Mecha Rogue (9 page)

Norah's reverse-Firefly attack had gone wide. She grappled with the untouched Hellion, holding the struggling Mecha's visor with one hand. Her arm and hand glowed bright, actinic blue, and the powerful boom of a Fusion Handshake rattled the surface ice like a drum. The Hellion's visor and chestplate folded inward, venting a puff of atmosphere from the pilot's chamber like a dying gasp.

The three Demons stood alone on the freezing world, with the thin shriek of the wind their only companion.

“I just—I just killed someone,” Jie said, his voice thick with remorse. “In a Hellion. Are they Union Mecha? Was he one of ours?”

“You're just now realizing this?” Norah cut in.

“Can someone please tell me if I just killed a Corsair, or Mecha Corps?” Jie's voice choked through tears.

“Can it!” Matt yelled, feeling terrible. He had the same doubts. “We have our orders. And we'll get through this, one way or another.”

“Yes, sir,” the two adepts said.

Matt breathed deeply, willing his heart to slow its thunderous beat. Everything was upside down, as if he were free-falling over an infinite dark plain. Here he was, fighting the Union's own Mecha. And this was only the beginning.

Next was whatever was down that fissure.

* * *

Matt crawled cautiously to the edge of the ravine. The fissure was heavily reinforced with metallic struts, its edges deeply gouged by industry. In the center squatted a massive construction of steel and semitransparent duraplas, almost a full kilometer long. The top section of the structure ballooned up, held in place with the metallic ribs Matt had seen earlier. Matt's enhanced sensors showed an interior temperature that suggested a climate fit for people, and residual oxygen leakage indicated that the thing was pressurized.

Next to the structure, a flat expanse of steel with thruster burns served as a rough spaceport. At one end of the spaceport stood a twenty-meter-diameter air lock. Big enough to admit Demons. Or conceal more Hellions.

But that didn't make sense. Why would they hold Hellions back? The rest of the fissure didn't hold any visible weapons.

“We can just blast the roof, sir,” Norah said.

Matt turned to look at her Demon. It had joined him at the edge of the fissure. Jie hung back, as if still shaken by the battle. His claim about not caring about his long life was long gone.

“Our orders are to kill anything moving,” Norah added. “It seems like the easiest solution.”

“Easy doesn't make it right,” Matt told her, his bile rising. This wasn't a mission. This was extermination. And he wasn't going to simply close his eyes and take the easy way out. Not anymore.

To Norah and Xie, he rationalized, “Easy also isn't definitive. What happens if the structure is full of pressurized chambers? Blow the roof off and they wouldn't even notice.”

“It limits their movement,” Norah said. “And makes them more likely to freeze to death.”

“We'll go in through the air lock, Adept. Why don't you lead us down and unlock it?”

“Yes, sir!” Norah said, her voice thick with sardonic respect.

Norah fired thrusters and descended into the fissure, trailing long waves of fusion heat. Matt half expected her to take fire, but the chasm was cold and dead. Not a single weapons tag floated in his POV. No life signs wrapped in space suits. Nothing. After the Hellions, it was almost too quiet.

Matt motioned for Jie to follow Norah. Jie's Demon blasted off and descended to join her on the fusion-scarred spaceport decking. Norah advanced to the air lock, taking a position to its side.

Matt fired his thrusters and descended into the fissure. Diffuse sunlight made the sheet ice walls glow sky-blue against the dark metal of the scaffolding. It was almost like descending into a clear blue ocean. Peaceful. Almost serene.

And that wasn't the only thing that was peaceful. The spaceport was unscarred by Firefly or Sidewinder fire. There weren't even any telltale dimples from depleted-uranium rounds. If this facility had been compromised by Corsairs fighting the Union Mecha, they'd been awfully discreet. There was no sign of a struggle at all.

When he reached the other two Demons, Norah was bent over the air lock's control panel. It bore the logo of United Technologies. That was a Union contractor.

This is a Union installation.

Matt rocked back, shivering with a strange sense of unreality. A Union installation? Out here? Why did they send him to a Union facility? What the hell was inside?

Norah finished her work at the control panel. The
CYCLING
light flashed red and the doors shivered, dislodging flakes of ice. After long moments, the doors cracked open, exhaling a pale puff of residual atmosphere.

“Get back,” Matt told them, stepping to one side of the doors, Zap Gun ready.

Norah and Jie ducked to the other side. Matt waited patiently as the doors rumbled fully open. Dim worklights illuminated a space filled with scarred yellow plastic pressure crates. Matt ducked his head for a better look.

Matt's POV jerked and rolled as his visor rocked back. Stitches of depleted-uranium bullets
spanged
off his hide as a dim figure inside struggled to tame the bucking gun.

Matt blinked, finally getting a good look at his assailant. His mouth dropped open in amazement. The gun was an MK-16, full Hellion issue. But it wasn't a five-meter-tall Hellion holding it. It was a person.
A thing.
Something three and a half meters tall, its body wrapped head to toe in carbon-fiber weave. Goggles the size of tea saucers covered its eyes, and a crude breathing pipe hooked to an oxygen tank on its back vented white oxygen at every bad weld.

The—thing—wasn't wearing a space suit at all. It was holding itself together with mechanical binding, and sucking on a raw oxygen tank. Matt's mind reeled. What the hell was it?

That's when he noticed its eyes. Violet-and-yellow HuMax eyes.

HuMax.

More fire came from a dozen figures in space suits. They were all HuMax. Some wore real Union space suits, bearing the seal of UARL, Union Advanced Research Labs. Some wore baggy rescue suits. Some were wrapped like the giant thing, taking their chance in the near-vacuum outside. Some had no choice but to be wrapped up in the makeshift suits, with bodies grown grotesquely out of proportion. One had four arms.

All held weapons. Most were MK-1s, but one pair operated another MK-16. The din of gunfire was oddly high-pitched in the thin atmosphere, and the impact of the depleted-uranium slugs was distant, almost painless. The HuMax creatures advanced grimly, squinting against the reprisal they knew was coming.

They're desperate,
Matt thought.
They're protecting their home
.

That was why they had attacked the Demons the moment they hit the ground. That was why they'd done that desperate stupid move of trying to capture the
Helios
. They wanted out. And when they couldn't get out, they were forced to protect their home, by any means necessary.

But—HuMax in a Union installation? Grotesquely transformed HuMax, at that? What did that mean?

“Permission to open fire, sir,” Norah said.

Matt whipped around on her. She'd exchanged her Zap Gun for an MK-160. The gun was comically huge against the pitiful weapons of their attackers.

“Hold!” Matt yelled, stepping in front of her. They weren't in danger from the HuMax's weapons. There was no way such a pathetic force could overwhelm three Demons.

“Our orders—”

“The hell with them!” Matt cried, his eyes leaking tears.

He remembered his promise, just before the mission had started:
“I'll find out what's happening. I'll drag it into the light.”

That was his new purpose.

Matt's Perfect Record played back an image from his past: Merging with the HuMax city of Jotunheim, and being gifted with their knowledge of the Expansion.

Biometal calls to metal,
he thought.
Everything seeks to Merge
.

Matt plunged his Mecha talons into the air-lock control panel, feeling the shock of electricity mixed with the thrill of data. Ropes of biometallic muscle Merged with the conduit, chasing it to its origin. Deep down, to the Union computer beating at the heart of the installation. A very well-guarded computer. Because this was UARL, the most advanced Union technology branch. The same people his father used to work for.

Deep in Mesh, Matt's mind met the computer. It responded with suspicion and a challenge. But its secrets were poorly hidden; a note made by a Union scientist on an insecure line revealed the pass code, and Matt was soon inside, drowning in data.

In the space of milliseconds, everything was laid bare. And Matt's whole life changed forever.

* * *

Code-named UARL: Arcadia/Progress 001, it was one of the Union's most secret development programs, intended not only to study HuMax, but to breed and improve upon them.

Starting fifty years ago with forty-one “founding stock,” the Union scientists worked to decode the HuMax's genetic makeup and isolate their beneficial traits. The first result of that research was a refined genetic code base—one still deemed too risky to deploy to the general Union population.

Matt reeled. Not only had the Union been working with HuMax, but they had completely mapped and cataloged their genome. If that knowledge had been released, families could have selectively chosen even more amazing genetic enhancements for their children.

“Except everyone would have chosen everything.”
Dr. Roth's voice came back to Matt.
“That's what humans do. Tick all the boxes on the options sheet. And then you're back at HuMax. And HuMax are uncontrollable.”

It got worse.

UARL documents referred to “most secret” founding Union data from the “initial HuMax development program.” That data went back over two hundred years, and included coordinates of known HuMax settlements like Prospect. Performance data rated HuMax variants by hardiness, efficiency, reliability, and effectiveness. It was like reading an engineering report on a new piece of machinery.

Matt's mind reeled. Rayder had been telling the truth. The Union had created the HuMax!

Their gruesome research continued to this day. The giant carbon-fiber-wrapped hulk was described as an “Enhanced HuMax Type/+size+strength+longevity.” The one with four arms was an “Enhanced HuMax Type/+appendages+versatility.” There were dozens of others, from +empathy+perception to +durability/partial-vac-capable. Video showed the artificial wombs where the HuMax were grown, the tests on the screaming violet-and-golden-eyed children, and the reams of observational data on the adults in every type of situation, from combat to sex (forced and consensual).

And it showed the postnatal experiments. Some of the HuMax weren't born with enhanced capabilities. Their genomes were rewritten by retrovirus after they had reached adulthood. Sweating, screaming superhumans struggled against their carbon-fiber bonds on sterile stainless steel tables as UARL scientists watched. A snippet of one scientist's report leapt out at Matt: “resequencing allows for more variations to be studied in a shorter period of time relative to pure breeding programs, with relatively low mortality load.”

Matt squeezed his eyes shut, trying to hold back the tears. Everything he was told was a lie. The Union had made the HuMax, it studied the HuMax, and it continued its invasive research, even at the cost of lives.

Only heavy doses of soporifics in the water supply had kept the HuMax under control. At least until one of their genetic rewrites rendered a couple of the HuMax insensitive to it.

That was what precipitated the revolt: first, turning off the drug feed, then taking over the remote research facility. The HuMax captured the researchers and demanded they arrange passage off the world. But, remote as it was, and secure as it was, Planet 5 was served only by Union military and the Mecha Corps.

There was no way out. The HuMax used the FTLcomm to try to reach help, but they were at the edge of any human exploration; no one came.

Except the Union, of course. The Union, via Matt and his kill squad.

When UUS
Ulysses
appeared, they tried to capture it. A last, desperate measure to save themselves. An impossible task. Of course they'd failed.

And now my orders are to ensure their total defeat. To kill every one of these beings.

Everything he believed, up in smoke. Every thought about the valorous Union, shredded. Matt retracted his Demon's talons from the control panel.

Disobeying orders was treason, plain and simple. He had to kill the HuMax if he wanted any future with Mecha Corps.

Kill them,
said the voice in his Mecha, veiled by static and dust.
Kill them all.

But the voice was far away, distant. His mind was whirling with the implications. This whole thing was a setup. The Union knew he was the best man for the job. After all, he'd taken out Rayder. His father had been killed by a HuMax. He was the final solution.

Reward, not recognition,
Matt thought, remembering Colonel Cruz's words. But no reward would erase the Perfect Record of this massacre if he went through with it.

Matt stood and placed himself between the HuMax rebels and his team. “Stand down,” he told Norah and Xie. “Hold fire.”

“Sir, our orders are to eliminate anything moving,” Norah said, her MK-160 twitching.

“Do not fire! That's an order!”

“Yes, sir.” Norah's gun barrel descended toward the floor. Her Mecha's posture indicated irritation.

“What are your orders, sir?” Xie asked.

“Pull back. This area is secure.”

Reluctantly, the two giant Mecha backed away. The peppering of depleted-uranium bullets on Matt's backside abated. Behind him, the HuMax glanced at each other uncertainly, not sure about this new development. Matt turned to address them. Maybe there could be some kind of resolution to this beyond killing.