by M. D. Cooper
the sergeant replied.
Kelly shrugged and signaled Keli and Shoshin to cover her as she crept down the street. Her stealth was shot with all the blood and grime that covered her, and she hoped no Niets would try to take a pot shot from up high—something she supposed Crunch’s railshots had discouraged.
Kelly didn’t dignify Crunch’s statement with a response, and instead called out to the Niets inside the loading bay at the base of the MacWood Building.
“Hey, dickheads! The sarge in the B’muth really wants to blow some more holes through your building. I kinda want to get down to the maglev line below, but he outranks me, so if you don’t all get your asses out here on the street—unarmed, mind you—then he’s going to get his way and take the whole thing down. Not much I can do about that, so now it’s up to you asshats. Think this thing is a big enough tombstone?”
She waited eleven seconds for the response, becoming more certain that the Niets must have a death wish as each moment ticked by.
Then a hand waved around the corner, and a moment later, over fifty Nietzscheans came out of the loading bay, and laid down on the street, hands behind their heads.
“Wow, you’re all so well behaved,” Kelly said as she stared at the enemy soldiers. “I should get you all some extra tasty dogfood later, a reward for being so good.”
“Hey, where you going?” Yig said as he jogged to Kelly’s side. “I’ll take my team in. You secure these Niets, they clearly respect you.”
“Yeah,” Cole said as she approached the prone Nietzscheans. “They didn’t listen to Yig at all when he tried to get them to come out. But you went all momma bear on them, and they just rolled over.”
Kelly glanced at the enemy soldiers, nodding with appreciation at Shoshin as he moved amongst them, checking for weapons.
“Tell you what, Yig, we’ll play Rock-Paper-Scissors to see who goes after Leslie.”
“Best of three?” the corporal asked, and Kelly shook her head. “No. Sudden death. Winner takes all.”
He shrugged, and they slammed their fists against their chests three times before showing their choices. Yig had his hand clenched in a fist, while Kelly swirled her fingers in a circle over his rock.
“What? No way!” Yig exclaimed. “Black hole has a thirty-day cooldown, and you…aww, shit.”
“That’s right, guard duty boy, I last used it thirty-one days ago.” Kelly reached out and tapped him in the chest with a long, pointed finger. “Boom.”
“Dammit,” he muttered as he turned to the Niets. “OK, you assholes, I want the first row to go stand against that building and get out of your armor, then go and lay next to that fountain over there.”
As Yig gave the Niets their orders, Kelly signaled Keli and Shoshin to follow her into the loading bay. “Let’s go find ourselves a lost kitty.”
Yig glanced at Kelly as she walked into the bay. “Hey, you mind taking Cole with you? She’s likely to try and bench press a stack of Niets if she has to guard them for too long.”
“Fuck, Corporal, I’m right here,” Cole muttered.
“Am I wrong?” Yig asked her.
“Well…no…”
Kelly gestured for Cole to join her team, chuckling softly as they entered the bay.
“Cole’s short for something, right?” Keli asked as she eased around one of the trucks, checking for ambushers—or just Niets who were too cowardly to exit the building.
“Yeah,” Cole replied simply. “Is Keli short for something?”
“Sure…Kelly.”
“Shut it,” Kelly ordered as she leapt onto the platform at the back of the loading bay, and peered through the torn-open doors of the elevator.
Kelly stepped out into the elevator shaft, dropping the twenty meters to the bottom.
A minute later, the four mechs stood on the maglev platform, looking for clues as to which way the train had gone.
It took Kelly and her team thirty minutes to get to the end of the track, thankful for the signs the Nietzschean mech frames had left on the tracks. When they reached the end of the line, they found themselves on a deserted platform, deep underground.
“One of the GMs went down here,” Cole said from the far end of the platform, where she stood over the fallen form of one of the mech frames. “Shell’s cracked. There was no one inside, but some Niets died doing the deed.”
“Signs of a fight up this staircase,” Keli said, her voice ringing out in the eerie silence of the platform.
A giggle came from Keli over the Link.
Kelly met Cole at the far end of the platform, sparing a glance for the twisted—and still smoking—wreckage of the mech frame.
Kelly nodded.
They climbed up seven levels, each one showing varying levels of combat, destruction, and carnage, until they got to the ground level, and came out into an utterly decimated courtyard.
Kelly only groaned while keeping her GNR level, sweeping its barrel before her. Ahead was a landing pad—recently vacated, by the signs of refueling lines.
Kelly had deployed drones, and flipped through their feeds while her team examined the area. She set three of her drones to sw
eep over the low hills surrounding the bunker. A minute later, one of the eyes in the sky spotted a smoking crater a kilometer from the base.
A minute later, she was at the impact site. The remains of the fourth mech lay in the crater, the pilot’s cocoon cracked open.
Empty.
Kelly saw something inside the cocoon, and prised the two halves apart.
No one spoke for several minutes after that.
A half hour later, they were certain that Leslie was not at the bunker. The silver lining was that wherever the captain was, chances were that she was near Rika.
The two of them can take on anything, Kelly thought as she got ready to report in to Captain Chase. They have to.
PULLING UP STAKES
STELLAR DATE: 10.12.8949 (Adjusted Years)
LOCATION: MSS Fury Lance in orbit of Kansas
REGION: Blue Ridge System, Old Genevia, Nietzschean Empire
Dropping a battalion of mechs on a planet was a lot easier than getting them back into space again.
In the end, Chase had left the B’muths and a squad of mechs under Vargo Klen’s command to finish the cleanup and keep Kansas from devolving into chaos. He had no idea how twenty mechs would manage to maintain order across an entire planet, but Chase told Squad Sergeant Abs that if things got too messy on the surface, they were to hightail it into space and leave the Blue Ridge System behind.
The SMI-4 gave a throaty laugh.
Chase replied.
Chase resisted a groan. Chances were that Lieutenant Carson was doing no such thing, but he didn’t have time to go check. Not only that, but the Lance was Heather’s ship; he wasn’t going to go checking up on her.
Even if I am the de-facto leader of Rika’s Marauders right now.
The thought brought a weight with it, and Chase wished he could just lie down for an hour, try to catch his breath.
He was, but he was more worried about Rika.
Chase nodded in appreciation.
* * * * *
Twenty-seven minutes later, the Fury Lance’s mighty engines thundered to life, their thrum sending a vibration through the deck plates that no amount of a-grav dampener calibration seemed to be able to deal with.
Chase didn’t mind, he liked the sensation. He could tell Captain Heather, did as well. I wonder if Smalls tweaks the calibration just enough to keep the slight shudder in place.
The Fury Lance’s captain approached him, standing across the holotank that displayed the Blue Ridge System.
“Those Nietzschean cowards gotta be heading to one of those three jump points,” Heather said. “They’re the ones that lead deeper into Nietzschea, and they’re closer than any others.”
Chase nodded. “They’re the most logical. Agreed.”
On the holotank, icons flashed showing the positions of the four Marauder ships.
Buggsie had the Capital boosting for the furthest point, while Travis was taking the Republic to the second furthest. Ferris had the Undaunted en route to a station which sat midway between the first and second points. It was still firmly under Nietzschean control, and a possible stopping point for Rika’s abductors.
The Fury Lance was headed for the closest of the three points, a marker currently twenty-five AU from the ship. At their current thrust, it would take the Lance two days to make their destination.
“What’s got you looking like that?” Heather asked. “Other than the obvious.”
Chase glanced up at the ship’s captain. “What makes you think there’s something else? Isn’t Rika being missing enough?”
Heather shrugged. “Just seems like you’re having reservations.”
He lifted a hand and ran it across his forehead, pulling it away greasy from sweat. “I hate the thought that Leslie could still be back there.” He jerked his thumb back to where Kansas lay. “Not to mention the fact that fucking Alice took off with Alison and her team…. How did this all go so wrong so fast?”
“Alison can handle herself, and we know that Leslie isn’t back on Kansas,” Heather shook her head. “Kelly was thorough. You know that she of all people would not leave any stone unturned if it meant finding Rika. If she says there was nothing left at that bunker, then there was nothing left. Leslie got on the Nietzschean ship with Rika.”
“As a prisoner?” Chase asked.
Heather only shrugged in response, and he sighed.
“I’m going to hit the san. Let me know if anything changes.”
“You got it, Captain.”
STOWAWAY
STELLAR DATE: 10.13.8949 (Adjusted Years)
LOCATION: NMSS Spine of the Stars
REGION: Blue Ridge System, Old Genevia, Nietzschean Empire
Even though Leslie’s armor kept her warm, she couldn’t help the shivers that continually wracked
her body. She knew it was psychosomatic, the result of knowing that she was crammed into a small compartment with the ship’s landing gear, enjoying the cold vacuum of space.
Or maybe it was that she was less than ten minutes from the end of her fresh oxygen supply. After that, she’d have to make do with only recycled air from her scrubbers.
Even though she’d been tucked away in the Nietzschean ship’s folded landing gear for hours, Leslie still felt like her heart was pounding in her chest. The fight at the Nietzschean bunker had been one for the books, and she couldn’t help but think it a shame that no one else had been there to witness it.
Using the three remaining Goon-Mechs, she’d taken out dozens of Niets, but hadn’t managed to head off the enemy brass, or their precious cargo. In the end, the ship had lifted off from the pad, leaving Leslie on the ground to slog it out with a group of their special forces soldiers.
The GM had short-burst jump jets, and Leslie had used them to boost up to the departing ship, getting within ten meters, only to have it fire on her with its point-defense cannons.
The second shot had rent a hole in the pod, and Leslie had made a do-or-die decision.
She’d jumped the final distance.
At that point, they were over a kilometer in the air. She’d almost missed the ship, catching a single finger on a landing strut, before whipping her tail up and around the beam, barely clambering up its length before the strut had folded up into the ship.
I didn’t bite it out there, and I’m not going to freeze to death in here, either! Leslie declared as she finally managed to breach the control systems for the maintenance hatch a meter above her head. I may not be all brained up like Rika, but this isn’t my first time hacking my way into a Nietzschean network—even if it’s taken hours.
Though the hatch was now unlocked, she still had to get up to it. Thanking the stars that she’d hadn’t mech’d up along with Chase and Barne, Leslie wormed her way past the landing strut’s armatures to the waiting hatch.
After keying in the access code she’d lifted from the ship’s network, Leslie pushed the hatch open and squirmed into the tiny airlock. She cycled it, begging the stars to let the taps she’d placed in the ship’s maintenance network keep the airlock activation from showing on anyone’s board.