by M. D. Cooper
“Maybe it was made at a Genevian shipyard, and the workers were sending a message,” Chief Garth suggested. “You know, ‘We want liberty!’ ”
“Well, we’ll take it off their hands and solve that little problem for them,” Rika said as she stood. “Leslie, you have the conn…and the whole ship, for that matter.”
“Wait, what?” Leslie turned in her seat. “I thought I was going! Heather’s the pilot.”
Heather rose and stretched out her physical and mechanical joints. “I’m no smooth talker, though, Cat Girl, and this is a hostage sitch. Don’t worry, worst come to worst, you can just sing to them. Croon your way to victory…or would that be ‘yowl’?”
Leslie rolled her eyes as she rose from the comm console and walked to the pilot’s station. “Careful, Smalls, this cat has claws.”
Lieutenant Heather chuckled. “I’ll tussle with you any day, Cat Girl.”
Leslie opened her mouth to reply, but Rika interrupted.
“Enough chatter, folks, we have a mission, and everyone else is already out on the hull. Heather, let’s get moving. This goes down on time, or it turns into one hell of a fuckaduck.”
“What’s a fuckaduck?” Heather asked as she followed Rika off the bridge.
“Beats me, I just hate the term ‘clusterfuck’, was trying out something new.”
“What? How can you hate CF? It’s such a great term!”
Rika shook her head as she gave Heather a sidelong glance. “Because it sounds like an orgy. And a lot of people think that orgies are good, which makes it an ambiguous term.”
Heather barked a laugh as they stepped into the nearest lift. “And ‘fuckaduck’ is better somehow?”
“Well, I did say that I was just trying it out. But it’s definitely bad. Even people who want to clusterfuck aren’t going to want to fuckaduck.”
“I wouldn’t bet on it,” Heather cautioned.
“Well, it’s gotta be a smaller number of people.”
“Sure. Yeah. If you want to be an optimistic quack.”
Rika only groaned in response.
Five minutes later, they were exiting an airlock on the Fury Lance’s hull, not far from where the forward squads had breached the ship back at Armens. The three squads of First Platoon aboard the ship were already out there, crouched behind sensor arrays and point defense cannons.
The Liberty was still seven kilometers away, but slowly growing larger as Leslie eased the Fury Lance closer, assisted by Niki and the helm NSAIs.
Leslie said to Rika.
Rika laughed in the confines of her helmet as she took up a position behind a cooling vane ridge.
Rika wanted to reach through the Link and smack Leslie on the back of the head. It was rare for her to be so punchy. Maybe it was just that so much stuff was happening over such a short period of time. They all had a lot to absorb.
The ships drew near, and Rika paid half a mind as Leslie began to speak with the Nietzscheans—telling them they needed to link up and show the hostages on verifiable live feeds before they’d be allowed to come aboard the Fury Lance.
The Nietzscheans were skittish and defensive, demanding access to review fuel status and FTL transition systems. They also wanted to bring some of the hostages across, promising that they would release said hostages in escape pods before the ship dumped to FTL at the system’s edge.
Leslie handled them with aplomb, and Rika couldn’t help but be impressed. She hoped all the teams were doing as well, though she couldn’t reach out to ask without risking the operation.
The Liberty drew closer, hanging above the Marauders mechs that were crouched on the Fury Lance’s hull like a dark cloud, blotting out the stars.
Rika took up a position with first squad, while Heather moved off to aid third squad, which was down a few mechs after the breach operation on the Fury Lance a week prior.
Just a week? Rika wondered. Feels like a lifetime.
Each squad selected their breach points, and when the two ships reached zero delta-v at a distance of a hundred and fifty meters, the squads pushed off the hull.
Rika clenched her jaw as she sailed through the black, doing her best to keep her vision fixed on the Liberty and not the vast expanse of nothing all around her.
It was amazing that with stations, planets, and a hundred thousand starships all around, space was still, by and large, empty.
So very empty.
Then the Liberty was rushing toward her, and Rika carefully turned, setting her boots to repulse, and slowing to hit the hull as lightly as possible.
Within seconds, Sergeant Aaron had sent fireteam one/one to the airlock, where they set to breaching it with plasma torches.
Thirty seconds later, they were in the airlock, setting up a grav shield before breaching the second door.
Once the door was breached, one/one moved into the passage, securing the first intersection as the other three fireteams moved into the ship.
There were several locations in the cruiser where the hostages could be held: cargo bays, hangars, and the main enlisted mess.
Rika’s money was on the mess or the cargo bay closest to it. They had to feed the hostages and get them to the head with some regularity.
The teams would stay EM silent until they met resistance, and then it would be a full-force push to the targets.
The corridor around one/one was dark. No lights, no EM. With any luck, the Nietzscheans would have no idea they had visitors. So far, the chatter between Leslie and the enemy sounded normal—as much as a hostage negotiation could.
Leslie had agreed to move the Fury Lance closer so that an umbilical could be stretched between the vessels, and a team could be sent over from the Liberty.
Rika hoped the fiction wouldn’t have to last that long, but the Fury Lance was a big ship; even if a couple Niets got aboard, they would be easy to contain.
Ahead, one-one led the squad onward, sending drones down each cross corridor before moving to the next. It was slow going, and Rika considered directing the squad to rush ahead, but knew that other breach teams could be in more precarious positions. The more time everyone had before the alarms started sounding, the better.
Just as she resolved not to rush ahead, a call came in from Barne.
One/one took off at a brisk pace, with fireteams two and three close behind. Rika moved up from the rear, settling in beside Corporal Crunch as they loped down empty corridor after empty corridor.
Suddenly Sergeant Aaron stopped, the AM-3 unslinging his JE-88 while spinning up the chaingun mounted to his other arm. He fired down a side corridor while calling out for Ben to lead the fireteam on to the galley.
Rika reached Aaron’s location as his chaingun spun down.
“Two heavies down there,” he said. “Think I got one, the other ran off.”
“Send a fireteam,” Rika said as she took off once more, hearing Aaron direct Kerry down the side passage.
It was risky to keep advancing with a potential enemy to their flank, but they had little choice. Rika didn’t want Tanis’s first impression of the mechs to be one where they lost hostages.
The concourse the squad sergeant referred to was a ten-meter-wide passage that ran through the ship. It served a similar purpose to the one in the Fury Lance: a passage for maglevs, lifts, and cargo transfers.
It was also the last easily defensible location before the galley.
Ahead, Rika saw one/one stack up at the entrance to the concourse, Ben and Whispers readying their chainguns before leaping out into the open, spraying what Rika assumed must be enemy locations with bullets, before falling prone while Kim and Harris took more careful shots.
Rika pulled their feeds and saw that they were facing at least a dozen enemies who had taken up positions behind a stalled-out maglev, forty-five meters down the concourse.
Rika came up behind Kim and took aim with her GNR, firing an electron beam at the rear of the maglev train, tearing through it and exposing a group of Niets, which fireteam one laid into.
She realized that half the enemies they were facing weren’t even wearing armor. Rika signaled for one-two to cross the concourse and take a side passage to move into flanking position.
Crunch gave her a sharp nod before leading his fireteam across the concourse, most clearing the passage in a single leap before disappearing into the passages on the far side.
Rika was about to move to a new position, when weapons fire came from further down the concourse and tore into the enemy.
A minute later, Rika was at the main entrance to the galley, fireteams from first and second squads at the other entrances, while Aaron led a small group toward another cargo bay to ensure it was clear.
A few seconds later, the teams at each door signaled that they were ready, and Rika gave a count.
Ben kicked the door in, and Rika fired her GNR, blowing the head off an unarmored Nietzschean solider, then she selected a new target and fired a round at him as well. That enemy was armored, and Rika traced a series of rounds down his torso. She considered firing a DPU, but there were too many hostages around. All it took was one small shard of uranium to make today someone’s last.
The armored Niet had fallen back under Rika’s barrage, and she thought he was going to return fire, but instead the man grabbed a hostage by the neck—a slim woman in a long robe that the Pyrans favored—and lifted her into the air.
“One more move and this bitch dies,” the man shouted.
The woman screamed in fear, but the Nietzschean clenched his hand, closing off his captive’s air supply.
“Hey, easy now,” Rika said, raising her GNR. “You let her go, you live.”
“Oh yeah?” the man growled. “I want to talk to your commander. Not gonna negotiate with a fucking mech.”
Rika sighed. “I am the commander. You’ll deal with me. You have my word—you drop her, and step out of your armor, and no harm will come to you.”
The Nietzschean glanced around at the dozen mechs moving into the galley, placing themselves between him and the hostages.
“You can’t get out of this alive otherwise,” Rika said quietly. “Loosen your grip. If she dies, the deal is off. We’ll make it slow, too.”
She wasn’t sure if the man would respond to the threat; she worried that he may be ready to die, but not to suffer.
By some miracle, though, her offer seemed to work. The Nietzschean opened his hand, and the Pyran woman fell to the ground. Rika rushed forward while Ben gestured for the enemy soldier to step back, Kerry yelling for him to get out of his armor and get on the ground.
“Thank you…” the woman rasped, a wan smile on her face.
“Least we can do,” Rika replied, examining the woman’s familiar-looking face. “Wait a second. Did you used to work in a coffee shop in Berlin?”
The woman nodded. “Yeah…” her voice came in a pain-filled rasp. “I got out just before the Niets bombed it last year…so much for being safe from them. But how—”
A fit of coughs overcame the woman, and she held her throat tenderly.
“Easy now,” Rika said, pulling off her helmet. “I’m Rika, and you’re safe. The Nietzschean fleet is destroyed, and you’re safe.”
The woman’s eyes widened. “You’re her…the woman who saved the president!”
Something like that, Rika thought as she nodded.
“You came back for us,” the woman wrapped her arms around Rika’s armored body. “Oh, thank the stars, you came back for us.”
LAKESIDE
STELLAR DATE: 08.30.8949 (Adjusted Years)
LOCATION: Ol’ Sam, ISS I2
REGION: Pyra, Albany System, Thebes, Septhian Alliance
Rika glanced at Major Tim and shrugged before raising her hand to knock on the wooden door in front of them. An instant before her steel fingers touched the surface, Tanis’s voice came into her mind.
She paused for a moment, and then lowered her hand and turned the knob, walking into the house.
Major Tim, whose eyelids were usually never more than a millimeter away from a narrow-eyed scowl, was looking around with clear amazement.
Rika understood his sentiment. It wasn’t every day you found yourself inside a city-sized warship, about to enter a wooden house sitting near the shores of a lake.
She wiped her feet as best she could on the greeting mat, which bore the words, ‘Mom said we could put anything on the mat’, taking care to pull a twig out of her left foot before proceeding down the short hallway.
A few paces ahead, the hall opened up into a wide living room, complete with a huge fireplace and five deep sofas arrayed before it.
�
��Please, sit,” Tanis said, appearing in the entrance to the kitchen on their right. “Would you like anything? I have coffee…and orange juice, I think.”
“Coffee, please,” Rika said, and Major Tim nodded.
“Coffee as well,” he requested.
“Cream and sugar?” Tanis asked as she turned back into the kitchen, which possessed the same rustic charm as the rest of the house, featuring a massive wooden table that was scuffed and scored from decades of use.
Both Rika and Tim declined the condiments and turned to the living room’s seating arrangements, each choosing a different sofa. Tim picked the one closest to the door, while Rika chose the one she gauged best able to support her weight.
“Don’t worry,” Tanis said as she entered the room carrying three cups. “It can hold you. I made them to support folks with a lot of mods.”
“You made the furniture?” Rika asked as she accepted her cup from the admiral.
“Well, Joe and I,” Tanis replied as she settled into the sofa next to the fireplace, a smile on her lips as she looked up at the thick beams above their heads. “We made most of this house. It was in rough shape when we first took over, but we managed to get it into good condition. Expanded it a few times, has a lot of character now.”
“Forgive my surprise, Admiral Richards,” Tim said, his customary scowl back in place. “But where do you find the time for that?”
“You know how things are in the military,” Tanis shrugged as she set her cup down on a side table. “There’s a lot of hurry up and wait. We once waited for sixty years in this house, Joe and I. We had some time to kill.”
Rika coughed and nearly sprayed coffee out of her nose. “Sixty years?”
Tanis nodded. “It was when we were drifting from Estralla de la Muerte to The Kap. We were so low on fuel we had to conserve everything for the deceleration, and with the sabotage…well, we were paranoid, so only Joe and I were out of stasis.”
“That’s right,” Tim said, nodding slowly. “This used to be a colony ship. That’s why you have these habitation cylinders.”
“Back when she was the Intrepid,” Tanis leant her head back and closed her eyes. “Back when all we wanted to do was get away from the chaos of Sol and build a nice, peaceful colony.”