Exile
John’s submission
Exile
2/16/2026
The Kemet raised its arm and fired its aging linear rifle. His opponent easily dodged the fire, slamming in each direction with enough force to liquefy a living pilot. All Brown could do was maneuver out of its effective range and try for a lucky shot.
Brown had given up hope of just about everything in his life, all he had focused on for the past three years was racing and combat. It had given him a sense of peace to focus on one little thing, it helped him deal with the agony of being on Rust - a sadly prophetic name for what the planet had become. Unfortunately, with total mental transfers now being readily available for pilots he was at an insurmountable disadvantage.
The opposing mech suddenly charged forward, evidently impatient with Brown’s delay tactics. That was his mistake. Reaching out his left arm and boosting to his opponent’s right, Brown caught the shoulder joint with his physical blade and cut down into the back. Both mechs skidded to a halt but only one turned around to see the outcome. He had hit the generator, the man was dead.
Brown panted, letting out stale breath. That guy was an idiot, what would he do against a good pilot? What would he do against Stone?
His radio crackled to life, interrupting his reverie. “Hello? I’m a journalist, my name is Liana Harris. I’d like to interview you, face to face.”
-
Brown walked down the spaceport, gazing out the windows at his frame parked on the concrete pad. It was an overcast day. A sandstorm could be seen in the distance. He stumbled a bit as he walked but paid it no mind.
He wondered what she would ask, he had not been interviewed before. Why did he use a physical blade and an aging linear rifle? Well, they were flexible and worked well even if you were not psych-transferred; not too much recoil either which important. Why Rust? The plethora of abandoned infrastructure was ideal for hangars and racetracks. He continued interviewing himself in his head until he came to the spaceport bar and found the reporter. He had expected her to be a bit older, a nightly news type. Instead he found a girl.
He looked her over. Jet hair, striking blue eyes, she was thin too. Huge rack.
He immediately turned around and put on his shades, crossing his arms in the most natural way possible. He could not look at something like that, it could ruin his focus during a race, it could get him killed, especially these days. There were no women like that on Rust, not many women at all for that matter, that made her dangerous.
Liana watched him do this and thought to herself “this guy is an idiot” but began the interview as professionally as possible.
“Alright, you seem like you want to get started. You are Lucius Brown, pilot of the Kemet, correct?”
Brown nodded, still facing backwards. “I’ve been piloting for the past three years.”
Liana shot him a snide look (which he would have been embarrassed by had he seen it) and carried on.
“Are you from Rust? You seem tall for a planet with this level of gravity.”
He shook his head. “No, I grew up on Mirrorlake. I came here to pursue a career in racing, the scene is way livelier here.”
She raised her eyebrow in surprise. “Really, Mirrorlake? I’m from Do Sul.”
Brown excitedly turned around. It had been a very long time. “I lived in Do Sul for five years, God knows I miss it. Rolling green hills, blue skies, clear waters, you never realize how important they are to you until they’re gone.”
Liana showed a coy grin. She saw that he was raw about his past. “Your parents worked for the local shipwrights, right? I mean, most people from there do.”
Brown took off his sunglasses and met her eyes. “Yeah, my father was a foreman and my mother did technical work for a partner firm. They loved their jobs and I loved listening to their stories when they got home from work. I wish sometimes that I could have followed in their footsteps but things just didn’t work out that way.”
Liana’s eyes drifted down to his legs. “…because you have a disability? Forgive me for this but you don’t walk normally.”
Brown winced. “Neurological issues. It’s part of why I got into racing, you don’t need full physical ability to pilot a mech. It’s not really why I left Mirrorlake though.”
That caught her somewhat off guard. “Oh?”
Brown laughed. “What it really was, my mother turned out to not actually be my mother, then she had a kid of her own. Things went downhill from there as I’m sure you can guess.”
Liana masked her horror at hearing that, he clearly thought it was no big deal anyway. She noticed an inconsistency though. “You said you came to Rust for racing, didn’t you?”
He shrugged. “Left because of family issues, landed here for the racing. Found my calling you could say. It’s not like I had anything else left. Plus, I’m pretty good at this.”
Liana tapped her head with her pen. “I wanted to interview you because you’re the highest performing pilot who has not undergone a psyche-transfer, by far the highest performing. Why stay human, especially if you’re disabled?”
Brown twitched a bit and rubbed his upper lip. “I don’t know, maybe I’m a bit of a coward but it just makes me uncomfortable. I’m going to have to do it eventually though. A transferred pilot will always beat a regular human unless he screws up. I get lucky a lot. Luck isn’t sustainable. The top racer – the real one - is my friend Stone, he one of the first transfers.”
She looked up at him inquisitively. “Stone, can I interview him? I’d like to ask about his reasoning.”
Brown glanced away. “No. He’s essentially never conscious these days except for during a race or during preparation. You’ll never find the man inside.”
Liana jotted down some notes. “I wonder if he really understood how much he was losing.”
“How do you mean?”
She looked up at him incredulously.
“You don’t want to live on Rust your whole life, do you? Racing’s fun but I’m sure you have something else you care about.”
He walked towards the window and looked out at his frame.
“No, that’s not my life. This is my place.”
-
The racers lined up at the mouth of the tunnel, preparations nearly complete. Brown breathed in, breathed out. He did his best to stop himself from shaking. A familiar but distorted voice crackled over the radio.
“Still not willing to commit, huh?”
Stone marched up next to him, the light next to his lens glowing, trained on the Kemet. Brown shut his eyes.
“I told myself that if I lost this one I’d finally do the transfer. I’m being left behind.”
Distorted laughter carried over the radio. “I’ll be sure to win then.”
Stone cycled his plasma rifle in view of Brown. “Once you do make the shift, get yourself one of these. The radiation is a bit too much for you right now though I’d say. Kick that old linear rifle to the curb already.”
Brown checked his heart rate on the panel. 120 already. He focused on his breathing. In, out, in, out.
Ten seconds. All the frames’ main boosters roared to life, dousing the tunnel in blinding light.
Five seconds. Arms retreated to rear position, shoulder weapons retracted. Only one man braced himself.
Zero.
White jets erupted, blackening the concrete, a cloud of sand erupting around the mouth as blurs of steel went screaming out. Brown was pressed against the back of the cockpit. He felt something warm and tacky running onto his lip. A nosebleed already? He was losing his edge.
The other racers took an immediate lead, able to withstand a far harsher acceleration than Brown could even with dampening. He had to gradually build to speed, patiently catch up.
He gained on a pink and purple frame that had taken a fast lead before falling behind the rest. It was probably someone who had just transferred. Usually they bought whatever had the highest immediate thrust on the market, forgetting sustained thrust or maximum output. That meant he was liable to rely on his newfound superhuman reflexes.
Brown raised the javelin launcher on his shoulder and let a volley loose. They lacked tracking or locking but they moved fast. The mech was skewered in an instant, faster than even a machine could react. Its boosters lost all control and sent the frame reeling. It hit the ground and went rolling off the concrete, slamming and detonating against a passing mesa, showering the track with dingy orange debris.
Brown gained on the next mech. His opponent quickly picked up on him. It cut its main boosters and whipped around, kicking on its front-facing boosters to maintain velocity. It launched two large missiles, forcing Brown to rapidly evade. His frame shot to the right hard, slamming him against the cockpit. He took a moment to get over the shock; his head would be pounding in a few minutes so he would have to work fast.
His opponent prepared another salvo but this time Brown was ready for it. A linear rifle shot struck the opponent in the upper chest and burst, shrapnel shattering the head’s lens. The frame quickly lost targeting, dropping its missiles to the ground underneath; the detonation setting it off balance. The opponent, recognizing the direness of the situation, turned and left the highway, speeding off into the wasteland leaving a wake of dust behind him.
Brown spit blood. The shock was breaking his focus. Was Liana watching this? He glanced at the vital sign panel; his heartrate was approaching 300. Her eyes were blue like water. He quickly dosed himself to deal with his growing nausea. He pushed the alien thoughts from his mind. He had to focus.
He was catching up with Stone, a feat unthinkable until now. He saw the blackened frame with a huge white jet against the orange horizon briefly before the road sank into an old tunnel.
Brown lifted his javelins but Stone already knew what was coming. A single plasma bolt took the launcher off its mount. Brown returned fire with his linear rifle but it was not enough. Stone piloted as if his mech was his original body, he simply glided out of the line of fire, not even bothering to dodge.
The radio came to life. “I’ll pay for your transfer myself once we’re through here, don’t worry. You’ll probably be even better than me once you have it, I can’t believe how far you made it this time.”
Brown’s loss was guaranteed, there was nothing he could do against Stone. In between bouts of coughing up blood and giving himself doses of meds to prevent a catastrophic health episode he thought about his life. Things could not carry on like this, he had to make some kind of change, but what? Give up his body? Give up his career? His mind was getting cloudy, he was losing his ability to chase out alien thoughts. He had been absent mindedly mumbling over the radio for a while, talking to himself about things in a near-stupor, but he finally blurted out -
“I met a girl with huge boobs today!”
Stone cocked his frame’s head as if to hear better then turned around. “What are you saying to me right now?” That got Brown’s attention.
Quickly raising his right arm, he fired two salvo off Stone’s left flank. Just as naturally as if someone threw a ball at him, Stone dodged out of the way. That was his mistake.
Stone smashed into the side of the tunnel. He quickly rebalanced himself and turned back around but Brown was already on him. He struck him in the back with his physical blade, crushing the booster. Stone would go no further.
Brown came roaring out the other end of the tunnel, firmly planting his feet in the concrete and firing his forward thrusters, grinding to a halt, leaving deep ridges in the concrete. He was the sole survivor. The finish line was nowhere to be found but what did that matter when there was only one racer left?
Brown gradually, carefully, emerged from his cockpit, wiping blood from his face. He turned around and looked up at the moon, glittering over a placid lake. He heard a beating noise coming from behind him. He turned around to find Liana leaning out of a helicopter, grasping a radio.
“You won. Does that mean you’re going to…”
He leaned down and reached for his own radio. “Like I said, I win because everyone else chooses to lose. I have to change.”
“Really?” She looked dismayed.
“Yeah. Did anyone ever tell you that you’re beautiful enough to cause a car crash?”