by M. D. Cooper
“You seem to be a bit off track on that goal,” Tim commented, and Rika shot him a sharp look.
Tanis reopened her eyes, a rueful smile appearing on her lips. “Yeah, little did we know that the colony we built at The Kap was to be our happily ever after. Sometimes I think we should have just stayed there—but at the time, New Eden was so close, just a few decades’ travel away.”
“You were originally headed to New Eden?” Rika asked, feeling like she was speaking with a living piece of history. “That system has quite the story.”
Tanis nodded absently. “We were, but we eventually got to an even better system, named it New Canaan, and got eighteen good years before Orion found us.”
“I’ve looked over the briefs on Orion and the Transcend,” Tim said. “That’s a lot to swallow.”
Tanis chuckled. “I’ve been in your shoes, Major Tim, I know the sentiment well. Stars, I had just ‘swallowed’ a five thousand year jump forward in time. At that point, the existence of the Transcend was the best news I’d heard in years—it meant there could be a colony world for us. Sera conveniently left out the existence of the Orion Freedom Alliance at that point.”
Tim’s brows rose. “President Sera of the Transcend?”
Tanis nodded. “Yeah, but back then, she was just ‘Sera’.”
“Why would she have done that?” Rika asked.
Tanis whistled and let out a short laugh. “Even she doesn’t really know. Later, she said she was trying to spare us more worry. Granted, when she gave her initial explanation, we were distracted by the Battle of Bollam’s World, so it may be that the right opportunity never presented itself.”
“Was her intent malicious?” Tim asked.
Tanis lifted her cup and took a sip as she regarded the major over the rim. “That’s a bold question, Major Tim. Technically, I owe Sera my allegiance. Like you said, she’s the president of the Transcend now. What if this was a regime that viewed that sort of questioning as treasonous?”
Tim didn’t hesitate before giving his response. “Then it would be best to know that sooner rather than later.”
Tanis didn’t speak for a moment, then set down her cup and shook her head. “I think I like you, Major. You’re a bit prickly, but that’s not a flaw that bothers me overmuch.”
This time, Rika managed to hold back her surprise with more success.
“No,” Tanis continued. “I don’t think that Sera did it maliciously. She had already shared a treasonous amount of information with me; I think she was torn between loyalties. I respect that she was between a rock and a hard place. She saved my life, and the lives of everyone aboard the Intrepid on more than one occasion, often putting everything on the line in the process.”
“That sounds like the best kind of leader.” Rika watched Tanis, wondering more and more why they were having this meeting, as the admiral met her eyes and smiled.
“Sounds a bit like you, Rika.”
Niki said privately.
Niki gave a nervous laugh.
Rika realized that Tanis and Tim were both staring at her.
“Thanks, Tanis. I usually just do what seems right at the time.”
The admiral gave a languid wink. “That’s how they get you, Rika. Put you in a position of responsibility, knowing that you feel compelled to do the right thing. Before you know it, you’re flying around the Inner Stars trying to build the largest alliance humanity has ever known, fighting a war on more fronts than you can even remember half the time. Did you know that the Transcend and Orion are skirmishing in the Corona Australis Star Forming Region?”
“The SFR below the galactic disk?” Major Tim asked, brow furrowed as he regarded Tanis. “How would we know that?”
Tanis shrugged. “Well, you wouldn’t, but neither did I until yesterday. I didn’t even know we had any forces down there, but it turns out that they were establishing a new watchpoint before the civil war, and the detachment got cut off. They didn’t even know there was a schism in the Transcend.”
“This is a lot to absorb,” Rika replied. “Just the idea that the Transcend and Orion are so huge blows my mind. Granted, I never really had a clear picture of how far human expansion went. I’ve seen maps that say that explored space ends much closer than even the boundary of the Inner Stars your briefing outlines.”
“Here be dragons.” Tanis laughed.
Rika had no idea what Tanis was referring to, but laughed anyway.
Tim just scowled as he replied, “As much as I would love to chat about this, what is it that you brought us here to discuss, Admiral Richards?”
“No, I suppose there is too much to do to chat overlong.” Tanis shook her head as she reached for her cup once more. “I want to hire the Marauders.”
Tim snorted. “I don’t even know if there is a Marauders to hire anymore.”
“You still have an HQ in Septhia,” Tanis replied. “And you have training facilities in two systems, not to mention a lot of ships deployed throughout Thebes and the former Politica—by my count, at least a hundred, probably more. And though Rika’s company has taken a bit of a beating, there are still another two thousand mechs that were rescued from the Politica currently in rehabilitation.”
“You’ve done your research,” Tim grunted.
“We gained access to the Foehammer’s archives,” Tanis replied equably.
“You what? You—” Tim began, but Tanis held up her hand.
“Major, I am currently running the two largest salvage operations in known space. In addition, the ISF’s first and second fleets are thirty-five hundred light years from home, engaged in a fight to save people who have never heard of us. We don’t have the time—or inclination—to tip-toe around people’s sensitivities.”
Tim’s lips drew into a tight, thin line, but he didn’t respond.
“What’s the job?” Rika asked, shooting Tim a quelling look.
She didn’t care if he outranked her. If he couldn’t keep his mouth in check, she’d walk over there and cold-cock him in the head.
Tanis chuckled. “Oh, just a little mission: topple the Nietzschean Empire.”
As Tanis’s words sank in, Rika didn’t even try to stop the wide smile that spread across her face. “Admiral Richards, I think the Marauders are the right outfit for the job.”
“I reiterate that we’re in no position to take on any job right now, let alone something like that,” Tim interjected.
“I understand,” Tanis replied. “It’ll be some time before we’re ready to launch major offensives, but I want to start operations within a few weeks at most. And I’m only interested if Rika leads the mission.”
“Me?” Rika couldn’t help the squeak that came along with her exclamation. “Why me?”
Tanis folded her arms across her chest as she regarded Rika, the admiral’s level stare making Rika increasingly nervous as it went on. Finally, Tanis spoke.
“I think I see something of myself in you, Rika. Granted my lot in life was never as difficult as yours—at least not so early on. I think you have the tenacity and the drive to get the job done, and….” Tanis paused.
Rika was about to ask ‘and what?’ when Tim did it for her.
“So, what else does Rika have that makes you think she can topple one of the most powerful empires in space?” His tone conveyed a clear impression that Rika was not up to the task.
Tanis slowly turned her head and narrowed her eyes as she regarded Tim, a look of disdain settling onto her face. “She has a spiri
t that can withstand the soul-crushing anguish that is going to come from seeing so many of her mechs die to bring back the nation that turned them into what they are today.”
The admiral’s words dripped with acid, and Tim recoiled as she spoke, appearing to sink halfway into the couch.
If it weren’t for the fact that Rika felt sickened by the thought of what Tanis was saying, she would have reveled in Tim’s discomfort.
“Tanis…I—”
Tanis held up her hand. “I won’t retract that statement. You need to think about this, Rika. If you don’t believe it’s the right thing for your mechs, then I have other, less desperate jobs I can offer the Marauders. But I think that you will all have a special stake in this one.”
Rika considered the admiral’s statement for a moment. “I won’t lie, Tanis. Your words are more than a little sobering. I will need to talk to my teams before I confirm that we can take the job, but I’ll also need to know more about it.”
“There’s another thing you need to consider,” Tanis’s voice was soft, almost compassionate. “You helped Rachel and the others save me with no request for compensation, no hesitation. Every person on your ships stood up and did what was needed without a second thought. I want to repay that.”
“Well,” Rika said with a self-deprecating snort. “We are mercenaries. We won’t say ‘no’ to payment.”
Tanis shook her head. “Don’t sell yourself so short, Rika. Mercenary work is what you’re doing right now. It is not who you are. Regardless, what I can offer your mechs is a complete undoing of what was done to you. I imagine we can find some sort of suitable compensation for the non-mechanized Marauders. Perhaps a rejuvination, or upgraded armor, weapons, whatever they’d like.”
Rika stopped listening when Tanis said ‘complete undoing’. The words reverberated in her mind like a drum. Priscilla had suggested it was possible, but now Tanis was offering it to all the mechs. It was a real thing—but it couldn’t be that simple. There had to be a catch.
“What do you mean by ‘complete’?”
Tanis’s shrug was cavalier. “I mean we can give any of your mechs the exact body that they had the day your government butch—uh, did what they did. Or we can age them a bit. A lot of you were very young when you were mechanized.”
As Rika turned that information over in her head, Tim noted, “That would make them a lot less useful for your mission, though, wouldn’t it?”
Tanis nodded, her lips pursed. “It would. The Genevian mechs—for all of their archaic technology—may be one of the most impressive fighting forces in the galaxy today. The crucible you and yours went through, Rika… it cannot be easily replicated.”
Rika finally recovered from Tanis’s initial offer and laughed as she considered the admiral’s following words. “I don’t know if I should be flattered or offended. I don’t think we’re ‘archaic’.”
Tanis moved her right hand to her left wrist, and in one rapid motion, pulled a sword out of her skin. Rika was amazed to see that it was seventy centimeters long—far longer than what could fit in the admiral’s forearm.
“How…?” she stammered.
Tanis tossed the blade to Rika, who caught it deftly and analyzed it while Tanis spoke.
“Gold-titanium alloy, reinforced with carbon nano strands. It splits apart in the middle, that’s how it fits in my arm.”
Rika slid the blade between her GNR and its mount, testing the flex on the weapon. “I would never have imagined…I can’t see a seam at all.”
“Of course not,” Tanis replied. “What you’re holding is Jovian tech from the height of humanity’s golden age—though we can replicate it now. The blade is only three millimeters thick, as well. I’ve slid that sword through joints on powered armor and shorn limbs clear off.”
“I can imagine…I can’t actually zoom my vision enough to see the edge.”
Tanis chuckled. “No, probably not. The blade is one carbon atom thick at its edge.”
“I bet you sheathe that thing very carefully,” Tim said appreciatively.
Tanis pulled another blade out of her right arm, and carefully handed it to Tim—something Rika appreciated. Her armor could deflect a casual toss of this weapon, but it would cut a squishie in half.
“Then there are toys like this.” Tanis slid a hand inside the leggings she wore—casual in appearance, but emblazoned with the ISF logo—and appeared to pull something out of her thigh. It was a small hilt, not much bigger than a handgun’s charge tube. Tanis ran her thumb along a part of it, and a meter-long beam of light emerged from the hilt.
“Lightwand,” she said.
“Looks more like a light sword,” Rika replied, and Tanis laughed.
“Yeah, well, I wanted to make it longer. The wands are standard issue for our Marines.”
Rika glanced at Tim and saw that the major was practically salivating. “I’ve heard of those,” he said quietly. “Though never understood how they worked.”
Tanis shrugged. “Standard stuff. Focused electron beam that hits a reflector held in place by a carbon nano filament. The beam reflects back, and the wand—or sword, in this case—reuses the energy to keep running. This one has a fairly small battery, so it’ll conk out if you hack and slash with it for extended periods.”
“ ‘Standard stuff’,” Rika mused, looking at her GNR-41C and the amount of hardware it required to fire its electron beam. “I’m starting to understand why you consider me archaic.”
Tanis disabled the light wand and slid it back into her thigh. “You’re not archaic, Rika. Your tech is. But as a part of the job, we’d also upgrade your mechs. The offer to revert any who wished it would still stand when the mission is over.”
Rika worked her mouth as she tried to imagine what life would be like with a fully human body again. As she thought about it, something occurred to her.
“How human are you, Tanis?” she asked.
“Human?” Tanis cocked an eyebrow. “That’s an interesting way to frame the question. If it were anyone but me you were talking about, I would assume the question was about how organic I am. Is that what you meant?”
Rika blushed and nodded. She hadn’t considered the possibility that Tanis really wasn’t human anymore, regardless of how modded she was.
“Less than forty percent of my body is organic,” Tanis replied equably as she looked down at herself. “But even then, there is no part of me that is vanilla anymore. I’ve been modded so many times that my mods have mods, and those mods were modded by other mods. There’s no completely original DNA in my body, either.” She placed a hand on her thigh and patted it lightly. “Pretty much every cell in here has been altered in some way.”
Rika whistled. “I have to admit, getting remade like you would be something I’d sign up for.”
“Oh?” Tanis asked, gesturing for Rika to elaborate.
“Well,” Rika began slowly. “Before I was mechanized, I was at the mercy of anyone bigger than me that could catch me. I was weak…I was helpless. The best thing about being a mech is that I am not helpless; now I don’t even know the meaning of the word ‘weak’. I don’t know if I’m stronger than you, Tanis, but it takes an AM-3 to beat me in an arm wrestling match.”
“I respect that,” Tanis replied. “I can’t say you’d get to be exactly like me, but it’s not off the table, either.”
“I’ll admit,” Tim spoke up as he handed Tanis her sword back, and he and Rika watched in awe as the admiral slid it back into her arm, revealing no hint that there was a weapon tucked inside her body. “Uh…where was I?” he asked.
“ ‘I’ll admit’,” Rika supplied.
“Right, yeah. Well, I have to say that getting mods like yours would appeal to a lot of us. The best of both worlds: the power of a mech, and the appearance of a person.”
Rika was surprised that the words didn’t sting. Either she was handling small slights better, or she had just written off Tim as an unredeemable ass.
She leant forward
and handed Tanis her sword while asking, “Compensation and mods aside, what form would this mission to topple Nietzschea take? A single, decisive strike to kill Emperor Constantine?”
Tanis shook her head. “No, our analysis—though in its early stages—suggests that there are so many power hungry admirals and oligarchs in Nietzschea, that killing the emperor would do little to slow down their advance. Stars, it may speed it up. Something that the alliance is being very careful to avoid is creating massive power vacuums as we take out our enemies. Swift strikes at the top may work in the short term, but in a lot of cases, they make life far worse for the general population.”
“That’s an astute observation,” Major Tim said, nodding slowly. “We’ve seen that a lot in our work.”
Tanis winked at Tim. “Well, I’ve been around for a bit.”
“So, we need to tear Nietzschea down brick by brick?” Rika asked.
“Well, we can work at the level of star systems, not bricks,” Tanis said with a wry grin. “And even then, we don’t need to take them all. We just need to take out a number of military facilities across Nietzschea, then seize control of a few key systems. Once that’s done, it should be possible to re-establish the governments of the former nations that the Nietzscheans defeated. Most appear to have active resistance movements. The only problematic area will be the core Nietzschean systems; we’ll have to put that whole place under martial law for a while.”
“Forgive my impertinence,” Tim began, and Rika held back a groan, “but how do you have this much intel on Nietzschea?”
“Remember when I said we opened up the Foehammer’s archives? It seems that General Mill had been working on this plan for some time. He also had contacts in many of the systems that need to be taken down, and even a proposed order; though at a certain point, there will need to be multiple coordinated attacks.”
“We’ll need that intel, as well,” Tim said, his voice carrying a sharp edge.
“Of course,” Tanis nodded, flashing a smile at Rika’s torso. “We’ve already opened it up to Niki, the AI living somewhere in the vicinity of Rika’s stomach.”
“You have?” Rika asked.