Mecha Rogue

by Brett Patton

  “That’s it,” she said, taking some smooth steps forward. “I can’t—I can’t make it go higher.”

  “That’s good progress for now, Cadet,” Matt said. “Join the others and start the exercise.”

  “Thank you, sir!” She ran over to stand with the group of two.

  The other Mecha still wasn’t moving. Matt switched the comms to his channel, and could hear only sobbing. The cadet didn’t even respond to his commands.

  Matt sighed. “Cadet, stand down,” he said. “Return to—” He looked at Jahl for help.

  “Conditioning.”

  “—conditioning. You’ll get another chance.”

  The Demon powered down and the cadet marched, head down, past Matt and Jahl to the low building where Dr. Roth worked.

  “Begin firing drills, Cadets,” Matt told the rest.

  “Adepts,” one cadet cut in. The slate identified her as Norah Posada Gracia.

  “Adept is a title that’s earned,” Matt shot back.

  “How?” she asked. “Sir.”

  “You could take a lead from Elize. Her Mesh Effectiveness is higher than yours now.”

  “I don’t need to give in to it!” she shot back. “I can fight!”

  “Sir,” Jahl added.

  “Sir,” she said. Her Mesh Effectiveness chart shuddered higher, before peaking at sixty-three percent. Matt could only imagine the battle of wills between Norah and the thing in the machine.

  That was what Kyle did, Matt thought. He never accepted it. He fought it. And in the end, it broke him.

  “You’ll do better if you accept it,” Matt told her.

  “I’ll do it my way, sir,” Norah said, as if through gritted teeth.

  Matt shook his head. It would have to do for now. Best to see what they could do. He had the nine adepts cycle through the firing drills, then had them do some simple hand-to-hand combat.

  * * *

  The adepts sucked.

  There was no other way to put it. They couldn’t target, they couldn’t shoot, they spent minutes switching from the MK-160 to Fireflies and back again. Under the overcast Florida sky, vast swaths of soggy ground erupted all around their targets, with only a few rounds hitting their marks. Mecha grappled ineffectively with Mecha, like two drunks wrestling outside a bar. The deep booms of their biometal bodies clashing together echoed hollowly across the land, like defeat.

  As the cadets grew more weary, their Mesh Effectiveness scores decreased. Two, then three Demons dropped out of the exercises. Eventually only five stood standing, and three wavered at the very edge of fifty percent.

  “That’s enough,” Matt said, calling all the pilots out of their Mechas. They stood in front of him, wobbly, in interface-gel-coated ranks. Their eyes shone with the lingering effects of Mesh high. They’d be hungover tomorrow. Brutally.

  “How’d we do?” one of the adepts called out, a slightly pudgy, short man with shoulder-length hair. His interface suit identified him as Jie Teng. He’d been one of the better performers. His Mesh Effectiveness hadn’t dropped below fifty-eight percent through the entire exercise.

  “Not as well as I expected,” Matt said.

  “Who are you to judge?” another adept called out, a young woman, almost painfully slim, with high cheekbones and buzz-cut black hair. Norah Posada Gracia.

  A slim spike of anger shot through Matt. I’m the guy who took down Rayder, he thought. Though he couldn’t say that. But what could he say? I was the first to use a Demon? The first to Merge? Still the best at Mesh? It sounded like empty boasts.

  “I’m the person Mecha Corps chose to train you,” Matt said. “That’s all you need to know.”

  Norah crossed her arms and grumbled, but said nothing more.

  “I heard you were on Keller, sir,” another cadet said. Matt didn’t catch his name tag.

  “Among other operations,” Matt told him. That stirred some more muttering among the cadets. This time, some of it even sounded respectful.

  Like Soto, when I heard he’d fought at Forest, Matt thought. Maybe the Union would tart up Keller into some famous Mecha battle, a turning point in Union history where only the might of the Mecha Corps had stopped an unspeakable Corsair ground invasion on a colony world. Maybe the easy victory they had, or the fact that Keller was working with the Corsairs would never get out. Or maybe Union helping Corsairs was just the beginning. How many people knew that Corsairs could be HuMax? How did that all fit in?

  “Dr. Roth wants a progress report,” Jahl said, interrupting Matt’s thoughts.

  “Already?”

  Jahl nodded at his slate. “Dr. Roth has spec’d three to five days as an optimal training and selection time.”

  “How would he know?” Matt spat.

  Jahl shrugged. “I didn’t say I agreed. But he has shared his estimate with Mecha Corps Command.”

  So that’s what they’d be expecting, Matt thought. That meant no break for the adepts tomorrow. They’d have to work through their hangover. If they were even able to move at all.

  But how the hell would he get them up to snuff in just a couple of days? They didn’t have time for weeks of training, like when he worked with Soto.

  Then Matt had a sudden flash of insight. Sink or swim. Turn it on its head.

  “Tell Roth we’re moving forward with the five adepts who maintained Mesh through the whole exercise,” Matt told Jahl.

  “You don’t think that some of the others deserve a chance—” Jahl began.

  “They do. Just not here. We don’t have time.”

  Jahl nodded. “Yes, sir,” he muttered at Dr. Roth’s image on the slate.

  Matt grinned.

  The five adepts who made it through the exercise would go again tomorrow. And this time, there’d be a surprise.

  * * *

  The five adepts had interesting histories. The buzz-cut woman, Norah Gracia, hailed from Paradise Lost, a refugee Displacement Drive ship, just like Matt. But she hadn’t gone to Aurora University like Matt. She hadn’t gone to any college at all. It was unlikely she’d be able to. Her disciplinary records, spotty as they were, had her in detention, and later in the brig, for much of her time on Paradise Lost.

  Another, Mikey Kerr, was a survivor of Highland, a rich precolony world that had just been established when the Corsairs attacked. Mikey had lived a year by himself, completely alone, on Highland before being rescued. Again, like Matt’s time on Prospect after the Corsair attack when he was a child. Matt had spent two weeks in the lonely tunnels under the surface, after burying his father in the wind-whipped sand outside.

  Jie Teng was the son of a tech magnate on Geos, an open genemod, but one without the signature violet eyes. Like Matt, whose genetic gifts from his father were well hidden.

  Elize Robbe was from Forest, a solid Union world, and was once counted as one of the smartest students in Union Grade 6, after coming up with a solar optimization system for the planetary ecosystem. A prodigy on many levels, she also counted a “photographic memory” as one of her skills. Matt found that coincidence especially chilling. Was she a genemod too—one like him?

  Finally Marjan Veluszic, whose records were as blank as a broken slate in the years before his observation for Mecha Training Camp.

  So many echoes of myself, Matt thought. Hidden pasts, refugee status, last person standing, genemod. Like looking in a shattered mirror. Did any well-adjusted, up-and-coming Union citizens ever become Mecha Corps?

  Probably not, Matt thought. Not unless it was someone like Kyle, where it was all for show. Quick stint in Mecha Corps, great showing for a senator’s son, a check mark on the way to being a senator himself.

  And even then, Kyle hadn’t exactly been stable, had he?

  Matt shook his head, sitting alone that night in his little Mech
a Corps apartment. Maybe he should call Michelle. He had plenty of units for the über-expensive FTLcomm connection. Maybe he should burn some of them.

  No, Matt thought. Play this out. Then decide.

  He went over the adepts’ histories one more time, even though he remembered every word. Trying to put together the puzzle, looking for clues to a bigger meaning.

  But the meaning, if any, eluded him.

  * * *

  Matt was waiting for the adepts that next morning, standing tall in his own Demon, as rain sheeted down on the grim gray-green land. Sensory feedback meant he felt the trickle of water down his back, running along the Demon’s serrated spine. He felt the chill gusts of morning air, and the sodden ground beneath his feet. Inside the Demon, he was the Mecha. There was no separation between him and what he rode. It was an amazing feeling. The best feeling in the universe.

  Matt’s heart beat double time as Peal and the adepts appeared. He’d told Peal to get them suited up and get them started with their exercises. The five adepts moved slowly, slump-shouldered, grumbling from Mesh hangover and the ill weather. If any of them noticed the sixth Demon as they made their way to their own Mecha, they didn’t give any indication. Matt held himself perfectly still, all external systems off, as if the Demon was unoccupied.

  As the adepts suited up, their Mesh Effectiveness lit on Matt’s internal viewmask, showing as floating tags over the Demons. Not surprisingly, it was lower than the day before. But all of them managed to activate the units. Matt let them take a few shambling steps before he sprang to life.

  The closest Mecha was Norah. She managed to half turn before Matt was on her. He slammed into her Mecha full-force with a resounding metallic clang, taking her Demon’s feet fully off the ground. For what seemed like an eternity, the two Demons flew through the air. Then Norah impacted on her back with a whoop Matt heard through the comms. Her Demon slid thirty, forty, fifty meters before coming to a rest at the end of a soggy dark furrow in the Earth, already filling with water.

  “Wh-wha-what the hell was that?” Norah sputtered as the comms lit up with exclamations from all the adepts.

  “That’s combat,” Matt said, on COMMSALL. “You never know what’s going to happen.”

  “You bastard!” Norah screamed, struggling under Matt’s Demon. Her Mesh Effectiveness had gone up to sixty-seven percent, but Matt countered her blows effortlessly.

  “Good,” Matt said. “Fight me, don’t fight the thing in the machine!”

  “I’ll fight you both!” Norah yelled, thrashing to throw his Demon off.

  “An enemy of an enemy is my friend,” Matt told her.

  “Not that . . . thing!”

  “The time to fight the ghost in the machine will come, but accept it for now,” Matt said, softly, quietly, the words spilling out of him. Almost as if something were feeding him lines.

  Yes, something said. Something not him. Matt smelled ancient dust, acrid with decay, and felt a prickling over his skin, like static. His own ghost in the machine.

  That’s not a reflection of my personality, Matt thought.

  All of you. All you are. Momentary images flashed in Matt’s mind’s eye: ripping Norah’s Demon’s arm off as she lay prone and helpless, tearing into her chestplate.

  Matt closed his eyes. No. Not now.

  The thing in his Mecha receded from his mind, as if agreeing with him.

  Norah thrashed hard, almost bucking Matt off. Her Mesh Effectiveness hit the seventies for the first time.

  “He can’t take us all!” Norah screamed over the comms. “Come on, guys, help me!”

  Four Demons converged on Matt. He grinned, watching their Mesh Effectiveness. Every one of them was climbing as their adrenaline and determination kicked in. They spiked through the sixties and into the low seventies.

  Matt waited until the lead two Mecha were almost on him, then sprang off Norah and triggered his thrusters. He shot a hundred meters into the air as the two Mecha collided shoulder to shoulder, where he’d been just a moment before. Elize’s and Mikey’s Demons resonated like a bell, and collapsed in a tangled heap on Norah’s Demon. Norah struggled to push them off.

  Another Demon triggered its own thrusters and soared toward Matt—this one tagged MARJAN. But Marjan’s Mecha went wide, its rearside thrusters firing intermittently. Marjan struggled frantically as the Demon headed back toward the ground. He barely managed to keep from landing headfirst in the muck.

  “Don’t try too hard,” Matt told them. “You’re all still babies.”

  Growls of rage came through the comms as two more Mecha launched themselves at Matt—Norah and Jie. Norah made it all the way to Matt’s perch in the sky and grappled with him. But she didn’t know anything about aerial combat. Matt fended off her blows with ease. Undeterred, she lashed out at him, harder and faster, her arms blurring. Matt nodded in satisfaction. Her Mesh Effectiveness was seventy-five percent.

  Matt used his thrusters to push Norah back down to the ground. She crouched as if collapsing under his thrust, then used all her strength to throw Matt off with a powerful shove. Matt laughed as he staggered back and tried to keep his balance. She was strong. This was fun. A little more—

  Norah’s fist fairly blurred as she caught him with an uppercut. Faint pain sizzled on Matt’s chin, and his vision went fuzzy as sensors strained with the impact. Matt’s Demon went down on its butt.

  Norah’s Mesh Effectiveness peaked at eighty-one percent. Matt grinned. Perfect. It was going just as he had hoped.

  Norah was on him again, fists pistoning as she shouted incoherently. The other Demons piled on, tearing at Matt. In contact with them, he felt their thoughts through the neural interface: anger and fear, twisted around the unnatural rush of Mesh high. Rising higher into irrational rage.

  Uh-oh. Their Mesh Effectiveness was spiking, but their emotion was taking it out of control. If he didn’t stop them, they might end up like insane like Kyle . . . or dead like Ash.

  “Stop!” Matt cried. The five Demons ignored him, their minds clamoring even more loudly for his blood. “Disengage! That’s an order!”

  Something like distant laughter, with the smell of static and dust, came as a response.

  The ghost in the machine. The thing Roth didn’t want to talk about. It was riding them, taking them out of control. And enjoying every second of it.

  “Shut them down!” Matt shouted, to COMMSP.KHOURY.

  “I can’t!” Jahl told him. “I’m not at that access level!”

  Shit. Norah’s Mesh Effectiveness was in the nineties, and everyone else’s was in the high eighties. The cacophony of their minds was so loud Matt couldn’t tell where he ended and they began. He tried to physically throw them off, but they kept him pinned.

  “Get Roth!” Matt yelled.

  “He’s offline!” Jahl said.

  No choice. He had to stop them now. There was only one choice: Merge.

  Even though he’d never Merged with more than two other Demons before. Even though each additional Demon added exponentially to the Merged configuration’s power.

  If he succeeded, what would stand on the surface of the Earth? A towering red colossus, burning bright with infinite energy? A thing capable of tearing the planet apart?

  It didn’t matter. Merge, he thought.

  Matt’s Demon ceased to be a singular entity. Its biometallic muscles liquefied and flowed like syrup, melding with the five Demons that surrounded him. Fragments of their panicked thoughts beat at Matt’s consciousness: What’s happening! I can’t. No, I can’t! Pull away! Get off me!

  But Matt was stronger than them. He drew them in. Into himself. As he drew the thing in the Mecha. He would use their power, as he used the ghost in the machine’s.

  Now I see, Elize thought, relaxing. She dreamed of technologies Matt only b
arely understood, great orbiting antimatter generators that could spawn entire new worlds.

  What do you see? Matt asked.

  Magic, she thought. And that was all Elize needed. Her mind settled down into a solid beat, in time with the Mecha’s biomechanical systems.

  It is all based on force and pain, thought Jie. This. The Mecha. You. Your entire life.

  You don’t need to follow my path, Matt said, sending Jie images of Jahl and his own accomplishments. Jahl and Jie were similarly entwined with technology. Jie understood and nodded, slipping into sync with the Merged Mecha.

  I want nothing to do with you! I am nothing like you! Norah yelled. But she softened. Her mind echoed with long, desperate chases down cold, dark, weightless halls, like Matt’s earliest years.

  Your time will come, Matt told her. You can fight all your battles in a Mecha, even the ones in your own mind. He showed her the death of his own father.

  You are nothing like me, she thought, but the thought was soft-edged, more tentative. Her mind spun like a perfectly balanced engine in time with the merged Demon.

  You think you’re the chosen one, Mikey thought, his mind unsettled and angry. Matt saw Mikey riffling through his own memories, his anger building at Matt’s accomplishments.

  I don’t think anything. I don’t even know what to do with the rest of my life, Matt thought, showing him the disastrous date with Michelle. Mikey laughed out loud and relaxed, falling into the overall rhythm.

  I refuse you all! Marjan’s thought was a scream in the darkness. He sent dagger-edged images of fire and destruction, obscuring any memories of his past. The Merge they worked for wobbled at the edge of instability. If Matt let it go, Marjan would drag them all down into a hell only Kyle had seen.

  No choice. Matt opened his mind to all of them and let his Perfect Record unspool the memory of his first Merge. The one that ended with Ash dead and Kyle insane.

  Brute force doesn’t make you a Demonrider, Matt told them. Try to control too much, and you might end up losing everything.