by M. D. Cooper
The colonel sighed.
While Niki did her work, Rika piggybacked on the AI’s tap into the shipnet, and found the control systems for the 1MC. There was only minimal security on the audible comm system, a standard Nietzschean firewall and port intrusion system she’d breached before.
Less than a minute later, she was in.
“Admiral Gideon? Can you come out to play?” she asked with a soft laugh, able to faintly hear her own voice as the ship began to air up once more.
“You think you’re funny, don’t you, mech?”
Rika glanced at Leslie, who only shrugged, and she replied, “Well, I’ll admit that Les and I got a bit riled up, carving our way through your ship. We’re kinda chomping at the bit to get into the bridge and finish things off.”
“You may get through, but you’ll be too late.” The admiral’s voice carried a note of smug satisfaction.
“Too late for what?” Rika asked. “To crush all your hopes and dreams? There’s still time, trust me.”
“We’ve rigged the transition system to hold us in the DL until we reach Epsilon. Plus, engineering is dumping all but our emergency fuel reserves, just in case you manage to get around that plan. Pull us out of FTL, and we’ll just drift in the black forever.”
The admiral paused, and Rika began to calculate if they were still close enough to the Blue Ridge System to jump into escape pods.
“Oh,” Admiral Gideon continued. “In case you were thinking to get off the ship, we blew all the pods and trashed the shuttle. We’re on a one-way trip. Even though you think you’ve won, you’ve still lost.”
Rika fought the urge to fire her electron beam at the bridge’s door ‘til she melted her way through, but after the combat, her internal batteries were perilously low, and she suspected she wouldn’t make it through.
Niki said, sounding dejected.
“Colonel Rika?” the admiral asked, his voice still carrying a triumphant note.
“What?” she shot back.
The admiral was chuckling over the comms as he replied, “Don’t think you can breach the bridge or engineering, either. You come through either of our doors, and engineering blows the ship. They’ve got the reactors ready to go at a moment’s notice.”
Rika glared at the bridge’s sealed door. “Fine,” she called out over the 1MC. “Have it your way.”
Activating her lightwand, she drove it into the bulkhead, melting it to the bridge’s door in four locations, and sealing the admiral and his three or four compatriots in the bridge.
“Enjoy your tomb.”
Leslie chuckled, pushing herself off the bulkhead.
Rika grinned, though Leslie couldn’t see it behind her helmet.
As they walked back down the corridors, Rika couldn’t help but wonder what Chase and the rest of the Marauders were doing. She felt as though her mad rush to capture the Nietzschean commanders had let them down.
I sure hope they’re managing OK back on Kansas.
VISITORS
STELLAR DATE: 10.14.8949 (Adjusted Years)
LOCATION: MSS Asora, in orbit of Kansas
REGION: Blue Ridge System, Old Genevia, Nietzschean Empire
“Captain Klen,” Senator Naia said as she entered the bridge ahead of Glen. “Thank you for allowing me on your ship. It’s…a bit strange to be aboard a Nietzschean vessel, and know it was one of the vehicles of our deliverance.”
“I’m very glad to meet you,” Vargo said, rising and offering the senator his hand, which she stared at for a moment, before recovering herself and shaking it.
“Um, yes. I have to say, Captain Klen—I hope this doesn’t come across wrong—I’m surprised that you’re a mech.”
“If you’d met me a month ago, I wouldn’t have been one,” Vargo replied with a wink. “Got an upgrade after trying to plumb the depths of a gas giant.”
A look of confusion came over Senator Naia’s face. “I’m sorry?”
“Got injured in a battle,” Vargo explained simply before turning to Ashley. “This is my second-in-command, Chief Ashley.”
To her credit, the senator handled Ashley better than she had Vargo, shaking her hand with only a look of mild consternation on her face.
“I’m sorry that this probably sounds improper to you, but are all Marauders mechs?”
Vargo gestured to a seat near his, and the senator smiled in thanks as she took it.
“No,” he replied. “Most of the Marauders are not mechs. However, this is Colonel Rika’s battalion, and in Rika’s Marauders nearly everyone is a mech.”
“The Nietzscheans always said they killed the mechs…yet you said you just got made into one?”
“They didn’t get them all,” Vargo replied with a lopsided grin. “A lot got away—they let some go, too, like Rika. And she found even more not long ago, in a place called the Politica. Freed them, and has been building up a force to hold back Nietzschea. We hooked up with the Scipio Alliance not long after, and they upgraded our old GAF mechs to 4th Gen, and let anyone who wanted make the change as well.”
“And you opted for mechanization as well, Chief Ashley?” Senator Naia asked. “I don’t recall seeing any four-armed mechs during the war.”
“Opted?” Ashley asked as she flipped through displays on two separate consoles. “I leapt at the chance. We’re spread a bit thin when it comes to shipboard operations, so Finaeus offered a set of mods to our minds and bodies that makes us able to multitask a lot better. I’ve always really liked being able to manage a lot of things at once, so it was a no-brainer for me. Plus, I can kick serious ass.”
“Finaeus?” Naia asked.
“Finaeus Tomlinson,” Vargo Klen explained, enjoying name-dropping on the senator more than he should. “The chief engineer on the Tardis, the second FGT ship to leave Sol.”
This time, Senator Naia’s mouth hung open for a full six seconds before she recovered. “The FGT?”
He nodded while giving a commiserating laugh. “I’d best start from the beginning; then we can talk about how to make things better for Kansas and the Blue Ridge System at large. Would you like something to drink? I can have a servitor bring it.”
The senator gave Vargo the first genuine smile he’d seen since she entered the bridge. “I’m on a Nietzschean
destroyer with a pair of newly minted mechs, who are about to tell me how the FGT upgraded them to take the fight to Nietzschea. Yeah, make it a whiskey.”
Thirty minutes later, Vargo had related the bulk of Rika’s story and the amazing events of the past few weeks to Senator Naia—who had eventually dropped into stunned silence, limited to sipping her whiskey and nodding periodically.
“And that brings us up to our visit here,” he finished, leaning back in his chair and lacing his fingers behind his head, before remembering that the last time he’d done so, it had been surprisingly difficult to get them separated again.
He carefully disentangled them, and set his arms on the chair’s armrests.
“If I hadn’t seen your five ships defeat the forty Nietzschean vessels orbiting Kansas a few days ago, I wouldn’t believe a word of it,” Naia admitted quietly. “But it’s hard to deny reality—not that I’d want to, in this case. In all honesty, your story sounds like music to my ears—which is not something we’re used to around here. The resistance has fought a losing battle against the Niets for years; to see you knock them down like it was nothing—”
“Huh,” Ashley interrupted.
Vargo turned to the chief. “What’s up?”
She flicked a finger—he wasn’t certain which hand it was on—and an image of three Nietzschean ships appeared on the main holodisplay.
“Seems like these three didn’t get the memo. Every other Nietzschean ship is headed away from Kansas, but these three are on a vector right for it.”
“Have they made any attempts at communication?” Vargo asked, frowning at the three ships—all of which bore the scars of recent combat.
“Not yet,” Ashley replied. “At first, I thought that they were going to join up with those four destroyers we chased off yesterday, but they banked around Kansas’s second moon, and are headed right for us now.”
“Should I be worried?” Senator Naia asked, half rising from her seat.
Vargo chuckled. “Not a bit, you’re currently in the safest place in Blue Ridge. Something’s not right about those ships. See that one in the center? That’s a Nietzschean hospital vessel. An older one, too.”
“Why would they bring a hospital ship into a battle?” Ashley asked.
“Beats me,” Vargo said with a shrug. “Being captain doesn’t make me all-knowing.”
He shifted the Asora’s optics to examine the largest vessel.
“Wait,” Naia said, walking closer to the display and scowling. “Are those…dragons, coming out of the shuttle bays?”
A laugh burst free from Vargo’s throat. “Stars! Bondo’s going to be pissed that someone beat him to that!”
Senator Naia cast him a look that said she clearly thought he’d lost his mind. “Captain?”
“Don’t you see?” He gestured to the display. “Those are mechdragons. Ashley, hail them. I want to see who this is.”
As the hail went out, he wondered if this was a surprise visit Barne and Silva had worked up, but when the response came back, he was the one standing mouth agape.
The woman on the holodisplay was a tall mech, one of the very rare SMI-3 models. An incredulous smile was on her face, and a laugh in her voice.
“Vargo Klen, of all the people I expected to see at the helm of a Nietzschean ship, you were not one! And a mech? Stars, what has happened to you since we last met?”
Vargo was even more gobsmacked than the woman on the display. “Adira? I thought you bought it almost fifteen years ago! How the hell did you get off Lornen?”
Adira laughed and shook her head, her long mane of hair shimmering like a halo. “Well, I can assure you that it wasn’t on a dropship you were piloting. My squad stole a Nietzschean shuttle. Sorta started a trend.”
“I can see that. We’ve taken up the same habit.”
“We?” Adira asked, leaning closer, her expression growing earnest. “Then it’s true? A mech is leading an attack on Nietzschea? We heard about the enemy’s defeat at Thebes, and swung by Sepe where they gave us directions here. We want to join up.”
“With the Marauders?” Vargo asked.
“With New Genevia?” Senator Naia said from Vargo’s side.
Adira’s brow lowered. “Screw all that. We’re here to join up with Rika.”
BACON
STELLAR DATE: 10.17.8949 (Adjusted Years)
LOCATION: NMSS Spine of the Stars, interstellar dark layer
REGION: Old Genevia, Nietzschean Empire
Three days after the ship had made its jump, Rika returned to the bridge’s entrance, eating a sandwich she’d prepared minutes earlier in the ship’s galley.
“How’re you doing in there?” she asked. “Getting hungry?”
No response was forthcoming.
Rika took a bite of her sandwich, moaning softly with pleasure. “Mmmmmm, it’s so good. Peanut butter and jelly, one of my favorites. Leslie’s cooking up some bacon for a BLT. Not sure if you know what those are; sandwiches made with bacon, lettuce, and tomato. It’s like heaven in your mouth. I don’t know if you noticed yet, but we cut off the water that ran to the emergency rations station you were using. I imagine it only holds a few days’ worth of food, right? Is it enough for seven? That’s how long it’s going to take us to get to Epsilon, isn’t it? I wonder how many of you will survive. I know! Maybe the admiral will order you to die so he can eat you. Think you’ll all get so far as cannibalism?”
Still no response came from the bridge, but the environmental systems showed that all five people within were alive.
She’d threaded nano through the door seal two days before, and she tapped the optics they provided to see the five figures. Heat signatures matched the environmental readings, showing them all to be alive, but none were moving, each one of them slumped in their chairs.
“Nothing? Not even a twitch?” Rika asked. “What about you, Red? Aren’t you hungry?”
The red-headed man at one of the forward consoles turned to look back at the door.
“There you go. I bet you can just smell it, right? The bacon? I’m sure it’s gonna taste great. I’m more of a PB and J girl myself, but I have to admit, BLTs are a close second. I mean…bacon, right?”
For a minute, no one moved. Then Red made a break for the door. He was halfway across the bridge before the colonel—Sofia, from the records Rika had found on the ship—tackled him, and struck him in the head twice.
“OK, I guess you’re not hungry.” Rika shrugged and walked away. “More for us, then.”
“Gives me something to do. How’re things going with the drive systems?”
Rika took another bite of her sandwich, getting a glob of peanut butter stuck to the roof of her mouth.
“Hmmghhhh, I geubs I shud reawwy be temping the engneers.”
“Well, if that’s a viable play, maybe we should make some more BLTs…or see if this tub has any steak.”
Two hours later, Rika stood in front of the sealed engineering bay doors.
Leslie hadn’t found steaks, but there were trays of bacon, and she cooked up as much as she could, placing the finished product near an air exchanger that Niki had taken control of, ensuring that the smell would make its way throughout the engineering section of the ship.
They’d debated just circulating a toxin instead, but none were willing to take the risk that the engineers had a deadman’s switch on whatever jury-rigged bomb they’d set up with the reactors.
“I know you Niets can hear me,”
Rika began. “We have optics in there, and we know the six of you are getting mighty hungry. We saw Blue-hair and Pinkie fighting over the last protein bar a half hour ago, and Pinkie really gave what-for, but I saw that Blue clawed her in the cheek and got the bar for herself. Good on the rest of you guys for staying back; those two girls look vicious. Anyway, I just thought you might like to know that we’ve cooked up a lot of great food. If you shut off the override you’ve got in there, you can come out and have a meal. I give you my word that no one will be harmed…I mean, unless Pinkie tries to go for one of my PB and Js.”
On the other side of the door lay a long passageway with a repair shop on one side, and storage rooms on the other. Beyond that was the main engineering bay itself, a realm of pipes, conduit, and of course nuclear reactors. It wasn’t the sort of place one wanted to lounge around, but it was where the six Nietzschean engineers were all stationed.
Pinkie and Blue, the two women who had fought over the last protein bar, were on either side of the thirty-meter-wide space, shooting daggers at one another with their eyes. Another woman, this one with more natural-looking brown hair, sat at a console near the center of the space, and the three men, all dark-haired, were playing a game of cards atop a crate near the corridor that led to where Rika stood.
“You guys are tough!” Rika said, commending the Niets. “I don’t know if I could say no to bacon after three days with only a few rations between me and my team. You know we have four more days ‘til we dump out of the DL, right? I mean…you must. You’re the ones running the engines and helm, since we hacked the bridge’s systems and found them already severed.”
At that, brown-hair’s head snapped up, and Rika gave a comforting laugh. “Oh, don’t worry. His High-Muckity-Muckness, Admiral Poopy Pants, is still alive and grouchy on the bridge. He didn’t want any food, either. Leslie and I have a small pool going as to which of his flunkies he’ll eat first. I gotta say, though, betting isn’t really that much fun when you do it with stuff that’s not yours; someone has some pretty nice pink dolls in their room, though, and I’ve put those down on the bet that the admiral eats Red first. That guy is seriously lacking in control.”