by M. D. Cooper
Then she saw that Alice had a pistol trained on them.
Huh…she’s not completely useless, after all.
“A mech?” the first of the women said, hands not quite on the grips of her pistols as she shook her head in disbelief. “This should be fun.”
Alison gripped her GNR’s barrel like a club. So long as none of her opponents had reinforced armor beneath their skin, they wouldn’t damage the barrel—she hoped.
“You have a strange definition of fun. This isn’t a fight you can win. Take your friends and go. Last warning.”
“Please?” Jill called out from the kitchen doorway, where she was peering around the corner. “Can you not destroy my diner?”
Alison didn’t spare the owner a look. This wasn’t the sort of situation that would diffuse over the risk of a little property damage.
No one in the diner moved, save for a few of the patrons who were backing away into the corners. Then the first woman reached for her pistols, and Alison swung her GNR’s barrel.
It hit her adversary’s left hand, the crunch of bones clearly audible in the quiet room, but that didn’t slow the woman from drawing her other weapon and firing from the hip at Alison.
It was a projectile round, and it hit the SMI-4 in the stomach, easily deflected by her flow armor skin.
The woman barely had time to look surprised before Alison swung her barrel around and into her enemy’s other wrist, breaking it as well. She cried out in pain, and fell to her knees, just in time for Alison to realize that the other black-skinned woman was aiming a pistol at her head.
Ducking to the side and narrowly avoiding a series of rounds, Alison jabbed her GNR’s barrel at the woman, who also ducked at the exact same moment.
The end of the barrel—which had been originally directed at the woman’s stomach—hit her right in the throat, and with the might of a mech’s arm behind it, proceeded to push through the woman’s throat.
Alison wrenched her gun’s barrel free, and a spray of blood shot out, dousing her left leg. Not bothering to worry about a bit of gore, she drove a knee into the first attacker’s face ensuring that she wouldn’t try anything further.
Looking up, she saw that the final two women were still in the booth, mouths hanging open, staring in horror at their two comrades, one of which was bleeding to death on the floor, while the other writhed in pain.
“You want a piece—” Alison began, when her gaze alighted on the booth where Alice and the contact had been.
Alison found that to be highly unlikely, but at that very moment, rounds tore through the diner’s windows, shredding the booth where Alice and her contact had been sitting.
Before she could even make a move toward the door, the two remaining women had their weapons drawn and aimed at her head.
“Oh, hell no,” she muttered and took two long strides before diving through one of the windows and back onto the concourse.
A hundred meters away, she spotted a light hauler with a chaingun sticking out of the back. It pivoted toward her, and opened fire as she raced across the concourse to duck behind a thick balustrade. She frantically reattached her GNR’s barrel, and initiated a cleaning cycle that used jets of plasma to burn away any obstructions in the end.
Rounds tore into the balustrade, and she realized her cover wasn’t going to hold out long.
She surveyed the concourse, noting that it had no cross-corridors for some distance, though there was no shortage of screaming civilians running in nearly every direction.
As much as Alison wanted to save her own skin, she balked at the idea of running through the crowd and getting dozens of people killed.
She gauged the distance to the mezzanine level above her and, without further consideration, pushed off from the balustrade, taking four long strides before leaping into the air and grasping the railing that ran along the next level.
A few rounds struck her, but she didn’t register any damage as she flung herself over the railing and landed at the feet of a group of men who had been looking down at the chaos below.
“Get back!” she yelled, pushing them down as rounds from the chaingun streaked overhead.
The men cried out with hands over their heads, and Alison scampered further away before rising and edging toward the railing. She got a visual on the hauler with the chaingun, which had ceased firing for the moment.
“Eat this, suckers,” she whispered, and a sabot round launched from her GNR and streaked toward the vehicle.
The depleted uranium rod struck true, hitting the chaingun with a spectacular shower of shrapnel. Just as she was about to let out a victory cry, a voice from behind Alison cried out.
“Police! Freeze!”
She slowly turned to see a stocky man in an MFP uniform aiming a pulse rifle at her chest.
“Buddy,” Alison said, doing her best to smile and appear disarming—which was difficult, with her left leg drenched in someone else’s blood. “I was just defending myself. I don’t know who those assholes were.”
She glanced over the railing, and the cop sidled closer to it as well.
Below, the two cloaked women who had been sitting in the booth stumbled out of the diner, staring in disbelief at the ruined hauler.
One pulled her hood back as she scanned the crowds, looking for Alison.
“Shit, Huro Girls!” the cop said, moving away from the railing. “I’m calling this in, and you need to come with me.”
“Where?” Alison asked with a frown. “There’s only two of them. We can finish them off.”
“Finish—lady. You just started a bloodbath on the station. You’re under arrest. SWAT can deal with those two down there.”
No response came back from the lieutenant colonel, but suddenly Fred’s voice came to her.
Alison said.
There was no response, and Alison wondered if there was some sort of comm lockdown on the station, or if Alice was behind her loss of connection.
“Shit,” she muttered, looking down at the stocky police officer again. “I’m sorry, but I really can’t go with you.”
The man frowned. “You’re sorry?”
“Yeah, I need to figure out what is going on here, and I can’t do it from inside a jail cell.”
“Uhh…but I have you under arrest,” the man’s voice wavered as he spoke.
Alison took a menacing step toward him. “With that? You’re going to need a lot more than a measly pulse rifle to arrest me.”
The man visibly shrank. “Look, please. I have a family.”
“Then you won’t mind giving me a little head start.”
HURO
STELLAR DATE: 12.23.8949 (Adjusted Years)
LOCATION: Chusa District, Cerulean, Malta
REGION: Iberia System, Old Genevia, Nietzschean Empire
Jaka Huro strode through the halls of the apartment complex in the Chusa District that he’d long-ago appropriated from its rightful owners.
The news that had filtered down from the Maltese Falcon didn’t make a lot of sense. The grab team he’d sent up after Lorne—the traitorous bastard—had somehow been attacked by…someone, and only two of his girls had survived.
What’s worse, Lorne had made contact with his c
ontact—a woman who’d whisked him away.
“Not how my fucking day was supposed to go,” he muttered as he pulled open the door to apartment 4C, which used to be a rather nice suite, but was now the heart of his operation, his own little CIC.
“Illumine!” he bellowed upon entry. “What the ever-living-fuck is going on up on the Falcon? We were supposed to ID Lorne’s contact and then grab them both! How do you fuck up an op this bad?”
The red-skinned woman sitting in the center of the room, surrounded by holodisplays, didn’t even glance up at him as she replied. “There was a mech…an SMI, not sure if it was a two or one of those rare threes. Her build was a bit odd. She killed Kalla, and messed Olive up bad—the cops have her now. Angie got killed in the hauler, but Hannah and Vera got away.”
“And the hauler? Did I hear that right? It got trashed?”
Illumine finally looked up at Jaka, her solid gold eyes wide as she nodded. “The fucking mech fired a DPU at it. Blew it to smithereens.”
Jaka launched into a string of curses. Getting an armed and armored hauler up on the station had taken a fair bit of work. He’d planned to use it for a number of jobs, and now the thing was trashed the first time he’d sent it out.
“How the hell did Lorne hook up with people like this?” Jaka finally demanded when he’d regained control of himself. “He can barely pull on his pants without sticking both legs down the same hole.”
“Still working on that,” Illumine replied tersely, having turned back to her displays. “So far as I can tell, two women—the mech and a vanilla from the looks of it—left a ship named the Karl’s Might and went straight to the meet. After things went to shit, the woman and Lorne evaporated into thin air.”
“And the mech?” Jaka asked.
“She got spotted by the cops…well, cop. He tried to arrest her, but she just ran off. Station surveillance picked her up a few times, working her way back to the docks, but they don’t have a precise fix on her right now.”
Jaka stroked his chin, which sported the fine red beard he’d taken to growing of late.
“A mech…now that would be handy. Think of what we could do with one of those.”
“Uh…what about Lorne and the woman?” Illumine asked.
“What about them?” Jaka shot back. “Maybe the mech will know where they are.”
His ops manger—and chief amongst his girls—fixed Jaka with an incredulous stare. “How do you plan to take down a mech and then question her? Hannah and Vera don’t stand a chance against someone like that.”
Jaka shook his head, lips twisting into a sneering grin. “Did Del’s ship dock before the station went into lockdown?”
Illumine’s eyes lit up as she looked down at her displays, fingers dancing over her panels.
“Oh, hell yeah. He made it. He’s onstation.”
“Get him on it,” Jaka said as he walked to the window and looked out over the cramped rows of buildings filling the Chusa District. “I want that mech down here today.”
JUGGERNAUT
STELLAR DATE: 12.23.8949 (Adjusted Years)
LOCATION: Karl’s Might, Maltese Falcon, Malta
REGION: Iberia System, Old Genevia, Nietzschean Empire
“Dammit!” Fred swore, barely stopping himself from slamming a fist onto the console.
If there was thing he’d learned since being mechanized, it was that most things weren’t made to withstand an angry mech.
Jenisa pivoted in her seat, staring at him with wide eyes. “This can’t be good.”
“It’s not,” he said. “Alison called in—she’s in some sort of trouble—but then she got cut off. I’m not sure what’s up.”
Jenisa turned back to her console. “Not sure why…comms look good. Lemme see if I can reach her.”
Alice didn’t reply, and Fred clenched his jaw, rage building within.
“What’s going on?” Jenisa asked. “You look like you’re about to tear your console off the deck and crush it with your bare hands.”
“It’s Alice. She says that she and Alison got separated, but she told Alison to come back here. But she wants us to go to her.”
“Faaaawk,” Jenisa swore. “That doesn’t make a lick of sense. There’s no way we’re closer to her than Alison is, why call us? That means—”
Fred nodded. “Either Alison is dead, or that bitch hung her out to dry.”
A second later, Kor walked onto the bridge, a confused expression on his face. “Why is the LC in my head demanding I come rescue her?”
The bay they met in wasn’t really an armory, but it was where the mechs had stowed what gear they’d brought along on the Karl’s Might. Once the team was assembled, Fred explained the situation.
“So we’re just going to storm the station and tear it apart till we find Alison?” Randy asked, a frown settling on his brow. “There are a lot of innocent people here. We should probably make some sort of announcement first.”
Jenisa laughed as she lifted her arms for Kor to attach her breastplate.
“Stop that,” Kor muttered. “Can’t get this thing slotted in place if you’re chortling.”
“Let’s get one thing straight, Kor,” Jenisa said as the AM-4 got her armor in place. “I do not chortle.”
“Focus, people,” Randy grunted at the pair. “This place is loaded with civilians. We can’t just run through it, shooting down everyone we see. Most of these people are Genevian.”
“What if we see Niets?” Kor asked. “Actually, what do I care? Our people treated me like shit after the war. You guys never got to see what it was like, what with being in the Politica, but the Genevians hated on us as much as the Niets.”
“Still can’t kill civvies,” Fred said with a shake of his head. “But Alison is top priority. If the cops try to stop us and won’t listen to reason, then we’ll mow them down.”
“Real civilized, Fred,” Randy shot back.
“OK, what do you propose?” Fred asked, throwing his hands in the air. “We’re fucking mechs. We don’t have any more cloaks, and stealth only gets us so far on a crowded station. Eventually we’re going to have to engage, and when we do, shit’s gonna get real.”
“Well, we can at least start out in stealth,” Randy replied. “Get to where Alison was last seen and go from there.”
“He’s got a point,” Jenisa said as she slammed a fist into Kor’s back, getting the armor in the right spot for the mounting pins to engage. “We do have the fancy ISF stealth gear. I bet it will get us close to Alison’s position faster than shooting our way there.”
Fred nodded. “Right, yeah. OK. That makes se
nse. I guess I still default to guns blazing.”
Randy slapped him on the back. “S’OK, Corporal. We’re mechs. Guns blazing is sort of our M.O.”
* * * * *
Getting off the Karl’s Might had proven to be more difficult than Fred had expected. Before they’d even finished armoring up, a squad of station police was at the ship’s airlock, demanding access.
Kor was all for blowing past them—non fatally, he insisted—but Randy suggested simply cycling the lock and letting the cops in, and then slipping out once they’d stormed the ship.
Fred hated the extra time it took, but he had to admit that killing all of the police wouldn’t have been any faster. Ten minutes later they were on the concourse, moving as quickly as they could toward the site of the attack on the Silver Train Diner.
Though the station was technically in lockdown, a lot of people were still going about their business, apparently unconcerned with any danger that may be present.
Kor snorted over the team’s combat net.
Randy mused.
Ahead, they could make out the diner set against the concourse’s curved bulkhead. On the near side sat a still-smoking hauler, and Fred could make out a twisted mass that looked like the barrel assembly of a crew-served chaingun—after the crew and the gun had gotten served by a DPU. The diner didn’t look much better—one of its walls was all but shredded—and out front stood a red-haired woman who had one hand raised above her head, while the other alternately gestured at the diner and the cop she was tearing into.