The Mechaneer

Chapter 20: Rebellion

Even as Rudy gawked at the destroyer looming above them, he skidded the mag-cycle to a stop.

"The Feds," Chloe hissed. The pleasant warmth and pressure of her encircling arms vanished as she pulled away. "What's going on here, Rudy?"

"Your guess is as good as mine." He watched, mouth dry, as the destroyer's huge main guns trained on the Algreil office spire. "Unless –"

He should have guessed this. Should have known he wouldn't be the only one who spotted Jack and Ellie Hughes in the Algreil Aerospace box.

He should have told Chloe he'd seen them, instead of trying to surprise her.

He should have told Otto.

He sure as hell shouldn't have paraded Chloe herself before Marcel Avalon. Hiding in plain sight worked only when the predator didn't know to expect the prey.

Dammit!

Too late for recriminations, he reminded himself. His mechaneer's instincts took over, analyzing the situation. Air superiority went to the Feds, obviously. Same with firepower and the element of surprise. Hell, would Otto even try to fight them?

If he didn't, what would they do? Would they take Jack and Ellie Hughes in trade?

Or would they require Chloe herself – who Otto didn't have and couldn't give?

"Are they going to fire on the office?" she asked. "Why would they do that?"

Because I found your parents, Rudy thought. Because the Feds did, too.

He didn't answer.

Chloe drew her own conclusions – probably not far from the truth. "They think Algreil Aerospace has me. They're gonna take me, no matter what."

She willed the bike's reactive gel to release her and slid to the platform. She drew in a deep breath, balled her hands into fists, strode toward the gate.

Rudy vaulted after her and caught her arm. "Where do you think you're going?"

"To stop this," she said. "The only chance your company, your family, has is if your brother actually does have me and turns me over. I saw those Kalder-Black reports. It's not a good chance, but it is a chance. Maybe if I hurry, there's still time."

"Time to get killed is more like it. Keep your mask up and get on the bike."

"You can't mean to run away!"

"Watch me," Rudy said. He pulled her toward the bike. The Feds would recognize his flight suit once they had time to analyze the data, but he figured they wouldn't be paying attention to the tunnel yet. If he boarded and floored it –

"Let go of me, Rudy," Chloe said. She threw herself back and managed to slide from his grip. "Your brother's gonna die if I don't do this."

"You've never even met my brother," Rudy said, "and if you had, you wouldn't worry about him. He's the slipperiest bastard you'll ever come across. If anybody can get out of this, he can."

"'If,'" Chloe said.

"He's a royal ass," Rudy said. He kept her talking while he circled around to interpose himself between her and the gate. Every second they lost gave the Feds more time to notice them.

"So are you, sometimes."

Rudy didn't rise to the barb. "He hates hybrids!"

"And –" She stopped. Bit her lip.

Finally, he'd found a hook to talk sense into her. "You really want to stick your neck out for somebody who thinks your mom is a piece of property, Clo?"

Chloe didn't answer.

"Didn't think so," Rudy said. He pointed to the bike. "Now let's get out of here and figure out what we're gonna do. The Feds won't make anything stick on Otto without you as proof."

Quietly, Chloe said, "Do you love your brother, Rudy?"

Hell no, Rudy thought. Otto had the galactic market on assholery cornered. The only way his treatment of hybrids differed from his treatment of everybody else was that the law didn't make him fake a different attitude toward hybrids. His voice shouted "Failure" in the back of Rudy's mind.

Rudy muttered, "Yeah."

"Then I won't let him get killed," Chloe said.

She shot past him, a streak of white lightning in her flight suit. At least she'd masked up. The Feds wouldn't catch her that way.

Rudy followed her toward the gate.

The explosion sent them both tumbling to the deck.

Rudy shook his head clear and rolled to his feet. His suit diagnostics proclaimed him unharmed, which just went to show they didn't know everything. His whole side felt like a solid bruise from the fall and his ears throbbed from the sound.

He ran to Chloe's side. She'd just started to push herself up. He hooked his arms under hers and pulled her back from the gate.

Her gasp brought him up short. For a second, he thought she'd hurt herself in the fall and his pulling her made it worse. No, he thought, she sounded more shocked than pained.

He looked up.

He could see the sky through the smoking hole in the Reformer's hull.

He said, "The hell…?"

He looked away and pulled Chloe's face down with him, muffling her startled cry.

Good timing. Another explosion rocked the arcology. Rudy looked up, hoping and half-expecting to see another great gash burned through the Reformer.

No such luck. A cylinder of atomic fire blazed out of the atmosphere, bent harmlessly away by the destroyer's gravitic shields.

"What's happening," Chloe asked. She tried to wriggle free of his grasp, but weakly. "Why did you yank my face down like that?"

"Fission cannon," Rudy said. "Big one. It could burn your eyes out if you saw the blast."

"What's a… something like that… doing on a civilian platform? Why aren't we all dead if someone's detonating fission bombs under our feet?"

"The someone in question being Otto, I guess he's using tactical-scale bombs and slapping a powerful field, probably magnetic since we're in atmosphere, around them. Funnels the blast almost like a laser." Rudy didn't try to get to his feet. If the cannon kept firing, it would just knock them down again. He scooted toward the cycle, pulling Chloe with him. "As to what it's doing here, I'd say Algreil Aerospace was less than diligent in disarming after the Civil War."

Or, he thought, Otto rearmed the company facilities after the Feds hit Kalder-Black.

He glanced at the water. Sure enough, it bubbled weirdly around the arcology. He pointed. "We've got shields, too."

Chloe followed his gaze. "Looks like your brother was prepared for a new Civil War."

Rudy considered that altogether too possible.

He couldn't even blame Otto. After all, the Oligarchy had won the war against the aristocracy and just as quickly lost the peace to the Senate. Hell, until the last years of the century-long war, it had been between 'garchs and nobs, with Emperor Theophilos XIX and “his” House of Commons remaining above the fray. Rudy was too young – and not studious enough – to grasp the political flanking maneuver by which Thomas Casimir, the President of the Commons, had simultaneously rebelled against the emperor and sucked the Oligarchy out of a conflict of interests and into a conflict of ideology. His knowledge of the Civil War boiled down to Otto's reaction, and Otto had never forgiven the Feds for stealing his thunder.

All of which left one central, all-important question:

If Otto had prepared Algreil Aerospace's defenses for a second Civil War, had he completed enough of his preparations to win one?

"What should we do," Chloe asked.

Good question.

Run, and they'd have to leave the field of space-bending gravitons shrouding the arcology. Stay, and they'd have to contend with the Reformer's mecha.

The destroyer's secondary and tertiary mecha bays opened – the primary, Rudy noted, had been melted into slag by the first blast of the Algreil fission cannon – to loose row upon row of humanoid battle machines. A smaller, one-mecha bay toward the front of the ship disgorged a familiar black-and-gold custom model: the Divine Auric Drake. Avalon commanded from the front.

Damn, but Rudy wished he had his Epee!

Without it, he and Chloe were sitting ducks. Mecha could navigate the compressed space of the arcology's shield. Good pilots could do so damn fast. With their ship damaged and irradiated and probably a couple hundred of their comrades dead, Rudy didn't know if the Feds would take prisoners.

"We've gotta run," he decided.

He scrambled to his feet. Glanced at the approaching mecha – the Divine Auric Drake's weirdly compressed image looked close to the wavering edge of the field. Pulled Chloe up after him.

"Look," she cried.

He followed her pointing finger.

Mecha emerged from the bays scattered around the office spire. Stingrays, equipped with batlike wing-arms and broad, sharp-pointed tails for efficient atmospheric and underwater maneuvering. Civil War mecha – Devil Ray mecha. Only eight 'rays to nearly ten times as many newer, smaller Fed machines.

"Only those eight," Chloe said. "It's brave of them to take on so many Feds, but it must be suicide."

Rudy snorted. "Says the girl who wanted to take them on foot."

"That's different. I wasn't going to fight them."

"Anyway, don't waste your pity on the Devil Rays. Those mecha? They're true aerospace models. Those Feds can barely move in one gee. Can't even fly under their own power – see the tow lines they're dropping on? Stingrays, on the other hand, work just fine in atmosphere. They were built for it."

"You mean the Devil Rays will win?" Chloe sounded suspicious. Probably figured he was still trying to talk her away from the battlefield.

"Devil Rays used to go toe to toe with nobs, Clo. Otto claims he was better than a nob in atmosphere, which is probably more of his bullshit, but that he lived to claim it says something."

Rudy still intended to run. Just his luck to get nailed by some friendly fire – not that most of the Devil Rays were friendly toward him.

Still, he hated to leave without seeing at least some of the fight. He hesitated as the Stingrays rocketed into the air. Except for one near the back, probably out of practice, they moved in a perfect wedge formation. They hit the Feds just as they punched through the distorted space around the arcology. Missiles first, because the 'rays needed to shed the load of anti-mecha warheads under their wing-arms to get full articulation, then fists to finish the survivors.

Even the straggler looked almost better than textbook-perfect. Better, Rudy realized, than he would have, trying to fly and fight in formation. As he watched, the straggler caught his squadron and fell into perfect synchronization, not just with his machine but with the other pilots.

"They're really good," Chloe whispered.

Rudy didn't – quite – detect a subtext of 'better than you.' He felt its sting all the same.

He had to fight to keep from rooting for Avalon. If the Divine Auric Drake took down even one Devil Ray, wouldn't that prove Rudy, who'd beaten Avalon, was better? Taking down probably meant killing, though, and Rudy couldn't quite wish that on Otto's old war buddies, much less the man himself.

The Devil Rays loosed their barrage of anti-mecha missiles and broke off into four pairs. The straggler and leader matched up, while the others sorted themselves out in a pattern Rudy didn't understand. Their wings stayed locked. They'd have to compromise their aerial maneuverability to engage in close combat, but would only do so when they completely controlled the situation.

The first Fed mecha slipped through the distorted space around the arcology just as the missiles reached him. His squat, milspec mecha burst like a pinata between two of the Algreil weapons, spraying coolant and artificial muscle. Rudy didn't see an ejection seat amongst the mechanical debris.

Nine other Feds went down in the first volley, destroyed or crippled beyond repair before they could return fire with the weapons gripped in their mechas' free hands. Most of their gear, like the mecha themselves, was meant for space battles. Normal mecha didn't perform well above half a gee, their humanoid construction a hindrance when they had to stand or fly in a planetary gravity well.

Still, Rudy frowned at the numbers. He'd figured the Devil Rays would wipe out twice as many. During the Civil War, he recalled, they'd used those two-mecha fireteams to bring down lone nobs. Had they ever been outnumbered? Did their tactics account for it?

The Feds, on the other hand, deployed in textbook Civil War formation. In less than a decade, the Federal Navy's Civil War casualties had matched what the nobles and oligarchs racked up in a century. They threw men and material at problems until the problems went away.

They had a lot of men and material.