by M. D. Cooper
Rika sent a smile and blew a kiss.
Leslie grinned and turned toward the back door, calling over her shoulder. “Piece of cake.”
Rika, Patty, and Amy gathered the team’s gear and assembled in the alley between the buildings, leaning casually against the wall as they waited for Leslie to arrive. The clock had moved less than four minutes when a white groundcar pulled up at the alley’s entrance.
“Ride’s here,” Rika announced as she walked to the car and held open the back door, gesturing for Amy and Patty to get in, before she pulled open the front door and got in herself.
“Leslie’s Spaceport Taxi Service at your…uh, service,” Leslie joked with a smile.
“Let’s get this show on the road,” Patty begged. “I don’t like it when other people are driving.”
“I’ll give you a taste of your own medicine, sister,” Leslie promised as she pulled out into traffic. “I haven’t forgotten that time you cut the grav systems when we were dropping over Mennas, and my back slammed into the overhead.”
“Leslie, seriously, we were being shot at. I was avoiding a missile,” Patty explained. “How many times are you gonna bring this up?”
“Well, you almost broke my back, so I think a few more.”
“It’s what you get for not strapping in,” Patty muttered.
Rika only half-listened to the banter as Leslie wove the car through the city streets. A flying car would have been much better, but the chances of finding one of those sitting on the street and hacking its flight systems were slim. They had to take what they could get.
Leslie drove the car through Kandahar City’s streets faster than the local ordinances allowed, but not so fast that they were worried about catching the eye of law enforcement.
If the ground traffic didn’t grow much more congested, they should reach the spaceport with ten minutes to spare.
As they drew closer to the spaceport, the city streets became cleaner, and the amount of vehicular and foot traffic increased. Before long, Leslie pulled off the larger thoroughfares and wove through an industrial district filled with manufacturing businesses and rows of low warehouses.
In the distance, on the far side of the spaceport, Rika could make out towering silos lining the horizon—likely the terminus for much of the grain harvested around Kandahar City. She watched as a large-bellied grain hauler lifted silently into the air on its grav drives, hauling enough grain to feed a station for a week.
“Just a few more minutes now,” Rika reported over her shoulder. “The guys’ directions have us getting in through a side gate just a kilometer away.”
A wire fence ran around the starship landing field, with hangars and fuel depots on the other side. Between the structures, dozens of ships were visible on cradles dotting the field.
Presently they arrived at the gate, and Leslie pulled the car up to the security booth.
“State your business,” an annoyed-looking guard demanded as Leslie’s window slid down.
“We have a berth on the Persephone Jones,” Leslie said calmly, not even batting an eyelash.
“Pass your public tokens over the security station’s auth-net,” the man said.
“She doesn’t have Link access yet,” Leslie said, craning her head back to indicate Amy. “I’ll be passing her creds.”
“Sure. Whatever,” the guard said, as he took a step back to gaze through the gate at something that seemed only marginally more interesting than the car in front of him.
Rika passed her tokens, praying that Barne would have thought to hack the gate’s auth systems. She hadn’t asked him to, and neither he nor Chase had mentioned it.
He doesn’t miss details like this, don’t sweat it, she scolded herself while forcing her heart rate to steady.
The guard glanced back at the security booth behind him, and his eyes blinked rapidly before he looked back into the car and nodded. “OK, you’re good to go. Park over there on the right—in the long-term garage.”
“Oh, we have a friend coming to get the car later today; we don’t need to go into the lot.”
“Sorry, ma’am. Passengers can’t park by the private terminals. You have to go to the garage.”
“OK, fine,” Leslie replied and drove through the gate, following the signs to the long-term garage, which was visible on their right.
It was a towering structure with twenty levels reaching into the sky, filled with thousands of cars, but surprisingly little foot traffic. As they approached, a lowered gate came into view, adorned with a sign indicating that the upper lot was full. A flashing arrow directed them into the underground section of the garage.
“Shit, this is going to take forever,” Leslie swore.
Leslie drove the car to the underground parking and found a spot on the second level down. Everyone spilled out, and Rika tossed a cleaner bot into the vehicle.
Thirty seconds later, they were rushing past rows of cars—some looked like they had been parked down there for years.
No one else was on their level, and the echo of their footfalls in the space was beginning to set Rika’s hair on-end. As they passed a support pillar, twenty meters from the lift to the ground level, a loud ping reverberated through the air. Rika ducked down, pulling Amy with her.
She looked up and saw a divot in the support pillar next to where her head had been.
A shot came from Leslie’s weapon, and the projectile round made the high-pitched ting it would when hitting hardened carbon armor.
Rika pulled her JE84 out of the duffel and scanned the area behind them. There was just one more row of cars between them and the side wall of the underground car park. A drone swept through the space and didn’t find anything, but Rika’s helmet scan caught a strange shadow passing near one of the lights, moving between two of the cars.
She took aim and fired at the shadow, nodding with satisfaction when the bullet hit something invisible a half-meter in front of the car.
Rika fired another trio of rounds while calling down to Amy, who seemed surprisingly calm in the midst of the weapons fire.
“Amy, get a grenade out of the duffel.”
Return fire hit the car she was crouched beside—one bullet passing all the way through the vehicle before bouncing off Rika’s armor. Rika sent a burst of kinetic rounds from her rifle in return; then an arm touched her shoulder, and she saw the grenade resting on Amy’s palm.
Sometimes having just one hand is a pain in the ass, Rika lamented. She set the rifle down, took the grenade from Amy, and tossed it with a flick of her wrist.
She didn’t throw it overhand, but instead skipped it along the ground. If her aim was true, it should roll out from under a car right underneath the enemy.
A moment later, the explosion thundered through the garage, and one of her drones caught sight of a figure being thrown into the air, and smashing against the ceiling before dropping down. Then the concrete above cracked, and a vehicle from the next level fell through; hopefully landing on top of whoever was back there.
“Nice!” Amy called out approvingly, and Rika wondered what sort of combat the girl might have already seen.
Patty added. oward us on the left.>
Patty fell in behind without needing to be told, and the group moved to the end of the row, staying low, with Rika and Patty firing their weapons sporadically, keeping the enemy back as best they could.
When they reached the last car, Rika could see Leslie crouched in the stairwell’s entrance. Rika pulled the duffel off her shoulder, grabbed the scout’s rifle, and tossed it to her across the open six meters.
Leslie snatched the weapon out of the air with her left hand while firing with her right and nodded at Rika.
“OK, stay on my right, both of you,” Rika said aloud for Amy’s benefit.
Patty stacked up beside Rika and pulled Amy against her
side, giving Rika a nod.
A second later, Leslie opened fire with her rifle, delivering short, controlled bursts at the locations the enemy had been firing from. Rika didn’t wait to see if the soldiers had taken cover before she moved out into the open space as quickly as she dared.
Patty had an arm around Amy, keeping her close, and Rika pushed her worry back as she took aim with her JE84 and fired four three-round bursts at the enemy locations.
Then they were at the stairwell. Patty and Amy took cover behind the wall, and Rika took up a position behind Leslie.
Rika asked, not looking as she fired at the figure of a soldier a dozen cars down.
Leslie fell back and took the stairs to the next level, while Rika continued to provide cover fire. To her left, Patty set the proximity-sensing shape charge on the low ceiling of the stairwell.
Weapons fire echoed down the stairwell, then Leslie called,
Rika gestured for Patty to go, and the pilot grabbed Amy and rushed up the stairs as Rika fell back, using her body to shield them from any shots that made it through the doorway.
They made it to the next landing, and Rika took up a position at the door, freeing Leslie to go up to the next level, which was the ground floor.
Patty had another shape charge and was about to place it when Amy said, “Do it at the top, by the lift; just in case.”
Patty led Amy up the stairs while Rika moved backward, signaling the proximity charge one level down to go live once Amy and Patty reached the floor above.
She hadn’t reached ground level when the first shape charge exploded—the roar thundering up the stairwell, followed by hot flames. There was a loud crack, and the stairs beneath her feet dropped a centimeter.
Rika threw her JE84 through the open door to the ground level and lunged forward, grasping the sill as the staircase fell away. A groan sounded above, and she hauled herself through the opening a second before the staircase above fell past.
“Shit,” she cursed aloud. “Didn’t expect that.”
Patty glanced over from where she was setting the shape charge on the lift. “I did set it to the max.”
“Thanks for the warning.”
Rika took up a position beside Leslie at the double doors leading out of the building. Ahead was a wide road, followed by an open, grassy field—easily a hundred meters across—then the first cradles on the landing area rose up.
Massive shipping containers were stacked along the edge of the field, and starships filled the space beyond; some rising as high as one hundred meters into the air. If the team could make it to those shipping containers, they’d be clear—provided no other enemies waited out there.
Rika unslung the duffel once more, surprised the strap had held, and grabbed her GNR’s barrel. She glanced down at her dress and was amazed that it wasn’t torn anywhere, though it was more than a little dirty.
Its condition was about to worsen. With a sharp pull, she ripped her right sleeve, exposing the socket for her GNR, and slid the tri-fire barrel into place.
“Sorry, Amy,” she said.
“It’s OK, Rika,” Amy replied. “I didn’t really expect them to last—plus I can fix it.”
Strange girl…wants to fix my dress—which I’ll probably never wear again—and also has excellent advice on where to place shape charges…
Behind them, the lift activated, and Patty swore. “Shit, I was hoping that thing had been damaged in the blast.”
“Gonna run a lot faster than you can; here.” Rika tossed her JE84 into the duffel, slung it over her shoulder, and scooped Amy up.
Patty moved out, crossed the road, and crouched behind a grey box adorned with power symbols on the other side.
Rika followed after, narrowly avoiding an automated cargo hauler that was trundling by with a dozen shipping containers on its wide bed.
She reached the far side of the road just as the lift reached the ground floor and opened its doors. She could see two figures inside. One stepped out of the lift and fired a round through the glass doors of the garage. Rika anticipated the shot and dodged to the right, hearing the round whistle past her head.
Then the charge went off, and the front of the parking garage was engulfed in flames.
Patty was already running across the grassy field at full bore, and Rika followed behind at an easy lope, keeping her head on a swivel to let her two-seventy vision get a complete view of the area around them.
Ahead, the two remaining drones reached the stacks of cargo containers just ahead of Leslie and began to sweep the area.
Rika wished once more that she was with a team of SMI-2 mechs. If she didn’t have to worry about Patty, she would be able to reach the ship in less than a minute. Even Leslie, adept as she was on the battlefield, often slowed Rika down.
A team of mechs would have cleared out the garage and then taken out anyone else who dared approach with extreme prejudice. Protect the target, destroy all opposition.
She shook her head, clearing the distracting thoughts. Hammerfall is gone. I’m Basilisk now, and my team needs me. They may not be as tough as mechs, but they are strong in their own ways—and they make me stronger.
Even though she was largely unaugmented, Patty did move like the fires of hell were at her feet, and made good time to the cargo containers, bursting past a group of men and women who had gathered at the edge of the field with worried expressions on their faces.
Rika realized that she must look ridiculous. Her dress had lifted up above her double-jointed knees as she ran, giving away the fact that she was no simple woman fleeing the explosion—though she supposed that her helmet had already ruined any illusion the dress was intended to create.
Patty had to push her way through the crowd, bu
t when they saw Rika rushing toward them, her GNR barrel held up and sweeping side to side as she scanned for targets, a wide space opened up.
“What happened?” a man cried out as Rika burst through the crowd.
She didn’t reply and kept moving, threading her way through the cargo containers, following Patty, who was tracing the route Leslie had taken.
More people were moving past, but none of these asked any questions—most just barely getting out of the way as Rika barreled past.
Once beyond the containers, Rika updated her view of the landing field, taking in the feed from the two surviving drones circling above.
To Rika’s left, she saw the EMS vehicles racing along the perimeter road, and more people rushing through the ships to see what had happened.
Many of the ships had also deployed armed men and women, and they took up positions around the loading ramps while other vessels deployed ground defense weapons.
Rika decided caution was better than speed and slowed her pace.
Patty nodded and paused beside an empty cradle, falling in beside Rika a moment later.
Rika checked the route through the ships.
Ahead, Leslie darted from cover, firing her rifle at a target Rika couldn’t see.
“Stay with Patty,” Rika said aloud to Amy as she set the girl back down.
“No, Rika, don’t go,” Amy said, her voice wavering, the prior cold determination gone, replaced by renewed fear. Amy kept her arms wrapped around Rika’s neck, and Patty reached for the girl.
“I’ve got you, Amy. Rika will be right back; you have to let her go.”
Rika ducked her head down, slipping out of Amy’s arms, and touched the girl’s shoulder as gently as she could. “Stay with Patty. When I give the word, you two advance to Leslie’s position.”