The Battle For Cyclops: A Xander Cain Novel Read online

  Most interstellar travel was conducted by massive jump ships, effectively mobile space stations to which entire fleets could attach, pulled across space in a blink of an eye. These behemoths featured massive spinning rings several miles long, ships attached to the outside like limpets. Periods of true zero gravity were rare, generally the short flight to and from the jump ship being the exception.

  Across the bay, the rest of the company’s mechs were in a similar state. It was to be expected, the job had been high risk from the start and some damage was inevitable. They came out well considering the danger, there was no real permanent damage. This was a good thing, even with the payment for this job the company coffers were nearly empty. When they had taken possession of the Sunchaser there had been a large amount of lost tech onboard that had been sold to provide initial capital. That hadn’t gone anywhere near as far as Xander had expected.

  He drifted towards the bay's exit, the doors opening with a swish as he approached. Things had gone well on the planet below them, a normally quiet agricultural world called Demeter. It was technically Demeter Four, the name applying to the system rather than just a single planet, but none of the other worlds orbiting this star were habitable. The war was touching every part of the Iron Belt, even places like Demeter, where the only mechs the populace had ever seen were on webcasts.

  The job had been straightforward. The Agricare Foods corporation was battling its rival Freshfeasts for control of the planet’s fertile equator. Demeter was slightly further from its star than most habitable worlds. This meant that whilst its hemispheres were incredibly cold, there was a thick band around the equator that had the perfect temperate conditions for growing crops. Agricare had tasked the Paladins with helping them capture a grain storage facility, along with the island it was located on. Once they had taken the beach and broken the defensive line the defenders had quickly withdrawn. They didn’t have the numbers for a protracted battle.

  Xander pulled himself through the ship’s corridors, darting between handholds like a fish swimming between clusters of coral. He passed a crewman who had their arms inside the guts of the ship, a panel removed from the wall. The crewman nodded as Xander passed then went back to their maintenance. The crew of the Sunchaser were all former pirates. They had been operating as unlicensed mercenaries on Hades and crewing a new legitimate job crewing a brand-new starship had been an easy choice for most. The other option was to remain trapped on Hades with an unknown number of people trying to kill them.

  “You know, I have a number of suggestions on how to improve that power conduit he’s working on,” Matthias said. “Some of the choices there seem inefficient.”

  Xander glanced around, making sure no one was nearby. He knew the AI could hear his thoughts, but not speaking out loud felt strange.

  “I’m sure you do. The problem is they would be my suggestions,” Xander said. “I know my way around a mechsuit’s systems, but I’m not exactly an electrical engineer. If I suddenly start spouting major improvements, it’s going to be a bit weird.”

  “I suppose. Your society’s taboos about artificial intelligence are bizarre. You’re deliberately impeding your development. All because of some old myths and legends.”

  “One’s you conveniently can’t remember if they’re true or not.”

  “I assure you, this is hardly convenient,” Matthias said. “I would quite like to remember my past. Who knows what vital information I might have for humanity.”

  “Humanity wouldn’t listen to you anyway.”

  “Xander?” There was a voice echoing through the hallway, a noise pumped in through the ship’s intercom. It was Sergei, a former corporate middle manager who had once worked for the Sunchaser’s previous owners. He had taken to running the business side of a mercenary company with surprising ease. The man had a knack for paperwork. “Can you come down to the bridge as soon as?”

  Xander sighed and pulled himself to the nearest intercom panel. He pushed the reply switch and the button clicked audibly. “There a problem?” Xander said.

  “Maybe. Look just come to the bridge.”

  “Fine. I’ll be there in five.” Xander released the button.

  “Something is wrong, you could hear it in his voice,” Matthias said.

  “Yeah. I knew today was going too well.”

  ***

  The screen was filled with coloured triangles, red pyramids advancing towards a looming green sphere. Xander understood instantly what it meant; reinforcements had arrived for one of the sides below. The triangles were spreading out from a crimson oblong like it was shooting darts at the planet. The eyes of the bridge crew were fixated on the screen, watching the dance of shapes and colours unfurl.

  “That what I think it is?” Xander said. He drifted across the bridge, stopping himself by gripping onto a nearby console.

  “That it is my boy,” Mikal said. The old pirate had settled into the role of ship’s captain. “We’ve got a jump ship. It’s done a combat jump, must have cost a pretty penny.” Mikal scratched his short white beard as he spoke. He turned towards a nearby crewman. “Are we getting transponder codes?”

  The crewman nodded, their fingers tapping at the console before them. “We’re getting Freshfeasts codes. Merc IDs.”

  “Looks like someone is going to undo all our hard work,” Xander said. It was an impressively sized force. Whilst there were dozens of dropship designs, most carried four mechsuits at a time, though there were outliers that carried two or six. There were fifteen red triangles on the view screen, each a dropship heading for Demeter. A quick estimate told Xander that roughly sixty mercenaries were heading towards the planet. “Can we ID the company?”

  “Looks like it’s a….” The crewman dragged out his words as he waited for the computer to respond. “Cain’s Corsairs.”

  “Friends of yours then,” Sergei said. He was sat by a console near the far wall, the seat straps pulled tight against his shirt. No-one else had bothered to strap themselves in.

  “Hardly,” Xander said.

  “Should I move the ship away?” Mikal said, already plotting the orders into his console. “We are working for the other side after all. I ain’t got as far as I have dicking about in weapons range of enemy ships.”

  “No, we’ve done our job. We had a one and done contract with Agricare. We’re not transmitting any ID codes for them anymore, are we?”

  “Shouldn’t be,” Mikal said. He looked at the nearby crewman who just nodded in response. “Nope.”

  “Then we're fine. Mercs don't just randomly fire on each other. There's a code, an etiquette, you know?” Xander gestured towards the view screen as if that somehow reinforced his point.

  “Not really. I was a pirate, remember. Damn good one too. We don’t really have a code, or rules, even if that’s not what webcasts think. There is no honour amongst thieves, that’s just something people tell themselves to feel better. You feel like less of a bloody idiot for following all the rules if you’re sure criminals are working under a different set of them.”

  “We’re being hailed, cap,” said one of the bridge crew. “From one of the dropships.”

  Xander let out a long sigh. He knew this day was coming at some point. “Put it through,” he said.

  “Paladins, eh? Not familiar with your company, but just giving you the heads up to keep clear of our operational zone. There's going to be a lot of dropships up and down over the next few hours in potentially hot space. Wouldn't want you to get hit by debris.” The signal was audio-only, the speaker transmitting from inside a mechsuit. The voice was a woman's.

  “Thanks for the warning, Adeline. We’re moving to jump out, but thanks anyway.”

  “Xander, is that you?”

  “Yeah, it's me.”

  “What the hell are you doing here? Last I heard you were doing freelance jobs. Finally found a company willing to take you in despite all the stink?” There was a vitriol in the voice, barely contained menace rattling through Adel
ine's lips.

  “I actually own this company,” Xander said. It wasn't strictly true, he part-owned it, the founding members splitting it evenly between them.

  “Makes sense. Nobody would want you otherwise. It’s a shame you’re bugging out. Would have been nice to see you on the other end of my cannon.”

  “I’m sure it would. Now if you excuse me, I have a jump to be making.” Xander dragged a finger across his throat, gesturing for the line to be cut. A crewman nodded and the connection ended. “That went better than I expected.”

  “You expected worse?” Sergei said in disbelief.

  “Mikal, get us out of here,” Xander said.

  ***

  The Sunchaser slid through the darkness, its engines pushing it through the black towards the jump point. Whilst, in theory, a ship could jump anywhere it wished, every star system had several pre-set points designed to minimise the risk of collisions when reappearing in normal space. Emerging outside these pre-defined regions carried large fines. Freshfeasts would be paying a hefty premium employing the Corsairs to perform the lightning assault they were currently engaged in.

  The jump point was several hours away from Demeter, a slow crawl through the inner solar system. It didn't matter, charging the drive took the best part of a day for the Sunchaser so flying through space was faster. It was the price the ship paid for having a jump drive despite its size. The massive jump ships benefited from efficiencies of scale, able to jump further and faster than the small ship. The Sunchaser sat at the jump point, unmoving as the coils within its drive began to spool up.

  It jumped. There was no flash of brilliant light, no monstrous wormhole opening up. The ship simply winked out of existence, vanishing as it skipped across space.

  Chapter Three

  The Sunchaser reappeared in space between moments, vast distances crossed near instantly. The time between entering and exiting a jump was so brief that it didn’t register to the human mind. You were simply in one place, then another. Xander didn’t pretend to understand the science, something to do with bending spacetime so that the universe overlapped with itself. Jump travel had made human expansion to the stars possible, turning journeys that would last centuries into mere seconds. Mankind had blinked from star system to the next until it had crashed upon the dead stars like they were a wall.

  The viewscreen on the bridge exploded into a shower of icons, the display still showing the Sunchaser’s sensor readings. Dozens of ships were moving through the system, collecting at jump points where they waited for incoming guild ships to appear, the smaller vessels hopping onto the larger ones like passengers clambering aboard a bus. The icons were coloured a neutral yellow, there were no hostiles in this system, or at least no one was openly hostile. A fair few of the people here would have some choice words for Xander. They always did.

  “Jump complete and on target,” said a crewman nearer the front of the bridge. “Drive winding down.”

  “Another job well done. You’ll have to start paying us more,” Mikal said. He smiled wide, revealing a set of teeth that had seen better days.

  “Yeah, well we need more jobs, otherwise we're not paying anyone.” Xander was sitting off to the side of the bridge, the chair reclined back as far as it would go. He had his legs in the air, floating in the zero-gravity like they were resting on an invisible table. Xander had decided to stay on the bridge during the journey simply because he had nowhere else to go. His mechsuit was being repaired and cleaned, Tamara and her people were busy editing footage and the other riders had gone to their quarters to rest. Xander would have done the same, but since the formation of the Paladins, he had felt this urge to fill his every waking hour doing something. The others had pushed him into a leadership role and he felt like allowing himself to slack off, even for a moment, was letting them down. At least sat on the bridge as he was, he could claim he was supervising.

  “That bad?”

  “That last job will tide us over for a month or two, but we need to build up a reserve. The problem with doing mercenary work is you don't know what your expenses will be until it's done. If an unlucky hit loses us a mechsuit that’s a few million to replace it that we don’t have. We’ve got my old Defender in reserve, and that’s it.”

  Mikal stroked his beard. “A few million you say?” He let out a long whistle. “Our boys were hitting the wrong targets then.”

  “I can’t imagine mechsuit shipments would make for easy targets.” Xander put his legs on the floor, his magnetic boots clanking as they gripped hold. He sat up, swivelling the chair to face the former pirate. “What kind of cargos were you after then?”

  “Movies, webcasts, books, that kind of thing. If you can nab a ship bringing something new into a system, then you’re laughing. Got yourselves a little monopoly. You can charge any bugger anything you want then. You would be amazed how much money people will pay to see the newest Deplorables flick before any other gits do.”

  “Not really a fan,” Xander said. The Deplorables was a popular series of movies about a disgraced mercenary unit taking on outlandish missions. Its premise hit a little too close to home, and the massive inaccuracies in its action scenes had rankled at Xander.

  Malik nodded in understanding. He tapped at the console in front of him. “We should get moving off this jump point. I’ll set us a course for the station?”

  “Yeah, let’s get moving.” Xander looked back at the viewscreen. The ships on it were clustered around a larger object, one orbiting a flat blue disc that represented a planet. The colour was a lie, the world was no blue jewel hanging in the heavens, but a gas giant, one with ferocious winds and storms that made mining it unfeasible. The rest of the system was a similar story, useless worlds that barely warranted corporate attention. The station's presence in orbit was deliberate, the location chosen to ensure neutrality.

  “Course plotted,” Mallik said. “Engage when ready, Jamal.”

  “Aye, boss,” said one of the crewmen. He tapped on the screen before him. There was a low groan throughout the ship as the engines fired, the acceleration generating a tiny amount of gravity that caused girders and walls to creak and moan.

  “I’m going to head down to my quarters to try and get some rest,” Xander said as he stood up. He could feel the force of the engines, only slightly, as he did. “Let me know when we reach the station.”

  ***

  Xander’s journey through the habitation arm to his quarters wasn’t taken alone. Loneliness was a thing of the past for him, much to Xander’s annoyance. He sometimes cursed the day he had climbed into that working lost tech mechsuit on Hades. It had meant victory, but the suit’s AI had burrowed itself into his mind rather than being destroyed along with the ancient armour. Matthias remembered almost nothing from before Xander had switched the suit on, so liked to bombard him with questions often.

  “This station, it’s run by your mercenary guild?”

  “Yes,” Xander said as he strolled down the corridor. “It’s a hub for mercs to pick up new jobs, hire people on, buy equipment, that kind of thing.”

  “So, somewhere we might find some equipment from my era?” Matthias said. The AI had been open about being equally disgruntled with his situation. He and Xander had made a deal to transfer him to a suitable system once they found one. That was an issue, the mechsuit he had been inside, the Paladin class war machine that the mercenary company drew their name from, was a once in a lifetime find.

  “I’ll look, but don’t get your hopes up. I don’t think you realise how rare you are. The first lost tech suit we found kickstarted the modern designs, and the second gave us the wetware to use them properly.”

  “I would hardly say properly. The quality of your connection is dire, even after I improved it somewhat.”

  Xander couldn’t argue. Riding the Paladin had been almost a pleasure. The connection between rider and mech was a joining of bodies, the mind wired into mechanical muscles. There had been no millisecond delay, no tiny almost impe
rceptible latency. The machine had simply moved like it was Xander’s own body. Matthias had adjusted Xander’s wetware, letting him control his Defender better than he normally could, but it wasn’t the same.

  “I just want to temper your expectations.”

  “Consider them tempered,” Matthias said.

  A laugh echoed through the hallway, leaking out of an adjoining room like oil from a rusted engine. More voices followed; the sounds of people engaged in the kind of forced good time being locked in a flying metal box could bring. Communal fun weaponised against the boredom. Xander recognised the voices and stuck his head around the corner.

  “Ah! Xander. Come, take a seat,” Alexi gestured to an open folding chair next to him. He was sitting at a round table, it's top bare metal. Several hands of cards were laying face up around a pile of plastic chips. Meg and Anya were sitting opposite him, and from the look on their faces, Alexi had just played the winning hand.

  “Oh no, I’ve learned my lesson. My wallet is still hurting from last time.”

  “One hand. Just the one. The ladies would like to win their money back I’m sure, and I could use the challenge.” Alexi ducked as Meg threw a handful of peanuts at him.

  “Arsehole,” she said, reaching into the packet she was holding and pulling out another handful. She dropped them into her mouth this time, deciding not to waste any more precious snacks on her comrade.

  Anya scooped up the cards from the table, shuffling the deck in her hands. “This time, I deal.”

  “Go ahead,” Alexi said. “I hope you’ll put up more of a fight this time. Our people are supposed to be good at cards.” He turned towards Xander who was pulling the empty chair away from the table. “Not a lot to do in the tunnels sometimes. Playing cards and making vodka, the two Svarogian national pastimes.”