by M. D. Cooper
Rika rolled onto her side and clasped his hand. “Chase, I want to spend my forever with you, but this is what I have to do right now. It’s who I am—I’ve accepted that. But I promise it won’t last forever.”
“How can I believe that?” Chase asked. “You’ve gone from loathing what you are to loving it.”
“Because…maybe deep down, where I’m too scared to admit it…I think I want to have my great-great grandchildren at my knee someday.”
Chase turned his head and met her gaze. “Mean it?”
Rika nodded, feeling her eyes grow moist. “I think I do. I really do.”
THE MEET
STELLAR DATE: 08.11.8949 (Adjusted Gregorian)
LOCATION: Hittis City
REGION: Iapetus, Hercules System, Septhian Alliance
“Nice place David picked for his date with Dala,” Kelly said, gesturing out the window as the three SMI-2s settled into their seats at Charlie’s Pasta and Chips.
Rika looked across the street to the restaurant David and Dala would be dining at. It wasn’t too fancy, simply named Hammurabi, but not having ‘chips’ in the name took any establishment up a notch.
“Not the sort of place our kind can visit,” Keli added.
Keli didn’t reply, but nodded as she picked up her menu with gloved hands.
Rika pulled her robe’s long sleeves back and did the same. She felt naked without her gun-arm, something that both Keli and Kelly had confessed to as well, but they were all still carrying rifles under their robes. Keli had called them their ‘security blankets’.
Rika shifted her weight carefully, keeping one leg extended under her chair to support most of her weight. She wasn’t too worried about the seat collapsing, but it wasn’t an idle concern for a mech. When they were scoping out a good location, the sturdy steel chairs at Charlie’s Pasta and Chips had played a major part in their choice of establishment.
Rika got her mirth under control.
The three women reviewed their menus, looking over the options and discussing them casually while each kept half an eye on the restaurant across the street, where David now waited for Major Dala.
“Stars. I think I’ll just have the spaghetti and meatballs,” Kelly said. “If you count the time I was on ice, I haven’t had a good spaghetti in…what, ten years?”
“They had it in the galley just last week,” Keli said as she perused her menu.
“Right,” Kelly nodded. “I think you missed the part where I said ‘good’ spaghetti.”
“Are you besmirching our ship’s cooks?” Keli asked. “Because I’m in love with all of them.”
“Points for using ‘besmirching’,” Rika commented.
“No, no besmirchment—is that even a word?—intended. They didn’t have the right sauce, is all. They should have waited for fresh tomatoes before trying it. Their menu here says all ingredients are locally sourced and that they make their sauce fresh each day.”
Keli shrugged. “OK, that’s good to see. Maybe this place is more than just the joint with the strongest chairs.”
Leslie groused.
Rika saw a waitress approach—not human, but an automaton good enough to fool casual observation. She wore a short blue skirt and white blouse with ‘Mary’ on her name tag. Rika thought her legs were a touch too long for her torso, but not so much that you’d notice at first glance.
“What can I get for you ladies to drink?” the subtly misshapen waitress automaton asked as she set three glasses of water on the table.
“Ohhhhh, drinks!” Kelly proclaimed. “I’ll take…one of your cinnamon martinis.”
“I’ll have this thing you call the cherry bomb.” Keli stabbed a finger at the menu.
“Just a glass of your best white bubbly for me,” Rika said when the automaton-waitress turned to her.
“OK, you got it. Cinnamon martini, Explosive Cherry Bomb, and a glass of our Atrium.”
The three nodded in turn, and Mary gave a nod and turned, walking to the back of the restaurant to prepare their drinks.
“Why make automatons look so perfectly human?” Keli asked. “Everyone can tell what they are.”
“Not around here, they can’t,” Rika said. “Thebans don’t mod much—at least not the ones that live on planets. They might not be able to spot a bot like our Mary.”
“Weird,” Keli replied. “Of course, I haven’t seen the inside of a restaurant for about as long as Kelly. Stavros didn’t really let us eat out a lot. And by ‘a lot’, I mean ‘ever’.”
“I imagine,” Rika said with a nod. “Stavros wasn’t much of a ‘let anyone do anything’ kinda guy.”
Keli’s eyes widened and she nodded in agreement. “Glad you put him down.”
“Was actually Barne that fired the shot,” Kelly said as she set her menu down.
Keli raised the glass of water that sat before her. “Well, when I get my drink, I’ll raise a toast to the Top. May his days of taking out evil dictators never end.”
“I’m sure he’d echo that sentiment,” Rika said, turning her gaze out the window once more. She didn’t really need to watch for Dala’s approach. Leslie would let them know when she spotted the Major, and David would confirm when she joined him.
“What was it like?” Kelly asked after a minute of silence stretched between them.
“It?” Rika asked.
“Being out in the world. After the war.”
Rika looked at the two women seated across from her and sighed. Both had been injured in the war, and subsequently found by Stavros. Neither saw the end of the fight with the Nietzscheans—saw their leaders surrender or flee. Neither had to live in the shattered remains of their nation amidst a populace that hated them
“It sucked balls,” Rika replied. “Lots of balls. All the balls. I guess it would have gone better for me if I’d joined an outfit like the Marauders—or even a gang of some sort. But I was stubborn. I wanted to try to make a go of it as a civilian.”
“Now that doesn’t surprise me.” Kelly grinned, the smile actually reaching her eyes. “You never could let go of an idea once it got into that head of yours.”
“Wish I’d been on a team like yours,” Keli said. “Kelly’s told me all about Hammerfall. You ladies kicked some major ass back in the shit.”
Mary returned as Keli spoke, and set their drinks down. “Are you ready to order, or are you still looking over the menu? Oh! I forgot to recite the specials.”
Niki replied.
Keli said she’d like to hear the specials, and Mary began to rattle them off.
Rika commented as she half-listened to Mary’s recitation.
Niki just groaned in response, and sent Rika an image of eyes rolling in exasperation.
“So, what was your favorite mission, Rika?” Keli asked once Mary departed.
Rika considered it for a moment. “You know, I really liked our mission on Parsons—I mean, except for the part where you died, Kelly. I could barely think about it for years afterward. But now…now it’s one that I can actually look back on. We kicked some major ass.”
“You saved my life twice on that mission, Rika.” The corners of Kelly’s eyes glistened, and she gave a short sniff before shaking her head. “I’ll never forget you standing atop that K1R, firing your rifle into it until it let me go.”
Keli’s brow lowered. “A K1R? Why were you fighting one of our own?”
Rika pursed her lips, and Kelly replied. “Fucking Niets turned it against us. Bastard—”
“Was a poor bastard,” Rika interrupted. “He didn’t ask for what happened to him. I gave him a good death.”
No one spoke for a moment, and then Kelly laughed. “And those are the ‘good’ memories.”
Rika stretched a hand across the table and took Kelly’s, then grabbed Keli’s as well. “No, the good memories were times like this. Sure, we didn’t have Mary bringing us the best chips this side of the cluster, but we did have each other. That was the real ‘best part’ about Hammerfall. And now we have the Marauders.”
“Rika’s Marauders,” Keli said with a silly grin. “Shit, Captain, why you such a big sap? Don’ you know we rust if we cry?”
“You might have to see Bondo about that,” Kelly smirked as she wiped a gloved hand against her cheek.
Leslie interrupted,
Rika looked out the window to see Dala, exiting a ground car and rushing through the rain to the restaurant across the street.
Rika nodded appreciatively.
Keli added.
Rika wondered about that. It would be an interesting twist. Or it just could be that Colonel Zim was as much of a hardass as Rika suspected, and Dala was happy for any excuse to get out.
Still, he’d confessed to being a poor actor, and Rika didn’t want to tax him.
The rest of the team was listening in on the conversation, though Keli and Kelly kept up some verbal chatter about the weather on Iapetus so that it didn’t seem like the entire table fell silent for no reason.
David provided a feed from his eyes on the team’s net, and Rika tapped into it, overlaying it on the right side of her vision.
Dala approached his table, and he rose to greet her. She was wearing a grey dress that had a patina of dark spots on it from the rain. Her pink hair was pulled back into a clip, from which it fell down over her shoulders. Her lips were colored to match her fuchsia eyes, and her smile seemed genuine as she took David’s hand and gave it a single shake.
“Very nice to meet you in person, David,” Dala said as she sat. “And even nicer to do it at a place like Hammurabi’s. I hear their roast chicken is superb.”
“I really don’t know the local establishments in Hittis that well,” David replied. “But no one seemed to complain about this place, so it seemed like a safe pick.”
“Weren’t you worried that I might be a vegetarian?” Dala asked. “Hammurabi’s is mostly known for their meat.”
Rika imagined that David must have shrugged or given a smile—though she couldn’t tell from his visual feed.
“I looked over your activity on the public feeds. You often post about the types of foods you prefer. It made my selection a bit easier, though it also told me that I needed to be discerning.”
Major Dala raised an eyebrow, though a smile toyed at the corners of her lips. “Did you check up on me, David of the Marauders?”
“I’m a P-COG. I check up on everything. It’s what we do.”
Dala’s smile faded. “We are all what we’re made to do.”
“That seems fatalistic,” David replied. “What have you been made to do?”
The major shook her head. “Nothing sinister. I was just thinking about how our parents shape us, then school, then our jobs.”
“Ah, and especially more so if your job is the military.”
“Doubly so, yes.”
David and Dala’s conversation moved to more trivial topics as they reviewed the menu and ordered their drinks. Rika listened with half an ear as they spoke of the Theban integration into the Septhian Alliance.
Dala was circumspect, but Rika could tell that she resented the change, though she did agree that it was likely a necessity in the fight against the Nietzscheans. Before the attack on the Albany System, the Niets moving into the Praesepe Cluster had been a worry for another day. Now it was history, and no one could argue that Thebes was in the Nie
tzscheans’ crosshairs.
On the public feeds, debate raged as to whether or not the Niets would strike the same target twice, but Rika knew they would. If there was one truth about the Niets, it was that they hated to lose.
If they lost an attack on a world or system, they would return again and again, throwing more and more resources into the conflict until they won.
During the war, Rika had often heard officers speculating about where the Niets were getting their seemingly endless resources. Though their empire was vast, there was no evidence that they had the economy to support the war they waged.
The prevailing logic was that they were being supported by the Trisilieds. That kingdom was the dominant power in the Pleiades Cluster, and had massive mining operations collecting both the dust permeating the region, and the exotic matter that streamed off the massive B-class stars that dominated the Pleiades.
Rika had kept her ear to the ground over the years—something made easy by working in places like Hal’s Hell. From what she’d heard, there was little to no chatter about major trade with the Trisilieds. Wherever the Nietzscheans had gathered their resources, it didn’t appear to be from there.
Maybe someday she’d be in a position to find out.
Across the road, David and Dala were sipping their drinks. On Rika’s side, Kelly and Keli were tucking into their meals, with Kelly letting out more than a few moans of delight as she ate her plate of spaghetti.
Leslie growled.
Rika followed up on her promise, and Kelly added five more orders, apparently planning to live on leftover takeout for the next week.