Mecha Rogue Read Online Free

of a toroid-shaped passenger cabin riding a meter-wide ribbon of carbon nanotubes from orbit down to Eridani. Floor-to-ceiling windows showed the gentle curve of Eridani’s surface, wrapped in a thick blue atmosphere and striped with bright white clouds. Eridani’s oceans covered almost eighty percent of the planet, and their deep teal depths reflected sheets of brilliant sunlight.
    As they fell toward the planet in the elevator, there was no vibration, no sensation of motion. Only a high, thin whistle of atmosphere confirmed what the room’s status screen showed: they were descending toward Eridani at almost five hundred kilometers an hour. The eight-hundred-kilometer drop would take less than ninety minutes.
    â€œSuch luxury. They’re showing off for us,” Matt said.
    â€œWhy shouldn’t they? And why shouldn’t we enjoy it?” Michelle asked, leaning over to look out the curved window at the ground. “We are the saviors of the Union, after all.”
    â€œThat pathetic fight on Keller?” Soto said.
    â€œNot that.”
    Soto frowned and nodded. He knew exactly what she was talking about. They’d killed Rayder together.
    Matt sighed. HuMax. Genetically engineered superpersons who had almost destroyed the Union over a century ago. They were supposed to have been all wiped out in the Human/HuMax wars of almost a century past. But Rayder had somehow survived. And much of his crew was HuMax. It was entirely possible there were even more of them out there, hiding past the edge of the Union.
    Michelle grabbed Matt’s sleeve and pointed down at Eridani’s surface. “You can see Newhome now. Come look!”
    Matt shook his head. He was wiped out. His head beat like a drum, and his stomach still churned from Mesh hangover, the unavoidable effect of using a biomechanical Mecha. They were all suffering from it. Demons were the worst for Mesh hangover. It was amazing they weren’t flat on their backs in bed.
    At the same time, a constant chant repeated in his mind:
Get back into that Mecha. Mesh, and you’ll feel fine. Mesh is the best thing in all the worlds!
    â€œWe’re above the Union capital, and you don’t even want to look?” Michelle looked at him incredulously. Even though she also had the well-used look of a Mecha pilot coming down from Mesh, her eyes sparkled.
    â€œA planet’s a planet,” Matt mumbled.
    Michelle frowned and crossed her arms, turning away from him. “No, it’s not. If each planet wasn’t special in its own way, we wouldn’t fight in Mecha to protect them. If a planet was a planet, we wouldn’t have created Mecha at all! We would’ve just kept lobbing atomic weapons at each other until they were all dust!”
    Righteously angry like that, she was even more beautiful than usual. The curve of her cheek was backlit by the teal-tinged reflected Eridani sunlight, and her face was lit like a halo. Her utilitarian blue Mecha Corps uniform didn’t hide her generous curves. Matt remembered the first day he saw her, the lone Union Army recruit at Mecha Training Camp. Beautiful and deadly. If she hadn’t known what she was doing, he might not have made it through the first mock battle.
    And . . . she was right. Planets truly suited for human life were incredibly rare. Uninhabitable rocks or borderline wastelands like Keller were the norm. Eridani was special, one of four worlds in the entire Union that were truly Earthlike.
    You should be making nice, not pissing her off,
Matt thought. Michelle was amazing, the kind of woman you could spend your whole life with. And she was a Mecha pilot. How could it get any better?
    But when Matt tried to imagine a future with her, his vision blurred. Things wouldn’t resolve. There always seemed to be something between them. First Cadet Kyle Peterov. Then Rayder.
    No excuses now,
he told himself.
    â€œI’m sorry,” Matt told her.