by M. D. Cooper
Ona – CWO, bridge crew aboard the Fury Lance
Garth – CWO, bridge crew aboard the Fury Lance
Travis – Captain of the Republic
Ferris – Lieutenant, commander of the Undaunted
Vargo Klen – Lieutenant, commander of the Asora
Buggsie – Lieutenant, commander of the Capital
BARNE AND SILVA
STELLAR DATE: 10.12.8949 (Adjusted Years)
LOCATION: A1 Dock, ISS I2 in orbit of Pyra
REGION: Albany System, Theban Alliance
Silva leant her back against the bulkhead next to Lift Bank 771 in the I2’s massive A1 Dock, and closed her eyes, breathing out a long, ragged breath.
Amy was gone—sent to New Canaan, where she’d be taken care of by Joe and Tanis’s daughters. The knowledge should have given her peace, and she was honored that Admiral Tanis’s own family would be watching over her daughter.
But the goodbye had felt so final.
In minutes, my daughter will be thousands and thousands of light years away…again.
After spending so much of her life away from Amy—and only recently being reunited—the thought of being separated across such a vast gulf was almost too much to bear. Without the ISF’s jump gates, it would take decades to reach New Canaan, a perilous journey that would be all but impossible.
Stop thinking like that, Silva admonished herself. We’re going to win this war, the ISF will still be around, and I’ll bring my boys to New Canaan to join their sister…not necessarily in that order.
The lift chimed, and Silva opened her eyes, surprised to see someone standing next to her.
“General Keller!” Silva snapped off a salute. “I’m sorry, I didn’t realize you were there.”
The purple-skinned woman gave a kind smile, gesturing for Silva to proceed her onto the lift car. “Don’t worry about it. I heard you just saw your daughter off to New Canaan; it’s not an easy thing, to send your children away…or leave them behind.”
Silva nodded while giving the general a sidelong look. “You sound like you have experience in that area. Do you have kids, General?”
“Please, call me Jessica. I spend so much time away from the Intrep—I mean the I2—that being called ‘General’ is hard to get used to. Especially here. This ship is more like a home than a workplace for me.”
“Fair enough,” Silva replied. “I’m not used to people saluting me…not even a little bit. So I get where you’re coming from.”
Jessica laughed. “Tanis drafted me into her merry little military almost a century ago, and I’m still not used to it. Probably because she keeps sending me off on side-projects. But to answer your first question, yeah, I have sixteen kids.”
“Sixteen!” Silva gasped, looking the general up and down. “I guess I shouldn’t be surprised you look so good, you have the tech to repair any damage that would cause.”
Jessica glanced down at herself. “Well, this is a relatively new epidermis—I’m on my fifth or sixth now, depending on how you count—but my children are all AIs. Though I did bear half of them within a sort of expanse, and let me tell you…that process felt entirely natural. Iris, who was the AI that I was paired with at the time, bore the other half.”
“Iris ‘bore’ them?” Silva asked, trying to clarify and understand what Jessica was telling her.
“We were at a place called Star City—which doesn’t describe the magnitude of the place at all,” the purple-skinned woman explained. “Anyway they had these powerful AIs known as ‘Bastions’ that were protecting it from the Orion Guard, but there was only one left. The city needed more, but they weren’t in a position to make the AIs themselves, so Iris, Trevor, and I had a little mental threesome, and bore our brood.”
Silva shook her head, laughing softly. “I won’t even pretend to know how that works.”
“It’s kinda weird, but kinda not weird, as well. Suffice it to say, I miss them a lot. Now that we have the—uh, well, I can’t talk about that…but I’ll be going to see them again before long, pretty freakin’ excited about that.
“I bet,” Silva replied, unable to miss the glow that Jessica’s skin had taken on as she spoke. The general was almost blinding to look at.
“Shoot, sorry about that,” Jessica said, apparently noticing Silva’s squint. “So yeah, long story short, being separated from your kids is awful. I mean, I got to be with them as they grew up, but when I left…well, I was worried I’d never see them again. It’s been over ten years now.”
“Wait,” Silva held up a hand, counting out the years. “How is it that you got to raise them? Does that happen really fast with AIs? I’m not really familiar with AIs that are partially born from human minds.”
“Well, Star City has some pretty wild tech—”
“Damn, that really says a lot, coming from someone in the ISF.”
Jessica snorted. “I suppose it does. Just goes to show, there’s always someone out there that’s above and beyond you. Either way, they had this thing called ‘The Dream’—sort of an accelerated life simulator that they were using to go through lifetimes of mental growth in days. Essentially a great big reincarnation machine. We were in for three days, and I got to watch my kids grow for over twenty years. Tanis is the oldest, she—”
Silva couldn’t help but laugh. “You named your oldest ‘Tanis’?”
The general cocked her head and shrugged, an embarrassed smile on her lips. “I didn’t know if we’d ever make it back, and I wanted to honor my best friend.”
“Was she?” Silva asked. “Honored?”
“I think so?” Jessica chuckled. “Tanis plays it close to the chest a lot—plus she has a lot on her mind. I can’t wait to introduce them someday. My Tanis is a lot like her namesake.”
The lift chimed, and Silva realized it was at her deck.
“Thanks for the chat, General—er, Jessica. It was really nice meeting you.”
“You too, Silva. Good luck on what lies ahead. You Marauders have your work cut out for you.”
It was Silva’s turn to laugh. “Stars, do we ever, but it’ll be good work. There are a lot of Nietzschean asses that need kicking, and Rika’s Marauders are just the mechs for the job.”
The general’s skin glowed brightly, and she waved as the doors closed, leaving Silva with her thoughts once more, this time focused on completing the work of training the latest batch of mechs that had arrived from the Politica, and then joining the fight, at Rika’s side.
* * * * *
Silva’s thoughts were interrupted by Barne’s booming voice, echoing across the platform. Despite having taken a lift and talking with General Keller for a time, she was still in the I2’s A1 Dock, seven full kilometers from where she’d boarded the lift.
Sitting atop the platform was the Terminus, a Nietzschean heavy destroyer captured in the recent battle around Pyra that was now a part of Rika’s fleet.
Technically, it was the Marauder’s 7th Fleet, 2nd Division, but everyone called it Rika’s fleet—even the Marauders who had shipped in from the Ontario System in Septhia to lend a hand with the training of the mechs who were joining in.
Not that the mechs needed training from squishies when it came to fighting. Their biggest obstacle was learning how to work together in larger units. A few weeks prior, Barne had assigned a platoon of the new mechs to help clear out a group of Nietzscheans that were still holed up on Pyra. When the enemy saw thirty mechs, including four K1Rs, forming up outside the small town they were holding hostage, they surrendered before the first shots were fired.
From there on out, Silva and Barne had worked with the ISF and the local Theban forces, using some of the hairier jobs as training missions for the new mech units.
The team helping load the Terminus, however, was not one of those units. It was a squad consisting of FR-2’s and 3’s who had not yet gone into the mech-tubes to get their 4th generation upgrades.
They’d also not yet gone on any team building missions, and
were barely able to function as a group. Silva imagined he had brought them along because they were otherwise unengaged, but as she listened to him bellow at the FRs, she wondered if he just wanted to blow off some steam.
“I once saw a squishie with an arm blown off and the other holding in half his intestines walk faster than you lazy oafs!” the Sergeant Major bellowed. “I shoulda had the Colonel’s daughter move this gear before she shipped out! It would be done by now. Once saw that little girl shoot down a pinnace, kill seven Niets, and then save a wounded teammate while eating a sandwich. And that was on her first day!”
“Sergeant Major,” one of the FR-3s, a rather cocky woman named Pence, said as she set down a crate on an a-grav float. “How did Amy have a ‘first day’? She’s not in the Marauders.”
“Not in the Marauders?” Barne stalked across the platform to where Pence stood next to the crate, a finger raised in the air as he closed with the woman. “You’re in Rika’s Marauders when Rika says you’re in. Not a moment before, not a moment later. The old lady says she’s in, she’s in. What about you? Has Rika personally called you a Marauder?”
“Uh…well…no. I’ve never met her.”
“Well then shut yer gob, Pence, and get a move on! Colonel Sil—well, shit, look, there she is, and you’re all just dicking around still. Get a move on and load this fucking ship!”
Spittle flew from Barne’s mouth, spraying across Pence’s face. To her credit, the woman did look terrified of the sergeant, and ran to grab the next crate.
Barne turned toward Silva, his face nearly split in half with an ear-to-ear grin.
Silva couldn’t help but smile in response to the Sergeant Major.
Silva shook her head, looking over the platform.
Silva said, looking out beyond the edge of the platform and across the A1 Dock, where hundreds of other ships rested on platforms, cargo drones flitting between them.
Barne snorted.
Barne’s grin took on a cunning slant.
Silva groaned and shook her head.
* * * * *
Twenty minutes later, the Terminus was boosting away from the I2, on its way to join with the rest of the 7th Fleet’s 2nd Division.
Silva watched the ships that made up the R2D, as the mechs had begun to call it, with pride. Though the 1st Division would always have a place of pride in the hearts of Rika’s Mechs—which was well earned, since they’d seized the ships while they were beneath the cloud tops of a gas giant—it was only five ships.
The 2nd Division boasted fifty-nine ships, all but two being Nietzschean vessels. Three of those were dreadnaughts the size of the Fury Lance. In all honesty, it was a tiny smattering of ships when compared to the vast fleets that the ISF—and the Nietzscheans, for that matter—were able to produce, but the ships belonged to Rika’s Marauders, and of that they were all immensely proud.
While many of the mechs hadn’t met Rika in person, they all knew she was the reason none of them were slaves to Stavros’s Politica anymore. Each and every one of them knew the story of what Rika had done to save them—Silva made sure of that—and they were ready to follow their chosen commander into battle.
The ships of the 2nd Division were arrayed in a diamond formation, the dreadnaughts on the central axis, one at the forward end, one aft, practicing various close-formation maneuvers. Silva was no fleet tactician, but she understood that the dance the ships were involved in was more to practice coordination and precise maneuvering than something they would do in combat.
That many ships that close in actual battle would simply be an invitation for heavy beamfire and relativistic missiles.
“Looks good, doesn’t it,” Barne commented as he approached the forward holodisplay on the bridge. “Rika’s gonna split her knickers when she sees this.”
“Split her knickers? What does that even mean?”
“Uh…I guess it makes more sense for men.”
“Barne! You’re on the bridge, you should set an example.”
The sergeant snorted. “Trust me, I set the right kind of example. I’ve been at this a long time. Besides, I may be near the top of the heap, but I’m not an officer like you. I don’t have to be all spit and polish all the time.”
“I suppose,” Silva allowed. “You’re right, though. Rika is going to be more than a little happy to see all these ships.” She paused and glanced over her shoulder before continuing privately.
Silva watched the ships in the 2nd Division shift vectors and spread out into a flying X formation, the arms becoming convex, and ships moving along them until the X was four separate lines, reforming into the diamond afterward.
Barne laughed.
ATTACK FORMATION
STELLAR DATE: 10.12.8949 (Adjusted Years)
LOCATION: Battalion HQ, Memphis, Kansas
REGION: Blue Ridge System, Old Genevia, Nietzschean Empire
When Chase replied, his tone was terse, and Rika could hear a simmering rage.
Chase didn’t reply for a moment, then the command net updated to show his company’s first platoon—which he was accompanying—engaged with a Nietzschean armored column that also shouldn’t have been there.
Rika checked the order log and saw that Lieutenant Colonel Alice had altered the orders Rika had given Chase, sending his platoon on a new route to their objective.
She turned to where Alice stood in the corner of the basement, hunched over another holotable. “Colonel Alice, why did you send Chase down 42nd Street?”
Alice glanced up, no concern evident on her face. “It was a faster route, and the intel showed no enemy activity.”
Rika drew in a deep breath. “That’s because we had a transmission hiccup. If you’d actually looked at the scan data, you’d’ve seen that it found nothing there. The only thing we have from 37th to 51st street is the city database’s standard maps for that area.”
Alice finally found the grace to look embarrassed for her mistake. “Shit…it wasn’t flagged, Colonel Rika.”
Chase’s reply took several seconds.
Rika was having similar thoughts regarding Alice. It was becoming clear that the reason the woman had survived the Genevian war with Nietzschea was an overabundance of caution, and just enough intelligence to avoid any truly dangerous missions.
It wasn’t quite enough to rate the woman as cowardly, but by Rika’s estimation, she was right on the cusp.
Considering that my orders and most of my supplies are coming from Tanis and the Allies right now, I really wonder if I could just send Alice packing, and tell Marauder HQ to pound sand if they complain, Rika thought as she pulled up options, looking for the best way to reinforce Chase.