by M. D. Cooper
Last thing I need is to find the barrel of a gun in my face when the other side opens up.
She fought the urge to close her eyes as the airlock’s inner hatch opened—not that it would have mattered. Though she hadn’t gone full mech, she had taken her share of mods from the ISF, and one of them was the ability to parse three-sixty vision.
With her helmet pushing feeds into her mind, there was no way she could avoid watching the hatch open.
However, nothing but an empty service tube awaited her, and Leslie offered up a silent thanks to the stars and Jerry’s soul.
She thought of him less these days, but Rika’s comment earlier had brought him back to the fore.
I bet you’d love this, Jerry; kicking Nietzschean ass, just like we were always meant to. Only this time, we have them on the run.
Leslie carefully accessed the ship’s schematics in the maintenance system she’d tapped, and downloaded the vessel’s full layout.
She’d not seen the ship’s name before, but the map denoted the vessel as the Spine of the Stars. It was a rather large name for a ship that was somewhere between a corvette and a destroyer.
It was small enough to boost out of a planet’s gravity well without too much trouble, but large enough to carry the fuel to power its engines for a long burn while running the reactors hot enough to power the ship’s three dozen beams.
A smile spread across Leslie’s lips. Once, she would have considered three dozen beams on a ship this size to be almost overkill; that was before seeing the I-Class ships the ISF had built. Ten thousand ships like the tub she was on wouldn’t even come close to an I-Class’s firepower.
Leslie put the comparison out of her mind and focused on her next task: get her armor clean and repaired so her stealth would return to peak efficiency.
Once she could move about the ship with impunity, she’d assess the enemy’s strength, and work out the best plan to free Rika.
Though Leslie would have liked nothing better than to blast her way through the ship and rescue the colonel as quickly as possible, chances were that her friend was in the most heavily guarded portion of the ship. There could be dozens of Niets and automated defenses waiting for her.
She’d have to wear down their numbers first.
* * * * *
“Who are you?” the man standing at the door to Rika’s cell asked. “Where did you get those Nietzschean ships you attacked Kansas with?”
Rika was still wrapped in the CF net, laying on the floor of her cell, arms pressed against her sides. Her power reserves had been working their way up over the past few hours, and she activated her armor’s external speakers to respond to the man.
“I’m Colonel Rika, 9th Battalion, 7th Marauder Fleet. As to where I got the ships, pretty sure it was from your mom. Right after I kicked her ass.”
“A mech officer?” the man’s voice dripped with disdain. “You Genevian mercs must be scraping the bottom of the barrel.”
“That’s where they kept us,” Rika replied, her tone even. “Lucky for you. If we’d been allowed to operate at our full potential in the war, I’d have your emperor over my knee right now.”
The man rolled his eyes and sighed. “I highly doubt that.”
“So you have my name and rank, what are yours?”
The man straightened. “Fleet Admiral Gideon.”
“Ah, the civilian killer himself.” Rika gave a derisive snort. “Pretty damn small fleet. I take it the rest got sent to Thebes? I guess they left the dregs behind. How’s it feel to be down at the bottom of the barrel?”
“I’m not going to share intel with you, squib.”
“Squib?” Rika felt a laugh building. She did her best to stop it, every muscle still ached, but the chortle broke free nonetheless. “Well, this squib has killed more Nietzscheans than she can count. Gotta be closing in on a quarter million now. But that’s nothing compared to what the Allies did to your people at Thebes.”
She gained a modicum of satisfaction as the admiral’s expression paled. “Allies?”
Rika gave a small nod—all that she could manage. “I guess technically it’s called The Scipio Alliance, but it’s really run by Field Marshal Richards of the ISF. She brought a fleet in that obliterated the forces your moron of an emperor sent into Thebes. My fleet chased after the cowards that ran away to Sepe. We mopped the stars with them and left their surviving ships for the Sepians to use in case any of you dickheads decide to wander into their system again.”
Halfway through Rika’s recitation, Admiral Gideon began to shake his head.
“No, there is no way. Scipio is in a cold war with the Hegemony; there’s no way they could send a force large enough to Thebes…not that they’d have any reason to.”
“Your intel’s ancient, Admiral Gideon,” Rika scoffed, reveling in the act of turning this Niet’s world on its head. “Scipio is in an active war with the Hegemony, now. But you missed the key point—the ISF is the driving force behind the Allies. Well, them and the Transcend. Either way, they crushed your fleet with a numerically smaller force, and only lost a hundred ships doing it. You have no idea how outclassed you are.”
The admiral’s jaw tensed, and he shook his head. “Nice try, squib. But that tale’s a thousand klicks too tall.”
“Curious what the ‘I’ stands for?”
“In your fantasy fleet? Sure.”
“Intrepid. Remember that ship that showed up twenty years ago in the Bollam’s World System? Remember how it had impenetrable shields and defeated five fleets on its own?”
The admiral’s eyes widened, and he shook his head. “They disappeared.”
“Sure did.” Rika wished the man could see her grin. “And then they got busy. Some folks found them and poked the hornet’s nest. Now they’re bound and determined to get payback while knocking down all the asshole empires. Think Nietzschea is an empire of assholes? I sure do.”
The admiral didn’t reply, and Rika saw him cock his head, his eyes losing focus.
The admiral’s face grew troubled, and he turned away, pausing to glance at Rika before the cell door closed. “We’ll have to continue exploring your fantasies later.”
“I look forward to it,” Rika said as her parting rejoinder.
* * * * *
Leslie peered around the corner, checking to ensure that no enemies were in the corridor, biting back a curse when she saw a pair of men wrapped in one another’s arms halfway down the passage.
She’d cleaned her armor off as best she could in a maintenance closet, bringing her stealth effectiveness up to seventy-two percent, but that overall number didn’t represent even coverage. Patches of her armor had no stealth capability at all, making it all but useless at close range.
She paused to consider her options. If I kill these two lovebirds, then I have to deal with bodies, and I start the clock ticking.
Leslie decided to see if she could slip past the pair. Given how into one another they were, she might just manage. If not, she’d take them out and deal with the consequences as they came.
One of the men had untucked the other’s shirt, and pushed it up, his lips working their way across a well-muscled abdomen.
Leslie wondered at the state of discipline in the Nietzschean military, that couples would just bang out in the open.
Wouldn’t surprise me if they just started fucking at some point.
She held back a laugh, half wishing they would. There’d be no way they’d notice her, then.
Moving quietly, and
as slowly as she dared, Leslie was almost past the pair when a voice called out from behind her.
“Hey! What are you two assholes doing?”
Shit! Leslie thought, watching a burly sergeant stride into the passageway.
“Uh…hi, Sarge,” the tummy-licking Niet said, rising to his feet right next to Leslie.
“I’ll show you, ‘hi, Sarge’. We got brass running for their scrawny li—what the fuck is that?”
Leslie could see that his eyes were fixed on her. More specifically, on a patch of armor on her shoulder that was completely visible.
“What?” one of the lovebirds asked, then his eyes fixed on Leslie. “Wait! There’s—”
The man’s words were his last, as Leslie extended her claws and tore out his throat with a single swipe. The other amorous Niet cried out in horror as a spray of blood splashed across him, though the utterance was cut short as he suffered the same fate as his former lover.
Leslie didn’t give their deaths a second thought as she ran toward the sergeant, well aware that her form would be completely visible now, half covered in blood as she was.
The sergeant unslung a weapon, but he was too slow. Leslie was already at his side, clawed fingers stabbing through a weak point in his armor where his pauldron met his chest plate.
He cried out, but still had the presence of mind—and ample strength—to swing his rifle at Leslie’s head.
She’d been ready for a counterattack, and blocked the blow with her right arm, while drawing her lightwand and slamming the blade into his neck.
It tore right through his light armor and jutted out the other side.
She took a step back and watched the large soldier crumple, before the sound of footfalls coming from around the corner sent her running further aft in the ship.
* * * * *
“We’ve got her cornered on the aft end of Deck 7, sir. She might have made it down to Deck 8, but we have it cordoned off as well,” Sofia reported as Admiral Gideon strode onto the bridge.
“She?” Gideon asked, scowling at the display showing the bloody mess on the port side of Deck 9.
Sofia flicked a finger, and the holodisplay shifted to show a woman in black armor, half-covered in blood, sprinting through a passageway on the ship.
“Is that a tail?” Gideon asked.
“Yes. This is the woman who breached the MacWood Building with Colonel Rika. I can only assume that she was in one of the mechs that pursued us down the maglev line.”
“Tenacious bitch,” Gideon muttered. “I want her dead; we have enough trouble going on. Vent the entire aft half of the ship if you have to.”
“She’s in armor,” General Decoteau joined in the conversation from where he sat at the back of the bridge. “Vacuum may do her no harm.”
“Kill grav too, then,” Gideon said with a sweep of his hand. “Whatever can disadvantage her.”
“I advise against that,” Sofia said, her voice deferential and cautious. “It’s entirely possible that she’s more adept in those conditions than our own soldiers.”
“I don’t care about our soldiers,” Gideon shot back. “It will disadvantage her. One shot in the right place, and she sucks vacuum and dies. The same is true for our troops, but we have over fifty of them.”
“Forty-eight,” Decoteau said, both his tone and his posture shouting that he was entirely disinterested in the situation. “But who’s counting.”
Gideon was about to lay into the general, but saw that the pair of ensigns manning the bridge consoles were staring at the exchange with wide eyes.
“Attend to your duties,” Gideon thundered before pointing at Decoteau. “You. In my office. Now!”
The general rose, his posture still one of insolence, and sauntered off the bridge and into the passageway.
Gideon’s office was the first on the left, and Decoteau ambled in, the admiral storming after him, slamming the door once they were both inside.
“What the fuck is your deal, General?” Gideon demanded as Decoteau sat in one of the plas chairs next to the desk.
“My deal?” the general coughed out a laugh. “Well, I took a bullet today; that was fun. So I’m basically just waiting to die at this point.”
Gideon frowned. “From the shot? You’re already patched up. You’ll be fine.”
Decoteau’s expression darkened, and he rose to face Gideon. “No, no I won’t be fine. You saw what these Marauders can do; they dropped a company to take a planet. A planet, Admiral. And two of them—fucking skinny-assed women, at that—killed their way through our HQ, and almost took us out, too.”
“Almost,” Gideon shot back.
“Well yeah, we survived. But you seem hell-bent on giving them as many fucking chances as you can. You should have killed that mech colonel—or left her behind. That might have slowed them down. Now she’s on our ship, and so is one of her friends. They killed hundreds of our soldiers already. Do you really think that the fuckheads on this ship—lazy assholes who’ve never seen combat in their lives—will stand up to one of them?”
“Watch it, Decoteau. Don’t forget who you’re talking to.”
The general leant back in his chair and looked Gideon up and down. “From where I stand, it’s a dead man walking. Only way we make it out of this is if we kill the mech, set the reactor to blow, and get on a shuttle. Any other scenario sees us dead within half a day.”
Gideon couldn’t believe what Decoteau was saying. The general wasn’t the brightest, or most ambitious of men, but he had never seemed so…pathetic before.
“You’re a fucking coward!” the admiral screamed. “I’ll have you court-martialed!”
“You?” Decoteau snorted. “You’ll be dead. You’re not having anyone court-martialed.”
Gideon ground his teeth together as his vision turned red. He took a step back, snatched his sidearm from its holster, and pointed it at the general’s head. The man’s eyes grew wide, then he slowly rose from his chair, the two men standing still for a moment, staring at one another in silence.
Suddenly Decoteau lunged for Gideon, and the admiral squeezed the trigger three times. After the general’s body fell, he emptied the magazine into the former officer’s head, turning it into a bloody pulp, smeared across the deck.
PURSUIT
STELLAR DATE: 10.13.8949 (Adjusted Years)
LOCATION: Karl’s Might on outsystem vector
REGION: Blue Ridge System, Old Genevia, Nietzschean Empire
“You sure we’re headed to the right jump point?” Jenisa asked while frowning at the navigation console. “The rest of the fleet is breaking up. Heading for these other three jump points.”
“Smoke screen,” Lieutenant Colonel Alice replied, her tone nonchalant. “We don’t want to spook the Niets. If they think we’re not hot on their tail, they’ll let their guard down. Half the civilian ships in the system are headed for jump points right now. We’re just blending in with the pack.”
“Why not just come after them with the Lance, and crush them?” Fred asked. “I don’t care what the Niets have, if they stay stealthed, the Lance can catch them, no problem.”
Alice turned in the commander’s seat to glare at Fred, who sat at the weapons console. “And what if they break stealth and do a hard burn for the jump point? Yes, the Fury Lance is fast, but we know there are plenty of corvettes and destroyers that are faster. You wanna lose Colonel Rika?”
Fred’s cheeks reddened as he shook his head. “No, Colonel.”
Alison gave the lieutenant colonel a sidelong look.
Fred’s laugh filled her mind.
* * * * *
Alison and her mechs crewed the bridge in two-person shifts, staying well-rested and alternating between card games and training sims, in which they practiced infil and takedown ops on ship-types similar to what Rika’s captors were flying—or what Alison suspected they were flying.
All the while, Alice stayed on the bridge, excepting short san breaks. Alison had kept tabs on the lieutenant colonel, and so far as she could tell, the woman hadn’t slept in the forty hours since they’d lifted off from Memphis’s spaceport.
Under her direction, the Karl’s Might continued to boost at the maximum velocity possible while maintaining the ship’s stealth systems. The fact that the ship had stealth systems capable of functioning effectively under heavy boost was impressive in and of itself.
Though the Karl’s Might was registered as a civilian craft belonging to Karl’s Shipping and Trade, the mechs were certain that it was really a smuggler’s ship, possibly even a pirate ship. Whenever they weren’t on duty—or playing Snark—the mechs were scouring the ship, trying to find evidence of what the Might was really used for.
There was quite the pool for whoever found concrete proof of either option.
Fred and Kor were both of the opinion that it was just a smuggler’s ship, or perhaps a mostly legitimate courier vessel that sometimes hopped into systems that were less than friendly. Randy was on the fence, and had wanted to put fifty percent of his credit on either outcome, but Jenisa had scoffed at him, asking what the point of a bet like that was. In the end, he put in for smuggler.