by M. D. Cooper
Tex grinned. “Well, we’ll be sure to be all discriminate when it comes to what we shoot the shit out of. I bet it’ll still be a hell of a lot more than they will.”
“Granted.” Scarcliff nodded. “I don’t know about the rest of you, but I feel like I should be worried, yet somehow I’m not. Those Niets are going to shit themselves silly when they see a mech breach team hit their ships. Stars, I wish I was on The Van’s assault team. Can you imagine seeing a K1R come around the corner on a starship?”
Barne barked a laugh. “It’s gonna be classic. I’ll be sure to record their expressions for you.”
“Can’t help but think you planned the assignments that way, Top.”
Barne gave Scarcliff a roguish grin. “Who says I didn’t? And who said you can call me ‘Top’?”
“Barne, I’m the company’s XO.”
“So?”
GOODBYE BASILISK
STELLAR DATE: 05.01.8949 (Adjusted Gregorian)
LOCATION: Golden Lark
REGION: Approaching Armens, Hercules System, Septhian Alliance
Rika stood in her office and couldn’t keep her face from wearing a big, stupid grin. “You three mean so much to me…can you believe that we met just a half a year ago?”
Chase raised a finger. “I met you further back than that.”
“Yeah, but not too much before that—minus my stint in cryo.”
Chase shrugged. “Was over two years ago, actually.”
Rika rolled her eyes. “I’m trying to be all poignant, here.”
“You sure you know what that means?” Barne smirked.
Leslie smacked a palm into the back of Barne’s head. Then she looked at Chase and smacked him as well. “Just like the boys, gotta ruin the moment.”
“We’re having a moment?” Barne asked. “I’m not kissing anyone.”
“What about a hug?” Rika asked. “I know you’re all badass and everything, but I don’t think it would kill you to hug someone.”
Chase chuckled and punched Barne in the shoulder. “Not sure about that. It might.”
“Sheesh, why’s everyone hitting me? And I hug plenty of people. Women. Right before I fuck their brains out.”
“Ha!” Rika laughed. “There’s the Barne we’ve all come to know and love.”
“No love,” Barne retorted. “That leads to hugging. Remember, no hugging unless I get to fuck your brains out, and you’re both off-limits.” He glared at Leslie and Rika as he spoke.
Leslie sidled up to Barne. “Why am I off-limits?”
“Les! Damn. Stop that! You’re like fucking kryptonite. I could die if you touch me.”
Leslie took a step back and cocked her head at Barne, then Rika. “Kryptonite? What the hell is that?”
Chase leaned close to Leslie and whispered loudly in her ear. “It means he finds you so damn attractive that he can barely function when you’re around.”
Halfway through Chase’s explanation—which he delivered with a goofy smile plastered across his face—Barne yelled for him to stop, but Chase only raised his voice to carry over Barne’s.
When he was done, Barne’s face had darkened, and Leslie was staring at him with wide eyes.
“Seriously, Barne?” she asked.
Barne kept his eyes locked on Leslie’s. “Well, you’re the most attractive woman on the ship, it’s perfectly natural to be attracted to a beautiful woman.”
“What about the tail?” Leslie asked as her tail rose and touched Barne’s neck.
“Leslie! Stop it! Seriously.” Barne swatted her tail away. “We have to go on a mission. I can’t have your sexy tail in my head the whole time.”
Rika wasn’t sure if Barne was playing with Leslie or not. He did sometimes make comments about how she was always slinking about. But the comments always seemed derisive, or at least critical.
Of course, that’s exactly how someone would hide feelings they knew they shouldn’t have.
Leslie pulled her tail down, a worried look on her face.
Rika’s eyes locked on Leslie’s.
“OK,” Rika said aloud. “Let’s table whatever the hell just happened here and get our heads in the game. We have a job to do and a company to lead. We’re going to get in there, secure ten core-damned starships, and kick the Niets in the teeth while we’re at it.”
Barne grunted. “Lots and lots of teeth kicking.”
Everyone put a hand in the center of their small circle, and called out at the same time, “Rika’s Marauders!”
Everyone except for Rika, who still said “Team Baslisk!”
Barne shook his head. “You really gotta get on board with that name.”
“I…uh.” Rika felt a flush rising on her cheeks. “OK, let’s try it again.”
They put their hands out again, and this time all four called out, “Rika’s Marauders!” together.
Rika felt stupid and proud at the same time, but the expressions on her friends’ faces filled her with confidence.
“OK, Marauders.” Rika struggled to keep her expression stony. “Let’s do this.”
They filed out of Rika’s office. At the first intersection where Barne and Leslie broke off for their drop bays. Rika and Chase paused, staring intently into one another’s eyes.
“Good luck, Rika,” Chase said. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”
“Tomorrow,” Rika nodded.
They parted ways, each trying to focus on the mission ahead, but failing miserably.
INSERTION
STELLAR DATE: 05.01.8949 (Adjusted Gregorian)
LOCATION: Golden Lark
REGION: Approaching Armens, Hercules System, Septhian Alliance
Rika settled into her seat at the front of the dropship, and clipped the harness onto her hard points. She looked at the mechs seated on the benches, First Platoon’s squad one, and nodded to them.
“Ready to kick the door in, Marauders?”
“Rika’s Marauders!” Sergeant Aaron called out, generating a Roo-ah! from the rest of the mechs.
Rika held back a groan and glanced at Kelly who stat with her helmet on her lap, grinning at Rika. Kelly tapped her chest and Rika saw that Team Hammerfall’s logo was still there, but below it was the Marauder’s crest.
Rika gave Kelly a thumbs-up and shared a crazy smile with her old friend.
Kelly said privately.
Rika nodded, smiling at the memory.
Rika felt the same way, but knew that Silva needed to be with her daughter, and her daughter needed to be with her mother.
Rika laughed, and then Flight Leader Heather’s voice came over the Link.
<
br /> Rika had already given her speeches. Everyone had their orders, and Niki had trained the AIs on the breach protocols. Once they dropped, communication would be minimal. From here on out, she was a soldier in a squad, focused on their one objective.
Good luck everyone.
The light at the front of the dropship went from red to green, and they fell through the deck and out of the ship.
“Goooood afternoon, squad one. We’d like to thank you for flying Air Shit-Storm; I’m your captain, Vargo Klen. The temperature outside is a chilly 120 degrees kelvin, but we expect to enter a warm band soon, where we’ll see things creep up to a nice, comfy 320 degrees.
“If you activate your external feeds, you can see a lovely column of particulate ice off our starboard bow, and to port, it’s raining ammonia. The inside of our grav shield is pressurized, so that scraping noise you hear is the planet’s frozen atmosphere dragging along our shields.”
“Klen!” Crunch hollered up to the cockpit. “Is that supposed to be comforting?”
“Why, thank you for the audience interaction. And yes, it is—at least when you consider that there’s no planetary surface below us. If we experience any failures, we’ll be crushed long before we fall the thirty-five thousand kilometers to Armens’ liquid metallic hydrogen core.”
Crunch looked like he was going to say something else, but only shook his head and sat back.
Klen continued his speech. “Our current flight path and cruising speed has us looking at a nine-hour and thirty-seven-minute flight time, so may I suggest our inflight entertainment system otherwise known as staring at your teammates’ helmets?”
“Man, someone needs to at least get us some good vids on this ride,” Private Kerry groused. “If I have to stare at Ben’s head this whole trip, It’s gonna crack my viewscreen.”
“Stow it,” Sergeant Aaron grunted. “I don’t want to have to listen to your shit the whole ride out.”
“Sorry, Sarge,” Kerry said, giving a thumbs-up. “Can I talk on the way back?”
“Maybe. We’ll see how many Niets you kill.”
The mechs spoke little for the rest of the ride, though Rika suspected that they were still chatting over the Link. Some would be reviewing the mission details and ship layout, others would be thinking and talking about anything but the mission.
The way the dropship bucked and rattled in the gas giant’s winds, she bet a lot of the mechs were pretending to be anywhere else.
Whatever worked was fine by her. So long as when the dropship latched on, everyone got out by the numbers and covered their corners.
Rika had a visual of their progress overlaid on her vision. She kept an eye on it, as the thirty-four dropships slowly crept toward the Nietzschean ships at what felt like an agonizingly slow pace.
The dropships were successfully maintaining their formation, pinging one another periodically on a shifting ULF band. Rika breathed a sigh of relief, as the second check-in passed, and the ships were all still in formation.
Other than a rogue lightning strike, the initial entry was the most dangerous part of the journey. If they’d made it this far, they’d make it to the Niets, no problem.
Then the real fun would begin.
Rika was with the team assigned to the enemy cruiser dubbed ‘Big Daddy’. It was larger than the others, nearly four kilometers long, and three whole squads were assigned to it.
Squad one, present in the dropship with Rika, would breach an airlock near the rear of the ship, while squads two and three would land amidships, and break up by fireteams once inside to harass the enemy and disrupt any assistance that may be sent back to engineering.
Rika lost track of time—deliberately keeping her eyes from the countdown. It seemed to work, because when Klen announced that they were on their final descent to the Nietzschean ships’ altitude, it took her by surprise.
The message came from Heather’s dropship that she’d sent out the signal to the SAF; a minute later live scan data began to flow in from orbiting military satellites.
The Niets would detect the scan, but Rika would bet her life they wouldn’t expect what was coming next.
“We’re seven hundred kilometers and closing,” Klen announced. “Expect some turbulence as we pass through the enemies’ shield, and please make sure you take all your weapons with you and kick some ever-lovin’ Nietzschean ass!”
A chorus of shouts met Klen’s proclamation, and Rika pulled up the view from the nose of the dropship, hoping for a visual of the Nietzschean cruiser.
Unfortunately, all she could see were the dark clouds surrounding them, punctuated by periodic flashes of lightning.
Then the enemy cruiser pushed through the clouds, and the dropship spun and fired its engines, lurching, and jostling the mechs about.
“Mind the bump,” Klen cautioned. “We’ve just passed through their shield. Bringing us in toward our landing site.”
Rika could barely see a thing on optical, but on IR, the ship glowed brightly against the dull red of the surrounding clouds.
“Damn, that sucker’s hot,” Klen commented, breaking out of his pilot’s drawl for once. “They’ll have to rise up to higher altitudes soon—seems like they can’t disperse enough heat down here.”
“We’ll see if we can’t help them with that,” Rika replied. “I hear space is pretty cool.”
“Too cool—well, too lacking in matter to transfer energy to. When you guys bring those ships up, you should try to do it slowly, with the cooling vanes deployed all the way.”
“I have a visual on the other two ships, they’re latching on,” Klen called back. “We’re touching down in three, two, one.”
The pilot’s statement was punctuated by a dull thud, and then the rear hatch on the dropship opened, mechs rushing into the darkness without hesitation.
Rika was last out, and she felt a wave push her upward, off the ship, a moment before her maglocks kicked in and pulled her back down.
A burst of beamfire came from a nearby point defense cannon, splashing against the dropship’s shields.
Ben and Al—who had both been with Rika that fateful night when they defeated the Politica—were joined by Harris and Kim. They each took aim, stepped through the dropship’s shield, and fired in unison.
Aaron nodded with satisfaction.
The airlock was five meters from where Klen had set the dropship down, and one-two set to their task, planting a pair of shaped charges on either side of the door’s center seam.
Rika’s external pickups detected a high-pitch whistle, and she realized it was the planet’s atmosphere, pushing into the ship.
That’s a change. Hope they like hydrogen.
Crunch and Shoshin dropped down into the airlock to attach explosives on the inner door, as fireteam one-one took out another surface turret to Rika’s right.
Rika tried to reach out to the dropships assaulting the other ships and found that it was as they’d suspected. With the planet’s interference, and the Nietzschean ship’s shields, the assault teams couldn’t communicate with one another.
She did connect with squads two and three; both were already moving into the ship and had pulled some rudimentary data from its network. Foremost o
f which was that the ship they were attacking was the Fury Lance. Rika was tempted to still think of it as the Big Daddy, but updated the combat net with the correct name to avoid confusion.
Another explosion shuddered through the planet’s thick atmosphere, and she saw its cloudy air rush into the ship. The lock was breached.
Fireteams two and three formed up around the airlock while fireteam four held back, just in case anything untoward happened.
Two tiny probes flew out of Kelly’s back and dropped down through the airlock. The outer doors had been smashed inward, and the inner seal—a solid disk that rolled into place—was folded over at the middle, just barely making enough room for the AM-3s in the squad.
Rika was glad that she didn’t have to worry about getting a K1R through the ship. The Van wouldn’t fit through this airlock, even if they’d opened it without explosives.
Kelly’s probes flew into the passageway beyond the entrance, and noted likely locations of auto turrets—though why they hadn’t deployed was curious.
The passageway ended in a T, and the probes split up, each travelling to the next intersections and stopping to keep an eye on all approaches.
The rest of the fireteam followed, and then Aaron leapt in after them.
Rika deployed one of her own probes to keep an eye on the fireteam from the rear. She pulled up feeds from second and squad three, which were relayed from their dropships to Klen’s, and then to her.
The other squads had already met resistance, but in the form of unarmored crew, barely even worth reporting.