by M. D. Cooper
Vi ducked her head and gave a slight nod, following Silva’s directions.
HOME ON THE RANGE
STELLAR DATE: 01.07.8942 (Adjusted Years)
LOCATION: 10k south of Farthingway Airstrip, Luddow
REGION: Nottingham System, Genevian Federation
The crack of Vi’s GNR-41B echoed through the hills once again.
Rika watched the rock on the hillside two kilometers away to see if this round would hit. It did not. A shower of dirt sprayed out of the ground a meter away from the rock, and Vi groaned with disgust.
“Dammit, Rika! I just can’t seem to deal with the wind drift.”
“It’s a bitch,” she agreed, half watching Silva as the corporal ambled down the slope into the valley below.
It had surprised Rika that the team leader had left her to train Vi alone. Silva had never wandered off like this before—she usually enjoyed target practice.
Maybe she’s tired of training FNMs just to watch them die a few months later.
“I don’t get why I can’t just use the targeting system,” Vi complained. “It could hit that rock, right?”
Rika pointed up at the fluffy white clouds drifting overhead. “See those cumulous formations, private?”
“Uh…sure.”
“Imagine that those are dark clouds of smoke. Some from airburst explosions, some from ships coming down out of orbit. Now see that big cloud over there?”
“The one that looks like a tree?”
“Yup. That’s a nuke’s mushroom cloud.” She reached down and picked up a handful of moist, loamy soil and smeared it across the front of Vi’s helmet. “You’ve got a squishie’s blood and guts sprayed across you. EM from all the shit is fucking with your scan suite, we’re running and gunning. That rock over there is a Nietzschean crew-served weapon that’s going to mow Hammerfall down like we’re a bunch of fucking bar servitors. If you don’t blow a hole in those bastards, we’re all eating dirt, so shoot the shit out of them!”
Vi widened her stance and turned her head to direct a clean side of her helmet toward the rock. She drew in a slow breath and took careful aim. Just before she fired, Rika shoved her in the back, and she missed her target again.
The woman groaned in frustration, and Rika shrugged. “Shit happens, Vi. Again.”
The FNM turned her head like she was going to say something, but then paused and leveled her GNR. Rika pulled her hand back to push Vi again, but just as she was about to hit the FNM, Vi dropped to a knee, rested the barrel of her GNR across it, and fired.
A second later, the rock exploded.
“Fuck yeah!” Vi shouted as she stood and turned to Rika. “I was watching you and the rock simultaneously! When I saw you about to hit me again, I just knew what to do!”
Rika wished she could give the woman a reassuring smile, but gave a thumbs up, instead. “That was some damn fine shooting, Vi. Now let’s see if you can do it twenty more times. Then we’ll move on to doing it while you’re running.”
“Running? That’s impossible.”
Rika grabbed a cloth from the top of the ammo crate they’d brought with them and wiped down Vi’s helmet. “Pay attention, Vi.”
She took off at a light jog along the hillside, which for an SMI-2 was a sedate twenty kilometers per hour. She held out her GNR-41B at ninety degrees from her direction of travel and chose a series of red-tinged rocks on the far hillside.
Two shots and two rocks exploded. She unfolded the second hinge in her legs and picked up the pace, hitting seventy kilometers per hour.
Two more rocks met their end.
Then Rika turned back the way she’d come and poured on her full speed, holding her GNR across her chest as her HUD registered a speed of one hundred fifteen kilometers per hour.
She fired again and one shot missed, but one struck true. She fired a third time and took out the first rock.
Slowing to an easy lope, she circled back around to Vi.
“Holy shit, Rika. How…?”
“Practice, Vi. You just have to practice. That was without my automated targeting systems on, as well. If they had been, that one rock wouldn’t have seen a miss. Granted…in combat, the targets move and shoot back, but you can see what’s possible. We’re in this together, though. It’s not a competition.”
“Still…I don’t think I can do that,” Vi said with a shake of her head.
Rika reached out and grasped the meter-long barrel of the GNR-41B that was the end of Vi’s left arm. “What’s this feel like?”
“Uhh…nothing.”
“You sure?” Rika asked, wondering if maybe Vi’s gun-arm wasn’t properly integrated with her neurological systems.
“Well, I guess I can kinda feel it.”
“When I touch the barrel of my GNR, it feels like when I used to tap a fingernail on a solid surface. I can’t feel with the fingernail, but I can feel with what it’s attached to. Think of the GNR like it’s your index finger, Vi. It’s not a gun that you’ve got attached to the stubby remains of your left arm; it is your left arm. You have to train your mind to think that way.”
“Do you always leave this arm on?” Vi asked. “Do they let us put a ‘regular’ arm in its place when we’re not in combat?”
Rika laughed and shook her head. “Vi. We’re always in combat. Besides, you need that weapon to be a part of your body. It doesn’t come off ‘til you can do what I just did.”
“But…I want to feel human again, Rika…I thought that when we’re alone….”
“We follow orders, Vi. We follow orders and we keep at the top of our game to stay alive. So far as we know, there’s only one way out of this war.”
“Through winning?” she asked hopefully.
“Winning? Fucked if that ever happens. No, through death. Haven’t you been paying attention?”
Through the afternoon, Rika continued to teach Vi about her weapon systems, what her improved body was capable of, and how to work as a team in combat. The woman was by no means proficient, but she had promise. At the very least, she took advice and feedback without complaint and argument.
Though Rika saw it more with the squishies, she’d seen a number of mechs behave like they were skilled warriors just because they had armor for skin.
Rika knew all too well that armor only helped so much.
By the time The Knot—what the locals called their day star—began to set over the northeastern horizon, Vi had become mildly proficient with her GNR’s projectile-firing mode, and Rika was considering letting her try out the electron beam.
Silva had recently reappeared over a hilltop to the west, briefly visible in the dimming light until she topped the crest and was lost in the valley’s gloom.
Rika’s tone held more accusation than she intended, but she couldn’t help but remember how lost and alone she’d felt when Hammerfall had taken her in. Silva and Kelly had treated her like family, and t
hat had saved her.
Why Silva wasn’t giving Vi that same welcome didn’t make sense to Rika.
I mean…I was a replacement for a sister they’d lost then, too.
Rika knew that all too well. Kelly had often thrown her seniority in Rika’s face. Most of the time it was playful, sometimes less so.
The corporal didn’t reply, but Rika could see the woman’s shoulders slump as she picked her way across the valley floor.
Rika was trying to think of something else to say to her team lead when she saw a heat bloom just ten meters behind the SMI-2.
For a moment, Rika thought it was just an animal—perhaps a rabbit or a muskrat that had come out of a hole.
No, Silva’s not in stealth, and she’s not walking softly. No animal comes out of hiding that close to a mech.
“Vi,” Rika turned to the mech next to her. “Load up your GNR with rounds. DPU and projectile. We’re going to have one last hurrah before we go back to the airstrip.”
Vi nodded and turned to the ammo crate, opening up a box of the depleted uranium sabot rounds and feeding them into her gun-arm’s weapon mount.
Rika stepped up next to her and yanked a belt-fed ammo box out of the crate, clipping it onto her hip before she fed the starter tab into her gun arm.
Her weapon was already filled with the uranium sabot rounds. She didn’t go anywhere without a full mag of DPUs.
“What’s our target?” Vi asked, trying to sound casual—as though today wasn’t the first time she’d ever fired a weapon.
“We’re going to hit that hillside on the right,” Rika directed.
Vi twisted her body in the direction her teammate had pointed. “Won’t we be firing over Silva’s head?”
“Gonna scare the shit out of her, too,” she said with a laugh and a nod. “Just don’t hit her. She’ll be pissed.”
Vi made a strange gulping sound and then ducked her head. “Got it.”
Rika felt a sense of pride that this woman—who had barely known which way to feed a bullet into a clip at the beginning of the day—wasn’t going to back down from the challenge.
“Oh, Vi?”
“Yeah?”
“Turn on your targeting systems.”
Rika picked out a few rocks on the far hillside, barely visible in the deepening gloom, and directed Vi to hit them in rapid succession with projectile rounds while she watched Silva, waiting for any further sign that the stealthed enemy was tailing the corporal.
She was beginning to think that what she’d seen before must have been nothing more than an especially dumb animal when she spotted the heat bloom again. This time higher off the ground—and only three meters behind Silva.
Without a second thought, Rika fired a DPU at the target. The sabot burst from the muzzle of her GNR, and then its propellant lit, flaring brightly as it sped across the valley.
Less than a second later, the bolt of uranium hit a solid object behind Silva, and a kinetic explosion boomed across the valley floor.
Rika moved to another one of the large boulders that dotted the hillside. Before she’d reached cover, a shot hit the ground next to her, and she traced its origin, responding with a series of projectile rounds sent in the general vicinity of the new shooter.
In the valley below, Silva was running backwards, firing projectile rounds at the figure Rika had hit. Most of the attacker was still in stealth, but there was a telltale patch of scorched armor hovering above the ground.
Silva’s rounds only ricocheted off the mostly-stealthed enemy. The enemy was still too close for another DPU shot, and an electron beam’s discharge might damage her as well.
Muzzle flash appeared in front of the armored figure, and Silva dove to the side, taking advantage of the dubious cover offered by a low slab of rock and firing her own rounds in response.
Both the SMI-2s on the hillside fired in unison. Rika hit the same spot on the attacker as her first shot, and Vi’s hit a little higher. Then the enemy’s torso—or what she suspected to be their torso—exploded.
Weapons fire rang out from the far side of the hill, some striking around Rika and Vi’s positions, some splashing off the rock that Silva was lying in the lee of.
Silva was up and sprinting as she said the last word, and Rika fired shots and fed targets to Vi as fast as she could. She wasn’t certain if they took out any enemies, but they kept the Niets pinned well enough that Silva only took a few hits, which her armor managed to shed.
Thirty seconds later, Silva dove behind a large boulder twenty meters down the slope and leant back against it, chest heaving.
Rika was about to ask the corporal if she’d called the attack in, when a general announcement came over the platoon-wide combat net.
MEAT THE MECHS
STELLAR DATE: 01.07.8942 (Adjusted Years)
LOCATION: 10k south of Farthingway Airstrip, Luddow
REGION: Nottingham System, Genevian Federation
Silva had worked her way up to Rika and Vi’s position and was availing herself of the ammo crate—after pulling it behind another of the large boulders.
Once the corporal was re-stocked, Rika moved to Silva’s position and pulled the woman’s AR104 off her back and set it into an auxiliary mount on her right forearm. The socket was a bit twisted, and Rika lashed a cargo strap around the weapon to hold it secure. Then she gave Silva a knock on the head to signal that she was all set.
Rika activated her armor’s stealth and slipped around the edge of the boulder. She moved through the grass and scrub on the hill with great care. Her goal was to crest the hill behind her team before moving west to flank the enemy.
She’d considered moving straight down the valley they were in, but her drones had
picked up some movement on the far side of the ridge behind the trio of SMI-2s, and she wanted to be sure it was just wildlife—much of which was actively fleeing the area—before she moved on.
Cresting the hill was tricky because the passage would silhouette her against the setting sun to the northeast. In theory, her stealth systems should keep her masked, but she didn’t really like testing their effectiveness when she didn’t have to.
Instead, she angled toward a depression in the ridgeline that would let her cross without undue risk. It took her two minutes to reach it, and one more to traverse its boulder-strewn slopes to the far side of the ridge.
Rika released another pair of drones to fly close overhead—her initial set were now a kilometer up, surveilling the entire battlefield.
She paid a sliver of attention to Vi and Silva’s chatter, the latter barking orders to the former. Vi sounded cowed, but was still responding and taking shots. Rika saw the FNM’s estimated kill count begin to climb on the combat net and could hear a measure of respect growing in Silva’s voice.
The girl must have played a lot more shooting sims than she let on, Rika thought as she picked up the pace, her drones and personal scan not detecting any enemy activity on the north side of the ridge.
By some serendipitous sinister chance, at the exact moment Silva said ‘look out’, weapons fire poured down on Rika.
She was in a clear space with a few boulders nearby—an ideal spot for an ambush, now that she paid closer attention to her surroundings.
Fuck. Pay attention to what you’re doing, Rika.
Her HUD flagged a half-dozen shooters, and she cast about for nearby cover. The north side of the ridge didn’t have nearly as many boulders as the southern face, and she felt a momentary flare of panic.
The quick survey had revealed that all the available cover was already occupied by Niets.