by M. D. Cooper
It was late in the afternoon, and Oran still shone overhead; though the shadows were beginning to lengthen. Rika looked up and saw a smattering of cars flying in the air, but most of the traffic was on the ground.
Rika doubted that any of the vehicles overhead would have spotted her;if they did, Faseema was not so civilized that an armored figure on a rooftop would be cause for alarm. Still, Rika engaged her stealth systems, blending into the rooftop’s gravel surface.
She crept to the front of the building across a series of boards that were laid along the roof, releasing a passel of drones as she went—restocked from Barne’s supplies—instructing them to take up positions on surrounding buildings.
Many of the local businesses had cameras and sensors on their roofs; Rika’s drones located those systems and tagged them on her HUD.
This was her last batch of drones—she had lost the majority back at the granaries. The rest of the team was low, too, and she made a mental note to recover these before they left.
Rika settled into her position as Kandahar City eased into evening, the traffic increasing for a time before the number of cars began to diminish.
There was a comforting aspect to the hum of the city: the sounds of cars and people mixed with the rustling of leaves in the large trees that ran down the middle of the boulevard.
Every now and then, a group of kids—some as young as ten, others older and more raucous—would pass by below. Their brief bouts of noise and color were a refreshing break from the quiet and stoic adults that made up the majority of the sparse foot traffic.
No one stopped at the windows of the fabric store; few even gave the place a second glance, which was good to see. It meant that the store was long since forgotten, completely blended into the urban landscape.
“I love how you can still see the stars here—even in the cities,” Chase said as he settled down beside her, leaning against the raised edge of the wall. He was wearing civilian garb, but she could see the neckline of his ballistic-sublayer poking above his shirt.
Rika gave him a warm smile. He had approached quietly, but there was no way to make it across the gravel rooftop without giving off more than a little sound.
“How are things below?”
Rika could have monitored everything on the Link, but she was keeping her EM signature quiet, enjoying feeling the pulse of the city.
“Patty came to right on schedule,” Chase informed her. “She’s pissed that she lost the shuttle—she said there was absolutely nothing on her scan when she came in. Blames herself for us being stuck here.”
“She knows that’s nonsense,” Rika dismissed the notion. “She was coming in fast for evac with no overhead scan. You just can’t see everything in that situation. We certainly didn’t expect there to be a whole other player on the field; though had we known who Amy’s father was, we certainly would have.”
“I wonder who they were,” Chase mused.
“Could have been anyone. Maybe they work for whoever hired K-Strike. Might have been on their way to pick her up from the farm. Could be some other third party that saw an opportunity… Stars, it could have been Stavros’s own people, looking to nab the girl once we’d found her and save paying our rate.”
“Great to have a list that includes pretty much everyone,” Chase replied, his voice rife with irony. “What do we do with her now, anyway? Do we take her to the designated rendezvous, or do we just hand her over to the authorities when we get to the Politica-controlled stations here in Oran?”
“We don’t know how K-Strike got their hands on Amy,” Rika pointed out. “Could be a traitor in Stavros’s government; if she doesn’t make it back to him, the Marauders won’t get paid. Amy stays with us, and we take her to the rendezvous.”
Chase inclined his head and nodded. “Sound reasoning. So right now, we just keep our heads down and hope Barne can get his guy to move us off-planet.”
“Pretty much,” Rika agreed. “Good ole tedium.”
“How is it that Barne always seems to have a guy and a place to hide out, anyway?”
“A lot of them are Marauder contacts and safe houses—though here on Faseema, he got everything set up with only three days of leg-work. It’s pretty impressive.”
“For an asshole, he sure can swindle and sweet talk.”
Rika chuckled and shook her head. “Sure. Yeah. ‘Sweet talk’—if that’s what you want to call it. It’s more like…sweet bullying.”
Chase snorted. “That makes for a weird visual, with Barne in the mix.”
Rika reached out and took Chase’s hand, and leaned her head back to stare at the stars. “So, are you here to spell me, or just chat?”
Chase clasped her three metal fingers, tracing the edges of one of her knuckle joints. “Some of both. Technically I’m on duty, but I wouldn’t mind spending some time alone up here, just the two of us.”
“I like where your head’s at.”
RETROSPECT
STELLAR DATE: 02.16.8949 (Adjusted Years)
LOCATION: Fran’s Fabulous Fabrics, Kandahar City
REGION: Faseema, Oran System, Praesepe Cluster
“They’re clear,” Rika said as she walked back into the fabric store. “No one on the street even looked twice at a truck pulling out of the alley.”
“I don’t like splitting up like this,” Leslie replied with a shake of her head. “I know we have to. We can’t all go out there and sit in the truck for an hour or two while they scout location, and then have the meet. Still…”
Leslie let her voice die, glancing over at Amy. Rika could tell by her expression that she didn’t want to worry the girl.
“They’re big boys, they’ll manage just fine,” Rika assured them, casting a smile Amy’s way.
In truth, Rika wished that she was out there—she should have been out there. But with her regular right arm back on the shuttle, and no cloaks to cover herself with, she was not the ideal candidate to be out and about.
Especially not when whoever had shot down Patty’s ride would know they were looking for an SMI-2 mech, from the arm left behind.
Rika hoped that it had been lost—smashed or thrown clear of the pinnace before it crashed. However, hope was not the sort of thing that one should bank on in the field.
“Where’s Patty?” Rika asked after the silence stretched on for a minute.
“Up front,” Leslie replied. “She said her head is still hurting and is taking a nap on a nest she made.”
“It’s very colorful,” Amy added with a shy smile.
“I won’t disturb her, then,” Rika said. “You game to take the roof for a bit, Leslie?”
Leslie nodded and rose languidly, stretching her limbs once she was upright. Her movements were measured and sinuous as always, the very image of power and grace.
At times like this, it was impossible not to think of Leslie as a panther; her body’s casual power cementing the image that her jet-black skin and yellow eyes created.
“I’ll do a bit of a patrol as well,” Leslie decided as she sauntered to the back door, grabbing her rifle from the counter on the way. “Be good to stretch my legs for a bit.”
“With the rifle?” Rika asked.
“I’ll be discreet,” Leslie replied with a slow wink.
“Don’t…don’t go for too long,” Amy said with a look of worry in her eyes.
“Just going to be on the rooftops, hon. Though you won’t hear me crunching around, like Iron Pants,” Leslie said with a nod to Rika, “I’ll be within earshot of you.”
“OK,” Amy said begrudgingly.
Leslie left, and neither Rika nor Amy spoke for several minutes—although Rika could tell that the young girl wanted to ask her a question.
Finally, Amy mustered up the courage. “How come they put you in charge? I’ve never seen mechs in charge of anything. Father says you were all bad people before the Genevian war.”
Rika nodded slowly. I wonder what’s on her mind, that she would bring that up? “Yes
, we were all convicted for crimes, but they were often not the ones we really committed. I was arrested for stealing bread.”
Amy’s eyes widened. “Really? They made you into…a machine because of bread?”
Rika nodded again. “They said I stole valuable tech needed for the war effort, but it was just bread. What they wanted were people to make into mech warriors. The government didn’t really care how the quotas were filled.”
“I can’t believe they did that to you over bread…” Amy said her brow furrowed as she looked up and down Rika’s body. “Your arms…your legs, they cut them off.”
“They did, and they reinforced my bones, muscles, joints, and gave me a new skin that could handle combat damage—as well as spend days under armor and not need maintenance.”
“Maintenance on skin?” Amy asked, her brows knitting.
“Cleaning; I don’t need to be bathed or washed.”
Amy’s mouth made an O shape, and she nodded silently—likely considering what would be involved in washing a mech.
“If your government is gone, and you’re not a criminal…why are you still a mech?” Amy asked.
Rika shrugged, uncertain if she wanted to get into this too much further with the girl. Granted, this was the most she had heard Amy talk since they rescued her.
“Remember how you asked why I was in charge?” Rika asked, and Amy nodded. “Well, I’m in charge because I’m really good at what I do…and a lot of that is because of this,” Rika gestured to her body in a sweeping motion.
“So, you’re an effective killer?” Amy deduced.
Rika gave a thin smile. “That’s one way of putting it. You say that like it’s something you’ve heard before, though.”
“My dad says it,” Amy replied. “He said that the Genevian mechs are effective killers. He has…nevermind.” The girl sighed and closed her eyes.
Rika wondered what Amy was going to say, but didn’t push the issue. She considered what Stavros would do with mechs. His Politica wasn’t the only group of totalitarian thugs in the Orion Arm, and they were far from the worst. Stavros claimed he brought stability to the region. From what Rika could tell, that was debatable. He had cleaned up some messes, but there were many more to be laid at his feet.
That, however, was not a discussion to get into with his daughter.
“We were good at what we did,” Rika said after awhile. “If there had been more of us, maybe we could have set the Nietzscheans back more and kept Genevia alive.”
Amy opened her eyes, a look of certainty on her face. “My dad says that the Genevians were a sick people—the fact that they made their mechs from criminals is proof.”
Sheesh, she’s just not going to let this go.
“Remember, not all of them were criminals,” Rika reminded her. “Not really.”
“But you said they lied about what you did,” Amy retorted. “So they’re liars and they mutilated people.”
Rika didn’t have much of a defense—in fact, she had no idea why she was defending Genevia. Maybe it was because so many Marauders were former Genevian military and they were her family now.
But Amy was right; the government and the military leaders of Genevia had been monsters. She didn’t know if the war had made them that way, or if her nation had been utterly amoral before the Nietzscheans attacked. All she knew now was that she hated them both.
“I suppose your father’s right. Some Genevians were sick people. But most of those were at the top, the rank and file; the regular people, they were—are—still good people.”
Rika watched Amy process the information that a government could be bad while the people were good. Rika wondered if it was a viewpoint that the girl had encountered before. From the sounds of it, Amy’s father had imparted a rather unforgiving view of the world on her.
“I guess,” Amy said uncertainly. “You five are all Genevian, and you don’t seem that bad.”
“Thanks for the ringing endorsement,” Rika said dryly.
Amy’s face fell as she realized she was being insensitive to the team who had saved her.
“C’mon,” Rika said, rising to her feet. “You and I can’t walk around in public, showing our faces. We need some disguises.”
Amy looked up. “Disguises? What kind of disguises?”
“Not sure—but we are in the right store to make some, I think.”
Rika wasn’t sure if they could muster up anything useful, but it would give Amy something to do other than plumb the depths of the morality that created a warrior caste like Rika’s.
Amy stood and stared out at the spools of fabric, then looked at the two auto-weavers to their right. “OK, yeah. This could be fun!”
ORIENT SPACE AND AIR
STELLAR DATE: 02.16.8949 (Adjusted Years)
LOCATION: Fran’s Fabulous Fabrics, Kandahar City
REGION: Faseema, Oran System, Praesepe Cluster
“Dear stars above, what did I miss out on?”
Rika gave Leslie a winning smile. “Like it?”
Rika twirled in the long green dress she wore, letting it flare out at the hem—though not enough to show her three-clawed, steel feet. The dress was belted at the waist, rose high on her neck, and was embroidered with decorative beadwork down the front. Soft pads covered her shoulders to hide her armor.
“We made an outfit for you, too, if you want it.”
“Uhh…we going for a stroll along the seashore or something?” Leslie asked.
Rika shrugged. “If the enemy knows there’s a mech on our team, they’ll be looking for me. They’re already looking for Amy; best if we play it safe.”
Leslie cocked her head and narrowed her eyes. “Huh…I can’t scan through it. At least not enough to tell you’re a mech…it does mask a lot of your EM.”
“I found the cloth that did it,” Amy piped up proudly. “It’s some sort of fabric used for making multi-spectrum dance costumes. It has its own EM emitters in it, and those mask the person underneath.”
“What about your faces?” Leslie asked, raising an eyebrow quizzically.
“Floppy hats!” Amy said with a brilliant smile as she reached onto the counter behind her and brandished a pair.
Amy’s smile was infectious, and Rika found herself grinning as well, daring Leslie with her eyes to continue to make an issue of the dresses.
Leslie was saved from having to bring any further logic to bear by Patty’s emergence from around the corner.
“You girls did great!” Patty said, striding out in a long, green and blue pastel-colored dress. “Going to try your outfit on, Leslie?”
“Your armor is really sleek,” Amy said to Leslie. “We didn’t have to add in a lot of stuff to hide it like we did with Rika. I know you like to be able to move easily.”
Rika watched a pained expression flicker across Leslie’s face before she smiled brightly. “Of course, I will. Is that mine there?”
Amy turned and picked up a loose pair of dark grey pants, a cream-colored tunic, and a white shawl. “I was going to go all black for you—you seem to like black—but I didn’t see anyone wearing dark colors when I looked outside, so I went with this.”
“It’s perfect,” Leslie told her and gave her a hug before taking the pants and stepping into them. They fit her well, hanging loosely from her hips to the floor. She slipped the tunic over her head and shrugged it into place before grabbing the shawl and wrapping it around her shoulders. “You did a great job, Amy.”
Leslie’s mental tone was tinged with more vehemence than Rika had expected. She considered making a comment that Amy’s life would always be complex with Stavros as he
r father, but thought better of it.
Amy spoke up, ending their private conversation. “I’m really glad you like it! I picked patterns and textures that would hide what’s underneath.”
“Our weapons can go in these duffels,” Rika added, gesturing to the bag that already held the barrel for her GNR, as well as her JE84 rifle.
“I like that I can still keep a handgun strapped to my chest,” Leslie said.
“And on my thigh,” Patty said, patting her leg.
“Do you have a gun?” Amy asked Rika.
“I can fire a few rounds from a weapon built into my left arm,” Rika replied. “But if we come under attack, Leslie and Patty can provide covering fire while I shelter you and get my JE84 out.”
“Do we think things will go wrong?” Amy asked, her tone losing some of its previous excitement.
Leslie smiled and patted Amy on the shoulder. “You know how people like us work. We are always ready for things to go sideways; it’s our job.”
As Leslie spoke, Rika picked up a message coming in over the channel that the team had established on one of Kandahar City’s public nets.
Rika brought up a map of Kandahar City, overlaying the routes to the Orient Air and Spaceport over her vision.