Chapter 2

Clara continued her slow, steady neutering of the raider craft. Walking her father’s mech around the outside, she methodically targeted anything that even vaguely resembled a weapons mount. Small bore weapons fire impacted against the mech’s outer armour but they lacked the punch to do anything other than chip the grease covered paint. People were streaming out from the crafts open hold. She ignored them.

The last weapon mount exploded in a puff of smoke and a brief flash of light. The mech was still ringing to the sound of small arms fire, so she turned the mech’s PPC’s on the more distant shooters. The attackers disappearing in puffs of greasy smoke that was mildly satisfying. The one’s closest had not seen the demise of those behind and continued to fire futilely. Clara put on a burst of speed and deliberately kicked one of the raiders. She didn’t hear or feel the contact, but she saw the figure contort into a position beyond the range of the average human as it flew through the air. Another one she stamped on, again not feeling any resistance through the mech’s foot. Just the solid resistance of ground. When she moved on and looked back, there was a mech foot shaped scratch on the surface of the landing pad with a red smear in the middle. Not unlike a bug splatter on the windscreen of a car.

The raiders still alive had finally comprehended the futility of their actions and had thrown down their weapons and were fleeing in every direction away from the mech, casting off their raider clothes in a desperate attempt to blend in with the local populace. Clara stopped her father’s mech and surveyed the area. The only sound of fighting was coming from the town, to which she could be of little use, without destroying most of it in the process.

The adrenaline and the anger were subsiding, but not the grief. Turning the mech, she headed for home.

On the return, she had spotted a few raiders fleeing across the countryside who had not divested themselves of their clothing. It was ridiculously easy for Clara to move her thumbs against their joysticks and divest the raiders of their lives, leaving just scattered and charred bones in her wake. The local wildlife would clean up the mess and in a few days’ time, there would be no sign of the raiders ever having existed.

Backing into the silo, Clara shut the mech down. With the access door closed, the air inside the silo smelt terrible. Like a rancid corpse. Clara dry heaved several times as she navigated her way across the gantry. She had cried hard and continuously on the way back to the farm, and now she just felt numb and drained. Settling the rifle on her back, she slid down the ladder and headed home. It felt as though someone was controlling her body as she stuffed some food in her mouth and washed it down with water. If someone had asked her what she had just eaten, she wouldn’t have been able to tell them.

Habit, more than conscious thought, made her fill a water bottle and she took it out to the sheds with her, rifle slung over her shoulder. One of the quads was already hooked up to a trailer, so she pulled a hair band from a pocket and swept her hair back before removing her helmet from its hook and donning it. Night had fallen, but she had never been afraid of the dark. Climbing aboard the quad, she entered the ignition code and rode out of the shed into the night.

The roads were quiet. Many of those who had fled had returned, now the threat had passed. The town was awash with lights of emergency vehicles. Bright arc lights were pointed towards the raider craft. Haulers were coming in from surrounding towns, and quickly leaving again. No doubt ferrying the injured to other medical centres. The sound of their passing a continual roar as they launched into the air, making it sound as though the town itself was crying out in anguish.

Clara carefully weaved her way between the wrecked vehicles on the road. Someone, or several someone’s, had moved the dead to the side so as to clear a route between the wrecks. There were a lot of dead. Some had been stripped to their underwear, implying that some raiders were still alive. Clara had left all the lights on in the house but had drawn all the blinds down the windows to give the illusion of life inside. She had also left the yard lights on. She doubted any raiders would approach habitation this close to the town. They would be seeking shelter further afield. Or at least the sensible ones would be, and they were the ones most likely to be still alive.

Her parents were where she had left them. Shouts and crying were everywhere. Figures were sat on the ground, rocking back and forth next to loved ones.

“I’m sorry.” Clara mumbled through a dry mouth at the limp figures of her parents, apologising for what she was about to do to them. Clara tried to be respectful, but there was no dignified way of putting a corpse in a quad trailer.

Her return home was slower, as she tried to avoid jolting her cargo. She knew it was stupid, pointless even. They were dead, they were not going to care about the ride, but still. She stopped off at the tool shed to collect a shovel and pick. She knew where she was going to bury them.

Clara worked all through the night using all her remaining anger and grief. She searched her parents, removing the small amount of jewellery her mother had and removing their ID’s. She dragged her parents into the hole and made sure they were secure in each other’s embrace. It was the least she could do. She took one last look at them, howled into the night and started to fill the hole back in.

Sitting next to the freshly filled in grave, Clara let the morning sun wash over her. Her eyes were open, but vacant. What she saw was of earlier happier times. The air full of the sound of her and her mother’s laughter.

“Hello!” A figure was staggering up the hill towards her. “Err, Hello?” he tried again.

With regret, Clara left the happy memories and turned to the male figure making its way up the hill. He was bedraggled, exhausted, and his clothes didn’t quite fit. He was about thirty years old and suspiciously pale. Clara opened her mouth to speak, but it was so dry, only a croak came out. She reached out, picked up her water bottle and drained it. Wiping the back of her hand across her mouth, she closed the lid of the bottle and coughed twice.

The man was a lot closer.

“Where are you from?” Clara called out.

“Err...” The man paused, obviously thinking. Clara nodded and reached out again, picking up the rifle that had been out of view beside the quad and trailer “Woah! No need for...” The butt kicked into her shoulder and the man went down as though all life had left his body. Which it had.

Dispassionately, she placed the rifle back on the ground beside her and returned her gaze to the valley, allowing the happy childhood memories to flood back.

Staggering into the kitchen, Clara dropped her long dried out water bottle into the sink and pulled a glass out of a cupboard, filling it till it overflowed. She lifted the glass to her lips and gulped the contents down, water spilled out the sides to run down her chin onto her chest. She refilled it and drained that one as well.

Climbing the stairs was an extreme effort, her muscles crying out at the further exertion. She wanted nothing more than to collapse on her bed, but the sweaty clothes and accumulated grime was creating a repulsiveness within her that was stronger, just, than her tiredness. Clara entered her bathroom and propped the rifle up against the wall within easy reach of the shower.

Her fingers were unhelpfully unresponsive and made her undressing harder than it should have been, but sheer determination won out in the end. Shivering, she stepped naked into the shower. Exhausted, she leaned against the wall as the hot water cascaded over her shoulder. The water at her feet was a murky brown as it circled the drain. The heat was soothing and revitalising. With a depressed sigh, she eventually stood up away from the wall and unbound her hair, the water at her feet turning darker. Clara scrubbed skin and hair till the water ran clear. Her body had relaxed and her exhaustion was back. She was too tired to go to the toilet and just let her bladder empty where she stood. The urine was dark orange as it landed on her feet. She let it all flow out and pulled the shower head from the holder to direct the spray between her thighs and down her legs to her feet, washing all her dark urine away.

Finally shutting the shower off, Clara wrapped a towel round her hair, and still dripping, collected her rifle and headed towards her bed. She placed the weapon down on her bed and fell next to it. Three breaths later, she was soundly asleep.

Clara awoke. Her mouth tasted awful and she became aware, that at some point, she must have awoken as she was now under her duvet. She had no recollection of doing so. The taste in her mouth made her screw her face up. With a groan, she threw the duvet back. She was sore, stiff and covered in the early stages of bruising. Swinging her legs over the side of her bed, she sat up, rubbing the heels of her palms into her eyes, feeling the crusty bits at the corner. She used the forefinger of each hand to scoop the ‘sleepy men’ her father used to call them, out of her eyes. Naked, she padded over to her dresser and pulled out a clean pair of pants and a tank top that stopped just a few finger widths under her small breasts. She looked at her image in the mirror. The towel had fallen off sometime as she had slept and her hair was still slightly damp. Clara moved it clear of her eyes and face, looping the strands behind her ears. She looked like she had been dragged over rough ground and through several hedges. Backwards. Scratched, bruised, but alive. Though she didn’t feel alive.

“Ugh.” She collected the rifle from her bed and padded barefoot in just her underwear downstairs. All the lights in the house were still on, the brightness teasing the onset of a headache. She knew that she was severely dehydrated. Back in the kitchen, she turned on the screens of the CCTV system as she placed the rifle on the countertop. It was still dark outside, the clock at the bottom of the screens saying it was three twenty five am. Her glass was still in the sink from ... whenever ... processing dates and time was strangely difficult.

Clara filled the glass and drained it, refilling and draining it several times before taking a couple of painkillers in an attempt to head off the dehydration migraine that was lurking on the horizon.

The farm appeared secure. No one was furtively lurking about. She queried the farm AI but it was confident that the only person on the property around the house and silo’s, had been her. A growing pain inside her was slowly building and Clara couldn’t tell if it was hunger or grief. She pulled one of her mother’s cream cakes out of the fridge. Just looking at it caused the tears to start and the sobs to well up. There was no point in fighting it and she shut the fridge door, sitting on one the breakfast bar seats, she buried her head in her hands and gave in to the grief.

Eyes red and puffy from the crying, it was hunger that pulled her out of her grief. The clock informed her that it had not long passed four am. Clara wiped the back of her hand against her nose and pulled the cake closer. She didn’t bother with a knife or plates, just picked a fork out of the drawer and plunged it deep into the cake, levering out a large chunk which she shovelled into her mouth.

Picking up the remote, Clara changed one of the CCTV screens to a news channel.

Unsurprisingly, the main news was all about the raiders. A female presenter was stood outside, lit by artificial light. Over one shoulder lay the ship and over the other, a hastily built gibbet on which several corpses hung by the neck. A ticker tape scrolled along the bottom, asking for anyone with medical knowledge to report to their nearest medical facility and for people to come forward to donate blood. Clara listened with half an ear as the view cut from the presenter to switch to footage taken in daytime. To people running in panic, of raiders indiscriminately gunning down people in the street and herding – mostly – young girls in the direction of the landing pad. And then there was footage of Clara, in her dad’s mech, coming up behind the ship. Firing into the engine exhausts and then starting to take out the weapon mounts. The presenter stating over the footage that no-one knew where the mech had come from, or even where it had gone. Only that if it hadn’t arrived when it had, then the town would have been destroyed.

Clara raised the remote and turned the news off. No point in changing the channel as they would all be reporting on the same thing. Outside, the AI carried on with the harvest, full tractors arriving back to empty before heading back out for another load.

Dawn changed to morning and Clara moved around the house, rifle over her bare shoulder, opening blinds and turning off the lights. The house was so quiet. There was no grumbling from her father because he couldn’t find something he’d had five minutes previously. No clatter of dishes from the kitchen. It was all so alien. Clara turned off the last light and headed back into the kitchen. Just seeing it without her mother was enough to set her crying again.

Clara managed to clean the now empty cake dish and put it away, before deciding that she no longer had the will do anything. Climbing back upstairs she took a favourite jumper of her father’s and a top of her mothers and climbed back into her bed. Holding both to her nose, the tears slowly soaked into the material.

An incoming alert forced her out of bed, along with a full bladder. She showered, abluted and dressed in clean underwear and her work clothes. The alert was from one of their scheduled flour ships. There wasn’t much to do other sign the ticket when they were loaded. The hauler crew would do all the rest. She sat on a chair and pulled on her boots, something comforting about the familiarity of the action.

It seemed strange, that yesterday had passed with her hardly leaving her bed. It was like the worst nightmare ever. Part of her knew this moment would come, her parents were old after all, but she had always thought that she would have had more time. The practical part within her ruminated whether the grief of losing a parent individually was better than losing them both together. Or was it better just to get the grief over with, in one singular, unpleasant dose. At the moment, she would have preferred to have lost them individually, then at least she would have had one of them to comfort her. The thought set the tears flowing again, as the hauler came in to land outside.

Clara rubbed the tears from her eyes and wiped her nose on the sleeve of her jacket. Checking that she had plenty of ammunition, she slung the rifle over her shoulder and opened the door. The hauler captain had seen the rifle and her tear stained face and opened his mouth with a stricken expression. He closed it again without saying anything, handing over the data slate when Clara silently held her hand out. She barely looked at the quantity she was signing for and handed it back. He opened his mouth, and again, could not find words.

He wasn’t the most sociable of people at the best of times, one of the reasons why he flew a hauler and the girl in front of him was obviously distressed. And armed. So he just closed his mouth, and took hold of his data slate again. Somehow feeling a coward, he turned his back on the girl and headed back to his ship. The opposite sex had always made him feel awkward and ungainly and he never know when physical contact was desired, needed, or when it was to be avoided. It was far easier to pay for intimacy from a professional comfort woman than it was to try seeking it out on his own. Someone else, he was sure, would give the girl what she needed.

Clara watched the hauler lift off from the back of the quad. Once it was clear, she engaged the drive and drove round to her mother’s garden. The trailer was still hitched to the rear with the spade and pickaxe in the back. Clara lifted out the spade and headed into the garden, attacking her mother’s favourite flowers with a practicality that would have made the previous tender shout out in horror. Clara dumped the clumps in the back along with the spade and headed up to the grave site. She replanted the uprooted flowers in the freshly dug soil, deciding that she would get a gravestone made in town, when things settled down in a few days.

The corpse was still where it had fallen, minus its eyes, tongue and a couple of fingers. Clara parked alongside the corpse and went through the pockets. Nothing except one wallet. She pulled it out and opened it. She stared down at a picture of a dark skinned man posing with two young girls. The girls had enough similarities in colour and shape to be sisters and the daughters of the man. The picture was at complete odds to the tall pale man on the ground in front of her. There were some credits still in the wallet and Clara left them there and tucked the wallet back into the pocket she had removed it from. Grabbing the corpse by the front of his jacket she hauled him over to the quads trailer. He was considerably lighter than he appeared, which along with the pale complexion, told her the man had been a lifelong spacer. His bones less dense than someone who had grown up under gravity, and his skin not used to the radiation from a sun. She dumped the raider in the back and took him to edge of her property, near a road and tipped the corpse out onto the roadside.

The next couple of days passed in a dreamlike blur, consisting of intense periods of sudden and unexpected grief. The farm continued, regardless, under the control of its AI overlord.

The town of Laz had returned to some semblance of normality. The streets had been cleared of corpses and burned out vehicles. Broken Windows had been boarded up and the more grievously damaged buildings had been pulled down. A large pit had been dug on the outskirts and was being methodically filled with the dead as soon as they became identified.

Clara knew that she needed to go down, register the deaths of her parents, have the farm officially registered in her name. She also knew that she was putting it off. As though by registering the deaths, she was removing the last chance her parents had of being alive and walking through the door, big smiles across their faces.

She would do it tomorrow.

There was traffic on the road. Slightly more than normal. The burned out and wrecked vehicles were all gone, the only signs of their existence, the scorched and damaged pieces of roadway. There was a muted atmosphere in town. People were moving with intent, but their heads were bowed and there was very little in the way of conversation.

The police station had been hit and mostly flattened. Emergency tents had been erected outside and staffed by officers from surrounding towns, by the look of the badges on their shoulders. The tents had signs above them ‘Missing Persons’, ‘Deceased’, ‘Assault/Rape’, ‘Theft’, and ‘Other.’ All had long queues in front.

Clara joined the one for ‘Deceased’. The queues were silent, each individual wrapped up in their own torment. When it was her turn, Clara sat in front of the officer as she typed away at the hastily jury rigged terminal in front of her.

“Do you wish to report a death?” Clara nodded.” Your relationship to the deceased?”

“My parents.”

“When did they die.?”

Clara paused. Time and dates had been very jumbled these last few days. “They day of the attack.” Clara slid her parents ID’s over the table.

“Do you have any indication as to death?”

“Weapons fire.”

“And where?”

“Half way along Daglon street, opposite the pawn shop.”

“Do you know where your parents are now?”

“Yes. I collected their bodies and buried them on the farm.”

The woman pulled over both ID’s and scanned them before sliding them back. “Can you confirm with certainty that it was them?”

“Yes, beyond doubt.”

“I’m sorry for your loss. Anything else I can help you with?” Clara shook her head and made way for the next person.

Unsurprisingly, there was a queue outside of the monument stonemason’s. Again, the long line of people were non-speaking, many of them sobbing. The line was almost completely female in its makeup. Inside, the counter was being staffed by two teens. A boy and a girl. Both were red eyed and had a mechanical air about them as they processed the orders.

The girl moved stiffly and had taken a beating. Her eyes were swollen, one almost shut, scrapes and cuts dotted her face and she slurred her speech as she spoke, implying one or more hard blows to her jaw. Her voice was hoarse barely audible as she spoke. Clara handed over her parents ID’s and a picture of the pair of them together that she had always liked. She also slipped across a scrap of paper with the words she wanted engraved on the stone.

“Do you want the paper back?”

Clara had to lean forward to hear the girl. “No. It’s okay.”

The girl wrote out a quick form and stapled the paper to it. “I can’t guarantee the headstone will be ready in the next week or two...”

Clara nodded, glancing back at the door and the queue trailing away. “It’s okay. I understand.” Impulsively Clara reached out and took hold of the girls hand, gently squeezed it. For a moment, Clara felt like her mother.

The girl smiled sadly. “Thank you.”

Carefully watching the black granite, Carla slowly eased down on the lever of the farms forklift. The strops slackened as the base of the headstone hit the stone foundation she had prepared. She climbed down and removed the strops from both the headstone and the forklift. Retrieving the shovel from where it had been lying on the back of the machine, Carla bedded the headstone in.

Parking the forklift up, Carla trudged back inside. Her heart was no longer in the farm. It held too many painfully raw memories. Memories that should be happy, but somehow ... weren’t

The AI chimed to say that there was an incoming craft. Carla looked at the screen. It wasn’t a grain hauler. It landed. Carla grabbed her rifle and headed outside.

Anndra stared down unhappily at all the paperwork, manfully resisting the urge to set fire to it all. Most of it was requisition forms that were mainly formalities. He scanned quickly through them all, scribbling his name at the bottom. It was quiet in his office. The Caledonia was currently in a stationary orbit, engines powered down. He leaned back in his chair and looked up at the whiteboard covering one wall. He could have used a screen to replace it, but sometimes old tech was quicker and more reliable. The company’s mechs were all neatly written down the left side and columns dissected the board, with headings of ‘Next service’, ‘Repairs to be actioned’, ‘Reactor Inspection’, ‘Armour inspection’, ‘Weapon’s inspection’, all with neatly scribed dates past and present, followed by ‘Deployment status’ and ‘Current status/location’ written alongside. Almost all the mechs were out on tasks, and the few who were not had ‘Cally’ neatly scribed as their location, and were down below in the repair bays. Only one was marked as ‘available.’ His.

It must be at least a year now, since he was last out in it, and it rankled. Rankled badly. Yet there was just never the time, anymore. There was always something needing done. Tasks to be recced, contracts to be negotiated. His door alarm buzzed.

“Yes?” he barked out sharply, not bothering to hide his ire.

The door opened and Christina, his aide and unofficial second in command entered. She had been an average mech pilot. Lower third of average if he were to be honest, and had come out of a skirmish badly, losing a right eye and the majority of movement in her right arm, which had further diminished her ability and use in a mech. To give her something constructive to do and to get her arse out of the med bay, he had tasked her with all the jobs he hated. Turned out that she was a better administrator than a mech pilot. Though the first few weeks had been a trial until she had mastered the art of writing with her non-dominant hand. Anndra looked up from the loathsome sheets of bureaucracy stacked up on his desk in front of him.

He met her gaze. “What?”...

Even to his own ears, he sounded like a petulant little boy.

“You’ve been dreaming of your mech again.”

Her voice was raspy, the result of shrapnel damage to her throat. She was dressed in her usual combat trousers and tank top, which showed off the heavy scarring up her right arm, across her throat and up the right side of her face.

“Yeah. What of it?”

“When you finish your homework, then you can go outside and play. But not before.”

“Fuck off.”

There was no spite in his words, as Christina carefully placed her data slate down on front of him.

Anndra grumbled. “What admin plague are you setting loose upon me now?”

“No plagues. I’m saving them for later, when your guard is down and I can get maximum anger points ... maybe even some vitriol thrown in for good luck?” Anndra just grunted. “I thought you might be interested in this.”

Christina reached out and tapped a finger on the screen to start a video playing. She let him watch in silence. The footage was juddery, but he had no trouble in identifying the Excabular class drop ship. A favourite of pirates and reavers, due to their massive numbers currently in existence, along with healthy availability of spare parts.

“Where’s this?” Anndra asked.

“Broema.”

Anndra wracked his brain. “That’s well in from the rim system, Mazybe system?”

Christina nodded. That far in, this was going to cause a lot of chaos within the policed worlds, and would undoubtedly cause severe recriminations to the pirate clans from sector police. Sector Police, who normally didn’t care what went on in the outer worlds as long as it stayed there. “This is going to get ugly over the next few months...”

Ugly was a Mech mercenary company’s favourite state of play. Ugly meant contracts. Christina was staying quiet, so that meant there was more. Off screen, something fired up one of the Excabular’s drive exhausts then another. Within a few seconds, the Excabular drop ship was ground bound.

The source of the shots stomped into view of the camera person and Anndra raised his eyebrows.

The mech was covered in leaves and branches, which made the mech look somewhat ridiculous. The camera person managed to focus right in on the mech and hold steady long enough for the image to steady. Anndra stabbed his finger on the screen pausing the footage. “It’s greased up. Obviously taken out of storage in a hurry. Looks like an old Dreesum Industries mark four Sentinel. Heavily modified, not many of them left in existence these days. Top of the range, in its day. Good actuator movement implying that it’s been well maintained in the past. It’s set up for long range support, very little in the way of short range weaponry. It’s missile racks are empty. The grease is hiding any markings ... if any markings exist.” Anndra let the footage re-start. “The pilot knows what they are doing. They grounded the drop ship from its blind spot, methodically taking out its weapons, increasing the drop ship’s blind area’s and vulnerability. Not a rookie. Most likely a retired Mech pilot who made enough to keep their mech.”

Christina nodded her agreement. Anndra paused the footage again as the camera person focused on the rear of the mech. “Extra cooling fins and see that? Extra antenna’s. That mech was once a commander, it’s geared up for the extra communication requirements.” Anndra’s own mech downstairs had a similar configuration. “I wonder if the owner will sell it” Anndra mused.

Mechs, new, were not easy to get hold of these days; and although new ones seemed to be built cheaper, somehow they were more expensive. Also they didn’t take as much punishment, nor were they as easy to fix. Old mechs were just better all around. The foundries that had originally made them had been taken over by inner corporates and the machinery re- purposed to build starcraft. Also, steady encroachment by sector police and their draconian laws meant that the need for mechs, at least in the inner planets, was no longer a necessity.

Which left just the outer rim worlds, who didn’t have the technology nor the foundry capability to build mechs, or at least, mechs worth owning.

“That mech is about thirty years old, at least. So the pilot must be in their seventies.” Christina noted.

“I concur. This is most likely the last chance they had to use it. Or will ever have to use it, so now will be the time to put an offer in.” Anndra opened the com to the bridge.

: Sebastion? :

: Yes sir? : Replied Sebastion, comfortably ensconced in the captain’s chair upon the Caledonia’s bridge.

: Wake the kids. We’re off on a jolly. :

: Very Good sir. Where to? :

: Broema. I think it’s in the Mazybe system? :