by M. D. Cooper
Instead, it had done exactly what was needed to drop the tower directly on the Marauders moving past.
Kirk pointed at the end of the strut that had plowed halfway through the desk before getting stuck. It was clear that it had suffered catastrophic superheating where the material had moved from solid to gas without first passing through the liquid stage. Twists and bubbles were present all along the surface, but there were also cracks running up the column.
“These cracks point to an explosive source inside the strut,” he explained. “I’ve also sent microprobes in, and they confirm that the locations where the material endured the highest temperatures are in the core.”
“So you’re telling me that they got the explosive into the middle of the strut?”
Leslie knew she was repeating his words, but she couldn’t help but feel the need to confirm them, given how unlikely such a thing was.
Kirk gave her an understanding look. “Trust me, we checked and re-checked that before we called you. But what we found in that re-checking explained it all.”
“Oh?”
“There are signs of an intense gamma burst…it radiates out from the inside of the column as well.”
Leslie shook her head, knowing that another chat with Caleb was in order. Only antimatter could cause such a large blast.
“I want the ISF team to come and take samples,” she said. “They might be able to determine if it’s the same antimatter the other bomb used.”
“Not sure how they could do that,” Kirk said, shaking his head.
“They might not be able to, but if we can confirm or rule out whether this material came from the same source, it would help the investigation immensely.”
“I understand,” Kirk replied.
Leslie clapped a hand on his shoulder. “Good work. Really good work. We’re going to figure out who did this, and ensure they are brought to justice.”
“So long as justice is a death penalty,” one of the investigators muttered.
Not acknowledging the statement, Leslie bid her farewells and walked back the way she’d come, and then out of the building. Two massive a-grav pillars stood on either side of the entrance, supporting the building and freeing up the Fury Lance to resume its orbit.
They had been flown in from a construction site on the far side of the planet, where they were to be used to support a dam during repairs. That was on hold now, as ensuring that Pandora Tower didn’t come down and take out a half dozen other buildings was paramount.
The air seemed to thrum around the pillars, and Leslie could feel the lightness caused by the negative gravitons pulling the building up, lessening its apparent mass, and keeping it from crashing to the ground.
While feeling the side effects of negative gravitons was a common experience for anyone who flew on starships, it was odd to feel it on the ground, and Leslie moved across the street before reaching out to Rika.
Leslie held in a laugh.
Leslie sighed and leant back against the building behind her.
Leslie barked a laugh that she passed along over the Link.
RIKA MAGNUS
STELLAR DATE: 05.28.8950 (Adjusted Years)
LOCATION: Fury Lance, Belgium
REGION: Genevia System, New Genevian Alliance
Rika stood before her command team in one of the larger briefing rooms aboard the Fury Lance. It was becoming quite the sizable group, with the captains of the new companies and the commanders of captured ships in attendance.
Admiral Carson of the ISF was also present, along with two rear admirals and a general. They were sitting near the back, and a curious smile rested on the admiral’s lips.
Not for the first time, Rika wondered what he thought of the mechs and their mission to free Genevia and defeat Nietzschea. Carson had been born over five thousand years prior, in the golden age of the Sol System. He’d flown engagements out in the deep black before the days of FTL, when a ship lost beyond Sol’s heliopause may never be seen again. No artificial gravity, no advanced shields, just your hull, mods to handle extreme gs, and a total lack of fear. Though he ran his fleet professionally, something about the way the man held himself belied the past crucible that had forged him.
She wondered what had prompted him to take a berth on the ancient colony ship that had taken him from the Sol System—and forward in time. He must have wanted a change of some sort…
Rika found herself curious if he’d gotten more, or less, than he’d expected.
“OK, people,” she said once everyone had settled into place. “We have a plan on how to retain the fleet legally, and for me to take command of New Genevia so that we can settle things down and move on to Nietzschea. Well, by ‘plan’, I mean strategy. We have some tactical holes that need plugging, so I’m looking for plugs.”
Without further preamble, she launched into the plan to take command of the system, transfer the fleet to Barne, and then utilize Admiral Carson to transfer the Marauder assets to Genevia, and thus back to Rika.
“Doesn’t that seem a bit shaky, Colonel?” Silva asked after Rika was finished. “I don’t mean to disparage all your hard work, but can’t someone from Marauder command show up and rescind Barne’s acceptance of Admiral Carson’s transfer request?”
“Like to see them try,” Barne grunted.
“Not so easy,” Carson said from his seat in the back. “The wording of the Alliance states that it’s for the duration of the war, unless the receiving party turns the assets back over of their own free will. Since the idea here is to maintain a legal claim, that will do. If your brass is dumb enough to try and make a play for your position here, they’ll have a difficult time of it.”
Heather barked a laugh. “That’s one way to put it.”
“Still, I want to set things up properly.” Rika surveyed her leade
rship with stern eyes. “The more care we take to have a solid, legal claim for what we’re doing here, the less trouble we’ll face later on. That’s going to make things a lot better for our people. Liberation, and reconstruction afterward, is going to be hard enough as it is without infighting.
“So, with that in mind, who has ideas on our two major hurdles?”
“Just to be clear,” Barne dragged the words out. “You’re sure that ‘fuck ‘em’ isn’t a valid strategy?”
“I’m sure, Master Sergeant,” Rika replied, and the man subsided.
“Well…” Captain Vargo Klen spoke up from close to the back of the room. “I might have a solution for your problem.”
Rika cocked an eyebrow. Vargo had a shrouded past, one that he’d only revealed in dribs and drabs. One of the things in his past was that he’d once been the governor of a planet. No one had been able to discern which, and some suspected that he’d been in charge of an entire star system. In proper Marauder style, there were a number of betting pools established for the system, scope, and time of his governorship.
“I’m all ears, Captain,” she said.
“Well, as you all know, I was a governor once. That was way, way back. But more recently, I had some other jobs. One of which was in the GAF.”
“Right,” Silva said, casting the man a suspicious look. “You were a lieutenant, a pilot.”
“At one point, yes,” the man replied. “But before that, a while before that, I was a general.”
An incredulous snort tore its way out of Barne’s throat, earning him an elbow from Leslie.
“I know, I know, it’s hard to believe,” Vargo said. “It was a lifetime before I re-enlisted to be a pilot. I like to keep my pasts separate.”
“How many do you have?” Captain Travis asked.
A smile crept across Vargo’s lips, and he winked at the other man. “Now that would be telling.”
“So, a general,” Rika shook her head, speaking the words as a statement. “In the GAF.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“You sure you should be calling me that? Shouldn’t I be ‘sir’-ing you?”
He shrugged. “Not Captain Vargo Klen, no. But if I were to be General Drew Mior, then probably.”
“This just seems like another catch-22,” David said. “Unless Drew Mior was still active duty at the end of the war.”
“Will MIA work?” Vargo asked.
“Sounds a bit like AWOL,” Silva said, giving Vargo a sidelong look.
“You know me,” Vargo looked around the room. “I’m not one to abandon anyone. I really was MIA, and not in a way I enjoyed. When I finally made it back to Genevia, so much time had passed that I decided it would be better if I just re-enlisted. I had spent some time behind a flight stick, so I decided to become a pilot.”
“And you didn’t think your experience as a general would have helped?” Barne asked.
“I did help,” Vargo countered. “For starters, I had been a peace-time general. When I got back to Genevia, things had already kicked off with the Niets. I would have been stuck at some supply dump, if they let me back in at all. I saw that the space force wasn’t doing good by the ground pounders, so I decided that by being a friendly voice in the skies, I could better help active combat units.”
Chase barked a laugh. “That’s some serious MIA.”
“You have no idea,” Vargo replied with a sorrowful nod. “So, technically, if I understand our situation well enough, I take on my old role, and Admiral Carson transfers all the captured Nietzschean ships to me, that way they’re not Marauder property at any point.”
“OK, that seems like a good start,” Rika said. “What next, General Mior?”
“Core, that brings back memories. OK, so once I’m ensconced as the lord and master of all I survey, I promote Barne in the GAF.”
“You what?” Barne asked. “How do you do that?”
“There’s actually precedent,” Vargo explained. “Command-track NCOs can transfer to officer status in times of crisis by a three-star or above.”
“Shit, really?” Travis asked. “You were a three-star? And you still suck that bad at Snark?”
“I was—am—a four-star,” Vargo explained. “Anyway, that’s not the point. Barne has one of the old Marauder contracts that was a little poorly worded. It says that his rank in the Marauders must at least match his highest rank in the GAF.”
“Oh shit,” Barne muttered, his eyes flicking side-to-side as he examined his HUD. “It does, but there’s no time stipulations or anything.”
“Right,” Vargo said. “Same as mine, incidentally. We signed at the same time, I didn’t look up your contract, Barne.”
“So then, you recall Barne to active duty in the GAF and promote him,” David mused. “He accepts and then resigns his commission, remaining in the Marauders. Following that, you recall Rika to active status in the GAF, and she resigns her commission, turning the fleet over to Barne, who must turn it over to Carson, because he’s not of flag rank.”
“That’s where I was going with this.” A grin settled on Vargo’s lips. “Then I promote Rika to three-star general, flag rank in the GAF, and resign my own commission. That puts her in command of all the captured Nietzschean vessels, and she is then a Genevian in command of the largest Genevian fleet in the system, making her magnum opus, or whatever.”
"Magnus,” David corrected.
“Right. Yeah. Once that’s done, Carson transfers the Marauder fleet to the ruler of the Genevian System, and then poof, it’s all done.”
“You forgot something.” The P-Cog turned to face Rika. “You’ll need to sign on to the Scipio Alliance before Admiral Carson can transfer the fleet to you,” he reminded her.
Rika realized that she was grinning from ear to ear. “OK, that’s a no-brainer. But, David?”
“Yeah?”
“Next time, we bring Vargo in on these things.”
“You mean General Mior?” he asked with his own wide grin.
“Mior,” Barne muttered. “Now that’s one hell of a weird name.”
Vargo snorted. “Says the guy who is named after where you store animals.”
“OK, boys,” Rika raised her hands. “Let’s just get this kicked off. It’s a lot of steps, and we need to do them all in the correct order.”
“Yes,” David nodded emphatically. “Timing is going to be very, very important.”
* * * * *
After the meeting was over, as the team was filing out, Rika called Leslie to the front of the room.
“Any leads yet?”
“No.” Leslie shook her head. “Well, I mean, some, but they were all dead ends. Nothing viable. We’ve found plenty of people doing bad things, mind you, but none we can connect to the antimatter and Xa.”
“A sea of crime out there, is it?” Rika asked.
“Stars, you have no idea. Everyone and their dog is taking advantage of the chaos to smuggle shit on and off Belgium. Some of it is totally blatant, too. Mostly we’re just noting who’s doing what. The local cops don’t have the staff to pursue even a fraction of these crimes.”
Rika cocked an eyebrow, wondering why Commandant Perin hadn’t brought this up. “Are they understaffed?”
“Oh hell yeah. They were augmented by a Nietzschean garrison before…. Seems like the Niets didn’t want the cops to have a sizable force of their own, so they kept them lightly armed, and any time the locals needed the big guns, they had to call in the military.”
“Guh.” Rika shook her head. “That must have sucked. It’s going to take us forever to untangle this. I mean…there are thousands of Niets living on Belgium—maybe as many as a million of them across the system. From what I’ve heard, most are content to live under Genevian rule, so long as they can continue to operate as they have be
en.”
“That’s the question, right?” Leslie sighed. “How have they been operating? Most are probably criminals by Genevian law, but then a lot of our people probably did things over the past decade that the Niets would allow, but we do not.”
“Yeah, don’t remind me. I just signed up to be magnus and lord over this mess.”
“We’re going to have to change that,” Chase said as he approached. “Magnus really doesn’t suit you. We’d all gotten used to thinking of you as our queen.”
Rika groaned. “Oh not you too.”
“Rika,” Chase’s voice grew serious. “You need to stop doing that.”
“Doing what?”
Chase and Leslie shared a look before he replied, “Complaining whenever someone calls you queen or president. It’ll become a morale issue before long.”
Rika felt like she’d just been punched in the stomach. If there was one thing she prided herself on, it was being there for her people. Her Marauders—or whatever they would end up being called once all the political shenanigans were over—were her top priority.
“What he means,” Leslie quickly filled in the silence. “Is that denying your place of leadership means that no one knows who will be in charge. That makes your people feel like you don’t want to take care of them, and that you’re leaving them in limbo. They need stability and clear structure. You need to own this. Own it like every bit of it was your idea.”
Both Marauders wore deadly serious expressions, and Rika realized that her playful dismissal of taking on a meaningful title was only amusing—or something along those lines—to her. To everyone else, it was annoying and insulting.
Rika pursed her lips, glancing down at her hands as they clenched and unclenched, then squared her shoulders and looked her intel officer and the captain of M Company in the eyes.