by M. D. Cooper
Carla explained.
The sergeant led the team around the corner to see the remains of the Niets.
“Well, shit,” he muttered aloud. “That’s a lot of bits and pieces.”
* * * * *
“Shit!” Heather cursed as the ship’s internal scan picked up another group of Niets moving down a parallel corridor.
A staccato beat thrummed through the deck, and she tried not to think of where the mech was shooting as she nodded to Karen and Tex. “I’ll fall back to keep them from hitting you in the ass.”
“Sure,” Tex said as he tossed a pulse bomb down the corridor, adding a trio of shots that took out two Niets who’d been thrown from cover. “Three’s overkill for this approach anyway.”
Heather snorted and fell back, passing the entrance to the bridge, where Garth and Ona were still managing the external defenses—with Potter’s assistance—and rounded a bend to move into the next intersection, ready to take out the flanking Niets.
The scan and optics in the corridor were dead, so she flung a passel of nano around the corner, only to get visual on a dozen Niets in heavy armor.
After considering her options, Heather activated her stealth systems and crossed the corridor, watching the Niets reach the intersection and then turn left toward the bridge.
Once they’d all rounded the bend, she lobbed a grenade and opened fire with her beam rifle, relativistic electrons slicing through two Niets before the grenade went off, slamming another four into the bulkhead. At the front of their group, one of the enemy had the presence of mind to turn and fire.
“Fuck!” Heather swore, diving around the corner as a rocket flew from a launcher on his shoulder, streaking toward her position.
For a moment, she thought she’d cleared the blast, but then something grabbed her legs, and she slammed into the bulkhead. Scrambling away from the cross corridor, it took her a moment to realize that her legs were gone from the knee down.
A Niet appeared in the intersection, staring down at her legs, and Heather raised her gun arm, firing a stream of kinetic rounds at his groin, tearing through the joint and ripping his left leg off.
“How’s it feel, asshole!” she shouted, the words dying when three more Niets rounded the corner, weapons leveled at her.
The Van’s single word thundered through her mind, and she complied, laughing as shots streamed overhead, the barrage of HE rounds tearing through the Niets.
She rested her gun arm on the K1R’s right shoulder and added her own fire, careful to keep her head from scraping the overhead as they smashed through the Niets and came back to the passageway that ran outside the bridge.
Tex and Karen had fallen back to the entrance to the ship’s command center, a withering barrage of fire slamming into the ribbing around the doorway.
Heather screamed as she released a DPU round from her GNR before switching to the electron beam, the pair’s shots tearing through the Niets, utterly decimating a dozen before the rest turned to fall back, only to get cut down in crossfire as Ainsley and Jenny flanked them, DPU rounds and beams finishing what The Van’s HE shots started.
Thirty seconds later, the corridor was silent—barring the groan of overheated metal and weapons ticking as they cooled.
“Shit.” Heather breathed the word. “That was fun…and destructive.”
“You’re welcome,” The Van replied as he ducked through the entrance to the bridge and walked to the command chair.
Heather swung off his back and landed in the chair, her eyes widening as she saw that Berra Station was seconds away from being able to fire around the Lance’s stasis shields.
Normally that would be difficult to achieve, but with both Berra Station and the Lance moving less than a kilometer per second relative to one another, it was possible that the destroyers could block a couple of shots.
Weapons fire sounded in the corridor again, and The Van patted Heather’s shoulder. “Stay put, Colonel. I got this.”
He walked to the entrance, wrenched the door free, and stormed back into the passageway.
“Maybe we should get him a shield,” Heather muttered, wondering how long it would take to repair the Lance.
“Any day now, Crunch,” she muttered.
* * * * *
“Shit!” Crunch cursed as his fireteam rushed toward their target. Ferris had just relayed that both the destroyers had been pushed off course by rail shots from Berra.
Ten seconds later, the pair of mechs reached the room’s entrance, and all Crunch heard was, “Touch that button, and I’ll blow your head off!”
The other three mechs on the team cleared the hall before entering the FCC room to see Kerry and Carla standing atop a console, weapons trained on a group of unarmored Nietzscheans who were backing toward the far wall.
“Would you look at that,” Crunch muttered. “Niets who actually know how to retreat. Too bad your commanders don’t understand that…then you wouldn’t be looking at spending the rest of the war in a Genevian POW camp.”
“War?” one of the Niets bearing a captain’s insignia said. “The war’s over.”
“No,” Crunch shook his head. “It’s just getting started.”
* * * * *
“Should I take us in, ma’am?” Garth asked.
A smile formed on Heather’s lips. “Oh hell yeah. Let’s show them what we can do.”
The super dreadnought surged forward, engines driving it toward Chad, complete shield coverage giving them full maneuverability. The main gun fired twice more, taking out two Nietzschean cruisers in short succession.
“They’re breaking off,” Ona announced.
Heather laughed and closed the connection before switching to a channel with Berra Station.
The newly minted stationmaster made a choking sound.
The Lance’s commander laughed.
QUEEN
STELLAR DATE: 06.09.8950 (Adjusted Years)
LOCATION: Royal Palace, Mount Genevia, Belgium
REGION: Genevia System, New Genevian Alliance
“Do we really have to do this?” Rika asked no one in particular as she stood in an antechamber just off one of the Royal Palace’s ballrooms, looking through the surveillance feeds at the mass of attendees.
“Have to?” Chase asked from where he stood at her side, a genuinely happy smile on his lips. “No, I suppose we don’t have to. But we really should. Besides, I’d much rather call you queen than magnus. Then I can be your royal consort.”
“Oh?” She turned toward him, looking over his gleaming white armor, which matched her own. “Consort? You don’t want to go for king?”
“King?” Chase snorted. “Stars, that sounds like a lot of responsibility. I’ll keep my sights a bit lower.”
“You realize that we’d have to marry before you could be either, right?” Rika asked.
The man who had been at her side for the past two years barked a laugh. “Is that how you propose to a guy, Rika?”
“Propose?” she coughed out. “Well…I guess I could at some point. I’d always thought that a wedding was the sort of thing you do after the war, though.”
“Or at least after your coronation,” Tremon said as he approached, resplendent in a deep crimson robe. “Let’s get one ceremony out of the way before we plan the next one.”
A snort came from behind Rika, and she turned to see Kelly covering her mouth.
“What?” the mech asked innocently.
“What’s what, that’s what,” Rika retorted. “I know that laugh. You’re already planning our wedding.”
“Oh hell no, I was thinking about my own.”
“You?” Rika asked. “To who?”
“Really?” Leslie shook her head as she approached the group. “Are you blind, Rika?”
“Ummm…” Rika looked from Kelly to Leslie, then at Chase and Tremon. “Have I totally missed something?”
The chancellor nodded. “You really have. Perish the thought that all our lives hinge on your powers of observation, My Queen.”
Rika groaned. “Well? Is anyone going to tell me?”
“You’re serious?” Kelly asked. “You haven’t noticed?”
“That’s it.” Rika turned away from her old friend. “I’m not talking to you till after I’m coronated.”
“Oh?” the SMI asked.
“Yeah, then I’ll issue a decree forcing you to tell me.”
“It won’t work,” Kelly countered.
Rika turned back to the door, on the other side of which waited a room full of people she didn’t know—most of them, at least. “You all really aren’t helping.”
“Easy, hon,” Chase placed a hand on her shoulder. “This is going to be a cakewalk. Tremon’s going to guide you through it all. Thirty minutes and it’s done but for the drinking.”
“I’m already ready for that part,” she muttered.
“So are we all,” the chancellor said. “You know, I was nicely retired before I met you, Rika.”
“You were hiding. That’s different.”
The chancellor shrugged, a relaxed smile on his lips. “You say tomayto, I say tomahto.”
Rika quirked an eyebrow at the man, glad to see him actually happy. In many regards, his time in Genevia had mirrored hers, insofar as unwanted added responsibility was concerned. But, for all her grousing, the Genevian people had been receptive to her, and positive in their reactions to having a mech as their magnus, and soon to be queen.
Niki said to Rika.
She sent a mental laugh her AI’s way and shook her head.
Rika didn’t reply to the AI, and glanced at Tremon. “So, do you go out first? I have to admit that I wasn’t paying much attention to the order of procession.”
The chancellor shook his head. “Yeah, me first, then—actually, Niki can just tell you when you’re on. Relax and go with the flow.”
“Umm…because that’s not disconcerting at all,” Rika muttered.
At Niki’s direction, she stepped out of sight before the doors opened, and Chancellor Tremon walked out. He was followed by Kelly and Silva, who looked magnificent in their white armor.
In a way, the ceremony felt a bit like a wedding to Rika. Instead of being married to Chase, though, she was being married to the Genevian people.
Even so, she’d walk down the aisle with him at her side.
The only thing that felt wrong was how few of her mechs were present. In fact, other than the members of her personal guard—the rest of whom were spread throughout the room—there were no other mechs on Belgium.
he replied, shooting her a curious look over her use of ‘too’. Luckily Rika was saved from him bringing it up by Niki speaking up.
Rika took Chase’s arm, and the pair walked out into the ballroom.
The space was filled with Genevian leadership, from planetary governors to ministers to stationmasters—nearly everyone in the inner system who had been found to be loyal—and not a Nietzschean toadie was present.
The room was decorated in a style fit for a mech queen. The pillars that supported the roof were covered in sheaths reminiscent of Rika’s own armor. They rose up to a darkened roof that was filled with stars and images of ships passing overhead, Marauder vessels doing battle against Nietzscheans in the faux night sky.
At the center of the room was a raised dais, where Tremon stood waiting for Rika. Kelly and Silva stood on either side, and Chase stopped at the edge as well, holding her hand for a moment before letting go.
* * * * *
Kora strode onto the ViperTalon’s bridge and stood next to the captain’s station, arms akimbo. “We in queue yet?”
“Yeah, using your name got us priority placement,” Rajiz said, his tone carefully neutral.
Despite the fact that Kora and Gary had essentially commandeered his ship, the captain hadn’t made a big issue out of it, and seemed resigned to the fact that he was facing another round of interrogations before—hope
fully—being let go.
Avi on the other hand had been building up a solid grudge, her eyes shooting daggers at Kora every time they encountered one another. It had become so uncomfortable that Kora and Gary rarely left one another alone out of a growing concern for their safety.
“That’s good,” Kora replied, wondering how to broach the next subject with the captain and his first mate, certain it was going to rub Avi the wrong way.
“So, I’m curious if you checked the case with the Discipline chips in it when you first took it.”
“What do you mean?” Avi snapped, her brows lowering. “Are you asking if I popped it open for a quick look-see when we were in the Nietzschean compound on Chad?”
“Yeah, or shortly after,” Kora suggested. “I’m just curious if everything was in there, or if some things were missing.”
“Not that I know—” Rajiz began, but Avi stood up and spoke over him.
“Kora, what in the effing stars makes you think we know so much about Nietzschean Discipline systems that we know what would and would not be in that case? We were hired to steal it, and we stole it. Job done.”
“Don’t you check to make sure that you grabbed the right thing?”
Avi shrugged. “I was told to get a case labeled DT11-142-X, so I got case with that label. It was sealed and Linked, so I didn’t exactly want to crack it open with ten thousand Niets around to see if they’d notice.”
“And later?” Kora pressed.
“I opened it,” Rajiz said. “But just to check that it had stuff in it. I only knew what they were from my time in the service, I didn’t inventory them.”
“Why do you ask.” Avi’s lips settled into a sneer.
Kora fixed the woman with as unpleasant a look as she was receiving. “Why the core do you think I am? Because some are missing!”
“How many?” Rajiz asked.
“Three.”
“So?” Avi folded her arms across her chest. “Aren’t all those Discipline units old Genevian tech? I thought the Niets hated mechs and the Discipline system.”
“They did,” Rajiz nodded, his brows furrowed in thought. “They hated the modification of the pure human form, but they respected the warriors. Maybe they have some mechs in their military and these units are for them.”