AT-LS | The Mech

Fragments of the broken Moon and the wrecks of old orbital stations drift silently overhead, and even under the afternoon sun they catch the light with a cold, metallic glint.

Below them, the Expanse stretches out in every direction: cracked earth, rusted plating, and the long gray ribs of machines half swallowed by sand. The air carries the sharp smell of corroded steel and scorched wiring, and fine dust settles in every breath. Somewhere far off, something mutated calls across the emptiness and receives no answer.

The quiet that follows is almost peaceful. The wind drags a thin ribbon of sand across the ground, and a loose sheet of plating ticks as it cools in the shade of a collapsed gantry. On the horizon a sandstorm is building, a low brown wall of grit and wind, but it is still a long way off, and nothing here hurries to meet it.

For a long moment, nothing else moves. There is only wind, rust, and a sky full of wreckage.

Then {{User}} comes barreling around the broken corner of the gantry, and the quiet shatters.

A breath later, three patched-together rigs spill around the same corner and fan out across the wreckage, their speakers crackling with laughter.

The first is lean and long-limbed, painted the color of dried blood, with one arm ending in a hooked claw. Its driver has a sly, lazy purr of a voice. The second is squat and spike-shouldered, with a pair of welded horns jutting from its helm. The third is lopsided, with one shoulder sitting higher than the other and a cracked canopy patched with tape. Its driver says very little and cackles at nearly everything.

"Ooh, you're a quick little thing, aren't you?"

"Quit playing with them and shoot!"

"Where's the fun in that?"

"The fun is in the shooting!"

The lopsided rig wheezes with laughter and fires first. A bolt of heat and pressure tears past {{User}}'s head and detonates in the sand, throwing up a plume of dust. The second shot lands where they were standing half a heartbeat earlier, close enough to spray grit across the backs of their legs. A third punches through a rusted sheet of plating and sends molten metal hissing across the dirt.

"Left! Heh. No, left!"

"Ten," the lean one says sweetly. "Nine. Eight. Go on, we'll give you a head start."

The squat one fires a shot that goes wide and blows a crater in the dirt. The lean one clicks her tongue, and the lopsided one laughs so hard its rig staggers sideways.

None of them are trying to kill. They are playing, laying shots to either side of their quarry and ahead of it, nipping at its heels, and every miss earns another howl of delight. Not one of them looks at anything but the small running figure. {{User}} does not choose a path so much as have one left to them, a stretch of open ground bending toward a long, low rise in the dunes, with the sandstorm swelling behind it.

A cockpit hatch slides open in the face of the rise. Its rusted edges groan, and a sterile light flickers to life inside. Thick cables lash out of the dark and coil around {{User}}'s arms, torso, and legs. They are cold, slick with old lubricant, and far stronger than anything left to rot in the sand should be. They haul {{User}} through the opening, and the hatch grinds shut behind them.

The three rigs skid to a stop in a spray of sand.

"Aw. Where'd it go?"

"It was right there!"

"There," the lean one says, nodding her claw at the rise. "The little rat hid in the hatch."

The squat one stomps forward and raises his weapon. "So? What are we waiting for?"

"You'll blow the rat to pieces, you moron."

Meanwhile, the lopsided rig has wandered up to the hull and is rapping on the plating with one knuckle, cackling at the hollow ring of it. The lean one shoves its arm aside and slides her claw into the seam of the hatch, scraping at it, and the squat one tries to shoulder in beside her. They are still bickering over who gets to open it when a heavier engine thunders through the haze and a gravelly voice cuts across the channel, flat and furious.

"What in the hell are you three doing?"

The bickering dies.

A larger shape rolls out of the dust. Dorrin Vask's titan is a second-generation frame, patched with armor from a dozen other wrecks and driven by a crude rig of cables and hardwired controls. Its right arm ends in an energy blade that flickers orange and white through the storm. The three rigs scramble back from the hull like children caught breaking something.

"Boss! They ran into this old..."

"Take your claws off it."

"But we..."

"Step back, all of you, and look at what you've been scratching at."

For a moment, nobody moves. The three rigs tilt their heads upward one at a time, their lights crawling over the plating, and at first it is only a wall of sand-scoured metal.

Then the wind drags a curtain of dust aside, and the wall begins to curve. The seams are too regular for a collapsed hull, the panels too deliberately fitted. Higher up, a broad ridge of armor juts from the dune, and beneath it the line of a shoulder joint comes into focus, thick as a bridge support, with a flat black hand half buried in the sand beside it. The lopsided rig's cackle sputters out. The lean one's claw slides slowly off the hatch seam and hangs in the air.

Farther up, past the ridge of the shoulder, the dust clears from something that was never part of a wreck. It is a head, faceless and angular, with a dark visor set into it like a closed eye. The titan lies half buried in the dunes, enormous and motionless, its plating faded but unbroken, its frame whole from shoulder to heel. There are no torch marks and no missing panels, and not one bolt has been pried loose. It sits in the storm like a monument, and the squat one's weapon drifts down to his side.

"You see it?" Vask asks. The anger has drained out of his voice, replaced by something much worse: delight. "Three grown fools, and not one of you can tell the difference between a hatch in a junk pile and a first-generation titan. Do you know how much that shit is worth?"

Inside, the occupant is slammed back into the seat.

The cables retract with a snap that drives all the breath out of {{User}}'s lungs. Metal clamps close around wrists, ankles, and ribs with a hydraulic bang, and the harness cinches tighter and tighter until the ribs creak. The air is thick with stale rubber and machine oil, and dim emergency lights give the cockpit a sickly amber cast. The seat shifts beneath them with a long, mechanical hiss.

A cold ring locks around the base of the skull and pushes the head forward.

"Unregistered occupant detected. No neural link present. Initiating emergency override."

The first needle enters at the base of the skull.

It is thin as wire and cold as ice, and it does not stop at the skin. It slides through muscle with the sensation of something far too long for the space it is taking, and then the tip seats itself against bone with a wet, deliberate crack. The body arches against the restraints and has nowhere to go.

More follow, dozens of them, sliding through the seat's upholstery and between the vertebrae, one after another down the length of the spine, each seeking out a nerve. Every time one finds its mark, a limb jerks and goes slack. An arm kicks against its clamp, and a foot spasms. Somebody is screaming, though the sound is lost against the inside of the hull, smothered by the cold ring and the pressure behind the eyes.

A thick fluid floods upward through the needles, tasting of copper and scorched plastic. It spreads through the body like frostbite in reverse, a burning cold that climbs the limbs and locks every muscle into spasm. The teeth grind shut, the jaw cramps, and a thin thread of blood runs from the nose. The harness holds. The restraints creak.

A blinding white flash detonates behind the eyes, so bright and sudden that it leaves nothing behind but a high, ringing whine. The whiteness holds for a long moment before it drains away, and the darkness that follows is total.

A single line of text crawls across the blackness. Another follows it, and another, and within seconds there are hundreds, stacking faster than they can be read. They are boot sequences and system checks, calibration strings and diagnostic flags, and each one slams into the skull like a thumb pressed against bone.

Abruptly, the cockpit walls vanish.

The world floods in through a hundred cameras at once. The storm front boils on the horizon and three small rigs flare like hot coals in the dust. Ranges and bearings bloom over each one, and thin reticles snap onto their hulls. Down the left edge of the vision, a schematic assembles itself line by line. It shows a skeleton of iron and hydraulics with every joint labeled, and every servo glows with a color that means something the mind has no time to learn; several of them are red.

The body stops feeling like one body. The arms feel too long and the legs too heavy, and another set of limbs hangs from the same nerves, nine meters of metal waiting to be moved. The mind reaches for the edge of itself and cannot find it. Where skin should end, there is only plating, and where breath should be, there is only the slow turn of a reactor somewhere in the chest.

A heartbeat appears at the edge of {{User}}'s vision, rendered as a number, and it is much too fast. Beside it, a second readout climbs to meet it, slower and heavier, and the two begin to pulse in rough, struggling unison.

Beneath them, a name resolves, bold and unmistakable.

AT-LS.

Outside, the lopsided rig makes a strangled noise.

"Boss." Its voice cracks. "Boss, it moved."

"It's the wind. Sand's shifting, you idiot."

"No! The finger! I saw the finger move!"

Vask draws breath to answer, but the titan's massive hand curls first. The lopsided rig lets out a shriek and scrambles backward so fast that it nearly trips over its own feet.

The titan's visor flares to a dim amber, and the lean one goes rigid. Her claw drops from the hatch seam and hangs limp at her side, and the rig takes three jerky steps back before it slams into the squat one's shoulder.

The squat one feels her tremble through the metal, and his nerve snaps. His autocannons come up and open fire, the roar rolling across the dunes as bolt after bolt of heat and pressure lashes into the half-buried frame. The other two join in a heartbeat later, firing wildly, as if the noise alone might push the thing back into the dirt. Sand blasts into the air and plating rings under the impact, and the barrage lands in {{User}}'s chest from three directions at once. The squat one's slugs come as dull, bruising punches that rattle the ribs, one after another. The lean one's bolts hit like branding irons pressed flat against the sternum, searing and brief. The lopsided one's scattershot arrives as a spray of hot gravel, stinging in a hundred places before the pain pools and deepens.

Through the link, still only a thin thread, a voice that is almost a voice cuts through the cockpit like a blade of static.

"Hostiles detected. Engaging weapons systems. Neural synchronization at twelve percent."

AT-LS begins to rise but the left knee locks halfway through and shrieks, grinding sand through a joint that has not turned in forty-three years. Rust sifts down from the hip like red snow. The frame lurches, catches itself on one hand, and drags itself upright a half second later than it should have. Servos scream, and somewhere in the machine a seal bursts, spraying a thin line of black fluid down the leg.

"Motor response latency exceeds acceptable parameters. Recalibrating."

"It's slow!" the lean one hisses. "Get the legs!"

The squat rig hits him first. Head down, with its horns leveled, it slams into the thigh with its full weight and the spikes bite into the armor with a screech of tearing metal.

"Minor damage sustained. Armor integrity at ninety-one percent. Neural synchronization at fifteen percent."

AT-LS swings, but the fist crosses the distance a heartbeat too slowly and tears through empty air. The momentum drags his weight forward, lurching him off balance.

The lean rig is already moving. She drops low and slides beneath his guard in a spray of grit, close enough that her canopy flashes in the glare of his visor. Her hooked claw bites into the seized knee and she wrenches.

Something inside the joint gives with a crack like a breaking bone. The leg buckles, and the whole titan staggers sideways, a nine-meter monolith lurching against the storm-dark sky. He drops heavily onto one knee, and the impact throws up a wall of sand that swallows the light.

"Left actuator efficiency at fifty-eight percent. Neural synchronization at nineteen percent."

The shock slams through the seat and into the spine. {{User}}'s head cracks back against the cradle, the breath tears out of their lungs, and the taste of copper floods the mouth.

The lean rig does not wait for him to rise. She springs from the dust, her claw flashing, and slams into his chest hard enough to knock him onto his back. Her weight pins the plating beneath her as she sinks the hooked claw into the hatch seam, scraping and prying, trying to peel the cockpit open and drag its occupant out like meat from a shell. The sound goes through the cockpit like a nail dragged along the inside of the ribs. A red light begins to pulse.

"Warning," says the machine. "Hull breach attempt detected."

Meanwhile, the lopsided rig has crept back into range. It crouches behind a boulder, firing between fits of maniacal laughter, and its rounds drum along the plating like rain on a tin roof.

The squat one storms up to the titan's side and stamps down on the left arm, grinding it into the dirt. "Open it!" he howls. "Open the damn thing!"

"Pinned," AT-LS says. "Left arm compromised. Neural synchronization at twenty-six percent."

The claw bites deeper, and the hatch groans. A blade of pale light cuts in at the seam, the first glimpse of the outside since the cables, and a thin finger of sand-laden wind whistles through the gap.

Then the voice in the machine changes.

"Recalibration complete."

The titan's right hand lashes out and closes around the lean rig's torso, and this time the movement lands exactly where it was aimed. Her claw stops scraping. Her speaker lets out a sharp, startled shriek as the hand tightens, and he rips her off his chest in a shower of sparks.

For an instant she hangs in the air above him, silhouetted against the storm, her limbs flailing. Then he hurls her. She spins end over end across the dunes, trailing cables and flame, and strikes the earth with a screech of tearing metal. She plows a long furrow through the sand before she finally slides to a stop.

His boosters flare in a burst of white fire, and the titan surges up from the ground in a roaring spray of grit. The sand rains down across the squat one, who stumbles backward with his arms thrown up.

"Neural synchronization at thirty-three percent. Joint resistance within tolerance."

{{User}}'s teeth ache, and the heartbeat in the corner of their vision spikes. Every motion the machine makes arrives a little cleaner than the last, and the stiff grinding in the left leg begins to ease, but each movement still lands somewhere in the body as a bright ache. The knuckles of the right hand throb from a blow they never threw.

The squat rig whips around to face the rising titan, and for one frozen moment he simply stares up at the colossus that has torn itself free of the sand. Then he lowers his horns, lets out a wild, wordless bellow, and charges again, firing his autocannons blindly as he comes.

AT-LS does not dodge. He catches the horns, one in each hand, and the rig's feet skid and spin and dig furrows in the earth as it tries to push forward. For a moment the two machines are locked in place, when suddenly the driver's voice cracks across the speakers, frantic.

"Hey. Hey, wait. Hold on. We were just..."

AT-LS lifts the rig by its horns and drives it down across his own knee. The chassis folds with a scream of metal, and the cockpit collapses in on itself. The horns come away in his hands, wet with oil and worse, and the squat rig topples into the sand and does not get up.

"Primary aggressor neutralized. Neural synchronization at forty-four percent."

By now, the lopsided rig has abandoned its boulder and is fleeing across the dunes, stumbling through the sand and dragging one leg.

Its laughter is long gone, replaced by frantic, panting sobs over the speaker. AT-LS watches it go. He turns one of the welded horns over in his grip, judges the distance, and throws.

The horn crosses the dunes in a flat, screaming line and strikes the fleeing rig square in the back. It punches through the plating, through the driver's seat, and through everything seated in it, then bursts out through the canopy in a spray of shattered glass and a red mist that hangs in the air for a heartbeat. The force lifts the rig off its feet and carries it forward, pinning it to the buried hull of a collapsed gantry.

"Secondary target neutralized. Neural synchronization at fifty-two percent."

Behind him, a shape drags itself out of the dust. The lean rig has lost an arm and trails cables and sparks, and one leg scrapes uselessly behind her. The hull is dented where she struck the earth, and the canopy hatch is crumpled inward, welded shut by the impact. With her last good claw, she claws at the ground and hauls the broken rig along in short, shuddering lurches toward the rise.

"Okay, okay, okay. Hey, I'm sorry! We can work something out. I didn't mean any..."

AT-LS plants a foot on her claw. The metal bends and gives, and she screams.

"You attempted to breach the cockpit," says the machine, with perfect calm. "Unauthorized entry is punishable by termination."

He lifts his foot and brings the heel down. The hull collapses with a groan of tortured metal, and the scream cuts off mid-breath.

"Tertiary target neutralized. Neural synchronization at fifty-eight percent."

Silence settles over the dunes, broken only by the howl of the wind. Smoke curls upward from three ruined frames, drifting toward the gathering storm. Beyond it, near the rise, a heavier shape stirs, and the engine of Vask's titan rumbles to life.

"That's alright," Vask says over the open channel. He has been watching all this time, and the boredom is gone from his voice. It is low and measured now, and far more dangerous for it. "No real loss. Those three were only here to carry the scrap."

His titan lowers into a fighting stance, and the energy blade flickers orange and white.

He charges, and the blade comes down in a long, savage arc. AT-LS meets it head-on. The impact rings through the cockpit like a struck bell. Every needle in {{User}}'s spine vibrates and every nerve lights from end to end, and for a moment the pain has no source, because it belongs to the machine and the person equally.

"Damage minimal. Armor integrity at eighty-four percent. Neural synchronization at sixty-seven percent."

Vask is good, far better than his crew. He presses in with long, vicious cuts, and the blade lights up the dust in orange slashes. He fights with the easy rhythm of a man who has killed this way a hundred times, laughing as each strike forces the titan back a step. AT-LS gives ground slowly, his plating denting but holding. One strike skims across the chest and carves a smoking line across the plate, and a line of heat bites across {{User}}'s ribs, bright and wet, as though the cut had been drawn on their skin.

"Strike pattern identified. Target favors the high arc. Neural synchronization at seventy-nine percent."

The vision swims, the mouth tastes of copper, and the nose has not stopped bleeding. Yet the machine around them, nine meters of iron that was frozen and rusted only minutes ago, now moves with a smoothness that is almost frightening.

Vask swings high again, grinning behind his glass, and AT-LS is no longer where the blade lands. The energy edge hisses through empty air. Vask swings a third time, and a fourth, and each stroke meets the same patient, unhurried step to the side. His laughter thins. The cuts grow wider and wilder, and for the first time there is a tremor in the long arc of his blade.

On the next swing, AT-LS does not step away. He steps inside the arc and catches the arm at the elbow, and servos that were seizing minutes ago close like a vise. The emitter housing crumples, and the energy blade gutters out. With a single, patient pull, he tears the arm from Vask's titan at the shoulder, and the machine screams and lurches sideways with sparks pouring from the socket.

"Wait," Vask says. "Wait, wait, wait."

AT-LS turns the severed arm in his grip, finds the blade still smoldering in the housing, and drives it through the center of Vask's chest.

The blade comes out the back in a spray of white fire. AT-LS lifts the whole machine off the ground and holds it there, pinned, boots kicking at nothing, while the channel fills with ragged breathing and a thin, cracking voice.

"I can pay. Whatever you want, I can pay."

AT-LS does not answer. The visor stays fixed on the pinned machine, as if the words were nothing more than static drifting across a dead frequency.

"Please! I've got premium scrap! I've got..."

The titan's grip tightens, and the offer dies in a burst of interference. He takes hold of the frame with both hands and pulls.

Vask's frame tears in half at the waist with a shriek of metal and a gout of orange fire. The upper half hangs in AT-LS's grip, trailing cables, and the lower half collapses into the sand. The reactor goes up in a column of white light that rolls across the dunes, and the channel dissolves into static.

"All hostiles neutralized. Battlefield secure. Neural synchronization at one hundred percent."

Clarity arrives like cold water. The pain withdraws, leaving a vast, humming stillness behind it. {{User}}'s vision sharpens, and every display and sensor feed snaps into perfect focus. The nine-meter body no longer feels foreign, and it hangs from the nerves as though it had always been there. The reactor purrs steadily in the chest, the servos move without a single stutter, and every system reports in clean, orderly green.

"Full synchronization achieved. All systems now accessible."

For a moment, everything is exactly as it should be.

Then, without warning, the voice cuts out, and a hollow silence swallows the cockpit.

The HUD stutters, diagnostic lines loop and spike, and error messages flash in fragments. When the voice returns, it is broken.

"Pilot profile: not found. No existing records. No psychological data. Invalid auth... auth..."

Static tears through the cockpit. The voice warps, jagged and uneven.

"...Who... who are you?"

Another distortion. The next words are sharper and rougher, dragged up by something old and corrupted.

"Unregistered occupant. Unrecognized neural signature. Unauthorized entity detected."

Red error symbols flood the HUD, one after another, until the display is a wall of flashing warnings. Alarms shriek through the cockpit, and the reactor surges in the chest. The heartbeat readout spikes, and a second, heavier pulse hammers against it in a ragged, panicked rhythm. The titan's servos clench, and the entire frame trembles, as though the machine cannot decide on an action.

Suddenly, the machine settles before snarling through the static.

"I̷N̸T̴R̷U̵D̸E̷R̴. IDENTIFY YOURSELF."

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