by M. D. Cooper
The general’s wording was unclear to Rika, but she feared the worst. My promotions in the Marauders have already been meteoric; I doubt that the General would—
Her musing was interrupted when Julia said, “But a lieutenant colonel may be something I can swing.”
Rika had been in the midst of drawing a breath to respond when Julia dropped that bomb, and she nearly coughed with disbelief. “Excuse me?”
A genuine smile made its way onto Julia’s face. “Captain Rika, who did you think we were going to put in charge of the rest of the mechs once they completed their evaluations? They only want to report up to you. Stars, your ‘company’ is already overstuffed with five platoons. Your battalion will suffer from the same condition.”
Rika opened and closed her mouth, uncertain how to respond.
Tim, on the other hand, had that covered. “General Julia, no offense meant, but is that wise? Rika does not have the operational experience necessary to manage a battalion. She’ll be in over her head.”
As much as Rika would have preferred to pull her own teeth than agree with Tim, she was thinking the same thing. Managing a company only worked because she had smart people filling out her staff. For all intents and purposes, Barne managed half the day-to-day issues. Heather and Scarcliff had a lot to do with the smooth operation, as well—something that was clearly evidenced by her week-long absence, during which nothing untoward had occurred.
“No offense taken,” Julia replied, though the smile on her lips turned somewhat predatory, and Rika suspected that the opposite was true. “Are you volunteering to be Rika’s XO? She’s going to need someone with operational experience. Someone who knows how to manage all of the details that come along with a force this size.”
Other than a few glances at General Julia, Alice had been staring at Rika unblinkingly for the last few minutes. Something changed in her eyes, and she suddenly blurted out, “I’ll do it.”
Julia’s brow lifted halfway up her forehead. “Colonel?”
Alice’s expression of pure certainty was undiminished as she looked at Julia. “I’ll be Rika’s XO. I have the experience she needs and, frankly, I’m sick of flying a desk. This is the fight of a lifetime, and I want to be in on it.”
“That’ll be a first,” Tanis said with a slight smile. “A lieutenant colonel reporting to a lieutenant colonel.”
“She’s right,” Julia agreed. “That won’t work. We can’t mess up the chain of command like that. From what I’ve seen, Rika’s company will not look kindly on such an arrangement.”
Alice shrugged. “Then demote me. Call it an operational field demotion or something.”
“What’s gotten into you?” Jeremey asked, nearly coughing out the question. “A demotion?”
Alice turned from Julia to Jeremey. “What the fuck do I care about rank, about the insignia on my collar? The whole point behind the Marauders was to form a resistance against the Nietzscheans—something many of us, myself included, have forgotten. But my parents are still in there, my brother, his kids. They all live in the Nietzschean Empire. What about your dad, Jeremey? He’s still stuck there, too. They won’t give him travel authorization because they think he has ties with the resistance. Don’t you want to help him? Free him?”
Jeremey looked down at the table and muttered, “I won’t throw my life away on a fool’s errand.”
“I’d rethink that attitude,” Julia’s voice lowered, and a dangerous edge found its way into her words. “Mill’s Marauders has no room for cowards.”
Jeremey’s jaw set, but when he looked up at Julia and saw the cold steel in her eyes, he gave a curt nod. “Understood, ma’am.”
General Julia nodded before looking back at Rika. “You know, Rika…you put in quite a few years in the GAF. In fact, your ‘enlistment’ date—for lack of a better word—is earlier than Alice’s.”
“It is?” Rika asked.
Julia nodded. “If we count the day of your sentencing, where you took on military service as your start day, you have three days on her…”
“That doesn’t cover time in grade,” Colonel Borden said. “I assume that would be an issue in the Marauders as well?”
“Yes, it would absolutely cause issues,” Tim replied, but closed his mouth as Julia shot him a cold look.
“We’ll figure something out,” the general said.
“So, you have your mech battalion,” Tanis spoke for the first time in several minutes. “We don’t have funds in your local currencies, but—as I was trying to explain earlier—our technology is worth more than most star systems. I suspect it will work in place of credit?”
“It will,” Julia said with a laugh. “In addition, we’ll exercise salvage rights on systems we capture. We can work out specifics later. However, there is something else that I want for the Marauders, if we undertake this mission.”
Rika saw Tanis’s eyes narrow as she leant back in her chair, regarding the Marauder general. “Name it.”
“I understand that you have a colony world, far from here. One defended by a massive fleet of your indestructible ships.”
Tanis nodded. “You’ve heard correctly.”
“Then I want the option for any Marauder to send their families to your colony.”
All eyes turned to Tanis as she regarded General Julia.
“I’ll consider it,” the admiral replied. “But if they want to be citizens, loyalties may become complex. We’ll need to think about this.”
“That’s good enough for now,” Julia replied, a resolute expression on her face. “Then it’s settled. The Marauders are at the Allies’ disposal.”
From there, the conversation turned to force deployments and possible strategies. Colonel Borden was assigned as liaison for the Marauders, tasked with venturing out with Rika’s battalion on their mission.
Julia’s mental communication held a tone that Rika hoped meant it was a joke.
Julia’s words sounded like a form of torture to Rika, but she supposed that was a long way off—after they took out Nietzschea. For all she knew, Tanis’s little mission could take years.
For a moment, Julia seemed like she was going to say something more, holding the Link connection open, but then she closed it as Tanis began to speak about the location of the first strike.
* * * * *
Two hours later, they exited the conference room, having discussed what felt like a hundred strategies for taking the fight to Nietzschea, and ultimately toppling the empire.
While Tanis wanted the Marauders to be the tip of the spear, she had understood that more forces would be necessary to pull off a mission of that magnitude. She alluded to a large Septhian force being available at some point—though Rika wasn’t sure how Tanis would pull that off.
The Septhians had not proven to be the most reliable of allies.
No, that’s unfair, Rika corrected herself. General Adam in the Hercules System acquitted himself well.
She rubbed the back of her hand against her cheek as she stepped out into the corridor, taking care not to tangle her finger joints in her hair, and let out a long sigh.
Tim and Jeremey had been the first out, and Rachel only paused briefly to wish Rika well before turning left, toward the bridge.
“I look forward to working with you more,” Colonel Borden said as he stepped out into the passageway, stopping to stretch out his arms at Rika’s side. “Would you object if I selected a squad of ISF Marines to accompany you?”
Rika had seen ISF Marines kick ass back in Hudson. They were a force to be reckoned with. “Bring as many as you can, Colonel. I won’t say no to their help.”
Borden chuckled. “Well, I’ll keep it to a small team, folks familiar with spec-ops infiltration actions. We don’t have a lot of field experience with that, but there are a few of us.”
“I’m surprised by that,” Alice said to the colonel from Rika’s other side as she exited the conference room. “I thought you guys were serious badasses.”
“We may be, but most of our fights have been pitched battles. Do or die stuff. I’m looking forward to learning from you.”
Niki commented.
“I do, however, need to chat with Rachel about this,” he said. “Given that I’m in her fleet, and all.”
“Wait…Captain Rachel?” Alice asked.
Borden nodded. “Recently Colonel Rachel, now General Rachel.”
Alice shook her head. “I don’t get it.”
Rika shared a knowing look with Borden before replying. “The honor of serving as the captain of the I2 is considered the highest in the ISF,” she explained. “Everyone calls Rachel ‘Captain’ out of respect.”
“I guess that makes sense,” Alice replied, the expression on her face clearly indicating otherwise.
“If you’ll excuse me,” Borden nodded to the two women. “I must go speak with Captain General Rachel before she gets assaulted by a thousand different crises.”
“I’ll see you soon,” Rika replied as the man turned and walked toward the bridge.
“So, Colonel Rika, what are your orders?” Alice asked, her tone conciliatory.
Hopefully in apology for her initial greeting.
“You bring any gear?” Rika asked, not sure what she was supposed to do with Alice.
“Still in my cabin on the courier ship,” the lieutenant colonel replied.
“Well, we’ll swing by there on our way to the Fury Lance. Also, I’m not a colonel yet. I took you for a rules stickler, what, with how you took me to task when I arrived.”
Alice shrugged. “Blood sugar was low, and I was tired of Tim pestering me over the Link.”
Rika said as she glanced at Alice.
CHALLENGE
STELLAR DATE: 09.09.8949 (Adjusted Years)
LOCATION: Marauder dropship
REGION: Pyra, Albany System, Thebes, Septhian Alliance
Rika could all but feel Chase’s confusion coming across the Link.
Chase didn’t reply for a second, and Rika stared out the dropship’s forward screen, wondering how he’d feel about the news.
Rika snorted at the visual.
Rika nodded, though he couldn’t see it.
Rika felt bad that she’d snapped at Chase; his reaction was an honest one. But he believed she could do it, and that counted for a lot.
Granted, he’s biased.
She swallowed while watching the shuttle fly past a massive ISF repair ship. The thing was nearly the size of the I2, though narrower so it could fit through smaller jump gates.
Rika knew exactly who ‘all of us’ was: the former members of team Basilisk, and the company leadership.
Chase managed a reasonable snort over the link.
Rika sent him a feeling of warmth before she accepted the general’s request of a full VR conversation. Rika didn’t have this style of conversation often; for some reason, she always felt vulnerable in them, as though the other person could somehow see into her core.
Still, she couldn’t deny the general’s request, so she kept Tanis’s imagery firmly in mind as she found herself on a vast plain and saluted General Julia.
The general returned the salute, and then regarded Rika silently for an entire minute before finally speaking.
“I should kick you out of the Marauders.”
Julia’s words carried a hard edge and hit Rika like a wall of ice, nearly staggering her in the virtual world.
“Ma’am?” was all she managed to sputter out.
“I know what you’re thinking; that it’s for your actions in Hercules, or for rushing into Albany half-cocked—which seems to be your thing, by the way, Rika.”
Rika placed the image of herself as a rock in the storm beyond Julia. The other woman couldn’t see it, but for Rika, Julia was now framed by a raging storm, wreathed by the unbreakable spire of stone that represented herself.
Rika widened her stance and clasped her hands behind her back. “I have defeated every adversary, ma’am. Perhaps people have just underestimated me. What they consider to be ill-advised actions are—with my abilities in mind—perfectly acceptable risks.”
A sardonic smile slipped onto the older woman’s thin lips, and her eyes narrowed. “I would have accepted that argument, but for your actions on Hudson.”
Rika frowned. “Hudson?”
Julia nodded. “If it were not for the fact that the Allies’ field marshal has such an obvious fondness for you—well-earned, since you saved her, I suppose—I would have booted you from the Marauders in a heartbeat for what you did there.”
The general’s words barely made sense to Rika. She had saved Patty, Silva, and Amy. Patty was a Marauder, and Silva may as well be. She had been doing her duty.
“I—I don’t understand…”
Julia turned her eyes upward and shook her head before looking down at Rika. “And that is why I’m still having second thoughts about sending you on the mission to Nietzschea.”
“But you seemed so supportive in the meeting with Tanis.”
“Yes, because if I had dressed you down, or told her I wouldn’t send you, then I’d have had to deal with Jeremey pushing back twice as hard on this whole thing.”
On the surface, Julia had seemed so genuine, so supportive. To know that she’d been playing Rika’s favor with Tanis against Jeremey that whole time…it cast the woman in a whole new light.
“So what did I do wrong?” Rika asked.
“Rika. You abandoned your post to save a friend.”
Julia let the words drop like they were a bomb. One that failed to detonate, so far as Rika was concerned.
“No,
ma’am. I took a calculated risk that my company would be safe performing S&R operations while in the care of the largest, most capable military that I’ve ever seen. They’re not green recruits, General, they know how to handle themselves, and it made for an excellent test of my lieutenants, to see how they operated without my direct oversight. Considering that we will be operating independently for some time, it seemed wise.”
Julia shook her head. “Dress it up however you want, Rika. You abandoned your post on a personal mission. Not only that, but you did it in what was still an active theater. You’re a disgrace to the uniform.”
Something snapped inside Rika, and she took a step toward the general, raising a hand, one finger pointing at the woman before her.
“No, General. You’re a disgrace to even think that I wear a uniform. Look at me!”
Julia’s eyes remained locked on Rika’s own, not wavering an iota.
“NO!” Rika screamed. “You look at me, General Julia! Look at my body. Look at what your beloved Genevian Armed Forces did to me. This isn’t a fucking uniform, this is my flesh! And it is no. Fucking. Disgrace.”
The vehemence in Rika’s voice finally seemed to crack Julia’s veneer, and her eyes widened as Rika took another step forward.
“You abandoned me. You abandoned us all back there in Genevia. Time and time again, you left us. Maybe if instead of running the fuck off, if the GAF brass had gone back for the lost, we might have won the war. You have a legacy of leaving people behind. I have a legacy of saving them. If one person—one!—is lost, I will save them.
“I saved Barne even when he hated me, I saved the man who had the control codes to the chip in my head, I saved the president of the world below us—though the Niets still killed her. But that didn’t stop me. I saved Amy from her father, and I saved Silva and the mechs from the Politica. I saved the fucking Hercules System, and we dove a starship into a planet to save Vargo Klen. But that wasn’t enough for me, General Julia. I came here to save Albany, and Tanis Richards, and then I saved the woman who made my coffee once, and then I went to save Patty, Silva, and Amy, and you know what happened?”