Mecha Corps (15 page)

Matt opened his eyes. He was dimly aware of mirrored muscle catching glints of light beyond the NPP, but it didn’t matter, it didn’t matter at all, it wasn’t just him, it was both of them and Soto was yelling at them to stop it. It was too soon, and it was too dangerous.

 

The thing that stood on the practice field was two times the mass and size of a Hellion. Obsidian and fire, it towered over Major Soto’s pristine Mecha.

Soto screamed at it. “UnMerge now! That’s an order! Acknowledge, cadet!”

Soto’s words were so far away. Unimportant. Instead, he chose to run toward Soto. The giant Mecha took a few jerky steps as Kyle’s thoughts reverberated.
No, no, don’t. Not now. Please let’s just listen to him!

Soto’s Hellion pounced, driving spikes deep into the Merged Hellion’s Control Nexuses.

Matt screamed in agony, and his consciousness snapped out into complete whiteness.

When he awoke, he was back in his Hellion . . . and Kyle was back in his.

They sat on the ground opposite Soto’s Flight Pack–equipped Mecha. The major stood in his open cockpit, looking down at them, expression cycling between disgust and awe.

 

Matt wasn’t surprised when everyone steered clear of him in the cafeteria, or when they ran through their exercises with him gingerly the next day, as if expecting him to try to absorb them too.

What did surprise him was Major Soto showing up on the doorstep to his tiny little apartment, dressed Mecha-casual, and looking profoundly nervous.

“May I come in?” Major Soto asked.

Matt stood openmouthed for a moment. Then: “Of course, Major.”

Soto went and took the seat in front of the tiny desk. His eyes skated off Matt’s face to dart around the room, as if he were looking for something to comment on. Of course, there was nothing, not even Matt’s old Imp model.

Matt couldn’t let the silence stretch any longer. “Sir, if this is about the unauthorized Merge the other day, I’ve been reading up on it, and I’m sorry—”

Soto laughed. “ ‘Sorry,’ he says.”

“I don’t understand.”

“You’re sorry. For one of the most amazing feats I’ve ever seen.” Soto shook his head. “It takes a full Mecha Corps member—not a cadet—months to learn how to Merge a Hellion with a Flight Pack. To Merge two Mecha, it takes the better part of a year.”

Matt stood stock-still, staring.

“It seemed natural, sir.”

Another laugh. “Natural. Okay.”

Matt waited for Major Soto to speak. When he did, his mouth pulled down into a deep frown. “We have an opportunity for you.”

“You don’t seem happy about it.”

Soto eyed Matt, his face still grim. “We’re already running too fast and loose.” He sat back in his chair and sighed. When he looked at Matt again, new respect showed in his eyes. “We’ve been lucky because most of the old Corps are military. So far. But this is no way to run training. Roth knows it, but this is his game, so we play by his rules. . . .” Soto trailed off. He stood back up and paced, visibly uneasy.

“What’s the opportunity, sir?” Matt asked.

“Running a full First Exercise. Up on the surface. Hellion with real ammo, weapons fully enabled, realistic assignment.”

That’s what I saw coming down from the Displacement asteroid,
Matt thought.
Those green sparks flying through the clouds. Visible from space.
He shivered with excitement.

But why was Soto so rattled?

“Sir, if you were in my position, would you take it?”

Soto turned to fix Matt with a steady stare. “At your age, of course I would. Now I’m old enough to say, ‘Whoa, that might be a bit much a bit too soon.’ ”

Matt nodded.

“But I’m not the one who’s being asked,” Soto said. “Only answer that’s worth a damn is yours. So, what’s it gonna be, Superman?”

The next day, Matt’s Hellion rode the rails up from underground Training Camp City to stand alone on the surface.

To his right, an amber sun bloomed over the steel-colored Atlantic, backlighting the black bones of the long-dead launch platforms. Behind him, the rust-stained block of Mission Control squatted. Inside, bright blue-white lights glared through slit windows. He imagined Sergeant Stoll sitting at her console and Soto brooding over her. In that moment, he saw everything as a whole, as if from outside himself.

It was a haunting, powerful scene: the fluid chrome of his Hellion set against the ruins of the birth of human spaceflight. Power rising from the Earth once again.

Every cell in Matt’s body resonated with excitement in the infinite confidence of Mesh. Soto was wrong. This wasn’t too fast. This was going to be easy.

Easy as pie,
Matt thought, remembering Michelle’s words.

“Transmission garbled. Repeat.” Sergeant Stoll’s comms icon popped to the fore of Matt’s NPP.

Matt felt his face go red. He didn’t realize he’d spoken out loud. Then he grinned. “Easy as pie.”

“Easy as what?” Sergeant Stoll asked.

“Pie.”

“Pie, as in the ancient American dessert, or pi as in the irrational number?”

“As in the dessert.”

Silence for a time. Matt imagined Sergeant Stoll’s brow furrowed in silent rebuke.

“What if it isn’t?” she asked.

“Isn’t what?”

“Easy.”

Matt laughed. He was in a Hellion, high on Mesh. He’d Merged before any cadet should be able to.
Everything
was easy.

“Enough team-building crap,” Major Soto’s voice came through the comms. “Are you ready, Cadet Lowell?”

“Yes, sir!” Matt couldn’t help coming to attention.

“Yes, sir,” Stoll said.

“Cadet Lowell, your assignment today is to recover Universal Government ambassador hostage Petra Novograd from Corsair Confederacy Attachment Seventeen.”

Data streamed onto Matt’s viewscreen. Attachment 17 was one of the more violent splinters of the Corsairs. They did the usual piracy thing, but seasoned it with a side of sadism. According to Matt’s display, they were located in the town of Cochran’s Cove about one mile to the north. Their offensive and defensive weapon profiles both read UNKNOWN.

“Do you understand the situation, cadet?” Sergeant Stoll said.

“Yes, Sergeant Stoll,” Matt said.

“Your assignment is to recover the hostage with zero civilian involvement,” Stoll told him. “Acknowledge assignment.”

“Acknowledged, ma’am.” In the darkness of his Mecha, dim glints of metallic muscle twitched in anticipation.

“Begin assignment.”

Sweating in his skin-tight silicone control suit, he lifted one foot and felt the giant Hellion respond. Around his tiny Mecha pilot’s chamber, biometallic muscles flowed and clenched.

And Matt’s lips curled up.
Easy as pie.

He turned his Hellion north. Gleaming leg muscles tensed, and suddenly he was gone, parting the morning mist like a juggernaut.

 

They had Cochran’s Cove set up like any of a hundred dump-and-dip towns on any water world on the edge of humankind’s expansion outside of the Union. Easy to dump your cargo in the muddy bay, and great to dip your overheated drive in for a quick cool-down and reprovision. Matt had lived for days or weeks in a hundred towns like it, gagging from the reek of dead fish cooked by the waste heat of ships and freight.

The outskirts of town were built from the detritus of space: shells of old drop cans, silo containers, end-of-life solar panels, pop-up Insta-tents. The town proper was the grim, poured-cement architecture of lowest possible price, pocked here and there with artillery fire.

From one of the taller buildings, the thousand-daggers flag of the Corsairs fluttered, bloodred on white. The Corsair ships—and Matt’s hostage—were undoubtedly in the bay. That meant Matt had to go through the town. Where the Corsairs could have entire battalions hidden.

As Matt sprinted into town, the crack of AK-47s split the damp dawn. Matt grunted as depleted-uranium bullets spattered off his Hellion’s skin. They were a small annoyance. He was too high on Mesh; every thought turned seamlessly into action, every movement a sensation of ecstasy.

It was amazing. The painful tear of the suit had fallen away. Matt was only peripherally aware of the thrusts and jabs he made with his arms and legs, and of the flowing and bunching of the biometallic muscles in the dark around him as the Hellion responded to his commands. He was no longer inside the cramped cockpit in the Mecha’s chest. He’d stepped through.

Now the itch of the bullets was joined by the dull pain of heavy artillery. Matt winced as shells struck the Hellion’s chest and arms. But it was still a distant irritation through the pleasure of Mesh.

A smartshell flashed at him, and Matt’s arm suddenly flared with acid-dipped pain. He screamed in frustration as the giant biomech lurched and fell against a pockmarked building. Matt thrust with his half-dead arm, trying to regain his balance, but he couldn’t get up.

CONTROL NEXUS FAULT, his screen read. The countdown to regeneration began: 42, 41, 40 . . .

He flailed on the ground. More smartshells appeared on his viewscreen, dotted lines of destruction arcing at him from the bay. They closed the distance, flicker fast.

“Reposition,” Sergeant Stoll said.

“Trying!” Matt said. The smartshells arrowed at him.

At the last moment, Matt crouched and sprang blindly. His Hellion crashed into another building and flailed helplessly, but the missiles impacted harmlessly on the tarry road.

A new, bigger group of smartshells appeared on Matt’s screen.

Matt levered his Hellion upright, sweat dripping from his forehead. His viewscreen counted down seconds—30, 29—to complete healing, but he didn’t have time to wait. He couldn’t risk another wild leap either. The missiles blazed at him—and this time they’d surely calculated his maneuverability.

Fireflies,
Matt thought. His mapping algorithms flashed to the fore, but Matt ignored the screen.
There. There. There.
He could feel the enemies.

Tiny Firefly rounds, white-hot and semismart, sprung from his Mecha’s chest, flashing toward the artillery. For a moment, Cochran’s Cove burned brighter than midday, all the color leached in the radiant light of the Fireflies. Matt had momentary glimpses of terrified holographic faces before the Fireflies extinguished the artillery gunners forever.

His kill list scrolled four names and reported the all-important status: NO COLLATERAL CASUALTIES. Even more important, the regeneration chime sounded. Matt sprang to his feet.

“Easy as pie,” Matt said.

Sudden heat flared in Matt’s chest, doubling him over. Through slitted eyes, he saw the source of the attack: a tank. His screen tagged it as TAIKONG X-6/LASER PLASMA CANNON.

Matt danced forward. “Okay,” he said. “Let’s play.”

In three long jumps, Matt crashed down on top of the Taikong tank. It cranked its laser cannon toward the sky, but the tank was painfully slow. Matt reached down with a skeletal hand, picked up the Taikong, and shook it like a rattle.

Two more tanks rounded a rough stone building, lasers blazing. The Hellion’s biometal glowed in the lasers’ attack. The pilot’s chamber was suddenly a convection oven. Matt felt his exposed skin crisping. But he never flinched. Flexing the Hellion’s muscles, he crumpled the tank and threw it at the other two. The Taikong wreckage struck the ground and spun, taking laser fire and spraying molten orange metal. The tank struck one of the others. Both went up in a brilliant burst of fire.

But the last Taikong kept coming. It was different from the others. It gleamed like Matt’s Hellion, though its flanks didn’t ripple with biomechanical muscle.

The Taikong’s laser tracked Matt as it sped forward. The dull red threads turned bright yellow. Matt pushed through waves of heat and grabbed at the tank, but his Hellion’s fingers only scrambled for purchase on its slick surface. Matt tore at the tank’s laser cannon. It came off in a burst of plasma and sparks. Matt glimpsed the faces of the white-painted men inside the tank—eyes wide, mouths open in a scream.

Matt took the tank in both hands and held it. He felt something welling up, something that felt very, very good and that strained for release. A low rumble built within his Hellion’s core. Blue waves of force exploded from both of its palms. The tank blazed white and vaporized.

Seconds later, the dull boom from Matt’s Fusion Handshake echoed back from distant swamplands.

Matt hung limp, for a moment drained by the power of the Fusion Handshake. He hadn’t even known it was enabled. He hadn’t thought. He’d just . . . imagined it.

“Cadet Lowell, update situation,” Sergeant Stoll said.

Matt panted and said nothing.
Easy as pie, and fun like nothing else.

“Update situation!”

Sergeant Stoll’s tone was urgent. Matt looked up—

—right into the eyes of an Imp-class Mecha, painted with the thousand-daggers insignia of the Corsairs.

Matt froze. Corsairs didn’t have Mecha. Nobody had Mecha except the Universal Union. For several long moments he remained openmouthed, unable to move.

But Imps were ancient. His toy Imp had been hugged to sleep for a dozen years while he dreamed of the day he might drive his own. But Imps were pure mechanical tech. Not much more than overgrown Powerloaders. Nothing like his Hellion.

The Imp lumbered at him. It was almost comically slow, but then it managed to slam into him with a force like a billion-ton cargo freighter. His Hellion’s feet came off the ground. Matt gasped, the wind knocked out of him. For a moment, Matt wanted to laugh. He was flying through the air in the arms of a childhood toy.

The Imp shoved his Hellion through the side of a concrete building, sending metal desks and wall screens and filing cabinets and office chairs flying in every direction. Boulder-sized chunks of the building showered the Mecha. Matt glanced the kill list, which showed NO COLLATERAL CASUALTIES.