by M. D. Cooper
Kelly and Keli both sketched salutes at Rika, then the three women separated, each going to a different station vendor to secure supplies for the ship.
The orders on the Nietzschean subrosa network had given all the ships two days to secure provisions through legal means before the military occupation and pillaging began. From what Rika could tell, this was to ensure that any easily damaged goods were secured first.
Rika turned a corner and nearly jumped at the sight of a Nietzschean squad approaching. The soldiers stood aside, making room for her, and she hoped as she strode past that none had spotted her momentary alarm.
Rika laughed and shook her head.
SUSPICION
STELLAR DATE: 09.19.8949 (Adjusted Years)
LOCATION: Fury Lance
REGION: Ursa Station, Sepe System (Independent)
Heather laughed aloud, catching a curious look from Chief Ona.
“Potter’s cracking jokes,” Heather explained.
“She’s got a real sense of humor,” Ona grinned. “I often get her to tell me jokes before I go to sleep to help me wind down.”
Heather’s brow lowered as she regarded the chief. “Really?”
“Great, how come I got assigned the ‘funny’ bridge crew.”
“Teams are deploying,” Garth said, glancing back at the rest of the crew. “You know…if you all care about the operation.”
“Easy now,” Heather pointed at one of her displays. “I’m monitoring it, too. Looks like everyone’s in the black.”
Heather pushed the smiling babies off the main holo and switched it back to the view of Ursa Station. The display now showed the station—which had one hundred and eleven Nietzschean ships docked on it—and the surrounding space, where eighty-nine more ships hung around the three inner moons orbiting Crag. Another hundred ships were docked at other stations, noted by red markers on the display.
Rika’s plan was a risky one, but after breaching the Nietzschean ships within Armens’ clouds, this mission seemed almost easy by comparison. All the assault teams had to do was trust in the ISF’s stealth armor and drift through the black to their target ships.
Granted, there was one major difference on this operation: the number of Marauders assigned to each target. With just over three hundred and fifty mechs and sixty target vessels to seize, some enemy ships only had a single fireteam assigned to breach and secure.
Of course, they weren’t trying to capture all the enemy ships. Scuttling them was a perfectly acceptable option, so long as the assault teams were able to do so without damaging the station.
“Have we picked up Klen and Buggsie?” Heather asked. “I don’t see them on the tactical display.”
“True,” Heather mused as she rose from her chair and walked to the holotank to the right of the scan console. She brought up space for four light seconds around Ursa station.
It wasn’t the largest station in orbit of Crag, but it was the one with the highest concentration of Nietzschean ships. What she found interesting was that over five hundred ships in the Sepan Space Force had moved into wide orbits around Crag as more and more Niets arrived.
Given that they were allied with the Niets, it was a strange maneuver, especially since the ships weren’t taking up especially good offensive, or defensive formations.
“Stars…it’s like they’re trying to look as innocuous as possible,” Heather muttered.
“You got that right,” Ona added. “The Niets sure have everyone cowed.”
“It’s sad,” Garth said as he turned to look at the holo. “But then again, they have no reason to believe that the Niets are going to wipe them out.”
Heather ran her hands through her long, red hair, tucking it behind her ears. “Yet. They don’t have a reason, yet.”
* * * *
Chase couldn’t see the members of his squad around him, but knew they were there, courtesy of ISF’s MK99 armor’s IFF systems sending out periodic pings on seemingly random frequencies.
Unless you knew what the signals were, they would just seem like static. Not only that, but the amplitude was so low, the signals dissipated after a few meters.
At least that’s what the manual says, Chase thought, looking nervously at the dozens of ships around them, all capable of obliterating his team in an instant, should they be detected.
Ahead, his team’s target grew larger with each passing second. It was the only other dreadnought in the Sepe system—the Peerless, Admiral Fels’ flagship.
A massive target, assigned to just himself and Sergeant Alison’s squad of mechs. Four kilometers of ship filled with hundreds of Niets versus eighteen mechs.
Looks like the odds are in our favor.
Chase felt an itch in his left thumb and tried to ignore it. Not that he couldn’t itch a finger when stealthed, but because it wasn’t there. For this mission, he’d opted for an FN-88 on his left arm. It was a weapon that the ISF had retrofitted from their own stock to work for the mechs.
Lower powered than a GNR-50, the FN-88 rapid-fired kinetic slugs that were chemically accelerated. They could do a hell of a lot of damage, and if that wasn’t enough, the weapon also sported a pellet railgun. Its third mode was a pulse cannon that could bowl over a dozen people.
He couldn’t wait to use them in combat.
The itch persisted, and Chase briefly wondered if he had been crazy to let the ISF turn him into a mech. If he were honest with himself, he had to admit that he didn’t quite know his own reasoning for the change. Did he do it for himself, to be a better warrior? Was it to gain acceptance by Rika’s Marauders? Or was it for Rika herself?
Maybe it’s a bit of all three.
The crazy thing was, aside from Vargo Klen, who was practically a madman to begin with, Chase may be the only person he’d ever heard of who had volunteered to be a mech.
Then again, from his perspective, half the people on the I2 were voluntary mechs. Their tech was just good enough to hide it in a human-shaped package.
Which, I suppose, we can do now, too.
As he mused, movement out of the corner of his eye drew Chase’s attention, and he saw a frigate moving toward Ursa Station, headed for the berth next to the Peerless.
Chase analyzed the braking speed of the frigate, and his team’s trajectory.
Shit, it’s going to come in right in front of us.
Then the frigate pivoted and slowed its approach.
* * * * *
“Lieutenant Fuller’s teams are ready,” Lieutenant Colonel Alice said as she strode onto the bridge. “Ships are on the rails and ready to drop.”
Heather nodded, never quite sure how to behave around Alice. The woman seemed overly deferential, especially given her rank. It was as though she was constantly in a state of kissing ass.
It was obvious to Heather that the battalion’s XO was a rulebound desk-flyer. On several occasions, Alice had begun to critique the more informal behavior of the mechs, but stopped herself each time, almost always with the same shit-eating grin on her face.
Rika seemed to regard Alice with a mixture of tolerance and appreciation. Heather wasn’t sure why the colonel put up with the woman; it was obvious that Alice was a plant from MHQ, sent to keep an eye on them—and right the ship if Rika steered it wrong.
Of course, there was no chance that Rika’s Marauders would side with a squishie like Alice over Rika.
Not a tulip’s chance in a black hole.
She supposed that’s why Alice kissed so much ass, something her shit-eating smile was well-suited to. The woman knew that she served only so long as Rika tolerated her.
Thoughts of dumping the lieutenant colonel into a stasis tube gave Heather some cheer as she watched Alice take a seat at one of the auxiliary consoles, where she began to scowl at the operation status data.
“Leslie’s team is moving too fast,” the battalion XO observed.
“We’ve noted that,” Heather replied. “Nothing we can do about it now. Borden’s managed to brake when they were occluded by a departing freighter, so at least he’s back in the pocket.”
Alice glanced over her shoulder, that smile on her lips again. “Have you tried reaching out to her?”
“And give her away?” Heather asked, not sure if Alice was messing with her or not. “She can see it as well as we can. One way or another, she’ll just have to deal with her early arrival.”
“And if it gives away the op?” Alice asked.
“Then it gives away the op, and we crush the Niets the old-fashioned way,” Heather replied with a nonchalant shrug. “Not that I’m worried about Leslie’s team and their ability to be stealthy. I’m a lot more concerned about what Chase and Alison are going to do about that frigate that’s about to collide with them. They’re going to have to brake, and when they do…”
“Shit…” Alice whispered. “That’s going to mess everything up. Potter, can you…?”
“Hack the Nietzschean command network and issue new docking instructions? Maybe. Can I do it without alerting their network security teams that something’s up? Probably not.”
Alice’s eyes were wide as she turned back to Heather. “So what are we going to do?”
Heather pulled her lips back into a toothy grin. “We’re going to do what mechs do best. Roll with it.”
* * * * *
Rika didn’t reply as she turned left down a narrow passageway lined with conduits. From the markers laying atop her vision, she only had to traverse another two hundred meters to the rendezvous.
Niki continued, laughing softly.
Rika shrugged as she approached the supply room she’d selected for her team’s meetup.
The microdrones might not have been as ubiquitous as Tanis’s nanocloud, but they were a damn sight better than the visible surveillance drones she was used to using.
Additional feeds appeared on the edges of her vision, highlighting items of uncertainty one by one before flagging them all as safe.
One of the drones picked up motion nearby, and Rika saw Keli saunter around a corner. At the same time, another drone slipped into the supply room and spotted Kelly already inside, pulling off her Nietzschean uniform.
Rika pulled open the door and gave Kelly a knowing smile. “Bet it feels good to get out of that thing.”
Kelly laughed. “You have no idea, Rika. I don’t care what Niki says, there’s no way to stop the itching.”
“Whatever,” Kelly scoffed. “You’ve never had a body, what do you know?”
“I can know everything there is to know about dogs, but I don’t know what it’s like to be a dog,” Kelly retorted.
Kelly glared at Rika. “Do you really have an AI, or do you just fake her to mess with us?”
Niki put a three-dimensional view of the surrounding area on the team’s combat net. A lone figure approached their position, moving down the right-hand corridor, already in view of Keli. However, that wasn’t the major concern: there were over three-dozen more Nietzscheans approaching on the decks above and below the supply room.
“Shit!” Rika swore. “That’s Reg isn’t it?”
“Our friendly neighborhood major pain in the ass,” Kelly replied as she triggered her MK99 skin to convert to a matte grey, the covering absorbing her mouth, nose, eyes, and even drawing her hair beneath the surface of her skin.
“Major Reg,” Rika boomed as she rounded the corner, a meter from the man. “What the hell do you think you’re doing, ordering my people around?”
Reg stopped short, a look of alarm crossing his face before a sly smile took its place. “Oh, if it isn’t Major Jessa.”
“What do you want, Reg?” Rika asked, not rising to the bait he was obviously dangling.
“Oh, I was just curious what you were up to down here. I found it odd that your supply run took you into maintenance se
ctions of the station.”
“Just stretching my legs,” Rika replied, knowing the excuse was lame. There was no good reason for her to be down here and they both knew it. “What brings you into these parts?”
“Oh, I was following you,” Reg grinned. “Muenos has been acting a bit strange, and then when I ran into you on the docks, I noticed something a little odd.”
Rika sighed, wondering if she should just kill this man now, or see if she could reason with him somehow.
“You see,” Reg continued. “On the holos, my friend the colonel seemed to have a new little gesture, a repeated curling of the fingers on his left hand. Something I’d never seen him do before. Then, on the dock, you did the same thing.”
“Maybe he picked it up from me—” Rika began.
“Liar! It’s not that hard to fake a holoimage,” Reg snarled. “What have you done with Muenos?”
“I haven’t done anything,” Rika held up her palms, trying to calm the man down. “You’ll see him in that meeting with the admiral in half an hour.”
“No,” Reg shot back. “I have you surrounded; you’ll take me to him now.”
Niki placed a dozen yellow markers in the corridors around them. Three were almost right on top of Keli, who had stopped a few meters away, standing with a hand ready to reach back and grab her KZA rifle.
As she spoke, Rika dropped to one knee and drew her pistol, firing from the hip at Reg’s torso. The gun was a chemical projectile weapon, and the rounds slammed full-force into the Nietzschean’s body, staggering him back.
A moment later he had regained his balance, growling as he drew his own weapon.