by M. D. Cooper
Though their presence made her job more difficult, Leslie didn’t begrudge them their celebrations and libations. Liberating systems from the Nietzscheans was the goal, and there was every reason in the universe to celebrate the victories.
Noticing an alcove where an overhead walkway crossed high above the street, Leslie assigned another stealthed Marauder to the position. So far, she had designated watch points for fifty of her best SMI and RR mechs. The enemy would have to get very lucky to have better than a one-in-five-hundred chance of even getting close to Rika.
However, she still hadn’t identified that perfect spot. The spot where she’d make a strike.
Her patrol had taken her almost to the end of the route, just a few kilometers from the stadium where the football game was to be held after the parade was complete. It was the section of the route where she most expected an attack to occur. Security would have grown complacent, and the human tendency to think that because nothing bad had happened, that nothing bad would happen would be gaining ground in their minds.
Retracing her steps for the dozenth time, she stopped and closed her eyes for a moment, losing her current orientation of where she’d come from and where she was going, instead allowing herself to simply be where she was. It was a tactic she’d learned long ago to reframe her thinking and revaluate a location as a destination rather than a part of a route.
With fresh eyes, she began to reevaluate the street. She looked at the shops lining the road, all in good repair, and the towers rising above, each stretching as high as a kilometer, with landing pads hanging off the sides and skyways stretching between the buildings.
Those were less of a concern for her. A grav shield would follow the parade, keeping them safe from above—or at least, safe enough that any single kill shot wouldn’t prove fatal. Not only that, but the Asora and a wing of skyscreams would be nearby, keeping the skies safe.
All of that meant that if there was a threat, it would come from the ground, an attack from within the crowd, or from one of the storefronts.
It would have to be a hell of an attack to meet with success. Rika would be marching through the streets with M company, the mechs who had been together since she’d been given her command.
Anything short of an army sent against those four platoons of mechs won’t last longer than a few minutes.
Which meant that a successful attack would have to be fast, devastating, and decisive.
The other obvious angle was the maze of tunnels that lay beneath the streets. Drones were already sweeping the subterranean passages, searching for anyone and anything that should not be there. Leslie was following their updates, though not reviewing things too closely.
Piper was handling the detailed analysis, the AI’s ability to effectively multitask far superior to her own. The drones would continue to scour the tunnels before and during the parade.
It was getting close to dawn, and Leslie was near the end of the route. Once again, she closed her eyes and went through the steps to see the street around her as though it was entirely unknown to her.
As she scanned the storefronts, something caught her attention. One of the restaurants that had been open the last time she’d passed by was now closed.
She checked their posted schedule and saw that they’d initially planned to stay open all night. However, a new notice on their feed indicated that the early closure was in preparation for the parade, but the lights were off and there was no sign of activity.
It was not what she would have expected from an establishment getting ready for a large influx of customers.
Her survey of the surrounding area continued without her giving any indication that something had registered as out of the ordinary. Once it was complete, she walked to the next intersection and rounded the corner. Two blocks later, she reached an intersection where a group of pedestrians waited to cross the street. She eased into their midst, and when the group began to move, she waited till most of them had passed her by before crouching. Just as the last of the pedestrians walked past her, Leslie activated her stealth systems and rose.
Now invisible—and hopefully unnoticed—she quickly moved to the edge of the group and began to carefully navigate the sidewalks back to the mysteriously closed restaurant.
As she went, she wondered what would have happened if Rika hadn’t brought her mechs to the Albany System at the same time as the Intrepid Space Force. The ISF had been there to rescue their leader, Tanis Richards, and Rika had joined in to help, partially out of guilt from her part in the Nietzschean attack on Thebes that had occurred a year earlier.
Even before that mission, Leslie had modified her body with its current cat-like alterations, but she’d not had the stealth abilities the ISF had provided her, abilities she had immediately fallen in love with.
Over the years, she’d encountered many types of flow armor, thin layers of armor that were normally soft and pliable, but would harden on impact. Their effectiveness varied, but none was as good as actual armor with ablative plating.
The ISF’s flow armor was better than any light armor Leslie had ever worn, and as good as medium, non-powered gear. But that wasn’t even the best part—at least so far as she was concerned. The armor also provided near-perfect invisibility. You could stand right in front of someone who was wearing it and never see them. Only dust or wind blowing around the person would give away their presence—but even that was hard to detect with the armor’s visual compensators.
And if all that wasn’t enough, the ISF had worked out a way to simply replace a person’s skin with the armor, so that one was never without protection.
All of the mechs had opted for that—especially since they were already used to not having real skin. Leslie had also jumped at the chance. The flow armor was capable of changing color and texture, but Leslie kept hers jet black, to suit her cat-like stealth.
A man suddenly cut left around a pair of women and nearly collided with Leslie. She managed to dodge out of the way just in time, but her tail slapped one of the women on the ass. The woman turned to the man, telling him to keep his hands to himself, to which he protested innocence.
A giggle almost escaped Leslie, but she held it in, thankful that she hadn’t collided head-on with anyone.
That was the thing entertainment vids never showed about stealth: how hard it was to move through crowded areas. In many respects, using a disguise to hide in plain sight was better than full stealth because people could see and avoid you.
Despite her need to weave through the crowds and jump to avoid collisions more than once, Leslie managed to reach the restaurant without further incident and stepped up to the window to peer inside.
What she saw heightened her suspicions further: two tables weren’t cleared, and the floor did not appear to be swept. Any eatery that closed early to prepare for crowds the following day would at least clean up properly before leaving for the night.
Leslie pulled up the schematics for the building the restaurant occupied, looking for anything interesting about its location. Nothing jumped out at her. It didn’t have a route into the tunnels below the street, or any privileged access into the skyscraper that rose above.
The AI didn’t respond for nearly a minute, then finally said,
n.>
That wasn’t surprising. Niki was possibly one of the oldest AIs in the galaxy—especially in continual time spent out of stasis. How she’d ended up in a position to run into team Basilisk in the Oran System still set Leslie wondering from time to time.
Granted, she’d since learned that there were even older AIs living in the galactic core, so somehow that made running into a being as ancient as Niki a bit less mind-blowing.
A little bit.
Leslie had already considered that.
The restaurant’s rear entrance was situated within the building that housed it. The structure’s main door was a dozen meters to Leslie’s left, and she walked over to it and waited until a man walked in through the revolving door, then followed closely after.
Once inside, she skirted around the security arches, glad that the active scan the building ran was not capable of detecting her stealthed form. From there, she entered the tower’s main foyer, taking in the sweeping lines designed to draw the eye upward. A glance at the ceiling revealed that there wasn’t one; a kilometer overhead, open sky loomed, ringed by the building’s glass and steel.
She drew her gaze away, focusing on her task of getting into the restaurant. There was no public entrance for it from inside the tower, which suited Leslie well enough. It meant there were fewer ways for anyone to escape, should she find someone up to no good.
Piper’s schematic of the building led her across the foyer and into a large hall on the right. She followed it for a short time before coming to a maintenance passage. The door was locked, but it didn’t take long for her breach kit to work its magic and gain access.
Piper commented as Leslie’s drones tapped into the nearby cameras and overrode their datastreams, masking all sign of the door that seemed to open and close on its own.
The maintenance corridor was clean and well lit, but not as well appointed as the passage without. She followed it to the first intersection, and then turned right, coming to a single door at the end bearing the restaurant’s name.
Once again, she set her breach kit on the lock system, while threading a filament of nano around the jamb, getting a view of a short hall lined with boxes.
Piper sounded annoyed.
Leslie had never considered the error rates in sensor data to be analogous to the disparity in perception that humans experienced.
Granted, I’ve never dissected that particular statement before. That’s what I get for using figures of speech with an AI like Piper. He hasn’t been around people enough not to take everything literally.
She pulled her thoughts back to focus on the task at hand. The restaurant’s rear hall was dimly lit, but that wasn’t a problem for Leslie. Her night vision was second to none, and she easily worked her way around the clutter, listening for any sounds.
She reached the doorway that led into the kitchen and saw that it was clean and orderly, but there were a few ingredients still on the counters, a clear sign that things had shut down in a hurry.
Upon further consideration, Leslie hoped it was nothing. She hated the idea that someone would try to kill Rika on a day of celebration.
Leslie focused on it and saw that the door to a walk-in cooler was open, and in the floor of the refrigeration unit was a rather large hole leading down into a tunnel below.
FORCED MARCH
STELLAR DATE: 05.25.8950 (Adjusted Years)
LOCATION: City of Jague, Belgium
REGION: Genevia System, New Genevian Alliance
“Whose idea was this, anyway?” Rika asked as she stood at the hotel room’s window, looking out over the city of Jague. “A parade? Seriously?”
Chase snorted as he looked over her armor. “Pretty sure it was the old lady’s brilliant plan.”
“Well, she’s a dumbass. Why would we do what she says?”
“Beats me.” Chase walked back around Rika and placed his hands on her shoulders. “She usually has solid plans, but this one? I dunno.”
“Woooow.” Rika shook her head, the corners of her eyes crinkling as she tried not to laugh. “Just throw her into the engine wash. I see how it is.”
“It’s going to be a good day.” Chase slid his hands from her shoulders to her back, pulling their armored bodies into an embrace. “The parade and game are going to start a tradition that will become important for our people. You’ll see.”
Rika leant her head against his. “Everything I do is noteworthy now, isn’t it?”
A laugh burst from Chase’s lips, his chest heaving in the bit of space between their bodies. “Probably not everything. You snored a bit last night, but I don’t think that’ll make the news feeds.”
She was tempted to give him a light slap, but her plans were foiled when he released her and backed out of range. Instead, she issued a mock-warning.
“Well, if I do see it on the feeds, I’ll know who to blame.”
“Mmmhmm.” Chase nodded sagely. “Barne.”
Rika rolled her eyes and then held out her left arm. Chase took it, and they strode across the mainspace to the room’s door. Before they reached it, the portal swung wide to reveal Kelly and her team waiting for them in the hall. Rika nodded as they formed up.
“You ready to watch the ISF Marines get their asses kicked on the field of battle?” Kelly voiced the words with a predatory grin on her lips.
“Umm…am I allowed to express a preference?” Rika asked. “Seems dangerous.”
“Dangerous?” Shoshin’s posture stiffened. “Dangerous would be not screaming your head off every time the Maraduers—and only the Marauders—score a goal.”
“Don’t worry,” Rika chuckled. “I know how this works. I still have to be polite to the Marines, though.”
“I think that some of Admiral Carson’s vacuum jockeys are in on it as well,” Chase said. “He hold
s games on his ships a lot, from what I hear.”
“Bringing in ringers,” Shoshin muttered. “I see how it is.”
Kelly nodded for Keli to secure the lift as they approached the end of the hall before glancing at Rika. “Must be rough being in his command. Even more ‘hurry up and wait’ than is normal for a service. They just hang out at Albany, waiting for the next emergency that they have to run off and deal with.”
“I hope you’re not complaining,” Chase laughed at the dark-haired woman. “His waiting game has saved our bacon more than a few times.”
“I would never complain about Carson,” Kelly said with a wink. “Not even a little bit. That guy makes grizzled veterans look like shiny-armored FNMs.”
“He seems pretty clean-cut to me,” Keli said, casting Kelly a puzzled look as the lift arrived and the doors opened.
“Well, Admiral Carson is,” Kelly said, a smirk on her lips as the lift doors opened, and Keli quickly checked the car over. “But he wasn’t always an admiral. He used to be TSF, you know.”
“Wait,” Keli shot Rika a look that suggested she needed a second opinion, while waving the group into the lift. “Admiral Carson was in the Transcend’s military? That doesn’t make any sense.”
“No,” Rika shook her head. “Don’t forget that the Sol System used to call their military the ‘Terran Space Force’. Carson was a fighter pilot in their fleets for years.”
“Right,” Kelly took over again. “He wanted to keep being a vac jock too, but Tangel promoted him all the way up to admiral and put him in charge of the Fan Fleet.”
“ ‘Fan Fleet’? As in ‘shit hits the’?” Chase asked.
Kelly nodded. “I think he just calls it that privately, though.”
“Privately?” Shoshin asked, fixing Kelly with a penetrating stare. “Are you banging the ISF admiral?”
“Damn skippy I am. Well, not ‘ing’, exactly. It was just once—well, one night. We did it more than once. The guy has staminaaaaa.”