Chapter 1 #

A few hours later, on a dark and sandy beach, a few kilometers from the outskirts of New Miami, the young man reclined on his red and yellow beach chair. Waves rolled in slowly and quietly all around. On this lonely beach, he was isolated and free.

He’d been swimming in the ocean only minutes before. His clothes were drying on the mech that knelt on the sand beside him. His training mech, the old Ajax with chipping paint and rusting bolts, was larger than most buildings. To climb out, Yuri had used a rope-lift that dangled out of the open chest cockpit.

As the boy looked up at the full moon in the sky, he realized his life was very good. All he was lacking was company. How wonderful it would be to share this moment of peace with a pretty girl. Unfortunately, he’d never been lucky with girls. He was too shy. Too awkward. Too short as well, at 172 cm. These Americans were so picky.

Just as he was about to nod off and fall asleep, a green laser streaked across the sky. The night was still for a moment, then blue, red, and more green streaks raced back and forth in front of the moon.

These flashes of light, they looked like laser weapons firing far in the sky. On a cloudy night, they would have been impossible to spot, but tonight, he could just barely see them. Perhaps a suborbital training exercise?

That would be unusual, since it was a day off. The only thing more valuable than starched dress shirts and creative swear words to his instructors was their free time. Hard to imagine one of them scheduling a training exercise for tonight.

Of course, it could be the class above. He was only a grade 3 cadet. Grade 4 did their training in space. In a few months, the cadet would join them.

Yuri had always wanted to fly in space. When his father had insisted he join the military after secondary school, the young man had managed to find a silver-lining in piloting mechs. Instead of becoming a security analyst like his father, Yuri chose a more dangerous career path. It was only the most recent rift in their rocky relationship.

After grade 4, Yuri would graduate to become an ensign, a junior mech pilot for the FTA. He’d get drafted into a unit and spend the next few years following them on their assignments. That could take him almost anywhere in the universe, though he’d surely get to fly in space at some point during that stint. He doubted he would ever see real combat.

The FTA was a mostly peaceful government to live under. That fact made the laser fire by the moon even more confusing. It must have been a training exercise, Yuri concluded. And anyways, it was preposterous to think any hostile force could be so close to Earth.

A crackle from his wrist transmitter:

“All training units, return to base. I Repeat: All units RTB.” It was one of his instructors. The nasally one with small glasses and a pet rat.

What was going on? He pulled his shirt on over his head and wiped the sand off his feet before slipping on his boots. The automatic laces tightened gently.

The cadet folded up the beach chair and dragged it over to the foot of the mech. He was about to climb up into the cockpit, when a falling star caught the corner of his eye.

Wait, that’s coming this way!

From out of the sky, fell a battle-scarred Ajax frame, much newer and slimmer than the boy’s, burning red hot from unshielded re-entry. As it descended, a trio of emergency chutes deployed and the red-hot flames died out, but there was still 200 tons of steel headed straight towards him.

“Holy shit… shit shit shit!” The cadet exclaimed, grabbing the rope-lift and zipping up to his cockpit.

He scrambled up and closed the door behind him. A red safety light came on, but he fumbled for the electrical starter switch. This process was complicated, and he usually had the manual open to start the machine. What was he supposed to do first? He couldn’t remember exactly.

Too late. The ground shook from the massive impact. He paused, wondering if he’d just heard the other pilot die on impact. He tried to start his electronics one more time, shook his head in frustration, then hit the door open button.

From high up on his machine’s open cockpit door, Yuri could see the downed mech lying in a half-burning crater a hundred meters away. Its head and shoulders were surrounded by a burning ring of brush and crushed palm trees, while its feet and legs soaked in pooling ocean water coming in with every wave.

Yuri wondered if he would have survived if he’d stayed outside his mech.

All the same, the cadet swallowed hard and rode the rope lift back down. In the academy, his instructors had stressed caution when helping fallen comrades. Despite decades of advances in fusion technology, mechs were still highly volatile machines, capable of “massive adverse reactions.” In other words, they blow up.

Yuri didn’t remember this until he was halfway to the fallen mech. He paused for a moment, weighing the chances between the pilot bleeding out versus the mech going nuclear (which it hadn’t so far). Perhaps it really was a ticking time bomb. Or maybe the pilot had cut the reactor before crash-landing?

The young man hoped for the latter, and continued to run towards it. The heat from re-entry was so intense, each ocean wave sizzled into steam as it landed on the metal carcass. He spoke into his wrist transmitter, hoping to hail the crashed pilot on an open channel. He could barely hear himself over the roaring blaze that was spreading through the palms. No response on the hail.

At the edge of the crater, Yuri tried to hop down onto the mech’s shin, and a wave soaked him from behind before landing on the mech and turning into more steam. The boy carefully jogged towards the mech’s torso, where the cockpit door was. The heat was intense and draining, and some remaining flames burned around him, but being soaked with ocean water helped him push through.

With his combat boots, he stomped on the emergency release, and the hatch popped. The cadet was able to grab the interior rim and press it open the rest of the way without burning his hands. Inside, he saw the pilot, draped lifelessly over the computer keyboard and control console.

The unconscious pilot wore a gray, lightweight flight suit, a cracked helmet, gloves and boots. The gear looked like a standard space pilot kit. The face mask was shattered severely, and shards of the glass lined the cockpit.

The cadet pulled the pilot off the chair, and fireman-carried them back outside. The heat was just as intense, but the nearby flames were dying down. He carefully walked back down the mech torso and leg, and eventually rolled the pilot down and onto the beach.

Yuri was dripping with sweat, almost as badly as Lu the noodle chef earlier that day, but dragging the pilot farther away, the cool night air was a welcome sensation. He knelt beside the body and felt around the helmet for the open button. With a click, the helmet opened and the pilot was revealed.

By the glow of the blue moon, and the dying embers of the nearby fires, Yuri could see her face. She was fair-skinned, with a blonde crew cut, and knocked-out. Mid thirties, perhaps.

She was also frighteningly beautiful.

Yuri’s heart lurched. Somehow he was even nervous around unconscious women. His heart might have just skipped a beat, but he shook it off and reached down to check her pulse on the side of her neck. He felt slow steady beats, and small, shallow breaths. She had survived. But he also felt something else, a line running down the side of her neck like the faintest, straightest scar.

He went to retrieve the medical kit from her burning mech, but when he returned, she was awake and kneeling. Yuri tried to call out to to her, saying:

“Are you al–” But she interrupted him, by vomiting.

He continued walking towards her slowly, until she raised her index finger at him.

“Just give me a moment.” She said, wiping her mouth.

“Are you alright?” Yuri asked.

“Oof. Yeah, no.” she stood, wobbling, hands rubbing her temples. “My head is killing me.”

“We should get you to a hospital.” He said optimistically. To him, it seemed like a miracle she was even standing. She could’ve had internal bleeding or a concussion or any number of injuries after a crash like that.

“Give me that medkit.” She mumbled.

“What?” Yuri asked, hearing but not listening.

“The medkit! Give it to me!” She yelled, and he quickly presented it to her.

She opened it carelessly and the contents fell onto the sand. She ignored the bandages, wipes, tourniquet, pillboxes and ointments that littered the ground, and instead plucked a small vial from the top of the pile. It was a glass tube quarter-full of a clear, viscous fluid, encased in rubber and steel, not much larger than a stylus. The end had a cap with a seal that had been broken before, and she pulled it off revealing a small needle. The injured pilot jammed the needle tip into her neck, pressed a button, and groaned through the pain.

Once the liquid was gone, the injector made a small beep and resterilized the needle by igniting a small flame. Before the flame was out, the pilot dropped it on the sand, before doubling over in pain again.

“What did you just inject?” Yuri asked her, while picking up the spilled contents of the medkit.

“Nanites.” She rasped through gritted teeth. A trickle of blood running down her nose.

Yuri had heard about those before. They were specialized micro-machines used in healthcare and manufacturing to perform work on a sub-molecular level. They were also insanely expensive. He’d never seen a person inject them straight into their body before.

“Is that your Ajax over there?” The pilot asked him.

“You mean my training unit? Yeah that’s it.” He replied.

“Good, I’m taking it to– Agh!” The pilot staggered forward before dropping to her knees in pain. She was clutching her ribs.

“Listen, let me take you to a hospital. You look pretty beat up.” He repeated.

“You’re a cadet, right? You’re in the FTA?” she said, breathing hard, glancing at his pantleg that read cadet.

“Well yeah, but I’m not technically enlisted yet.” He wasn’t sure what she was getting at.

“My name is Warrant Officer Dianna Hawthorne. I need your mech to get back to my squad.” Her speech was slowly improving. Every sentence, the raspiness and pain seemed to fade away and she could speak more clearly. The nanites seemed to be working.

“Look, I just got called back in. I can’t just give you my mech. Let me take you to a doctor, then the academy can call the military and—”

“SHUT THE HELL UP AND LISTEN, CADET!” She screamed in his face.

Yuri’s eyes went wide and he jolted like he’d been shocked.

“My team is up there taking fire from enemy contacts!” she added, pointing at the moon. “I’m taking your mech!”

The pilot slowly stood up again and limped past him, grimacing through the pain. She was heading towards Yuri’s kneeling Ajax. To Yuri, this felt so surreal. It was jarring. It was like talking to a brick wall. But she did outrank him. So what choice did he have? He’d just have to call for help and hope his instructors believed him. Her burning Ajax in that crater behind him would probably be enough evidence to convince them, actually.

Ahead of him, Officer Hawthorne stumbled again and fell to one knee. Perhaps she had been in space for a long time? Or maybe her injuries were more serious than she was letting on?

“Wait, let me help you!” Yuri said, jogging over to her.

“I’ll help you get to my mech,” he said, offering her his hand.

“Good idea.” she replied, taking it.

The pair of them hobbled together the rest of the way. The injured pilot kept chiding him to move faster. Yuri was just trying to follow orders.

“Was that you guys firing by the moon?” The cadet asked.

“No shit, Einstein.” she replied, grinding her teeth.

“What’s going on? It looked like some kind of training op.”

“No training, it was an enemy scouting team. We’ve been trailing them for a few days. We were trying to apprehend them, and they hit back hard.”

“Is that why you crashed?” he asked her.

“One of them hacked me pretty good. Sent me rocketing towards Earth. By the time I had restored the OS, I was too deep in the atmosphere to pull out. I saw your mech on the nav and tried to land nearby.”

They reached the boy’s training mech, but the injured woman doubled-over in pain again. She was clutching her head.

“I… I might need your help cadet. What stage are you at in the academy?”

“Grade 3.”

“Grade 3? You look like you’re eleven.” She said, head bowed.

Damn American women, every time.

It was clear she wouldn’t be able to climb into his mech on her own, so Yuri took the rope-lift and connected it to the handgrip on the back of her flight suit. It seemed like a secure way to do it. He looped her foot and hand through the rope lift holds and stepped back to let her ride the lift up. As soon as she was off the ground, she started crying out in pain. Yuri worried if he’d attached something incorrectly.

“Agh! What the hell! Help me!” She yelled at him from the top, just below the open cockpit door.

Yuri realized she wouldn’t be able to climb up onto the cockpit door by herself, so he climbed up the rope behind her, by hand.

The cadet had actually always enjoyed climbing rope. He was smaller for his age; slim but strong. Nimble even. He was always among the fastest runners in any class he took, back in school. Little had changed since he had joined the academy.

He pulled himself up to her, then mantled onto the Ajax’s knee to climb on top of the open cockpit door. From up there, he reached down and grabbed the officer’s free hand to help her climb up. She was heavier than she looked, not that Yuri was going to say anything.

“Damn you cadet, what are you doing on a freaking beach anyways?” She asked, sore from the ascent.

“Just minding my own business, ma’am.” He replied.

Together, they climbed into the older Ajax cockpit. The boy set the medkit down beside the pilot’s seat in case she needed it later. Officer Hawthorne passed the pilot’s seat and climbed into the instructor’s chair behind. This confused the cadet, as he thought the officer would take the pilot’s seat. She started tapping away on her keyboard, ignoring him.

“Is there another medkit onboard? I need more nanites.” The officer muttered, without looking up.

“I think it’s under the seat.” he said before digging it out and passing it back to her.

She opened the medkit and rooted through it, but unfortunately, no nanites. Just bandages, water, and various medications. The boy continued to stand there, looking at her, waiting for something. Any second now, she’d probably kick him out and fly off with his mech.

“Just hang on.” She said.

Yuri stepped back and leaned against the side of the cabin, watching her. Her face was focused on the instructor’s monitor, but she looked frustrated. The cadet noticed her typing had a kind of slow rhythm to it. It reminded him of one of his old substitute teachers trying to enter their username and password again and again and again, failing to login to EdToolia to play a video. He waited with the same bated breath now as he did back then.

“Screw it, get in the chair, kid.” Officer Hawthorne finally said, leaning back in her seat. Hands over her face.

“What?” The cadet asked. Almost instantly he regretted it.

“Sit your ass down in the chair, cadet!” She ordered. Yuri did as he was told.

“My right hand, I can’t curl my fingers to type,” she said, visibly annoyed.

“I must have broken my hand when I crashed. I can’t even make a fist. It’s like the tendons are gone.” She said, stifling back equal parts horror and disgust in her voice.

“I can’t waste time hunting and pecking up there, and I’m worried I won’t be able to use the joysticks or throttle either. So since I am combat ineffective, I need you to follow my instructions.” She finished.

“… Are you saying you want me to fly you back to your team? In space?” Yuri asked her.

“What’s your name, kid?”

“Yuri. Yuri Asimonov.” He replied.

“Well then, cadet Yuri. Yes, I am asking you to fly my happy ass into space. I’m also asking you to fight for the FTA, under my supervision, and kill those three bastards up there waiting for us, if my team hasn’t crushed them already.” She said.

“There’s a chance we could die up there. But if you follow my instructions, you might help me save some lives. What do you say?” The officer finished.

Maybe it was Yuri’s sense of duty, or maybe it was the promise of seeing space early, or maybe it was just because Officer Hawthorne was stunningly beautiful and Yuri didn’t want to disappoint her. Either way, the cadet took a deep breath and decided to help her.

“Just tell me what to do.” He said.

“Close the cabin door and start the engine.” She replied.

Closing the cabin door was easy. One switch for up and down. But starting the engine was a more complicated matter. As the door shut, the dim red glow of the emergency lights was all the illumination left, aside from the blue white brightness from their monitors.

“Okay, now start up the mech.” She added, impatiently.

“Hang on, I just need to find the page in the manual, I–” He said, fumbling through the book. He knew it was a bad look, but he couldn’t help it. He always had to check the manual.

“Bottom left, under the keyboard, there’s a trigger. Pull the trigger, then turn the overhead ELC switch on.”

Yuri followed her instructions, and the cabin monitors sprang to life. The panels lining the walls of the cockpit brought up screens of the view outside. The small monitor in front of Yuri also lit up with an FTA homescreen.

“Okay, first we need to supercharge this mech. You’ve never flown before?” She asked.

“I’ve flown in-atmosphere.” Yuri tried to correct her.

“That’s better than nothing I suppose. Look, your instructors wouldn’t teach you the trick we’re about to try in a million years, but trust me. We’ll be fine.”

She passed the bottled water and a small yellow tablet from the medkit to Yuri, and told him to take it.

“Just like when you’re hauling ass down here, when we lift off, you need to flex your legs and feet as tightly as you can. You don’t have a flight suit, and while in orbit, we’ll be pulling G’s that will pool the blood in your feet. You’ll pass out if that happens. The medication will help.”

The cadet nodded and used the buttons on the joy stick to fire the rear thrusters and raise the Ajax frame to an upright position, both feet sloshing in the briny sea. He wanted to show off a little. Hawthorne didn’t seem to notice.

“We need to break out of this training mode,” she said behind him. “Open the terminal.”

“I can do that on these?" He asked.

“On your keyboard, hit the super key. Then type ’term’ should be the first option. Yuri did so and a purple terminal window with a single white cursor appeared.

“Type whois.” She continued. He did so and the following username appeared in the terminal.

YuriAsimonov35

“Okay, now type su DiannaHawthorne114.” he did so and a password prompt appeared. Behind him, Dianna slowly typed in her password one key at a time. Her hands were still trembling from her injuries, so she had to be careful.

“These training mechs are modified variants of units that survived long enough to be decommissioned. At least yours is. It’s an older model, but it should have everything we need.”

The nice thing is that from this instructor seat, I can see and override what you’re doing from up here. But I can’t stop my hands from shaking, so you’ll just have to follow my instructions.”

“Okay, I’ll try.” he said, but inside, he felt his chest tightening up.

The terminal finally loaded the next step for authentication.

Biometric Key Required…

Dianna put her thumb into the scanner. It accepted her thumbprint, before asking for her physical passkey. She plugged in her wrist transmitter and hit ‘accept’ on the interface.

After she did, the terminal cursor re-appeared. She asked Yuri to enter whois once more, and this time, it read her username.

DiannaHawthorne114

“Wow! So you’re logged in now?” Yuri asked, looking back over his seat like an excited toddler.

“Someone’s easily impressed!” she laughed. “Just wait and see what comes next!”

“Swivel my mech into view and type vwfr scavenge -f into your terminal.” Yuri tried to follow her instructions.

Since the engine was turned on, the whole cockpit around them had opened up into a 360 video feed of the world outside the mech’s head. In the center of the feed was a small rectangle called the viewfinder.

While a historical greek hoplite would have complained about a lack of visibility from inside a bronze Spartan helmet, Ajax pilots had no such problems in the 37th century. They could watch a bird land on the back of their own head if they wanted to.

Yuri turned his machine so the downed mech was in focus. When he did so, a list of options appeared.

“Take my sniper rifle. Then take my mobility rockets.” Yuri selected the options as instructed, and his mech began to retrieve and equip the weapons from Dianna’s crashed hull.

“Good, we’ve got everything we need. Hang on, do you have my key binds? Hit Ctrl + Page Up.”

Yuri did and a flurry of windows opened and tabs opened. Classified documents, photos, maps, and message histories. The last photo was a grainy cctv capture of a humanoid lizard with a long tail walking in a dusty alley. Yuri recognized the figure as a Zard, a race of alien lizard people that lived 50 lightyears from Earth.

“Okay good, that’ll make this easier. Hit F4 until all these disappear. Then type ctrl se4.”

After entering the shortcut, a new window appeared. SetupEngineV4. It looked like the kind of thing a mechanic would use to tune a muscle car, with guages and low-poly flame decals in the UI.

“Now in the terminal, type vwfr grapple -f. Then, grapple shed -a.”

Yuri’s mech suddenly picked up Dianna’s, and connected a cord to its chassis. A moment later, each of the fallen mech’s arms, legs, head and wings detached simultaneously, leaving only the core engine in his hands.

“Blin! The arms and legs just fall off?!” Yuri exclaimed. His mother tongue and accent flashing for a second.

“Stay focused kid. In the SetupEngine window, click the gear icon. Then click preferences and modes. Hang on, it’s not in here, go back. Try the experimental modes tab. Okay, there it is, click dual engine input.”

Yuri did as she commanded and suddenly the power meters spiked all throughout the cabin. The lights got brighter too.

“What did that do?” He asked.

“That’s how we feed two engines into one thrust pack.” She said with the grin of a mad scientist.

“Use the overhead switches to route all the power to the thrusters. Good, we should be ready to lift off. Remember what I told you about tensing your legs and feet. When you’re ready, hit ctrl space-space to launch.”

Yuri hesitated a moment. He turned his mech towards the ocean and tilted the viewfinder up towards the sky. His first spaceflight. This was a moment he’d dreamed of since he was a kid, it was the only thing he’d ever really wanted. A mech pilot was all he’d aspired to be. And it was all happening so fast.

All the applications, psych evals, paperwork, just to get into the academy. He had been just one more year away from real space flight, but his number was called early. Guess it had to happen to somebody. Better make the most of it.

“Cadet?” She asked.

“Launching!” He replied, tapping the space key.

The Booster rockets fired and the mech began to hover off the ground. Immediately, several windows appeared onscreen and the robotic intercom warning voice rang out:

“Warning, flight system compromised, flight system compromised. Warning, flight system com-”

Dianna furiously hammered her keyboard, closing the windows.

“Don’t worry, those warnings aren’t important. We only care about errors.” After she said that, another window appeared and the robotic voice came on again, saying:

“Error, life support leak detected. Life support leak detected.”

“Okay, that one will be a problem, but we can deal with it later.” Dianna said nervously.

“Are you sure this will work?” Yuri pleaded.

“Have a little faith, cadet! Now take the throttle back slowly, and keep the viewfinder on the sky. Use the joysticks to keep us stable in the air. "

Yuri did so but encountered more acceleration than he’d ever felt in his life. Dianna’s mech engine was humming and glowing happily in front, while the booster rockets were absolutely dumping thrust out behind them. The training Ajax was blasting through the sky, but not gaining much altitude.

“Keep the viewfinder up! Pull the joysticks back to give us some lift!” Officer Hawthorne commanded.

The mech hurtled through the air gracelessly. As they ascended, Yuri felt his legs and hands get heavy, his cheeks sagged backwards, and his vision started to blur and dim. He couldn’t make out any of the controls in front of him, he could only feel the joy sticks in his hands and the pull of mother Earth’s gravity begging him not to leave.

They burst through cloud after cloud, leaving smoke and water vapor trails in their wake. The world behind grew flatter and blander all the time. The hull of the mech was bright red from the heat.

As they hurtled out of the planet’s atmosphere, gradually the strain was reduced. The outdated heat shielding on the hull had failed, but the metal had melted in a way that sealed the gaps in the cockpit. The error window disappeared and the robotic voice silenced.

For a moment, they just drifted along, catching their breath.

“Is our life support okay?” Yuri asked.

“Looks like it, I wonder why it was throwing that error before. Everything seems to be fine.” Hawthorne replied.

“What would we do if it really was leaking?” He asked her.

“Cabin leaks are pretty easy to deal with in the vacuum of space. Flight mechs carry a special sealing paste you can squirt on the holes to patch them quickly. It’s usually right here.” She said, opening a cabinet and pulling out a stack of zines and candy bars.

“Cadet, are these yours?” She asked in a strong mom tone.

“Yeah, I thought that was a storage cubby. There was nothing in it when they gave me the mech.” He replied.

“Okay, so neither of us have full PLS and our patch gel is made out of chocolate and puffed rice. In other words, if we get hit, we are going to suffocate.” She looked a little incredulous when she said this, and Yuri stifled a laugh.

The officer sat back down and slowly typed out a command into the terminal. The training ajax dropped the second engine it had used to reach outer space, as it was no longer needed. Then she asked him a question.

“Cadet, have you ever fired a mech weapon before?”

“Oh yeah, plenty of times, I qualified on the carbine.” He replied.

“That’s good. My sniper is pretty similar actually. It’s got a longer effective range, and the targeting computer is set for anti material, meaning you can shoot the guns right out of your target’s hands. But it only fires one round at a time, no burst fire.” She said enthusiastically.

“Now pay attention”, Dianna continued, “Here’s your mission briefing: My team was hunting three mechs of unknown affiliation. One Gecko-II, and two corporate iSentinel XRs that look pretty old.”

“The Gecko II is one of the newer Zard mechs, right?” Yuri had read about it online. It was supposed to replace the standard Gecko models sometime this year.

“Good observation, kid. And why would that be interesting?” She asked, testing him.

“Well, Zard high command is going to keep a close eye on a brand-new prototype, right? So a Zard combattant is probably flying it, right?”

“Correct, that’s our suspicion. And based on how he crashed my mech, he’s a highly skilled hacker. The other two, unknown. My team may still be alive up there, but I’m their tech specialist, so they’re probably hurting. Rescuing them and destroying that Gecko II is our immediate priority.”

“Why are these guys so close to Earth?” Yuri asked.

“They’ve been pulling some kind of cargo. Maybe a dead drop for spies on Earth. Maybe deep space listening tech. Either way, we have to take them down.” She replied.

“When our scanners pick them up, stop immediately, and pull up the sniper. We need to hit them before they can react. Prioritize the hacker’s AI drone. Without that, he’ll have a harder time shutting us down again. It’s also a weaker target.”

“What does that look like?” Yuri asked.

“It’s a floating orb. It will be easy to spot if you enable thermal outlining.”

They flew through space for a few more minutes, silent. Officer Hawthorne had given him all the info she had. They kept their eyes on the scanner. This next part would be fast. Faster than any drill or exercise Yuri had ever been a part of. He was tapping his heel nervously.

Ping ping ping… ping ping ping.

And there they were. All three enemy mechs.

“Stop! Kill the thrust, raise the sniper!” she commanded.

Yuri followed her orders and the mech lurched forward from the momentum. The scope window appeared. Two brown corporate security mechs with carbines, and one dark green Gecko II in the middle, bulkier, with a drone. That was the hacker. One of the enemy’s voices rang out on the intercom through a lot of static. The Ajax’s deep space listening had kicked in.

“Head’s up. We’ve got company.” an unknown, leathery voice said.

Yuri’s reticle steadied on the center mech. No hesitation. Bang. The training mech was thrown slightly off balance from the shot, and Yuri had to steady himself.

“Good hit! Target the AI drone!” Dianna yelled behind him. Surely the Gecko’s deep space listening had picked that up.

“Sounds like a spotter too, you two find her. I’ll take the sniper.” Was that the Gecko’s pilot speaking?

The corporate scouts split up. A volley of laser fire came, but missed the Ajax. A second volley hit the leg, but helped turn Yuri towards the fleeing hacker in his viewfinder.

Yuri trailed the reticle on the moving target, using the predictive targeting system like he’d learned in the academy, and fired again.

“Glancing hit! Aim for the AI drone, cadet!” Hawthorne yelled, gripping the armrest of her chair tighter.

“I’m trying Ma’am!” Yuri was feeling the pressure.

“Wait, the shooter and spotter are in the same mech! L1, L2, back on me!” The Zard commanded.

On the monitor, Dianna noticed the mouse moving without her or Yuri moving it. They were being hacked. The cabin lights started flickering. terminals started opening and waves of execution results started filling the windows. She may not have been able to type, but she could hammer Alt + F4 to try and slow them down. But like the heads of a hydra, the terminals regrew as fast as she killed them.

“He’s in our system. Last shot Cadet!”

A real lizard with red and black spots ran across the monitors. The color of the windows inverted. A crying baby started screaming through the speakers, and then a jackhammer, and then a man shouting in French. The hacker was trying to distract them.

Yuri took aim again at the hacker. The AI drone was floating off to his right. Through all the noise and lights, Yuri focused and made the shot. The AI drone was fried by a beam of red plasma, before it exploded behind its owner.

“Good hit, good hit! Drone is down. Target the mech again!” Dianna cried.

Another flurry of laser fire came from the other two corporate mechs. Yuri tried to strafe left, and continued firing on the Zard’s Gecko II. His shots were more frenzied, and missed.

Unfortunately, destroying the AI drone didn’t reverse the hack creeping into the training Ajax. Awful noises and distracting images poured into the cabin, obscuring their ability to move and fight. Slowly, the mech stopped responding to Yuri’s inputs. First, the weapon stopped firing. Then he couldn’t aim the viewfinder anymore. Finally, the whole craft slowed to a halt and wouldn’t budge.

“It’s stalled out! I can’t move it anymore!” Yuri screamed, turning back to the ice-cold Officer Hawthorne.

“Shit. We’re done then. We need to restart. When it comes back up, keep hitting esc until the bootloader comes up!” She replied.

Just as Yuri was about to restart the computer, they heard a friendly human voice hail them over the intercom.

“Chief, is that you out there?” He sounded pleasantly surprised.

“Boone?” Dianna replied.

“Glad you’re alright! Guess it’s time to get back to work!” The man said.

Boone’s comms went quiet, then a pair of twin laser miniguns erupted, firing at all three of the enemy mechs. One of the corporate mechs exploded and his awful scream cut over the channel.

“L2 with me. I’m dropping the package.” The hacker said.

“What! We need those for the mission!” L2 responded. He sounded like a pig stuffed into a suit of armor.

Yuri watched as the hacker’s mech detached several external cargo boxes, making it appear much smaller now. It then spun around, and fled at full speed. The remaining corporate combatant fired again at Boone, before he was obliterated by another minigun volley.

“AHHGH!” The pig monster oinked in agony.

“He sounded like a Durok. What a fun bunch.” Boone said.

“Where’s Kenshi? Can he pursue?” Hawthorne asked over the radio.

“Negative. His mech is wrecked. I’ll need to pick him up on my way back to the ship.” The other pilot replied.

“Better pick us up too. We’re dead in the water. No PLS either.” She told him.

“Us?” He asked, a grin apparent in his voice.

“I’ll explain later.” After saying that, she closed the channel.

“Cadet, shut down the electrical. We’ll try that restart to clean up the hack.” He followed her orders, and the machine went dark. The red glow of the emergency light was all that remained. Yuri tried to restart, but the monitor stayed dark.

“Uh, did I do something wrong? It’s not turning back on.” Yuri said.

“Well at least we won’t have to hear screaming babies all the way back to the ship.” Her demeanor had softened. She was almost jovial.

“You know, that was some good shooting. Not everyone can say they had three hits their first combat mission. Or that they destroyed enemy equipment as a cadet.” She said, smiling at him. When there weren’t lives on the line, she seemed much less aggressive.

Yuri didn’t know what to say. It almost didn’t feel real. The adrenaline of the experience wasn’t wearing off. Even though they were floating weightlessly in space, he felt very heavy.

“Thanks, it all happened so fast. I was just acting on instinct.” he replied, running his hand through his short dark hair.

“That’s good training. Your weapons instructor deserves a raise. By the way, what’s your name again?” She asked.

“Yuri Asimonov.” He replied, smiling proudly.

There was a sudden thud, and they figured Boone had grabbed them.

“You did a great job, Yuri.” She congratulated him, then leaned back into the instructor’s chair and shut her eyes. The blood running from her nose had dried, and she was content to rest for a few moments.

Yuri followed suit. They rested in their seats while Boone carried them to safety.

“Where is he taking us?” The cadet eventually asked.

“The ULSS Niobrara. It’s an ultralight used by our unit exclusively. There’s a crew of 25, plus my team. We’ll store your mech in my bay, since mine is still relaxing on the beach.”

Eventually, the training Ajax was carried into the main hanger of the Niobrara, and positioned in Hawthorne’s bay, bay 1. A pair of engineers attempted to open the cockpit, but found it and several other joints had been welded shut from exiting Earth’s atmosphere.

They used a cutting torch to slice through the welded hull, and after that, the blast door rose smoothly. The engineers peeked in, alongside Boone the pilot. Boone was a tall, handsome, blond-haired, man with sandy rugged stubble, wearing the same pilot uniform as Officer Hawthorne.

He made eye-contact with Yuri immediately. He seemed upset.

“Who are you? Where’s Dianna?” He demanded.

Yuri quickly pointed behind at the instructor’s chair. She must have passed out during docking, either from her injuries or exhaustion. Or maybe both.

“We’re gonna need a stretcher.” Boone announced to one of the engineers.

Boone carried Hawthorne out to the stretcher, then the engineers carried her away. As Yuri stepped out into the ship, he looked around, amazed by how large the room was. It was vertically very tall, tall enough to house an entire Ajax mech.

In fact, three mechs rested in the bays, side by side, with a long metal walkway running between all three of them, at cockpit level. At their feet, there was a loading dock, several scissor-lifts, and many crates and boxes that were held down to the floor with straps. It looked like the inside of a manufacturing plant.

“You coming?” Boone asked the boy over his shoulder as he was heading down the walk way. It was more of an order than a question.