by M. D. Cooper
Stavros crouched beside Rika and grabbed her hair, pulling her head up to stare into her eyes. Rika met his gaze head-on, not bothering to hide her rage.
“What did you come here for?” he mused. “What did your little crew think you could do against me?”
Rika spat blood into Stavros’s face, and he responded by driving his knee into the back of her head. He forced her down, confirming Rika’s suspicion of his considerable muscular and skeletal enhancements.
Her face was pushed into the dead dancer’s, and Rika felt the burned layers of the corpse’s skin flake off. Some got into her mouth, mixing with blood and angry tears.
The intensity of the pinches signified crippling levels of Discipline, and Rika convulsed underneath Stavros as he screamed questions at her, asking what her real reason for coming to the Isthmus was.
Finally Rika moaned. “We came to rescue Silva and kill you.”
Stavros lifted his knee off her neck and stood, dusting himself off. “Was that so hard, Rika? I knew it all along, of course. Did your precious General Mill of the Marauders ever tell you how good your record really was? Hammerfall was the best mech team in the Genevian armed forces, and I wanted the best. I got Silva, and I used her and her daughter to get you. Now I have the whole set.”
“The whole set?” Rika repeated, confused at his statement.
“I really wanted to save this for the grand reveal later, but I’m going to tell you now, because I want you to understand how little hope you really have. I’m sure you remember Kelly? Part of your original team?”
Rika’s mind reeled. Kelly died. I watched her bleed out in the back of a GAF drop ship years ago… She had never seen Kelly after that, and the records had shown her as KIA.
“You’re confused,” Stavros noted with a smug smile. “I get that. Don’t worry; it’s really quite simple. Toward the end of the war, the Genevians didn’t have the resources to repair all their mechs in the field, so they cryofroze them and shipped them out to a centralized facility. Thing is, that facility didn’t have the resources to repair the mechs, either—not once the Nietzscheans cut off their supply lines.
“The techs abandoned it, and there it sat—just another station drifting in the outer reaches of a devastated star system.”
Stavros stopped his recitation to give a self-satisfied laugh, and then continued his monologue. “That is, until I found it. Unlike your makers, I had the resources to repair those mechs. That station is now here, in the Peloponnese System. With it, I have everything I need to build a full army of mechs; a military that will sweep across the Praesepe Cluster and beyond. You, Silva, and Kelly will be my vanguard. You’re mine now, Rika. You, and everything you hold dear, are mine.”
“Kelly,” Rika whispered, unable to process what Stavros had told her—unwilling to believe it.
“Get up, Rika. You’ll meet her soon enough,” Stavros ordered. “Go clean yourself off and do whatever it is meat does when you’re not being useful. I have work to do.”
CONVICTION
STELLAR DATE: 04.03.8949 (Adjusted Years)
LOCATION: Politica Senior Officer’s Club, The Isthmus, Sparta
REGION: Peloponnese System, The Politica, Praesepe Cluster
Rika arrived at the bank of lifts and sent a command to summon a car down.
The doors of one of the lift cars opened, and Rika stepped in. The rage on her face, combined with the blood and filth, kept any other passengers from joining her.
She slammed a fist into the wall after the doors closed and let out a bloodcurdling scream.
Niki was right. I can’t stop what they are going to do to Leslie. Not yet, anyway…
Rika bit back a response. She knew Niki was trying to help—and she was right—but it didn’t make her feel better right now.
In the end, Rika stopped at a restroom on the same floor as the mech bay and washed her face. Once the dead dancer’s remains and her own blood were scrubbed away, she returned to the mech bay—which was currently empty—and gave the autodoc a long look.
Stavros would expect to see her lacerated face repaired by morning, but the autodoc’s standard procedure would be to pull off her limbs while it ran a full diagnostic.
Niki scolded.
“So autodoc’s out. Options, options…” Rika muttered aloud.
The bay contained everything a platoon of mechs would ever need: mech-racks, weapons, supplies, nutripaste, field kits…
Field kits!
Rika strode over to the racks where the field kits lay and searched through them. Most were for armor and structural repair.
There have to be some subdermal repair kits for musculature… Rika remembered a medic back in the war saying that the kits were the same ones used for skin repair, just more powerful.
After rifling through all the kits, Rika finally found one with subdermal meshes. She grabbed a package, carefully peeled off the backing, and took a deep breath.
“Here goes nothing,” she braced herself and slapped it on her cheek.
Searing pain tore through her face, and she realized why these kits weren’t normally used on parts of the body with so many nerve endings.
The pain abated, and Rika was wondering if the kit had already done its job when Niki spoke up.
Rika blushed. She hadn’t even thought to ask for Niki’s help with the pain.
She did her best to ignore the unpleasant—though now painless— sensation of the patch stitching her cheek back together.
She busied herself with cleaning up the mess she’d made rifling through all the field kits. Then she poured herself a glass of water from the bottles she had secured the night before and rinsed out her mouth a few times before resigning herself to the fact that there was nothing to be done for her swollen tongue for the time being.
Just like the bay didn’t stock water, it also didn’t have any real food—Rika was the only one operating out of the bay who had a mouth. She couldn’t go down to the level’s galley with the patch on her face, so she sat at the table with the feeder tubes, and hooked one up to the port on her stomach.
It had been some time since Rika had taken in sustenance through the port, and her stomach grumbled as the feeding system filled it past full.
“Dumb thing needs an off switch,” Rika griped and clenched her stomach muscles. The feeder detected max pressure and stopped, detaching from the port on her stomach.
“Surprised you still kept the port,” Aaron commented upon entering the mech bay and seeing Rika replacing the access plate on her armor.
“Back when I was on Dekar, all I could afford some days was paste. Better to put it in that way than down the throat; you have no idea how bad it tastes.”
Aaron chuckled. “The one reason to be glad to
not have a mouth.”
“Hey, so I learned that Stavros found a lot of his mechs in some repair facility that the GAF abandoned. Is that true?” Rika asked.
Aaron nodded as he walked to one of the mech-racks and backed toward it. “Yeah. I wasn’t one of those, though. I got picked up by a recruiter that was a bit misleading about what I was getting into.”
“I had a number of offers like that,” Rika empathized. Hell, that’s nearly how I got into this whole lifestyle.
“Scuttlebutt says you were with the Marauders,” Aaron shared as the rack’s automated systems detached his legs.
“Yeah, I got picked up at auction.”
“Auction? That’s rough.”
“Why are you racking?” Rika asked as she watched the armatures pull off Aaron’s arms and set them aside.
He gave a resigned sigh. “One of the lieutenants at the Residence got pissed at me and told me to go rack myself. It’s sort of his go-to insult for us. Added benefit for him is how we actually have to go do it.”
It broke Rika’s heart to see Aaron so accepting of his fate. He was completely broken; so used to following orders without question that he never even tried to fight them anymore. He was just a shell. He really had become nothing more than the meat in the machine.
“Aaron,” Rika sighed. “Get off the rack.”
The system had removed his helmet, and Rika could make out a crease on his forehead as he frowned. “What are you talking about, Rika? I have orders. I have to follow them.”
Rika felt something break inside herself—or maybe it was something snapping into place. Either way, she realized there was more for her to do here than to just rescue a few people and kill a dictator.
She rose from her seat and walked across the bay to where Aaron hung from the hard points on his back. Rika stared into his eyes; the sad eyes of a defeated man.
“What are you, Aaron?” she asked, her tone soft.
Without the speaker on his armor, Aaron had no way to give an audible reply.
“Are you a machine?” Rika pressed. “Or do you have a soul?”
Rika didn’t find out what Aaron was going to ask, because she took a step back and punched him in the face. It wasn’t hard enough to break anything or split apart his pseudo skin, but she knew it hurt.
She drew close to him, her nose touching the small lump on his face that was all that remained of his. “How does that make you feel? Do you feel? What are you, Aaron?”
Rika jammed her finger into his chest. “Is there a heart in here? Does it still beat, or did they take that out too, along with your spirit?”
“Being a mech isn’t shame,” Rika reminded him, her voice filled with both rage and pride. “It’s not weakness. It is strength and power! We are what they cannot be. We are the best of the best—but only if we choose it. Right now, you’re nothing but what they tell you. Your worth is no more than a tool in a fool’s hand. Is that what you want to be forever? Are you happy being someone’s wrench?”
Rika’s arm shot out, and she grabbed Aaron’s shoulder. “Then don’t be! You’re a man; a strong, powerful man. You have the will to fight, now use it! Get. Off. The. Rack!”
Aaron’s eyes narrowed, and Rika thought she saw a bit of fire behind them. Not enough.
“I know you’re a cunning warrior, because you’ve survived this long,” Rika reasoned. “But you’ve forgotten how to use your mind. You’ve allowed yourself to relax into being a slave. Did the lieutenant order you to spend the rest of your life on the rack?”
“Is it time for your designated charge cycle? Do you need repairs?”
Rika leaned forward, pressing her forehead against Aaron’s, letting her long blonde hair fall around them. In the shrouded light, all she could see were his eyes.
Her voice was low and hoarse. “You’re a free man if you want to be. Now get off the rack.”
Rika stepped back and stared at Aaron, her jaw set, and her eyes narrowed. Aaron had to get off the rack. She needed to see it as much as he needed to do it. Somehow, she felt responsible for the mechs under Stavros’s control. There was no other option. She had to free them all.
Aaron’s eyes narrowed in return, and he slammed his head back against the support bar. The automated system began to put his limbs back on—first his legs, and then his arms. A minute later, Aaron stepped off the rack.
“Feels good, doesn’t it?” Rika prompted quietly. “You’re nobody’s slave.”
“What does it matter?” Aaron demanded, now that he had his voice back. “This doesn’t change anything. It’s a loophole.”
Rika took a step forward and placed a hand on Aaron’s shoulder. “They’ve grown lax in how they use Discipline; they don’t understand it like the GAF did. They use it to punish, but they are not specific in their commands. Discipline uses your belief of whether or not you’re following orders as much as anything else.”
“Still, they can punish us if they want,” Aaron argued.
“Well, tomorrow it ends,” Rika stated firmly, then switched to the direct Link that Niki had facilitated through their touch.
THE STORM BEFORE
STELLAR DATE: 04.04.8949 (Adjusted Years)
LOCATION: Basileus Residence, The Isthmus, Sparta
REGION: Peloponnese System, The Politica, Praesepe Cluster
When Rika walked into the Residence’s private lounge, Leslie was already there. Rika bit her cheek to keep from saying anything as she took in the vision of her teammate and friend.
It was now clearly Leslie standing at the far end of the room; the prosthetics on her face had been removed, though the ears and tail remained. Around her neck was a gleaming silver collar, with a chain stretching between it and a ring that was set into the floor. Matching cuffs were around her wrists and ankles, and she still wore the black dress from the night before.
Despite her circumstances, Leslie stood ramrod straight. Her eyes were bright and hard. A pair of Stavros’s goons stood on either side of her, and an AM-3 mech beside each of them—Aaron and John, Rika realized as she approached her friend.
“Don’t look so sad, Rika,” Leslie said with a sly smile. “I’ve been through worse than whatever Stavros can throw at us.”
Rika glanced down at the chain running from Leslie’s neck to the floor. “Really? Worse than this, with a compliance chip in your head?”
Leslie shrugged. “I’ve been around a long time, Rika. If you take the chip out of the equation, this is the third time I’ve been in this exact same situation.”
Rika smiled, emboldened by Leslie’s calm. “You really were quite amazing last night. I didn’t know you could sing like that.”
“I wasn’t always a soldier,” Leslie informed her. “I’m closing in on three hundred; I’ve done a lot of things with my years.”
“Stop talking to the prisoner,” one of the goons grunted.
“Are you talking to me or her?” Leslie asked. “Last I checked, we’re both prisoners. From what I hear, you’re chipped, too. Doesn’t that make you a prisoner? Sounds to me like that order could have been for yourself.”
The man raised his hand to hit Leslie, but Rika caught his wrist before he could begin his downswing. “Stavros’s orders. She’s not to be hurt before she performs tonight. Or do you want to explain why her jaw is broken and she can’t delight his daughter?”
The man pulled his hand back, a
nd Rika gave him a sickly-sweet smile. “There’s a good slave. Always doing what you’re told. I bet you miss having balls.”
“Leslie?” a small voice edged in from behind them, and Rika turned to see Amy entering the room. The girl stood stock-still, a look of shock on her face. “Why…? What are you…? You’re chained to the floor.”
“Come here,” Leslie said and knelt with her arms spread wide.”
To her credit, Amy didn’t hesitate. She rushed across the room and fell into Leslie’s arms.
“I’ve missed you so much,” Amy said, her voice muffled as she burrowed into Leslie’s neck. “But you shouldn’t be here…father.”
“ ‘Father’ what?” Stavros’s voice boomed from the room’s entrance. “Father has done what he must to protect this family and The Politica.”
Amy turned to look at Stavros with more fire in her eyes than Rika had ever seen there before. “What have you done?” she demanded. “Why have you chained her?”
“Mostly for show. I’m not certain she’s housebroken, yet,” Stavros dismissed with a laugh. “Do you like her, Amy? You always said you wanted a cat.”
Amy’s face reddened. “Father! She’s a person, not a pet!”
Stavros shook his head. “Amy, you’ve lived with me for some time now. Surely you understand that I decide who is really a person. Other than you and me, everyone here has a chip in their head, and they’ll do whatever I say.”
“I’m surprised that C319 isn’t here,” Rika observed. “I would’ve thought you’d want her to watch this.”
Stavros locked his steely gaze on her. “You really do have a sharp mind, Rika. Yes, I do want her here. She’ll be along presently, she just had to fetch something.”
“Does it get boring?” Rika wondered aloud. “Having everyone at your beck and call all the time?”
Stavros touched a finger to his chin and looked at the ceiling contemplatively. “Hmmm…no. No, I don’t think it does. I mean…I have you, Rika. You’re always arguing and questioning; I’ll admit it’s refreshing, but I know you’ll still do as you’re told in the end. That’s the part I like the most.”