by M. D. Cooper
“Speaking of which,” Rika reached into the back and grabbed a fistful of protein bars, dumping half in Barne’s lap.
“Thanks…” he said, a pregnant pause hanging between them.
Rika didn’t want to spend the next four hours in an uncomfortable silence, so she asked, “What is it?”
“Well,” Barne began. “What’s it like? I mean, I’ll be honest—you were kinda sour and mopey, at first. But in a fight…I’ve never seen anything like it. You just charged them like their guns were shooting spitwads.”
“Well, in my defense, I woke up in that warehouse only minutes after being sold at auction—by my reckoning,” Rika replied. “I was feeling just a bit down. Shit…that was still just over two days ago for me.”
“At auction?” Barne shook his head. “I had no idea…”
“Is one form of selling a slave somehow more dignified than another?” Rika asked, her tone acidic.
“I guess not,” Barne said. “But I hadn’t really thought about how the regiment got you. I figured they had you in a warehouse at HQ or something.”
“Yeah, back to miniscule differentiations of humiliation.”
“Sorry…you don’t have to be such a bitch to me about it. I didn’t chop you up and sell you off after the war.” Barne’s face took on a pouty frown, and Rika realized that she was punishing Barne for what others had done to her.
“Gah. I’m not good at this, Barne. Personal interaction and I are not close friends.”
“You too, eh?” Barne said, and then laughed. “Look at the two of us—both shithead messes after the war, barely able to talk to anyone, and stuck together in here.”
Barne continued laughing, and Rika joined in, letting the cathartic release calm her down. Eventually, when they were silent once more, Barne glanced over at her.
“You didn’t really answer the question.”
“Which question?” Rika asked, knowing full well what he was referring to.
“About what it’s like. What they did to you.”
Rika looked down at herself, at her steel limbs, at her three-fingered hands.
“I won’t lie,” she said. “There are times when it’s wonderful. The power, the speed—they’re intoxicating.”
“You like killing,” Barne said quietly. “I saw it in your eyes. Don’t try to bullshit me. I know the look; it stares back at me in the mirror every day.”
Rika didn’t respond for a minute. Then two. Then five. She wondered if Barne was going to let it drop, but knew he wouldn’t. She knew she shouldn’t.
“There are two Rikas,” she said at last. “There’s a Rika who just stopped that night when they took me, when they made me into this…machine. That Rika would give anything to go back to how things were—hell, she’s still just a nineteen-year-old girl. I can’t stop her from wanting to go back to before—she craves it constantly. But there’s this other Rika. The one that came out on the battlefield, the one that survived the war…when so many others didn’t…”
Rika closed her eyes, and the vision of Kelly—her friend, laying before her on the deck of the shuttle with a hole blown clear through her torso—came back to her.
“I know that guilt,” Barne said.
“Yeah, all the psych programs go on about survivor’s guilt,” Rika said. “But they don’t tell you what to do with the other feeling…”
“The joy you get from killing,” Barne said.
“Is it joy?” Rika asked. “For me it’s just rage; I want to make them all pay for what they did to me—for what they took. But maybe…maybe you’re right, Barne.” Rika let out a long sigh. “Maybe there is joy mixed with that rage.”
Barne nodded, silent for a minute. “I don’t know if it’s wrong or not, Rika. But it’s what we are now. We’re killers, you and me. Why don’t you rest a bit? We’ll be killing again soon enough.”
Rika closed her eyes and leaned her head back. A killer. That’s all Barne saw when he looked at her; it was all he had ever seen. The only difference was that now, she had killed to save him.
Maybe he was right. She was on Pyra to kill. Though she had spent her day enjoying a lovely walk, its purpose had been to help her kill more effectively. Even the rescue they were about to undertake—even if it was bloodless—was just so they could kill once more.
Killer….
* * * * *
The sun was beginning to set as she and Barne settled behind a rock to survey Cheri’s ‘hideout’. Though it only took a few hours to reach Jersey City, it had taken several more to get deep into the nearby mountains and make their way up the steep valley without being seen.
“How come this Cheri person gets a nice villa at the foot of a mountain, and we had to hang out in a dusty warehouse?” Rika asked.
“Covert mission,” Barne said. “Cheri doesn’t’ seem to be doing the ‘covert’ thing, here.”
“Barne, I was kidding,” Rika said.
“Huh, musta been your robot voice.”
Rika opened her mouth to give Barne a tongue-lashing he would never forget, when she saw the twinkle in his eye.
“Asshole,” she said, and gave him a mock punch on the arm.
“Ow! Shit, Rika, even your pretend punches hurt like balls. Ease up, OK?”
“Sorry-not-sorry,” Rika replied in a robotic voice.
Barne chuckled. “Now who’s the asshole?”
Rika shook her head and allowed a small smile to grace her lips. If someone had told her that two days after being sold at auction she would be smiling—with the people who had bought her, no less—she would have slapped them upside the head. And not in a nice way.
Is this Stockholm Syndrome? she wondered. I never felt this way about the GAF…I hated them. Well, most of them.
She made a note to have her internal psych-eval program check for Stockholm the next time she ran it. For now, getting Jerry and Leslie out of that rather nice-looking villa was all that mattered.
The question Barne had asked her after he rescued her echoed in her mind once more. Why had she saved him? Sure, there were all the issues with getting offworld, and where she would go without the help of Basilisk. That was all logical and fine; but Rika knew she hadn’t thought of any of that when she saw his warning in the window.
She’d had a teammate in trouble, and she had to rescue that teammate. Was that some sort of leftover conditioning from the military, or was she just so desperate to belong somewhere that she’d side with her owners?
“Hey, Rika, you with me?” Barne asked.
“Yeah, sorry.”
“Enough dicking around. Time to get frosty. I can see seven sentries, what’s your count?”
“I make eleven—make that twelve.”
Barne and Rika had parked the car further down the valley, and hiked the last few kilometers to the villa. Since it was rather secluded, they decided to go in packing. Rika had spent the last two hours of the car ride adjusting the socket and mount on her gun-arm, so that she was able to place it on her right arm. It felt good to have it there. Even better, since it was the GNR-41C, and not the old B she used to have.
A JE78 multifunction rifle was on her back, and two pistols were slid into the clips on her thighs.
But the icing on the cake was her helmet. It was an older model, the one used by SMI-1 mechs. It only had two-seventy vision; not the three-sixty of her SMI-2 helmet from the war, but it fit. That helmet had only fit so long as the wearer didn’t possess a nose or ears.
Given the fact that she had spent a lot of credit getting those features back, she was glad not to have to sacrifice them again.
Her hair, however, had been a different matter. It had taken several tries to get the helmet on and sealed without blonde strands sticking out around her neck, causing the seal-leak warning to flash.
In the end, she had lain down on a log with her head hanging off, while Barne carefully placed her hair in the helmet, and then raised it up to her head.
That was, of course, after jok
ing that they should just shave it all off. He had almost called her ‘mech-meat’ at the time, but stopped himself, a look of apology on his face.
She hadn’t made a big deal about it. He wasn’t swearing at her, and calling her military hardware anymore, so she’d take what progress she could get.
Now, as she watched the sentries through her helmet’s enhanced sensors, she remembered how good it felt to have the extra senses it provided. She could hear animals in the brush two hundred paces away, see through haze and fog clear to the edge of the horizon, and even see through some of the walls in the villa.
“What’s our plan, then?” Rika asked.
“Not sure,” Barne replied. “I estimate we could take out five or six of those sentries before they figured out what was going on. But then they’ll be on high alert. I bet there are at least forty or fifty of them in there, and they probably have no small number of automated defense systems, as well.”
“Want to do something crazy?” Rika asked with a sly grin.
“How crazy?’ Barne asked.
* * * * *
An hour later, Rika stood with Barne on the mountain slope, a kilometer above the villa.
“Let me get this straight, you want me to get on your back?” Barne asked.
“Yeah. You get on, and I’ll run down the mountain. There’s an escarpment sixty meters from the villa. Running downhill, I can probably hit one-fifty before we get there. Then I jump, we sail over everything, and—if I aim well—we smash right through that glass ceiling in the back.”
“So your plan is to run down the mountain and jump into the villa,” Barne said. “That’s crazy.”
Rika nodded. “Yes, I said that before we climbed up here. What did you think we were going to do?”
“I don’t know, I figured you saw a secret door with your fancy helmet.”
“Wouldn’t that be nice,” Rika laughed. “OK, climb on.”
“This is the dumbest thing I’ve ever done,” Barne complained, as he clambered up onto her back and wrapped his arms around her neck.
“I really doubt that this is the dumbest thing you’ve done,” Rika said.
“At least you’re sexy,” he said morosely. “If you were a guy mech, I’d never live this down.”
Rika wanted to tell Barne to shove his backhanded compliments up his asshole, but he might like that too much, so she let it drop.
“Hold on tight!” Rika said instead, and began her run down the mountain. She wove around rocks and trees, careful not to jostle Barne overmuch. Her speed crossed over a hundred, and then a hundred and fifty kilometers per hour. The edge of the escarpment rushed toward her, and Rika leapt off it at nearly one hundred and seventy kilometers per hour.
She gauged her trajectory and saw that her aim was true. The glass ceiling on a rear room of the villa’s main structure rushed up to meet them, and they smashed through it and slammed into the room’s floor.
Barne leapt off her the instant they broke through the glass, and landed nearby, rolling to his feet, the medium armor he wore helping to absorb the shock.
The sensors in Rika’s helmet, coupled with her neural augments, gave her a full layout of the room by the time she landed—and smashed a rather expensive-looking table.
Two men were standing near one of the doors, both looking surprised, though still raising their rifles.
Rika shot one with a ballistic round from her GNR-41C, while Barne took out the other.
Rika swept her active scan across the room, and saw a cluster of people sixty meters to their right.
she said, gesturing to a door that led in the general direction they needed to go.
Barne ran to the door, flattened himself against the wall, and then reached out and turned the knob. Rika leapt through into the hall beyond, her GNR pointed right, and her JE78 covering the left.
She nodded to Barne and he moved to the other side of the hall, holding his rifle ready.
He had visual before she did, and opened fire, taking out two enemies in seconds.
Rika moved down the right, and Barne followed after, covering their six. Behind them, the sound of raised voices came from the room they had crashed into, and Rika picked up the pace, not wanting to be caught in a crossfire.
Ahead, a door opened, and three guards rushed out. None had their weapons ready, and Rika made short work of them.
At two more intersections, Rika paused to listen and scan, each time leading them further into the south wing of the villa.
Rika flipped her GNR to its electron beam mode. The next time one of the guards leaned out to take a shot, she fired.
A straight line of blue lightning streaked down the hall—a nimbus glow of blue cherenkov radiation further emblazoning its passage. It hit the guard square in the chest, and burned a hole right through him. Lightning arced all around his body, blowing out the overhead lighting and setting a wall on fire.
Rika turned back to the doors at the end of the hall. She could pick up five figures on the other side of them. Two seemed to be seated, with another one nearby. Another pair was on either side of the doors.
She took aim at the figure on the left side of the door, and fired her electron beam again. The force of the electrons travelling a hair under the speed of light blew a hole right through the wall and the person beyond. Rika smiled as the wall splintered, and the left-side door groaned before the top hinge came free and fell to the ground. Rika peered around the door to see Leslie and Jerry strapped to a pair of steel chairs in the center of the room.
Behind them stood a tall woman with mousy brown hair. She wore a cozy-looking red sweater, navy leggings, and fuzzy white slippers. If she was the nefarious Cheri, her wardrobe did not mirror the reputation.
The guard on the right side of the door moved into view, and Rika fired a ballistic round from her GNR, taking the top of his head off.
“Rika! No!” Leslie cried out as Rika stepped into the room. Barne was close behind, taking up position behind the remaining door, watching the hall to their rear.
The woman punched Leslie in the back of the head—a blow that was well delivered, and Leslie’s eyes grew unfocused.
“So, you’re the great Rika,” the woman said. “These two have told me a lot about you.”
Rika looked at Leslie and Jerry. Jerry’s mouth was covered by a gag, but other than that, he looked OK. Leslie had a few bruises, and a chunk of her hair was missing, but she didn’t appear to have any broken bones that Rika’s quick scan could see.
“And you must be Cheri,” Rika said cautiously. “I have to admit, I’m a bit underwhelmed, here.”
The woman didn’t even have a weapon. Rika raised her GNR but Leslie pulled her head up straight and cried out. “Rika, run! She has the Discipline codes.”
Cold dread washed over Rika. The moment the GNR pointed at Cheri, a spike of Discipline hit her, and she lowered the
weapon.
“That’s better,” Cheri said. “Getting your location was easy; too easy, if I know Jerry, here—which I do. Still, I sent Gamine in with a team to see if they could pull it off. I suspected that Gamine couldn’t manage, but then I’d still get what I wanted: you. Except you’d deliver yourself, all nice and tidy. Gamine was getting a bit too big for her britches, so it was really a win-win for me.”
Rika took a step back. “How?”
“How did I get the Discipline codes from Jerry?” Cheri asked as she stroked Jerry’s head. “Oh, I just used a nifty little tool I got a while ago. It breached his neural security and extracted the code from his mind. It was easy to find; people always try not to think about the thing they want to hide the most, but in reality, it’s all they think about.”
Rika shook her head in denial. “No, there’s just no way…”
Cheri’s eyes narrowed. “Rika. Kill Barne.”
The words flowed into her mind like ice water, and the tingle of Discipline grew stronger. She turned to Barne and saw true fear on his face as he stepped away from her.
“Rika, no, please,” he said, raising his rifle.
She darted forward, swatted the gun out of his hand, and reached for his throat. But she couldn’t bring herself to hurt this ass of a man. He was her friend—she hoped he was, at least.
Rika pulled her hand back, gritted her teeth, and lowered her head. She remembered what Barne had said, about mechs that somehow fought Discipline.
She turned to Cheri.
“No.”
This time, it was Cheri who looked concerned. Though it was just for a moment; then a wicked smile crossed her lips. “Rika, Kill Barne now. That’s an order.”
Even before Cheri had spoken, the Discipline sent searing pain into her mind. But not just her mind—it made her entire body feel like it was on fire. Like her skin was melting off, and the only way to put it out was with Barne’s blood.
Blood she would not spill.
The pain brought her to her knees, and she gasped for air, fighting against the searing agony. Still, she managed to raise her head, and she stared into Cheri’s grey eyes.