Mecha Rogue (30 page)

Silence fell for long moments. Finally Michelle replied, “By whose authorization, Captain Marjan?”

More silence.

“I received no changes in our orders since going underground. Answer me, Captain! Whose authorization?” Michelle prodded.

“By the Union! By common sense!” Marjan's voice was thin and screechy. His Zap Gun wavered from Matt and swung toward Michelle's Demon. Midswing, Marjan seemed to realize what he was doing and pulled the barrel away.

This was Matt's chance.

He lit thrusters one hundred percent, going forward full speed. Michelle and Marjan hardly had a chance to react before he was on them. Matt's Demon slammed into Michelle and drove her back into Marjan. Norah sidestepped out of the way, pulling her Zap Gun out of its holster in one fluid motion.

Michelle's thoughts ricocheted in Matt's head as their Mecha made contact. Shrill, panicked thoughts:
I don't know, I don't know, I don't know what's going on.

And other thoughts leaked out: Michelle still burned to take down Matt. For the Union. For her ideal, for her life. She had made it off Earth. She wouldn't let anyone take that away from her.

But the ideal of the Union was now warring with the reality.

Marjan's mind was spiky and raw like blades.
Hate you, hate this, hate everything, this life, everything.
Marjan had volunteered for this, and he'd vowed to kill Matt Lowell.

And now Norah was raising her weapon. He couldn't hold Michelle and Marjan down and deal with her as well.

Merge,
Matt thought.

No!
Michelle screamed, in his mind.

Marjan said nothing intelligible, but his brain vibrated with rage.

The three Mecha flowed together, legs and arms becoming a mass of spiky appendages as Michelle and Marjan fought against the Merge.

But Matt didn't need ultimate control. He focused all his energy on a single extrusion, extending a single Mecha claw from the mass of their three Demons. It shot out and grabbed Norah by the wrist. Her Zap Gun went clattering to the floor as her mind screamed in protest.

The three minds pulled Matt apart, as if he were being tortured on a rack. He groaned with the pain, and struggled to hold the Merge together. They were too strong; he wouldn't be able to hold it for long.

But there'd be time enough for one more thing.

Matt opened his mind and showed them everything: Jotunheim. Planet 5. Esplandian. Last Rising. Rayder's death. The shattered HuMax labs on Aurora, Utopia, and Geos.

And he asked them,
Who gives the Union the right to choose someone else's future? Is it all orchestrated from this cavern, by something else?

For a moment, Michelle wavered. The images had reached her, stunned her. But she couldn't act.

Marjan roared and pulled away as hard as he could. Matt's grip on the Merge melted away, and Marjan's Demon slithered out of the main mass. Norah followed. Matt let them. This was all about speed now, not finesse.

In one malformed appendage, Matt held Norah's Zap Gun. In the other, he held his own.

Matt raised both weapons and fired, slicing Marjan's Demon neatly in half, and punching a giant hole in Norah's leg joint. Marjan's Mecha spouted superheated vapor from every single joint and slumped forward on the floor. Marjan went down hard and slumped into a keening ball. Their screaming over the comms confirmed he was still alive.

Matt turned the gun on Norah's Demon, but Michelle forced a deMerge, sending Matt's Zap Guns clattering harmlessly away on the floor. Even before she had completely re-formed into a humanoid Mecha, she had drawn her own Zap Gun and trained it on Matt.

“Stop!” she yelled as Matt went for his own guns. Her voice was strident, commanding.

Matt stopped. Michelle had come into a crouch. Her Demon's talon was tense on the Zap Gun's trigger. She had it pointed directly at Matt's midsection.

She's going to kill me. Simple as that
. Those were her orders, and Michelle always executed her orders.

Even if she cried for him in her Demon's cockpit, she would kill him, because he would never be simple, and things needed to be simple.

But as the moments passed, Michelle didn't fire. Was it possible she was having doubts?

Say the right thing. Save the universe,
Matt thought.

Matt opened his mouth and said, “You came from Earth and saw the stars. Don't you want to see if there's anything beyond humanity?”

For an instant in time, nothing changed. Michelle stood tense. Norah didn't move. It was as if the whole world were holding its breath.

Then, softly, Michelle's voice: “Yes.”

Michelle's visor snapped up, and her Mecha's talon loosened on the trigger.

“Traitor!” Norah cried, shambling forward. Her Zap Gun shuddered upward to fix on Matt.

Michelle brought her Zap Gun up as Norah fired wide. Both Matt and Michelle swept her legs with scintillant beams, and she pitched forward with a biometallic clang. Michelle picked Norah's Zap Gun out of her fingers.

“I think I may lose some R-and-R days over this,” Michelle told Matt over the comms, her tone trying for wry humor.

“Only if you go back to the Union,” Matt said, thinking,
And only if any of us get out of here alive.

The black biometallic tendrils all around them waved as if agitated now.
There is only one,
boomed a voice in Matt's mind. Razor talons stroked the surface of his consciousness as his nostrils filled with dust and the prickle of static.

“What was that?” Michelle yelled.

What is here. What has always been,
the voice of the ghost in the machine boomed in answer. The thing in the Mecha. The thing he'd heard from his first Mesh. The thing all Mecha pilots heard.

“Did you hear that?” Matt asked.

“Yes,” Michelle said, her voice hushed.

“What are you?” Matt said.

What we have always been: your masters,
the voice said, swirling with hate.

21

SOURCE

As the voice in Matt's mind echoed, the green glow of the orbs and crystals in the pale walls of the endless underground chamber pulsed brighter.

“I don't have a master,” Matt said, out loud.

We have controlled/crafted you since the beginning of your history,
the voice said, now sending waves of an emotion like chill amusement. The green glow seemed to pulse in time with its statements.

Sudden insight unfolded, sped by Matt's Perfect Record calculations: this must be the connection between everything. This was where Mecha came from—an unimaginably vast cache of supertechnology from before the Union. Something profoundly alien.

This is where all your greatest achievements come from,
the voice whispered, sending images of Dr. Roth and Rayder and HuMax scientists and Union researchers, all blurred and jumbled together.

But if this was the source of Roth's technology, why had he seemed so surpised? And if the Union knew about it—and were actively hiding it—why didn't they have their own Mecha? How had Rayder found it? And why were they all at odds?

This location is/was only one of many,
the voice boomed in response.
And conflict is only the most entertaining part of the plan.

And in that moment, Matt got a momentary image of something so huge, so unimaginable that his mind recoiled in instinctual revulsion. This giant cavern was just a tiny part of a network that spanned all of Eridani, riddling the crust and mantle of the planet like a giant ant farm. Its power conduits wrapped the molten core itself, drawing power from the near-infinite source of the planet.

And this was just one of a universe-spanning network of planet-sized nodes and conduits, all packed with biometallic tendrils, fractal fibers, and thinking nodes. Something had created a giant computing network and built it throughout the stars.

Too simple,
the voice rasped.
Concepts still small/limited.

Tendrils shot out and drilled pinprick holes in Matt and Michelle's Demon. Their ends were like red-hot embers, burning deep into his body. It happened so fast neither of them had a chance to scream.

And, in a flash, they were elsewhere.

* * *

Matt stood on an infinite plain of glowing white, under a bright pale sky. Only the thin gray line of a horizon gave any indication of distance or dimension. He couldn't see his body. He existed as pure consciousness, stretched out on a blank canvas.

As we are,
the static-dusty voice boomed. In the distance, a pale shadow flickered. The voice, a thing of razor spines and slicing claws, devouring Matt.

“Who are you?” Matt asked.

We are Omphalos
. Echoes chased the voice:
Nonexact. Closest concept/representation in your mind.

Omphalos. Matt's Perfect Record brought a memory of his Ancient Mythos class in Aurora U. Omphalos was the pin on which the world turned.

Flickers of thought came from the Omphalos, shadowy representations of twisted shapes growing peacefully in the seas of a long-extinct world. No, not twisted. Just complex. Like tumbleweeds, branching and rebranching.

And they sang. They sang a dusty, lonely song, full of overtones and harmonics that carried the data of their thoughts from one plant to the next.

Like Centauri, Matt thought. The Palos. The underwater bushes that sing.

Sudden anger struck him like a blazing wind. The voice rasped.
Degenerate forms! No longer part/integrated! Disunified!

Images flooded Matt's mind, grandiose images of swarms of these plantlike things breeding and growing in giant diamond bubbles as they made their slow way across the stars. Crashing into new watery worlds and remaking them to their needs. Then discovering ways to transform themselves into forms that could live on land, in deserts, on desolate stone wastelands.

“Aliens,” Matt breathed. The reality of it all finally sank in. The Omphalos had always been there on Eridani. Here hidden throughout time.
Waiting for us. Playing with us.

Something like ironic amusement washed over Matt.
More than you believe/imagine.

The window into the Omphalos consciousness opened a little wider. Matt saw them swarming over inhabited worlds. Primitive furred quadrupeds looked up at the Omphalos' dark ships as they fingered their spears nervously, in an amazingly human gesture.

Do not interpret as genuine/actual,
the Omphalos voice grated.
Representational filtering, redacted to compatibility with your mental faculties.

And more: worlds with giant floating cities and races that played gracefully in the seas, gas giants with floating jellyfish brains, another insectoid race with advanced armaments, which beat back the Omphalos for a time.

But we prevail,
the Omphalos voice said.

And they did. Cities burned, civilizations fell, and entire planets flared with nuclear annihilation. Omphalos changed the remaining population to suit their needs: making them stronger, smarter—and more obedient.

At its height, the Omphalos civilization spanned a million races and spread across the entire Milky Way galaxy. Snail-slow Omphalos ships crawled their way across the voids between stars at sublight speeds as the millennia ticked away. For all their brilliance, they'd never invented the Displacement Drive.

“How could plants take over the universe?” Matt asked, incredulous

Not accurate. Not plants.
The Omphalos showed him more: their nanoscale technology, building their diamond ships an atom at a time. Their minds, reaching into the more animal-like races' thoughts and turning them into their minions.

“Slaves,” Matt said.

An expression of ourselves,
the Omphalos said.
The most glorious expression
.

At the same time, Omphalos changed themselves to meet any environment, via their advanced bioengineering technology. Their protean biometallic Interstructure Suits became their permanent homes.

Interstructure? “Mecha?” Matt asked.

That is what you have made of it.
A simple perversion of an elegant concept,
the Omphalos answered. The Omphalos lived their entire lives in shining biometallic enclosures, completely dependent on their transformational capabilities. An Interstructure Suit was much more complex than any Mecha, serving as both life support and life extension for the Omphalos.

And now, Matt realized, that was what the shining nodes and crystals in the walls of the chamber were—millions of Omphalos seeded throughout the planet. They had become their technology, permanently inseparable.

In the Omphalos' mind, it was a glorious dream. But that wasn't entirely accurate. The Union had capped their realm. They hadn't yet swarmed over the whole human race. Why not?

“What happened?” Matt asked. “Why are you stuck here while humans take your stars?”

Instant, hot anger.
Humans minor/unsustainable.

“We're doing pretty well for a minor race,” Matt said.

Hot anger washed over him.
It is more entertaining/interesting to act at a distance.

But they showed him. While the Omphalos' diamond ships never exceeded the speed of light, their FTLcomm networks became more intertwined and massive. The Omphalos, in all their varied forms on all their perfected worlds, retreated into the infinite space of the mind.

More space within than without,
the Omphalos told Matt.

The Omphalos had built the sprawling Arcadia network on Eridani, as they had built millions more across the galaxy. It wasn't just Eridani. On every Union world, on every frontier world, on nearly every place in the explored universe where humanity could live, there were Omphalos networks. If humanity dug long enough, it would find the Omphalos. Just like on Keller.

But there was something else. Something hidden. The Omphalos guarded their secrets carefully.

All to plan. We led/brought you here.

“For what?”

Unification,
the Omphalos said, its voice suddenly sharp-edged, hungry.

And in that moment, its grip on Matt's mind loosened, and he caught a glimpse of the grand plan: transform humanity through genemod, and then assimilate them into the Omphalos mind-space.

Of course. The HuMax.

And you/yourself,
the Omphalos said.

“Me?” Matt recoiled, a chill shooting down his spine. How was that possible?

Our influence is felt/perceived evermore,
the Omphalos told him.
You are one of the most pure expressions of desired genome, but also failed/incomplete.

Most pure expression? Matt rocked back. Was that the source of his Perfect Record? His enhanced probability-calculating capabilities?

Causal interpolation, we see all/most/some eventualities.

Matt's shock drove him deeper, and for a moment he was directly connected to the Omphalos mind, seeing every point in time as a single continuum.

Early U.S. Expansion missions had found Arcadia on Eridani, just as planned. They'd eagerly taken the technical data the Omphalos had prepared for them, and they'd quickly used it to create the HuMax, as well as the first earliest FTLcomm devices.

But humanity was cagier than the Omphalos had expected; they isolated their most critical systems from the biometallic tendrils, and probed for information that lay deeper in the infinite universe of the Omphalos mind. They saw the shadows that lurked within. And they took steps.

Even before the Human-HuMax War, the proto-Union was already putting additional safeguards in place, and working on drawing only the useful information out of the Omphalos, not the information they wanted the Union to have.

Yet time overcomes all,
the Omphalos voice told Matt.
Our tendrils now infect/control much human communication. It is time for direct action. To prevail.

Matt shivered. That voice. So alien, so implacable, so confident. And he saw the truth behind it. While UARL believed they had sealed Arcadia, the Omphalos had always been present throughout their systems, changing directives, altering reports, slowly moving them forward toward their ultimate goal. Toward assimilation.

The Union had done their best to contain the Omphalos, but their containment had crumbled over time until it was little more than a ruse. Everything was part of their plan. Roth had found his own outpost of Omphalos deep in Corsair space, and they'd been feeding him the technology to create his biomechanical Mecha. Rayder had undoubtedly done the same. Matt's own father had gone deep into Union records to give what he thought was a priceless genetic gift to Matt. All these ambitious people, each driven to use the Omphalos' technology for advancement, for power, for personal gain. But in the end, all those wonders would lead only to enslavement.

Balance/divide. Embrace/conquer.
The Omphalos voice sounded almost smug.
You will be our general in the coming battle, imperfect as you are.

General?
Matt suddenly saw himself commanding the tendrils of Omphalos, spreading over the Union and converting it to the whims of these alien masters.

“What about Michelle?” Matt asked.

Not optimized,
the Omphalos told him.
Her mind is only mildly interesting
.

Help,
Michelle said. She was trapped on the same infinite plain as Matt, terrified and alone. Matt's anger rose, but he was powerless, bodiless, in the grip of the Omphalos.

Not powerless,
a new thought came. A familiar, dark thought. Gray lightninglike bolts streaked across the infinite plain. The Omphalos keened in surprise.

Suddenly Matt was seeing the scene through his viewmask inside the Demon once again. Ahead of him, orange-hot stone flowed from the Arcadia chamber supports.

Dr. Roth's Demon had staggered to its feet and joined him. He had partially Merged with Matt and was firing Matt's Zap Gun deep into the Omphalos' chamber. The tendrils waved angrily and whipped up to reach Roth's Demon, but they were instantly vaporized by the all-powerful antimatter stream. Nearby, Michelle's Demon remained wrapped in the biometallic ropes.

“They lied to me,” Roth croaked, by way of explanation.

Matt took control of his other Zap Gun and aimed it at the tendrils surrounding Michelle. They disappeared in giant blue flames, and Michelle staggered free. She scooped up Norah's Zap Gun and joined Roth in firing into the Omphalos' chamber. Matt turned his own weapon at the same target.

Where the antimatter beams struck, stone melted and flowed like water. Smoke and steam billowed out, obscuring the destruction. The Omphalos cried out in his mind. But it was more in surprise than in pain.

After what seemed like infinite moments, Matt stopped firing. Molten stone flowed throughout the chamber. But the irresistible antimatter force just splashed harmlessly off the glowing nodules and sharp-edged crystals buried in the rock. They remained unscathed.

And the Omphalos laughed.

* * *

“Probability disruptor,” Dr. Roth croaked, over the comms. “They see all probabilities, and choose the outcome.”

Matt's guts twisted in momentary awe of the Omphalos' power. They'd shifted the beam around their Interstructure Suits, dancing through quadrillions of possibilities to find the one where they were not harmed. Their most powerful weapons, their Zap Gun, couldn't touch the aliens.

The Omphalos' surprise turned to rage.
We prevail,
the voice echoed. Matt's Zap Gun fell from numb Mecha fingers. Roth's and Michelle's Demons stiffened and dropped their guns as well, fully controlled by the Omphalos. Matt's mind expanded to feel Michelle's fear and Roth's deep disappointment. They were sharing feelings, as if in a Merge.

“It is over,” Roth said. “I was to be a god. Now I am nothing.”

But behind his words, there was something more. Some deep calculation, something that Roth himself had held back. The biometallic devices implanted deep in his skin. It gave him an ability to control the connection with the Omphalos. Not enough for movement, but maybe enough to—