Mech Wars: The Complete Series Read online

  “This goes without saying, but the mechs should give us a huge advantage against the Quatro. And it seems like we’ll need that, given how feisty they’ve become. Take a day to think about it, if necessary, but no longer than that. I need to know your answer soon. Bronson out.”

  “Feisty,” Gabe muttered. That was one word for what the Quatro had done.

  He already knew his answer to Bronson’s proposal. He would take the job.

  Vengeance was all he had left, now, and it seemed likely this opportunity would accelerate that cause nicely.

  That was all he needed.

  Chapter 13

  Beetle

  Andy tried to radio Habitat 1 for what seemed to Lisa like the twentieth time. Still no luck.

  He sighed. “Either we’re specifically being locked out of the com satellites, or the entire system-net is down.”

  That brought a grunt from Tessa, who sat in the seat opposite Lisa’s. “I’m not sure which possibility is more alarming right now.”

  “Indeed.”

  Tessa returned to whatever she’d been doing on her implant—reading a book, probably. They’d been fleeing Habitat 2 for two days, but for Lisa, those days had felt like weeks.

  It didn’t help that it also felt like the beetle was crawling. Andy assured her that any pursuers would be traveling just as slowly. If they knew what they were doing, anyway.

  The terrain of Alex would punish the unwary, Andy said, opening a ravine beneath their wheels when they least expected it, or upending them with rocks that looked as though they should have posed no problem.

  Darkstream had plans to eventually terraform the planet, but currently they didn’t have the extra resources to devote to the effort. So for now, Alex would remain as she was. Beautiful but forbidding. Harsh. Blue.

  Everything natural on Alex was mostly the same sapphire hue, and so was the dust that kicked up and clogged suit valves and engines. Even travelers following the strictest protocols would eventually find everything they owned coated in a growing layer of blue dust.

  The beetle boasted a number of tricks for navigating the treacherous landscape. Perhaps the most important feature was its individually articulated wheels, which allowed it to “walk” over rocks that would otherwise impede it. Almost as crucial was the jointed arm mounted in front of the crew cabin, for rolling rocks out of the way.

  They were headed for Habitat 1, which was one of only four permanent habitats Darkstream had established on Alex. It had taxed the system’s economy and industrial base to get just those four up and running, but they more than paid for themselves, now. They had the endlessly toiling Gatherers to thank for that.

  Lisa felt embarrassed at the realization that she’d never taken enough of an interest in the geography of Alex to figure out how far away Habitat 1 was. She vaguely knew that 3 and 4 were well out of reach, and separated from the first two by a gargantuan canyon that stretched across half the planet and was basically impassable.

  But she didn’t have a good idea of how far 1 was from 2. Ever since she’d been assigned to provide security for the businesses and inhabitants of Habitat 2, she’d focused on the particulars of the job, not on the planet that existed outside it.

  Eventually, as much as she hated to admit her ignorance to Andy, she decided to just ask. “How long will it take for us to reach Habitat 1?”

  Andy seemed too focused on navigation to bring his usual snark to bear, thankfully. “I’ve never made the trip. I’ve only gone to the space elevator and back, and that’s roughly equidistant between the two Habitats.”

  “How long does that trip take, then?”

  “Three months, if you’re going at a sane speed. Which we will be.”

  “I’m guessing by ‘sane’ you mean slow as hell.”

  “If you consider our current speed to be slow as hell, then yes. And we can assume the rest of the trip to Habitat 1 will take about as long again.”

  Shaking her head, Lisa said, “Why did they put the elevator so far away?”

  Tessa snorted. “Well, the official explanation for that is the company could only afford to build two of them on Alex, so they put them equidistant between each pair of habitats. But that’s bull. The real reason is so the habitat residents can’t easily mount an offensive on the elevator, should they ever become disgruntled enough with their lot.”

  That brought a short, awkward silence, and Lisa wondered whether Andy found Tessa’s conspiracy theories as off-putting as she did.

  She decided not to engage with Tessa’s paranoia. “Why don’t we just go as far as the elevator?” she asked instead. “We can take that up to orbit and ask Darkstream for help.”

  That made Andy glance back at her. “You seriously don’t know?”

  Lisa suppressed the urge to frown. It wasn’t hard to see that she was about to feel stupid again.

  “What?” she said, her voice small.

  “Darkstream maintains a minimal security presence on the orbital station at the top of the elevator. Definitely not enough to retake Habitat 2, if that’s what you’re hoping. The company only uses it as a pickup point for the resources we produce and a drop-off point for supplies. Us beetle drivers do the dirty work of hauling both back and forth.”

  “So…”

  “So, if we’re going anywhere, it’s all the way to Habitat 1, across the most treacherous terrain humanity has ever willingly subjected itself to. Buckle up.”

  Chapter 14

  Your Favorite Video Game Character

  Captain Bronson invited Jake to the CIC to watch their approach to Valhalla Station. He even let Jake sit in the Captain’s Chair, while Bronson stood off to one side of the main viewscreen, hands curled at his sides.

  Jake accepted both offers, though he kind of felt like he was being treated like a giddy little kid.

  It surprised him that Bronson would let him inside the CIC at all. Overall, protocol seemed fairly lax aboard the Javelin.

  I guess that’s what comes of not having any enemy ships to fight for almost twenty years.

  Those thoughts fled Jake’s mind the moment Bronson ordered his sensors operator to magnify their view of Valhalla Station. His breath caught in his throat, then.

  The structure dwarfed any warship he’d ever seen in vids or heard about, including even the Providence, the last supercarrier humanity had ever built—at least, as far as anyone in the Steele System knew.

  Valhalla had four main sections that spread out from a central core, like two sets of wings. The orbital station was all sweeping curves and no edges. It maintained a geosynchronous orbit over Eresos, and the planet’s single space elevator extended down from Valhalla’s center, until it became a near-invisible ribbon that vanished beneath a pillowy cloud cover.

  “It’s massive,” Jake said.

  Bronson turned to him. “You’ve never left Kuiper Belt 2, have you?”

  “Huh? Oh. No, I’ve been in the Belt ever since I was born.”

  “Well, lucky for you, you’ll experience exactly the same gravity here as you did there, thanks to the healthy Ocharium stores we brought with us when we first traveled to the Steele System.”

  “That’s good,” Jake said.

  Bronson nodded. “Enjoy it while it lasts. Soon, we’ll be injecting you with extra Ocharium nanites, to get you accustomed to the heavier gravity of Eresos.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  The more Ocharium nanites his body had, the more it would attract the fermion matrix that infused every ship’s deck, as well as all of Valhalla’s flooring. Jake didn’t look forward to the experience of having more weight to carry around.

  Using Ocharium and fermions to simulate gravity was an example of dark tech, which also permitted the generation of wormholes—that was how Darkstream had reached the Steele System in the first place.

  Back in the Milky Way, Darkstream had learned that humanity’s use of dark tech was actually unraveling the fabric of the universe, and so since arriving here they’d wo
und down their use of dark tech by a lot. They’d scrapped the wormholes, along with the micronet that had once enabled instantaneous communication.

  That said, they still used it for gravity, figuring that since theirs was a relatively small fraction of humanity, that should result in minimal danger. In the short- and medium-term, at least.

  It’s possible that we’re not a fraction of humanity, of course. If the Ixa won the war, we might now be all of humanity. And if it’s true that the nearby stars could also hold powerful adversaries…

  Jake decided to abandon that line of thought. Bronson’s Coms officer communicated with a space traffic controller on Valhalla, who informed them that Landing Bay Theta was ready to receive them.

  Fewer than thirty minutes later, Bronson and Jake were exiting a shuttle’s airlock inside the designated landing bay.

  A tall man with a hard face met them outside the airlock. Short black hair stood at attention above a creased brow, which overshadowed a hooked nose.

  Jake cursed, drawing a sharp look from Bronson. “Sorry, sir. B-but that’s…that’s Gabriel Roach!”

  “Ah. Yes. I take it you’re a fan?”

  Since leaving his father’s comet hopper to journey into the inner system aboard the Javelin, Jake had attempted to display the proper deference toward officers, which he knew would be expected of him at all times once he enlisted. But he often slipped, and now was no different.

  Ignoring Bronson’s question, Jake stepped toward Roach, his entire body vibrating. “E-excuse me, sir, but…could I have your autograph?”

  Eyes widening and mouth twisting, Roach surged forward to grab Jake by the lapels, driving him backward until his back collided with the side of the shuttle. Pain shot through his torso, and he winced.

  Bronson observed the ordeal impassively, hands folded behind his back.

  “What’s your name, boy?” Roach said softly, his voice dripping with menace.

  “J-Jake Price, sir.”

  “Listen to me, Price. You will never ask me for anything again, least of all my autograph. I’m not your favorite video game character, nor am I your favorite movie star. From this day forward, I am merely your instructor and your superior officer, and you will merely follow every order I give without question. Is that clear?”

  “Yes, sir.” Jake was still shaking, but with an entirely different emotion, now.

  “Perfect.” Roach released him, and Jake slumped against the shuttle. He quickly righted himself, his cheeks burning.

  Roach stood with his back to him now, facing Bronson.

  “You didn’t have to be so hard on him right off the bat,” the destroyer captain said, in a tone one might use to inform a server that he’d brought the wrong type of cheesecake.

  “Sir, I can be hard on him now or the Quatro can tear him limb from limb upon their first encounter.”

  “That seems a bit dramatic.”

  “I’m sure it does seem dramatic, to a man who watches people bleed and die for him from space.”

  Bronson blinked, but offered no other reaction. Even so, Jake got the sense that Roach would pay for the disrespect he’d shown today.

  Roach paused to speak to a man standing at attention nearby, who Jake hadn’t noticed until now.

  “Wipe the kid’s nose for him and then show him his quarters. If he already wants to run back to his mother, send him out on the next shuttle.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  With that, Gabriel Roach left Landing Bay Theta.

  Chapter 15

  Burpee

  Andy claimed that he was capable of simultaneously finding the safest path over Alex’s surface, attempting to establish communications with Habitat 1, and keeping an eye on satellite images of the surrounding area. Even so, he delegated the latter two tasks to Lisa most of the time.

  “I can do the multitasking, but it’ll be better for all of us if I don’t have to,” he said.

  As for why Andy could access satellite imagery but not the system-net, well, that was another mystery.

  Occasionally, usually toward the end of the day, Lisa wondered whether Andy was screwing with them. She accused him of it once, and he brought the beetle to a halt, getting up from the driver’s seat and gesturing toward it.

  “Go ahead, Lisa. See if you can raise Habitat 1.”

  And she’d tried. For a few minutes.

  Nothing. They had access to satellite photos of Alex, but not to communication with the rest of the Steele System.

  “Sorry,” she said, returning to her seat in the back.

  The beetle’s crew cabin wasn’t designed for sleep—almost every inch of it was taken up with vital instruments, and there was certainly no room for the seats to recline. Luckily, it did have an inflatable habitat, which Andy deployed out of the rear of the vehicle each night.

  The habitat even had its own airlock, which accordioned out. Stowing the thing each morning was a pain, but it was better than attempting to sleep in the cramped beetle, or worse, inside their pressure suits on the rocky surface of Alex.

  One morning, Tessa said something Lisa found fairly insulting. It came after Lisa asked whether they could be sure their oxygen supplies would last until Habitat 1, and as usual, Andy’s answer dripped with sarcasm.

  “Wow,” he said. “Okay. Think about this for a second, Lisa. Have you ever heard of Habitat 2 ever getting any oxygen shipments?”

  “Um, no.”

  “That’s because it has multiple large zirconia electrolyzers, all around the roof, constantly breaking down carbon dioxide for its oxygen and venting it into the city. The beetle has a smaller electrolyzer. We’ll have oxygen for as long as that’s functioning.”

  “Thank you for informing me, Andy,” Lisa said stiffly. Her father had always told her never to feel ashamed of admitting ignorance by asking a question. She’d always lived by that principle, but Andy sure was testing it.

  Then came Tessa’s remark. “What sort of training did Darkstream give you, anyway, Lisa?”

  That cracked Lisa’s emotional dam, and her temper came steaming out.

  “Well, they never trained me on any zirconia electrolyzer, Tessa. Maybe back in your day the company doled out training that had nothing to do with an employee’s job, but they’ve become a bit more efficient since then.”

  Tessa chuckled, which only made Lisa angrier.

  “I passed every course I did take with flying colors, for your information,” she added.

  “That’s interesting,” Tessa said. “Considering how useless you were back at Habitat 2.”

  “Excuse me?”

  Shrugging, Tessa shifted in her seat, leaning against the beetle’s inside wall and facing Lisa. “Your disguise back at the Swinging Eel was laughable. And you crumbled when faced with just two low-level criminals. What did you actually do back in Habitat 2, other than the handful of arrests you made for possession?”

  “I can handle myself, Tessa. You can see for yourself, if you like. Why not fight me in lucid?”

  “Lucid,” Tessa said, chuckling again. “Of course it’s lucid. All right, girl. I’ll see you in lucid. You choose the terrain.”

  “Done.” Lisa popped a sedative designed to boost REM sleep and tried her best to get comfortable in the beetle seat.

  Soon, she stood in one of her favorite levels: a vast warehouse with “islands” of freight that formed narrow corridors between them. She knew the paths that led to the top of three different islands, and if you were stealthy and patient, it was possible to get the drop on even the most formidable opponent.

  Lisa crept to the top of a central island that consisted of stacked shipping containers. She relished her ability to leap from surface to surface silently, like a cat.

  From her chosen vantage point, she scanned the three pathways in her line of sight, taking full advantage of her assault rifle’s scope.

  A flicker of movement caught her eye. There.

  Tracking her opponent’s anticipated trajectory, she was reward
ed with another flicker of dark clothing, and she fired a short burst.

  Tessa cried out, spinning out of sight once more, and Lisa allowed herself a moment of silent celebration. She was sure she’d gotten Tessa in the shoulder.

  In the dream, Tessa’s fear would be real, as well as her pain. This wouldn’t take long. I told you I could fight, Tessa.

  Remaining in this position was not wise, now that she’d given it up by firing on her adversary. Instead, she crept across the top of this freight island and leapt over to the next, which was the only way you could access it.

  Time to find another spot to lie in wait for my prey.

  This second island consisted mostly of wide crates, stacked in towers, all of which rested on a bed of pallets that sat flush with one another. Lisa knew of another excellent vantage point up here, which would give her a line of sight on two well-trafficked ground-level paths.

  Just before she reached her chosen spot, a blur of black surged toward her from behind a nearby crate.

  Tessa struck Lisa’s gun hand, sending her assault rifle flying.

  Raising her hands to defend herself, she deflected the first blow, but a hammerhand got her in the temple, followed by a roundhouse to the ribs.

  Lisa staggered dangerously close to the edge before regaining her balance. Then, she charged Tessa.

  The old woman seized her as though she was a rag doll, tossing her against the crate from behind which Tessa had emerged.

  Lisa’s assailant followed along, landing a jab on her jaw, and then a hook that found her eye.

  Railing against the blinding pain, stumbling toward Tessa in an attempt to tackle her, Lisa yelled in frustration. Somehow, Tessa’s foot connected with her buttocks, sending her staggering toward the edge once again.

  Tessa followed, tripping Lisa. She fell, her body colliding with the wood of the crate beneath her, sending the air out of her lungs.