Mecha Rogue Read Online Free Page A

“It’s just that—”
    â€œIt’s just that you’re an asshole,” Michelle said, with real heat. She didn’t turn around.
    Matt felt a red-hot stab of anger, and he clenched his fists. He had to grit his teeth to keep from biting off a sharp comment. More Mesh hangover. It tweaked your emotions. Had to keep that in mind.
    Soto went to the window to look down with Michelle. He held a small snifter of some golden liquid he’d gotten from the bar. Matt’s gorge rose. How could he drink now?
    But Soto was always like that. Soto didn’t waver. Soto was tough, gristly, made of muscle and determination. Even in his forties, he was a pinnacle of fitness. Washboard abs showed even under his Mecha Corps uniform. Bulging biceps strained the limit of the fabric. Matt could see Michelle easily going for someone like him, even though he was twice their age.
    Would that happen? On Eridani? They were supposed to be going to some Mecha Corps retreat overlooking Newhome Basin. And if not Soto, what about the other Corps who were undoubtedly there?
    Always something in the way.
    Matt sighed and looked down at the swelling city. It was late in the afternoon, and shadows stretched long from Newhome’s concentric rings of brilliant chrome-glass and white-stone buildings. The Capitol Plaza was a hilly green park at the very center of Newhome, ringed by wide canals and dotted with neoclassical buildings housing the Universal Union Congress, its High Court, the Union’s most important monuments, and the Prime Residence. It looked far too perfect and regular to be real.
    Sudden vertigo made Matt sway, but he forced himself to stay there and look down.
    â€œYou’re right,” he told Michelle.
    Michelle said nothing. Her expression, visible in the reflection from the window, remained set and hard. After a time, though, her lips twitched into a smile.
    â€œYes,” she said. “I am.”
    The trio watched the rest of the way in silence as the space elevator hurtled down toward Newhome.
    * * *
    A whisper-quiet electric shuttle took the Corps to a resort that sprawled atop a hill overlooking Newhome. In the gathering twilight, the city was a vision in porcelain white and green glass, towers soaring gracefully as they approached spires soaring nearly a kilometer high. At one edge of the city, Atlantis, Eridani’s largest ocean, fed canals that snaked through the outermost concentric rings of Newhome, glowing a pale teal from artificial light. Small personal watercraft and larger yachts peppered the canals, lit with pinpricks of brilliant white light. Low, purple-tinted clouds stood in banks off the edge of the shoreline, as if politely waiting for nightfall to move in. Above the clouds, the first stars had begun to speckle the sky, and two of Eridani’s five moons were visible as tiny crescents.
    â€œIt’s beautiful,” Michelle said.
    The resort itself was a collection of low, post-and-beam buildings of raw native wood and glass. A single stone slab outside read MECHA CORPS 1: SHANGRI-LA.
    â€œNot subtle, are they?” Soto asked, nodding at the sign.
    It’s not a heroes’ reward,
Matt told himself.
It’s a bribe. Forget your questions, here in the lap of luxury. Do your job, and you can live like this for a time.
They technically had an entire week off. Matt had no idea what he would do.
    Inside, graceful, sculpted furniture and abstract art were the order of the day. The lobby looked out over carefully pruned grounds of Eridani’s native, spiky, purple-tinged foliage, with a lighted turquoise pool the size of a small lake, dim-lit gazebos perfect for a romantic tryst, and an open-air bar at the edge of the hill overlooking Newhome.
    On the grounds, figures moved here and there, dressed in comfortable, casual clothes. But the way they moved—the furtiveness, the caution—told Matt they were Mecha Corps like themselves, or high-ranking