by M. D. Cooper
They leaned into one another for a minute, before separating and turning their featureless heads toward each other.
She reached out and tapped Kelly’s chest above where she knew their augmented hearts beat, beneath layers of armor and tech. Beneath the mech.
Kelly stopped and her body sagged.
Both women snapped out of their reverie and realized that Silva stood a meter from them.
They took off at a quick trot again as the sun began to set on the western horizon, and Kelly told a rather embellished story of how Rika all but tore the K1R limb from limb to save her.
Eleven minutes later, they approached the coulee where the battalion HQ once lay. They had a pretty good idea of what they were going to see long before they reached it. Their rad-counters had been registering increasing levels for some time, and before they got within five klicks of the camp, they passed into an area where the tall grass had been burned away completely.
The coulee was a shallow depression in the prairie, only forty meters deep in the center, with a small stream winding its way through—or what had once been a small stream. Now it was a slow flow of sludge and ash.
The broken skeletons of trees and transport vehicles were scattered through the coulee with no small number of corpses lying among them.
The women wordlessly split off, and Rika jogged through the ashen terrain to the edge of the coulee above the eastern end of the camp. The slope’s incline was gentle here, and she worked her way down, ignoring the bodies she passed.
Most looked like they had been fleeing the camp—she supposed the battalion HQ probably had some advanced warning before they were taken out. Rika wondered how the Niets had fired a tacnuke at the HQ that the air-defense systems didn’t detect and shoot down. Maybe it was a high-velocity artillery round, or maybe it was a high altitude drop, or a captured K1R turned rogue…she would probably never know, but it didn’t stop her from wondering.
The eastern end of the camp was the motor pool, and she passed a long row of troop transports, several light tanks, and an H82 mech—one that allowed for a regular human pilot. She eyed it, wondering if her SMI-2 body could fit within the massive mech’s cocoon. The extra protection would be nice, but it would also make for a dangerously large target out on the prairie.
Stealth was team Hammerfall’s most powerful weapon—one that she wasn’t going to trade for all the 50mm cannons, tacnukes, and ablative armor in the world.
Just beyond the H82, she spotted a spare cannon for a K1R and a Gatling Gun mount for a J22 model laying on the ground near a toppled stack of crates.
Silva called over the link.
Rika added.
Rika looked over the crates, trying to find one that was the right size for SMI-2 parts. Normally she would have scanned the RFIDs, but the nuke had hosed those, and burned off the shipping plas labels as well. She pulled down a few crates that were far too heavy, digging into the stack, then found one that looked right.
She unlatched it and prised the lid off. Bingo!
Inside the case lay a right arm for an SMI-2 mech, plus the toolkit to pull off the old arm and attach the new one. She rifled through several more cases until she finally came upon a fresh set of SMI-2 armor plating.
She cast about, knowing that the squishies would need a hover sled to move this equipment. She rounded the crates and saw a smaller case lying on its side. The words “Advanced Field Biological Repair Kit M7.1 – Limbs” were stamped into its metal shell.
Rika wasn’t familiar with any Mark 7 repair kits. The one she had used to re-enforce her missing thigh muscle—which still throbbed—was a Mark 5 field kit.
She popped the case open and saw two hollow cylinders. One looked about the right size to fit around her thigh, and the other would encompass an arm. A single card sat in the case and she picked it up. The instructions were simple: they directed the user to clear out any biofoam and other repair tech from the wound, and then slide the cylinder over the limb.
Rika looked down at her leg and frowned. This was probably going to hurt. A lot.
Using her field knife, Rika cut out the biofoam until she got to the re-enforcement rod. She took a deep breath and gave it a twist, unlocking it from its mounts, and carefully pulled it out, whimpering in her mind as the waves of pain tore through her leg and up her body.
She quickly scooped the rest of the biofoam out while she had the nerve. When the crater in her thigh was reasonably clear, she opened the cylinder up into its two halves and then closed it around her thigh.
The pain was instant and excruciating. The only other time Rika had felt anything like it was when her limbs were being sawed off—though somehow this felt even worse. She fought it for a moment, terrified it was simply cutting off the limb, then blessed darkness rolled over her and she knew no more.
* * * * *
Something was shaking her, and Rika fought against consciousness as it returned. Couldn’t she just sleep in a bit longer?
Rika’s vision snapped back on as her augmentations forced her to full awareness. Her right thigh felt like it was on fire, and Rika looked down to see the metal cylinder still wrapped around it. As she tried to focus on what was happening, an indicator on the cylinder flashed green, and then it split into two pieces and fell off.
Rika looked down, and saw that Kelly was right. Where there had been a gaping wound exposing muscle and bone, there was now just the smooth matte grey ‘skin’ all the SMI-2 sported under their armor.
said as she picked the smaller cylinder out of the case.
Kelly complied, and Rika fitted the cylinder around her stump of a limb, watching as it clamped down and began to hum.
Rika was impressed that Kelly didn’t pass out; though the repairs the kit performed on her were far less extensive. Five minutes later, the cylinder came free and Kelly held up her arm, which looked as good as new—well, new for a mech.
Silva attached the new arm to Kelly’s socket, and they quickly used pieces from the full armor set that Rika had found for repairs. Ten minutes later, they were ready to get on the move—rearmed, restocked, and eager to get out of the coulee, and away from the corpses filling it.
The base of the tower was hardened and contained a communications computer, which should have survived the blast. Silva opened the cover and Rika and Kelly shared a glance as the soft glow came from its holoscreen.
Silva replied.
Silva looked up at the other two members of Hammerfall.
Silva nodded and kicked the comm unit, smashing the computer inside.
EVAC
STELLAR DATE: 12.02.8941 (Adjusted Years)
LOCATION: City of Denmar, Naera
REGION: Parson System, Genevian Federation
The three women crouched behind the ruins of a factory on the edges of the city of Denmar. Parson’s light was just beginning to fill the eastern sky as they checked their weapons and loadouts for the final push.
They had already fought their way through several platoons of Nietzschean soldiers in their mad dash to reach Denmar on time. However, an entire army of the enemy now lay between them and the evac point.
Rika peered around the edge of the building at the maelstrom of weapons fire that arched between the advancing Nietzscheans and the retreating Genevians.
As she finished speaking, a blinding flash of light lit up the buildings around them, far brighter than Parson’s orb shone at high noon, before disappearing and leaving everything looking darker than it had a minute before.
Rika checked her rad-counter. It hadn’t spiked, so the blast hadn’t been an electron or proton beam. An orbital plasma shot was the most likely answer. She peered around the corner again, and saw a stretch of molten ground three hundred yards away.
The three women left the building’s cover and dashed across an open stretch of asphalt before ducking behind a row of ground haulers. They kept moving past several more buildings, and then skirted the edge of the area where the ground still glowed from the starfire burst.
Rika wished they still had drones, but their eyes in the sky had been lost when they first engaged the Niets at the edge of Denmar an hour ago. Now they had nothing but their vision to rely on—though with IR and UV overlays, it was still better than what any stock human came equipped with.
Rika spotted the enemy: a solidary Nietzschean in medium combat armor. The rounds from Kelly’s GNR slammed his chest plate; the first two ricocheting off, before the third finally cracked the armor and turned his insides to mush.
Kelly groused.
When they finally reached it, Rika was amazed at how large the river had grown. It was the same water they had slipped into back in the hill country, but now it stretched over a kilometer across. Her HUD gave her spectral analysis, and she saw that the water was much more saline than when they had languidly floated in its currents.
Kelly shook her head.
From what they could tell, the far side of the river was still held by Genevians—or at least the amount of weapons fire arching over the water suggested it was. The trio was so close to safety, yet even on their best day—a day when they weren’t exhausted and running low on ammunition—they couldn’t best a thousand Niets.
Kelly twisted a party grenade apart and spilled the thermite packets onto the ground. Then she spread them out across the area she wanted to melt. Once they were arranged to her satisfaction, Kelly manually activated the trigger inside the grenade’s shell and the thermite packets flared to life.
“Hey!” a voice called out from down the street. “What are you doing there?”
Rika slid her GNR under the car, using its sights to see who had called out. What she spotted was a half-platoon of Niets, all in heavy armor, advancing down the middle of the street. Rika relayed the finding to her team, and then prepared to fire. Her nerves were shot—too much adrenaline and too many bio-stims from her augmentations. She took a deep breath, lined up her weapon, and fired seven bursts in rapid succession.
Four hit, and three tore the feet right off the enemy they struck. The enemy platoon scattered to the edges of the road. With any luck, their newfound caution would buy team Hammerfall enough time for the thermite to do its job.
The Niets returned fire, and their armor piercing rounds tore through the car Rika was using for cover. She thanked the stars that penetrating the vehicle slowed the projectiles enough that they bounced off her armor, but at the rate the enemy was firing, there wouldn’t be enough of the car left to slow their shots down for long.