Mech Wars: The Complete Series Read online

  Contents

  Title Page

  Free Books

  POWERED - Book 1

  Chapter 1: Mech

  Chapter 2: The Dusty Bucket

  Chapter 3: Gabriel Roach

  Chapter 4: The Crazy Part

  Chapter 5: Clearly a War Machine

  Chapter 6: Mind on the Mission

  Chapter 7: Trying Not to Kill

  Chapter 8: Toe-to-Toe with Beasts

  Chapter 9: Confession

  Chapter 10: White and Scarlet

  Chapter 11: Pockets of Resistance

  Chapter 12: Accelerate Vengeance

  Chapter 13: Beetle

  Chapter 14: Your Favorite Video Game Character

  Chapter 15: Burpee

  Chapter 16: Firing a Real Gun

  Chapter 17: Living Hell

  Chapter 18: We're All Starting to Hate

  Chapter 19: Plenty to Worry About

  Chapter 20: Test Run

  Chapter 21: Beetle Chase

  Chapter 22: For Our Sisters

  Chapter 23: Do Not Flinch

  Chapter 24: Dangerous for Basically Everyone

  Chapter 25: War Never Asks

  Chapter 26: Quatro

  Chapter 27: No Warning

  Chapter 28: Claustrophobia

  Chapter 29: Stranded

  Chapter 30: Oneiri

  Chapter 31: Taken

  Chapter 32: Subterranean Ship

  Chapter 33: Drop

  Chapter 34: Stars

  Chapter 35: Miscalculation

  Chapter 36: Heavy Ordnance

  Chapter 37: Crumbling

  Chapter 38: First Words

  Chapter 39: Our Planet Now

  Chapter 40: Fullerenes

  Chapter 41: Collectivist

  Chapter 42: Red Company

  Chapter 43: So Long as the Walls Hold

  Chapter 44: Shut up and Shoot

  Chapter 45: Act Fast

  Chapter 46: How Many Teeth

  Chapter 47: Parabola

  Chapter 48: Makeshift Tank

  Chapter 49: Steam

  Chapter 50: A Losing Engagement

  Chapter 51: Attack Angle

  Chapter 52: Beating Heart

  Chapter 53: Fear and Revulsion

  Chapter 54: Sharing

  Chapter 55: Take No Prisoners

  Chapter 56: Clutch

  Chapter 57: A Troop of Giant Aliens

  Chapter 58: Retreat

  Chapter 59: Quadruped

  DYNAMO - Book 2

  Chapter 1: Into the Shadows

  Chapter 2: Quads

  Chapter 3: Classic Conspiracy Theorist

  Chapter 4: Valiant

  Chapter 5: Two-Legged Murderers

  Chapter 6: Mating Ritual Initiated

  Chapter 7: Fury and Justice

  Chapter 8: Adventurous Benders

  Chapter 9: Act like a Soldier

  Chapter 10: Played

  Chapter 11: Vaguely Humanoid

  Chapter 12: Militia

  Chapter 13: Not Just a War of Expansion

  Chapter 14: Extermination Is Also Acceptable

  Chapter 15: Operational Details

  Chapter 16: Eyes Aglow

  Chapter 17: Feedback Mechanism

  Chapter 18: Creative Karma

  Chapter 19: Sucker for Punishment

  Chapter 20: Alliance

  Chapter 21: Infiltration

  Chapter 22: Imminent Danger

  Chapter 23: Back in Business

  Chapter 24: On Patrol

  Chapter 25: Constable Station

  Chapter 26: If I Bleed, I Bleed

  Chapter 27: A Lot to Answer For

  Chapter 28: Contract Violation

  Chapter 29: Significant Deviations

  Chapter 30: Jump

  Chapter 31: This Thing Is Moving

  Chapter 32: Coma

  Chapter 33: That Which Nullifies

  Chapter 34: Try Something Else

  Chapter 35: All the Cards

  Chapter 36: Oxygen

  Chapter 37: Billy's Bunker

  Chapter 38: Slave State

  Chapter 39: Play with Explosives

  Chapter 40: More Hectic than Expected

  Chapter 41: Paste

  Chapter 42: Nature's Original Shape

  Chapter 43: Our Best Idea

  Chapter 44: Training

  Chapter 45: A Monster or a Coward

  Chapter 46: Supposed to Be the Best

  Chapter 47: Defensive Formation

  Chapter 48: The Long-Term Doesn't Matter

  Chapter 49: Lay Down Your Guns

  Chapter 50: Payload

  Chapter 51: Dynamo

  Chapter 52: No Choice

  Chapter 53: Subsumed

  Epilogue: Progenitor

  MELTDOWN - Book 3

  Chapter 1: All Combat Units

  Chapter 2: Under Attack

  Chapter 3: One Rocket Each

  Chapter 4: Swath of Destruction

  Chapter 5: The Beast

  Chapter 6: Good and Evil

  Chapter 7: Sucker Punch

  Chapter 8: Phantoms

  Chapter 9: Sympathy for O'Toole

  Chaper 10: Until I Am Satisfied

  Chapter 11: Emergency Bulletin

  Chapter 12: A Unified Oneiri

  Chapter 13: The Quatro Way

  Chapter 14: Without a Spacefaring Enemy

  Chapter 15: Sabotage

  Chapter 16: Blaring Prophecy

  Chapter 17: Avalanche

  Chapter 18: The Glades

  Chapter 19: Comet Four

  Chapter 20: Whirlwind of Metal

  Chapter 21: The Gatherers

  Chapter 22: Shower of Shrapnel

  Chapter 23: Cordage

  Chapter 24: Crescendo

  Chapter 25: Definitely Fearless

  Chapter 26: Peppertree

  Chapter 27: Lockdown Mode

  Chapter 28: Defeatist

  Chapter 29: Cascade Error

  Chapter 30: DuGalle

  Chapter 31: One-Note Dirge

  Chapter 32: Charred Roots

  Chapter 33: Simpatico

  Chapter 34: Sea of Blades

  Chapter 35: The Altar of Expansion

  Chapter 36: Scratching an Itch

  Chapter 37: Data Dump

  Chapter 38: The Debt

  Chapter 39: Silence

  Chapter 40: River Rock Redux

  Chapter 41: We Stick Together

  Chapter 42: Her New Army

  Chapter 43: Vanguard

  Chapter 44: Engage Together

  Chapter 45: Champion

  Chapter 46: Makeshift Gunships

  Chapter 47: Concentrated Fire

  Chapter 48: Everything at her Disposal

  Chapter 49: Instant Headache

  Chapter 50: Locked in Combat

  Chapter 51: Balance of Power

  Chapter 52: Full Potential

  Chapter 53: Surge Forward

  Chapter 54: Torn Asunder

  Epilogue: The Demands of War

  INFLICTION - Book 4

  Chapter 1: Live by the Ledger

  Chapter 2: Full of Empty Words

  Chapter 3: Engage Every Hostile

  Chapter 4: Warzone

  Chapter 5: Window into Your Skull

  Chapter 6: Robot Horde

  Chapter 7: Far from Stable

  Chapter 8: Bonds

  Chapter 9: Access Controls

  Chapter 10: Electronic and Biological

  Chapter 11: Too Clever by Half

  Chapter 12: Signs of Insubordination

  Chapter 13: On Her Own Terms

  Chapter 14: It's Time

  Chapter 15: Textboo
k

  Chapter 16: This Is Awkward

  Chapter 17: Repelling the Actual Attack

  Chapter 18: Imminent Doom

  Chapter 19: A Pair of Rockets

  Chapter 20: Commit More Horrors

  Chapter 21: The Brightening Sky

  Chapter 22: Surrender, Then

  Chapter 23: A Risky Play

  Chapter 24: Early Arrival

  Chapter 25: MIMAS Sim

  Chapter 26: Worthy First Targets

  Chapter 27: As Anticipated

  Chapter 28: Valhalla's Defensive Arsenal

  Chapter 29: Fight for It

  Chapter 30: Oneiri Team

  Chapter 31: Make It Happen

  Chapter 32: Miracle Timing

  Chapter 33: Gated Community

  Chapter 34: We Aren't Darkstream

  Chapter 35: Last Goodbye

  Chapter 36: Deficient

  Chapter 37: State of Play

  Chapter 38: Return to Habitat 2

  Chapter 39: Many

  Chapter 40: Detach Parachutes

  Chapter 41: The Lie

  Chapter 42: Do Not Think

  Chapter 43: High-Risk

  Chapter 44: Redemption

  Chapter 45: Intelligence

  Chapter 46: A Selfish Impulse

  Chapter 47: Painful to Watch

  Chapter 48: Just as He Always Did

  Chapter 49: That Was His Prayer

  Epilogue: No Matter What

  Supercarrier excerpt

  Chapter 2: Thessaly

  Dedication

  Acknowledgments

  Other Books by Scott

  The Mech Wars Collection

  By Scott Bartlett

  Mech Wars, Books 1-4

  Want free books?

  Scott is giving away Onslaught (the Mech Wars prequel) for free, along with 2 other books set in the same universe. If you like free, you can get your books here:

  Click here for your free books

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  Onslaught reveals a shocking secret from when Darkstream first took Eresos.

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  POWERED

  Mech Wars: Book 1

  © Scott Bartlett 2017

  Cover art by Tom Edwards (tomedwardsdesign.com)

  This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 License. To view a copy of this license, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0

  This novel is a work of fiction. All of the characters, places, and events are fictitious. Any resemblance to actual persons living or dead, locales, businesses, or events is entirely coincidental.

  Chapter 1

  Mech

  Jake Price swapped out his assault rifle’s empty magazine for a full one, sucked in a quick breath, and leaned to fire around the low garden wall that served as his only cover. A tight burst, and then back again. His ammo was almost depleted.

  The Ixan soldiers were closing in, and they’d already taken out the rest of Jake’s team.

  Of course, today wouldn’t have gone half so poorly if his dropship pilot hadn’t insisted on putting his team down in the middle of an open square bordered by Ixan snipers. Jake had lost half his people as they tried to sprint across the open space, zigzagging to give themselves a nonzero chance of survival.

  Right now, his chance of surviving seemed pretty close to zero. But he’d been in tighter spots than this.

  And he had to complete the mission.

  Ripping a grenade from his tactical vest, he lobbed it at the approaching soldiers as he scrambled the other way, staying low to the ground and praying he wasn’t kicking up enough dust to give away his location.

  When he judged he’d put enough distance between himself and his original position, he flipped onto his back, ripped his pistol from its holster, and waited.

  There. The Ixa started coming around the wall, fleeing the impending explosion. Jake inhaled, lined up his shot, and fired as he exhaled.

  Boom. Headshot. Boom. Headshot.

  Jake was already up and running as the grenade went off, rumbling through the ground and sending a wave of heat against his back.

  His mission was to rescue a diplomat who’d been foolish enough to try negotiating with the Ixa. They’d taken him hostage, of course, and then the demands had started.

  The Commonwealth needed to send a strong message: they weren’t interested in entertaining Ixan demands.

  And Jake was the messenger they’d chosen.

  Intel had the hostage in a basement two streets over, and an indicator blinked on Jake’s HUD, with a dotted line outlining a suggested route.

  Screw that.

  Following the AI’s suggestion meant staying predictable. Instead, Jake tried a door, and when it wouldn’t open, he slapped a charge just above its doorknob, taking cover behind a nearby dumpster.

  The charge went off, and the door creaked open. Perfect. Now, if he could just…

  “Jake.” Someone shaking his shoulder. “Jake, come on. We’ve arrived. Time to work.”

  He opened his eyes to the gunmetal gray of the tiny cabin he shared with his father aboard their comet hopper.

  As it often did, reality brought a resigned sigh to his lips. “I was about to get a hostage back from the Ixa.”

  “The Ixa aren’t here. I’m here, though, and I’m telling you it’s time to clock in.”

  “They could come,” Jake muttered as he sat up, blinking rapidly to clear his grainy eyes.

  “Not in time to get you out of work,” Peter said with a grin. Then his smile fell away. “You were jolting in your sleep again. I think you’re spending too much time lucid, Jake. It’s not worth sacrificing your sleep for.”

  “It’ll be worth it if the Ixa ever show up.”

  “Sure,” Peter said, nodding. “Or the Gok, or Amblers, or maybe the Quatro will develop spaceflight to come out here and pester us. Until they do, though…”

  “Yeah, yeah.” His father wasn’t mentioning what the single orbital telescope in this system had discovered: the fact that almost all of the nearby star systems had exoplanets with atmospheres filled with oxygen, carbon dioxide, and methane—which made it pretty likely those planets harbored life.

  People living in the Steele System barely ever mentioned that. It made them uncomfortable, so they avoided the topic. They especially didn’t mention that the flux of one star in particular often dropped to below the twenty percent level, for periods that ranged between five and eighty days at a time. On the system net, Jake had seen speculation that the unusual fluctuations could signify a Dyson sphere under construction.

  Either way, Darkstream Security didn’t dare explore the surrounding systems, for fear that it would alert their occupants—who might be much more powerful—to humanity’s presence in the neighborhood. At least, Darkstream wouldn’t do that until they achieved a much better foothold here.

  Jake crouched beside his bunk to access the long drawer underneath it, pulling it out until the handle hit his father’s closed drawer under the opposite bunk. Piles of neatly folded work shirts and jeans waited inside. His father made him fold them neatly every time he steamed them clean, and then Jake had to arrange the clothing according to outfits. Even when they were in transit between work sites, his father enforced neatness.

  “Did we get any messages from Mom and Sue Anne?” Jake asked.

  He glanced to see his father shaking his head. “Not this morning,” Peter Price said softly, after a brief pause.

  Jake nodded, reflecting that no news was probably good news. If Sue Anne’s illness had taken a sudden turn for the worse, then they would have heard about it.

  Even though they’d disembarked the comet hopper hundreds of times, Peter insisted they triple-check every clip and fastening on each other’s pressure suits before leaving through the airlock.

  With his helmet on, Jake sighed again, loudly, knowing his father couldn’t hear. He ha
ted this job. He’d never say that, because they did it to help Sue Anne, but this wasn’t how he’d envisioned spending his life. Turning comets into habitats, for homesteaders so paranoid that it wasn’t good enough Darkstream Security had already brought them far away from every government in existence. No, the homesteaders still weren’t satisfied—they still felt the need to get away from Darkstream itself.

  Although the comet’s surface was almost as cold as anything ever got—Jake’s HUD told him minus two hundred and forty Celsius—the inside of the pressure suit could be made as warm as he liked. If he wanted, he could make it feel like his whole body was pressed against a radiator.

  But that would make work even more unbearable, so he kept the suit’s environment fairly cool.

  “Come help me with the hose,” his father said over the frequency they always used, walking over to the hopper’s hull and keying open a square panel that took up much of the aft. The panel slid aside to reveal a coiled drilling hose. The thing was half a kilometer long and as big around as a man’s ankle.

  “Where are we setting up?” Jake asked.

  Peter pointed. “That flat area over there.”

  As his father unwound the hose, Jake walked with its end toward the indicated spot. It was more shuffling than walking, actually. If you had too much bounce in your step as you crossed a comet, you could easily fly off into space.

  His father had activated the water harvester before leaving the hopper. That device projected downward from the ship’s keel, where it would heat the ice and collect the resultant water before it could freeze again. As water passed through the system, the ship would warm it further, till it was piping hot.

  “That’s far enough,” his father said, and Jake lowered the hose to the ground. They’d have to wait thirty minutes for the ship to heat up enough liquid. In the meantime, Jake helped his father extend the hopper’s antenna array from another part of the hull. The array would use step-frequency radar to gradually scan the comet’s interior, so they could anticipate any problem spots during the drill down.

  That done, it was time to stand around and wait. Even if he’d been able to go lucid, he doubted his father would have let him. But you needed an implant for that anyway, and all Jake had was the dorky-looking sleepgear.

  His eyes played over their comet hopper, which didn’t technically have a name, though he always thought of it as the Whale. The name fit: the thing was big. It had to be, to carry the equipment necessary to set up multiple comet colonies.

  They were on a years-long voyage to establish several such habitats, hopping from comet to comet. Anything smaller than a mile wide didn’t interest them, but luckily there were more than enough suitable candidates for colonization in what had originally been dubbed the Kuiper Belt 2, and those candidates passed near each other often enough to make the whole operation viable.