Oh, and we pilot mechs.

  So anyway, this, my dear readers, was my first deployment.

  Out here, in the mountainous war zone between Mongolia and Russia, we were working with the Marines, trying to flush out the insurgents who had taken over Baganuur City. Lui had shipped out a couple of months ahead of me and already got his callsign. Because he’d earned his name, when a position opened up for ATLAS 5 mech operators, he got it. I guess it helped that he had the highest Advanced ATLAS Warfare qualification scores of anyone on the platoon.

  The ATLAS 5. The latest and greatest in the ATLAS line of mechs. We’re talking three meters of pure, towering war machine here folks. A thousand hydraulically actuated joints with closed-loop positions and force control. Head-mounted sensor package with built in LIDAR, night vision, flash vision, zoom. Crash protection. Jump jets. Active protection countermeasures. Swappable weaponry for each arm (gatling gun, serpent rocket launcher, incendiary thrower). Deployable ballistic shield.

  The mechs we built in school were toys in comparison.

  Lui, that lucky bastard.

  As for me, because I still didn’t have a callsign and hadn’t yet proven myself, I was stuck in a communications role, carrying around this heavy rucksack of comm equipment on my back while Lui got to pilot an ATLAS 5. I’d only been in two firefights since I arrived—I’d taken cover, fired off some shots, but that wasn’t really enough to earn an official callsign. The others still called me by my real name, Mason, or just CWC. Caterpillar Without a Callsign. Well, that and Midget.

  I hated all three.

  There was another commo in the platoon. Fret was his callsign. This tall guy with a neck like a giraffe. The dude towered over me because as I said I was 134 cm (4’5”), and he was 195 cm (6’5”). Nice. I practically looked like his kid when we were on duty together. Sort of how we all looked when standing beside an ATLAS. Anyway, somehow Fret the giraffe had ended up coming with our squad today. Don’t ask me why. I just follow orders around here. If the Chief wanted two commos on the squad, I guess he had good reason.

  So there I was, hiking with my squad up into the mountains of Khentii Province to check the validity of a rumor that said one of the tribes was harboring a handful of insurgents from Baganuur city. The local gossip had it that there might even be an insurgent leader among them, one of the warlords who had masterminded several guerilla attacks in the region. A man named Gansükh Tömörbaatar. “Steel-Ax Iron-Hero.” Whatever that was supposed to mean …

  “Hey, Midget, pass me the thermos would you?” Fret told me.

  He’d made me carry his thermos of coffee. Because I hadn’t earned my callsign, I still wasn’t considered a full member of the team. A newbie caterpillar, a baby moth, in service of those with the callsigns.

  Maybe I should have just dumped the thermos out, but I dutifully handed it over to Fret. I’d been hazed enough times already to know that when those with the callsigns told you to do something, you obeyed.

  “Don’t worry,” Lui had told me one time after a particularly bad hazing. “They’re just testing you. Want to make sure you’ll watch their backs when they really need you.”

  “How does pushing me around and hazing me and making me do whatever they want prove that I’ll watch their backs?” I had asked him.

  “It will. Trust me. It’s just Team culture. You’ll get used to it. And once you’ve got your callsign, most of that stuff will end. Because then you can stand up for yourself. But only then.”

  I hoped so.

  Speaking of Lui, right now he was clambering along the rocky escarpment at the head of our squad, acting as our point man (or point mech). The giant steel feet of his ATLAS just ground the rock underfoot, leaving behind these crushed, powdery footsteps. His callsign showed up in bright green letters above the mech, thanks to the Implant I had in my head, which tapped into my neocortex and fed my brain all the visual and auditory extras the military deemed fit to equip me with. I couldn’t hold bac
k a surge of jealousy whenever I saw that callsign floating above his ATLAS though. We were good friends, but when I joined the platoon and found out he’d been assigned to a mech, relations had been strained between us.

  There was another mech in the squad, piloted by a dude known as “Bomb.” He brought up the rear, acting as our drag man. I hated him too. Well, figuratively speaking of course. I loved Lui and Bomb like brothers, just not right at that moment …

  The rest of my teammates and I wore strength-enhancing jumpsuits that also served as body armor, though the units were pretty useless against the armor-piercing heat the insurgents liked to pack. Those jumpsuits also had jetpacks strapped on the back, which might come in handy if one of us fell. We wore ordinary helmets, no facemasks or rebreathers or anything like that: The mountain range wasn’t that high. I should note that Lui and Bomb wore the same jumpsuits as everyone else while operating the mechs.

  We were passing a wide valley on my right. A distant river meandered between the rocks, with pine trees lining either shore all the way to the horizon. There was a slight mist hanging in the air, blurring out the farthest end of the valley. The whole scene looked like a painting. Very peaceful. Very calming.

  That was the thing about this country. Intermingled with all the ugliness of war you’d find places like this just full of beauty.

  Fret took a long sip from his thermos. “You know what the problem with Mongolia is?”

  I glanced at him. “Other than the war?”

  “Yeah.”

  I rubbed my chin. “Well, the fact that it’s a zillion miles away from civilization might have something to do with it. Get these guys a proper education and we wouldn’t have problems like this.”

  “Typical Democrat answer,” Fret said. “But completely wrong. There are colonies in space way farther away than this place, full of uneducated dim nuts, and they’re bastions of peace.”

  I shrugged. “Fine.”

  We walked in silence for a few paces. Fret took another sip from his thermos.

  “Well, ask me,” Fret said.

  “Ask you what?”

  Fret offered me the thermos. “What the problem with Mongolia is.”

  I sighed, taking the thermos, and asked.

  Fret grinned widely. “Can’t get a decent cup of coffee anywhere.”

  “I thought you made your own coffee?”

  “Hell no, Midget. Where am I going to get access to an espresso machine? As for this swill, I got it from the robots at Dunkin’ Bucks.”

  “Ah.” Dunkin’ Bucks was one of the flagship chains the military had spent big money to open at the base. The other was Tennessee Fried Bacon. My favorite.

  “See, the root cause of all the malaise in this country is actually quite easy to track down,” Fret continued. “I mean come on, what else is going to eat away at the very heart and soul of a place? Make better coffee and you make a whole bunch of people a whole lot happier. You end the malaise, the political discontent. Make better coffee, and you change the world. The foundations of every great democracy were built on great coffee. Mark my words, caterpillar, the moment this country starts making better coffee, everything else will get a whole lot better.” He nodded at the thermos. “I left you some, by the way.”

  “No thanks. I’m not a coffee drinker.”

  “What? After everything I just said, and you’re not a coffee drinker. We’ll have to remedy that. Go ahead. Drink it.”

  I reluctantly opened the thermos. I grimaced at the smell, kind of a mix between two acrid flavors: burnt mint and crushed cockroach. The green color definitely made it look like swill.

  “I was never a big fan of espresso,” I said, swirling the contents around.

  Fret laughed. “That’s not an espresso. It’s a grasshopper mocha. With some dip thrown in for good measure.”

  “Oh.” Man, I really hated dipping tobacco.

  I raised the thermos to my lips, trying to figure out how I could avoid drinking the terrible concoction— Just then someone shoved past from behind, striking my shoulder. I exaggerated the blow, purposely spilling out the contents of the thermos.

  “Out of the way Midget!” TJ said. The tanned squadmate looked like the son of a Victoria secret model and a football player. He was our drone operator. Not sure what he was looking for. Maybe he had lost sight of one of his drones or something.

  Or maybe he just wanted to shove me.

  “Well that’s a damn shame,” Fret said, regarding the spilled coffee. “You’ll just have to buy me a new batch when we get back to base.”

  “I thought you didn’t like it.”

  “I don’t. But I still gotta drink it. When you got an addiction, you gotta feed it even if you hate the taste. Why do you think those Mongolies smoke all those poppies? Because they like the taste?”

  And so it went.

  We eventually reached the tribal village, which was really just a bunch of dwellings carved into the rock of the mountain. Caves with curtains.

  TJ sent out three HS3s—hover squad support system drones. The basketball-sized robots floated from dwelling to dwelling, slowly mapping out the place for our HUD (heads-up-display) maps. A HUD was overlaid onto every squad member’s vision courtesy of the aforementioned Implants we had in our heads. My squad brothers appeared as green dots on that map, while the HS3s marked out civilians in blue and hostiles in red, though none of the latter had been detected yet. There wasn’t too fine a line between a civilian and a hostile—basically anyone who carried a gun was marked in red. Of course, usually the people in those houses, civilians and hostiles alike, hid themselves pretty good when the HS3s came in, so we always had to follow up with a manual sweep.

  We didn’t have any of the AI-driven infantry robots known as Centurions with us, so we had to go in and do the sweep ourselves. We split up into two five-person fire teams, with one ATLAS mech per team. While the mech took up a position outside one of the dwellings (they were too big to fit the diminutive doorways, which were actually perfect for my height), the rest of the fire team ducked inside and cleared the dwelling.

  We’d been going from dwelling to dwelling for an hour so far, and other than a lot of frightened residents, we found no insurgents.

  How could you tell an insurgent from a normal villager, you might ask?

  Well, besides the fact that they shot first and asked questions later, they’d have a stash of weapons in their dwelling. And they dressed differently. Usually in black and gray digital camos with dark boots and headgear. This in stark contrast to the traditional garb of the tribesmen: white cloaks, fur sheepskin hats, Yak boots. Some of the fanatics had gotten smart lately though, and started wearing the same cloaks and hats as the locals. So we were forced to give a thorough pat-down to any residents we encountered, which got us some nasty looks from the women-folk and their mothers.

  So yeah, my fire team finally made contact a little into the second hour.

  We were standing beside a dwelling near the outskirts of the village, at the top of a sharp cliff. To our right was a steep escarpment—one misstep and we’d plummet right off that mountain. Good thing we all had jetpacks. The dwelling itself didn’t look much different from any of the others. A plain gray curtain hung over the doorway carved into the rock, with another curtain higher up on the second story “window.” On the top, smoke from a chimney vented out. Well, “chimney” was a bit of a misnomer—it was just a hole in the rock ceiling. Usually the dwellings had a small room known as a “smoke” room set aside for wood burning. The residents would use the room to generate warmth and cook meals. Sometimes those rooms served as sweat lodges, and were these wide-spaced areas with benches carved into the rock around the firepit. I guess when you lived in a cold environment, you thought up all these creative ways to keep warm.

  Facehopper, the leading petty officer of my fire team (and the platoon itself), always went in first. This guy was your basic ladykiller—good looking, twinkling blue eyes, slight British accent. He was the
kind of guy who could charm his way out of anything. Rumor had it he had five girlfriends back home, plus another one among the Marines on deployment here. You ask me, that was far more trouble than it was worth. The Marine girlfriend I mean.

  You definitely didn’t want to piss the Marines off.

  Anyway, Facehopper slid aside the curtain of this particular dwelling and did a quick “pie” scan of the doorway with his rifle raised (that’s where you step away from the wall in a circle or “pie” pattern, slowly increasing your angle of exposure to whatever trouble might be waiting inside). Then he went in. Fret followed behind him. I went in third.

  The gunfire started when I stepped inside. I caught a brief glimpse of a staircase hewn into the rock, leading to a second floor with a wooden handrail, before I dropped and rolled for cover. I ended up behind a wooden table. Fret was right beside me. Facehopper had taken cover on the far side of the chamber, near the doorway to another room—the smoke room, judging from the steaming firepit I could see from here.

  Two attackers on the second floor, Facehopper sent via his Implant, on the fire team comm line.

  Indeed, two red dots had appeared on the map overlaid on my HUD (heads-up-display), because one of us had spotted the attackers, and the Implant transmitted the locations to everyone else. Those dots were situated on the second floor of the 3D wireframe map that represented the house.

  What about the room beside you? Fret sent. The Implants only informed us of enemy contacts we (or the drones) had actually seen. If there was anyone in the smoke room, they hadn’t been spotted yet.

  We’ll deal with it after. Suppressive fire if you please.

  Fret and I started unloading our rifles at the balcony. Our ordinary vision was augmented so that the attackers themselves were highlighted in red, and even if the light was dim or they hid behind some object, we’d see a bright outline around those parts that were visible.

  I saw a part of that red outline right now, behind what looked like a toppled hutch upstairs, and I fired at it. The red quickly vanished from view.