Mech 2 Read online

  A gripper reached up and grabbed his foot. It crushed painfully, even through the boot.

  Carrying both the squirming sac with the Savant inside and Aldo in his space suit, Fryx marched out the door.

  “Why are you helping suddenly?” Aldo asked Fryx.

  One optic swung to look at him. “The enemy is gone, for now. I want to make friends.”

  Aldo snorted.

  Twenty-Nine

  The battle was over. They had searched every corner of the Zürich, multiple times with a battery of sensors, and come up with nothing alien to report. It would take a long time to make sure they were not still hiding in the duct systems somewhere. To make sure, they flushed the vessel with radioactive gas then vented it all out into space.

  The Zürich had been saved, that was the good news. Unfortunately, the Gladius was gone. It had been taken by the skalds, who triggered its prelaid course for Ignis Glace. Everyone figured that they had somehow convinced the Captain to fly out early, escaping what the Tulk probably thought was a lost system.

  The truly bad news came when they carefully reviewed vid data from the orbital station where the Gladius had been docked. Alien invasion pods had reached the ship before they took off. They had no reports on how the humans and the Tulk inside had done with the invaders. During the confusion of the battle, no one had bothered to worry much about the Gladius, other than to note that some sort of disturbance was going on aboard.

  Droad would have tried to get the Zürich to fire on the Gladius, but it was already far beyond their range. If they tried to pursue, they would fail. The Gladius had large engines that produced continuous thrust. They were not as fast as the Zurich’s Orion system, but far more steady. They simply had too great of a head start. They were already out of the Kale system. If they did try to chase them down with their Orion-based battleship, they would run out of bombs and have no way to turn around and go back to the Kale system. There would be no way to reduce their velocity so they could dock at Ignis Glace if they arrived there years later. They would be forced to smash into something, or coast forever at great speed into the endless void of space.

  Still, Droad thought it might be worth it. To finish the Skaintz was imperative. They were like a cancer that must be cut out at all cost. But Nexus Command would not hear of it. They valued the Zürich very highly now. It had saved their world.

  The decision was not his to make, so he did what he could. He returned to Neu Schweitz.

  Two of the great rolling rocks from space had made it down to the planet surface. One, pushed off course, struck a mountain overlooking New Geneva. Unfortunately, such was the impact of the strike that the city was greatly damaged. Thousands of citizens who’d opted to ride out the war at home perished.

  The second asteroid caused significantly more damage. It struck the great central ocean, causing a tsunami of unprecedented proportions. A string of coastal towns were swept away. Causalities numbered in the hundreds of thousands.

  Still, Droad considered the entire affair a victory. So did the Nexus Command people, who had stared directly into the abyss of extinction. The population at large, however, was not happy. Elections were coming in a day or two, and incumbency was a death warrant for every politician.

  Droad met with Sarah on the Nexus Capitol steps. Aldo waited in the flitter, pointedly looking away at Capitol Park. Bili sat in the back, staring at them.

  “What will you do now?” asked Sarah.

  “I’m running for office,” said Droad, smiling. “As a write-in candidate.”

  She smiled at the quaintness of the idea. “You don’t give up easily, do you? What will do if you win?”

  “I’m going to win, eventually. When I do, I’ll build up this world for the war.”

  “We just won the war.”

  “I don’t think so. Recall those messages? They went out to many worlds, awakening things we won’t even hear about for years. And when we got to Minerva, the aliens had pulled out.”

  “And the Gladius escaped, possibly with aliens aboard. Yes, I know,” she said. “But people here want to think it’s all over.”

  “I have a Tulk witness, and a living Savant to push into their faces. I won’t let them forget.”

  “There’s no place in all of that for Bili and I, is there?”

  “Are you offering?”

  “Not this time.”

  “Aldo is a good man. I approve.”

  She laughed. “I approve of you and Ensign Tolbert, as well.”

  “Oh. You heard about that, did you? You aren’t upset?”

  “How could I be? I’m with Aldo. So what if you impressed a younger woman by out bluffing the Brigadier?”

  Droad frowned. “Nothing goes unnoticed on this world. It’s like a giant beehive of gossips.”

  “Don’t worry, I’m not telling the press any secrets. Just do what you always do, Lucas.”

  She gave him a light kiss then, and was gone.

  He missed her immediately.

  Thirty

  It took six men in haz-mat suits to dig their way into the rook containing Nicu. The vessel had spun away from the battle where it had been severely damaged and was left in a decaying orbit around Neu Schweitz. Nexus Command probably would have let it burn up or smash into one of the many circling moons if they had not received a tiny, beeping distress signal.

  They found Nicu inside the bathroom, or rather, inside the waste compartment. He was curled up in a ball, playing vids on his goggles. He was thin, almost emaciated. But he had somehow managed to survive against all odds.

  Due to the hideous nature of his ordeal, and the fact that nearly everyone else involved in the rebellion of the Vlax Romani of Minerva had apparently died, the Nexus courts took pity on Nicu. They released him into the general population of Neu Schweitz two months later, where he promptly vanished.

  Nicu later took up residence in a low rent district of the city, working as a sanitation engineer. Various items began to vanish while others mysteriously appeared in the apartment complex where he lived. Nicu was often looked upon with suspicion. The abundance of vid pickups in the women’s gymnasium, for example, was problematic. But after a thorough investigation, it was determined that no human being could have gotten to the spot where the pickups had been placed without having alerted the security systems. That put the police on the trail of the security installers themselves, who were the only men capable of turning off the security system and thus achieving the installation of the spy devices.

  In the end, the matter was thrown out of court for lack of evidence, and remains a mystery to this day.

  End of MECH 2

  The Future of the Series: The planned next book, Mech 3, will involve the return of Droad to his strange homeworld, Ignis Glace. Many years have passed since his departure, and the monarchy that rules the planet is in a state of upheaval due to the extermination of the royal family. Can Droad reach his homeworld before the alien invaders arrive? Will anyone listen to him if he does? The Skalds seem strangely resigned to an Imperium victory… have they come to some kind of arrangement with the enemy? Read it all in Mech 3!

  Note from the Author: Thanks Reader! You have joined the thousands who have finished the Imperium Series as it stands. If you enjoyed the books and possibly want to see more, please write a review for the first book (MECH) and let new people know what is in store for them.

  Books by B. V. Larson:

  IMPERIUM SERIES

  Mech: Garm

  Mech 2: Neu Schweitz

  Mech 3:Ignis Glace

  HAVEN SERIES

  Amber Magic

  Sky Magic

  Shadow Magic

  Dragon Magic

  Blood Magic

  Death Magic

  Other Books by B. V. Larson

  Swarm

  Velocity

  Shifting

  Spyware

  For more information go to: BVLarson.com

  ; B. V. Larson, Mech 2