Mecha Corps (10 page)

“Did we win or did we lose?” Jahl asked.

Matt almost laughed. He had no idea. Michelle paced beside her Eel. Kyle sat on the edge of the Eel cockpit, studying the walls of the cage.

An almost subsonic hum shook bits of sand and rock from the ceiling, tinking on the metal grate.

“Look,” Ash said, pointing at the inner steel door. It rose slowly into the ceiling. It revealed a polished floor, reflecting bright blue-white light. Two strong, muscular legs stood in the middle of the floor. As the door rose higher, Matt wasn’t surprised to see that it was Major Soto.

Behind Major Soto rose a miniature city, set under a brilliant blue sky. It was like something you’d see in the
Future Ideals of the Union
video. To one side, streamlined, graceful towers, connected by transit tunnels with bright-lit cars sliding like strings of pearls. Broad avenues carried gray-uniformed Auxiliaries and blue-suited Corps hurrying to their jobs. To the other side there was a broad blacktop training area, covered with markings like a giant football field. Eventually the blacktop area gave way to more natural rock, trees, and grass. In the natural area, concrete slabs simulated a town. They were heavily cracked and cratered.

Matt swallowed hard, trying to hide his awe. It was an underground city under a simulated sky. The sun streaming down on them was likely a small fusion reactor, riding rails set into the ceiling.

“Welcome,” Major Soto said, “to the real training camp.”

Two days on Earth. Two hours in underground Mecha Training Camp. Matt stood on his tiny balcony in Cadet Housing and looked out over the bustle of the city, drained and numb. Part of it was simple fatigue. Part of it was the beating he’d taken from the interface suit. And part of it was the incredible vista in front of him.

Cadet Housing looked right up one of the main avenues of the mini city. Auxiliaries and Mecha Corps hurried up and down the broad boulevard, beneath a fake sky that had faded to purple twilight and stars. The crowd moved quickly and purposefully, intent on their business. Almost everyone walked alone. The few couples kept a tense distance between them. Eyes locked forward, looking at something beyond the edge of the horizon.

Matt knew that look. Every refugee ship had its share of people lost in endless drudgery. Workaholics. Obsessives. Or those who lived only for the bar at the end of the day. Alcoholics. Addicts.

Love without joy, Pat had called it. Pat Osaki was boss of the gardens on the
Rock
, the Displacement Drive ship that had picked him up after his father’s murder.

In contrast with the passersby, small, bright-lit signs advertised businesses centered around entertainment: JAKE’S TAVERN; IL TRATTORIA, A RESTAURANT; PENNI ARCADE ADVEN-TURELAND; REAL-SIM VIDEOTOPIA (FEATURING
CORSAIR RAIDER REVENGE 7
&
TWO WORLDS: A LOVE STORY
); SEACURSIONS & EARTH TOURS; MECHA CORPS SPECIAL SERVICES.

Above the throngs, big adverboards cast a garish light. The one closest to him ran a PSA on the Union’s most-wanted Corsairs. Number 1 was represented by only a silhouette and a single name: Rayder.

Everyone knew Rayder, but few had ever glimpsed him. They called him the General in Shadows. He kept well-hidden, despite leading some of the most daring and direct raids on Union worlds in the past decade. Rayder loved high-profile targets. He’d recently destroyed an entire Universal Union Displacement Drive cruiser in a skirmish near Epsilon, deep inside the Union.

Matt’s hands twisted on the chrome rail, remembering once again, all of a sudden, in vivid detail that last day with his father. That was more like a Corsair: strike at the edge of the Union, kill defenseless people for money you can get from black-marketing stolen tech, then run and hide. Corsairs were only loosely organized. If they couldn’t fight the Union, they’d happily hit the Aliancia or the Taikong, or fight among themselves.

“Hey,” a voice came up from below.

Matt looked down. Michelle stood on the balcony one floor beneath him, one room over.

“Hey, yourself,” Matt called, telling himself,
You’re not here for this.

Michelle leaned on the railing and looked out over the city. After her first greeting, she seemed content to ignore him. The silence stretched like a challenge.

Matt was first to speak. “Have you ever been off Earth?”

Michelle looked back up at him, her expression suddenly grim. “Not even to orbit.”

Instantly, Matt wanted to take her on a Displacement Drive ship. He wanted to lie out on its surface and watch the stars change with her. “What’ll you do when you’re out there?”

Michelle’s face compressed in concentration, and she looked at Matt for several long moments. For the first time, Matt thought she really saw him.

“You think I’ll make it.” A statement, not a question.

“Yes.”

“Don’t feed me bullshit.” But her tone was neutral.

“I’m not,” Matt said. Thinking of Kyle, of his calculating words.

Michelle swallowed and looked away. “Gotta get through this first.”

“We will,” Matt told her.

“You can’t say that for sure.”

Matt nodded. Three others had walked out after the Eels. There were eleven cadet candidates left. Only about a third of their original group. And they still hadn’t gotten in a Mecha.

“Yes, I can. So can you.”

Michelle nodded, but her expression went tight-lipped. She looked back out over the city. Matt let the silence stretch out. After a while, Michelle waved and went back into her room. Matt heard the door slide open and shut.

“Good going,” said another voice beside him. Matt leaned farther out of the balcony to look. Ash was two doors down from him.

“Thanks,” Matt said. “I think.”

Ash nodded. “She’s skittish. Got lots of walls up.”

“I’m not . . .” Matt trailed off. He wasn’t what? Human?

“Problem with the skittish ones: sometimes they don’t get close enough to make the right choice. Y’know?”

“No,” Matt said, laughing. “I have no idea what you mean.”

Ash laughed with him. “Lotsa folks say that. Well, g’night.” Matt heard the sliding door again.

After a while, he went back in. His room was tiny and severe. A single bed done in three shades of gray covers. Two bare shelves beside the bed. A table and chair built into the wall. There was a single button on the desk marked EMERGENCY COMMS.

Matt went to the door and twisted the knob. It didn’t turn. A small screen above the knob flashed bright orange words: ACCESS TO TRAINING CAMP SUBFACILITY IS LIMITED AT CADET CANDIDATE LEVEL. THIS ROOM IS SEALED FOR YOUR PROTECTION.

Matt nodded. Everything they’d been through so far made sense. Minimize the budget while weeding out the incompatible candidates. Invite the remainder into an exclusive club. Then ensure they can’t do anything stupid if they got second thoughts.

Yeah. It made sense. It was also scary as hell.

What had he gotten into?

 

The next morning, Soto and the Auxiliaries made the cadet candidates put on their interface suits before transport through the city. The Auxiliaries and Corps on the avenues watched them pass with knowing smirks.

But when the transport pulled up to the blacktop practice field, suddenly it didn’t matter.

On the field, five Mecha stood at ready. Five times the height of a man, they were made of something like black chrome, sculpted into fluid equations of power. Legs bulging with metallic muscle supported a massive, ridged torso pockmarked with shuttered, carbon-burned apertures.

Powerful arms serrated with razor-sharp protrusions terminated in skeletal talons that looked like they could rip through steel as easy as paper.

A spiked head with mirrored visor reflected the crawl of white clouds in the artificial sky above. They looked more alive than mechanical, more grown than made.

Matt shivered, his heart racing.
This is why I’m here.

“Hol-ee shit,” Ash said, jumping off the transport. Murmurs of appreciation rippled through the ranks of cadet candidates as they lined up in front of the Mecha. Michelle looked up at the Mecha in raw hunger. The Khoury brothers were silent, and even Serghey seemed at a loss for a dickish comment. Only Kyle seemed unimpressed. He stood with his arms crossed, his expression relaxed and almost a little bored.

“These are Hellion-class Mecha,” Major Soto said. “They are not trainers or simulators. They are exactly the same as the front-line units.”

Major Soto nodded at Sergeant Stoll, who held a small slate. She keyed a long sequence into the device.

The Mecha closest to them crouched down in a fluid, organic motion. Unlike a Powerloader or an Imp, it made almost no noise, save for a faint metallic squeak. The Mecha’s chest unfolded along invisible seams and opened in six sections like a flower. One of the sections touched the ground, providing steep stairs up to the cockpit.

The cockpit itself was like nothing Matt had ever seen. There was no seat. The only thing inside was a simple body harness, fashioned of the same metal-veined silicone as their interface suits. The top of the harness formed a silicone cap, almost completely shot through with metallic fibers. The walls were plain metal, sculpted into organic forms and striated like muscle.

“In a Hellion, a Corps member is completely encased in the chest cavity. There are no viewports or windows, which provides a high level of protection in combat.”

“How do you see outta it?” Ash asked.

“Nonphysical Projection, or NPP, provides a three-hundred-sixty-degree view from within the cockpit,” Soto said.

“All screens, bad design,” Serghey muttered.

Soto’s eyes rolled heavenward. “Any of you have experience with mechanical Mecha? Imp or Villain class?”

Matt remembered his tiny cubicle on the
Rock
, where his model Imp-class Mecha had kept him company, Velcroed to the wall above his sleeping bag. Compared to the Mecha standing in front of him now, an Imp was laughably old-fashioned. But there were still a few on Aurora, loading and unloading large cargo shuttles.

Serghey and Kyle raised their hands.

“Powerloaders?”

Matt raised his own.

Soto shook his head. “Don’t count on your experience. You can’t run a Hellion like a mechanical Mecha.”

“Principle same. No difference!” Serghey yelled.

“This isn’t force feedback,” Soto said. “The neural interface establishes a direct mind-body connection with the Hellion. It may take days for you to have fine control.”

“I’m quick study,” Serghey said, crossing his arms.

Major Soto nodded. “You’ll get your chance soon. For now, let’s talk sensors and weapons.”

At the mention of weapons, cadets snapped to attention.

“First, the sensor arrays. If you’ve been in Union forces, you already know most of this. Standard visible light, with IR, radar, EM, light amplification, thermal, and compositional overlays. Sound with amplification, rectification, and augmentation. Detection of all known languages, automatic translation. Best you just run through all of those once in the cockpit; we’ve set aside time for that.

“Weapons are different. Standard handheld weapon is an MK-15, 15mm, depleted-uranium slug gun, strong enough to pierce a half meter of carbon-fiber/steel-laminate armor. The MK-15 is plenty for most everything. Corsair fighter on the ground, MK-15. Corsair transport on the ground, MK-15. Corsair in an Aliancia tank, MK-15; Corsair in a Taikong—well, maybe then you gotta move up to short- and medium-range ordnance. Those are your Fireflies and Seekers.”

Major Soto pointed at the small apertures on the Hellion’s chest. “Fireflies are small, semismart rounds closely coupled with the Hellion’s sensor systems. Sweep the area, map the unfriendlies, send out Fireflies, and, bam, no unfriendlies. Or no slow ones, anyway.” He pointed at the larger apertures near the Hellion’s shoulders. “Seekers are larger missiles that have limited steering capability—think armored carriers and Taikong tanks.”

“Second, close-quarter combat. Every once in a while, you’ll come across something that’s really tough. Corsairs dig in, put up all the armor they got, you’re not getting through. For that, we have the Close-Quarters Fusion Pulse, CQFP, or, as we like to call it, the Fusion Handshake.” Major Soto gestured at the Hellion’s hand, where a lam-preylike aperture was visible on the palm. “Grab on, trigger the Fusion Handshake, and that’s pretty much the end for whatever you’re holding on to.”

“Finally, we have the weapon of last resort.” Major Soto nodded at Sergeant Stoll. A compartment unfolded from the side of the Mecha, revealing a dazzling, mirror-plated gun. “The MA-ZERO matter-antimatter rifle, or, as corps call it, the Zap Gun.”

Some gasps and mutters from the cadets. Kyle continued to look unimpressed.
An act?
Matt wondered.
Or is he so high up in government, he’s seen it all?

“Don’t use the Zap Gun unless you really need it. The Corsairs drop an entire battleship on you. You’re out in free space and you’re completely out of ammo. You’re stuck on a rock with a fighter that has zero-permeability coating. Situations like that. The Zap Gun just makes really big things disappear. Forever. Got it?”

Matt grinned and nodded. How could any Corsair stand against that, no matter how superhuman?

“Finally, don’t ever underestimate the power of a Hellion. We’ve disabled all weapons systems for the purpose of today’s test, but even without them, Hellions are one of the most powerful machines ever created. Don’t push it.”

“No sufficient Mecha for all,” Serghey bleated. “How we choose—flip coin?”

Soto nodded. “We go in shifts. Serghey, you can be in the first group.” Soto pointed out four more cadets. Ash and Michelle were the ones Matt knew by name.

“Here’s what you’ll do,” Soto said. “You’ll get in the Mecha. You’ll put on the neural interface and Mesh.”