by M. D. Cooper
Throwing caution to the wind, she initiated a relay chain through her probes and reached out for help.
She waited several seconds, getting no reply. Then her drones picked up a change in the air currents behind her.
* * * * *
The battalion of mechs ahead of Rika had already begun to turn onto the road that would take them down the alternate parade route. On the sidewalks—and parts of the street—crowds of onlookers were streaming onto the new road in order to get a better look at the procession.
No word from Leslie at this point was expected, but Rika still didn’t like it.
She didn’t explain which tunnels were on her mind, but Silva didn’t ask, either.
The B’muth began to turn to the right, following the new route, when it lurched left and stopped moving.
The B’muth started up again, moving to the right and navigating the turn as gracefully as the lumbering machine could.
The AI snorted.
As much as Rika hated to hear it, she suspected that Niki was right. Her life had progressed to the point where not only did she send mechs into danger while she was safe, she did it while riding a B’muth in a parade.
* * * * *
Caleb watched the data rolling in from his sensors with a single-minded intensity. Twice now, he’d caught errant wind currents, but when he crosschecked the scans, nothing showed up. If there was an enemy moving through the tunnel, it would imply stealth tech that could alter air movement.
Theoretically, it wasn’t impossible for a stationary object to do that, but to move and mask air currents was an ability he hadn’t expected even these more advanced enemies to possess.
Or he was just paranoid and misinterpreting the data.
Eventually, enough time had passed that he decided there was no reason to stay hidden any longer. He’d almost taken his first step out of the alcove, when the equipment rack across the passage shifted, sliding out enough to admit a slim body.
Holy shit…they got within three meters of me, and I can’t see a thing!
A small bit of dust shifted on the ground, and he knew that his visitor had moved into the alcove.
Caleb ran through a series of options, one of which was to push the rack onto the intruder and run. As tempting as that was, he knew that was foolish. Mechs and ISF soldiers were modded to the point that an equipment rack landing on them wouldn’t buy more than a few seconds. Such a crude approach would also risk breaking the bomb’s level-set and reduce the size of the blast.
Moreover, he knew that there was no way he could just sneak away. They would have left probes in the tunnel, and his stealth tech was not good enough to fool physical probes in the air.
There was only one other option. With the utmost care, he reached inside his cloak and felt for the colloid ball. He drew it out so slowly that the speed would have driven a snail mad, and then, when it was free of the cloak, Caleb flicked his wrist, bouncing the ball off the wall and into the alcove. There was a soft pop, and he knew the colloid had been delivered.
Let’s do this.
He surged forward, but had only taken a single step when a yellow-streaked shape burst out of the alcove and lunged at him.
Caleb—expecting to have been the aggressor—fell back, fumbling for his sidearm, when something struck his left arm, leaving it numb and throbbing. Then a fist slammed into his face, the force dropping him to his ass.
The fall opened up enough room between him and his attacker for Caleb to draw his pistol and aim it at the enemy’s center of mass. He squeezed the trigger, and the weapon unleashed a barrage of kinetic rounds interspersed with concussive pulse blasts.
The weapon’s kick slammed his elbow back against the ground, but he was pleased to see the shots lift his assailant off the ground and fling her backward. She—he was certain it was a woman, from what he could make of her shape—slammed into the wall and dropped to a knee.
He struggled to his feet, while she remained still.
The weapons fire had shattered the silence he’d been operating in for the last few hours, and that liberated his tongue.
“You’re going to regret snooping around down here.”
Caleb took a step forward, lifting his gun to fire, when there was a blur of motion, and the woman was suddenly centimeters from him, her hand pushing his weapon to the side.
“No. You’re going to regret it.”
* * * * *
As the rounds from the man’s weapon struck her body, Leslie had half a second to think about how big an idiot she was. Knocking him back was just what he’d wanted.
She knew her armor would protect her from whatever a sidearm could deliver, though it hurt like a god’s hammer had slammed into her chest, but it took her a moment to shake off the effects.
She watched from beneath hooded eyes as her opponent rose to his feet, also shaking—likely more from adrenaline than the pain of being knocked down.
The man was bringing his weapon to bear again, and she knew that a second barrage was not something she wanted to experience.
He voiced a blustering threat Leslie barely heard before she kicked back and pushed off the wall. She closed the gap between them in an instant, and slammed the heel of her hand into his wrist, pushing his weapon wide.
“No,” she hissed. “You’re going to regret it.”
I need to work on my one-liners.
He struggled against her, but her other hand clamped around his neck, and she pushed him back, slamming his outstretched arm into the wall, and breaking his grip on the pistol.
“The bomb, you’re going to disable it,” she snarled.
A warbling laugh sputtered out of the man’s throat. “Well, it wasn’t even activated. Until now, that is.”
“Aw crap,” Leslie muttered. “I was really hoping that you weren’t the suicidal type.”
“I might not be,” he countered. “There’s enough time for us to get away. Just let go and—”
“And we let a few thousand people die? What is it, by the way, antimatter?”
“Smart woman,” he replied with a rasping laugh. “We’ve got a few more seconds to get out of h
ere, otherwise we won’t make it far enough.”
Leslie pursed her lips, wondering if that would even be possible. The man could just be trying to get her away from the device so that she couldn’t disable it.
She tried to reach out to Piper through her network of probes again, but wasn’t able to make a connection on the far end. Likely, the mad bomber in her clutches had set up some sort of jamming device. She’d directed her drones to extend their reach, stretching their chain into the skyscraper’s public corridors in search of a connection, but so far, they’d not gotten back on the Link.
Then the solution came to her, and if she hadn’t been grappling with the bomber, she would have slapped herself in the head—metaphorically speaking, of course.
The nano she’d dropped on the bomb was working on infiltrating its systems, running the hack through the device’s hard-Link port.
Which was connected to a trunkline.
“C’mon, bitch!” the man swore, beginning to struggle more violently. “We have to go!”
“Nah.” Leslie deactivated her stealth so he could see her grin. “We’re gonna stay and see what happens. It could be fun!”
While speaking, she routed a connection through the hard-Link cable and reached out to Piper.
“Don’t worry, we’re safe. My AI is going to disable your little party trick,” Leslie informed the man. “It was a good try, but now you’re going to be up on attempted mass murder charges.”
At her words, he ceased struggling. The hood on his cloak had fallen back, revealing a resigned expression on his face.
“You might as well kill me now. That’ll be what happens once I’m in custody.”
“Maybe,” Leslie said with a shrug. “Maybe not. I doubt that whoever hired you is so well connected that they could infiltrate an ISF cruiser.”
A mixture of hope and resignation formed a conflicting expression on the man’s face. “Really? I suppose your right.”
“Glad you think so,” Leslie replied. “But don’t get your hopes up. We could still die down here.”
“I’m no martyr,” the man said after a moment’s pause. “There. The bomb’s disabled.”
“Caleb,” the man answered. “I—”
His words were cut off as the ground shook beneath their feet. Caleb fell forward, and Leslie had to grab the wall to remain upright.
“What the hell?!” she gasped.
RIKA BOMBA
STELLAR DATE: 05.25.8950 (Adjusted Years)
LOCATION: City of Jague, Belgium
REGION: Genevia System, New Genevian Alliance
Vargo tuned Heather out as he took helm control from the autopilot and dove his five-hundred-and-forty-four-meter destroyer down toward the planet’s surface, threading the needle-like towers, bringing the ship over the alternate parade route.
He summoned an overhead view of the buildings and his ship, pursing his lips in concentration as he brought the Asora to within four hundred meters of the ground, the vessel coming to rest directly over the B’muth that Rika stood atop.
Piper announced.
Vargo shifted the Asora a meter to port, moving the ship’s starboard aft beam weapon array out of some poor woman’s office.
“No!” Ashley’s voice wavered. “I mean…how? Ground’s half a klick down! If I extend shields that far, I won’t have enough fidelity, someone is gonna get crushed!”
“Get them ready anyway,” he replied. “The comp can aim them, just make sure it understands priorities. Rika and the—”
Before Vargo could respond, alarms blared, and the shields registered impacts. The holodisplay of the ship and the two towers on either side showed the one on the left sagging against the Asora while the destroyer’s grav shields pushed against it and the ground, propping the building up.
“Shit!” Ashley cried out. “Fuck! We got pushed over. The shields came down on the walkway!”
“Focus on keeping us from ending up under that tower!” Vargo ordered.
Vargo flipped the forward display to show the view below the ship. People were fleeing in every direction, the mechs and Marines trying to direct civilians down the street and away from the collapsing building.
* * * * *
Rika reached back for the B’muth’s access hatch just as the explosion’s shockwave hit her. The blast was enough to lift the massive walker a meter into the air, and she lost her footing, tumbling over the side.
With a practiced flip, Rika righted herself and landed on her feet right next to one of the B’muth’s legs.
“What the hell?” she shouted both aloud and over the Link.
Rika looked around the walker’s bulk and saw that the kilometer-high tower on the other side of the road was leaning precariously, held up only by the Asora’s grav shields.
Good guess.
She spun around and saw a shimmering grav wall just a few meters away, the ‘foot’ the Asora was using to hold up the tower. The sidewalk beneath the grav field was already crushed, and mixed in with the pulverized rubble were the remains of a few bodies. She couldn’t tell if they were civilian, mech, or Marine, but knew that wasn’t the problem she needed to deal with right then.
She moved toward the front of the walker, calling out on the combat net,
Chase stood a few meters away, and glanced back at her, nodding with relief before he resumed disseminating orders over the Link. He directed three squads to get the civilians moving back the direction the parade had come from, while sending one of the mech companies forward to clear a path.
Rika looked around and saw that her mechs could get out of the way easily enough, and the civilians who had gathered for the parade would be cleared out in a minute.
The leaning building, on the other hand, had over five people thousand still inside.
Carson’s ‘Muth lumbered forward, wobbling side to side as he fought to keep it moving in a straight line. Rika tried not to think about what would happen if he lost control and it careened into the building.
The AI snorted.
During their exchange, the groaning from the building had gotten louder, and Rika noted that in another thirty seconds, the civilians on the street would be clear—though a new group was emerging from the building, following the direction of Goob’s team, and moving back past Stripes’s walker.
Trusting that the situation was in hand as much as it could be, she jogged forward to where Chase and Admiral Carson were directing their troops from just beyond the building’s shadow.
“We’re as clear as we’ll get.” Chase still looked concerned as he spoke, his eyes turning up to the leaning building and the starship supporting it.
Admiral Carson whistled. “That sure isn’t in the training manual.”
Rika nodded mutely, unable to tear her eyes away from the swaying peak of the building, amazed that it hadn’t broken apart yet.