Rikas Marauders
Page 87
Rika knew exactly who ‘all of us’ was: the former members of team Basilisk, and the company leadership.
Chase managed a reasonable snort over the link.
Rika sent him a feeling of warmth before she accepted the general’s request for a full VR conversation. Rika didn’t have this style of conversation often; for some reason, she always felt vulnerable in them, as though the other person could somehow see into her core.
Still, she couldn’t deny the general’s request, so she kept Tanis’s imagery firmly in mind as she found herself on a vast plain and saluted General Julia.
The general returned the salute, and then regarded Rika silently for an entire minute before finally speaking.
“I should kick you out of the Marauders.”
Julia’s words carried a hard edge and hit Rika like a wall of ice, nearly staggering her in the virtual world.
“Ma’am?” was all she managed to sputter out.
“I know what you’re thinking; that it’s for your actions in Hercules, or for rushing into Albany half-cocked—which seems to be your thing, by the way, Rika.”
Rika placed the image of herself as a rock in the storm beyond Julia. The other woman couldn’t see it, but the general was now framed by a raging storm, wreathed by the unbreakable spire of stone that represented Rika.
Rika widened her stance and clasped her hands behind her back. “I have defeated every adversary, ma’am. Perhaps people have just underestimated me. What they consider to be ill-advised actions are—with my abilities in mind—perfectly acceptable risks.”
A sardonic smile slipped onto the older woman’s thin lips, and her eyes narrowed. “I would have accepted that argument, but for your actions on Hudson.”
Rika frowned. “Hudson?”
Julia nodded. “If it were not for the fact that the Allies’ field marshal has such an obvious fondness for you—well-earned, since you saved her, I suppose—I would have booted you from the Marauders in a heartbeat for what you did there.”
The general’s words barely made sense to Rika. She had saved Patty, Silva, and Amy. Patty was a Marauder, and Silva may as well be. She had been doing her duty.
“I—I don’t understand…”
Julia turned her eyes upward and shook her head before looking down at Rika. “And that is why I’m still having second thoughts about sending you on the mission to Nietzschea.”
“But you seemed so supportive in the meeting with Tanis.”
“Yes, because if I had dressed you down, or told her I wouldn’t send you, then I’d have had to deal with Jeremey pushing back twice as hard on this whole thing.”
On the surface, Julia had seemed so genuine, so supportive. To know that she’d been playing Rika’s favor with Tanis against Jeremey that whole time…it cast the woman in a whole new light.
“So what did I do wrong?” Rika asked.
“Rika. You abandoned your post to save a friend.”
Julia let the words drop like they were a bomb. One that failed to detonate, so far as Rika was concerned.
“No, ma’am. I took a calculated risk that my company would be safe performing S&R operations while in the care of the largest, most capable military that I’ve ever seen. They’re not green recruits, General, they know how to handle themselves, and it made for an excellent test of my lieutenants, to see how they operated without my direct oversight. Considering that we will be operating independently for some time, it seemed wise.”
Julia shook her head. “Dress it up however you want, Rika. You abandoned your post on a personal mission. Not only that, but you did it in what was still an active theater. You’re a disgrace to the uniform.”
Something snapped inside Rika, and she took a step toward the general, raising a hand, one finger pointing at the woman before her.
“No, General. You’re a disgrace to even think that I wear a uniform. Look at me!”
Julia’s eyes remained locked on Rika’s own, not wavering an iota.
“NO!” Rika screamed. “You look at me, General Julia! Look at my body. Look at what your beloved Genevian Armed Forces did to me. This isn’t a fucking uniform, this is my flesh! And it is no. Fucking. Disgrace.”
The vehemence in Rika’s voice finally seemed to crack Julia’s veneer, and her eyes widened as Rika took another step forward.
“You abandoned me. You abandoned us all back there in Genevia. Time and time again, you left us. Maybe if instead of running the fuck off, if the GAF brass had gone back for the lost, we might have won the war. You have a legacy of leaving people behind. I have a legacy of saving them. If one person—one!—is lost, I will save them.
“I saved Barne even when he hated me, I saved the man who had the control codes to the chip in my head, I saved the president of the world below us—though the Niets still killed her. But that didn’t stop me. I saved Amy from her father, and I saved Silva and the mechs from the Politica. I saved the fucking Hercules System, and we dove a starship into a planet to save Vargo Klen. But that wasn’t enough for me, General Julia. I came here to save Albany, and Tanis Richards, and then I saved the woman who made my coffee once, and then I went to save Patty, Silva, and Amy, and you know what happened?”
Rika was screaming at this point, standing less than a meter from Julia, towering over the tall woman.
“No,” Julia mouthed the words.
“They saved me.” Rika said the words softly, shaking her head. “You think that we’ll defeat the Nietzscheans by storming beachheads and decimating their forces. But that’s not how we’ll win this war. We’re going to win this war because we’re going to save people. And when we’re done, when we stand atop Constantine’s toppled throne, our hands covered in blood, it’ll be the people we saved who are going to save us.”
Julia’s eyes lowered, finally breaking contact with Rika’s as she shook her head. “I…”
Rika didn’t want to hear Julia’s equivocations or apologies. She knew she’d stepped over the line, but what she’d said had to be said. Julia needed to understand what Rika was willing to do to see this through.
“I have to go, General. I’m sure we’ll talk later.”
Rika cut the connection, and the grassy plain with the storm raging in the distance faded away, replaced once more by the interior of the dropship, and Alice sitting across from her.
“You OK?” Alice asked. “You were breathing really heavily, there.”
Rika shook her head. “No, not really. I just had a blow-out with the general. I think I might be fired.”
Alice’s brows rose in amazement, but then a smile slipped onto her lips.
“You sure about that, Rika? General Julia just announced your promotion to the rank of colonel across the Marauders’ general net. Maybe you said the right thing.”
Rika’s mouth dropped, and she pulled up the latest command announcements. “Well I’ll…holy shit…was she putting me on?”
Alice shrugged. “Could be. General Julia is known for her skill at getting people fired up before tough missions. Either that, or you just made a dangerous enemy. One of the two.”
Rika leant her head back. “Or maybe both.”
UPGRADES
STELLAR DATE: 09.10.8949 (Adjusted Years)
LOCATION: ISS I2
REGION: Pyra, Albany System, Thebes, Septhian Alliance
The best description Rika could come up with for Finaeus was a combination of a mad scientist and some back-world cattle rancher.
It wasn’t just the way he talked, either—it was the combination of his languid, lackadaisical attitud
e and an excitement for creating new things, tempered by a wealth of experience that brought about no small amount of confidence.
Or cockiness.
Tanis winked at Rika.
Rika’s gaze slid back to the man who spoke with a slow drawl, while gesticulating wildly at the holodisplay at the front of the room. She felt like she was in the presence of titans, and they’d offered her the opportunity to join their number.
“To be honest,” Finaeus was saying, “we could really have a lot more fun with the SkyScreams. I could probably even make some that look like…dragons or pterodactyls. You know…we actually seeded pterodactyls on a world once. Stars…that place was nuts.”
Lieutenant Carson almost cackled with glee. “I can only imagine those fuckin’ Niets screaming their heads off when a mech-powered dragon swoops down on them.”
Corporal Stripes shook his head. “Yeah, ‘til you have to service them, or S&R a dragon on the ass-end of some world.”
“Who said they’d just have to be on a world?” Finaeus asked. “No reason why we couldn’t fit them with high-impulse grav drives. Could fly them through space, as well.”
“As amazing as that sounds,” Rika spoke up, gaining Finaeus’s attention. “We don’t have time to learn all new weapons platforms. The best options for us are to upgrade the power and efficiency of our existing systems. We’ve been at this for years with this same tech; we know how to use it to beat the Niets, we just need it to be more reliable in the field.”
“Right,” Finaeus nodded. “Sorry, I get carried away sometimes. However, I do think you should mull over mechanized space dragons. I think there’s something there.”
“Finaeus,” Tanis said simply.
“OK, moving along,” Finaeus gestured to the holodisplay, and it switched over to show a K1R mech. “First off, I feel really bad for these poor guys. So I have an idea to make every K1R an AM, and every AM a K1R.”
Rika shared Finaeus’s general sentiment. Everyone felt bad for what had been done to the K1Rs.
“The two mech frames are nearly ready for this—it’s clear they intended to go this route at one point,” Finaeus continued, “but what we’d do is give all AM and K1R mechs stub limbs, like your SMI and RR-3s have.”
“Is that feasible?” Rika asked, and Carson nodded.
“With the tech these people have, yes. And it would make our force a lot more versatile, and the repairs simpler. During the war, the GAF kept trying to standardize mech components to help with cost cutting, but R&D wasn’t always in the loop. The secondary, bolt-on upgrades were more generic, but then a new model would roll out with new specs, and we were back at square one.”
“He’s right,” Stripes added. “If mech platforms could have standardized buildouts, we could manage refit and repair a lot better.”
“Or…” Tanis drew the word out as she looked around the table. “You could get human frames, and use powered armor.”
Rika said ‘No way’ before Tanis had even finished speaking, and the other mechs at the table—Scarcliff, Heather, and the platoon lieutenants—also shook their heads.
“No offense, ma’am,” Heather said not unkindly, “but we’re mechs. This is what we are, and we have a mission to complete. Maybe after the war, some will want to be squishies again, but for now, we are mechs.”
Tanis smiled and raised her hands in mock defense. “I figured that would be your answer, I just wanted to put it out there to be sure.”
A wide grin stretched across Finaeus’s face. “Well, then. If you want to be mechs, let’s make you all the best mechs the galaxy has ever seen. Here’s what I have in mind….”
* * * * *
Rika came awake all at once, but didn’t open her eyes right away. A small fear lingered in the back of her mind, a worry that the last few months had been a dream, and that she was still in the Politica—or worse, in the GAF.
Actually…I don’t know which would be worse.
She checked the date, the information flowing into her mind, and breathed a sigh of relief.
It was no dream, everything she remembered was real. Which meant that she was out of what Finaeus had called the
‘Mechtube’, and was, for all intents and purposes, upgraded.
Most of the changes to her body would be as she’d requested—minor, just improvements and tweaks. But there was one change that she knew was profound, a change that she was both excited and scared to explore.
She felt a sense of agreement from Niki, a sense that came directly into her mind.
Rika said.
Niki snorted.
Rika knew of the different designations in human neural density and interconnectivity. L0 humans were the ‘vanilla’ version. Over the centuries, mods and DNA alterations—deliberate, as well as from the body’s response to unnatural changes—had spurred on an evolution in many people. One where they grew more neurons, longer axons, and more dendrites. Their brains just had more. These were designated L1s.
L2 humans were even more evolved, with massively interconnected brains, though few L2 humans were the result of natural evolution.
Rika said after thinking about the implications further.
Rika groaned inwardly.
Drawing a deep breath, Rika shook her head.
Despite her own words, Rika had been exploring her senses. While some of the mechs had undergone significant physical changes, such as the K1Rs and AMs—both receiving partial limb stubs, and all opting to go skinless, like the RR and SMI models—the
SMIs had faced the fewest outward changes.
Though none of them were SMI-2s anymore.
The irony of Finaeus’s upgrades was that every mech had moved further from being a pure human. Every one of them would come out of the mechtubes less organic and more mechanized than when they went in.
At the same time, Rika felt more human than she had in a long time. Her senses felt sharper, more acute. She wasn’t certain if it was from the mental enhancements, or the changes to her physiology.
OK, Rika. Sense your surroundings, feel where your body is.
She was on a bed of some sort, not a hard medtable. Her head was slightly elevated, and she could feel her hair against her ears and neck…and shoulders. Her prior skin had never been sensitive enough to feel that, largely because the matte grey ‘flesh’ that covered her from the neck down didn’t have the tiny hairs that human skin had, which had limited her sensitivity to light touch.
But now Rika could ‘feel’ the light brushes. She realized she could even feel the room’s air circulation systems blowing on her chest where the sheet wasn’t covering her.
Rika could tell that her limbs still ended at the elbows and knees, and it was strange, but the confirmation gave her comfort. Before going into the Mechtube, she’d had an irrational fear that she’d wake up with fully human limbs.
Such an alteration would have made her less effective at what lay ahead, and Rika wanted maximum effectiveness when it came to taking down Nietzschea.
She decided it was time to test things out, and moved her right arm. Though she’d intended to just slide it over a few centimeters, the limb whipped out nearly perpendicular to her body.
“Shit…that’s going to take some getting used to,” Rika muttered.
“Yeah…but knowing about it, and experiencing it are very different. I’m going to have to train a lot to get used to this.”