Mech Zero: The Dominant Read online

  “You and I will spend many of these extra hours preparing personally,” Goddard said. “You will meet me in the combat chamber one minute after you go off-duty.”

  Davenport paled slightly. Goddard was known as an inhuman fighter. He was a tiger in the practice sphere, and relished beating subordinates into submission.

  “Wouldn’t these final hours be better spent preparing for battle with the enemy fleet?” Davenport asked.

  “There is no need!” Goddard shouted. “The enemy abhors its own military and will pay the natural price for their weak spines. Namely, we will snap them without compunction. You are hereby ordered to meet me in the sphere.”

  “As you wish, sir,” Davenport said. He threw his head high and stalked off the bridge. His dark locks flowed behind him.

  It was Goddard’s turn to smirk, which he did openly at the other’s retreating back.

  Three

  The crew dozed and mumbled, wrapped in bizarre, narcotic dreams. It was a tradition among the people of Tranquility to prepare for a stressful task with psychoactive chemicals. A brief state of euphoria, when experienced directly before unpleasantness, had been proven by the planet’s medicinal sages to take the sting out of the whole affair. How could one be fraught with worry while comfortably sedated?

  Ensign Theller was alert, although he did not appear so. His academy training as a mummer had proven useful for once. His face was slack. His mouth hung open, and a tiny thread of drool ran down to his tapered chin.

  Theller knew Captain Beezel was not among the dozing crewmembers. She was too disciplined to allow herself indulgences. Besides, as a mech, her metabolism was different. She could not imbibe the same quantities of a substance such as the sacrificial wine and expect to experience the same results a normal human would. Her primary flesh component was her brain, which comprised only a fraction of her total mass. As was the case for most mechs, the rest of her body was artificial. For her kind, it was difficult to get the chemical dosage of a narcotic measured correctly.

  In order to achieve his goals, Theller knew he had to get past the captain and her big blue eyes. He listened for her, and soon sensed her moving around the prime deck. The aisle between the two rows of seats was so narrow that passage down it wasn’t possible without contacting sitting crewmen. Ensign Theller sensed her approach. Her vacc suit crinkled as she drew near and paused.

  He waited for her to move on, but she didn’t. He thought of attempting a false snort or similar action, but decided against it. Grandstanding never made an act more convincing. Still she paused, silently hovering over him. A trickle of sweat began under his armpits. Did she suspect he had shirked his required sedation? He waited longer, but she remained there. He could feel her eyes upon him, those strange, surreal orbs. He wanted nothing more than to crack one eye minutely—just for a second—to see what she was doing. But he held firm. He played the part of the sleeping dead, breathing evenly, shallowly, even while his heart pounded in his chest and he thought he might suffocate.

  His heart, he thought. Could she hear it? He knew some mechs were fitted with superb auditory pickups. If she could pick out the sound of his accelerated heartbeat, perhaps that would explain her odd behavior. Still he waited, determined to maintain his façade until the last possible instant. He willed his heart to slow and grow steady…and to some degree, it did.

  At last she moved on. Her hip bumped him as she slid by between the seats. He felt the contact and under different circumstances, would have craned his neck around to stare at her as she walked away. Not today, however. Today, he had bigger worries than Captain Beezel’s fine posterior.

  She left the chamber and went down the tube to the lower decks. Theller’s hand was on his buckle in an instant. It hesitated there and did not unfasten the buckle.

  This was the moment of truth. Thus far, he had done no wrong—or at least nothing serious. He was not a man who broke rules often. It was not in his nature. But today was different. He did not want to die so easily, so pointlessly.

  Theller popped open the metal buckle. The belts slid away into the seat with a rasping sound. He climbed out of his seat and moved down the extremely narrow aisle. He bumped the various drugged crewmen along the way, but didn’t worry about that. They wouldn’t awaken for hours.

  He reached the tubes and he passed them by. He could not afford to be seen by Captain Beezel, and the ship wasn’t so big that he could expect to escape notice if they were on the lower deck together.

  Theller opened a hatch and entered the engine compartment. His eyes slid this way and that. What could he damage without arousing suspicion? Something small, reparable…but absolutely required for battle.

  He quickly decided to change the oxygen mixtures by altering the manual-overrides on the tank valves. This would cause a slowly growing problem that shouldn’t even be noticed by the computers until the carbon levels exceeded what the scrubbers could take out of the pressurized cabin. When the alarms went off, he was sure his lax crewmen would attempt to repair the situation using the automated systems. They were not the type to handle an emergency directly, and would be loath to get out of their chairs and head back to check on the manual settings.

  He put his hand on a valve, then paused. He could be wiped for this—sentenced to mental evacuation. Afterward, he would only be an oddity in the park, drooling over his social-wellness rations. After a full minute’s hesitation, he reminded himself if he did nothing, he would be a splatter of atoms in the outer reaches of the system. He twisted the valve a fraction. Then he twisted all the others at random.

  Sweating, he glided back toward his seat. He froze at the hatchway leading to the prime deck. Captain Beezel stood in the forward crew section, staring at his empty seat. In that terrifying second, he knew he’d been discovered. He wanted to confess, to have a quiet argument with her, to somehow make her see reason. They could slip away so easily. The star system was vast and the universe was infinite. They could hide among the gas haulers or asteroid mining bases and come back after the Mendelians had grown tired of their sport and flown home.

  Instead, he darted into the head. He let the door shut behind him with an audible click. Inside, he made a great show of urinating. Fortunately, this came easily to him, as he hadn’t used his personal waste tube for hours. He’d been too keyed-up.

  Among the many peculiarities of his people, the citizens of Tranquility lacked shame. They did not object to nudity in public or to public elimination activities. The door of the head behind him, in fact, had a porthole in it.

  Theller sensed a shadow behind him. Captain Beezel watched him through the porthole. He took no notice. He continued relieving himself and even leaned sleepily against the close walls of the tiny restroom. When he had finished, he turned around without closing his suit, exposing himself. He did everything he could to appear mildly intoxicated.

  There stood Captain Beezel, staring at him through the porthole. Her perfect-looking blue eyes were too big for a human face. They were child-like, exaggerated and strangely attractive.

  Theller slid open the door and almost stumbled into her.

  “Uh,” he said. “Captain? Sorry.”

  She didn’t say anything. Her manner was disturbing, and he thought she suspected something. He decided to keep with his act, however, and remained the bumbling intoxicated crewman. He moved to push past her, and she snapped out an arm to stop him.

  Her arm was thin, and it looked as if it might break when he leaned against it. But it was made with metal bones and artificial muscles, not weak flesh. He could not pass.

  “Sorry,” he mumbled again, eyes half-closed. He thought in all likelihood she had seen his sabotage, but he would continue to play his part to the finish, even if she grabbed him with those tiny, impossibly strong hands and threw him out the airlock. He was an academy-trained mummer, he told himself pridefully. If this was to be his last role, he would stay in character to the bitter end.

  “Ensign?” she asked.
>
  “Captain?”

  “Do you find me attractive?”

  This question surprised him. He had expected a hundred things, but not this. “Yes,” he said. “Sure.”

  She reached for him, pulling his face down to hers. She kissed him. Her lips were soft, and although they tasted slightly of plastic, they were convincing enough. He felt himself becoming aroused.

  She pushed him back into the restroom then, and followed him inside pulling the door shut behind them. It was a tight squeeze, but Theller didn’t mind the experience.

  He did feel fear at the moment of consummation. What if she were equipped differently than normal women? He soon found she had a very convincing set of apparatus, and apparently it was connected to her braincase with enough artificial sensory nerves to be very stimulating for her. She achieved her climax before he did, and she proceeded to repeat the process no less than five times before he could finish himself.

  Afterward, he maintained his bemused, groggy smile. “What was that all about?” he asked.

  Captain Beezel looked at him. Her big, blue, artificial orbs were more entrancing than ever. He felt certain at that instant he’d done the right thing by saving them all.

  “If we are about to die, I figured we might as well enjoy our last minutes. I saw you sleeping earlier…and when I found you up and relieving yourself….”

  “Ah,” he said. “Of course. But why me?”

  “Well,” she said without a shred of concern for his feelings, “you are the only other officer aboard.”

  “I see,” he said, nodding again. “Staying safely within regulations?”

  The captain laughed. “Hardly,” she said.

  Ensign Theller staggered back to his seat and buckled himself in. He quietly watched her moving about the cabin. He had to smile, feeling glad that due to his efforts she might just survive this war. Perhaps, if he were lucky, they’d get a chance for a repeat performance.

  Four

  Mendelian cruisers were built on a vast scale. They would have been called battleships by any other colony, but by calling them cruisers they knew they left witnesses wondering just how terrifying a true Mendelian battleship might be. In design they were functionally equivalent to the designs passed on by the Old Earth Collectivists. Each chamber, tube and weapons mount was similar—but bloated to approximately twice the standard dimensions. Even the corridors were grand, being constructed of thick steel rather than the usual economically thin materials. The Mendelian crews fit these vast ships, being large people. The officers were taller than any Homo Sapiens that had ever walked upon Old Earth. But the true reasons for the wastefully-sized ships was psychological. In short, they were intimidating to lesser men.

  As Goddard marched confidently to the personal combat sphere, the metal plates rang under his magnetic boots. The corridor he walked within dwarfed him. There was room here for four of his gigantic brethren to walk abreast. If he were to raise his tremendous arms above him, his fingertips would scarcely brush the distant ceiling. To add to the prideful feeling of the ship, the corridors were built with long vistas that ran the length of the vessel. Seeing a mile-long tube of metal such as the one Goddard now walked along never failed to further intimidate visiting mundanes, who always quailed in the presence of rumbling Mendelian warriors.

  Goddard was mildly surprised to find Davenport waiting for him in the combat sphere. He’d half-expected the captain to invent an excuse or beg for a postponement. Instead, the dusky over-thinker hung in the air, free-floating in the gravity-free chamber, already wearing his pads and blades.

  “Captain,” Goddard said with a nod.

  “Admiral,” Davenport responded crisply.

  “Remove that equipment at once,” Goddard ordered.

  Davenport, who had been staring at him flatly, ready for anything, blinked in confusion. “Sir? This is standard combat gear. This is the exact kit we issue to our boarding parties.”

  Davenport’s combat suit was made of tough fabric that could hold up well in vacuum or a dozen other environments. There were protective shells that cupped the elbows and knees. From each of these shells protruded a sharp, triangular blade that resembled the dorsal fin of a shark.

  “What of it?” Goddard asked.

  “Well, aren’t we testing our skills for shipboard combat?”

  “Indeed we are,” Goddard said. As he spoke he donned weighted gloves. “But you are uninformed. As line officers, we would be unlikely to board enemy ships. If we were to engage in close combat it would probably be in a defensive situation. In such a case, we would be wearing our normal uniforms.”

  “I see,” Davenport said. He flicked on his boot magnetics and let himself be drawn to the nearest wall. Balancing there, he began unsnapping the straps of his combat suit.

  Goddard waited until the man had the suit at half-mast. The tight-fitting material was like a wetsuit, and always seemed to bunch up over the hips and had to be rolled down over the legs. When Davenport had the suit down to the top of his thighs, Goddard judged he was at a critical point of maximum encumbrance. He launched himself at the captain, his two gloved fists thrust out like twin battering rams. Each fist was buried in a weighted, padded glove.

  Although not entirely above-board, Admiral Goddard’s tactic was not against the rules. There were only two rules in the combat sphere. The first was to stop fighting when one man quit or was incapacitated. The second was to avoid striking at the head. Too many permanent injuries resulted that way.

  Davenport did not fumble with his half-dropped pants, but instead prepared to meet the assault. Both men released ear-splitting battle cries. These were designed to rattle an opponent, to freeze his mind and induce a critical moment of indecision. In this case, neither combatant was affected as they were accustomed to such tactics.

  In his split-second of flight before crashing into his opponent, Goddard was disappointed to see Davenport did not try to dodge away. This was going to be a very quick round indeed. The man had no chance tied up in his suit.

  But then Davenport did the unexpected. He reversed the polarity of his magnetic boots and fired up toward the ceiling. He had waited until Goddard was too close to change course. Goddard’s fists smashed into a blank wall, rather than Davenport’s midsection.

  Goddard reoriented himself and glanced up at the ceiling where Davenport hung like a spider. “A cowardly, but effective ploy,” he commented.

  “I was not aware our sparring had begun, sir,” Davenport said evenly. “I thought perhaps your boots had malfunctioned.”

  Goddard snorted. “Are you coming down or must I chase you around this sphere while you run like a flea-squirrel?”

  Davenport pulled his tight combat suit back up above his hips, but let it remain there, not daring to slip his arms into the sleeves. It was obvious that Goddard, who had coiled his legs beneath him like two springs, was waiting for another moment of awkwardness. Davenport flipped off his boots and floated gently toward the base of the sphere.

  Goddard sprang at him when he was half-way down. Grinning, he extended his fists again. Davenport was a fool! He should have crawled down the far wall. Now, he would pay for every irritation he’d ever provided over the long year they’d spent together in space.

  As he flew to battle, Goddard thought of his prideful, wickedly clever parents. Like all Mendelians of his generation, he’d been designed in secret by a mother and father who were themselves veterans of duels over rank and status. They knew all too well what their son was going to face in the harsh society of Mendelia. As a result, he’d been born with the outsized body of an Olympic star. He was faster, stronger and quicker of mind than any human combatant the species had produced naturally for a thousand years.

  Davenport did not look surprised at the coming aerial assault, however. He calmly flipped up his feet and directed them toward Goddard’s face.

  Goddard realized in a moment of chagrin that legs were longer than arms. Davenport’s extremities would theref
ore strike first. With a curse and a liquidly smooth motion, he did a flip in mid-air. The two crashed their boots together and bounced away, their feet stinging from the combined impacts.

  The moment he touched down, Goddard stalked forward, growling. It was a bass sound one would have expected from an extinct creature such as the grizzlies of ancient North America. Davenport moved forward to meet him with matching ferocity.

  Goddard fought with absolute confidence as the two began to trade blows. Davenport attempted a kick, which Goddard blocked. Another foot came up, but Goddard caught it, and twisted the ankle. Goddard was forced to release the foot when the other caught him on the shoulder. Goddard took note: Davenport liked to use his feet, a tactic that had always irritated Goddard. He preferred a stand-up battle where his long arms and powerful shoulders could come into play decisively.

  Goddard managed to get a half-dozen blows into Davenport’s ribs, but the thinner man still didn’t go down. Goddard grappled, seeking to drive his opponent onto the floor. Once they were down and rolling around, his superior weight would come to dominate and the fight would soon be over.

  When Goddard had his hands on the lesser man, he felt an explosion of bestial battle lust. The two tumbled to the floor and began to wrestle with bone-crushing strength. Each had muscles hardened by heightened testosterone levels, perfect genetics and rigorous exercise. Goddard soon had Davenport on his back, although the thinner man squirmed to escape. Goddard pounded him with a blurring series of strikes to the chest.

  Finally, at long last, he was putting this cowardly worm into his place. Goddard’s mouth opened with excitement and each blocky tooth was exposed. His teeth were an oddly discolored stone-gray, a byproduct of his extreme breeding.

  An explosion of pain arced through his body, starting in his groin. Davenport had managed to get a bladed knee up and into a sensitive spot. The blade did not penetrate the flesh as each man wore a fine mesh of molecularly aligned links. This chainmail was so exquisitely made that it was almost unbreakable, and fit like a sack over each man’s body. The purpose of dueling chambers such as this one was instruction—the men used it to train and release tension, not slaughter one another. Even so, the stealthy thrust was extremely painful. Without a qualm, Goddard slammed a fist full into the face of Captain Davenport, who slumped down, stunned.