Mecha Rogue (15 page)

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—

Flash.
He was sitting back in the conference room, amid the babble of angry voices.

“—no unadmitted technology aids, we told you!” the Aliancia magistrate yelled at the subcommander. Captain Gonsalves's security men stood, pointing stubby Aliancia J-40 pistols at the Cluster's man.

Petr held up his box and slate. “It is off.”

“This is a civilized discussion, not a mind rape!” the Aliancia magistrate grumbled. “Either you converse with this man or you leave.”

“If it is civilized to wear a neural interface, it is civilized to use technological aids to facilitate discussion,” the subcommander said mildly.

“You will give the neural interface to my staff if you wish to continue,” the magistrate said as two new men flanked Petr.

The subcommander smiled and stood. “That will not be necessary. Thank you for your time, Major Lowell.”

Matt just blinked up at the man, brutal afterimages from his Perfect Record scattering his thoughts. Done? He was done? It didn't make sense.

“The monetary part of the contract is binding, whether you terminate the discussion early or not,” Captain Gonsalves said.

Petr nodded. “It has already been made good. I wish you an excellent day, Captain.”

Matt watched, stunned, as the man walked out the door.

What the hell was that technology?

And—even more frightening—had he gotten the information he'd come for?

10

BETWEEN

Captain Hector Gonsalves's secret home, Esplandian, was one of the most bizarre places Matt had ever seen.

At one time, Esplandian had been just a large oblong asteroid, twenty kilometers on its short axis and thirty-three kilometers on its longer side. Ejected from a solar system a few billion years in the past, it had found its way to the dead, dark space between stars, where Displacement Drive ships almost never passed.

By dumb luck, an early Displacement Drive ship had detected it in the first days of the Expansion, but had never thought to add it to the catalogue of systemless objects in deep space. No real wonder; in those days, such a mass was too large to turn into a Displacement Drive ship, too small to be a meaningful gravity well, and too far from the nearest sun for easy solar power.

And that would probably have been the end of the wandering rock if Hector Gonsalves's great-grandfather four times removed hadn't been on the ship that found the asteroid. Because, twenty years later, he returned to claim the mass for himself, not as a ship but as a home.

The story was that he'd foreseen the HuMax rising as a threat to humanity, and wanted a safe harbor away from the early colonies at the dawning of the Expansion. Or at least that's what Hector told them as they approached the giant asteroid on a cramped shuttle filled with crewmen from the
El Dorado.

Matt only half listened, staring at the amazing thing before him. Over the last two hundred years, Esplandian had been hollowed out, built up, and refitted into a small city in space.

Buildings made of native concrete and steel stuck out of the asteroid at crazy angles, with warm yellow light streaming through ten thousand pinprick windows. At one end of the asteroid, a sprawling junkyard of spaceships covered the native stone. Matt picked out battle-scarred Taikong freighters, utilitarian Union transports, and ancient open-scaffold ships bearing the flags of dead Earth nations. Most had been cannibalized for parts. On the other side of the asteroid, open space docks hosted a similar bizarre array of functional spacecraft. Across the middle of the rock, some enterprising souls had rearranged boulders to approximate the Corsair thousand-dagger flag.

“. . . and that's the only reason they call my brother, Federico, ‘mayor of Esplandian,'” Captain Gonsalves was saying when Matt tuned back in. “Our family founded this place and built it to the fifty thousand souls you see today.”

Matt suddenly understood a lot more about why Captain Gonsalves was a Corsair, and why his particular faction operated the way it did. In some ways, Captain Gonsalves was more of a refugee than Matt ever was. He wasn't just displaced from his home planet. He'd never had a planet at all. Esplandian was his entire life. But he wasn't really a Corsair in the sense Matt had been taught to understand them.

“Where are we?” Matt asked.

“In the Space Between,” Hector told him. “Where nobody would look for us. Hell, where nobody would expect us.”

“I mean, relative to the Union.”

Hector laughed. “That's the real funny part. We're actually just beyond the Union Core, at the interface with Aliancia Space.”

So close! Their location unnerved Matt. That was closer in to Eridani than many of the Union colony worlds. If the Union had known about Hector's Esplandian, they would have wiped him out long ago. They wouldn't even bother with Mecha, since there was nothing to preserve here. They'd just send a warship and slice it to pieces.

Another laugh. “I know what you're thinking. But no worries.”

“We're near the Union?” Ione asked, leaning against Matt as if for comfort.

Hector shook his head. “A few billion kilometers of Space Between is better isolation than a thousand light-years. There's no reason for them to ever come here. They're interested in worlds on convenient routes, not rocks in the middle of nowhere.”

Matt hoped Hector was right. It was unsettling being so close to the Union. It was also frustrating. It reminded him of his pledge to find out what was really going on with the Union . . . and fix it.

At the time it had seemed almost possible. He was Mecha Corps, one of the most highly trusted cadres in the Union military establishment. He talked to people like Dr. Salvatore Roth and Colonel James Cruz. Hell, he'd been on an FTLcomm conference with the Union's prime!

Now, stuck in the middle of the Space Between, on a ragtag Corsair asteroid, what the hell could he do about the Union? Nothing.

And maybe that's okay,
he told himself.
Live your life. Let the Union deal with their own problems. Stay hidden, and make your mark here.

But what about Michelle? Soto? The billions of other innocent people who trusted the Union implicitly? Did they deserve to be kept in the dark, not knowing what was going on around them?

And even more importantly—what did the future hold, even if he stayed hidden? There was still the mystery of the Corsair Cluster and whatever mind-interface tech they'd used on him. Captain Gonsalves was apologetic, but completely unhelpful. He knew little about the Cluster, other than that they were technologically aggressive. He didn't know what the segmented Mecha were, and he didn't seem to care too much about them. They were as removed from his world as a nanosemiconductor factory was from a miner on Keller.

Matt's knuckles were white on the aluminum brace pole of the Corsair shuttle as they docked. He'd spent most of his years bent on a single purpose: avenging his father's death. Would he ever find his new compass?

The docking bay was filled with families welcoming their sons and daughters back, vendors hawking fast food, and currency exchanges that listed the types of barter items they were looking for. Matt stopped stock-still in the melee, overwhelmed by the press of humanity. Esplandian was warm and humid and smelled of algae and body odor. It was like stepping back into a refugee ship. For a moment, he wanted to turn around and get back in the shuttle and ask the pilot to take him anywhere, it didn't matter where. This was too much like his past. It triggered too many painful memories.

Ione walked several steps ahead of him before turning and looking back quizzically. Captain Gonsalves clapped Matt on the shoulder, almost sending him flying in the microgravity.

“Why don't we talk for a bit, Former Major?” he said, nodding at Ione to include her.

“About what?”

“A job.”

“There aren't job boards here?” Matt asked.

“Of course. But this might be more interesting.”

Reluctantly, Matt nodded and let Captain Gonsalves drag him to a bar that overlooked the docking bay. The proprietor nodded familiarly at Gonsalves and led them to a small, private room in the back. A faded photograph hung over the head of a battered wood table. It showed a pudgy, dark-haired man in a U.S. Space Authority uniform.

Gonsalves nodded at it. “Pedro. My great-great-great-great-grandfather. Or close enough. Founder. You'll see photos of him a lot around here, but it's not like we goose-step around saluting them or anything. People here just like him, and what he created.”

Matt shook his head. He had no idea what the captain was talking about. “What's the job?”

Gonsalves sat down at one end of the table and motioned for Matt and Ione to sit.

“Relax. Have a drink.” He pulled a bottle of dark whiskey out of a cabinet and then took three drink bulbs from it. Ione looked at hers and wrinkled her nose.

“I don't want a job I have to get drunk for,” Matt told the captain.

Gonsalves laughed. “You Union drones. Every one with a steel girder up his ass. This is just a pleasantry. If you don't want it, fine.”

Matt crossed his arms and waited.

Gonsalves glared at him, then blew out a breath. “I was only partially kidding about your Demon being our defense. What do you say about using that thing for us?”

Matt shook his head. “I think I'd rather go to the job boards.”

“This pays better.”

“And?”

“And you'll be working for the Founding Family.”

“Which means?”

“Respect, prestige, confetti at your funeral. Come on, man! You need a new home. We can be that for you. And don't try to say you don't need to get in that thing from time to time. Why not use it for us?”

Matt licked his lips. Captain Gonsalves's mention of his need to use the Demon had immediately spiked his heart rate. A little voice whispered,
Yes, you need it. You know you need it. There's no better feeling in the world. You can do anything in your Demon.

“What about Ione?”

A little smile. “Ione can't run a Mecha, as far as I know.”

“What happens to her if I take this offer?”

“I can use the job boards,” Ione said.

Matt shook his head. Too many times, he'd seen her ready to punch
ACCEPT
on a job that was clearly sketchy. She'd never lived in the real world. For all the abuse in her past, she didn't know how cruel people could be.

“Your job will provide plenty of income for the both of you, if that's your wish.”

“With her own room?”

Gonsalves laughed. “Do we look like a rich world? Families room six to a hundred square meters. You'd stay together.”

“But—” Matt began.

“Plenty of privacy, if that's what you want.”

Ione opened her mouth, as if to speak, then seemed to think better of it. “I can use the boards.”

“No!” both Matt and Gonsalves said, in unison.

Tears glittered in Ione's eyes. “I—I don't need your help.”

Matt put his arm around her waist. It was amazing how natural it felt. Ione let him hold her for a moment, then shrugged him off.

“I want to do this,” he told her.

“So you'll take the job?” Gonsalves chirped, grinning.

Matt sighed and nodded. Only half hating himself.

* * *

Matt spent the next few days getting acquainted with his new home. He and Ione were given a “luxury apartment” in one of the newest concrete towers. Matt supposed it was luxurious compared to a refugee ship. Forty square meters, finished polished stone, with two sleeping areas and a reconfigurable main room. It was clean and competent, but nowhere near inviting. One small window looked out over gray asteroid rock and dust, dark in the dim starlight.

Most of the asteroid was given over to agriculture. Over the past two hundred years, forty percent of its interior had been hollowed out. Fusion tubes ran down the length of the space, illuminating microgravity-tolerant plants within the cylindrical space. Half of the jobs in Esplandian were in or around the farms. Planting, harvesting, weeding, waste recycling, and food processing were the local industries. Completely understandable with fifty thousand people to feed. After one fly-through of the damp, fetid space, Matt was very happy he'd taken Gonsalves's offer.

The asteroid's age had a lot of other ramifications. Since the earliest days, Humans and HuMax had lived together on Esplandian. Its population was almost ten percent HuMax today. There was even a HuMax town, where HuMax bodybuilders and acrobats displayed feats of strength and dexterity that humans could only imagine. Oddly enough, HuMax weren't highly represented in the technology or entrepreneurial side, though.

But there were HuMax doctors. It didn't take long for Matt's curiosity to get the better of him. He talked Ione into seeing one.

Dr. Arksham had a compartment deep in the asteroid, near the constant hammering of the diggers. The space was large, fastidiously clean, and well lit with modern antiseptic lighting. Only a small steel plaque announced the doctor's name and specialties:

 

DR. UVE ARKSHAM

HUMAX & HUMAN PHYSICIAN

SPECIALIZING IN EPIGENETIC COMPLICATIONS

 

The doctor was an older man with silver-gray hair and bright violet-and-yellow HuMax eyes. Other than a slight stoop, he was in amazing physical condition, with sleek musculature that spoke of hours upon hours of time in the gravity centrifuge. He looked from Ione to Matt and back again, before giving her a tentative smile.

“What brings you here today?” he asked.

Matt looked at Ione, but she wasn't paying attention to him. She stared around the office, her eyes wide and fearful. She took a step back toward the door.

Of course, Matt thought. This was like going back to Planet 5.

“It's all right,” Matt told her. “If you want to go, we don't have to do this.”

“I—” Ione's eyes locked on his for a moment, before skittering around the room again. “I don't know.”

“What's the matter?” Dr. Arksham asked.

“She's had a tough life,” Matt said. “This may not have been such a great idea.”

“I can go?” Ione said.

“If you want.”

Ione drew a shuddering breath and nodded. “I think I can do this. If you stay with me. There are no weapons, at least.”

“Weapons?” Arksham exclaimed.

Ione nodded. In fits and starts, with help from Matt, she told the doctor the story of her life on Planet 5 and the experimentation that had been done on the HuMax. Dr. Arksham's expression hardened with almost every word, but he didn't seem surprised at all. When Ione got to her own genetic retranscription, she broke off, tears flowing freely. Matt pulled her close and let her cry, finishing the story for her.

“You're the famous defector,” Dr. Arksham said, looking at Matt.

Matt nodded. The word still hurt.

“How does the truth feel?”

“Not good.”

“Cold reality is better than warm fantasy,” Dr. Arksham said.

Matt nodded. Impulsively, he asked, “Do you hate us?”

Dr. Arksham raised an eyebrow. “Hate you? As in HuMax hate humans, or Corsairs hate Union?”

Matt shook his head. It was a stupid question. He shouldn't have asked it.

“It's all the same level of idiocy,” Arksham continued. “There's no gene for evil. There are only people. Some good, some bad.”