by M. D. Cooper
Letting go three seconds later, she spun and fired her missiles into the cowling around the freighter’s engines. The ship lost power, and Rika mapped its trajectory, glad to see that it would pass over mount Genevia and land in the next valley—which was thankfully uninhabited.
Rika was about to respond, when the final freighter began to disgorge drop pods. She was prepared for landing craft, but not for the hundreds of pods now spewing from its belly.
The pods spread out, the remaining drones moving to the fore, protecting the attackers from the grapeshot. It worked for the most part. More drones fell from the sky, but other than a few casualties, the pods remained unscathed.
The ViperTalon was firing from the rear, taking care not to shoot at angles that would hit the mountain and its defenders, and the two mechs in their skyscreams were doing the same.
It wasn’t enough. Seconds later, over two hundred drop pods hit the side of the mountain.
Rika saw that the AI was right. The enemy drop pods covered almost ten square kilometers of the eastern slopes of Mount Genevia.
She picked an outcropping three quarters of the way up the mountain and tagged it for Kelly.
Kelly snorted.
The other mech laughed.
Rika banked around the top of the mountain and swept down the slopes, releasing her last few missiles in the direction of the enemy forces, and then settled down at the rear of the outcropping.
Once her limbs were reattached, Rika jumped to the ground. As she did, Kelly’s skyscream streaked overtop, beams flashing out, striking targets in the forest and setting a few dead trees ablaze. Rika grabbed a portable shield generator from the back of the ‘scream and sprinted to the edge of the outcropping.
Mount Genevia was normally covered in sensors. Unfortunately, the assault led by her mechs a few weeks ago had destroyed much of the network. Small drones still provided some scan coverage in the gaps, but Rika knew that a determined enemy could slip past them.
However, unless the rebels were to circle around to the west side of the mountain—where they’d encounter Harlan and the bulk of the regulars—they would pass on either side of the promontory. And Rika would be ready for them.
ON THE SLOPES
STELLAR DATE: 06.09.8950 (Adjusted Years)
LOCATION: GMS Overwatch, Belgium
REGION: Genevia System, New Genevian Alliance
Piper sectioned off a portion of his mind to watch Rika and Kelly in their desperate defense. He felt guilty that the five freighters had slipped past him, but the PLI had sent in another wave of ships, and it had taken the last of his drones to stop them.
He had a few dozen bots, but they were consumed with mopping up the remaining enemy drones, as well as chasing after a few dropships the freighters had disgorged at high altitude before being destroyed.
Six PLI ships in the second wave had boosted back to a higher orbit, trying to blend in with the civilian craft at parking altitudes, and he’d dispatched the two destroyers under his command to chase after them.
That left him contemplating how to help with the situation on Belgium. Thousands of PLI troops were closing in on Mount Genevia; Rika and a few mechs were all that stood between them and the Royal Palace.
If it were up to Piper, he would extract everyone from the palace, and then nuke it from orbit.
With the enemy’s orbital offensive in tatters, they didn’t possess the ability to stop starfire from falling on their heads. The only problem was that the fighting on the mountainside had become a morass. Defenders were spread through the forest in pockets, holding back the enemy via overlapping fields of fire, but they were too close to the PLI troops to use any weapons of mass destruction from above.
I need to get closer.
The battle had taken the Overwatch five thousand kilometers away from Mount Genevia, and several thousand klicks higher above the planet’s surface. Piper set a new course, turning the ship, and fired its engines to slow the craft’s orbit and bring it closer to the ground.
Unlike the smaller freighters that had penetrated Belgium’s atmosphere, the Harriet Class ship’s engines possessed the thrust to geo over Mount Genevia in minutes, even in atmosphere.
Of course, running the fusion burners that hot deep within a world’s gravity well could ionize large sections of its atmosphere, creating storms and even sparking wildfires from the heat.
Take it easy, don’t kill all the organics.
Barne didn’t respond, but a series of coordinates with safe radiuses followed a few seconds later. Piper could fire on four of them from his current position, and let loose with a salvo of kinetic rounds.
Each rail-fired pellet was just a few kilograms wrapped in a sabot that protected the slug during atmospheric entry. The sabots burned off roughly one hundred klicks above the targets, and from there, the depleted uranium rods fell on the enemies.
Piper rechecked his velocity and firing angle.
Both Rika and Leslie were on that mountaintop. There was no way he’d let either come to harm.
No matter what.
* * * * *
Rika spied another group of rebels moving through a copse of trees on her right, and let fire with a depleted uranium round, the rod striking the leader and turning him into a chunky spray before tearing through the woman behind him.
As Niki made the comment, another series of rounds slapped against the grav barrier. The field—which had been deflecting rounds a few minutes ago—only slowed these, and they tapped against Rika’s armor before falling to the ground.
Kelly laughed.
The SMI’s message cut off, and an instant later, Rika picked out a fireball just over a kilometer away. It arced down toward the side of the mountain, plowing through conifers, before a cloud of earth shot into the air.
The debris hadn’t even begun a downward arc before Rika leapt off the outcropping. The forty-meter trees below raced up toward her, and she grabbed onto the trunk of one, bending it before letting go and splitting her feet apart into her customary three-clawed appendages and grabbing hold of another.
A second later, she was on the ground, tearing through the foliage.
Rounds pinged off her armored body, and Niki highlighted the origin of the shots. Rika fired without even looking; only the cessation of the attack indicated she’d met with success.
More rebels appeared in the woods, weapons barking in the night as they tried to hit the SMI-4 dodging and weaving through the trees. Some she fired at, some she ignored, some she ran right over, her armored body crushing bones and tearing apart her enemy.
Ahead she saw fires burning amidst the trees, and she angled toward the light, finally coming to a stop in a deep furrow plowed into the ground by Kelly’s skyscream.
The ship’s central bulge appeared intact, but one wing was sheared off, and the rear section where Kelly’s limbs were stored was a crumpled ruin.
“Fuck, Kelly, you’d better be OK,” Rika muttered as she slid down the loose scree and then jumped atop the ship.
“I will be if you don’t knock me loose and roll us down the mountain,” Kelly’s sarcasm-laced voice came from within.
Rika snorted, GNR whipping to the side, and fired an electron beam at a rebel who appeared at the edge of the trench.
“Sure, that’s our biggest threat right now.”
The top hatch opened halfway and then jammed, but Rika grabbed hold and prised it free, revealing Kelly’s helmeted head.
“You wanna go for a ride?” she asked the mech.
“I take it the fact that I can’t get a response from the rear compartment means it’s gone?” she asked.
“No,” Rika shook her head. “Just doing an impression of a crushed can. Don’t worry. I can carry you.”
Kelly nodded, and the ship released the clamps holding her in place. Rika reached down and extracted her longtime friend, swinging her around and settling the other mech onto her hardmounts.
“Maglocks working?” she asked.
“Yeah,” Kelly replied. “I’m your little mech barnacle.”
Rika groaned in mock horror as she took stock of the surrounding woods. Downslope, things appeared to be clear, but there was no visibility on the other side.
“You’re so gracious,” Rika sighed as she released a pair of microdrones, flinging them into the sky. “Let’s see what we can see.”
The small bots took a minute to clear the debris and fire, whereupon they showed a force of a hundred rebels closing in around the crash site. More were visible in the distance, and Rika realized that fully half the enemy on the eastern face of the mountain was within a few hundred meters.
The general groaned.
Rika wondered about that.
There was a brief pause.
She climbed out of the gash in the earth, feeling an unspoken question from Kelly.
<‘Bring them forward’?> Kelly asked with a snicker.
The enemy soldiers had the sense to remain in cover as she stood atop the smoldering log, her GNR pointed at the ground between them.
“Why should we do that?” a voice asked from behind a nearby tree.
“Because I’m Rika, Queen of New Genevia.”
She felt like a fool saying the words. For all intents and purposes, she’d proclaimed herself queen in a ceremony meant to impress the populace. Instead, she’d shown that she couldn’t even protect her own house.
“Queen.” The word was spoken with a snort of derision. “Some queen.”
“Queen of dirt,” another rebel soldier said.
A laugh slipped from Rika as she glanced down at her once-pristine white armor, now covered in scorch marks and grime. “We mechs have a lot of experience with dirt.”
“Fitting,” a new voice said. For a moment, Rika’s vocal analytics tagged the speaker as a high probability match for Arla, but when she spoke again, the system suggested a sibling. “It is, after all, what you were made for. Getting dirty.”
“Are you trying to tell me that someone else’s intent in my creation has anything to do with my destiny?” Rika asked. “By that logic, no one should ever go against the will of their parents.”
“I’m not going to argue your purpose with you, mech. You were made to serve Genevia, not rule it. You’ve had plenty of chances to return to your proper place, but you never took it. Now you’ll be forced to.”
“Oh for starssakes,” Rika muttered. “Why do you people always have to talk like this? Do you think that you’re somehow going to convince me to see the error of my ways? I’ve saved Genevia. I’ve taken on our enemies and crushed them. I’ve stopped your attack, too, even though you were working with the Niets.”
“What are you talking about,” the woman asked, stepping into view.
“Rachella,” Rika hissed, recognizing the woman. “How did I not realize it before?”
“I hacked the ViperTalon’s comm systems. They shifted my voice a
nd appearance just enough. I didn’t know then that you’d imprisoned my sister, but I still knew better than to trust a mech.”
Rika wished the woman could see the smile on her face. “Oh, you can trust me. To put you right where I put her.”
“Where?!” Rachella demanded. “What did you do with my sister?”
“Oh, she’s tucked away somewhere,” Rika replied with a shrug. “Nowhere you’ll find anytime soon, though.” She turned her attention inward, to Niki.
Kelly said.
Niki chuckled.
Kelly grunted.
“Don’t mess around with me, Queen Rika.” Rachella spoke the words with clear derision. “You’re going to free all your Genevian prisoners and then abdicate. We’ll let you leave in exile if you publicly swear never to return.”
“And my ships, my mechs?”
“They can swear fealty to a new government.”
“Oh?” Rika cocked her head. “A democratically elected one?”
“Eventually.”
“So how’s that any different than what I’m doing? I don’t want to be queen forever. This is just to strike fear into the hearts of the Niets. But the middle of a war is no time to hold elections.” Rika turned as she spoke, taking in the soldiers arrayed around her, many peering out from their cover as she spoke. “We’ve pushed the Niets back. At this rate, we will topple them entirely in a matter of years. Then I will retire. I’ll step aside, and we’ll set up a new government. But for now, Genevia needs a single ruler, and like it or not, I am that person.”
“You’re not a person,” Rachella said as she took a step back. “You’re a mech.”