Infliction (Mech Wars Book 4)

by Scott Bartlett

  “I do. Marco Gonzalez has succeeded in hacking the station’s defensive arsenal. In doing so, he stopped them from targeting the shuttles carrying our reinforcements.”

  “How many of them can you send me?”

  “Twenty Quatro. Most of them armed.”

  Tessa resisted the urge to curse again. It wasn’t nearly as many as she would have liked—apparently, her allies still weren’t convinced about what she was doing. But Tessa was sure that the mere fact that Epsilon was so heavily guarded meant it was worth attacking.

  “At least most are armed, I guess,” Tessa said. “Send them my way. I’ll do my best to hold on till they get here.”

  “They are already en route.”

  The transmission ended, and Tessa grimaced. She’d been about to ask Rug if she knew anything about the plummeting temperature. Hopefully the life support systems aren’t failing on us. In the meantime, her jumpsuit would keep her warm.

  She did her best to keep up the pressure on the enemy soldiers, to prevent them from swarming her and ending her little campaign before it harvested the fruit she knew awaited it.

  She’d been doing a lot of thinking, lately—about her future. Tessa wasn’t young by any stretch, but she would have given herself ten more good fighting years, and two or three decades of life beyond that, given current technology.

  Her ideas about where she’d likely end up spending those years had started to solidify on the space elevator, while she watched the end of Eresos take shape.

  The end of the entire Steele System, probably.

  If this system was going down, then survival meant fleeing from it.

  She’d spent a lot of time with the Quatro, enough to know how unlikely it was that they’d be willing to return to what they called their Home Systems. That meant there was only one safe haven left to any Steele System refugees:

  The Milky Way.

  Whether humanity’s home galaxy was actually a safe haven depended on several factors, especially for Tessa. What would facing human society mean for her, at whose feet many people laid the hundreds of thousands of deaths that had resulted from the failure of dark tech? She’d been the one to let the Ixan, Ochrim, access the master control for every warship’s wormhole generator, and in doing so, she’d inadvertently signed the death warrants of all those military men and women.

  Of course, whether she’d face consequences for that depended on whether humanity survived in any form back in the Milky Way. The year Darkstream had fled the galaxy, victory over the Ixa had seemed far from likely. Just a few months before the company’s departure, the Ixa had devoured the Coreopsis System with thousands of advanced warships.

  As Tessa continued to fire on the Darkstream soldiers guarding the gated community before her, she couldn’t decide which would be worse for her: returning to find the Ixa had won the war, or that humanity had.

  It didn’t matter. Today had involved the drawn-out process of realizing what had become their only option: they had to risk a return to the Milky Way, and it wasn’t reasonable for her to impede that effort because of her own past. For her friends—her brothers- and sisters-in-arms—she would accept whatever awaited her.

  When she ducked down after delivering her latest salvo, pressing her back to the garden wall, she saw signs that the Quatro reinforcements had arrived—large forms flitting between structures, shadows flickering behind vine-covered trellis walls.

  Without warning, a fifty-strong Quatro force charged toward the gated community, around a third of them armed.

  “Stop!” Tessa yelled. “Go back!” The Quatro charge amounted to pointless suicide, but her warning was lost in the roar of gunfire as every Darkstream soldier opened up on the aliens.

  None of them seemed affected by the volley, though, and Tessa blinked in confusion. A soft clattering sound reached her ears, and suddenly, she realized what it was: the bullets the enemy soldiers had fired were falling uselessly to the ground.

  She got it, then. The station’s falling temperature was not an accident. It had been engineered, to grant the Quatro full use of their fullerene-laced brains.

  Poking her head over the garden wall, Tessa was just in time to watch as most of the Darkstream soldiers were thrown forcefully against the three-meter brick wall surrounding the gated community. Other enemy combatants had their guns wrenched from their grasps by the same invisible force, and a couple even had their skulls caved in with their own weapons.

  Within seconds, it was over. Tessa stood, then, walking calmly toward the gate, which was dragged aside by the same force that had taken care of the soldiers.

  The Quatro fell in around her. “Post a guard at the gate to make sure no one escapes,” she barked at the Quatro she’d designated as her second-in-command. “Send two parties along the walls to find any other exits and secure them. I want everyone else searching the homes.”

  It didn’t take long to find what she was looking for. Huddled in the parlor room of the largest mansion, they found all six members of the Darkstream board of directors.

  Tessa smiled, taking a moment to enjoy their expressions, which ranged from fear to indigestion.

  “If you like living,” she told them, “you’ll order your warships to stand down. All of them.”

  Chapter 34

  We Aren't Darkstream

  Lisa breathed a sigh of relief as her metal feet connected with the deck of Landing Bay Theta. Fighting in zero-G had been far more disorienting than first entering the MIMAS had been—that said, the latter had felt so natural it was almost scary.

  “Good work, Oneiri Team,” Jake said. “I know we’ve lost a teammate already, but we honored Gifford’s death by winning. I like to think he’d appreciate that.”

  “Plus, things could have been a lot worse,” Ash chimed in.

  “They are a lot worse,” said a voice with a Hispanic accent, and they all turned to find Marco, inside his mech again, standing at the landing bay’s entrance.

  “What are you talking about?” Jake asked.

  “Tens of thousands of ships—I have to assume they’re warships, but they’re like none I’ve ever seen before. They just appeared all along the Outer Ring of the Steele System.”

  “They have us surrounded?”

  “I mean, yes,” Marco said. “But I’d say the more relevant detail is how many of them there are. Tens of thousands, Jake. I don’t think a battle group of rusty old UHF ships is going to do much against that, even backed up by a few spacefaring mechs.”

  “What are they doing now?” Lisa asked.

  “Just sitting there, or at least they were three hours ago, which is how long light takes to reach us from out there. It’s like they’re waiting for something.”

  Lisa’s heartbeat accelerated, and the mech dream made her peripheral vision pulse. She still hadn’t gotten used to the way it turned her emotions into phenomena that warped reality. “They could be headed for us right now.”

  Jake nodded. “The fighting on Valhalla is basically over. A handful of Darkstream soldiers ignored the board’s command to surrender, but they’re mostly keeping to themselves. We should call everyone here and decide our next moves.”

  “Can we trust the Darkstream warships not to strand us here?” Lisa asked, gesturing with a metal hand toward the airlock.

  “Well, they seem to listen to the board, and it’s in the board’s best interest to cooperate with us.”

  “Still…” Lisa shook her head. “All those enemy warships could easily cause the captains to panic and run.”

  “You’re right. For now, I’ll have Rug assign a squad of Quatro to every ship, to keep an eye on the CIC crews. Later, we’ll divide the Quatro more or less evenly across the entire battle group. ”

  It took twenty minutes for most of the resistance leaders to assemble in Landing Bay Theta. Tessa was among them, and she had the Darkstream board of directors in tow. They didn’t look very happy, and their designer clothes looked strange among the mechs, the Quatro, a
nd the handful of militia members left over from Alex.

  Oneiri Team formed a circle with their mechs, then each pilot exited—except for Ash, who was still recovering from getting impaled by Roach outside Vanguard. Lisa blinked groggily as she climbed down the ramp formed by her MIMAS’ back, and her forearm stung a little. When she reached the ground, she studied the spot where the needle had punctured her wrist to inject the sedative’s antagonist.

  “So,” Jake said, studying the six members of the board with an expression that bordered on contempt. “Have you figured out how you’re going to extract a profit from the mess you’ve created?”

  Suzanne Defleur, who was chairperson of the Darkstream board of directors, returned Jake’s gaze through silver wisps of hair that hung over her face, having sprung free from her otherwise elaborate hairdo. Lisa had once had a lot of respect for Defleur. Once.

  “We’ve failed,” she said, and she actually sounded contrite. Lisa was nowhere near ready to accept anything Defleur said or did as authentic, but maybe this was a good sign. “There isn’t much else to be said on the topic. Like Icarus, we reached too far, and now we burn for it.”

  Lisa shook her head. “There’s something you’re not telling us.”

  Defleur returned her glare wearing a blank expression, and the rest of the board behaved similarly.

  Masterful acting. Whatever they were hiding, it had to be something big. Else, they wouldn’t be putting this much effort into concealing it. Lisa doubted the board members were used to putting this much effort into anything.

  “You’re probably right, Lisa,” Jake said. “But we don’t have time to extract whatever it is from them, and we’re not about to resort to torture.” He turned back to Defleur. “We obviously need to find a way to leave this system. I’m not sure how we’re going to accomplish that yet, but I do know that your cooperation will be a major boon to the effort. Do I have that cooperation?”

  Defleur nodded, and the other board members murmured their assent. “The Javelin still has a working wormhole generator,” Defleur said. “Or at least, it should. It was the only one that was kept disconnected from Ochrim’s master control, meaning it was the only one that wasn’t damaged irreparably. We haven’t generated any wormholes since the one we used to reach this system, but as far as I know, the Javelin’s generator does still work.”

  “Then we have a way out,” Jake said, and Lisa was surprised by how much relief he allowed into his voice. He returned his gaze to Lisa, and then to the other members of Oneiri. At last, his gaze drifted to Rug, and to Tessa, who was fiddling with a silver band of some sort. When she flicked it, it snapped into place, becoming stiff, and when she bent it, the band rolled into a circle.

  “Lisa Sato,” Rug said staring directly at her. “You once promised me that you would help me to reclaim my people’s ship, hidden in the Outer Ring. Now that you have the means to keep that promise, do you intend to?”

  Lisa hesitated, her gaze on Jake. “I was always going to keep my promise, Rug. But to do it, we’ll need at least half of the Darkstream battle group, including one of the destroyers. Even with them, though, I’m not sure how likely we are to succeed out there.” Or to survive.

  “If we can reach my hidden ship, our firepower will increase significantly,” Rug said.

  Jake blinked. “Hold on. Rug, your ship must have the capacity for interstellar travel, too.”

  “My ship has a warp drive,” the Quatro said. “However, it does not have the ability to extend the effect to other ships.”

  “Ah. There goes that backup plan, then.” His lips pressed together, and as he cast his gaze to Oneiri Team, Rug, and Tessa, his jaw muscles clenched visibly. “We’re going to split up the battle group. Lisa and Rug, you’ll take half to the Outer Ring, and we’ll take the other half.”

  “To where?” Lisa asked.

  “To evacuate as many people from Alex as possible. I refuse to let what happened to Eresos happen there, too. We aren’t Darkstream,” Jake said while shooting a hard look at Defleur and the others. “We aren’t in this strictly for our own self-interest. We’re going to save as many innocent people as we can. And while we’re preparing to leave Valhalla, I want it broadcasted to the entire station that anyone who wants to leave is welcome to join us. That includes any soldiers willing to surrender to us. Spirit, I’m putting you on getting that message out.”

  Marco nodded.

  Lisa felt her mouth quirk involuntarily. “Quentin Cooper and his Daybreak goons still hold Habitats 1 and 2. It’s probable he’s moved on the others, too—system net access was cut off for the entire planet, so it’s a reasonable assumption.”

  “Hopefully he has moved on them,” Jake said. “That will mean his forces are spread thin.” Jake turned to walk toward his alien mech, then he faced the others once more. “I’ll put out a call for every spaceworthy ship in the system to join us at Alex, to help with the evacuation. Once we’re finished, we’ll push out to meet you and Rug in the Outer Ring, Lisa. From there, we’re just going to have to pray that the wormhole generator on the Javelin is functioning.”

  “To where will we open the wormhole?” Defleur said, her voice a little deflated from before.

  “Well…” Jake said, clearly considering the question. “The way I see it, we’re going to have two sizable cohorts representing two species. By now, the use of dark tech is likely completely illegal in the Milky Way, and we have to take that into consideration: if we return there using a wormhole, they probably won’t look kindly on it.”

  “We cannot return to the Quatro Home Systems,” Rug said flatly.

  Jake tilted his head. “Oh?”

  “The Assembly of Elders has established a brutal regime that’s wholly intolerant of insubordination. Every Quatro that returned would be put to death for our decision to separate from Quatro society, and I doubt you would be treated much better.”

  “All right, then,” Jake said. “The Milky Way it is.”

  Chapter 35

  Last Goodbye

  “Lisa, can I speak with you?” Jake called out across the landing bay amidst the bustle of everyone preparing to depart the station.

  She nodded. “Sure, Jake.”

  They exited together into the corridor just outside the landing bay, which was empty.

  Jake glanced back into the landing bay just as the hatch was closing behind Lisa. Landing Bay Theta had been the one he’d used the day he first came to Valhalla Station, with Bronson.

  That seemed like a million years ago, and looking back at the person he’d been then was like remembering a little kid. He remembered Roach slamming him against the side of the shuttle Bronson had brought him in on. I’d never tolerate that, now.

  “Will we take the risk of getting out of our mechs to talk?” he asked Lisa.

  “Sure. I…I would like to see you.”

  “Okay.” He ordered the alien mech to terminate the dream and release him, which it did. It made him glad that Lisa had said yes to getting out of the mechs. There were still Darkstream soldiers at large throughout the station, not to mention Roach. But Jake considered this worth it, to snatch a last bit of human interaction before they parted ways, possibly forever.

  “What’s up?” she said, blinking away sleep as she circled to the front of her mech. Giving her head a shake, she said, “I’m still not used to going to sleep and waking up so many times in one day.”

  “You’ll get used to it,” he said. “I brought you out here to talk about Andy. He’s insisting—demanding, really—that I let him come with you. But if we really are reforming Oneiri Team, it’s important to maintain the chain of command, and right now, I’m at the top of it. Letting him subvert that just because he feels like it doesn’t seem like a great precedent.”

  “Well, are you going to need him on Alex?”

  Jake shrugged. “Right now, it’s mostly about the principle of the thing. I’m inclined to deny him his demand, for the simple reason that he came to me and dem
anded it. But the real question is, do you think you’re going to need him out in the Belt?”

  Lisa hesitated. “I’m going to need some backup, but honestly, I’d prefer a more experienced pilot. If you send Andy with me, then we’re just a couple of rookies on a mission that already doesn’t look great for us.”

  “What about Beth?”

  Slowly, Lisa nodded. “I’d feel better with Arkanian. Despite her recent switch in allegiance.”

  “Okay,” Jake said. “It’s settled.”

  “How are you holding up?” Lisa asked, her head tilting to the side, raven hair swaying.

  “I’m…better. For a while, all I could think about was losing Sue Anne, and how dire everything’s seemed since she died. But I still have my mom and dad, not to mention plenty of the friends and neighbors we grew up with. I have to remember that. I’ve been so focused on the fact that if something happens to them, I won’t be able to live with myself. But just then, in that landing bay, I realized that the only thing that means is it’s not an option for me to let anything get in the way of us all leaving this system.”

  “It’s true,” Lisa said softly. “Though it took me a long time to realize, too. Did you know, when you arranged the meeting between my father and I, I used the opportunity to act like a terrible daughter?”

  Slowly, Jake shook his head. “How?”

  “He tried to persuade me that our attempt to build a society here in the Steele System has failed. I wouldn’t believe him. I thought we could fight to hold onto it. But he was right after all, and now I might never get the chance to tell him. I might never get the chance to say I’m sorry.”

  “I can have the message passed on, if you like. While we’re en route to Alex.”

  “Would you? I’d truly appreciate it.”

  “Of course. And Lisa…we’re going to make it through this. You will speak to your father again. I promise.”