Mech Wars: The Complete Series Page 5

  “Not in here, people,” the wiry woman behind the bar yelled. “Please. If my service has meant anything…”

  Most of the bar’s customers filed outside, then, where the gunfire continued. The two groups kept their distance from each other as they left.

  But instead of following the rest, two well-muscled men from the bandanna group broke away from their fellows and approached Lisa.

  “You’re coming with us,” said the taller one on the right. He looked to be of Korean descent, like Lisa.

  “No, I’m not.” Now Lisa did draw her gun, pointing it at the one who’d spoken and willing it not to tremble.

  Gales of laughter burst from both men. Neither had drawn their own guns, though both wore shotguns across their backs.

  “Please,” said the one on the left, who looked Mexican. “We have no time for comedy. Your colleagues are being taken as we speak. We’re trying not to kill Darkstream employees, but we will if we’re pressed. We saw Tessa talking to you, but that only gets you so far.”

  “Tessa? What does she have to do with it?” Lisa knew this was far from the time to ask, but she was suddenly burning with curiosity about the older woman.

  The Korean ignored the question, nodding at Lisa’s pistol instead. “That’s not a toy. Put it down and come quietly so that no one gets hurt who doesn’t need to be.”

  Lisa shook her head, her fear having stolen her ability to speak.

  The Mexican stepped forward, wrapped his hand around the gun’s barrel, and yanked it from Lisa’s grasp. He held it in front of her face, lips curling into a smile. “That was easy.”

  Why didn’t you fire? Lisa demanded of herself. You were within your rights to fire!

  But she hadn’t fired, and she felt completely useless because of that. The idea that she’d been somehow important to the security of Habitat 2 was melting away, and from behind it, the ugly truth was staring her in the face.

  The men bracketed her, gripping her firmly by her upper arms. Then they escorted her through the bar and out of a rear exit.

  Chapter 8

  Toe-to-Toe with Beasts

  “What do you think?” Bronson asked Jake as they left one of the destroyer’s corridors and entered a large room filled with comfortable-looking leather chairs that circled low mahogany tables. A gleaming bar stood at either end of the room.

  “What do I think of what?”

  Bronson’s smile twitched. “My lounge. I had it installed six years ago.” The smile widened again, and the destroyer captain continued. “I figured, since Darkstream keeps whittling down my crew for postings elsewhere in the system, why not make the most of it? So I had Engineering study whether this was feasible. Obviously it turned out to be, and I had them come up with a design. Then, I had Maintenance knock out the walls between twelve crew cabins. This was the result. The Starlight Lounge.”

  “It’s cool,” Jake said, nodding.

  “Thanks.” Bronson led Jake toward the bar on the right, and the captain went behind it, selecting a tall, dark bottle and splashing some of its contents into a tumbler. “What can I get for you, Jake? Juice? I assume your father doesn’t allow you to drink.”

  “Yeah. He doesn’t.”

  Bronson’s smile took on a mischievous cast. “Well, would you like a drink anyway? He doesn’t have to know.”

  Jake shrugged. “All right.”

  Splashing some amber liquid into a glass for Jake, Bronson held up his own. It took a second for Jake to figure out what he wanted. He clinked his class against Bronson’s, and they both took a swallow.

  “Ugh,” Jake said, screwing up his face. “Gross.”

  “You’ll get used to it. How old are you, Jake?”

  “Seventeen.”

  “I had my first drink when I was younger. Of course, back where I come from, that was against the law.”

  “Yeah. I know.”

  Bronson’s eyebrows jacked up a couple notches. “Your father told you about the Milky Way, then?”

  “He told me a lot. Told me about Captain Keyes, and the rest.”

  The captain’s tumbler hit the bartop with a thunk. “Did he?” he said, clearly trying to sound casual, though his voice was strained.

  “Yeah. Did you know Captain Keyes?”

  The smile grew brittle. “He and I go way back. But let’s talk about something else. Let’s talk about the reason you’re here.”

  Jake held his breath. He thought he knew the reason Bronson had brought him here, and he also knew how he felt about it. But he wasn’t certain it was right for him to feel that way.

  “How would you like to be a Darkstream soldier, Jake?”

  “I’d love to,” Jake blurted out. “But…but I don’t want to leave my dad alone out here.”

  “Well, we’re planning to buy that mech from your father. Soon enough, he’ll be able to hire a whole team. So either way, he won’t be alone.”

  “Yeah. I know. But the reason we’re out here is to help Sue Anne, my sister. She has stage four adenosarcoma, and she needs lots of medicine. A lot.”

  “I’m aware. But after our conversation, I think you’ll find that working for Darkstream will be the best thing for your sister, too. You’ll be paid handsomely, Jake, and you can do whatever you like with the credits we’ll give you. That includes paying for top-tier procedures for Sue Ellen.”

  “Sue Anne.”

  “Right. Sorry. Sue Anne.”

  Jake sighed heavily. His dreams were pulling him one way, while his sense of duty tugged him in the opposite direction. What Bronson said made sense, but his dad had always criticized Darkstream, and Peter also said that what they were doing out in the Belt was best for Sue Anne.

  “I just don’t know, sir.”

  “I’ll tell you what,” Bronson said. “Why don’t you take a seat in that recliner just over there.” The destroyer captain reached under the bar, producing lucid sleepgear that was sleeker and much less dorky-looking than Jake’s. “We have a special simulation that we only use for certain recruits. I want you to try it out. Go lucid for just ten minutes. At the end of it, I’ll wake you, and I won’t say anything else. I think you’ll have enough to make your decision, then.”

  Jake took a seat, and Bronson slipped the headgear over his skull, positioning the electrodes so that they were spaced more or less evenly across his scalp.

  He was too excited to get to sleep, so Bronson handed him a light sedative. That did it. He slipped into lucid and found himself piloting a powerful mech.

  The machine conformed to his movements, offering just enough resistance to make the controls intuitive and realistic. Jake’s strength was amplified a hundredfold at least, and the HUD exceeded anything his v-lenses were capable of. It showed Ixa piloting mechs of their own, fighting in an urban landscape populated by towering buildings and looming warehouses.

  He’d run similar simulations in lucid before, but nothing this detailed, and nothing with such an advanced, intuitive interface.

  Jake led a team of fellow mech pilots, and together they rampaged through the city, saving the populace from the mechanized Ixa.

  The most memorable moments included punching an Ixan mech in what would have been its sternum, sending it hurtling from a seven-story building, and corralling an enemy grouping of three mechs using rockets alone, which bought enough time for some nearby civilian office workers to reach safety.

  Historically, the Ixa had never had mechs, but as always happened in lucid, Jake’s brain accepted the simulation as total reality. That was the strength of using dreams to run sims. The fear was real, and so was the sense of victory when Jake and his mechanized companions smashed unit after enemy unit until they were slag.

  Ten minutes of lucid felt like hours, subjectively, and when Bronson finally removed the headgear, bringing Jake back to reality, he felt like he’d had a good run with the new tech. Of course, he also felt ready to go back for hours more.

  But he didn’t say so. He wanted to keep his cool
in front of the destroyer captain.

  “What did you think?”

  “It was awesome!” Jake blurted. So much for keeping my cool. He coughed. “I loved the thermal lances for breaching bay doors, and the HUD was out of this world, but…”

  “But?”

  “Well, why did the sim only have me piloting mechs? I would have expected a sim designed for Darkstream recruits to be more well-rounded than that.”

  “I told you. This is designed for certain recruits only. Recruits with the skills to become mech pilots, namely.”

  “But Darkstream doesn’t have any mechs.”

  “That’s true, we don’t. Yet.” Bronson drew a long breath, his shoulders rising and falling. Jake got the sense that the old man felt almost as excited as he did. “Can you keep a secret, Jake?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Good. Because what I’m about to tell you is classified. Darkstream has long had a program to develop viable mechs. They would be the perfect weapon against the Quatro, who currently overpower us. Yes, enough bullets will take them down, but they’re remarkably resilient, and if one of them reaches you, well…it’s lights out, isn’t it? And we can’t very well bomb the Quatro from orbit, because we’d risk damaging the planet that’s best-suited for human colonization. We’d risk damaging the Gatherers, who have become so important to our industrial base. No, what we really need is a brand new war machine that can go down to the planet’s surface and stand toe-to-toe with the beasts.”

  “Mechs.”

  “Yes. We need to win this fight on the ground, and mechs may be our only way to do it. You and your father finding this mech, way out here—it was an amazing stroke of luck. It’s almost as important a discovery as the Gatherers. We haven’t been able to create a viable mech, for multiple reasons, but now that we’ve found one, we know it’s truly possible. By studying it, we can improve our own designs, and hopefully, before long, we can start producing them. The reason that sim put you in a mech the entire time is because your lucid scores are high enough that if you make it through Darkstream’s training, you could conceivably pilot a mech. How does that sound, Jake?”

  Jake’s breath came much heavier, now. He tried to sort out his thoughts, tried to identify the right thing to do. But it was no clearer than before.

  It didn’t matter. One thing was clear: there was no way he could say no to the chance to drive a real-life mech. It was the ultimate incarnation of his lifelong dream to join Darkstream’s military. Saying no simply wasn’t an option anymore.

  “I’m in,” Jake said. “I’m in.”

  Chapter 9

  Confession

  The goons dragged Lisa through Habitat 2, avoiding streets with fighting. They both had their guns drawn now, and they seemed to pay more attention to the city’s dark places—its smaller streets, its shadowy canopies, its alleys—than they did to Lisa.

  That made sense to her, now that she knew she posed no threat to them whatsoever. Even if she’d still had her gun, they probably would have disarmed her just as easily as before.

  I’m a total failure. A fraud.

  If her captors noticed her dejection, they didn’t remark on it. Instead, they brought her into a low building, whose door opened onto two short rows of poorly made cots. A kitchen followed, and then a set of stairs, and then Lisa was in a squat storage basement, with narrow, street-level windows filled with thick glass.

  She had the presence of mind to wait a few minutes after her kidnappers’ departure before seeking a way out.

  She threw herself against the door they’d left through, but it didn’t budge, and trying the handle produced no results.

  A cursory glance at the horizontal slits the room had for windows showed that even if she could shatter their glass, there was no way she would squeeze through them. Knocking on them generated only a dull thud—no one outside would hear, especially not over the shooting, which continued still.

  A man ran by with children in tow, and Lisa waved at them frantically, but they took no notice of her or even of the building that was her prison. For all she knew, the windows were one-way.

  Before long, she gave up, sitting on a long crate and taking stock of her surroundings.

  Nothing that shouted criminality drew her attention. There were a few guns, but none of them had any ammo. Besides, anyone was allowed to carry pretty much any firearm, wherever they wanted in the Steele System.

  That gave her hope. If the criminal element was taking over Habitat 2, then maybe its residents would find the strength to fight back.

  She tried to imagine Phineas Gage holding a gun. Or worse, Bob O’Toole. Her shoulders slumped once more.

  Dragging together some empty sacks to make a bed, she fell into them, awaiting her fate. Hopefully the men who’d brought her here weren’t killed. That would be even worse than facing them again: starving to death down here, alone, forgotten.

  Memories of her family came flooding back to her. They were in Kuiper Belt 2, or the Belt, as most of its residents called it. She’d been born in Hub, the de facto capital of the Belt, and she’d hated the close quarters there. The closed-in world, the ability to look directly up and see what your upside-down neighbors were doing…

  Now, she wished she’d never left.

  The door opened, and Lisa leapt to her feet instinctively.

  This is it. She was ready to fight, this time. I won’t stay down here any longer. If she had to take down several muscled goons, she didn’t care. She’d do it. She would.

  Tessa Notaras descended the stairs into the basement, clutching a pistol in each hand. When she saw Lisa, she came to a halt.

  “Tessa,” Lisa said. “What’s going on?”

  Glancing behind her, the white-haired woman motioned with one of the guns. “Come on. We have to go.”

  “I’m not going anywhere. Not until you tell me what the hell is happening to Habitat 2.” Lisa wanted to stamp her foot, but it seemed like it might come off as childish. A real soldier would rely on the authority of her commanding voice alone.

  But am I a real soldier? She didn’t think so. Not anymore.

  “Fine.” Tessa turned around and ascended the stairs.

  “Wait,” Lisa said. “Okay. I’ll come!”

  The sound of the door clicking shut reached her ears, and Tessa reappeared. “Calm down. I was just securing the door.” She reached the basement and crossed the room, placing her pistols on the crate Lisa had first sat on and taking a seat beside them. “Are you okay?”

  “Yes. I’m fine. Are…are you?”

  “Yeah. I guess.” Tessa sniffed. “I need to make this quick, because we’re very short on time. Listen carefully, okay?”

  “Okay.”

  “The drug trade in Habitat 2 is controlled by two rival gangs. One gang just went to war with the other, and the worst of the two won. That gang, called Daybreak, now controls Habitat 2. Their leader is Quentin Cooper, and he’s a ruthless bastard. If we stay here long enough, he’ll find us.”

  “How do you know all that?”

  “Because I work for Three Points, Lisa. The gang that lost this fight.”

  Lisa studied Tessa’s lined face. “You’re serious, aren’t you?” She shook her head. “How could you, Tessa?”

  “Because the gangs are the only meaningful opposition Darkstream faces on Alex. And I have a lot of hangups when it comes to my old employer. Listen, why do any of us do what we do? I needed the credits, for one. But that doesn’t matter right now.”

  “It matters a lot, actually. Darkstream will send troops soon to liberate the town, and when they do, it’s my job to report your confession, Tessa.” Lisa sighed. She really liked Tessa. Even despite what she’d just learned about her. Maybe there was some way to get some leniency for her. “If you cooperate, it’s possible they’ll reduce your punishment.”

  Tessa chuckled. “You’re cute, Lisa. I wouldn’t hold your breath on Darkstream liberating anyone. The company’s negotiating with Daybreak ri
ght now.”

  “Negotiating what?”

  “The terms of their occupation. That’s been Daybreak’s plan from the start. Take over Habitat 2, make themselves rich, and keep Darkstream happy by giving them an even bigger cut of the resources collected than they were getting before. If Habitat 2’s residents become slaves, their standard of living can go down. It’ll no longer matter whether they’re happy—just that they have whatever scraps are necessary for survival. Meaning more resources, for the gang and for Darkstream.”

  “That’s ridiculous. Darkstream would never allow that to happen. It would destroy their public image.”

  “They’ll play it off like they had no choice. Maybe say something about the gang threatening to blow up the habitat if they tried to intervene. Something like that.”

  “I won’t believe it.”

  “Believe it, honey. It’s happening.”

  Lisa stood. “We have to do something. Darkstream will come soon, but we’re no use to them in captivity, or dead. Maybe…maybe we could make it to Habitat 1. Recruit some reinforcements, to come back and help my colleagues retake this Habitat once they arrive.”

  Joining her in standing, Tessa said, “Leaving certainly seems like a good idea. For us both. They’ll kill me if they find me, and they may kill you, if your employer doesn’t bother to negotiate for your release.”

  Shaking her head, Lisa marveled at how brainwashed Tessa was. She’d had no idea that the old woman had drunk so deeply from the anti-corporate lemonade.

  “Andy Miller does supply runs between here and the space elevator all the time,” Lisa said. “If we can reach him, convince him to help—”

  “Oh, we’ll convince him,” Tessa said, scooping up her pistols in one fluid motion. “One way or another.” She grinned. “Grab some weapons and let’s go. There should be ammo upstairs.”

  Chapter 10

  White and Scarlet

  Gabe watched the woods roll by as the armored personnel carrier trundled along the Gatherer path, much slower than the speeders most civilians used. For vehicles this size, it was much more efficient to use old-fashioned wheels than to try to make it hover. But it sure made for a slower trip.