by M. D. Cooper
If the K1R meant to take them out with one missile, it was going to be a big one, and Rika sprinted away at top speed, hoping that Kelly had the sense to do the same. She was half a kilometer from her previous location when a blinding light appeared a dozen meters off the ground.
She ducked behind a large rock, and gripped the ground with the three claws on each of her feet as the nuclear shockwave—and the hot, radioactive wind that followed—washed over her.
Fuck! Tacnukes!
So much for a livable world. The Nietzscheans were pulling out all the stops. She thanked the stars that she was leeward from the wind, and allowed a minute for the stiff breeze to blow away at least some of the fallout before she peered around the rock.
She pinged her drones and only two responded. She directed them toward her teammates’ positions, hoping to pick up a signal as she released her final passel to aid in the search.
She looked at the rock she had taken cover behind, and took a second to appreciate that nearly half of it had melted away. The ground between her and the ridge was a smoking ruin, shrouded by the mushroom cloud that rose overhead.
A note on her HUD provided an estimate as to the weapon’s probable yield: 100 kilotons. More than enough to melt through an SMI2’s armor and fry the meat inside.
In a minute, the K1R was going to come over the top, and she prayed it didn’t have another tacnuke in his back pocket, because that wasn’t the sort of ordnance she wanted to dodge again.
As if on cue, the mech topped the rise; its four-meter height a dark shadow in the dim morning sun, further obscured by the dust and ash in the air from the nuclear blast.
She dashed up the smoldering valley’s far slope at top speed, aiming to put another rise between her and the enemy.
The bark of Kelly’s AR97 confirmed that Rika’s teammate wasn’t going to heed her advice. She decided not to waste Kelly’s bravery, and made the top of the next rise before dashing down the far side, then north fifty meters and back up, where she again fired her electron beam at the mech.
Her probes had kept it in sight, and she only needed a second to lock onto the monster and strike it once more at the same place as before.
The mech took the hit, and, after the shower of sparks and lightning, its left arm began to jerk erratically.
Rika gave thanks that no more 50mm rounds would come their way. While her beam rifle recharged, she pulled the AR97 off its latch on her back and fired from the hip with its 15mm rounds. She spent the clip in twenty seconds while the K1R on the far rise fought with its spasming limb.
Rika was glad to see Kelly making proper use of the distraction, as she raced up the rise discarding the twisted barrel of her GNR-41B’s sniper rifle in her wake.
Once her teammate was over the ridge, Rika dashed down the far side of the slope and met up with her.
Once it was clear, Kelly slapped her AR97 into the gun mount, and drew her DR88 handgun free from its thigh-holster.
Kelly cocked her grey oval head.
Rika gave a mental snort as Kelly turned and raced a hundred meters to the north before cresting the rise and opening fire with her AR97. Rika didn’t waste any time, moving to the south and lining up to fire as the K1R fired a salvo at Kelly from its heavy repeater.
Her teammate dodged the first few shots, but then one ricocheted off her arm and spun her around.
Rika called back as she moved into new cover as well.
Rika watched the K1R through the eyes of her drones as it descended into the valley and began to climb the slope toward Kelly’s position. She braced herself to make another shot, when the enemy mech leapt into the air, powerful chem boosters pushing it up over the rise to land just five meters away from Kelly.
The enemy hunched forward, ignoring the weapons fire, intent on getting its massive hands around the SMI-2 mech in front of it.
Rika didn’t give a moment’s thought as she rushed toward the K1R, her double-kneed legs pushing her up over a hundred kilometers per hour. When she was twenty meters away, she leapt, barely passing over a stream of projectile fire the enemy casually sprayed in her direction as it grabbed Kelly by her right arm.
She landed on the K1R, the claws on her feet clamping onto its shoulders. Rika switched modes on her AR97, and fired a stream of rail-accelerated pellets into the joints where the K1R’s arms met its body. Half the pellets ricocheted off—a few striking her own armor—but she kept firing. Four seconds later, the enemy mech’s left arm—the one dangling Kelly’s body in the air—fell limp.
Kelly crashed to the ground, and the K1R began to flail wildly, attempting to shake Rika free as she continued to fire into its body. She spent a second clip, and then crouched low and leapt straight up, firing her electron beam at point-blank range.
With few atmospheric nuclei between her weapon and the target, the bolt of electrons tore through the front of the K1R, splitting its torso wide open.
Rika landed on the ground in front of the K1R as the massive metal monster fell backward.
She turned to Kelly, who was struggling to her feet, her right arm a mangled mess of twisted carbon and steel and soaked in blood.
Rika made a move toward her teammate, but Kelly waved her off.
Rika nodded and turned back to the mech, half-curious, half-scared to see what was inside. She knew that the K1R models were skinners…meaning that they still wore human skin inside their cocoon. If they weren’t pulled out and cleaned with some frequency—something that rarely happened in the field—they would be a stinking mess.
She approached the fallen enemy and saw that her beam had cut clear through to the cocoon inside. Rika slipped her AR97 back onto its latch before gripping one side of t
he gash with her right foot, and pulling on the other side with her left hand.
With a deafening shriek, the split widened enough that she could see the person—a man, from the looks of it—inside. He certainly lived up to the ‘mech-meat’ moniker. He was nothing more than a limbless torso, covered in bright red, welt-covered skin. Pus oozed from sores, mostly around the bio ports on his body, where cables and tubes just punctured his flesh wherever it was convenient.
Rika didn’t know what to say to the ruin of a man. Only one thing came to mind, and she activated her external speakers.
“I’m sorry.” The artificial voice the Genevian military had granted her grated out the toneless words.
The man had a pair of tubes going down his throat, but it seemed he possessed the ability to speak audibly, as a mechanical voice rasped, “What are you waiting for? Do it.”
“How did they turn you?” Kelly asked. “How can you kill your people?”
“What does it matter,” the ruined man said from within the K1R’s cocoon. “We’re all just meat. All we do is kill. You, them, it doesn’t matter. It’s what we are now. Killers.”
Rika heard his words—angry, resolute—but his eyes said something else. They held a pain she knew all too well.
The man was right about one thing: they were killers.
She took a step back and switched her GNR-41B to its projectile mode before leveling the barrel at his head. Rika whispered through her suit’s speakers, “I release you.”
The weapon gave its nearly inaudible snap, and the man’s head exploded.
Rika turned away, but her three-sixty vision didn’t let her stop seeing it. She focused on Kelly, wishing she had never seen the thing inside the armor behind her.
It was a fate none of them deserved, but that they would all earn in the end.
OVERWHELMED
STELLAR DATE: 12.01.8941 (Adjusted Years)
LOCATION: Western plains of Naera
REGION: Parson System, Genevian Federation
Weapons fire came from the ridge to the west, and the SNAP-PING of projectiles hitting the ground around them brought the two women back to their senses.
They dove behind the K1R’s fallen mass and surveyed their surroundings. At least nine of the Nietzscheans in powered armor stood atop the rise, raining fire down on them. Rika would bet her bottom dollar—if she got paid for this shit—that their enemies were out there as well, moving in to flank them.
Rika slid the barrel of her sniper rifle over the downed mech’s body and fired a pair of depleted uranium rods at one of the Nietzscheans, and then a second pair of rods at another. The rods struck true, and both targets were picked up and flung off the ridge by the force of the impacts.
Rika and Kelly fell prone. A ‘party’ was team Hammerfall’s name for the special grenades only the fireteam leads got. Parties detonated in the air, and small, guided packets flew out and attached to enemy targets—most often the head, if they could manage.
Once attached, the packets ignited a thermite charge and burned clear through whatever they were stuck to. The mad flailing dance anyone unfortunate enough to be near a party when it went off was what caused the women to give it the name.
A second later, they heard the resounding crack as the party exploded. The screaming wasn’t far behind. Rika watched through her drones as seven of the Niets began tearing off their armor. They gave it a three-count before she and Kelly fired on the other five enemies, who also were frantically checking themselves over.
Ten seconds later, all twelve Nietzschean soldiers were down, either from the party, the three women’s weapons fire, or the extreme levels of radiation that waited for them outside of their armor from both the nuke and Rika’s liberal use of her electron beam.
Rika didn’t share the sentimental feelings Silva displayed; maybe because Silva had been a real member of society with a future back in the world. Rika had never even had a home or a family. If it weren’t for the brutal mutilation of her body and the compliance chip in her head, the military would be a step up from her prior life.
Which wasn’t saying much at all.
Sometimes she wondered if she should stop fighting so hard and pray that the Nietzscheans would win. Although, after seeing the meat in that K1R, she was certain that the Niets wouldn’t be any better than the Genevians. Maybe they could both lose equally and she could figure out a way to get free.
Rika shook her head. Every option was shit. All that mattered was just surviving today so that she could make it to tomorrow. At some point, it had to get better.
Silva led them along a route that paralleled the one they had taken on the way out, just one valley to the east. Behind them, Rika’s probes picked up movement; probably the flanking troops that had been going to hit them before Silva threw the party.
The enemy was almost a kilometer to their rear, but that was well within weapons range. She signaled for the others to take cover as she sent a probe high over the valley to get a clear view.
Sure enough, an enemy platoon with good camo gear was picking its way toward them. These soldiers had different armor than the ones in the convoy—scout gear, not heavy, fully-powered stuff. Though their armor was weaker, scout troops were usually better soldiers…. Unlike the ones who stood on ridgelines to fire. They were just FNG cannon fodder.
Rika said with a mental smile,
Silva rose from her cover and crept toward the ravine.
In short order, the three women had planted their full supply of mines in the ravine and along the eastern slopes on either side of it—just in case any of the enemy scouts went around the gorge. Which they should, if they were smart.
All told, twenty-eight hidden explosives waited for the enemy. After taking up positions behind three separate piles of rock on the east side of th
e valley, they settled in to wait.
Less than five minutes later, Rika caught sight of an enemy drone as it crested the hill. She was surprised it was so easy to spot, but then she realized that the enemy probably expected ambush, and the drones were scanning the ground.
She pulled a feed from team Hammerfall’s drones, which were almost a kilometer overhead at this point…except for a few comm relay units, which sat on the ground between their positions. From there, she could see that the enemy drones, by some miracle, had missed their mines. She prayed that the enemy troops wouldn’t follow the paths of their drones too closely.
The mines gave off no EM signatures, so unless the enemy was running ground sonar with every step—something that would give the soldiers away like a beacon in the night—they wouldn’t be able to spot the traps.
Through her overhead view, Rika saw a few of the enemy troops begin to enter the ravine, while the rest scaled the hillsides.
She didn’t envy the poor assholes that had to go through the narrow gash between the hills, but she knew it was necessary. Their team had to clear it. If they didn’t, they’d never know if their enemy was hiding within, waiting either to strike them from the rear, or to slip off to the west and escape.
Then, just when she began to wonder if the Nietzscheans in the ravine had turned around to back out, one of the mines detonated. A cry rose up, and then several more mines exploded—likely the ones to the rear that had been placed to block a rapid retreat.
As the women watched, several of the Nietzschean scouts came over the ridge, staying low and using cover well enough that they would be almost impossible to hit. Rika wondered if maybe their drones had managed to detect the hidden explosives. She was getting ready to fire her GNR, when another mine went off. This time there was no scream as one of the Niets’ bodies flew into the air, and the scouts on the hillside all froze in place.