by M. D. Cooper
Rika leant back in her chair and grinned at Silva. “I have a bit of an in with Tanis.”
AVATAR
STELLAR DATE: 09.09.8949 (Adjusted Years)
LOCATION: ISS I2
REGION: Pyra, Albany System, Thebes, Septhian Alliance
Nine days after leaving Pyran space to find Silva and Amy on Hudson, Rika was back aboard the I2. This time, instead of a trip to Tanis’s cabin by the lake, she was on her way to meet with the admiral in what the message termed ‘Bridge Conference Room 1A’.
Rika found no end of amusement that this warship was more like a city than a starship. Hundreds of square kilometers of parks, enough housing for tens of thousands of people, two massive hospitals, commercial and restaurant districts….
Heck, it even has three spaceports, and that’s not counting the thousand fighter bays.
Tanis had made an offhand comment that the ISF planned to build at least two dozen ships like the I2—the Carthage, Canaan’s Sword, and Starblade being just the tip of the iceberg.
Granted, those three ships were already gone, departed through a massive jump gate that Tanis had said would be dismantled and moved after the I2 left the Albany System.
As Rika walked down the long corridor toward the bridge, she wondered about the meeting ahead. The message had indicated that Major Tim would be in attendance, plus two colonels from Marauder HQ that had come back on the ISF’s courier ship.
Would they tell her to stand down? Punish her for leaving the Hercules System without orders?
Anything was possible.
Rika breathed a heavy sigh.
Niki snorted.
As Rika was fervently hoping the same thing, she came to a large room that the I2’s visitor map listed as ‘Bridge Foyer’. The space within was devoid of furnishings, but it was filled with holos. Displays with ship’s status readouts, the stellar cartography of the Albany System, fleet tracking, solar flare monitoring, a whole series of screens dedicated to the CME that had burst off Howe two days ago, plus the flight paths of every civilian vessel within scan range.
A path was marked out on the deck, and Rika’s ship map told her to follow the left branch, but she caught sight of a figure in the center of the room, and turned to walk toward it. As she passed through layer upon layer of holos, she made out a white woman perched atop a low pillar. Long, black hair splayed out around her, waving gently like a living halo, as she manipulated virtual screens around herself.
“Priscilla?” Rika asked.
“What are you doing?” Rika asked, looking around at the thousands of displays filling the room.
“Running everything, from the looks of it,” Rika replied. “Are you…stuck there?”
Priscilla glanced down.
“Is it comfortable?” Rika asked. “I mean…couldn’t you change it to something else?”
Priscilla glanced down at the lower half of her body. She completed the sentence with a conspiratorial wink.
“Newbies?” Rika asked. “Are you going to spend less time here, and go on rescue missions and stuff?”
“Couldn’t you shorten the shift?” Rika asked. “Rotate out more often?”
A silvery laugh filled the air, a sound like a thousand tiny bells ringing.
Priscilla said the words without emotion, though Rika could detect a hint of yearning. Somehow, this strong, independent woman wanted to lose herself in the mind of an AI.
The thought almost caused Rika to physically recoil. It was an anathema to her; the stuff they made horror vids about.
Rika realized her mouth was hanging open. First she’d witnessed Tanis tearing apart matter into subatomic particles to harvest its energy and destroy Nietzscheans, and now she was listening to a woman speak of merging her mind with an AI, and being reborn as an ascended being.
Priscilla gestured to her right.
“Uh, yeah. Thanks, Priscilla. I hope I see you again before you…whatever.”
The sound of tiny bells filled the space once more, and Priscilla winked.
POWER
STELLAR DATE: 09.09.8949 (Adjusted Years)
LOCATION: ISS I2
REGION: Pyra, Albany System, Thebes, Septhian Alliance
Rika stepped into the conferen
ce room to see Tanis sitting at the head of the table, with Captain Rachel at her side, and another man she didn’t recognize next to the I2’s captain.
On the other side of the table sat Major Tim, next to a man and woman who wore Marauder uniforms. The woman bore the insignia of a lieutenant colonel, and the man was a full-bird.
“Good of you to join us, Rika,” Major Tim said, glancing at her over his shoulder as she entered the room.
Rika was a fan of symmetry—though she personally had none, what, with her gun-arm—so she sat on the ISF side of the table, next to the man she didn’t know.
The ship’s database flagged him as ‘Borden’, a colonel in the ISF, and Rika added that information to her own internal roster. From what she could tell, the ISF military was small, comparatively speaking, but they seemed to have a lot of high-ranking officers. She supposed it may have to do with the fact that they could crew a thousand-meter warship with just a dozen people.
Not a big need for grunts in their space force.
Rika hadn’t responded to Major Tim’s passive-aggressive greeting, and the Marauder Lieutenant Colonel, ‘Alice’, by the name tag Rika could now see, shot her a dirty look. “Captain, respond to the major when he addresses you.”
Rika opened her mouth to reply, but Tanis spoke up. “Colonel, it’s my fault that Rika was delayed. I asked Priscilla to clarify some intel with her. No need for recriminations, let’s get started.”
The Marauder colonel, ‘Jeremey’ his name tag read, gave Rika an unreadable smile and turned his attention to Tanis, while Major Tim contented himself with glaring at Rika, though he didn’t speak further.
Rika wasn’t surprised at his attitude in general—though she’d expected him to show more restraint in public. He must know one of the two colonels, to think he could operate with such impunity. He’d continually badgered Heather and Scarcliff, even attempting to coerce Barne while Rika had been at Hudson.
Ultimately, she’d had to instruct her company leadership to ignore the major entirely.
It was obvious what Tim had been doing. With the Old Man gone, he was trying to either prove himself to the new Marauder leadership, or consolidate control of his assets and strike out on his own.
However, with Rika controlling most of the Marauders in the Albany System, that plan hadn’t gotten very far.
Once they received word that two colonels had come back from Marauder HQ on the ISF courier, he had ceased all attempts of communication with her.
It had surprised Rika that neither of the colonels had reached out before the meeting, but it was also possible that they had decided to leave first impressions for the physical realm.
“Very well,” Lieutenant Colonel Alice replied to Tanis. “Let’s begin. It is our understanding that you wish to hire the Marauders for an operation within the Nietzschean Empire.”
“That is correct,” Tanis said as she reached for the glass of water in front of her, lifting it while she continued to speak. “The Nietzscheans need to be put down, and I believe the Marauders have enough skin in the game to pull it off.”
Colonel Jeremey folded his hands on the table and nodded, looking down for a moment before shifting his gaze back to Tanis. “True, we’ve been at war with Nietzschea for some time, and General Mill had always favored missions that would harm them, but this is a little out of our league.”
“Is it?” Tanis asked, cocking an eyebrow as she took a sip of her water. “From what I’ve seen, Marauders mop the floor with the Niets whenever your forces go head to head.”
“There are a finite number of Marauders,” Jeremey said, spreading his arms wide. “We need to stick to engagements where we can achieve clear victory with minimal losses. Recklessness in missions…like toppling the Politica, attacking a Nietzschean fleet tucked inside a gas giant, or riding to your rescue under the nose of the largest Nietzschean armada anyone has seen in decades, is not our modus operandi.”
As Jeremey spoke, both Tim and Alice fixed their unblinking gazes on Rika, and she resisted the urge to squirm in her seat. She wished she had her GNR on her right arm; she never knew what to do with two hands.
Alas, sitting at a conference table with a meter-long weapon attached to her arm was even less comfortable.
Once again, it was Tanis who came to her rescue, only a few words being necessary to change the direction of the conversation.
“Maybe it should be.”
Jeremey’s lips pressed together in a thin line, and Alice spoke up. “Would the ISF or your allies be able to offer us support on the mission?”
“Well,” Tanis began, steepling her fingers. “As I’ve already mentioned to Captain Rika and Major Tim, we’re prepared to upgrade the mechs that were involved in the action here, as well as Tim’s crews. We have a list of things we can do that will be sustainable with your lower levels of tech—not everything we have is on the table. Some of our mods would kill you in a decade if you didn’t have our maintenance systems.”
“That’s a bit vague. How will that help us beat the Nietzscheans?” Jeremey asked.
“Stealth systems, better batteries, more efficient and more reliable weapons,” Tanis ticked the items on her fingers. “We’ll take what you have and make it stronger, better, faster.”
“It’s impressive tech, sir,” Rika weighed in. “Their stealth systems render a person completely invisible to any scan we have.”
“That’s great on the ground,” Alice said, giving Rika an appraising glance. “But we have to get our ships to the fight before hitting the dirt.” She returned her focus to Tanis. “We’ve heard that you have similar stealth tech for your ships, as well as invincible shields.”
The admiral nodded. “We do, yes, and we’d consider outfitting some ships with that, but it is not tech we give out in great numbers. A very strong concern of ours is that we do not let those systems fall into enemy hands. As a result, ships that get stasis shields or our stealth tech have failsafes built in.”
“Failsafes?” Colonel Jeremey asked.
“Kaboom,” Captain Rachel said as she spread her hands wide. “On tamper, or if there is a possibility that the ship will be disabled in unfriendly territory. There are manual triggers, too.”
“Seriously?” Major Tim asked. “You put bombs in ships?”
“Better we lose one ship than see the enemy gain this technology. How long do you think this region of space would stand against a Nietzschean Empire that possessed stasis shields and our stealth tech?”
The thought was a sobering one, and the two Marauder colonels nodded while Tim continued his glower.
“Well, I’ll pass on those systems getting installed on the ‘Lark and the ‘Dream,” he sneered. “Ships stand enough chance of getting blown up as it is.”
“It’s a calculated risk,” Rachel said in agreement.
“One that you take on yourselves?” Colonel Jeremey asked. “Is this ship rigged to blow if those systems are compromised?”
Rachel shook her head. “The I2 doesn’t have stealth capability. It’s not feasible on a ship this size. When your engines are larger than space stations, it’s a tad difficult to hide their optical emissions, let alone the rest of the spectrum. As for our stasis shields—”
Bob intoned, his voice feeling like someone had just parked a fuel tanker in Rika’s head and struck it with a building-sized hammer.
Rika saw that the other Marauders were grimacing, but Rachel only gave a soft laugh before adding, “Bob will ensure that the ship is destr
oyed before our stasis—or other—tech is lost. But as you saw from the recent battle, it would take more than just a few ships to defeat us, and we are very resilient to sabotage. Only people who already have our levels of technology pose a significant risk.”
Jeremey appeared unconvinced. “If you have this tech and the ability to drop tens of thousands of ships on any given location at a moment’s notice, why do you need the Marauders to take on the Nietzscheans? We’re not against helping, but our resources are better suited to small-scale strikes and policing actions.”
“This is not the only conflict the allies are involved in,” Tanis replied. “There is a war spreading across all settled space—and even beyond. While we can perform targeted offensives like this, we cannot maintain a presence to ensure conflict does not reoccur.”
“And there’s the matter of power vacuums,” Rika added. “If we jump in and take out Constantine, we’ll just be fighting the next person in the chain of command. Nietzschea is too large for that. It’s not a snake, it’s a hydra.”
Tanis spoke aloud to the group, outlining her reasoning for using the Marauders, and expanding upon what Rika had said. At the same time, she also addressed Rika’s question over the Link.
Rika couldn’t help but be impressed with how well Tanis could carry on two conversations at once. There were no pauses, or hints that she’d lost focus on either one. Rika, on the other hand, had to almost ignore Tanis’s vocal response to focus on the mental one.