by Brett Patton
With an earsplitting clap, the UUS Helios disappeared. Superheated air condensed into swirling white clouds where the giant ship had just been. The UUS Helios had Displaced to safety.
“All eyes front!” Major Soto snapped. But his voice wasn’t angry. It quavered with excitement. Soto was in his element too.
“Yes, sir!” Matt said, turning his gaze back to the planet. Below him, yellow and salmon-colored wastes stretched into the gray haze of atmosphere. Brown-black mountain ranges punctuated the desolate landscape, their razor-sharp peaks slicing the sky. There wasn’t a single green growing thing in the entire vista, no blue lakes, no vast cloud-shrouded oceans. Keller seemed to be a near-dead world. All the value must be underground, in the mines.
Ash had raised her kids here. Matt remembered their grinning faces in her images from home.
On the horizon, tags popped into view in Matt’s viewmask:
OBJECTIVE: PLACERVILLE (SUBSURFACE, POP: 80,000)
RELATED OBJECTIVE: PLACERVILLE SPACEPORT (SURFACE)
PRESERVE WITHIN REASONABLE COST: PLACERVILLE FARMS (SURFACE)
More tags floated, farther away, showing the location of Keller’s other primary mines. Clusters of Hellions rocketed toward each of the tags. One was tagged SERGEANT PEAL KHOURY.
Good luck, Peal, Matt thought. That kid and his brother had been through a lot. His brother would never be a Mecha pilot, but Peal had stuck with it, and he was one of the best Hellion pilots they had.
“No Corsair Displacement ship in orbit,” Colonel Ivers barked over the comms. “Automated emplacements intact but noncommmunicative and noncombative. Redirecting all Hellions to the surface. Looks like the fight’s on the ground, Corps.”
“Good news, sir,” Major Soto said.
Ivers broke comms without commenting. Matt frowned. Were the Corsairs so cocky they thought they could hold a Union world with only ground troops?
Placerville swelled as they fell toward the dry surface of Keller. Sand fountained in the wake of their delta-winged Mecha. Cracked, heat-crazed ground flew by at a blur.
“Slow up!” Major Soto commanded as the tags for Placerville Farms exploded in size. Matt braked his Mecha, forward thrusters momentarily blinding him. They were passing over square kilometers of milky plastic-covered crops, vaguely green beneath their shroud. Mechanical harvesters did their mindless work, as if nothing was amiss.
Keller Spaceport came into view beyond a low rise, its vast expanses of sand and rock blasted into shiny green glass by ten thousand passing cargo shuttles. At one edge of the field, a low tower built of aluminum scaffolding glinted in the scorching daylight.
And directly under the tower were two Corsair freighters, wearing the familiar thousand-daggers insignia of the terrorists. They’d been converted from Taikong stock, hastily refitted with amplified cutting lasers.
But cutting lasers were really low-grade weapons. Not something a leading Corsair faction would use.
On the field, figures tagged as KELLER CITIZEN were working with figures tagged CORSAIRS, unloading battered yellow storage crates from the ship. Not one figure held a gun.
A deep shard of anger ripped through Matt. Union and Corsairs, working together? How could that be?
“Fire Sidewinders,” Soto said. But even his voice sounded hollow, uncertain.
Fire, Matt thought. Sidewinder missiles exploded from Matt’s chest apertures, tracing brilliant white lines toward the Corsair ships. The spaceport staff looked up and ran for cover as the Corsairs’ amplified cutting lasers finally began jerking toward the incoming Mecha.
Too late. The first of the Sidewinders hit the ships. Actinic light burned Matt’s retinas as the big freighters rocked. Corsair crew bailed out of the ships as they crumpled inward and collapsed.
That was way too easy, Matt thought. The Corsairs were as weak as they looked. Sending Demons against them was like using a nuke to kill a spider.
Michelle’s Demon gestured frantically at the mine entrance, a hangar-style door set into the side of gray-brown cliffs. The name PLACERVILLE was laser-cut into the cliff face to the right of the door.
The door was slowly closing.
“Shit,” Soto cursed, diving toward the mine entrance. Matt and Michelle followed, zooming in sideways as the door slammed shut.
* * *
Matt, Michelle, and Soto landed just inside the door, Demon Mecha transforming seamlessly back into their basic humanoid form.
They stood in a vast, warehouselike space. Union shuttles and ancient Shark-class fighters stood to one side of the cavern, while stacked crates of refined metals and supplies towered on the other. Sunlight streamed down on them from dusty skylights cut through the stone ceiling.
Ahead, Placerville’s living areas stretched on either side of a boulevard for more than a kilometer. Functional aluminum-and-glass apartments sat shoulder to shoulder with buildings constructed of native stone. Skinny trees grew in a row down the middle of the boulevard, each carefully placed to get the maximum amount of light from the skylights.
Matt turned on his Demon’s Sensory Amplification. The city was quiet, seemingly deserted.
“Enable Fireflies, antipersonnel mode only,” Major Soto told them.
“Major, what was that out there?” Matt asked. “Uh, sir.”
Soto didn’t answer for a long time. After a while, he said, “We can discuss that later, Captain.”
“Were the citizens helping the Corsairs?” Why would anyone help a Corsair?
“Proceed forward,” Ivers’s voice boomed, cutting Matt off. “Escalate weapons to Sidewinders or Fusion Handshake if necessary. Do not, repeat, do not, use Zap Gun. It may destabilize the mine.”
Matt, Michelle, and Soto proceeded cautiously through the city toward a dark opening tagged MINE ENTRANCE. Heat signatures showed citizens watching them through windows as they passed, but nobody challenged them.
The three rode a massive platform down into the mine. Rough-hewn rock walls, pockmarked by inset lights and ribbed with scaffolding, passed swiftly by as they descended. The outside temperature reading dropped, then leveled off and began to rise.
“Out here on the frontier, Corsairs aren’t as black-and-white as you’d expect,” Soto grumbled in grudging response to Matt’s earlier question. “But that doesn’t change anything. This isn’t any different than Rayder and Geos. We’re here to knock them down hard.”
Matt didn’t respond, feeling his anger rise at the mention of Rayder and Geos. Five million dead. The biggest Corsair assault ever on the Union.
They continued to descend in silence. One thousand meters, two thousand, five thousand. The faint sounds of metal on rock came through the Mecha’s enhanced senses. It seemed that even with the attack, the work in the mine went on.
When they reached the bottom, dust billowed ahead of them, coming from a new, jagged shaft that descended at a sharp angle even deeper into the planet. Matt’s viewmask tagged the rest of the mine as UNOCCUPIED. Only the newly hewn shaft reverberated with the desperate grinding of steel through bedrock.
Was it the Corsairs who were digging? Matt wondered. If so, digging for what?
“Forward,” Soto said, descending into the shaft. Only a single climbing scaffold had been hastily welded in place; they were working fast and desperately.
Matt and Michelle followed. The clank of machinery swelled to a cacophonous symphony, hidden in the all-encompassing dust.
As they reached the bottom, shapes resolved. Giant mining machines, fronted by immense rasps, ground the shaft ever deeper, while men in battered PowerSuits cleared away the mounting piles of rubble.
Matt’s viewmask tagged the workers as both KELLER CITIZEN and INFERRED CORSAIR. But they worked together seamlessly, again without guards or guns. There was no doubt now. The people in Placerville were actuall
y helping these Corsairs.
Matt clenched his fists, fighting down the urge to fire every single one of his Fireflies and wipe them all out.
Finally the men in PowerSuits noticed them. One by one, heads rose, their dirty faces peering up at the hulking Demons above them. In his Demon’s augmented senses, Matt saw frustration, anger, and fear—not even a tiny bit of relief.
“But we’re Mecha Corps,” Matt whispered. “We’re here to help you.”
“Captain—” Major Soto began. But before he could get any further, something struck him and took him down to the ground with a reverberating boom. Soto yelled in pain.
Crouched on top of Major Soto’s Demon was a Mecha unlike any Matt had ever seen. Smaller than a Hellion and dull silver, with overlapping metallic scales covering a thin, whiplike body and long, multijointed arms and legs. Next to a Demon, it was a frail thing. How had it toppled the major? The giant red Demon spasmed and shook, but Soto wasn’t trying to get up.
Michelle launched a small burst of Fireflies. They knocked the silver Mecha off its perch, and Soto started to get back on his feet.
The silver Mecha came back at them, blurring fast. Michelle moved forward to grapple with it.
“Don’t let it touch you!” Soto hissed.
Too late. The silver Mecha impacted with Michelle, and she went down, groaning in pain. Like Soto, she made no move to get up.
“Michelle!” Matt cried.
“Get back!” she hissed. “Pain—it’s got—pain!”
Matt ignored her. All he wanted to do was rip that spindly scaled Mecha apart. He ran at it, grabbed the thing with his Mecha arms, and prepared a Fusion Handshake to take it out for good.
Matt’s world exploded in a burst of agony. Every muscle in his Mecha spasmed as pain arced through Matt like an electric shock. He collapsed against Michelle’s Mecha hard, his visor banging on her chest plate.
Matt thrashed and tried to move, but he had almost no control over his Demon. The silver Mecha was doing something to his Mecha’s systems! Boring deeper into its code, screaming feedback through every nerve of his interface suit. It had to be some kind of neural interrupter, bent on total domination of his Mecha. The feel of the Demon’s own mind, the familiar prickle of dust and static, ramped upward as the multifaceted eyes of the silver Mecha peered down at him.
“Situation report!” Ivers barked.
“Down, sir,” Soto grated.
“I see that! Why?”
Soto’s Demon gave a mighty push, but it wasn’t able to get to its feet. The small Mecha held the giant Demon down effortlessly. Soto was in the grip of the same pain as Michelle and Matt.
Matt tried to aim his Fireflies at the silver Mecha, but his Demon didn’t respond to his request. There was nothing in the system but reverberating pain. It was his entire world.
Can’t . . . use weapons . . . either. Michelle’s thoughts came to him through contact with her Demon, amplified by the Mecha’s neural interface.
Merge, he thought. Two minds are better than one.
The two Demons flowed together like drops of molten metal. Matt was dimly aware of the pilot’s chamber re-forming to accommodate the two of them. He reached out and touched Michelle, feeling the smooth surface of her interface suit. The beating pain of the silver Mecha fell away, just a little.
The configuration diagram in Matt’s viewmask showed the two Demons had become a completely new form, something almost wasplike. Matt grinned. He and Michelle did make a great team.
Matt didn’t hesitate. He threw the Demon’s body against the raw rock walls, knocking the silver Mecha off its perch. The stuttering pain left Matt/Michelle. They grabbed the silver Mecha before it could react, pinning it with sharp pincers.
Fusion Handshake, Matt/Michelle ordered. Blue power rammed down his arm, and the silver Mecha exploded in a hundred shards.
Matt/Michelle went for the remaining silver Mecha on top of Soto. It turned and leapt at them, but Matt/Michelle loosed a volley of Fireflies, driving it back into Soto’s own Fusion Handshake. The boom of actinic power shook dust from the rough tunnels, and rocks pattered down on the Mecha.
Sudden silence fell over the mine. Matt/Michelle and Soto turned to face the diggers, who’d powered down the mining machines. Keller citizens and Corsairs alike stepped away from their machines, raising their hands in the universal sign of surrender.
“What?” Matt asked. They were just giving up now? That wasn’t how Corsairs acted.
Helping Corsairs wasn’t how the Union acted. Who could side with them?
“Placerville Mine secure, sir,” Soto told Ivers.
“I see. Round them up, pull the mining gear out, and collapse the shaft they created.”
“Collapse the shaft? Sir?”
“Are you questioning my orders, Major?”
“No, sir.” But Soto’s Demon stood tense, uneasy.
When they were back up top, Soto’s Demon clapped Matt on the back. “Good thinking,” he told Matt. “That Merge saved our asses.”
“It was all of us,” Matt said, beaming with pride. “Sir.”
But through his happiness, doubts ate at Matt. Why had Union citizens been helping Corsairs? What were they digging for? Why had they gone in so hot, when this job was so easy? Was the Union trying to hide something?
And just how much more powerful were the Corsairs, now that they had their own Mecha?
2
CAPITOL
Matt didn’t have time to stew on his questions. Less than twenty hours after their arrival at Keller, the UUS Helios Displaced for Eridani, the first planet in the Union and capital of the largest interstellar governmental organization of humankind. The official line was that the Mecha pilots were being shuttled to another stop on their scheduled R&R rotation.
But it felt undeserved. Yes, they’d destroyed the Corsair Mecha and the transports, and yes, Peal and his Hellion platoon had confirmed no Corsair presence in the other major mine cities. But that was it. They’d wasted far too much firepower on a tiny little job. Sure, it was a surprise that the Corsairs had Mecha, but they were weak and pathetic, except for the “corrosive system meme”—Peal’s words—that disrupted the Demon’s systems.
Why was the Union acting as if they had to pay them hush money?
“The heroes’ reward,” Major Guiliano Soto said, sardonically, as he lounged with Matt and Michelle in a first-class cabin on the Eridani Space Elevator Transport. The curved room was a slice of a toroid-shaped passenger cabin riding a meter-wide ribbon of carbon nanotubes from orbit down to Eridani. Floor-to-ceiling windows showed the gentle curve of Eridani’s surface, wrapped in a thick blue atmosphere and striped with bright white clouds. Eridani’s oceans covered almost eighty percent of the planet, and their deep teal depths reflected sheets of brilliant sunlight.
As they fell toward the planet in the elevator, there was no vibration, no sensation of motion. Only a high, thin whistle of atmosphere confirmed what the room’s status screen showed: they were descending toward Eridani at almost five hundred kilometers an hour. The eight-hundred-kilometer drop would take less than ninety minutes.
“Such luxury. They’re showing off for us,” Matt said.
“Why shouldn’t they? And why shouldn’t we enjoy it?” Michelle asked, leaning over to look out the curved window at the ground. “We are the saviors of the Union, after all.”
“That pathetic fight on Keller?” Soto said.
“Not that.”
Soto frowned and nodded. He knew exactly what she was talking about. They’d killed Rayder together.
Matt sighed. HuMax. Genetically engineered superpersons who had almost destroyed the Union over a century ago. They were supposed to have been all wiped out in the Human/HuMax wars of almost a century past. But Rayder had somehow sur
vived. And much of his crew was HuMax. It was entirely possible there were even more of them out there, hiding past the edge of the Union.
Michelle grabbed Matt’s sleeve and pointed down at Eridani’s surface. “You can see Newhome now. Come look!”
Matt shook his head. He was wiped out. His head beat like a drum, and his stomach still churned from Mesh hangover, the unavoidable effect of using a biomechanical Mecha. They were all suffering from it. Demons were the worst for Mesh hangover. It was amazing they weren’t flat on their backs in bed.
At the same time, a constant chant repeated in his mind: Get back into that Mecha. Mesh, and you’ll feel fine. Mesh is the best thing in all the worlds!
“We’re above the Union capital, and you don’t even want to look?” Michelle looked at him incredulously. Even though she also had the well-used look of a Mecha pilot coming down from Mesh, her eyes sparkled.
“A planet’s a planet,” Matt mumbled.
Michelle frowned and crossed her arms, turning away from him. “No, it’s not. If each planet wasn’t special in its own way, we wouldn’t fight in Mecha to protect them. If a planet was a planet, we wouldn’t have created Mecha at all! We would’ve just kept lobbing atomic weapons at each other until they were all dust!”
Righteously angry like that, she was even more beautiful than usual. The curve of her cheek was backlit by the teal-tinged reflected Eridani sunlight, and her face was lit like a halo. Her utilitarian blue Mecha Corps uniform didn’t hide her generous curves. Matt remembered the first day he saw her, the lone Union Army recruit at Mecha Training Camp. Beautiful and deadly. If she hadn’t known what she was doing, he might not have made it through the first mock battle.
And . . . she was right. Planets truly suited for human life were incredibly rare. Uninhabitable rocks or borderline wastelands like Keller were the norm. Eridani was special, one of four worlds in the entire Union that were truly Earthlike.
You should be making nice, not pissing her off, Matt thought. Michelle was amazing, the kind of woman you could spend your whole life with. And she was a Mecha pilot. How could it get any better?
