Mecha Rogue (23 page)

Peal laughed. “True. They aren't good at subtlety.”

Jahl took his hand. So did Peal. And in that moment, Matt was content. His team was coming back together. What an amazing stroke of luck.

Unless—they actually were working for the Union.

When Peal and Jahl had left, Matt met privately with Gonsalves. “Have the Last Rising analysts look into their back trail. And have them double-check everything they do.”

Gonsalves nodded, looking relieved. “Thank you.”

But at the door, Gonsalves paused. “Is it worth trusting them?”

“I think they're on the level,” Matt told the troubled captain. “And if they are, they're worth our entire team of informants and analysts. They could easily make or break this plan.”

“Or we can simply keep our heads down and stay out of Union business,” Gonsalves said.

“Do you really think we can, now?”

Gonsalves was silent. Matt used the moment to press his argument. “Yeah. We can keep our heads down. We could hide, and wait while they wipe out all the Corsair worlds. We could sit and watch while they go on to take the Aliancia and the Taikong—”

“They wouldn't do that!” Gonsalves cried.

“You think not?”

Again, the captain had no answer.

“We can wait until the entirety of humanity is Union, and we can watch as they round up all the HuMax and genemod, and do what they want to them. And we can hope they never, ever find us, and keep spinning on this rock in the middle of nowhere. Because if they did find us, there'd be nothing left for us to do. We couldn't possibly defend against a force that big, not even with every Last Rising world at our disposal.”

Gonsalves fell silent and leaned back, as if considering Matt's words carefully. “How much do you trust these two?” he asked again, finally.

“Ninety-nine point nine percent.”

Gonsalves nodded. “I've taken worse odds. But . . .”

“But what?”

“It's the tenth of a percent that gets you.”

Matt put a hand on Hector's shoulder. “Hector, if we don't do something now, we die.”

* * *

As Matt was drifting off to sleep, he was roused again by the shrill of his slate.
Should turn the damn thing off,
Matt thought, struggling up from his doze.

Matt shrugged off the zero-g sleep harness and blinked up at the slit windows that looked out over Esplandian's desolate surface. His slate's screen spilled chill light in the dark room. Matt grabbed it and scanned the short message.

 

DR. ARKSHAM: Ione's coming around. Thought you'd like to know.

 

Matt's heart raced.
How is she? Is she okay?
Why hadn't Arksham told him to come down? He wanted to shout a thousand questions at the slate. But that was stupid. Better to find out for himself.

He threw on the first pants and shirt he could find and rocketed down the tunnels to Dr. Arksham's office. Curious eyes watched as he passed, but Matt didn't care. The only thing that mattered was getting down to see her.

Matt caught himself at the last corridor. What if she was a monster? What if she had been completely transformed? Was that why Arksham hadn't ordered him to come see her?

Matt shook his head. No. Maybe Arksham was just being polite. Maybe he didn't think it was his place to order the leader of Esplandian around. Whatever reason, it didn't matter. He'd have to take that as it came.

He made himself go down the last corridor. He paused for a moment outside the door, trying to get his rushing breath in check. He took a deep breath and opened the door.

Inside, the lights were up full bright, and Matt squinted against the halos. Dr. Arksham and one of his nurses bent over a figure in a hospital bed, still lying prone. A slim hand, free of the cooling bag, rose for a moment, before coming to rest again on the table. She'd moved!

Matt flew closer. Ione's eyes were open, but they were so sunken and bloodshot they almost didn't seem human anymore. Her voice croaked reedily as she tried to speak. Her wrists were so thin they were little more than sticks. She had a long way to go for a full physical recovery.

But she still looked like Ione! Matt's heart surged with hope. Maybe the transformation wasn't as radical as he'd thought, or maybe she'd somehow fought it off.

“Ione,” Matt said, coming up beside the doctor and nurse.

“Mr. Lowell, I don't know if now is the time for reunions,” Dr. Arksham said. “We have tests to perform, and—”

Ione's eyes found Matt's. “Matt,” she gasped.

She recognized him. Matt pushed past the doctor and gave her a quick embrace. It was like hugging a bundle of reeds. “Ione,” he said. “I—I missed you.”

Ione nodded, her lips turning upward into a painful smile. “I . . . too.”

“Mr. Lowell, really, I have to insist,” Dr. Arksham said.

“So do I!” Matt snapped. “Give us a moment, will you?”

Arksham looked unhappy, but backed away. Matt took Ione's hand and gave it a light squeeze. Her bones were as sharp as knives. She tried to return the grip, halfheartedly.

“How do you feel?” Matt asked.

“Bad,” she breathed, trying to laugh. “But . . . better, I think.”

“Yeah?”

“Yes.”

Matt's heart soared. She was going to be all right. They could pick up where they left off. They could have a life together.

Ione gripped his hand more tightly. She grimaced and swallowed, as if in pain.

“Are you sure you're all right?”

“Still hurt,” she said, voice strengthening.

“We really need to get some real food in her,” Dr. Arksham said, his voice firm. “And we need to run tests.”

“Of course,” Matt said. Arksham was right. She needed to get on her way to recovery. He let go of Ione's hand, but she didn't release her grip.

Matt grinned. She didn't want to let him go.

Ione grimaced again, squeezing his hand tighter. Painfully tight.

“Ione—”

“Something's wrong,” she croaked, her eyes going wide.

Arksham and the nurse rushed over. “Where does it hurt? What's wrong?”

Ione shook her head from side to side. “No, no, something wrong, get out, get away!” Her voice rose to a panicked, near-ultrasonic pitch.

Arksham tried to take her pulse, but she batted his hand away. His slate went flying across the room. The nurse tried to pry Matt's hand out of Ione's, but her grip was too strong, incredibly strong. Matt cried out from the pain as she clamped down. Warm blood flowed out of his palm.

Blood? He looked down and gasped. Ione's skin had split open, revealing sharp white spikes. Her bones had turned into razor-sharp weapons, and they ground painfully into the flesh of his hand. The blood that flowed wasn't just hers—it was his own.

“Ione!” Matt yelled.

“Get away, away!” she yelled, thrashing against the restraints that still held her to the bed. She wasn't a weak creature anymore, wracked by disease. She was a whirling harpie, struggling to get free.

Skin stripped back from her other hand, exposing sharp claws. She raked at Dr. Arksham, slashing his face. Red globules of blood flew in the microgravity, spattering the wall of screens on the other side of the room. Arksham yelled and drew back. The nurse recoiled in horror, throwing herself out of the room.

Matt's hand was a throbbing mass of pain. Ione drew him closer to her as she still shook her head in mute negation. Her lips skinned back from her teeth, revealing sharp rows of slashing fangs, set behind her human incisors.

“Ione, please,” Matt said.

“No,” she moaned. “Can't. Stop.”

Her other hand found Matt's shoulder, and spikes dug deep into his muscles. Matt howled and thrashed against her, trying to get free. Ione's claws tore deeper into his flesh, unleashing new crescendos of pain.

Matt couldn't break her grip. Her strength was impossible, absolute. She drew him down into a deadly embrace. Red blood welled up on Ione's hospital gown, and she let out a shrill scream of pain. Matt looked down. New talons had emerged through the skin of her abdomen. They waved hungrily, ready to impale him.

Bang!
A sharp report resounded in the small office, deafeningly loud. A small hole appeared in Ione's forehead, and the wall behind her went red with blood and gore. Her hands gave one final convulsive grip, then went slack.

Matt tore his hand out of hers, pushing himself away. He went spinning wildly in the microgravity, hitting the wall opposite with his back and rebounding out into the room.

At the office's inner door, Dr. Arksham held a Taikong P-06 pistol. His hands shook visibly, and his face was a mask of terror. But he'd done what he had to do.

He killed Ione,
Matt thought, anger rising. No. He killed the thing Ione had become. The thing the Union had turned her into.

Matt used the handhold to go to Dr. Arksham and take the pistol from his slack fingers. It was still warm from the discharge.

“I—I had to—”

“I know,” Matt said. He looked cautiously at Ione's remains. The entire room was spattered in blood, and a faint pink mist hung in the air like fog.

Gone. Ione was gone. Matt couldn't process it. It wasn't happening. Ione was his future. She was his companion, his confidante, his lover.

In that moment, he realized,
I always expected her to just wake up and get better. I thought this would just be a bad dream.

But it wasn't. Matt felt as if he'd been completely hollowed out, echoing and empty. As if Rayder's chill blade had finished its job and disemboweled him.

But it wasn't Rayder who killed Ione. It was the Union. The fucking Union.

“What—what did they do to her?” Matt's voice was heavy and rough with anger.

Arksham shook his head. “Your precious Union has lots of tricks I've never seen. Like this one. Some kind of extreme combat mode, I suspect.”

Matt's anger ramped up into a haze of red. How could they have expected her to survive? Or maybe they didn't. Or maybe the transformation wasn't fatal.

The Union. The Union had taken Ione.

A rustling from the corridor signaled the arrival of Esplandian's red-striped security. They charged into the room, took one look at Ione, and visibly recoiled. One retched and exited the office at high speed.

Arksham came to look at Matt's hand and shoulder. “I can't say I have the tidiest office,” he said. “But let's get that fixed up.”

“No!” Matt shrugged Arksham off. Ione was gone. The Union had taken her. That was all there was. His other wounds didn't matter. He didn't feel any pain at all.

Matt threw himself out of the office and down the corridor, trailing ruby drops of blood.

17

FLAMEOUT

“This is insane,” Soto said as he floated along beside Matt down the central corridor of
Helheim
, the Last Rising flagship.

Matt nodded. “I know.”

“The data is probably bullshit.”

“I know.” The Last Rising intelligence network had waffled about the location, saying it was only the “most probable.”

“I'll go in your place.”

“You think you have a better shot at it?” Matt turned to look back at Soto. It was still strange seeing him in civilian clothes, though he'd instantly adapted his casual T-shirt and khakis look to his Last Rising command.

Soto sighed and shook his head. Soto knew Matt was the best Mecha pilot they had. And if this was going to work, they'd need every bit of his skill.

They came to the Mecha Dock end of
Helheim
's central corridor. Looking back down its length, Matt smiled at the changes he saw. The first time he'd floated down the corridor, unthinking mind-controlled crew wearing Rayder's color castes dominated the traffic; only a few technicians were sufficiently free of mind control to even look at Matt. Now it looked like any other thoroughfare in Esplandian, filled with humans and HuMax wearing all manner of clothing, some gathered together in small groups to talk, and some moving purposefully about their work.

I've done this,
Matt thought, feeling an instant of pride.

But there was still so much to do.

Matt keyed in his Mecha Dock code and floated into the huge space, followed closely by Soto. Matt's Demon dominated the space, a hulking red skyscraper against the rest of the Mecha. Most of them were Last Rising Lokis and Aesir, but there were a few scattered Hellions as well.

Matt looked up at his Demon, longing to get back in the cockpit. But his Demon would be no good for this mission.

Instead, he floated toward a single Hellion equipped with a streamlined flight pack. Behind it, a chunk of asteroid rock bigger than the Hellion was held in large steel clamps. At the top of the rock was a dark opening, just big enough for the Hellion to crawl inside.

“What happens . . . ,” Soto began, then trailed off.

Matt knew what he wanted to ask. What happens if you're detected down there and everything goes sideways? Are you just throwing your life away, in mourning for Ione?

And the terrible thing was: that was partly it. Ione. His Perfect Record tortured him, every minute, with gruesome images of her transformation and demise.

“Then you have a new job to do,” Matt told Soto.

Soto nodded, but his expression was pained.

A Last Rising tech emerged from the asteroid hunk and waved at Matt. Matt waved back, his interface suit pulling painfully on his skin. Another reminder this Hellion wasn't his Mecha.

“Five minutes,” Soto said, looking at his slate. “You'd better get prepped.”

“Yes, sir!”

Soto colored. “I thought there weren't any of those around here.”

Matt nodded and pushed off, floating over the steps up to the Hellion's chest cockpit. Inside, raw biometallic muscles wrapped the entire surface of the chamber. Matt wriggled into the harness, plugged in his interface suit's neural connector, and triggered the NPP displays. Compared to a Demon, the Hellion seemed primitive.

“I hope they're right,” Soto told Matt as he triggered the cockpit closed.

I do too,
Matt thought. But he said nothing as the Hellion folded up like a flower closing for the night. His NPP displays showed Soto quickly retreating to the safety of the dock control room. One corner of the screen counted down the time to their last Displacement—now less than four minutes away.

Mesh,
Matt thought. The Hellion's damped neural Mesh was like feeble candlelight next to the Demon's nuclear glow. Matt sighed as his feeling expanded throughout the Hellion. How had he ever been excited about piloting a Hellion?

Matt climbed inside the asteroid chunk. It was a tight fit, even for the relatively small Mecha. He pulled a rock end cap in place over its head, and his screens went dark as he shut out all light.

A brief grinding noise, and Matt's piece of asteroid rocked with movement. Matt knew what was happening: they were moving him in place to the launch doors. Soon they'd slide open. Soon after that, they'd make the final Displacement and fling him out into space.

The countdown on Matt's screen reached fifty-nine seconds. Time for the crazy part.

Power down,
Matt thought. The Hellion flashed red-lit warnings. Matt gripped the manual restart and confirmed.

All light disappeared. Matt floated in pitch-blackness. The only sound was a tiny ticking noise, spinning down to silence.

His Hellion was, for all intents and purposes, dead. He'd be going in blind and powerless. But he had to trust Peal and Jahl and the Last Rising informants; he had to trust the
Helheim
's technician's calculations and their timing. Because the idea was to Displace in, deploy his powered-down Hellion, and Displace out less than forty seconds later, so the orbital sensors had little chance of detecting them.

Or at least that was the theory. Nobody really knew what was going to happen. Nobody knew if he really could reactivate the Hellion as it dropped into the atmosphere, and regain control in time to land. Nobody knew if the Union ACK codes were any good, even if he did get control before planetary impact.

And even if everything went well, Matt had only a single window to meet the
Helheim
again. If he wasn't there, plus or minus twenty seconds, he'd be stranded in Union space.

But that was the only way they had any chance of landing Matt on the Union Core Candidate world of Silver. Their intelligence indicated that the Union still operated a HuMax research lab just outside Franklin, one of Silver's largest cities. If he could get in and expose the Union's secret experiments, he'd have the evidence he needed—

—to avenge Ione—

—to get the truth out to everyone in the Union, and start the process of getting it back in balance.

Silver. Somewhere beneath him, Silver turned, Union sensors searching for any hint of unrecognized activity. He had to hope that his disguised Hellion was cold and quiet enough to escape detection.

A sharp kick hit Matt hard, bumping him against the back of the cockpit. He cursed and rubbed his head.

This was it. He was committed.

* * *

The mechanical timers in Matt's Hellion's protective shell did their job, and the asteroid shard shattered around him, deep in the atmosphere.

Suddenly tumbling, Matt triggered the manual restart and thought,
Mesh.

The heat of reentry seared Matt's skin as his NPP displays lit, orange and fiery. Fragments of the asteroid glowed red-hot next to him, shading to bright yellow at their leading edge. Below him, the rich continents of Silver spread away like a perspective map, uncomfortably close on the horizon.

Matt righted his Hellion, lit his flight pack, and set his transponder to squawk the Union Mecha Corps ACK code for a routine mission. Theoretically, Silver's planetary defenses would pay no attention to him; he was simply another cog in a greater Mecha wheel. Hellions were openly displayed in all Core and Satellite Union cities now. They were symbols in a larger fight brewing with Demons as its main force.

The ACKs that came back to Matt's signals were routine, simple automated systems disinterested in the whys and wherefores of his mission.

Matt sighed in relief and guided his Hellion to Franklin. The city itself was relatively small, only a half million or so inhabitants, but it glowed like a diamond against the dark night sky. Franklin was being transformed into the Mecha Corps city on Silver. Broad, new-laid fields of pristine concrete flanked two sides of the metropolis, while ranks of Hellions and Demons stood on the practice ground outside the city, where another new Mecha Training Camp transformed cadets into corps.

Matt put his Hellion down in the swamps of a green-tinged lake at the edge of the city, amid fields of tangled green alien plants. Just ahead of him, low industrial buildings marked the edge of Franklin proper, lit by ugly orange sodium lamps.

If their intelligence was right, those nondescript buildings hid a HuMax research lab. Probably not one as grand in scope as the one on Planet 5, but any evidence the Union was experimenting on HuMax would punch a gigantic hole in the Union's party line—and that could open the door to change.

Matt made sure he was recording at max resolution and capacity and moved cautiously forward toward the building. Dim yellowish lights painted windows set high on its facade, but Matt's enhanced sensors couldn't penetrate the thick concrete walls. Only vague heat signatures moved inside.

At the back of the building, more dim light outlined a universal truck dock. The steel roll-up door was fresh painted and pristine. Matt's enhanced sensory array brought garbled fragments of voices from within.

Matt looked at the countdown timer. Less than fifteen minutes to the
El Dorado
's rearrival. It was now or never. Matt grabbed the bottom of the roll-up door with his Hellion's sharp talons and tugged upward. Its locks gave a brief squeal as they sheared off. The door rolled up effortlessly. Its bang and clatter was shatteringly loud in the still night.

Matt pulled his Hellion through the door. Inside was a large warehouse space, packed with plastic shipping crates. The Hellion's NPPs scanned and tagged the packing codes. They were all processed protein for shipping to industrial food producers.

“Hey! What are you doing in here?” someone yelled. Outside Matt's Hellion, a man wearing a Univeral Foods coverall advanced furiously toward Matt, waggling a finger as if he were scolding a puppy.

“You're not supposed to be here! Damn Mecha, think you own the worlds! Who are you! You'll pay for that door!” The man's litany of complaints just kept coming as his face went scarlet with anger.

Matt had a sudden sinking feeling. This wasn't a lab. This was just another warehouse. Their intelligence had been wrong.

“Hey, you hear me, tell me who you are!” The man now stood only three meters away from the Hellion. He looked up at the big Mecha, totally unafraid. He pulled a slim device out of his pocket. “I'm gonna call the office. You're in big trouble!”

Matt stepped over the man and proceeded deeper into the warehouse. The man ran after him, shouting obscenities. Still, there was nothing but plastic crates of protein. Matt's enhanced senses showed the floor was solid. There was nothing hidden below him. That only left the offices at the front of the building

Matt pushed his Hellion faster, losing the angry functionary in the warehouse. The offices loomed before him. Heat signatures moved behind the thin tilt-up composite walls. Matt grinned. Maybe this was it. He slid to a stop at the facing wall of the office and peered in through the glass windows on top. Beyond were just ranks of cubicles. Some employees had stayed late to play a game of poker. They looked up at the Hellion in surprise as Matt stared at them.

And that was all. The cubicles ended at the glass front of the building, which looked out on a broad courtyard. Matt's enhanced senses found nothing odd.

Wrong.

They were wrong. There were no HuMax here. Nothing here.

“Ninety-eight percent of your network have bad data.”
Peal's and Jahl's words came back to haunt Matt.

And maybe more. Maybe Peal and Jahl weren't the only countermeasures the Union was using. Maybe none of their data was right at all.

“Gotcha,” said a voice behind Matt. A new voice. Not the voice of the yelling man. A big voice.

A Mecha voice.

Matt turned. Behind him stood two Hellions, Fusion Handshakes charged and ready.

It wasn't just bad intelligence.

It was a trap.

* * *

No chance for explanation. No chance for anything other than surprise.

Matt triggered his Hellion's flight pack booster. Behind him, the office wall buckled and glass shattered. Matt shot forward and struck the two Hellions like a hammer. His Hellion bucked and rang with biometallic reverberations. The two other Hellions bowled over and went tumbling through protein crates. Billowing brown clouds of powder cascaded out through the warehouse. The yelling man coughed and scampered away from the fighting giants.

Matt accelerated toward the exit, but one Hellion caught him by the arm. He felt its Fusion Handshake charging up to fire. Matt winced. He'd lose the arm. No changing that now.

Then the Fusion Handshake stopped charging. Matt looked down. The Hellion still clung to him, but now its visor looked upward toward his own. It looked almost confused.

Who's confused?
a familiar thought came. And in that moment, he knew who he was fighting.

Major Michelle Kind.

Every shattered piece of Matt and Michelle's almost relationship went cascading through his Perfect Record, torturous in its perfection. Seeing her for the first time at Mecha Training Camp. Kyle's assertion that “she will be mine.” Growing too close to her for Kyle to control. Holding hands, that one last night after Jotunheim. Trying to save the universe together more than once.

The memories, the feel of Michelle's warm body against his, the taunting memories. It was a brief glimpse of a perfect life, one he could never attain.

Michelle,
he thought
. I—I—

You traitor!
she thought, her mind sending waves of hate. In a glimpse, she'd seen him as a part of the Corsairs, as a defector from the Union.

Soto joined me,
Matt thought.

Michelle's thoughts paused, just for a moment.

And Lena. And Peal and Jahl.

Doubt. He absolutely felt doubt. Michelle was wondering how much truth was behind his thoughts.

“See?” Matt said, out loud, and sent her images of his mission on Planet 5, and the terrible experiments they were doing on the HuMax.