Rika Rising
Page 17
KK100.
The word echoed in her mind, and she knew what had happened. Somewhere in the ship, one of those disgusting devices had been used. It seemed, however, that it had just rendered the mechs immobile, not allowed the operator to take control of their bodies.
Small mercies, she thought.
Knowing there was nothing for it, she approached the door’s control panel and activated it. Before it slid aside, she ducked behind Crunch and shoved hard the moment the portal opened.
He toppled over and hit the deck with a thud that echoed through the space beyond.
“Check it out,” a voice called out from somewhere within the large bay.
That’s right. She eased past Crunch’s immobile and invisible form, creeping toward a row of workstations. Split up, make it nice and easy.
She spotted a figure standing atop the command center’s raised platform, and recognized him as Xa. A string of curses filtered through her mind, some directed at the spy, some at herself for not finding any leads that had led her to him before now.
Leslie let her anger run for a moment, but then tamped it down, releasing a nanocloud into the room and tagging enemies.
She spotted four moving toward where she’d entered the bay, and two more at the far side. Another three were standing with Xa on the platform. They were wearing matte black armor without markings, but she recognized their rifles as Nietzschean spec-ops gear.
It was possible that more were in stealth around the room. Her nanocloud should be able to pick them out, but it would take time.
She moved around the center of the bay in a wide arc, looking for Rika and her team. She spotted Kelly first, slumped over a console, and then found Shoshin nearby. Both were in the same condition as Crunch and the fireteam at the door she’d entered. Then she spotted Rika, laid out on the command platform at Xa’s feet.
“I don’t care about the others. Dump them out the closest airlock, but this one comes with us back to Nietzschea.”
His words lit a fire in Leslie, and she made a beeline for the spy who she realized had orchestrated so much of what had gone wrong over the past two weeks.
The spy who had destroyed the Fury Lance, and….
A minute later, she was standing at the edge of the command platform, her lightwand in hand. She crouched, coiling up her strength, before leaping into the air, her blade activating as she came down on Xa, ready to slice him from shoulder to groin.
Leslie was almost upon the smug-looking bastard, when a pulse blast hit her and she flew across the command platform and slammed into a console.
One of the Nietzschean spec-ops soldiers was in front of her a second later, railgun pointed at her head.
“Try something,” he grunted. “I dare you.”
* * * * *
A garbled thought came into her mind, and Rika wanted to scream—only she couldn’t. She couldn’t do anything other than think about how stupid she was for not coming into the bay lobbing grenades and razing it with her electron beam.
An eternity passed, and she began to wonder if maybe she was dying.
Maybe this is what happens when a mech dies. We don’t see our past, or visions…just nothing. A nothing that fades into nothing.
The AI gave a rueful laugh.
Niki didn’t respond for a moment before saying,
Nearly a year ago, Rika had tapped into abilities she’d never dreamed of possessing, a result of the L2 upgrades the ISF had performed on her brain. But Niki had told her later that, should Rika want to, a different path lay ahead of her, one not dissimilar to the road Tanis and Angela had taken when they merged into one being.
They’d spoken little of it since, and Rika hadn’t concerned herself with it too much. Tanis and her AI had taken centuries to merge. Rika was usually more concerned with surviving the next week.
Rika’s HUD came back online a moment later, and an overlay view of the bay appeared, showing Xa on the platform, with nine soldiers in various positions around the bay. Three were nearby, and she flagged those as her primary targets. Then Xa. Then it was a simple matter of cleanup.
In an instant, Rika felt full control of her body come back. She swung her legs up and then down, flipping her body forward and landing on her feet. Somehow, her view of the bay felt sharper, so crisp that the edges of consoles and bulkheads hurt her eyes, like everything was too in-focus.
Ignoring the strange dissonance, she fired her GNR’s electron beam, slicing off the arm of a soldier before spinning to fire on another. The third of the Niets on the platform was within reach, and Rika’s left foot shot out, clamping onto his thigh and squeezing.
Her armor crumpled, and a muffled scream came from within the woman’s helmet.
Rika ignored it and set her sights on Xa, his prior smug expression replaced by one of concern.
Curious, she thought. Most people would show fear.
She stepped forward and casually backhanded him—sending the unarmored man flying off the platform—while firing on another of the Nietzscheans.
A second later, a lightwand appeared in the air nearby. It hung above a Niet’s head for a second before plunging through the man’s helmet. A moment later it was gone, the falling corpse the only testament to the unseen attacker.
Rika turned toward the entrance she’d come through, ignoring the rounds striking her body as she let loose with a barrage from her GNR, the weapon flinging kinetic bursts intermixed with electron beams. She shredded their cover and made her kill shots before jumping off the platform and striding toward Xa.
The Nietzschean spy was clawing his way up a console, something that was difficult with a broken arm.
“You’re so lucky that I want to learn what you know,” Rika muttered as she fought back the urge to kill the man where he stood.
“Good luck,” Xa whispered. “I’ve faced off against far worse than you.”
Rika laughed as Leslie signaled that her end of the bay was clear. The battle was won, though she feared the toll they’d find paid once the Pinnacle rose above Babylon’s clouds.
“Yeah, I’m pretty nice. A lightweight, rea
lly. But you’ve not met Kora.”
CLOUDTOPS
STELLAR DATE: 06.03.8950 (Adjusted Years)
LOCATION: GMS Pinnacle, Babylon
REGION: Genevia System, New Genevian Alliance
Rika stood at the Command Center with Chase at her side, the pair steering the ship out of the clouds.
Niki had disabled the KK100—after having it send a signal to release the mechs from their lockdown. Shortly afterward, Lieutenant Chris announced that the bridge was secured and the Niets there dead or wishing they were.
Leslie had taken her squad aft to find the engineers, whom one of the surviving Niets had said were still alive. Leslie had delivered the usual threats, and then taken Crunch’s squad to find them.
Kelly, Keli, and Shoshin prowled the engineering bay, none of the three prepared to believe that they had fully secured the space until they’d stuck a rifle into every corner.
“You’re making me anxious,” Rika called out as Kelly stalked past.
“Me? You’re the one standing up there with a big ol’ bullseye on your back.”
“That’s great, Niki,” Kelly said in a tone that implied anything but. “I’ll just keep doing my manual sweep anyway.”
“Funny.”
“We’re almost through the clouds.” Rika’s words were clipped, and the others fell silent, Kelly turning to look at the large holodisplay on the forward bulkhead.
The ship’s scan had picked up a field of small objects near the Fury Lance’s last known position. Rika had already steeled herself for the ship’s destruction—though the confirmation on scan still hurt.
When the vessel had fired its DMG through the clouds, the ensuing lightning storm had damaged the forward sensor array. As such, they couldn’t pick up any signals from beyond Babylon’s stratosphere—especially not any that might have been emitted from escape craft.
She held her breath as they passed through the upper cloud deck, her hand finding Chase’s as the rear sensor arrays were able to aim toward the debris field that was once Rika’s pride and joy.
Goodbye, Lance.
Rika closed her eyes and drew a deep breath as the IDs of the survivors came up on the forward display.
Three craft meant that not all of the crew had survived.
“I knew every person on that ship,” she said in a quiet voice that only Chase could hear.
“I know,” he replied. “I did, too.”
A gasp came from Heather.
There was a pause before the Lance’s former captain responded.
“Dammit,” Rika whispered, her throat constricting.
Suddenly, Niki laughed.
The man’s words caused a damn to break open, and Rika found herself laughing and crying at the same time, until she couldn’t breathe anymore. Chase’s strong arm wrapped around her waist, and she sagged into him, finally catching her breath.
She looked up and saw his serious eyes above a knowing smile.
“You ready for whatever comes next?” he asked.
Rika drew in a deep breath, her shoulders surging up against the weight that rested on them. Somehow, the load felt lighter than it had over the past few weeks.
The ISF was gone, the enemy might have more DMG ships, and the Fury Lance had been destroyed. But they were still standing. The Genevian Marauders were just getting started.
“Yes. Yes I am.”
THE END
* * * * *
Magnus Rika now commands the Genevian Marauders, but the Nietzscheans aren’t going to let her rest on her laurels for long. With the ISF fleet gone, and the Marauders spread thin, it’s the best time for the enemy to counterattack and halt Rika’s march toward Nietzschea.
Find out what happens next in Rika Coronated.
MECH TYPES & ARMAMENTS
While these are the standard builds and configurations documented by the Genevian Armed Forces (GAF), many mechs reached the field in mismatched configuration, or were altered after deployment.
Sometimes these alterations were upgrades, sometimes downgrades, as repairs were often made with whatever spare components were available at the time.
The mechs in the Marauders generally align with the stated configurations, though many have altered themselves over the years.
NOTE: The K2R and all 4th generation models were made by Finaeus Tomlinson, in concert with Rika’s Repair and Maintenance team, specifically Lieutenant Carson and Corporal Stripes.
K1R (Kill Ranger – Generation 1)
This mech is more of a two-legged tank than a mech. The K1R sports a central ‘pod’ where the human is situated. None of the limbs utilize human material.
K1Rs often had mental issues due to feeling as though they had lost all sense of humanity. When the Nietzscheans won the war, they did not release any K1Rs from their internment camps. It is not known if they kept them, or killed them all.
Until the discovery of the mechs in the Politica, there was only a single K1R in the Marauders (who had been under General Mill’s command at the end of the war). That mech has joined Rika’s company to assist the four K1Rs Rika freed from the Politica in re-integration.
K1R mechs have a variety of heavy armament, including massive chainguns, railguns, missiles (with and without tactical nuke warheads), electron beams, and proton beams. They also sport a variety of suppression devices, from pulse, to sonic, to portable grav shields.
K1R mechs were not made later in the war, due to their cost and mental instability.
There were rumors that a limited run of K2R mechs were made, but no credible reports exist.
Sub-Models:
All K1R models could be outfitted with interchangeable armament, excepting the base model, which could not carry the tactical nukes.
K1R – The base K1R model was made in the early years of the war, and lacked the coordination and reactive armor of the later models.
K1R-M – The ‘M’ K1R added in the reactive armor, and included upgraded railguns with more advanced scan and target tracking systems. These mechs carried two missiles in launcher pods in their backs. They could be (and often were) upgraded to support the tactical nuke warheads on the missiles.
K1R-T – The ‘T’ model was a similar configuration to the ‘M’, but came standard with tactical nuclear warheads. Instead of the pair of launchers the K1R-M sported, the ‘T’ model carried as many as twelve missiles.
K1R-X-4 – ‘M’ and ‘T’ models both saw upgrades from Finaeus and the ISF engineers, which made them capable of functioning as AM or K1R models. None of the K1Rs opted to operate as AMs, but their 4th generation frames had considerable upgrades to power and armor. X-4 models have the ability to swap armament with AM models as well.
K2R-MBM – Based on designs Corporal Stripes stole at the end
of the war, the K2R-MBM took the idea of a tank mech and raised the bar.
The Genevian military never had the energy to power their plans for the K2R mechs, but with miniaturized critical energy modules and ISF-grade SC batteries, the dreams of the GAF came into being under Finaeus’s guidance.
The K2R-MBM is piloted by two AM-4 mechs (leveraging a part of the AM-T spec); one who manages movement and main-arm weapons, and another who controls the secondary arms, defensive systems, and secondary weapons systems.
On top of existing armament, the K2R-MBM brings to bear variable density proton beams, nanonet missiles, electron lashes, mortars (both thermite and HE), rapid-fire DPU cannons, as well as ground-hugger missiles.
The mech also functions as a re-armament center for its squad, and an attack drone deployment system.
AM (Assault Mech)
The AM mechs represented the bulk of the GAF’s mechanized infantry program. It is estimated that over ten million AMs were created during the war, and over one hundred thousand are known to have survived. Many joined mercenary outfits or militaries of other nations.
AM model mechs were a ‘torso-only’ design, where none of the human’s arms and legs were retained. The original idea was to make their cores swappable with K1R models, but it turned out that the mechanized infantry design of the AM models was generally more effective than the ‘walking tank’ design of the K1R models.
AM models were versatile mechs that had swappable loadouts. The improvements over time were mostly centered around human-mech integration, armor, and power systems.
AM mechs were often outfitted with chainguns, shoulder-mounted railguns, and electron beams.
Without known exception, AM mechs were always male.
Sub-Models
AM-1 – The original model of AM. Fewer than 100,000 AM-1 mechs were made, and none were known to have survived the war.
AM-2 – The AM-2 mechs quickly superseded the AM-1s, with better armor, more efficient power systems, and superior human-mech integrations.