Mech 2 Read online

  MECH 2

  Isaac Hooke

  Copyright © 2019 by Isaac Hooke

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  www.IsaacHooke.com

  For my dad, my best fan

  Give 'er hell

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Mech 2

  About the Author

  Acknowledgments

  In Closing

  1

  Lying flat on the hillside, Rade peered through the scope of his rifle, his targeting reticle aligned over the door of the farmhouse below. His left eye remained open for situational awareness purposes.

  Crouched behind the crest of the hill behind him was his new mech, a Jupiter class unit.

  Tahoe, Manic and Lui were also present, similarly observing from other hides nearby, their own Jupiters in tow.

  The orbital footage showed the target had entered the building half an hour ago. Now it was simply a matter of waiting.

  There was no air support—by treaty, no United Systems drones were allowed in this territory. In fact, mechs weren’t either. Nor special operatives. If Rade was caught, the United Systems would disavow any knowledge of his mission.

  He was in the heart of Sino-Korea on Earth. He and his four-mech-team had inserted several klicks out, via submersibles deployed by a submarine in the Yellow Sea. After reaching shore in the late hours of the night, their mechs had debarked from the submersibles and they’d made their way through the villages lining the coast into the quieter farms of the heartland, staying away from the major thoroughfares.

  When the morning came, they made camp in an abandoned farmhouse, and waited for updates from Central Command. The target had left Beijing some hours later, and the orbital footage was relayed to the team shortly thereafter. The team had mirrored the course of the convoy, staying in the countryside, and using the stealth features of their mechs to evade detection. Noise-cancelling systems reduced the sound of their servomotors to little louder than the buzz of bees. They planted their metal feet slowly and carefully, so that their advance was as quiet as possible. The camouflage skin that coated their hulls automatically changed colors to match the current surroundings, allowing them to blend in. They would only be visible to LIDAR, but the average SK farmer didn’t possess the necessary high-tech gear.

  As he waited, Rade drew upon his inner well of patience, keeping his aim steady on the front door.

  “A few tangos just became visible in the kitchen window,” Tahoe announced over the comm. “I’ve got partial shots. No sign of the target.”

  Rade had Tahoe’s feed displayed in the upper right of the HUD generated by his Implant. He could see the two tangos his friend referred to: the upper halves of their bodies were visible as silhouettes. They appeared to be holding glasses and drinking.

  “Hold your fire,” Rade said. “We’ll get them on the way out when we can be sure we have all of them.”

  The tangos vanished a moment later as they retreated deeper into the house.

  Rade kept his aim firmly on the door for the next hour. Lui would be watching the other exit, while Manic and Tahoe concentrated on the windows.

  Finally, the front door opened.

  Rade’s heart beat faster.

  Three armed guards emerged, followed by two individuals. One, dressed as a farmer, stood next to the man Rade recognized as the target: Tan Xin Zao. A high-ranking official in the SK government.

  They were followed by another three guards.

  “Take them out,” Rade transmitted.

  He and the others fired in rapid succession, and the six guards, and the farmer and government official with them, went down.

  Rade glanced at his HUD. The darts he and his team had just fired were equipped with medical sensors that transmitted the status of the victims in realtime: though unconscious, their heartbeats were all still in the green.

  “Windows?” Rade asked.

  “Clear on my side!” Tahoe replied.

  “Clear here, too,” Manic added.

  “Lui, with me!” Rade sent.

  He rose to his feet and rushed toward the farmhouse. As he reached the porch, Lui joined him, emerging from the far side of the building. Manic and Tahoe remained in position to cover them.

  “Apply the antidote,” Rade instructed Lui.

  The Asian American knelt and sonically injected the target.

  Tan Xin Zao blinked groggily, and Lui helped him sit up. The man noticed the farmer beside him.

  “No!” Tan Xin Zao said. He wrapped his arms around the farmer, and cradled him. “He is but a friend! He has nothing to do with the government!” All of this was spoken in Korean-Chinese of course, but Rade’s Implant translated the words in realtime.

  “He’s not dead,” Rade said. A small speaker attached to his exoskeleton translated his words into Korean-Chinese in turn. “Nor are your guards. The darts were filled with incapacitating agents.” His HUD indicated all the men were still in the green, but he glanced at Lui anyway. “Double-check them.”

  Lui moved between the fallen men and performed a quick medical examination. “The agents worked as designed, for once. No allergic reactions.”

  Rade nodded. He remembered quite well a time when a mission had failed thanks to an incapacitating agent that had inadvertently killed the target.

  Lui collected the weapons from the guards.

  Rade returned his attention to Tan Xin Zao, who still held his friend. “We’ll revive him and your guards as soon as you answer a few questions.”

  Tan Xin Zao ignored him. He was speaking quietly to his friend. Rade’s translator picked up phrases like “I’m sorry, so sorry.”

  “Cyclone, send in the two HS3s,” Rade transmitted before addressing Tan Xin Zao: “Is there anyone else inside?”

  The Sino Korean didn’t answer.

  The two HS3s arrived, and Rade dispatched the hovering spherical objects through the front door.

  “There is no one else,” Tan Xin Zao finally said, but Rade had the HS3s continue deeper into the farmhouse anyway.

  “A few years ago, a woman was captured by the Sino Koreans,” Rade told the man. “She ejected from one of our starships in an escape pod and landed in your territory. Her name was Cynthia Abraham.” She was a scientist from a colony known as Newridium that fell during an alien invasion.

  Tan Xin Zao stiffened.

  “You’ve heard of her then, that’s good,” Rade said. “Your government has been refusing to cooperate with us. We’ve spent two years trying to recover her through official channels, but your Paramount Leader continues to deny her very existence. But we know you have her. And we know that you were one of the men responsible for her recovery, and her placement into protective custody.”

  Tan Xin Zao finally looked up from his friend.


  “We saw your hackers poking about in our systems,” Tan Xin Zao spat. “So rude. And illegal. An act of war!”

  “No ruder than your own hackers,” Rade said. “Anyway, we’re here because we want to know where she is.”

  “I don’t know,” Tan Xin Zao said.

  “You were the one who placed her in protective custody on behalf of your government, did you not?” Rade pressed.

  Tan Xin Zao shrugged. “Never heard of her.”

  Rade glanced at Lui. “Guess we’re going to have to do this the hard way. Tie him up.”

  “With pleasure, Chief,” Lui said.

  Lui removed the rope he carried at his utility belt and proceeded to hogtie Tan Xin Zao. The man tried to resist but was no match against the strength-boosting exoskeleton Lui wore.

  Lui finished tying him, and then Rade hefted the prisoner over one shoulder. Tan Xin Zao continued to squirm about but Rade held him firmly.

  The HS3s returned and made their report: “Building contents empty.”

  Rade nodded. “Cyclone, recall HS3s.”

  The scouts flew back toward Tahoe’s position.

  Rade glanced at Lui. “Install the delay injectors.”

  Lui nodded, and knelt to attach a sonic injector to the farmer’s wrist. He moved between the other unconscious men, applying similar devices.

  Meanwhile Rade made his way up the hill with his squirming charge. When he reached his Jupiter, he said: “Nicolas, I’ll need you to get lower.”

  The large humanoid mech knelt obediently.

  Rade secured the prisoner to the mech’s passenger seat, and then Nicolas stood up once more.

  “Cyclone, destroy vehicles and comm nodes,” Rade transmitted as he climbed the rungs on the mech’s right leg.

  The three vehicles that were part of the official’s convoy exploded, thanks to the charges Cyclone had planted earlier. Another explosion came from one of the outbuildings where a large radio antenna was mounted. More detonations echoed in the distance, coming from the farms nearby: the HS3s had marked all the comm nodes on the neighboring farms earlier, and the team had systematically placed charges upon all of them.

  Rade opened up the storage compartment in the thigh of the mech’s leg, and shoved his rifle inside. The compartment closed, and Rade pulled himself higher, onto the open hatch of the cockpit and settled into the spherical chamber within. The hatch sealed, cloaking him in darkness. Inner actuators pressed into his exoskeleton from all sides, some of them touching his armor and exposed flesh below. Those actuators yielded under pressure from his body, allowing him to control the mech. The feed from the Jupiter’s head cameras filled his vision.

  Rade glanced at the overhead map in the upper right of his HUD and watched as Lui’s blue dot climbed the hill. Lui’s indicator reached that of his mech and the two became one. The status next to Lui’s name changed to “aboard mech.”

  “Cyclone, leave one HS3 in place with an eye on the tangos,” Rade said. “I want to make sure they recover. Send the second ahead of us… we’re moving out.”

  Rade piped in the feeds from both HS3s; in the upper left of his vision was the video from the HS3 Tahoe had left behind, while in the lower right was the feed from the model scouting ahead. His displays set to his liking, he made his way down the far side of the hill. At the bottom, the other mechs joined up with him, and they continued east together, away from the farmhouse. There were no further hills here, but the party members did their best to keep beneath the boughs of the tall cathaya trees that were prominent in this region.

  The signal from the trailing HS3 began to degrade when the site was well behind them, so Rade turned to Lui’s mech and said: “Activate delayed injectors.”

  “Delayed injectors activated,” Lui told him over the comm.

  Via the HS3’s feed, Rade watched the seven men begin to stir as the injectors applied the antidote. He glanced at the appropriate section of his HUD and confirmed the men were awake and unharmed, courtesy of the medical sensors in the darts. They would be groggy for the next little while, however, as their antidote was designed to revive them at a far slower rate than Tan Xin Zao. The darts and sensors would dissolve over the next several minutes, leaving behind no trace of United Systems involvement.

  “Cyclone, withdraw trailing HS3,” Rade ordered.

  On the overhead map, the blue dot representing the HS3 retreated from the hilltop, and rapidly made its way toward the team.

  Rade returned his gaze to his immediate surroundings, glancing occasionally at the feed from the lead HS3. There was no sign of any Sino Koreans. These farms were quiet places, manned by agricultural robots. The owners lived in the city, reaping the rewards of their robots’ toil.

  One of the pluses of having robots manning the farms was that Rade and company were warned of the positions of these bots well ahead of time, courtesy of the universal transmitters all civilian Sino-Korean robots were required to have installed. The transmitters were mostly meant for other robots, who used the notifications to navigate around the bots in question, as appropriate. Owners also utilized the transmitters to keep track of where their robots were, of course.

  But while the civilian robots readily gave away their positions using those identifying protocols, Rade’s mechs emitted no such signals in return. They were operating under a strict protocol of radio silence that allowed transmissions only within a twenty-meter radius around the mechs. That range could be adjusted up and down as necessary, given the requirements of a changing battle space.

  Rade glanced at the time displayed in the bottom right of his vision. They had eight hours to return to the exfil site on the coast, where the submarine was scheduled to pick them up shortly after midnight.

  The plan was to put some distance between themselves and the farm, moving well beyond the expected range of any search parties that might be dispatched to look for Rade and his companions, and then take cover inside an abandoned barn or silo, laying low until nightfall before continuing toward the coast.

  The thick boughs of the trees in this area would allow his team to avoid being picked up by enemy satellites. Unfortunately, those trees eventually thinned out, but Rade planned to lay low well before then, continuing through the treeless areas after dark.

  “The prisoner is speaking,” Nicolas said. “Would you like me to pipe the audio into your Implant?”

  “Go ahead,” Rade told the mech’s AI. “And transmit it to the others.”

  “It’s too late,” Tan Xin Zao was saying via the translator. “Her corruption has run deep. The Paramount Leader has already fallen for her lies. He plans war against the United Systems. First, he will invade your continents, taking control of them on Earth. And then he will take your colonies.”

  “Her corruption?” Rade said. “You’re talking about Cynthia?”

  “Yes,” Tan Xin Zao said.

  “Then why don’t you tell me where she is?” Rade said. “So we can put a stop to this?”

  “I wasn’t lying when I said I don’t know,” Tan Xin Zao told him. “The Paramount Leader has squirreled her away somewhere and refuses to reveal her position to anybody, even his closest advisors. She might be hidden inside the main palace or the countryside outside the city. Either way, her taint has already taken hold. The Paramount Leader speaks constantly of the Reborn, and of the coming age of peace and prosperity they will usher in together.”

  “The who?” Rade asked.

  “The Reborn,” the man said patiently. “Some entity the she-witch claimed to be in contact with.”

  “Did she give it any other names, like Anarchist, or Nemesis?” Rade asked. “Maybe Draactal?”

  “No,” Tan Xin Zao said. “Only Reborn.”

  “And you never saw this creature?” Rade said.

  “No,” Tan Xin Zao said. “I and most other senior officials believe she is mad. But somehow, she has convinced the Paramount Leader that this Reborn is real. And that when he comes, he will share great power and
technology with the Sino Koreans.”

  “Thanks for sharing all that,” Rade said.

  “You will let me go now?” the man asked hopefully.

  “I’m still going to have to bring you in,” Rade said.

  Tan Xin Zao remained silent.

  Rade muted his connection to the man and spoke to his team. “Did you hear all that?”

  “I’m not sure I buy it,” Manic said. “But if it’s true, Central Command was justified in sending us out here.”

  “Do you really think Cynthia managed to smuggle those spores of hers off the Radial before it crashed?” Lui said. “Saving what was left of the Anarchist? Spores that she then managed to sneak aboard our Sol-bound ship before jettisoning above Earth?”

  “I don’t know what to think,” Rade said. “But for now, our only mission is to bring our prisoner safely aboard the waiting submarine.”

  “We got trouble,” Tahoe said. “The HS3 has spotted two police drones up ahead on an intercept path. Looks like we missed one of the comm nodes around the farmhouse.”

  “Either that, or someone reported the explosions,” Lui said.

  “We prepared for either outcome,” Rade said. “Cyclone, hide the HS3s. The rest of you, take cover, and switch to complete radio silence.”

  2

  Rade lay behind the thick trunk of a cork oak tree. He had opened up the cockpit earlier and climbed into the passenger seat to gag Tan Xin Zao before returning inside his Jupiter mech.

  He gazed at the farm beyond. The police drones flew rapidly over the cornfield, heading straight for the farm Rade and his companions had abandoned.