Meltdown (Mech Wars Book 3) Read online

  Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Onslaught

  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

  Dedication

  Acknowledgments

  Excerpt from Supercarrier

  Chapter 2: Thessaly

  Meltdown

  By Scott Bartlett

  Book 3 of Mech Wars, a military science fiction series.

  MELTDOWN

  © 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.

  Onslaught

  Sign up for the mailing list and read Onslaught for free, the prequel to Mech Wars.

  Only mailing list subscribers get to read Onslaught. It reveals a shocking secret from Chief Roach’s past, when Darkstream first conquered Eresos with the help of Tessa Notaras.

  You’ll also be the first to know when Infliction comes out - that’s the 4th and final book in the Mech Wars series!

  Chapter 1

  All Combat Units

  Ash stared at Chief Roach, and she realized that if she hadn’t been inside her battered MIMAS mech, her mouth would have been hanging open.

  “So, you…dissolved? You let that thing eat you?”

  Roach stepped forward, his alien mech towering over the human-made MIMAS mechs. Except, Ash supposed it was no longer correct to think of it as “Roach’s mech.” If what he’d just said was true, the mech was Roach, in every sense.

  “I wouldn’t phrase it that way, exactly,” he said. “The mech gave up as much as I did, Sweeney. It’s bonded to me, now, permanently. It can’t accept anyone else inside it, and it can never act on its own without me. If it tries to do something I don’t like, I can veto that act, and vice versa.”

  “Wait, it can act on its own?”

  Ash looked around at the other members of Oneiri Team—what members were present, anyway. Tommy was dead, Jake was gone, and Roach…

  Is Roach even a member of Oneiri anymore? Ash wondered. That remained to be seen.

  The other MIMAS mechs stood stock-still, as though unsure what to make of Roach, now, and unsure how to treat him. If Ash could have seen their expressions, she would have bet they’d feature a potent blend of shock, fear, and maybe even some revulsion.

  She was certainly experiencing all of that herself. In equal measure.

  Turning back to Roach, she said, “So, if you don’t plan to lead us anymore, what do you plan on doing?”

  Even though Roach was clearly able to have his metal body take virtually any shape, he’d kept all his weaponry active after the battle, and the mech bristled with it. It lent him a fearsome air. “I intend to continue doing exactly what I came down here to do—kill Quatro, along with anyone who tries to stop me from doing that. So don’t get in my way.”

  Chief Roach—Just Roach, now, she reflected—turned as if to leave them, maybe to track down the remaining quads.

  At that moment, Captain Arkady Black returned from his inspection of the surviving soldiers of the Winged Dragons. That was the Darkstream reserve battalion that had helped Oneiri Team wage the battle that had ended mere moments ago—against Quatro, Red Company mercenaries, and Quatro piloting quads.

  “If that’s the way it is, so be it, Roach,” Black said. “Although, you haven’t completed your current contract with Darkstream, and I expect the board of directors will have something to say about your defection.”

  Unexpectedly, Roach’s laughter boomed across the plains of Eresos. “I no longer pay attention to the whimpering of corporate executives. They can come and whine at me all they like—I won’t heed it. If they think they have the power to reprimand me with anything beyond their inane babble, I invite them to try.”

  Black grunted. “Our aims align, at the moment, so I doubt they’ll feel moved to put you down just yet. But if you’re truly the rabid dog I suspect you’ve become, then that day will come. I hope you know that.”

  “Again...I invite it.”

  “Uh huh. Well, your business is your own. Before you leave, I hope you have enough humanity left in you to lend us your help in closing the tunnel the quads dug into Ingress. Surely you understand the danger of leaving it open—the danger to innocent people. We can close it much faster with your help.”

  For a long moment, Roach’s midnight mech stood inert, seeming to stare at Black. Unless Ash missed her guess, Roach was glaring at the captain, and for a moment she expected him to refuse to lend his aid.

  But she was wrong. “Very well,” Roach said at last. “Let’s make this quick.”

  “Yes, let’s,” Black said. “I’ll accompany you to the hilltop where the tunnel begins, though I’m sure I can’t keep up with a crowd of metal giants.”

  “On the contrary,” Roach said. With that, he picked up Captain Black with one hand, whose face darkened with the indignity.

  Roach’s shoulder morphed to form a sort of saddle, which he deposited the captain into. Metal straps snaked out from either side of him to wrap around Black’s legs and stomach, holding him fast.

  “Come,” Roach said, taking off across the terrain, toward the hill.

  Exchanging glances with B
eth, Ash followed, and so did the rest of Oneiri.

  Paste, Ash thought. That’s the nickname I gave Beth.

  She’d given Marco one, too—Spirit. Surprisingly, no one had objected to the nicknames she’d doled out, even though she’d given Marco’s sarcastically, and Paste…

  Well, Paste is a serviceable nickname, I guess.

  Before they reached the hilltop, Marco—Spirit—started thinking out loud. “There were eight quads that we know of, right? It’s possible more came down in meteorites, but…”

  He glanced at Ash, who nodded. “That’s right, Marco. Eight, as far as we know.”

  “We took down one, and Chief Roach defeated two more. Before that, he chased off four. But that means there’s still one unaccounted for. Doesn’t it?”

  Ash stopped running, and the rest of Oneiri Team did too, all of them turning to face her.

  “Has anyone checked the tunnel since the battle?” she asked.

  At that moment, an alert appeared in her vision, dominating her HUD.

  It was from the Ingress garrison:

  “INGRESS IS UNDER ATTACK! ALL DARKSTREAM COMBAT UNITS GO TO THE CITY AT ONCE!”

  “Come on!” Ash yelled, turning back to run toward Ingress. The other MIMAS mechs followed.

  As she sprinted toward the city gates, she contacted the commander of the city garrison.

  “It’s a quad!” Cassandra Sora said, jogging alongside Ash inside the mech dream, looking completely freaked out. “It’s only one of them, but nothing we’re doing is having any effect. It’s already slaughtered dozens of civilians. You need to get here, now!”

  “We’re on our way,” Ash said, the dream translating the mech’s exertion as a simulated ache in her own muscles. “Hold on as well as you can. We’ll be there soon.”

  Chapter 2

  Under Attack

  For Lisa, the journey from Alex to Eresos had dragged on, seeming to last forever.

  I wonder why, she thought sarcastically.

  Maybe it was the fact that one of them needed to stay in the cockpit at all times, weapon in hand, to make sure the pilot followed the course they’d told him to follow. Lisa had instructed those in the other shuttles to do the same thing with their pilots.

  Maybe it was the way Rug insisted on pacing up and down the craft, when there truly was no room for her to do that, especially with two other Quatro occupying the shuttle. Lisa had twitched every time the massive alien brushed her leg, and when Rug had bumped into Andy, Lisa snapped at her to lie down and stay there.

  That brought her to the real reason the trip to Alex had seemed to take forever: Andy needed medical attention, and he needed it right now.

  Lisa had done everything she could with what she’d found inside the shuttle’s medkit, which was missing a lot of essential supplies. Apparently the pilot hadn’t been performing his checks anywhere near as often as he should have.

  Despite her efforts, a quick glance at Andy’s vitals indicated he needed to see an actual doctor, as soon as possible.

  You don’t have to be a medical professional to figure that one out.

  On her HUD, most of Andy’s body was rimmed with red-tinged yellow, communicating sub-optimal health. His left leg, which now ended at the knee, terminated in a scarlet sun on Lisa’s HUD, and his right leg was covered in maroon patches. A readout told her that the risk of infection was high, and the prophylactic antibiotics the medkit was supposed to contain had been one of the things missing due to the pilot’s negligence.

  “Tell dad I can prepare supper,” Andy muttered. “I don’t need him. I don’t need the guilt trip. I’ll do it.”

  Andy had fallen unconscious hours ago, and strangely, Lisa took solace in his occasional delirious muttering. It meant he was still alive; that his brain still functioned.

  Other than monitoring his state using his vitals, all she could do was keep his forehead wet with water from a canteen she’d found in the back of the shuttle. She was doing everything she could to fight the fever that had already begun to form.

  An hour before they reached Eresos, Lisa started getting updates from the system net about a battle that was underway just outside Ingress—the city where the space elevator terminated.

  Of course. Of course there’d be a battle there now. It’s not like we’ve faced enough problems.

  The battle was between Darkstream troops on one side and Quatro on the other. Humans accompanied the Quatro, and some of the social posts had identified those humans as mercenaries.

  The battle itself was being recorded by civilians who were documenting it from atop the city walls.

  A few of the Quatro seemed to be piloting mechs of their own. Then, Lisa saw a video of yet another mech, this one a biped with similarities to those controlled by the aliens. It took on two of the Quatro mechs at once, and it won, even after the aliens ran it through with massive, razor-sharp lances.

  Lisa didn’t relay any of that to Rug. She didn’t want to agitate the alien any more than she already was.

  That changed when she received the alert from Ingress:

  “INGRESS IS UNDER ATTACK! ALL DARKSTREAM COMBAT UNITS GO TO THE CITY AT ONCE!”

  Partly, she felt surprised to still be receiving alerts from Darkstream. I guess they haven’t gotten around to removing me from their database after what I did to Laudano and his soldiers. Or maybe they’re just that desperate.

  Either way, she knew she now had to break her silence about the Quatro’s involvement in the strife around Ingress.

  “Rug,” she said, and the alien’s enormous head snapped up to look at her, quicker than Lisa would have thought it could move.

  “Yes, Lisa?” she said. “Do you have news of my people on Eresos?”

  Lisa hesitated. “I do, actually. I have news of one of them, anyway. And it’s not good news, Rug.”

  “Tell me. Do not be hesitant.”

  “All right. Well, I’ve been keeping this from you—I’m sorry, but I thought it best, considering your agitation. Some of your people seem to have acquired mechs of their own, and one of them is rampaging through the streets of Eresos right now.”

  Rug regarded her silently, totally motionless. After several moments, Lisa began to wonder whether the Quatro had gone into shock.

  Lisa cleared her throat. “Do you…do you think you can talk to it, Rug? Get it to stop, somehow?”

  “I can try,” Rug said, and she didn’t speak again.

  “Good,” Lisa said, with a glance at Andy. For a while, I thought things would become simpler once we reached Eresos. How stupid. “That’s all I ask, Rug—that you speak to it, and try to convince it to stop killing humans. Then, hopefully, we won’t have to kill it.”

  Chapter 3

  One Rocket Each

  When Wound’s tunnel broke through to the planet’s surface, he emerged inside a cramped basement. Stone stairs led to an upper floor, though they were too narrow to accommodate him, and the door at the top was too small for him to pass through.

  So he blasted it apart with a single shot from one of his energy cannons, leaving it a gaping, smoldering aperture.

  Pouncing through, Wound came upon a frightened family sitting around a table, participating together in a meal. The largest, hairiest one of them got up, brandishing a small knife in its hand.

  Is that a joke? The whispers asked from inside Wound.

  He crossed the eating room in one stride and crushed the human with an enormous metal paw. Then he turned a low-caliber gun on the three that remained and put a swift end to them.

  All four members of the family now lay strewn across the floor, having assumed the various twisted postures of death.

  It’s beautiful, the whispers remarked. What a beautiful tapestry they make. Should we stay and admire it forever?

  “No,” Wound muttered, and turned enormous energy cannons on one of the walls. He blasted it, causing it to disintegrate and reveal a narrow alley. Opposite the structure where he’d emerged sat another squat
dwelling, over which hung an iron sky.

  The weather’s changing.

  Just as were the fortunes of those humans that dwelled in this city.

  The ones who benefited from the oppression of my brothers and sisters.

  For a moment, that didn’t seem like justification enough to proceed with the slaughter.

  Don’t I welcome the oppression of the Quatro? They deserve it, after all.

  The whispers answered: These humans have your mate somewhere in this settlement of steel and filth.

  “Ah,” Wound muttered. “Yes.”

  He stalked out of the exit he’d created, following the alley toward a busier street, with vehicles the humans called speeders zipping back and forth along it. As Wound approached, a man and a woman passed the alley mouth as they progressed down the sidewalk.

  His mech’s heavy footfalls made them turn as he stepped onto the street, and they screamed, but Wound ignored them for now.

  Yes. In addition to the speeders, there was also ample pedestrian traffic.

  They will hear my demands. But first, I must teach them to listen.

  Twin heavy machine guns projected suddenly from Wound’s shoulders, even startling him a little. Inside the alien suit, his barest whim often manifested as dramatic physical phenomena.

  Luckily, this phenomenon suited his purposes.

  He sprayed the young, screaming couple with bullets, throwing them back to lie supine on the sidewalk—their bodies tattered, metal-ridden remnants.

  Then, Wound galloped down that sidewalk, crushing any walkers too slow to get out of his way while firing rockets at the individual speeders; one rocket for each vehicle. The speeders lacked armor of any kind, and so one rocket seemed to do it; tossing them into each other, leaving massive dents in their metal bodies. Occasionally, the explosions were enough to tear the speeders open.

  Before long, humans with guns came against him, seeking to stop his stampede, or maybe just to slow it.

  They failed. Wound brought his energy cannons to bear once more, turning the puny creatures into scorched, smoldering lumps. He knew that if he used enough energy, he could cause them to disintegrate, just as he’d done to the walls of the structure he’d emerged inside. But he wanted to conserve his power, so that he could continue to attack until they gave him what he wanted.