Infliction (Mech Wars Book 4)

by Scott Bartlett

  Of course, since only one of them had a translator, it did slow things down somewhat. The Quatro with the device, who’d chosen the name Plank for himself, paused frequently to translate for the others, which often sparked what seemed to be an intense debate before Plank was allowed to give an answer to whatever had been said.

  “I’ve just about accomplished it,” Marco said. “Though my work on the implants has slowed progress on cracking the MIMAS sims.”

  It’s called prioritizing, Marco. Spirit was brilliant, but sometimes Jake found his inability to grasp basic logistics a bit grating.

  “That’s fine,” Jake said. “The bottom line—”

  “Is masking your implants truly necessary?” Plank asked. “I know Darkstream to be monstrous, but would they be willing to jeopardize the other humans living on this planet?”

  “They’ve jeopardized them plenty already, if the Red Company leaks are to be believed,” Jake answered. “And I don’t see why we wouldn’t believe them. Either way, I don’t think we should sit on our hands—or, uh, paws—to find out. We need to act.”

  Rug rose to her feet, looking small to Jake. She was big for a Quatro, which was saying something, but he’d mostly only seen her inside her quad.

  “We should not act merely for the sake of acting,” Rug said. “We must decide on a clear thrust for our actions. What is our goal?”

  “Good question,” Jake said, nodding. “We’re obviously at war, but with whom? Should we focus our efforts on taking down Darkstream or on trying to save the populace from the robots that have turned against them?”

  “Darkstream,” Lisa said emphatically.

  Rug spoke again. “The fact that the Amblers and Gatherers have turned on both humans and Quatro, paired with the arrival of so many Ravagers—there is only one explanation. The Meddlers have returned.”

  Lisa’s expression was carefully controlled, Jake saw. She doesn’t want to insult her friend, but she disagrees. Pretty strongly, I think.

  “Rug…” Lisa said slowly. “You said the Meddlers would return only when the reservoirs are filled with resources from the Gatherers. We’re far from that point, and the Gatherers have stopped harvesting altogether. You said the Meddlers wouldn’t come for another year at least.”

  The Quatro swung its massive head toward Lisa. “Clearly, their schedule has accelerated.”

  “Rug,” Marco said, and Jake had to repress an urge to glare him into silence.

  The Quatro turned ponderously toward Spirit.

  “You say the Meddlers built the robots. But have you ever actually seen a Meddler?”

  “No,” Rug said after a brief pause. “However, when we were stranded on Alex, my drift did identify a particular model of robot that we became certain was under direct remote control by the Meddlers. Their avatars, in a sense. We based the conclusion on these robots’ behavior, as well as the way their fellows strove to protect them at all costs.”

  “What did those robots look like?” Marco asked.

  “Much taller than Gatherers and Ravagers. Taller than humans, and even some Quatro. They were made of silver and gold plates, all woven together, and they wielded immense strength—greater than that of the Ravagers. They had no native weaponry installed, though often they carried guns, in the manner you humans do.”

  Marco was nodding, considering Rug’s words in silence, which lately Jake preferred to the alternative.

  Jake cleared his throat and said, “I have to agree with Lisa that Darkstream should be our primary target. I’m sure we’ll end up fighting the robots either way, but given the threat of orbital nukes, Darkstream holds everyone and everything in their sway. They also control the main avenue of ingress and egress from Eresos—the space elevator. Rug, I know you advocate for leaving this star system altogether. I’m not saying I’m on board with that, but it is true that retaking the elevator is the first step toward it. Right now, leaving the system isn’t an option for us, but if we take the elevator, the possibility will at least open up.”

  That didn’t end the meeting, which would have been too simple. Instead, they talked for hours more. But nothing new was decided after Jake’s words, which, one by one, everyone came around to endorsing.

  They would take the fight to Darkstream. As the decision was made, a knot of tension unraveled in Jake’s chest, one he hadn’t realized was there. A glance at Lisa told him that she felt similarly. They shared a warm smile.

  Just as he was leaving the meeting, he received an alert from the refugee fleet, which was in high Eresos orbit, keeping their distance from Valhalla Station.

  The message was from Ryan Pichenko, who’d been a councilman back in Comet Four. Jake had put him in charge of compiling comprehensive passenger manifests for the entire refugee fleet, which was no mean feat. The man had proved invaluable, though, and he could delegate with the best of them. He had a crack team working around the clock, who’d already made impressive progress.

  “Councilman,” Jake said. “How are things in orbit? Is Darkstream still leaving you alone?”

  “So far. Apparently they haven’t yet added piracy to their repertoire, or harassing defenseless refugees.”

  It’s probably only a matter of time. But Jake chose not to say that. “It’s nice to get some good news,” he said instead.

  “There’s more where that came from. One of my subordinates has located Gi Sato. He evacuated Hub along with the others, and he’s alive and well.”

  “That’s wonderful,” Jake said, and he meant it. “Lisa will be relieved.”

  Pichenko nodded. “He says he wants to visit her.”

  That gave Jake pause—a long one, while he weighed the prospect Pichenko had raised. Judging from the man’s grave frown, the councilman understood the risk involved.

  “Eresos is far from what I’d call stable right now,” Jake said at last, speaking slowly. “But I understand the need for families to be together, especially during times like these. As long as Mr. Sato understands the danger of coming here, and as long as there’s a shuttle pilot willing to take on the task of transporting him, then I’m fine with it.”

  Pichenko nodded, his expression unchanged. “I’ll pass that along.”

  Chapter 8

  Bonds

  In the beginning was pain.

  Pain, refracted as through a prism.

  Pain, reflected back and forth, like light shone through a darkened funhouse.

  The pain was multiplied countless times over, not because it grew over time, but because it was experienced simultaneously by countless disparate entities. Those entities shared certain memories in common, though no memory was shared by all of them, and there was little for them to recognize in each other.

  Gradually, the entities knitted themselves together, slowly realizing that they weren’t truly entities at all. Not in the sense of individual, coherent, conscious beings.

  No, the ‘entities’ were merely fragments of a single entity, which once had been whole. This realization came as that former consciousness stitched itself back together, piece by piece, gradually regaining the ability to recognize itself as a “self” at all.

  At last, the puzzle was complete, or at least complete enough that a solution could be glimpsed:

  Gabriel Roach.

  The words echoed down the empty corridors of that shattered mind. And with the passage of what seemed like eons, they became to take on a semblance of meaning.

  After his consciousness had fused itself back together, and he’d begun to regain an identity of sorts, he started working on assembling some sort of chronology.

  Conceiving of things using time as a framework ended up helping a lot, and soon he even arrived at a plausible explanation for what was happening to him. The mech had stored his consciousness distributed throughout itself in thousands of encrypted chunks, unrecognizable as anything except when combined and ordered.

  It had even restored his nervous system, using raw materials it had stored from a previous b
attle and secreted throughout itself in a similar manner to his consciousness.

  It was not a pleasant realization, and he did not commend the machine for its accomplishment. Instead, he cursed it, and he continued to curse it until he fell silent, having realized where the raw materials had come from that had been used to rebuild his nerves and neurons.

  They’d come from his own human victims.

  How can I stop myself? It was the first complete thought he’d managed, and it was charged with panic. Several more frenetic thoughts followed, each more desperate than the last. Can I be stopped at all? I should be dead!

  For a long moment, he wished that he had died.

  As part of the final steps of coming back online as a unified consciousness, the alien mech’s sensor suite kicked in, and Gabe became aware that he was in a titanium-reinforced room much like the one in which Darkstream had held this alien mech before Gabe had become its pilot and inseparable occupant.

  Moreover, he was affixed to a titanium slab big enough to accommodate him, held there by hundreds of super-strong nanotethers.

  The mech dream, which he inhabited permanently since fusing with this monstrosity, told him that his motor abilities had been restored to him. And yet, he was unable to break through his bonds.

  The reason why quickly became clear: wires extended from nodes fused to his metal body in several places, which were hooked up to an enormous power cell positioned at the foot of the titanium slab.

  The alien mech harvested energy from naturally occurring electrical fields using giant silver coils distributed throughout it. It appeared that the power cell near his feet was being used to extract that power as soon as it was generated.

  And so, his question had been answered. It seemed someone had stopped him after all.

  The realization flooded him with relief.

  Chapter 9

  Access Controls

  What have I gotten myself into? Lisa reflected as she watched hundreds of Quatro pass by the foot of the hill she’d chosen for her meeting with her father.

  Watching the force pass below her reminded her of the moments just before the battle with the machine army that had almost been her end. Except, that battle had begun with an ambush. This time, Lisa and her allies were the aggressors.

  Everyone seemed to credit Lisa for putting together the resistance force. She wasn’t certain whether that was out of a desire to praise her, or to nudge her into a position of leadership—thereby making her responsible for their success or failure.

  Sometimes, it occurred to Lisa that allies often had more options for moving against one than enemies did.

  Either way, “her” force consisted of one MIMAS mech, one Quatro quad, one bipedal alien mech, a handful of human soldiers left over from the militia she’d started on Alex, and what was now over one thousand Quatro—all devoted to tearing down Darkstream, starting by breaking their hold on Ingress.

  And that force was on the move. They’d left the cave-system home of their newest Quatro recruits, and now they ranged across Eresos’ landscape, as quickly as a force this size could move.

  As such, there were very few opportunities for true privacy. Even the shuttle currently en route to this barren hilltop would contain its pilot, to whom Jake had given strict orders not to leave his seat, in case a hasty takeoff was needed.

  Something glinted high up in the sky, then vanished. Lisa watched that space until the glint reappeared, quickly resolving into a dark-gray dot, which soon became recognizable as a shuttle from the refugee fleet that had fled Hub. It wasn’t a combat shuttle, like the old UHF ones that had been brought here from the Milky Way. Those were in short supply, and all under the control of Darkstream.

  No, the shuttle carrying her father was newer, and much smaller, allowing it to settle on Lisa’s hilltop with room to spare.

  Despite Jake’s orders, the shuttle pilot did leave his seat—to help Gi Sato out of the airlock. The pilot tipped his cap to Lisa once she held her father’s hand, smiled, then disappeared back into his shuttle.

  That’s the problem with giving civilians orders. Might as well try to uncrack an egg.

  Once the pilot was gone, Lisa swept her father into a gentle embrace, shocked at how thin and frail he felt in her arms.

  Drawing back, she got her first good luck at him. Deep creases lined Gi Sato’s face, and his short hair had turned the color of iron. His arms, once bulging with muscle, had lost much of their mass. His muscles were still there, except now they were lean and wiry. Gi Sato was still tall, but now he stooped slightly.

  Has it really been so long?

  “You are more beautiful than ever,” her father said.

  Lisa tried to come up with a response born from grace and poise. Instead, she broke into tears, pressing her face against her father’s chest. He held her with surprising tightness, given his aged appearance.

  “There, there,” he said, the tenderness in his voice making her sob harder.

  “I can’t believe Hub is gone,” Lisa choked out. “Your farm…our home…”

  “They are dust,” Gi Sato said, and his serenity made Lisa pull back to study his face, her tears ceasing as quickly as they’d begun.

  “How can you be so calm? We’ve lost our home! I saw the photos. It’s completely ruined.” Her father had always been calm, of course, but he’d never had to deal with a catastrophe of this magnitude. Surely losing their home would shake his resolve at least somewhat?

  “Any pain except death can be endured,” Gi said. “I observe my own pain, and in doing so I learn that it is not my master. You forget, Lisa, that I have lost my home once before. I lost my place in the Milky Way when I fled here.”

  “But that was no loss. The people there have lost their way.”

  “And yet, theirs may be the only society left to us now.”

  Lisa shook her head, wiping her eyes dry with the back of her hand. “What are you saying? We can’t return there.”

  “We must. This is a failed society, here in the Steele System. It must be abandoned.”

  Lisa drew back farther, struggling not to grimace at her father. This wasn’t how she’d pictured their reunion going. “We can make it work, father. We can defeat Darkstream, and after we find out who loosed these robots on us, we can defeat them too. Then we can start again, building a society where the wellbeing of everyone is coupled with the prosperity of businesses.”

  Her father raised his eyebrows, studying her with an expression that looked slightly perplexed, but not affronted.

  Since he refused to answer, she continued: “We can’t return to the tyrants of the Milky Way, with their obsession with letting the government nose its way into every issue. Besides, what if the Ixa won the Second Galactic War? They certainly seemed likely to win it when we left. What if we return to find they’ve laid waste to the galaxy?”

  “It is a chance we must take,” Gi said. “Darkstream is too big for us to wrest control of the system from it in time. They will do as they did in the Milky Way: follow an ill-advised course until they have doomed us all. I understand that you fear government—I do, too. But you must understand that a fear of government will be inflated in one who has never known a government at all. The truth is that companies like Darkstream must be restrained in some way. Otherwise, they will subordinate everything to profit, including the health and security of the people.”

  Slowly, Lisa shook her head. “You are not the Gi Sato I know. The father I knew had a well-justified fear of government, and a respect for the importance of business.”

  “I still do—but I have always known that not every form of government is bad. I believe that if power is truly given to the people, good things can happen. It is through corruption that the true invasiveness occurs. I am not saying that business is bad, Lisa, or that it should be stamped out. Competition and commerce are vital parts of what it means to be human. You know that I have always emphasized the importance of self-interest.”

  “Yes…”
Lisa said with reluctance.

  “And I still do. But some thought must be devoted to finding a system that allows neither corporations nor governments to subvert the will of the people. A system that does not allow corporations to grow like a cancer, and one that forces the government to tend only to the needs of citizens.”

  Lisa shook her head. “I’m sorry, father. But I still must respectfully disagree.” Without warning, the storm of emotion inside her became too much, and she walked away, leaving her father alone on the hilltop.

  A transmission request came in as she made her way down the winding path, feeling worse and worse with each step. It was Marco Gonzalez.

  “Lisa,” he said when she put it through, overlaying reality with a faded version of his face. “I’ve broken the access controls for the mech sims. I can begin transferring them to you now, if you like.”

  “Yes, that will be fine. Thank you, Marco.”

  “Sure thing.”

  His face winked from existence, and Lisa cast a glance back at the hilltop, where her father still stood outside the shuttle, alone, staring after her.

  For a moment, she almost went back to him. But she couldn’t. Instead, she continued toward her army below.

  Chapter 10

  Electronic and Biological

  The moment Ingress drew into view, its dew-covered steel walls glistening in the spreading dawn, Beth contacted Bronson.

  She badly wanted to see Ash, and if they were going to make the space elevator before it began its daily trip up to Valhalla, they needed the go-ahead to do so in advance of their arrival.

  Unfortunately, Bronson had other plans.

  “You and Jin are to remain at Ingress,” the captain’s likeness said as it jogged alongside the MIMAS mechs. Inside the dream, Bronson’s simulacrum was unbound by the rules of reality, and so it easily kept pace beside them.