Mecha Rogue (24 page)

Michelle softened, just for an instant. And in that moment, Matt saw her mind laid bare. She really did trust the Union. She loved her appointment on Silver. She was a major, and she was going higher. She was with . . . Marjan. Marjan. The new man in her life.

And she just couldn't integrate what he had just shown her.

The Union must have a reason,
she thought.

Yes. They created the HuMax.

No!

Matt sent her memories of his battle with Rayder, and his takeover and release of the mind-controlled masses. The aftermath. Ione, and what the Union had done to her.

But Michelle's anger ramped up, savagely.
You found a lover? A HuMax?
she thought, her mind razor-edged. Her Fusion Handshake cycled up to fire again.

But her grip had faltered. Matt threw her off. She went flailing backward into a tall stack of the protein crates. Gray-brown dust came exhaling out of the warehouse in waves.

From the cloud, a flickering light. Matt rocked back as Fireflies found his Hellion. Sharp flares of pain blossomed on his chest.

And that wasn't the end of the explosion. The flammable dust in the warehouse lit in a reverberant dirty orange fireball. The flame front hit him like a giant fist, pushing his Hellion backward through the warehouse. Matt flailed through plastic crates, spilling more protein powder. The flame front carried him all the way out the roll-up door as the entire building ballooned from the pressure wave. Gouts of dust shot from new-stricken cracks in the tilt-up facade. Wisps of flame shot into the air from the shattered roof.

Matt landed hard on his back, skidding across the blacktop with a wet biometallic screech. Flame billowed out of the ruined roll-up door, passing only meters above his Hellion.

The two Union Hellions flew out of the flames like birds of prey descending on a feast. Matt took one look at their grim, determined visors and knew: Michelle would not join him. Not now. Maybe not ever.

Matt triggered his flight pack and shot toward the sky. Eight minutes to rendezvous. Eight minutes of eluding those Hellions.

And, his screens reminded him, the rest of the Mecha they were now launching at him—one of which was labeled
DEMON
.

* * *

Matt's thrusters propelled him toward orbit like an ascending rocket. Behind him, his NPP screens showed the Hellions falling behind. They must have had only planetary flight packs on.

One spark kept pursuing. This one was marked with a red icon: a Demon!

Ah, shit,
Matt thought. Four minutes and thirty seconds left. What could he do? Straight up against a Demon, he was a dead man.

Matt searched his POV for places to run. But Silver had no moons. Its skies were empty, except for the Union's orbital emplacements.

The brilliant beam of a Zap Gun flashed by Matt's backside, close enough to feel the heat. The Demon pilot was gaining—and he was already within range!

A comms icon flared on Matt's POV:
MARJAN VELUSZIK
.

“Couldn't stay away, could you, traitor?” Marjan's voice grated over the comms.

Matt smiled, remembering one of Michelle's memories. “Couldn't move into her apartment, could you, loser?” Matt taunted.

Marjan yelled in rage, and additional Zap Gun bolts passed by Matt's sides. These were less targeted, wild. Marjan was losing his grip.

“Did she talk about me?” Matt asked. “I bet she did.”

An orbital emplacement loomed in front of Matt.
ANTIMATTER WEAPON TARGETING
flared in his POV. Matt instinctively jinked away from the emplacement at full redline.

Then he had an idea. It was a stupid idea, an impossible idea. But the whole thing had gone from stupid to impossible. Why stop now?

Matt released the limiters on his flight pack and pushed them to twice redline, ignoring their squeals of imminent destruction. This wasn't about coming back repairable. This was about coming back with his life.

His velocity took him on a wild parabola past the side of the Union's orbital gun emplacement. He had a momentary glimpse of its guns, struggling to track him. Matt pushed his thrusters deeper into redline as he braked behind the emplacement. His velocity dropped like a rock, and he rocketed toward the surface.

The guns on this side of the rock swiveled eagerly. He had only seconds. Matt gave the thrusters all they had.

Bam!
Matt impacted on the surface of the rocky emplacement. Dull steel gun turrets poked up all around him. Matt rolled over the surface of the asteroid and reached one of the turrets. Gripping it with both hands, he thought,
Merge.

Matt's Hellion's hands became one with the turret. Suddenly he was the big gun, an unthinking algorithmic construct on a simple mission: protect the planet. The emplacement was entirely automated. There were no people on it at all, just machines.

In the machine's mind, Matt saw Marjan. Approaching fast, his Zap Gun charged and ready. To the emplacement, Marjan was not a threat, because he broadcast the right Union ACK codes.

As if on cue, a Zap Gun bolt hit the emplacement. Its simple electronic mind registered confusion, but it didn't act against Marjan.

Matt grinned. He could change that. Using the emplacement's own comms, he swapped the ACK codes between Marjan and himself.

Marjan reacted immediately as the guns swung around to target his Demon. His forward motion slowed fast as his thrusters lit, and he barely jogged out of the line of fire for an antimatter bolt. Marjan retreated away from the emplacement. The guns followed, forcing him farther and farther away.

On the surface of Silver, Matt's screens showed additional sparks crawling toward orbit. More Demons. His safe haven wouldn't survive an assault by them.

One minute, forty seconds left. Could he make it?

You have to,
he thought. Matt's NPP screens showed the location of his rendezvous point, a thousand kilometers away.

Matt waited until the heavy-matter guns had reloaded and were ready to fire. He thought,
DeMerge,
and pulled his arm out of the turret. Then, in one quick motion, he blasted his thrusters to full and leapt off the emplacement in the direction of his rendezvous point.

Then, in the same instant, he cut all power except for his screens. Hopefully the interference from the heavy-matter guns had covered his launch. Hopefully he'd drift across space, almost dead, to arrive as the Last Rising appeared.

Of course, if he miscalculated and went a little too far—well, there were lots of stories about finding small orbital shuttles, oddly crystallized and embedded deep within the rock of a Displacement Drive ship.

Matt's heart beat loudly in the tiny cockpit as he drifted through space. Behind him, the Demons converged on the orbital gun emplacement. Brilliant lines of battle sketched in his POV. The clock ticked slowly down: one minute, thirty seconds, ten seconds.

Matt gripped the emergency restart, his lips dry and his breath coming in ragged gasps.

Just outside Matt's Hellion, a gigantic mass flashed into being. Matt swore and restarted his Hellion, looking in vain for a landmark. The
Helheim
's smooth armored surface was almost completely seamless.

There! In front of him! The Mecha Docks!

Matt shot forward into the dark bay, just as Union antimatter fire rocked the
Helheim
. Orange-yellow explosions lit the docks like lightning, and the air lock itself melted and ran.

Then the stars changed, and there was nothing.

Matt's comms crackled on, the icon reading
SOTO
.

“Tell me this stunt was worth it,” Soto's voice boomed.

Matt sighed. What could he say?

Then he realized what Soto had asked, and he barked a laugh. “Yeah,” he said. “It was worth it.”

“Then what are you waiting for? Get me the footage, and let's crack the Union wide open!”

Matt shook his head. His Hellion mimicked the motion perfectly. Soto just stared at him, unable to comprehend what Matt was getting at.

“It was worth it,” Matt said. “To prove our intelligence is completely worthless.”

18

DECLARATION

“Seventeen months ago, a man named Rayder attacked Geos and issued an ultimatum: ‘make me prime, or I will smash the Union.'” Matt licked his lips and paused, staring at the glassy eye of the FTLcomm camera. He was alone on the bridge of the
Helheim
, with the exception of two men: Guiliano Soto and Captain Gonsalves.

Matt continued. “You were told Rayder was killed in a daring raid by Mecha Corps personnel. But you weren't told who these corpspersons were. You weren't told many things.”

Matt felt sweat beading on his brow, despite the chill of the room. He'd had the techs crank down the temperature to eighteen degrees C, but it didn't seem to help. He didn't like talking to the camera. Talking to people was easier. The tiny, multifaceted lens seemed to be weighing him . . . and finding him wanting.

“I was one of the Corps who participated in that raid. I am also the person who killed Rayder. I am Matt Lowell, first Demonrider and former Mecha Corps major.”

The technicians would later insert here a cut scene from Matt killing Rayder, a recording by the villain who thought his triumph was going to be broadcast to his brainwashed legions. Instead, it would serve a better purpose.

“But I am no longer Mecha Corps. I speak to you now as the leader of the Free Stars Alliance, a neutral and independent entity that has no military quarrel with the Union.”

No military quarrel, but certainly a subversive agenda,
a small voice whispered in Matt's mind. He shrugged it off and pressed on.

“You might ask why a hero of the Union no longer wears the uniform. It comes back to what the Union isn't telling you. I've discovered some things about the Union that I think you should know. For example, the Union's ongoing experiments in genetic modification.”

Matt knew the techs would edit in a brief version of the Planet 5 video at this point, with extensive attached archives of compressed data. Hopefully the viewers would dig deeper into the attachments to see the whole story: the Union as the source of the HuMax, the ongoing atrocities.

Soto stepped forward. “I'm Colonel Guiliano Soto, formerly of Mecha Corps. I've known Matt since he was at Mecha Training Camp. I fought with him against Rayder. I joined the Union from the Aliancia because I believed in what the Union was doing. We need to pull together, and work as one people. But over the years, I've seen the hidden agendas, the truth behind the promise. Now I've seen Mr. Lowell's evidence, and I've joined him.”

Captain Hector Gonsalves stepped forward. “And I am only here today, a thinking man, because of Matt's overthrow of Rayder's regime. It may sound like a joke, but if it wasn't for Matt, I'd be a mind-controlled puppet.”

Matt addressed the camera again. “If what you've seen concerns you, contact the Union press and demand the truth. Contact your Union congressperson and demand the full archives on their genetic modification experiments. Pressure the Prime to release the whole story, and take action to end genetic experimentation. I want nothing more than for the Union to fulfill its promise. But to do so, it must face its past, to create a better future.”

Matt held his determined expression for a few moments. The techs would edit the video from there, and then squeeze-burst transmit it via FTLcomm to their network's Union transponders.

“How was that?” Matt said as Lena Stoll entered the bridge, followed closely by Peal and Jahl. In addition to being an excellent Mecha controller, she was also proving to be the ideal leader for their flighty duo.

“Better than the first transmission,” she said, classically deadpan.

“So it's still crap?”

Lena didn't react. “Let's hope your earnest tone carries the day.”

“He did fine!” Soto boomed. “I just don't think we're going far enough.”

“Calling for open insurrection, or inviting Union worlds to be part of the Free Stars Alliance, would be a huge mistake,” Captain Gonsalves added, rising to hang out on a rail. “Then we'd be considered a strategic threat, inciting secession.”

“This is the same thing,” Soto said. “We're telling them their entire government is corrupt and amoral.”

Gonsalves shrugged. “It's the principle. People have hope in change. Even if it's a silly hope.”

Matt frowned. Except they had even more tolerance for the status quo, it seemed.

Their first transmission had hit the Union like a heavy-matter gun. Major media had erupted about the “new Corsair threat” to the Union hegemony—despite the fact that they flew no Corsair colors, and Matt clearly identified them as the Free Stars Alliance, using terminology carefully stitched together from the Independent Displacement Alliance. Talking heads had painted him as a misguided hero or a rapacious opportunist, standing on the dead body of Rayder to threaten the Union. They played more video of Rayder's attack on Geos than Matt's simple plea asked for.

The few outlets that covered the meat of Matt's content were small and sparse, though lively chatter on the UniNet flared for a week afterward. Nine possible locations of current HuMax experimentation were listed, but the Union citizens who dared investigate found innocent businesses, or a rapid arrest. Their intelligence network couldn't confirm that any of the leads were more solid than their failed one on Silver. One well-funded news expedition found an empty facility, apparently long abandoned. Matt was labeled a crank and a nut, and the buzz on the UniNet began to spin down to its usual low-level mutter about conspiracy theories and political plots.

Net result, zero. No giant revelations. No hint of insurrection, even on the farthest-flung colony worlds. No fires in the street. A few million messages to senators, perhaps, but that was nothing in an interstellar governmental organization spanning billions of lives.

“We have to keep trying,” Matt said.

Lena shifted uncomfortably and exchanged glances with Peal and Jahl. Matt frowned. He knew Peal and Jahl were ill at ease with his transmissions, but what else could he do? With no reliable intelligence on Union/HuMax experimentation, they had no other way to make people believe.

“What we have to do is start drinking,” Captain Gonsalves said. “Why don't we head out to the Free Stars?”

Soto concurred, and Matt, Lena, Peal, and Jahl tagged along with the group.

The Free Stars was a new bar set deep within
Helheim
, established by some enterprising Last Rising crew who'd repurposed one of the former communal sleeping chambers. Ranks of hard steel bunks had been turned into tables, with chairs set every which way to maximize the space in zero gravity. A long bar had been set up along the back wall, backed by a traditional mirror. Some patrons hung near the bar, not even bothering to use the handholds.

When they were all at a table with drink bulbs in front of them, Lena opened her mouth as if to ask a question, then shut it again. She looked at Peal and Jahl, and they returned her look with nods.

“I know, I know,” he told her. “Every transmission increases the chance of discovery of our transponders within the Union. Our effective coverage will shrink. But unless you have other suggestions—”

“Not just that,” Peal interrupted.

Jahl shot him a look. “It's by no means certain they have the ability to effectively analyze entangled-pair distortions.”

“If we can do it, they can do it too.”

“Do what?” Matt and Gonsalves said, in unison.

“We have new tracking techniques in development. Analysis of entangled-pair distortions on the FTLcomms can assist in location of the source,” Jahl admitted.

“I thought that wasn't possible if we weren't transmitting directly!” Matt said, alarm rising.

“It's something we've been working on,” Jahl said. “Very cutting-edge.”

“Does this mean the Union can find us?” Matt said, a sudden chill shooting through his body.

“Some of the research we've been doing here started in the Union,” Peal said.

“But the logical connections aren't there,” Jahl argued. “We didn't have any idea it could work as a location technique, until just yesterday. The chances the Union would expand on our research—”

“Is small but nonzero,” Peal finished.

Lena broke in. “And it's not that simple—”

Matt had had enough. He held up his hands. “Wait. Stop arguing. Do we have a chance of being discovered because of our transmissions? As in, the Union shows up on our doorstep?”

“Even if they extend the research we started to the breakthrough we just had, entangled-pair FTLcomm distortion is nearly impossible to analyze at the level of precision necessary to locate Esplandian,” Jahl said.

Matt sighed. Good. But why were they so on-edge?

“However, they may be able to get our range,” Peal added.

Shit.

“Of course, they may discount the results at first, since the source will seem too close,” Jahl shot back.

“But if they accept the results, it will substantially reduce their search volumetric,” Peal said.

“This speculation, of course, is assuming they have our same breakthrough.”

Silence fell over the six people at the bar as Peal's and Jahl's verbal jousting sunk in. The stakes were too high. They had to assume the Union would chase down the same answer as Peal and Jahl—especially with a troubling FTLcomms transmission stirring up their media.

Matt shifted uncomfortably on his perch. That was bad. Matt had always counted on losing the odd repeater in Union space, but FTLcomm itself was never supposed to be a problem.

“What if we send the second transmission from a repeater in deep Last Rising space?” Matt said.

“We've been talking about that,” Lena told him. “It won't work.”

Peal nodded. “One of the principles of FTLcomm entangled communications is that it always reflects the distortion of the original source.”

“We'd have to actually do the transmission physically from a remote system in deep space,” Lena said.

“Then that's what we'll do.”

“Leaving Esplandian vulnerable? And possibly sentencing an innocent system to destruction by the Union?” Lena said.

Matt felt as if he'd been punched in the gut. He could say nothing for a long time. Instead, he sipped his vacuum-distilled vodka and winced at its roughness. The booze was as new as the bar, it seemed.

“How many FTLcomm transmissions can we do and still be safe?”

Jahl and Peal pulled out their slates and bent over the gray-blue glow, muttering to themselves. Matt let them work.

“Assuming they work out the same reverse-processing algorithm we landed on, and they set it at Highest Priority in UARL,” Peal announced finally, “maximum may be as high as ten. Minimum could be three.”

Silence shrouded the table. Matt shared nervous glances with Captain Gonsalves and Soto.

“So the next transmission after this one, we could be found?”

Jahl frowned. “Like I said, it isn't that simple, and there are a lot of assumptions—”

“But we could?”

Peal sighed. “Yes. We could.”

Matt sat silently as Gonsalves and Soto turned to look at him. At that moment, it seemed as if the entire bar had their eyes on him.

Saying, You're gambling with our lives.

* * *

Word from Dr. Arksham interrupted Matt's worries about discovery by the Union. Arksham had his genetic results back. Matt headed to his office, his mind in a daze. Would this finally answer, definitively, what his father's gift really was?

Will I be HuMax?
Matt wondered.

Matt barreled into the office. For a moment, his Perfect Record overrode reality and painted the office as he'd last seen it, spattered in blood and gore. Ione's shredded body was still strapped to the table—

Matt closed his eyes, willing back the welling rage. Ione. The Union had taken Ione. They deserved to pay.

They deserve all your rage,
a small voice said. Matt started. It didn't even feel like his own thought. It felt—outside, alien. He was hungering to get back in the Demon. The voice was part of his addiction.

In reality, Arksham's office was spotlessly clean. It had undoubtedly been disinfected weeks ago. Matt shook his head and went to the doctor's inner office, where Arksham sat at his desk.

“What am I?” Matt asked.

Arksham raised an eyebrow, as if to say,
No time for pleasantries, hmm?
But he just said mildly, “You're a mongrel.”

“Not HuMax?”

“There are similarities. But pure HuMax, with the markers that define it, no.”

Not HuMax. Matt nodded, not knowing whether to be relieved or disappointed. “What do you mean, a mongrel?”

Arksham shook his head. “Perhaps a bad term. There's a ton of old code in your DNA, dating back to the beginning of human genetic modification. It looks like your father mined all the old databases. But . . .”

“But what?” Matt leaned forward.

“But you also have more pure sequences than I've ever seen in a viable genemod organism.”

“Pure sequences?”

“Sequences without the junk DNA and redundant viral clutter that fill up the human genome. Entirely engineered parts, crafted to perfection. As if a master engineer was creating a whole new code base.”

“My father did that?”

Arksham gave Matt a sad grin. “That's the problem. I don't know of anyone who could have put together these pieces so masterfully, without negative interactions.”

“So he found it somewhere in the databases.”

Arksham looked doubtful. “I don't think so. There are no referents to large parts of your genome in any of the databases, not even from our Last Rising network.”

“Then he got it from the HuMax databases. My father worked with UARL, digging up HuMax history.”

A head shake. “HuMax aren't this pure. Never were. He didn't find it in a HuMax database.”