by M. D. Cooper
Leslie gave Amy a kiss and rose. “Am I to perform for you, or do we just have to listen to you posture forever? It’s really tiring, you know.”
“Why not,” Stavros shrugged, and fell back onto a sofa, spreading his arms along its back. “Amy, sit with me. Rika, why don’t you pour me a glass of wine?”
Amy slouched to the sofa and sat beside her father while Rika walked to the sideboard and pulled a bottle from the chiller beneath. As she selected a glass, Leslie began to sing.
It was a haunting ballad; a song about a woman who was lost in the woods at night, being pursued by a nameless fear. It chased her across hill and vale, and the woman ran until her feet were ragged.
She came to a cliff and could run no further. At that point, the woman finally mustered the courage to look back and see what chased her, only to find that it was herself; a vision of what she believed she should be, but could never attain. Her belief in a perfection that she could never reach had nearly become her undoing.
The woman found a sword in her hands, and struck down the false vision that her fear of failure told her she should be. Then the dark forest and the terrifying night fell away.
She found herself standing in a peaceful glade in full daylight, and the woman realized she already was what she needed to be, but she had to believe in herself.
As Leslie sang, Rika watched Amy’s face—rapt with wonder as the words of the song sank in, moved to tears when the woman in the song faced her fears.
When Leslie finished, Stavros rose and clapped slowly. “You are truly a treasure, Leslie. I wonder why you’ve chosen to be a soldier; surely, you could travel the stars and entertain billions. Maybe that’s what I’ll do with you. I imagine you could bring in a healthy revenue stream for The Politica.”
“No, father,” Amy pleaded, rising and clasping Stavros’s hand. “I want her to stay with us.”
The dictator looked down at his daughter, no sign of love present in his eyes. “We’ll see how this evening turns out, Amy. There are some lessons I’m going to teach you. Today begins your journey of becoming my proper scion. One that will serve the goals of The Politica.”
As he rested a hand on Amy’s head, a sound at the door caught Rika’s attention. She saw Silva enter, dragging something behind her. It took a moment for Rika to understand what she was seeing.
“Chase!” Rika cried, and dropped the glass of wine she still held before she leapt over the sofa and dashed to his side.
He was conscious; that much she could tell, as his one eye swiveled and locked onto her. The other was swollen shut, and his lips were also swollen. He groaned, and Rika saw that his right arm was broken and dangling awkwardly behind his back.
Rika didn’t respond. She didn’t want to hear another word from her former CO.
She reached out to touch Chase and made a direct Link with him.
Chase fed her a data stream over the direct link.
Niki reported.
“The rest of your crew won’t make it far,” Stavros assessed from behind Rika. “Maybe I’ll just chip them all; you make a good team. Better yet, I’ll turn them all into mechs. Chase here already needs a new arm; he’d make a good AM-3, or maybe a K1R.”
Rika rose and spun around with her GNR extended, its barrel centimeters from Stavros’s face. Pinches erupted across her body, and Rika gave a good show of bearing the agony.
“You’ve gotta be the toughest bitch in the galaxy,” Stavros laughed. “It’s amazing. It really is. Imagine what I could do with a thousand of you—a million. All of humanity would bow before me.”
Rika gritted her teeth and lowered her GNR.
“There’s a good girl,” Stavros cooed. “I wouldn’t want Meat to have to shoot you in the head.”
Rika turned to see Silva’s GNR raised and aimed to do his bidding.
“Tit for tat, then, is it?” Rika asked.
“A bit of that, yes,” Stavros agreed with a grin.
Rika looked past him at Amy, who was crouched on the sofa and peering over its back at the tableau before her. Rika wondered how often the young girl had witnessed scenes like this unfolding before her.
“I’m curious why you picked K-Strike,” Rika mused to Stavros suddenly before she turned back to look at Silva. “You know he hired them, right?”
Silva cocked her head to the side, peering around Rika at the dictator. Rika turned back and saw Aaron, John, and the goons all straighten—likely told to be on alert by Stavros.
“You ruin all my fun,” Stavros accused with a mock pout. “But stars, do I enjoy the variety you bring.”
Rika turned her back on Stavros and looked down at Chase, who had managed to pull himself up to a kneeling position after Silva let him go. Rika gave him a sad smile before turning her gaze to Silva.
“Take off the helmet, C319.”
“She doesn’t take orders from you,” Stavros sneered. “No one takes orders from you, Rika. I think it’s time for you to understand that, once and for all.”
Pinches erupted across Rika’s body and she smiled.
“I’m going to enjoy this,” Rika smiled as she took a step back, no longer standing between Silva and Stavros.
Stavros’s mouth fell open. “No…Rika…how…?”
“Your chip never worked on me in the first place,” Rika answered his incomplete queries. “I’ve never been under your thrall; now no one is.”
“Get her!” Stavros shouted angrily at the two AM-3s in the room, but neither moved.
“No,” Aaron said simply. “We’re done taking orders from you, Stavros.”
Stavros took a step back, looking around the room filled with people he no longer controlled. The two goons looked uncertainly at each other and at the AM-3s at their sides.
Rika noticed a small smile growing on Amy’s lips as she watched her father exhibit more than a little fear.
“Take off the helmet,” Rika urged Silva again. “Show her.”
Silva’s head slumped forward, and she reached up to release the clasps of her helmet. She hesitated a moment, and then pulled it free, revealing the featureless face of an SMI-2 mech. Only her eyes hinted at the living human beneath.
“Tell her,” Rika repeated.
“No! Stop!” Stavros cried, rushing toward Silva. “I order you—”
His words stopped the instant Rika’s hand closed around his throat.
“Not another word,” Rika whispered.
“I don’t understand,” came Amy’s small voice. “Why are you showing me your face?”
“Because…” Silva started brokenly, speaking aloud for the first time that night. She took a breath and tried again. “Because, Amy…I’m your mother.”
Amy’s face went slack, and she looked to Rika.
“She is,” Rika nodded with a smile as Stavros thrashed in her grip. “Stop, little man,” she scolded him. “You live only because I’m not the one who gets to mete out justice today.”
“I wouldn’t mind a kick or two on justice’s behalf,” Leslie growled softly.
“Aaron, do you think you could give Leslie a hand over there?” Rika asked.
“Yeah, no problem,” Aaron replied.
A plink echoed through the room as he broke Leslie’s chain, and Rika turned her attention back to Amy, who had climbed over the sofa and was approaching Silva with slow, tentative steps.
“I called you ‘Silver’ because I imagined that you were my mother,” Amy admitted in a soft voice. “You came to me sometimes—I could tell it hurt you to do it. He hurt you.”
“I loved that you named me Silver,” Silva responded quietly. “I knew what it meant.”
Amy looked at her father, and Rika saw anger burning in the girl’s eyes. Rika knew the revelation had to happen; Amy had to learn the truth. But to see this truth take its toll on her, for such a young girl to see such thorough debasement—it was one of the hardest things Rika had ever done.
“It’s OK, Amy,” Silva pulled the girl’s attention back to her. She kneeled down before her daughter and stretched out her hand. “I came for you. I came to take you away years ago, but I failed. I was captured, and Stavros—”
Silva stopped speaking as Amy crashed into her arms, and mother and daughter sobbed as they embraced one another.
Rika continued to hold onto Stavros, while Leslie walked to Chase’s side and helped him to one of the sofas.
“Really, it looks worse than it is,” Chase said.
“Chase, I can see your ulna sticking out of your forearm,” Leslie scolded.
“Well…yeah.”
“And there’s your radius,” she pointed.
“Stop talking about it, you’re making it hurt more.”
Rika glanced at Amy and Silva. Killing Stavros in front of his daughter was something she had really wanted to avoid.
In that moment of hesitation, all hell broke loose.
ASSASSINATION
STELLAR DATE: 04.04.8949 (Adjusted Years)
LOCATION: Basileus Residence, The Isthmus, Sparta
REGION: Peloponnese System, The Politica, Praesepe Cluster
Leslie fell first, screaming as she clutched the sides of her head. Silva wasn’t far behind, and Amy cried out in fear as her mother squeezed her eyes shut and began to convulse.
John raised his rifle, took aim at Rika, and squeezed off a round before Aaron collided with him, knocking him to the floor.
The shot caught Rika in the neck—right where her armor ended and her skin began. Pain flared, and she spasmed, releasing her grip on Stavros.
John pushed Aaron away and took aim at Rika, firing again, but not before she backpedaled and sent a burst from her GNR into the AM-3.
One of the goons was down on his knees, clutching his head, and the other lunged for him, clawing at his face. They rolled to the floor, and the report of a ballistic pistol sounded from between them.
Aaron leveled his rifle at John and emptied his magazine into the other mech’s right arm, disabling the limb before smashing his fist into John’s head.
John went down screaming and clutching his head, but he still managed to drag Aaron down with him.
Rika leapt to her feet, feeling lightheaded as blood rushed from her neck and drew a dark red line down her torso. She looked around the room, but Stavros was gone.
And so was Amy.
Rika didn’t respond, but rushed to Leslie’s side and delivered the nano dose, then moved onto Aaron, who had finally subdued John. She debated giving it to John, ultimately deciding that it was better than having him under Stavros’s control. Somehow, both the goons were dead, so there was no need to use the nano on them.
“Thanks,” Leslie panted as Rika walked back across the room toward Silva. “I had no idea how much that shit hurts.”
“It’s a hell of a thing,” Rika agreed as she knelt at Silva’s side and touched the covering over the data port on her left arm. A few seconds later, Silva stopped rocking back and forth, and her breathing steadied.
“He took Amy,” Rika told her firmly. “You ready to go kill that son of a bitch?”
Silva nodded as she rose. “Yes. Yes I am.”
“Where would he go?” Rika asked.
“There’s a bunker here in the Residence, but I don’t think he’d go to it. He once referred to it as the ‘coward’s hole’,” Silva recalled. “I think he’d go to The Isthmus’s Central Command.”
Rika looked to the group behind her. “Thanks for the assist, Aaron. Can you ensure Leslie and Chase get to their evac ship?”
“Rika,” Aaron responded solemnly. “Thank you. It would be my honor to keep them safe.”
“Go,” Leslie urged. “We’re not children, we can handle ourselves.”
Silva was already halfway to the door, and Rika followed, unslinging her JE84 to get ready for close quarters combat.
Silva put her helmet back on before poking her head out into the hall, and then pulled back as a series of shots streaked past. Rika sealed her helmet in place as well, grateful to finally be going back into combat with proper three-sixty vision.
Rika agreed.
Silva glanced up at Rika.
Rika counted silently and then rushed out into the intersection, standing on the ceiling, while Silva rolled across the open space, taking a position on the far side of the hall, while Rika fired twice with her electron beam, tearing holes through the lightly armored enemy.
Silva fired a shot with her rifle before moving on.
Despite how pissed I am at Silva for hurting Chase, it feels good to be working with her again.
They easily fell back into a rhythm they had developed over many dozens of battles. The pair of SMI-2s were out of the Residence a minute later, and Silva led Rika down a broad
boulevard toward a maglev station. All around them, Stavros’s soldiers fought with each other and much of the citizenry. A few mechs were in evidence, and they seemed to be siding against the soldiers.
They fought two other groups of soldiers before making it to the maglev station.
Three AM-2 mechs and one K1R stood on the platform, and Rika skidded to a halt, raising her GNR.
The K1R’s chaingun spun up, and Rika dove out of the way as a hail of kinetic slugs tore through the air.
Rika turned to see a squad of nearby Politica soldiers retreating, half their number dead.
“Aaron said you needed a hand,” the K1R mech growled. “I’ll hold them back. You go.”
“Thanks,” Rika replied and rushed onto the maglev train. Silva followed, as did the AM-2s.
“You Rika?” one of the AM-2s asked as the train took off down the tunnel.
“Yeah,” Rika nodded. “And you’re…?”
“I’m Ben,” the AM-2 offered before gesturing to his friend. “This is Al. He doesn’t talk much.”
“Lot of that going around,” Silva grunted.
“We’re going to kill Stavros, right?” Ben asked. “This isn’t a capture op?”
It occurred to Rika that many of these mechs had never known freedom; they had gone from the war with the Nietzscheans straight to Stavros’s Politica. It had been just one long war for them. Mission after mission.
“Right,” Silva confirmed before Rika could. “Stavros dies. Then we kill The Politica.”
“You’re a woman after my own heart,” Ben replied.
The maglev train skidded to a halt half a kilometer before it reached the destination platform, and Niki spoke into all their minds.