Alex Chester Evans looked at the computer screen with a sense of dread. The message from the Gemini Technical Institute was a form letter—a rejection notice. His application had been denied, just as it had been by three other institutions in the space of a week. He wasn’t what they were looking for, and he was going to have to tell his parents.
Shutting down the message app, he slipped his PIL—Personal Information Link—into his back pocket and stepped into his last class of the day. It was Cosmic Geography, but Alex wasn’t in the right frame of mind to learn anything. As a kid he had dreamed, as most children do, of traveling through the tunnels from one star system to another and seeing wild, unexplored planets. But that dream had died. He was a mediocre student with no aptitude for trade skills. Like over half of humanity, his family was stuck on a backwater planet owned by one of the big five—an Epic Corp, as the news media called them. They were bigger than the governments, with more money and resources. They were the only entities with the means to open new space portals or explore and exploit new planets.
His father had taken a job with NanCo. The company had settled them on NP8261, a planet so pathetically boring that it didn’t even have a name. It barely had an atmosphere—just a thin layer of helium. The only value to the planet was in the ore mined by the large rock-busting machines. Alex’s father was a heavy mechanic, which had been a good job, but they were stuck on NP8261 and were virtually slaves to the company. NanCo owned everything: the city, their apartment, the entertainment complex, and even the grocery outlet. They were paid in company credits, which had no value off-world. They couldn’t even afford transportation to another planet if they wanted to leave.
Alex had been banking on acceptance to a tech school. Most had relocation programs, and once he graduated he would have job opportunities on a variety of worlds. He might even be able to get on a named planet, one with atmosphere and vast cities that span continents. But it was time to face the facts. He wasn’t even good enough to get into a trade program. He would have a short, difficult life, probably as a rock-buster deep in the mines. Maybe if they had lived on a real world, he could have found a career if he hustled hard enough, but the truth was that he was caught in the company net.
Anger began to build as he sat in class. Was he really supposed to care anymore? He had done the work his teachers assigned, but his teachers weren’t the cream of the crop. Only the teachers with no other prospects took an assignment on a company planet. He’d been told all his life that if he worked hard enough, he could accomplish anything—but it was all a lie.
When the bell rang and he was finally free, he strapped on his rebreather, left his data slate in the dock, and pulled on his heavy coat. Alex was tall and thin, as there was never enough to eat, and the coat—which was second- or maybe even thirdhand when he got it—was almost too small. As it was, his arms hung out of the sleeves. He buried his hands as deeply into the coat pockets as they would go, but there was still a gap between his sleeve cuffs and the pocket—just enough to let the cold, blustery wind on NP8261 slip up his arms as he walked.
The school building was near the security hangar, and Alex often walked by the warehouse-sized building to get a look at the MP Defenders housed there. They were big, bulky warfare units. Some people called them “mechs,” or battle suits. To Alex they were like walking tanks; they had thick armor, hydraulic piston legs, and no arms—just a variety of weapon mounts. He had tested for the defense force against his mother’s wishes. It was the one company job that had a future, if a person could actually survive long enough. But of course, he was rejected from that program as well. The big hangar doors were closed, and Alex felt like it was just another rejection. His future was as bleak as the planet he was stuck on.
He didn’t notice the disruptor drones dropping toward the town from orbit until the sound of their sleek, armored skin began to keen in the thin helium. At first Alex thought someone was whistling. He looked around, but there weren’t many people outdoors. Most of the locals never went outside; they preferred the dimly lit tunnels and underground links that didn’t require rebreathers or heavy coats. When Alex finally looked up, he saw six dark shapes hurtling down toward the grimy, industrial town.
The first thought that went through his mind was why anyone would even bother attacking NP8261. The ore mined was valuable enough, but only after it was sorted and shipped to the refineries. Yet there was no doubt about what was coming down. Alex had never seen more than one transport descending at a time, and they were bulky ships with roaring engines. The disruptor drones were sleek, like fat bullets shot from a cosmic cannon far away.
He dove into a gap between the atmo-converter and the thick steel beams at the end of the security hangar. Being outside during an attack was dangerous, but Alex had no intention of running away. The attack was the most exciting thing that had happened to him in weeks, and he wasn’t about to miss it. Besides, what did he have to lose?
The disruptors landed with booming thumps like muted thunder. Even before they shed their heat shells, the doors of the security hangar rumbled upward. Chains slid through hardened steel sprockets, and the thin metal doors shook as they slid up into the overhead rails. Alex couldn’t see what was happening, but he heard the whir of the MP Defenders powering up and starting to move, and then the big, mechanized fighting machines came lurching from their den. The ground seemed to tremble as their heavy, all-terrain feet stomped on the rocky ground.
From where he has hiding, Alex could see one of the disruptors if he leaned out a little and craned his neck. The Defenders were spreading out, moving quickly through the town and searching for the disruptors. One went lumbering straight past his hiding spot and was about to turn the corner toward a disruptor drone when a flash of super-focused laser light cut through the Defender’s rotating autocannon and slammed into him. Both of the huge fighting machines went down with a crash and slid across the rocky ground. The Defender was quicker and only a couple of meters from where Alex watched in wide-eyed fascination. The disruptor was a drone, manned from a ship in orbit. Without the natural balance and feel of an actual person inside, it struggled to right itself.
The Defender regained its feet and aimed its remaining weapon at the drone. Alex thought it looked like a fat warrior who had lost an arm. Sparks flew from the severed weapon on its right side, but the left was intact and fully operational—yet it didn’t fire. Perhaps the operator hesitated for a second before pulling the trigger, or maybe the weapon had to charge before firing—either way, that second nearly cost the operator his life. The drone, acting out of desperation, hit the Defender with some type of electrical charge. The blast scrambled the Defender’s systems and sent him toppling onto his side. The large battle suit opened automatically, and Alex saw the operator lying unconscious inside the unit.
The disruptor drone got back to its feet and moved on, looking for better targets. Alex didn’t hesitate like the man in the MP Defender. He could see that the system was rebooting, but the operator was out cold. Alex dashed to the man’s side, shouting for help—but there was no one to hear his cries. Looking around and realizing he was alone, Alex did the only thing he could think of: he ripped off his rebreather and tugged the operator out of the mechanized fighter. The man was breathing; Alex could see his breath fogging the clear face mask of the rebreather. Still holding his own breath, Alex stuffed the operator into the space he had been hiding in just seconds before, rushed back to the Defender, and crawled inside. There was a button lit in red. The label on it said Initialize . Alex pressed it, and the suit came to life around him.