by M. D. Cooper
There was no husband in her life, but that was normal in Thebes. Long-term spousal relationships were rare.
Rika swallowed, forcing down her uncertainty. She had just found a place where she fit in. Failing to complete this mission would put that in jeopardy.
It was distasteful, but it was her job. It was what she was.
* * * * *
The time slipped past 8:00, and Rika re-checked her GNR-41C, making sure the uranium sabot rounds were ready to fire and crosschecking her targeting reticules.
Several presidential guards had passed by fifteen minutes before without giving the tree she was in so much as a second glance—after that, no one else operating in an official capacity came by.
This surprised Rika. She had expected to see several more guards keeping ahead of the president; so far, she had only seen a woman and two kids run past.
Another minute slipped by, and then Jerry reached out to her.
She wondered if Jerry remembered that he hadn’t reactivated her compliance chip. Either way, it was nice to get an order and not feel the warning from Discipline in the back of her mind.
If he had remembered and left it off, she owed him one hell of a thank you.
Once on the ground, Rika pulled off the GNR-41C and slipped it back under her robe. She started moving through the brush, but then remembered her helmet. After quickly removing it, she rewrapped her head in her scarf before replacing her cowl.
She reached the path a minute later and jogged to the meet-up point where the rest of Basilisk was waiting.
The hoverbikes were out, set up beside the truck, and Jerry and Leslie were sitting on the back, chests heaving from their run.
“You guys out of shape or something?” Rika asked with a grin.
“Har har,” Leslie replied between breaths.
Rika laughed aloud and said something in response to Leslie, while replying to Jerry over the Link.
* * * * *
Rika sped down the streets of Berlin at over three hundred kilometers per hour, with four police bikes and two air-cavs hot on her tail. Ahead, she periodically caught sight of Jerry and Leslie on their bikes, weaving in and out of the slower street traffic.
A car pulled out from the side of the road, and Rika boosted her hoverbike, jumping it into the air and over the car. She nearly hit another vehicle, and swerved sharply to avoid it. Behind her, a car also swerved, and slammed into another, obstructing the road.
Now that was more like it. The harder the pursuit, the better.
A map of the city streets floated over her vision, and she saw that after a right in three blocks, they would be just two blocks from the government parking garage.
She slowed the bike and dropped her foot, dragging it along the street to swing the bike around the corner, and then she jammed on the throttle again. Ahead, Jerry approached the parking garage and fired into the guard booth.
Instantaneously, stop posts jumped up and turrets dropped down, firing on Jerry as he sped off. Leslie was just a second behind him, and she tossed a detpack at the entrance to the garage. Barne was monitoring feeds, and blew the pack at just the right moment for maximum damage.
At least Rika hoped it was maximum damage. She scanned the entrance, trying to see if any of the stop posts had been taken out. Her vision cycled through several modes and picked up a gap wide enough for her bike.
Rika passed through it a second later. One of the turrets sputtered a few shots at her, but none did any noticeable damage.
She slammed on the bike’s rear brakes and turned left up the ramp. Guns fired on her the whole way, but their tracking wasn’t fast enough to deal with an overpowered hoverbike ridden by a mech who felt no fear—at least, no fear about this.
Six levels later, she was on the roof of the parking garage. Rika got her bearings and pushed the bike’s throttle wide open. It bucked, rising up as it raced across the rooftop, and Rika hit the edge at exactly the three hundred and twenty-two kilometers per hour Barnes said she needed.
Except she didn’t hit the edge. She ramped off a car and sailed through the air, waiting for the prescribed ten-count to pass.
Time seemed to slow, and she looked around, her view augmented by her two-seventy vision.
Ahead loomed the capitol building and the east wing where the president was having her meeting. Below her laid a few smaller buildings and a park. As Rika passed over the park, she pushed off the hoverbike, sending it down and her up.
Four missiles streaked out from hidden defense points, targeting the bike. Rika watched, soaring higher, as the four missiles reached the bike at almost the same moment.
Right before impact, the bike exploded.
The blast gave Rika the extra push she needed to make it up to the building’s roof. Unfortunately, the force also sent her cartwheeling through the air, so when she landed, it was on a skylight.
A thousand kilograms of mech, steel, and high-density glass fell into the room below just as the remains of the bike smashed into one of the room’s windows and fell to the ground.
Huh…the window did hold up. They should put that glass on their skylights.
Rika looked around, her locator systems finding her on the building layout she had saved that first night when she had reviewed Basilisk’s intel on the operation.
This was the room; the president should be there.
One more look around the room now that the dust had settled revealed that something had been going on. Holosheets were still on the table, along with glasses of water, and some jackets were still draped over chairs.
The president had been here just moments before.
She plotted the most expeditious route through the Capitol and took off, smashing through the door and rushing down the corridor beyond. Several men and women were approaching, all armed and wearing medium armor. Rika pulled her JE78 rifle off her back and fired four rapid pulse shots, knocking two people over and pushing the others aside. One tried to grab at her as she ran past, but she slapped h
is arm out of the way; the crunch of his bones snapping reached her augmented ears even over the general din of her passage.
She turned left at the next intersection and kept running while firing pulse blasts at anyone who got in her way. Her plan didn’t require a return trip; the squishies could chase after her as fast as they wanted, they weren’t going to catch her.
Rika passed under a large archway and into the capitol’s main atrium. She was running along a balcony toward a door at the far end when she saw a soldier in heavy armor step through a doorway across the atrium. She recognized the weapon in his hand and dove to the ground as a blue streak of lightning flashed overhead, blowing a hole in the wall beside her.
Debris fell on her, and Rika struggled to get free—fighting her robe as much as the wall. She tore the robe asunder and scurried free as a second electron beam hit where she had been a moment earlier.
Rika took off running, taking a moment to fire a return shot from her own electron beam before leaving the atrium.
Her rear vision revealed that her shot hit the soldier center mass. She wasn’t certain if his armor could withstand the beam, but she wasn’t going to stick around to find out.
Inside the next corridor, she pushed past several men and women in highly ornate robes. One called out, hurling insults that Rika barely heard as she raced on.
Rika continued her mad dash, wishing the Marauders had secured drones for her armor. She constantly had to slow at intersections to see if anyone was lying in wait, and one time almost got her head shot off as a group of soldiers opened fire on her.
She didn’t bother engaging them; instead she raced back to a nearby lift, prised the doors open, and leapt down the shaft. The elevator car was on the main floor, and she crashed through the ceiling, narrowly missing a terrified woman who spilled coffee down her robe.
“Sorry ‘bout that,” Rika said as she took off once more.
Again the incongruity of what she was doing hit her. She had no issue with the Thebans. Aside from the possibly corrupt police up north at Cheri’s villa, all her dealings with them had been pleasant and enjoyable.
And here she was, barreling through their capitol building, hell-bent on taking out their president.
She was close now to the ‘mop closet’ and as she rounded a corner, she caught sight of a group of people rushing down the hallway ahead.
Rika surged forward, banking up onto a wall, and came around the corner to see a woman—the president, her HUD confirmed—being ushered into a lift.
There were too many people around for Rika to take a shot. She’d have no way to know if she’d hit the president. No way to confirm the kill.
The action caused her to lose forward momentum, and she dropped fast. The doors were half a meter apart, and Rika gave one final push to break free of the dozen hands on her and slipped through into the elevator.
She struggled to her feet and a pulse rifle fired into her torso. Rika reached out, grabbed the weapon, and pulled it free from the shooter. Four hostiles, as well as the president, lit up on her HUD. Two were without armor—one of which was the man she had just disarmed—and the other two were in heavy armor.
One of the heavily armored guards pushed the president into the back corner and protected her bodily while the other opened fire on Rika. She stepped in close, past the man’s short rifle, and punched him in the throat.
His armor cracked but didn’t break. Rika was about to hit him again when she felt her right arm pulled back. She saw that the other two guards had grabbed the barrel of her GNR and were trying to pull her away from the president.
In the close quarters of the lift, Rika could barely maneuver her left arm—but she was able to swing it enough to lift the two men into the air and slam them into the elevator’s ceiling.
The armored guard took advantage of Rika’s distraction to pull out a sidearm and unload a magazine into her helmet. Rika gasped in surprise as her visor cracked, but it held against the point-blank fire.
She lifted her left leg up and sank her claws into the elevator’s wall, and then punched the man again, straightening her leg at the same time.
This time the man’s gorget broke; so did his neck. As he fell, the two unarmored guards were rising. They scrambled to their feet just as the lift doors opened. Rika reached for the president as the armored guard rushed her out, but the two men pulled Ariana back.
“Enough!” Rika yelled. She unslung her JE78 rifle and unloaded a quartet of pulse shots into the two men, before spinning and chasing the president and her guard across a foyer and through a massive blast door that was slowly closing.
She slipped in with plenty of room to spare, only to come face-to-face with a pair of Assault Mechs. She had met some of these guys during the war. Mostly they were made from large men; like a tank version of a scout mech, but not large and clumsy like a K1R. Unless she missed her guess, these two were model threes.
Rika surveyed the room and saw that it was a large foyer with thick pillars, five-meter-high ceilings, and a number of desks and consoles along two walls. The fourth wall had a number of crates stacked against it.
The guard all but carried the president past the two mechs and through a door amidst the consoles. Rika wondered for a brief moment—during which the AM-3s raised their chainguns—if they were under compliance or were still making war with their freedom. Like she was.
“Guys…do you really want to do this? We were on the same side once,” she said, smiling pleasantly—even though they couldn’t see it behind her helmet.
“Stand down, SMI-2,” one of the AM-3s said in a sharp tenor.
“Or don’t,” the other shrugged, his voice gravelly and deep.
Rika knew that if she backed down now, death would be the best possible outcome she could hope for.
“No can do,” Rika said, and fired one of her uranium bolts at the AM-3 on her right. He saw her GNR rise and moved to the side—but not far enough.
The bolt hit his left arm where the chaingun was mounted and blew it clear off. The AM-3 models, unlike the SMI-2s, did not have any part of their organic limbs remaining, so the man only grimaced as the stump of twisted metal sticking out of his left shoulder twitched and sparked.
Rika knew that a fight against two of these mechs would be one of the most difficult she’d ever had, but a part of her reveled in the opportunity to test her mettle against them.
She closed with the one she had wounded, knowing that the best way to keep the other from bringing his formidable ordnance to bear was to have him run the risk of shooting his teammate.
Hopefully these two like one another.
She remembered hearing that the AM-2s had a weak spot on the edges of their chest plates where the armor connected to the hard mount on their bodies—hopefully it hadn’t been fixed on the 3s. She toggled her JE78 rifle to kinetic slugs and fired a rapid burst of the two-centimeter rounds at the weak spot, spinning the already-wounded AM-3 to the side and driving him back.
Though Rika tried to keep the one-armed AM-3 between her and his gravelly voiced companion, she wasn’t entirely successful, and he fired off a trio of blasts from his pulse rifle, pushing her back into the open.
The whine of the chaingun got her moving, and Rika dove behind a pillar as rounds chased after her. Two struck her in the side and one got her in the ass, but her armor reg
istered no penetration—though the plate on the side of her butt was fractured.
Luckily the Marauders didn’t believe in playing fair—Team Basilisk even less so—and Rika pulled a burn-stick from the pouch strapped to her left thigh and primed it for an impact ignition.
The burn sticks were thermite incendiaries modified to stick to their targets for maximum damage. One stick may not make it through an AM-3s armor, but it certainly would scare the shit out of them.
Rounds poured past the pillar, chipping away at its sides as the two AMs spread out, narrowing the cone of safety behind it. Rika considered her options and then leapt, twisting in the air so that her feet were up and her head was down.
She prayed her aim was true and almost shouted out in triumph when her feet clamped onto a decorative capital on the top of the pillar. She twisted around the pillar, threw the burn stick at the already-wounded AM-3, and then twisted around the other way, and aimed her GNR at the other AM-3.
He had anticipated her move and let loose with another barrage from his chaingun.
It would have hit, too, if the capital hadn’t torn off the top of the pillar. Rika fired her round as she fell; the depleted uranium bolt struck the AM-3 in the head and snapped his neck back, but not enough to have broken it.
The front of the mech’s helmet was a ruined mass, and he tore at it with his other hand, desperate to pull it off and regain sight.
Rika wasted no time and fired her electron beam at the struggling mech, burning a hole clear through his head.
She hadn’t heard any screaming from the other AM-3 and assumed her burn stick had missed—but when she peered around the pillar, a pulse blast hit her square in the face and threw her backward, exposing her again.
As she struggled to her feet, she saw the second AM-3 was limping toward her, his right hip a mess of melted steel and blood.
“Gonna fuck you up,” he said, his voice filled with rage. “Benny was a good friend. You’re going to regret this.”
Rika sprinted away as the AM-3 fired kinetic rounds from his rifle at her. Three bullets traced a line down her thigh and shattered the armor plating, then a fourth hit and tore through the front of her leg.