Mecha Corps (27 page)

“You’ll keep doing it until you destroy us all,” Colonel Cruz muttered.

Tomita nodded. “Our colonel poses a valid question. Cadets, how far will you go to Merge the Demon? Far enough to endanger Mecha Base?”

Matt sat silent, as did his companions. There was nothing they could say.

Tomita continued. “Have you learned enough from your last encounters to ensure our safety?”

Matt started to speak, then cut himself off and looked down. Remembering the rush of Mesh and Merge. His first exercise, running out of control to orbit.

Michelle and Kyle stayed silent too.

Tomita’s image flickered again, accompanied by a burst of static. When he came back on, he was nodding. “I’ll take your silence as a negative.”

Tomita turned to address Dr. Roth. “Dr. Roth, do you care to comment on the failures to date, and any plans you have to improve upon the Demon’s Merge capability?”

Roth frowned, visibly bristling at Tomita’s criticism of his Mecha. “The Demon’s Merge capability is flawless,” he began. “However, this project was of significantly greater complexity than anything attempted previously. Upgrades to the biometallic architecture raise the level of neural interface needed. A Demon’s neural interface is significantly more advanced than a Hellion’s, which means it will take more time to master.”

“So your strategy of using raw cadets perhaps was not the best plan of attack?”

Roth crossed his arms. “It’s the only plan. Major Soto’s experiences with the Demon are on record; we have cycled ten other willing Hellion pilots through the Demon with even more dire results, including two deaths.”

“So we keep running these pilots until they too die?” Tomita said.

“I can deploy a thousand Hellions with a thousand skilled pilots anywhere in Corsair space tomorrow,” Colonel Cruz cut in. “I don’t see how Rayder can stand against that.”

“How many thousand-Hellion maneuvers have you deployed, Colonel?” Dr. Roth spat.

Cruz blinked. “None, but it’s a simple scaling—”

“It is not simple scaling. With every additional layer of control, the possibility for failure increases, as does Mecha capture. And that is leaving aside the location problem.”

Cruz grit his teeth and said nothing.

“Location problem,” Matt said, remembering Yve’s words.

Dr. Roth nodded. “We cannot simply assault Rayder surgically, because we have not located his base of operations. So we must be ready with overwhelming force when Rayder appears next.”

What planet might be hit before this is over?
Matt thought.
Aurora? Earth?

“Colonel Cruz, I appreciate your enthusiasm,” Congressperson Tomita said. “It’s an admirable trait in a Union citizen. However, you must accept that there are many valid reasons why a mass Hellion offensive isn’t the best approach, even if we know Rayder’s location.”

“There’s nothing a battalion of Hellions can’t take on!” Cruz asserted. “Congress is being a bunch of scared old ladies.”

Tomita only nodded mildly. “You must also accept there are considerations beyond your purview.”

Cruz ground his teeth. “I hate this cloak-and-dagger crap.” He sat back in his chair and glared sullenly at the other men.

“If I may answer Congressperson Tomita’s question,” Roth said mildly.

“What question?” Tomita asked.

“About whether we would continue to use these components”—Roth nodded at the pilots—“until death.”

“Go on,” Tomita said.

“The answer is no. I am bringing in another team, as well as a backup team, on the UUS
Ulysses
, when it is back from Earth.”

It felt like Matt had been punched in the gut. “You can’t do that!” he cried.

Dr. Roth turned to give Matt a neutral look. “I absolutely can.”

“You’re kicking us out?” Michelle asked, her voice hollow.

Roth shook his head. “I had excellent expectations, given your early results. Unfortunately, you’ve proved to be useless as Demon pilots.”

Useless?
Matt thought. Searing-cold defeat and blinding rage warred in him. “No!” he wailed.

“We can do it!” Michelle yelled.

Auxiliaries moved in to flank the three cadets.

“I apologize for Dr. Roth’s unfortunate choice of words,” Congressperson Tomita said. He turned to Roth. “However, I do concur with your overall assessment, Doctor. Ensure the new cadets are ready when they disembark, and let us all pray they’ll be ready when Rayder strikes next.”

Sergeant Su escorted the three cadets down the hall. Matt’s Mesh hangover pounded at his head even worse than before. Almost as bad as the first time. A thousand thoughts ricocheted in his head:
Gotta find a way to try again, talk to Soto. Can Stoll do anything? Who else can I talk to? Can’t stop now; gotta get back in the Demon.

“It was you,” Kyle said as they neared the end of the long corridor.

“It was me what?”

“You. You broke the Merge. Made us fail.” Kyle’s voice was low and urgent.

“Kyle,” Michelle said, laying a hand on his arm. “You don’t really think that—”

Kyle shrugged away from her touch and glared at Matt, his eyes narrowing in anger. “I heard your thoughts! Your dad. His killer. Your stupid, petty revenge. That’s all you fucking care about.”

Matt was so shocked he couldn’t speak.

“It has nothing to do with the Union. Or Rayder. You’re chasing some ghost,” Kyle said, his voice rising. “You don’t even know if the man is still alive! You put that ahead of us, and you broke the Merge. You killed Ash!”

“Cadets,” Su warned.

Kyle floated up to hover over Matt. “What do we do now? What does Michelle do now?”

Rage lit in Matt.
I remember someone going crazy, but it wasn’t me,
he thought. Matt clamped his jaw tight. It took everything he had not to launch himself at Kyle.

At the same time, he remembered their time together in their pilot’s chambers yesterday and the stories they shared. Why couldn’t it always be like that?

“Kyle, I’m all right,” Michelle said.

“No! You’re not! None of us are. What do we do now?” Kyle’s voice spiraled up and up, screeching.

“Cadets, last warning,” Su said, his hand on his stun stick.

But Kyle got right up in Matt’s face. “How will you make it up to us? Merge wrecker!”

Su pulled his stun stick. “Cadet, stand down!”

“Why? Can’t you see? He ruined our damn lives!” Kyle screamed, his eyes jittering from Su to Matt.

Su brandished the stun stick. “Come with me. You need treatment for Mesh fugue.”

Kyle blinked, his eyes losing some of their angry sheen. “I—I don’t understand.” He backed away from Su.

Su advanced on Kyle. “We can make this hard, or we can make this easy.”

Kyle lashed out at Su. At the touch of the stun stick, he crumpled, limp.

“Kyle!” Michelle cried, going to him.

“Stand back, cadet,” Su said, slinging Kyle over his shoulder. Michelle nodded and pulled herself away.

“Where are you taking him?”

“Infirmary,” Su told them.

“Mesh fugue?” Matt asked. “There’s a treatment for Mecha hangover?”

Su shook his head. “Not so much a treatment. Just tranquilizers. But at least he can sleep through the worst of it.”

“Maybe that’s what I need,” Matt said.

“Not a chance,” Su asserted. “This is only for when it gets real bad. The tranquilizers they use . . . sometimes they work, and sometimes they make it worse.”

Matt looked at Michelle. She returned his stare with wide eyes, then shot off down the hallway without a word.

 

At the residential block, Matt stopped. Why was he going back to his cell like a drone? He was just going through the motions.

A storm raged in his mind, maybe a side effect of Demon Merge. No thought lasted more than an instant. Every emotion peaked and crashed in seconds, only to drive to another peak. He was unsettled to the core.

You’re chasing a ghost
. Kyle’s words.

Kyle was right. He was chasing a ghost. He didn’t even know if his father’s murderer was alive. Or if he was really HuMax.

Matt went to the Decompression Lounge to look for Yve, but the bar was nearly empty in the early morning, except for two guys wearing dirty coveralls and sucking on big bulbs of ale. Diggers coming off shift.

As Matt waited for Yve, his Perfect Record took him back to Prospect. It all came back to the HuMax. The way his dad was the only one allowed in the inner lab. The interlocks on all the data access in the outer lab. How all the other researchers orbited around his dad, their bodies held in awkward tension. As if they were scared of him. As if they knew something of what they were researching and knew it was wrong.

HuMax. HuMax technology.

All the histories read the same. HuMax were created as the logical endpoint of human genetic research. Instead of simply being smarter or stronger or more intuitive, or gifted with better endurance or longer life, they were all of the above and more. Able to live on the most hostile frontier worlds, they were a boon to humanity in the early days of the Expansion into space, after the discovery of the Displacement Drive. It was a rugged universe, and only a handful of worlds were fit to live on. HuMax spread far and fast, quickly establishing colonies on the most challenging worlds. Prospect had been one of their colonies.

Then they turned on unenhanced humans and tried to wipe them out. And they came close. The histories showed ruins of the capital on Eridani after the Human–HuMax War; only twisted girders and shattered stone remained, as far as the eye could see.

But we were supposed to have killed them all,
Matt thought. The Human–HuMax War was nothing less than genocide. It was the defining event of the Union, when humans came together to forge their destiny.

But no history talked about the HuMax’s superior technology. No recent articles even hinted that the Union was studying HuMax tech, unearthing the past.

What had his father been doing? What had he found?

Matt shook his head. That stuff didn’t matter. What mattered was his father’s murderer. He might be chasing a ghost, but what was the best way to find it? To become a Mecha pilot. To Merge the Demon. To take out all the Corsairs. He could do it. He just had to convince them to give him one more chance.

When it was clear Yve wasn’t going to show, Matt went down to the Mecha Corps staff office to look for Soto. The Corps there gave him scornful looks. News of their failure must have traveled fast.

Soto was there, strapped down in an aluminum chair in a cubicle maze of offices. He looked tired, defeated. He listened to Matt plead for another chance, then shook his head. Nothing he could do. Decision from the top. It wasn’t just their team’s loss. It was Soto’s as well. Soto had been ordered to cease his Demon training.

And, looking in Soto’s bloodshot and angry eyes, Matt wondered,
Is he blaming me?

Matt went to the far end of Mecha Base, following the maze of tunnels down to Dr. Roth’s lab. On this side of the base, the corridors gave way from smooth steel to rough, plasti-coated asteroid rock.

Roth’s lab was marked by a simple stainless-steel airlock door bearing an inscription:

Matt stared at the keypad displayed on the door screen. What could he tell Roth? That he was willing to do anything to try Merge again, not just for selfish reasons, but also to beat back the constant Mesh hangover? He had to get in the Demon again to make sure he didn’t end up like Kyle, in nightmarish withdrawal?

But there was more than that. Even over the pounding of his Mesh hangover, Matt realized that he needed to make it up to Roth for the team. For Michelle.

The door screen changed to a head shot of a thin woman wearing a white lab jumper. Her blond hair was cut short, almost a crew cut. She studied him with violet genemod eyes.

“Cadet, this is a secure area,” she said finally.

“I’d hoped to talk to Dr. Roth. I’m—”

“Cadet Matt Lowell. Yes, cadet. We know who you are.”

“Can I see him? Dr. Roth?”

The genemod woman shook her head. “Dr. Roth is occupied. Please return to the main part of Mecha Base, or I’ll call security.”

Matt nodded. Of course. Roth wouldn’t just be sitting behind a desk, waiting to talk to him. Roth probably wouldn’t want to talk to him at all. Matt could only imagine what he might say.
You did what nobody else could do: killed an entire team.

Despair covered Matt like a suffocating blanket. He had gotten so close to making it! He’d gone so far; he’d done so much. But in the end, he’d failed.

 

Matt woke to the soft glow of his wall screens. They showed him images of Geos, of protests on Union core worlds, of ranks of Mecha being prepared for battle. People picketed for the Unitarians: THE TIME FOR ALL-UNION IS NOW! ELIMINATE THE MENACE! EVERYONE UNITED! UNION FORWARD, UNION ALWAYS! The tone of the news was clear: the time for debate and dissent was past. They wanted to wipe out the Corsairs and everything else that stood against the Union, whether it be via Demon, Hellion, or even old-fashioned, world-destroying nukes.

Matt reached over to turn the screen off, and a hand reached out of the dark and clamped down on his arm. A chill rocked through his body.

Matt yelped and looked up. Standing over him was Kyle, wearing a hospital gown. His wide eyes seemed to dance in the soft light of the wall screen. In one hand, Kyle held a scalpel.

“You’re not going to hurt us anymore!” Kyle said, slashing with the scalpel. Matt dodged and put up a hand. The blade cut deep into his palm. It stung hotly as his flesh split. Black drops of blood flew and spattered on the wall screen.