Mecha Corps by Brett Patton Read Free Book Online Page A

match them to constellations he knew, but couldn’t. “Far away from Earth.”
    “Four.”
    “You, in a lab coat.”
    “Five thousand, one hundred ninety-three.”
    Matt frowned. That was a picture of a world a lot like Prospect, except the sand ran up to bright green water under a clear blue sky. “A world. With water.”
    “A beach on Eridani,” his dad said. “Someday I’ll take you to a planet with beaches.”
    Matt looked back at his dad. He was looking at the photo that Matt had just described on his slate. His face had that sad, faraway look he got whenever he thought about Mom.
    Dad looked up and saw Matt. He thumbed off the slate and put it in the oversized pocket of his white lab coat.
    “No more?” Matt asked.
    His dad shook his head. “No more. I don’t need to test you further. You remember everything you see.”
    “You don’t?”
    “No. Nobody does. Not like you.”
    Matt walked in silence for a while. His dad had told him this before, but it didn’t seem possible.
    Dad caught up with Matt and put a hand on his shoulder. “You haven’t told anyone, have you?”
    “No.”
    “It’s very important you don’t tell anyone. Your Perfect Record is a small gift. I wish I could do more. But it was difficult enough separating out that trait from the . . .” He trailed off, then squeezed Matt’s shoulder. “Just don’t tell anyone, okay?”
    “Like I can’t tell everyone you’re a secret agent for the Union.”
    Dad laughed. “I’m not a secret agent. The Union just trusts me to do some very important research for them.”
    “A secret agent.”
    Dad looked doubtful. “In a lab coat?”
    “Secret agent scientist!”
    Dad laughed. They’d reached his lab, a small room with walls covered in copper mesh. On stainless-steel tables were pieces of twisted wreckage. They were tagged with holo-floats calling out atomic maps and carbon dates, as well as compositional analysis and genetic sequences. Matt didn’t know what they were at the time, but later on, reviewing his memories, he’d understood more and more.
    His dad turned on the wall screen and leaned close to it. Cross-sectional views of Prospect’s tunnel maze rotated on the screen, bright with false colors.
    “Be careful what you bury,” Dad said. “You never know what may bloom.” He wore that faraway look again.
    He was probably thinking about Mom, Matt knew. He’d never known his mother. She’d died in childbirth. Matt’s Perfect Record didn’t reach back to the womb.
    Footfalls echoed from the hallway. A man brought himself up short at the doorway and darted wide eyes from Matt to his dad. It was Yve Perraux, the head of security for Union-Prospect Research.
    “We have to evacuate!” Yve gasped.
    Dad frowned. “I haven’t heard the—” A warning Klaxon blared through the concrete hallways, cutting him short.
    “Dad?” Matt said.
    “Not now,” Dad said. To Yve, he asked, “Corsairs?”
    “Maybe.” Yves eyes skittered to Matt. “Maybe worse.”
    “No,” Dad said, toggling the wall screen to the security view. A number of multicolored dots descended toward the curved edge of a tan planet. They all converged on a single target: a green block labeled UNION-PROSPECT RESEARCH FACILITY 1.
    Their facility. Matt’s guts clenched. He knew what Corsairs were from videos. They were the bad guys. They killed people. And they were coming here. What would they do then?
    “Dad—,” Matt began.
    “Matt, sorry, but not now .” Dad fumbled frantically with the mass-storage-system interface on one of the desktops. He slotted his slate down into it. Its screen showed it filling with data.
    Dad pulled the slate out as soon as it was full, and typed in commands. Matt didn’t know what they were at the time. Later, he saw they were instructions to wipe and reformat their entire data system.
    “I’m scared,” Matt said.
    “Just a second, just a second. Gotta do this,” Dad muttered. “Just a second; then we go. I