by Brett Patton
The interior of the warehouse wasn’t the usual neat rows of packaged gear; it was more a grab bag of everything from the latest FTLcomm antennae to ancient flat-screens, all placed haphazardly on giant racks that stretched fifteen meters to the ceiling. Surplus and reclaimed gear. That wasn’t unusual. But one of the items was.
Matt stopped stock-still at the end of one of the junk corridors. In front of him stood a Union Mecha Corps Hellion, its chest unfolded and one of its arms partially disassembled. Carbonized blast scars marred its black-chrome finish, and its biomechanical skin was peeled back from the side holster that would normally hold a Zap Gun. The Zap Gun itself was gone.
A Hellion? his mind screamed. Hearing that the Corsairs had Mecha was one thing. Seeing a pinnacle of Union-funded technology piled among racks of surplus tech junk was a punch in the gut.
A dark-skinned woman came out of the Hellion’s chest cavity and sat on the stairs to the cockpit, her head bent low over a glowing slate. She wore a white jacket that was smudged with dirt and pale red hydraulic fluid, and her hair stuck out in crazy spikes from what was once a carefully pulled-back bun. She glanced up at Matt once and went back to her slate, almost as if she had never seen him.
Metallic footfalls came down the corridor behind Matt. He turned—and jumped in shock. Two more Mecha were headed his way. But these weren’t Hellions, Demons, or anything he’d ever seen in the Corps. They were multisegmented, dull silver, with four arms, like the strange things he’d seen on Keller. They were flanked by two men in formfitting gray uniforms, with a Corsair thousand-dagger insignia on their chest.
Instinctively, Matt dropped behind the end of the racks, prepared to fight. What were those things doing here? Were they from that other Corsair ship?
“Already?” the woman on the Hellion stairs called out, looking up at the pair of Mecha.
“Afraid so, Dr. Lira,” one of the men said.
“Another four hours?” Dr. Lira pleaded.
“Not a chance. Boss wants this loaded now.”
“Two hours?” She looked back longingly at the cockpit.
“Now,” the man said, his voice firming.
Dr. Lira sighed and jumped off the stairs. A young man, also wearing a dirty white coat, came out from behind the partially dismantled arm, holding a strip of biomechanical muscle.
“Make sure you leave all the parts, Doctor,” the Corsair said, his voice hardening.
“Of course.” She nodded at the kid, who tossed the biomechanical strip inside the Mecha’s chest.
The researchers stood aside as the two silver Corsair Mecha flanked the Hellion, picked it up, and carried it down the corridor and out into the spaceport. The men followed the Mecha. They headed straight toward the giant VTOL transport, where they quickly blended in with the rest of the Powerloaders that swarmed around it.
Those aren’t Powerloaders, Matt realized.
Seen at a distance, they looked like Powerloaders, but every single one of those things was the silver-segmented Mecha. Entire platoons of the things.
What kind of Mecha were those? And what was that faction?
A sigh made him turn. Behind him, Dr. Lira and her compatriot were watching wistfully as the Hellion disappeared up into the belly of the Corsair transport.
“Who are they?” Matt asked.
Dr. Lira started, as if seeing him for the first time. “Who are who?”
“The Corsairs that just took the Hellion.”
“They’re Corsairs. I don’t know. Wait—you know what a Hellion is?”
Matt frowned. Shit. He’d said too much. He grabbed at the collar of his coverall and zipped it up even farther, to make sure it covered his interface suit.
“We’ve gone up against the Union,” Matt said, standing up straight.
“What do you know about Hellions?”
Matt made himself laugh. It sounded forced and artificial. “I know they’re hard to kill. Are you trying to come up with a better way to kill them?”
Dr. Lira shook her head. “No. They’re—they’re really odd technology. It’s a blending of nanomachines and artificial neural structures, at its base level, but I have no idea how it’s all coordinated.”
Interesting, Matt thought. He opened his mouth to encourage her to talk more, but she interrupted him before he could get started.
“And there’s a neural interface to the pilot too,” she said. “I can’t see how that can be safe. They’ve had that Hellion in the warehouse for six months, and all the hawks have been saying, ‘Use the damn thing to defend La Malinche!’ But I don’t want to know what would happen to the pilot.”
Mesh, wonderful Mesh, Matt thought. “You’ve had this thing for six months?”
Dr. Lira pouted. “And we only got permission from the bureaucrats to study it a week ago. Now they’ve gone and sold it to the Corsairs, and we haven’t got half the answers we need.”
Sold it. Sudden spikes of fear jolted through Matt. Just as they could sell his Demon. Maybe they’d somehow disabled the warning systems. Maybe it was already gone.
No. He couldn’t think that. Not now.
“It looks like that faction already has Mecha,” Matt said, nodding at the Corsair VTOL ship outside. “I wonder why they need a Union piece.”
“Are you kidding?” Dr. Lira said. “Where do you think they learned how to make the Lokis?”
“Lokis?”
“Those things,” she said, nodding at the silver Powerloaders.
“What faction are they?” Matt asked.
“I told you, I don’t know. Maybe the Cluster, maybe Last Rising. Why? What faction are you from? Don’t you have Mecha?”
Yes, Matt thought. We have one.
“No,” he told her.
* * *
Matt paid the cancelation fee on his loading job and went back to the El Dorado on the next cargo carrier, squeezed between two-meter-high plastic containers of raw soy protein. His mind chanted terrible thoughts: My Demon’s gone. They’ve already sold it. They only agreed to let me go down on the surface because they wanted to get rid of me. I’ll never see it again.
But his interface suit told a different story. His Demon hadn’t been compromised. Its systems still reported back FULLY OPERATIONAL. READY TO DEPLOY.
But maybe they’d figured out how to spoof it. Maybe they’d had help from the other faction, which was clearly much more technologically advanced than the crew of the El Dorado.
But as they approached, he noticed that the repair ships had stopped their work. The arms were retracted, and no space-suited figures swarmed near the big rock of the El Dorado anymore. Had they run out of money? The repairs were scheduled to take three more days. The quietude was both reassuring and troubling.
When they arrived in the spaceship dock, Matt stopped stock-still, his breath going out of him.
His Demon was gone.
Matt shoved through the cargo containers before they’d even docked and pushed his way to the air-lock doors. They’d done it! Stolen his Demon! Red, acid-burning spikes of anger flared through him as he waited for the locks to open. The other passengers stayed away from his clenched fists and flushed face.
Matt flew out the air-lock door and nearly collided with Ione and Captain Gonsalves. In a flash, he grabbed a handrail for leverage and kicked the captain hard with both feet, sending him flying down the corridor.
“Matt!” Ione shouted, and dove for him. But Matt had already pushed off in pursuit of the captain. He reached the man as he hit the opposite wall and grabbed a handrail. Matt swung hard at his face, but Gonsalves ducked. Matt’s hand glanced off the hard rock wall, skinning his knuckles and sending a bolt of pain through his arm. The captain yelled something at him. Matt didn’t care. He wound up so he could hit him again.
Matt’s arm wa
s caught. He yelled and whipped around to strike his attacker. It was Ione. She grabbed his arms and pinned him to the floor. Matt couldn’t do a damn thing except scream to get his Mecha back.
“Stop it!” Captain Gonsalves yelled, pulling himself up. “Your Mecha’s still here. Damn crazy Union addict!”
“We should have told him,” Ione said.
“Yes. We should. The Cluster should have gone to another planet to reprovision too. And he should have stayed down on the surface awhile longer.”
Matt screamed and bucked, but Ione and the two men held him securely.
“We relocated your Mecha,” Captain Gonsalves said. “The Cluster—”
“Liar!” Matt yelled.
Gonsalves pursed his lips, then continued. “The Cluster wanted to come by for a visit. We couldn’t let them see your Demon, so we moved it to the, uh, secure cargo dock.”
“You’re lying! Show me!”
Gonsalves grinned. “If I’m lying, how can I show you? Now, do you want to listen to reason, or do you want to fight some more?”
“You sold my Mecha! To finance your repairs!”
Gonsalves’s expression darkened. “I don’t think so. Especially since the Cluster’s motto is ‘if they have one piece of tech, they probably have more, might as well take it all.’ No way I’m going to have them annex the ship.”
“He’s telling the truth,” Ione told Matt.
Matt shook his head. It kinda fit together. Made sense. But—
“Show me!” he said.
Gonsalves sighed. “I’ll do better than that. I’ll see you take it for a spin.”
“I don’t need to Mesh!”
“I disagree,” Gonsalves said.
A security team joined Ione and dragged Matt down through rough, dusty corridors to the other side of the asteroid ship. Captain Gonsalves followed. They came to a dead end, solid rock. Matt knew exactly what was going to happen. They’d kill him now, and that would be the end. He thrashed against his captors and succeeded in getting one arm free. Ione, flash-quick, helped them get ahold of Matt again.
“You sold me out!” he yelled.
“Oh, please,” Captain Gonsalves said. He did something on his slate, and the rock wall pivoted aside. Beyond it was a conventional air lock. Through the window, Matt saw a shadowy space, lit by pinpricks of orangish sodium lamps. Something large and red hulked inside. His Demon!
“Let me in!”
They cycled the lock and took him out into the large space. Racks for cargo, largely empty now, lined the interior walls of the dock. A larger pair of steel doors on one side of the dock warned EXTERIOR EGRESS-NO LOCK!
A smuggling dock, Matt thought. But it was just a whisper next to the other thoughts churning in his head. Because inside the dock was his Demon. Matt’s heart pounded. Everything was okay. They were telling him the truth.
“Let him go,” Captain Gonsalves said. The security goons let Matt loose, and he pushed away from them to float toward the giant Mecha.
“Get in the damn thing,” Gonsalves called. “Don’t come out until you can act human again.”
“I’m not addicted!” Matt yelled back at him.
Laughter was his only answer.
It didn’t matter. What did they know? It was his Mecha, and if he was addicted, maybe that was just fine. He irised open the pilot’s cockpit and dove in, not even bothering to remove his jumpsuit. It didn’t matter. Matt snugged on the viewmask and closed the iris, feeling the warm magnetorheological gel flood the chamber.
Mesh, he thought.
Warmth exploded inside him. It was like being taken apart and reformed into another being—a being with atomic energy in its veins. Matt shivered in pure pleasure. He could do anything. Be anything. He could break through the dock doors and be free. He could rule Tierrasanta like a king.
Matt forced his rushing thoughts to slow. Yes. He could. And deep within non-Union space, he’d probably quickly meet a Corsair faction like the Cluster. Maybe they had enough tech to take him on. Better to stay here and play defense.
Matt sighed. Everything that Gonsalves said rang true. He’d been out of his mind.
Addicted.
* * *
“So, are you ready to hear how you can help us?” Gonsalves said when Matt came out of the Mecha.
The security guards were gone, but Ione still watched him steadily with her yellow-and-violet eyes. Those enchanting eyes.
“Help you?”
“Yes. Despite your addiction, you aren’t a complete idiot,” Gonsalves said. “You called it before. We’re out of funds. I stripped the secure dock, I hocked my own stuff, I sold bonds to all the crew, and we’re still in a pinch.”
“I won’t sell the Demon,” Matt said.
“That’s not what I’m thinking about.”
“Then what is it?”
“The Cluster is here. They’re one of the two or three richest Corsair factions. They could pay for our repairs out of the change they find in their couch.”
Matt shook his head. The phrase meant nothing to him.
“Old Earth expression,” Gonsalves said.
Like Michelle. Easy as pie. A pang of regret and loneliness pass through Matt. What was she doing right now? Enjoying a stay on Eridani? Or wiping out more innocents in the name of the Union?
Gonsalves saw his reaction. “What’s the matter?”
“Thinking of someone,” Matt told him. “Someone from Earth.”
Gonsalves blinked. “Earth native?”
“Yes.”
The captain sighed, and his eyes went blurry and unfocused, as if he were looking at something far away. “I’ve always wanted to visit Earth.”
“It’s a backwater.”
“It’s our damn home!” Gonsalves exploded. “The origin. Where we started. Doesn’t that mean anything to you?”
Matt held back a chuckle, remembering the hot and smelly Cape Canaveral swamps. “Why don’t you go?”
“Because the Union controls it!” Gonsalves said. “Why do they have a right to monopolize Earth?”
Matt shook his head, surprised at Gonsalves’s heated outbursts. It was like seeing a small piece of his soul. “What do you have in mind?” Matt asked.
“For what?”
“For me.”
Gonsalves blinked. “Yeah. You. Here’s the idea. The Cluster would pay good money to have a chat with a real live Mecha Corps officer.”
Matt started. A chat? More like an interrogation. They’d want Union secrets. And he wasn’t ready to simply sell the Union out.
“No,” Matt said.
“They wouldn’t have to be real answers,” Gonsalves said.
“I can’t do it.”
Gonsalves went red. “You’ve seen what the Union has done. And you still want to protect them?”
“No.”
“Then why not?” Gonsalves asked.
“I don’t want another Geos.” Rayder’s attack. Five million dead. Even if the Union was experimenting on HuMax, their civilians didn’t deserve to be slaughtered.
Gonsalves winced. “Yeah. I hear you. But I’m out of options. Either I find some more funds or we’re going to be parted out right here where we sit.”
Matt shook his head.
“You don’t understand, do you? If they take us apart, they’ll absolutely get your Demon. And you. And Ione. And whatever else they want.”
Matt frowned. That was a problem. And he couldn’t just get in his Demon and set out on his own. There were too many question marks. “What’s to stop them from taking me with them?”
“We do it on Tierrasanta, under the protection of the Aliancia. Even the Cluster won’t chance their heavy-matter guns.”
“You’ve thought this
through.”
Gonsalves gave Matt a thin, sad grin. “I’ve had a lot of time to think about it.”
Matt sighed. “No other choice?”
“None.”
How bad could it be? Matt wondered. He could pick and choose what he would tell them. And when it came to Union defense, he didn’t really know that much. He knew even less about Mecha tech. And maybe this would be his chance to ask about those segmented Mecha. The Loki.
“A half hour. No more.”
Gonsalves blew out a big breath, all the tension leaving his body. “Thank you. I’ll get it set up.”
* * *
They shuttled Matt down to La Malinche and took him on a train to a large government building, where the Cluster had set up a conference room. A magistrate of the Aliancia courts and his retinue sat as observers on one side of a large oval table, and Captain Gonsalves and his armed guards sat at another.
The Cluster had sent only one man. He walked into the room, exchanged pleasantries with the Aliancia and with Captain Gonsalves, then went to sit next to Matt. He was a thin, dark-skinned man with deep brown unblinking eyes. He wore the same formfitting uniform as the two Corsair Mecha handlers, but with an additional gray stripe on his shoulder.
“Thank you, Major Lowell, for talking with us,” he said mildly, extending a hand. “I’m Petr Volinsky, ranked subcommander in the Cluster.”
Matt made himself shake the subcommander’s hand. His grip was firm and his hand was cool. The man displayed little emotion, and his eyes fixed Matt with a calm stare.
“I see you wore your Neural Interface,” Petr said. “That will make this a lot easier.”
“What do you—”
But that was as far as Matt got. The subcommander extracted a small black box and slate from his pocket and pressed a button, and suddenly the conference room disappeared.
Matt stood on an endless gray field, dimly lit by an unseen sun. His heart thundered as he whipped around, trying to figure out where he was. He tried to yell, but he had no voice. He raised his hands, but he couldn’t see them. His body wasn’t there! He was nothing, just a disembodied mind.
