by M. D. Cooper
“Which mess?” Rika chuckled. “The Albany System, or the fight with the Nietzscheans?”
“You mean with how the Orion Freedom Alliance operates?” Rika asked as she pulled up the lists of civilian casualties, searching for names, then DNA signatures.
“I didn’t dig into that too much. Some sort of civil war?” Rika asked.
Rika looked up from the list of casualties she had been reviewing. “What do you mean there are two of her?”
“Ahhhh,” Rika breathed. “So that’s why Tanis is out here building the Scipio Alliance. She’s got trouble back home.”
Niki corrected.
“I don’t really know much about them,” Rika replied. “Other than that they’re big. I guess you don’t get to be big without kicking some ass, do you?”
Niki said, a tired but resigned feeling flowing between them.
“Do you think Tanis will end up being the leader of the FPA?” Rika mused as she returned to searching through her lists.
Niki answered Rika’s question with a question.
“How am I supposed to know? I’m just the muscle in this operation.”
Rika snorted and leaned back, eyes drifting to the overhead, wondering if it had any answers tucked into the conduits and environmental runs. Nietzscheans really didn’t go for aesthetics—even on their bridges.
“Niki, exactly when have I had time to really think about whether or not Tanis does her magic finger touch with everyone?”
Niki snorted a laugh.
“Yeah, well, you’re more likely to have sex than I am.”
Rika laughed at Niki’s impertinence. “You have some sort of plan for my future I don’t know about? What color are you going to paint the nursery? Besides, I doubt Tanis carried her daughter in her own womb. People like this grow babies in medlabs.”
A low whistle escaped Rika’s lips. “I stand corrected. OK, so maybe they can give me a vagina and leave me a mech.” An incongruous thought crossed Rika’s mind, and she barked a laugh. “I guess I’d have to start wearing pants again when I’m not in armor.”
“Good, because I’m probably one of a very small group of twenty-nine-year-old women who has never bought a single article of clothing in my entire life.”
“Not really upping the confidence quotient here, Niki.”
“We’ve had sex,” Rika countered, feeling a flush rise on her cheeks, wishing Niki would drop the subject.
Niki corrected.
“OK! Stop! You’re making all those up.”
“I suppose. If you can imagine it, it’s out there on the nets. I get your point, though.”
Niki asked.
A host of memories surged to the surface, recollections of what it was like living on the streets of Tanner City. Memories Rika rarely ever thought of, if she could help it. Some of the things that had happened while living meal to meal back then….
Being wrapped in her armor, unassailable, had always been one of the best parts of being a mech.
Rika opened her mouth to brush Niki off, to tell her she wasn’t worried about intimacy with Chase. But she was. She’d never really had sex—not the way it was supposed to be, at least.
What if Chase….
Even as she let the doubt creep into her mind, it dissipated, replaced by the image Tanis had placed within her. The scared girl from the streets fell away, to be replaced by the confident woman that Tanis saw her as.
The rock, undaunted by the raging storm. The girl was still there, was still the heart, but she wasn’t cowering, wasn’t afraid. She was the iron will and the resolute spirit that drove Rika forward.
“You know what, Niki? I’m not. When I talk to the ISF techs about upgrades, I’ll bring it up. But it may not be something I do until we finish the mission. I don’t want to be distracted.”
Rika groaned and rolled her eyes. “From the way you’ve gone on, I’m not entirely certain you believe that.”
Niki’s avatar grinned in Rika’s mind, though the smile faded as she asked,
Rika shook her head. “Not yet. Patty brought them to Pyra four weeks ago, then filed for a short leave with the local office. They gave her use of the pinnace to fly to Hudson, but we haven’t been able to get any docking records from their stations yet. I don’t know if Silva and Amy stayed on Pyra, or went with Patty to Hudson.”
Niki didn’t reply, but Rika knew the question that hung in the air: Or if they died somewhere on Pyra?
Niki said, her voice consoling.
Rika grit her teeth. “I don’t have weeks, Niki.”
“Yet here I sit,” Rika grunted, gripping her armrest, the plas denting under her fingers.
Niki replied.
“Is that what she was doing when we found her?”
Niki gave a throaty chuckle in Rika’s mind. ipping apart atoms and releasing the energy in their nuclear bonds. Effective, but she probably irradiated half of Jersey City doing it.>
Rika whistled as she rose from her chair, and gestured to the bridge’s main holodisplay, throwing a three-dimensional image of the Albany System into the forward half of the bridge.
“I’m sure glad she’s on our side.”
Rika stared at the map, nodding absently as she wondered where Patty might have taken the pinnace. That should be easier to find than Silva and Amy. If she could locate it—and hopefully Patty—maybe she could get a lead.
Neither woman nor AI spoke for a minute, and although Rika wondered who Tanis’s powerful enemies could be, she didn’t ask.
Niki announced.
Rika sifted through the message queues and found the one Niki had noted, answering it and putting the AI on the bridge’s audible systems.
“Captain Corsia, what can I do for you?” Rika asked once the connection was made.
“It’s good to make your acquaintance, Captain Rika. You’re already a hero to our people.”
Corsia’s voice was strange. Rika would almost describe it as both smooth and edged at the same time. Like one of Tanis’s blades, sliding through water.
Rika wished the ISF personnel would stop treating her like she’d done something miraculous. She’d only found Tanis and carried her to a ship. Anyone could have done it—probably.
“I was just doing what needed to be done at the time. I’m sure you have been in similar situations.”
Corsia chuckled. “Maybe. I’ve had some crazy times in the black with Tanis. But that’s not why I reached out to you. I’ve seen the inquiries you’ve put out, looking for your people.”
Rika’s heart leapt at the thought that Corsia may finally have a lead. “Yes?” she managed to say, not bothering to hide the hope in her voice.
“Don’t get too excited,” Corsia cautioned. “I don’t have strong intel, but I did come across a record of a woman named Patty logging a flight path to Hudson. She was flying a pinnace designated PD-17, which matches your inquiry.”
“How long ago?” Rika asked, her voice barely above a whisper.
“One week before the Nietzscheans jumped in,” Corsia replied. “When the ISF First Fleet entered the system, Captain Rachel sent a small strike force to Hudson. They defeated the Niets there, but there are still at least two battalions of the buggers on the surface. I’ve sent an inquiry to Hudson to see if they have anything further, but it’ll be over an hour until we hear back.”
Rika swallowed and nodded, then remembered that she wasn’t sending visual. “Thank you, Corsia.”
“Of course, Captain Rika. I just wish I had better, more definitive news for you. I know how terrifying it can be, not to know where loved ones are.”
Corsia’s choice of words caught Rika’s attention, she’d never heard an AI use terms like ‘terrifying’ or ‘loved ones’. Granted, her first-hand experience with AIs was almost entirely limited to Niki.
“Do you have any amongst the missing?” Rika asked.
“No my children are all safe. I was thinking of one time when my youngest daughter got lost inside me. Turned out she was trapped in a lift shaft that was under maintenance, and the sensors were disabled. She was down there for half a day before we realized she was missing and then found her.”
Rika’s brow furrowed. “Inside you? How does…oh! You have organic children.”
Corsia’s laugh sounded like ice cracking on a lake. “Yes, Captain. I am married to my chief engineer, and we have both organic and inorganic children.”
“Wow…that’s…”
“Normal for us,” Corsia said, and Rika imagined that if the AI had been on visual, she may have winked. “I’ll keep you apprised of any developments, and pass along word from our forces at Hudson the moment they respond.”
“Thank you, Captain Corsia,” Rika replied as she leant against a console.
“You’re most welcome.”
The connection closed, and Rika let out a shaky breath. “Why do I feel worse, Niki?”
“Thanks. You volunteering to be the new company shrink?”
At present, Hudson was on the far side of Howe, over 5 AU distant. Rika pulled up the inventory of long-range pinnaces aboard the Nietzschean ships under her command. She’d need a fast ship to get there in less than a week, one with some solid defenses as well—there were still a lot of only ‘mostly dead’ hulls out there. Many could still muster the energy to fire a beam her way.
“And they should keep running S&R,” Rika replied. “It’s just as likely that Silva and Amy are here, rather than at Hudson. But Patty is probably out there, and we don’t leave ours behind.”
“Well, then,” a voice came from the bridge entrance. “You’re going to need some company, I expect.”
Rika turned to see Chase approaching, still wearing his armor, helmet tucked beneath his left arm, a tired smile on his lips.
“I thought you were storming Nietzschean hulls with Second Platoon,” Rika asked as she walked toward him, embracing when they met.
“I blew an actuator in my left leg. Had to come back to swap it out. Ship’s log showed you onboard…so here I am. You really thinking about flying to Hudson?”
“I don’t know,” Rika shrugged. “Maybe? I’ll wait for the response from the ISF force out there. Would be silly to fly halfway there only to find that Patty ended up going somewhere else.”
“Well, I doubt you’d make it halfway before you got the message.” Chase chuckled. “Not unless they took a really long time to respond.”
Rika nodded. “Yes, I was exaggerating. It’s a normal thing to do, you know.”
“Oooh…punchy. When was the last time you ate?”
“Ummmm…I had a cup of coffee at Tanis’s cabin on the lake. Before that…yesterday?”
“Cabin on the lake? Is that code for something?”
Rika laughed. “Stars…no, truth is stranger than fiction. Admiral Tanis Richards lives in a cabin on a lake inside one of the I2’s rotating cylinders.”
“Wow…I knew they were hab cylinders, but that’s still surreal.” Chase took Rika’s left hand in his right. “C’mon. Let’s stuff you full of carbs, charge up your batts, and see if you need any joints lubed. You’ll feel right as rain.”
Rika snorted. “You’re such a charmer, Chase.”
“Me?” he asked as he led her off the bridge. “I doubt it. But I did follow you across space and join the Marauders just to find you. That’s still gotta have earned me some points.”
“All used up now,” Rika winked at him. “But you’ve done a few things since then—namely not getting killed while we were in Armens’ clouds, and every other time too, I suppose.”
“Got it,” Chase said with a grin. “Not dying keeps me in your good graces. You have no idea how lucky you are, Rika. Not dying is something I’m also very keen on.”
“It’s why we make such a great couple,” she replied.
HUDSON
STELLAR DATE: 09.02.8949 (Adjusted Years)
LOCATION: Lance Pinnace 09
REGION: Hudson, Albany System, Thebes, Septhian Alliance
Rika looked at the blue and white orb of Hudson as it slowly grew before them, both colors glinting as the world rotated in Howe’s light.
“A place with a nearly full planetary winter.” Chase shook his head. “Sounds like my idea of hell.”
“Yeah, but they have great summers from what I hear…warmer than Pyra’s.”
Chase glanced a
t Rika from his seat next to her in the cockpit. “Rika, we’ve only had terrible experiences on Pyra. It’s hell, too.”
“Not so,” Rika shook her head. “Pyra is where I met Team Basilisk, didn’t assassinate the president, and was reunited with you. I also saved Tanis there. Pyra’s got a lot of good memories…even if the place is trashed now.”
Chase gestured to the ruins of one of Hudson’s orbital habitats, once home to more than sixty million people. “Hudson’s not doing much better.”
“Fucking Niets,” Rika muttered. “It’s like they get some sort of special glee from destruction.”
“Incoming message from the local ISF detachment,” Chase said and put it up on the cockpit’s holodisplay.
A young man appeared before them.
“Captain Rika, I’m Major Harl. We were advised that you were coming, but I’m not entirely certain what you hope to find here on Hudson. The humanitarian crisis we’re facing is worse than the one on Pyra.”
“Really, Major Harl?” Rika asked as she shared a puzzled look with Chase. “Why’s that?”
“Power, Captain Rika. The Niets took out almost all of the ground-side power generation facilities when they buggered off. They wiped out the space-to-surface energy beaming systems, too. Most of Hudson has been without power for two weeks now. I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but this world has a legitimately serious winter.
“Add to that the fact that half the stations in orbit blew pods when they came under attack, and those people landed all over the surface; we’re doing what we can just to keep three billion people from freezing to death.”
“The planet’s tropics don’t look frozen,” Chase commented, gesturing at the world before them.
“Yeah, I’ve noticed,” Major Harl grunted. “You have a dogsled handy? One that can ferry a million people down to the tropics?”
Rika pursed her lips and swallowed. She’d come to Hudson expecting to search for Patty, but now that seemed incredibly selfish, given the suffering occurring on the world below.
“Our ship is at your disposal, Major Harl. How can we help?”
Harl’s expression lightened, though only a touch. “That means a lot, Captain Rika. I’ve got a group in the mountains that I can’t get to. Some of the Niets dirtside have taken them hostage, making all sorts of wild demands. Right now we’re in triage mode, saving as many as fast as we can. We’d expend too many resources on that mission when we can save lives elsewhere…however, if you’d like to take a crack at them….”