by M. D. Cooper
Rika shook her head in remorse. The people of Iberia had already watched the Falcon’s sister stations fall in years past. Cerulean was their largest population and the remaining jewel of the system. The one city that had survived the war mostly intact.
Now they faced losing it, too.
While she sometimes worried that maybe liberating Genevia from the Nietzscheans wasn’t worth it, Rika reminded herself that there was no scenario where living under the rule of an empire that kept weapons in orbit whose sole purpose was to kill the civilian population was better than the losses incurred in the struggle for freedom.
I just hope they all see it that way when this is over.
Her thoughts were interrupted by landfall. The last known location of Fred’s team was in the Chusa District on the city’s west side, and Rika banked the pinnace around the Gibraltar Highlands, and then kept close to the Italis River.
Ahead, Chusa was shrouded in smoke. The poorest district of Cerulean, it was likely filled with looters and roving gangs, grabbing what they could before leaving the city.
The last message they’d received from Fred’s team put the stranded Marauders in the southern end of the district, trapped in an underground maglev station on Cartegena Avenue. They’d come into the city on the maglev lines, but every time they’d tried to come out onto the surface, swarms of gangs and mercs had driven them back down.
As much as Rika wanted to strafe the street with beamfire and simply set down over the station, she knew that a pinnace landing in Chusa right about now would look like a gift from the gods, and it would be swarmed in seconds.
Circling the area, she spotted a ten-story building a few blocks away on Avonlea Boulevard that had an old landing pad on its roof. She settled the ship atop the semi-stable structure. Once she was certain they weren’t about to fall through the roof, she turned to her team.
“Shoshin, I need you to stay with the pinnace. Worst-case scenario, this city is a crater in just under an hour. We need to be sure that our ride out is still here.”
She could see the mech tense, as if he was going to fight her over the order, but then he nodded. “Understood.”
Kelly and Keli both placed an arm on Shoshin’s helmet, and he grasped both their shoulders.
“Good luck.”
The women nodded and exited the cockpit, followed by Rika. Behind them, the AM-4 moved into the pilot’s seat, activating the ship’s ground defense systems.
Once outside the ship, the three SMI-4 mechs activated their stealth systems and leapt from the top of the building to the roof of the next structure, a dozen meters below.
They worked their way across several rooftops in that fashion until they’d reached Cartegena Avenue. They crouched at the edge of a four-story building, overlooking the wide street and the pair of entrances to the underground maglev on the far side.
The entrance on the left—sixty meters down the road—was guarded by a group of hulking toughs that Rika’s perusal of the public feeds had identified as the Kallers. They’d set up CFT barriers at the exit, and had a rather impressive crew-served railgun set up to boot.
Rika noted.
Rika touched each woman on the shoulder; one with a hand, one with a GNR’s barrel.
Rika shrugged, even though they couldn’t see it with her stealth gear active.
both Kellies replied at once.
Upon reaching the rear of the building, Rika dropped over the edge, landing as lightly as possible in the rear alley. To her surprise, a large man—who was wearing good enough armor that she’d picked up no heat from his body—detached from the shadows under an awning.
She held perfectly still, watching as he looked around for the source of the sound, hoping he wouldn’t see the divots her feet had made in the pavement upon impact.
She recognized a red band on his right arm that matched the Kallers’ out front and determined to kill him instantly and quietly so that no alarm could be sent.
He advanced toward her, and Rika carefully lifted her right leg in the air, extending her foot’s claws as she brought it up to the level of the man’s head. At the same time, she slowly reached back and grasped the hilt of her lightwand.
His rifle was ten centimeters from her outstretched thigh when she brought her left foot down on his head, while sinking her right foot’s claws into the pavement, then twisting to the side as she drove her lightwand into his chest.
His helmet crumpled, and the lightwand pierced his heart at the same time. She hoped it would be enough to kill any sort of emergency transmitter he may have. She almost squeezed harder to completely crush his skull, but remembered that stealth gear didn’t work as well with brains on it, and instead let him fall and then sliced his head in half.
The unexpected guard taken care of, she crept down the alley toward the western maglev entrance, which was guarded by the black-skinned women. She figured that the meager protection their peculiar skin likely offered made them easier targets than the group of Kallers at the other end.
As she approached, she overheard a pair of the women at the rear of the group speaking in low tones.
“If we don’t get them in the next half hour, I’m leaving,” the first one said. “I don’t care what Jaka says. When that station comes down, that’s it—this place is done.”
“I’m not arguing,” the second replied, nodding her head emphatically. “No bounty is worth that kinda risk. You have a way to leave Cerulean? The maglevs out of town are packed.”
The first woman tapped a foot on the ground. “Yeah, but not out of Chusa. They shut the tracks down last night when shit went sideways on the Falcon. Word is that there are cars stopped down there, waiting. We get one, then get out to Kappara.”
“Kappara? Hell no, that’s where those nukes went off just a few hours ago. That seems like the wrong way to go. I heard Hannah say that Jaka has a pinnace in Cartegena, though. Why not go there?”
“You think he’ll let us on? Besides, how are we going to get to Cartegena that fast—if he hasn’t already buggered out of here? Look, none of the maglevs are going out toward Kappara. All we have to do is get a car and switch the tracks. It’s simple and guaranteed.”
The second woman’s yellow lips split into a grin revealing bright yellow teeth and a black tongue. “OK, I’ll admit that’s more of a sure bet. Even if we don’t go all the way to Kappara, we’ll at least get far enough from the Falcon when it falls.”
Rika replied as the two women continued to talk about other ways out of Cerulean.
Rika looked over the Huro Girls’ emplacement and noted that the two crew-served chainguns were the extent of their heavy weaponry. She sent that informa
tion up to Kelly and Keli, and then flushed a swarm of nanoprobes down the stairs, noting that the station was much nicer below than above.
As they spoke, the nanoprobes worked their way across the platform and down onto the tracks, where Rika caught sight of Fred and Randy. She set a group of the probes on the side of the car, and relayed a low-bandwidth connection through them.
Fred started, and Randy nearly jumped upright.
The two mechs glanced at one another and laughed.
* * * * *
Two minutes later, Kor and Jenisa attacked the police barricade down the eastern side of the maglev tunnel. Immediately, some of the cops on the platform below tried to come up both exits, and while the Kallers allowed it, the Huro Girls fired down the stairs, yelling out something about the deal not being good enough.
Thirty seconds later, Gemma attacked the barricades in the tunnels to the west, and the three groups of enemies fell to arguing about where to press their advantage. After a brief exchange of shouts between the cops and Kallers, both groups began to move back down the stairs, likely planning to flank their prey.
A pair of DPUs streaked down from two separate rooftops, converging on the Kallers’ railgun and blasting it to pieces. None of the enemies had been paying close attention to what was happening on the street level, and after a moment’s consternation, one of the Kallers pointed at the Huro Girls thirty meters away, bellowed a challenge, then opened fire on them.
The Huro Girls responded by swinging their chainguns up and opening fire on the Kallers. Three of the gang members and a cop that was handing over a wad of credits were mowed down in an instant. A moment later, weapons fire burst out of both staircases, hitting the Kallers and Huro Girls.
At that point, Kelly and Keli began taking shots at both Kallers and Huro Girls, firing on anyone who seemed to be doing too well.
They focused more on the Kallers, as the heavily armored brutes were giving the cops a run for their money. Then a pair of police emerged on the Huro Girls’ side, and Rika blew them away before they could open fire on the last three black-and-yellow women who had just turned to flee.
Rika let two of them go, but ran after the one who’d spoken of Jaka Huro being in Cartagena. She caught up to the woman with little trouble and clamped her hand around the girl’s neck, stopping her cold.
“Not so fast, my little friend,” Rika whispered, still fully stealthed. “You’ve signed up to be my guide.”
Behind her, Kelly and Keli had switched to electron beams, and were burning through the lightly armored cops spilling out of the underground platform with wild abandon.
All Rika got in response was a grunt, which she translated as ‘I can’t believe you made me sit that out.’
EYE ON THE PRIZE
STELLAR DATE: 12.23.8949 (Adjusted Years)
LOCATION: Cartegena District, Cerulean, Malta
REGION: Iberia System, Old Genevia, Nietzschean Empire
Alison had been presented with plenty of opportunities to escape Jaka Huro, but she’d not taken any yet, mostly because she still didn’t have a good plan for getting to safety.
So she’d played her part, doing her best not to laugh at some of the expressions Finaeus’s face periodically made on the pain-o-meter.
She’d gone along with Jaka when he abandoned his headquarters in Chusa and moved to his secondary location in Cartagena. They’d arrived two hours before at a small house on a quaint residential street situated in the western outskirts.
Over that time, the frenzy over the Maltese Falcon’s impending fall had reached a fever pitch, as the populace watched the captured destroyer—which everyone thought would blast the approaching asteroids away—get chased off by Nietzschean fighters.
She had just decided to leave Jaka and Illumine to their fates—plus steal their hovercar—when two things happened that stayed her hand.
Alison was standing in the kitchen, near the doors to the house’s mainspace—where Jaka and Illumine had set up their impromptu operations center—when she overheard them talking about Del’s latest report.
“Great, so he killed Lorne,” Jaka muttered. “But what about that woman he met with on the Falcon, did Del at least see her face?”
“No,” Illumine replied, sounding equally annoyed. “I guess her back was to him. Jessa and Mel saw her, but they both got greased in no time by that fucker who made trouble for us a few months back—I told you we should have taken him out then.”
“What? That weird friendly guy’s bodyguard?” Jaka asked. “Damn…I thought we’d established a truce with him.”
“Yeah, I guess everything’s out the window now. One of the girls caught sight of them helping the woman to an autocab, but her face was against the guy’s shoulder. Yakob! That’s his name. Anyway, she couldn’t get a visual.”
“What about those other mechs?” Jaka asked. “The ones that people saw come in o
n a maglev from Kappara?”
“You’re not going to like this,” Illumine said in a quiet voice. “The Niets have put a bounty on the mechs. Five million creds a pop. It’s chaos out there.”
“Fuck!”
Jaka’s exclamation was accompanied by a loud thud, and Alison imagined that the man must have kicked something.
“Whoever goes after that bounty is an idiot. The Niets have all bailed, pulled off-world. Who do they think is going to pay them? Not to mention that, when the Falcon comes down and wipes out Cerulean, they’ll have nowhere to spend it.”
“Time to start thinking about an exit plan,” Illumine replied. “We have our pet mech. We pull in some of the girls—the ones who can actually shoot straight—and we get off this rock. Malta’s done. Iberia, too.”
“Yeah, you’re right,” Jaka said in resigned agreement. “I’m going to get Del to gather the hard currency and ready the pinnace. I’ll send whatever girls are still in Chusa after those other mechs. Who knows, maybe they’ll get lucky.”
“Doubtful,” Illumine said with a heartfelt sigh. “Next time, let’s establish the cult of personality around me, and attract big burly types that we can mod up more practically.”
“Hey,” Jaka laughed. “You’re the one that came up with the black and yellow, sexy girl thing.”
A snicker came from Illumine. “Well…I suggested it, I didn’t think they’d actually do it. It was cool, though…seeing all those people mod themselves just ‘cause we told them to. There’s a few boys in your ‘girls’ too, you know—well, they were boys.”
“What can I say?” Jaka replied, and Alison could just imagine the haughty look on the little weasel’s face. “I have a commanding presence. People want to please me.”
A moment later, he walked out of the mainspace and almost ran into Alison, who had just decided that waiting for Del to arrive with Jaka’s pinnace was now her best option.
“Dammit, what are you doing there?” Jaka scowled up at her.