by M. D. Cooper
Potter said, joining in the command net from First Platoon’s location.
Rika nodded slowly. “Lieutenant, Chief, you’re both all too correct. I think it’s time for us to pull up stakes and join the fun.” She glanced at Alice, who wore standard Marauder armor that looked like it had never seen a moment of combat. “You got a helmet, Lieutenant Colonel?”
Alice pursed her lips. “Are you sure we should all go in? Who’s going to run things?”
Rika rapped a knuckle on her head. “I can walk and chew gum at the same time, Alice. Don’t worry, Niki and I can manage things just as well from the front as we can back here.”
Alice didn’t reply, and Rika wished she knew what was going on in the woman’s head. The Lieutenant Colonel often made veiled comments about Rika and Niki’s pairing, as well as Rika’s neural upgrades. Nothing that approached insubordination, or even made Rika certain that the woman didn’t trust what the ISF had done to Rika’s brain, but they were slowly stacking up, building into a solid annoyance.
Yig’s laughter intensified, and he replied,
A sense of confusion came back over the Link, then Yig exclaimed,
Rika closed the connection, watching with approval as Leslie shut down the holodisplays and packed up the portable projector. In a minute, it would be like her HQ had never been here.
ADMIRAL GIDEON
STELLAR DATE: 10.12.8949 (Adjusted Years)
LOCATION: Nietzschean System Command, Memphis, Kansas
REGION: Blue Ridge System, Old Genevia, Nietzschean Empire
Fleet Admiral Gideon stared down from the four hundred and first floor of the MacWood Building. His gaze settled on the distant smoke rising near Bridge Street where the advancing enemy was skirmishing with the Nietzschean battalion holding that position.
“They’re going to overrun our line there, sir,” Colonel Sofia advised from his side. “Colonel Cole is organizing his reserve companies to flank the enemy, but I’m not convinced it will work.”
Gideon glanced at the tall, yet somehow stocky-looking woman next to him. “What gives you that impression?”
“Well, sir, Cole’s maneuver assumes the enemy wants to keep civilian casualties to a minimum. If that turns out not to be the case, they’ll just pummel our flanking forces from orbit.”
The admiral’s lips pursed as he considered Colonel Sofia’s words. The woman tended toward pessimism—which was one of the reasons he kept her around. He didn’t need someone’s lips around his asshole, he needed people who would tell it like they saw it. No punches pulled.
Sofia never pulled punches.
“Your thoughts, General Decoteau?” Admiral Gideon asked the man to his left.
“Well, our intelligence has flagged this motley crew as Marauders, a merc outfit comprised mostly of former Genevian soldiers—though I don’t know how a bunch of mercs managed to steal a ship like the Fury Lance. However, because they’re Genevians, our psycho-analysts think they’re unlikely to cause mass destruction to one of their own former cities. So…” Decoteau paused to glance at Colonel Sofia. “Despite the colonel’s worries, I don’t think they’ll perform orbital strikes on the city. Not without clear and significant targets.”
“Like this building,” Sofia added softly.
Gideon pretended he hadn’t heard the colonel. It wasn’t a new objection from her; the moment the Marauder ships had forced his garrison fleet away from the planet, she’d feared an orbital bombardment, and had advised evacuation to a bunker on the outskirts of the city.
Fleet Intel was still trying to sort out how the Marauder ships were able to withstand the attack from a numerically superior force with no damage. For all intents and purposes, it seemed as though the enemy’s shields were impenetrable.
There had been a recent rash of rumors describing shielding such as what the Marauders possessed, but Gideon hadn’t given the stories any serious consideration—until now.
Just the fact that a Marauder fleet was attacking a world within the Nietzschean Empire—and doing it with stolen Nietzschean ships, no less—was something that Fleet Intel was still struggling to come up with a good answer for.
Gideon knew the answer, but he didn’t like it.
Somewhere, someone had screwed up. They’d overextended themselves, and suffered a loss so great, it had encouraged rogue elements like the Marauders to launch offensives.
But he knew of only one offensive large enough that its utter failure would bring about a response such as this.
The attack on Thebes.
That assault was the reason why Gideon only had a handful of ships available to police the Blue Ridge System. He’d been all but stripped bare.
Still, he was a Nietzschean, and far from defenseless. The Genevians had fallen before his people like so much ripe grain, harvested by their master scythes just a scant decade earlier. The mongrels would manage no better this time—especially not with a force comprised of a band of mercenaries.
“Pull a company from the spaceport,” he ordered. “Hit those squibs from behind, and it will send them into disarray. We saw the dropships come down. Given the number of craft, there can’t be more than a few platoons out there.”
“There have been sightings of mechs,” Colonel Sofia cautioned. “They’ll be more dangerous than their regulars.”
Gideon shrugged. “They can’t have that many mechs. We killed most of those abominations at the end of the war, only let the women and more docile men live. I should know; I had to deal with a lot of that mess.”
Sofia’s jaw tensed, but she nodded. “Yes, sir. I’ll pass the orders along.”
“Make sure to tell Colonel Lucas at the spaceport to redistribute his troops so it doesn’t appear as though he’s sent a company to reinforce us here.”
“Of course, sir,” Sofia gave a sharp nod.
Gideon suspected she’d already been planning to tell Lucas that. Colonel Lucas often needed additional instruction. Damn political appointees. Think they’re officers just because their parents bought them their commissions.
“What about the reserves north of the city?” General Decoteau asked. “I could bring them in to strengthen our position here.”
Gideon half turned to the general. The man typically preferred to operate on the offense than defense, but Admiral Gideon remembered the look of worry in Decoteau’s eyes when the Marauder ships had shed the fleet’s beams as though they were pleasant rays of sunshine.
It was entirely possible Gideon’s own face had displayed a similar worry.
“Very well, General, call them in.”
GROUND POUNDERS
STELLAR DATE: 10.12.8949 (Adjusted Years)
LOCATION: 1km South of Bridge Street, 48th Ave, Memphis, Kansas
REGION: Blue Ridge System, Old Genevia, Nietzschean Empire
“Crunch!” Chase hollered over his shoulder once he got off the line with Rika. “You can drive a B’muth, right?”
Crunch was sitting on a bench outside a restaurant bearing the name, ‘The Green Pickle’. His features were hidden behind his helmet, but Chase imagined that the mech
was probably a bit green, himself.
An enemy artillery round had come in almost right on top of Crunch. He’d been hunkered down with Kelly, going over positions for her fireteam, when it hit. He’d shielded Kelly and took the brunt of the explosion himself.
“You know,” Crunch replied, his voice strained. “This is what we get for having more bio-parts. If I didn’t have this stupid-assed half-leg, I’d be able to swap on a new one and get going. Now I have all this muscle and bone nonsense down there…which fucken hurts!”
“Can you lean to the left a bit, Sarge?” Private Harris asked from behind Crunch. “And steady your breathing. You’re the perfect rifle mount.”
Crunch half-turned, though with his helmet’s three-sixty vision, he had no need to. “You fire that thing next to my head, Private, and I’ll shove it so far up your ass you’ll talk through its barrel.”
Harris only laughed and repositioned next to a nearby groundcar, taking aim down the street.
“You never answered the question,” Chase said, moving next to Crunch as Harris fired his PR-99 railgun at a group of Niets advancing down the street.
“I love this shit!” Harris cried out as he fired. It wasn’t the first praise the private had lavished on the ISF-designed railgun. If the day progressed as it had been, it wouldn’t be the last, either.
The weapon allowed the operator to dial in the desired speed of the projectile, with settings from five hundred meters per second, clear up to ten kilometers per second. It fired a variety of different pellet sizes; anything from a one-gram ball, up to a ten-gram slug. Several of the options fired the pellets as a single mass that broke apart in flight, spreading out into rail-driven grapeshot.
By the sound of the discharge, Chase could tell that Harris was letting fly with three-gram pellets moving at close to the max speed. That setting meant the private was firing at armor.
A pellet moving at that speed would punch right through a soft target—which included even moderately armored humans—with less damage than a conventional bullet. But fire it at a more heavily armored target, and it would punch through, super-heating the armor and causing significant destruction within whatever it hit.
Crunch had been watching Harris as well, and called out to the private, “Shit, Harris, you shoot like my mom! Put it where the thing’s barrel meets the body.”
“He was close,” Chase chuckled. “And it is a kilometer downfield…behind a defensive barrier.”
“No excuse,” Crunch grunted. “And to answer your earlier question, yeah, I can drive a B’muth with just one leg. ISF upgraded ‘em all to use neural hookups.”
Chase nodded in satisfaction, doing his best not to flinch when an enemy round ricocheted off the concrete walkway nearby. “Good, one’s going to drop on the next street. I’ll help you hobble on over there.”
“Corporal Ben!” Crunch called out as Chase helped him rise. “Make sure to keep an eye on Harris. I think he gets the ends of his PR-99 mixed up.”
Ben only laughed in response, and Chase turned away from the fireteam to lead Crunch between the buildings.
“We’re T-minus ten on the ‘muths coming down,” he told his injured teammate.
“Saw that,” Crunch replied with a brief nod, wincing as he hopped along at Chase’s side. “Glad they brought them down to such a convenient location.”
“I could get you a little cart,” Chase offered with a laugh.
“Is it insubordination if I tell my CO to fuck off?” Crunch grunted.
Chase could tell that Crunch was in a lot more pain than he was letting on, and he glanced down at the man’s wound.
“Damn, a bit of the biofoam came off. Hold up, let me reapply.”
Crunch nodded silently, and Chase applied the biofoam as gently as he could.
the AI affirmed.
“Sergeant,” Chase said as the pair got underway once more, coming around the back of the Green Pickle restaurant. “You’re using the pain suppressors, right?”
Crunch made a noncommittal grunt, and then gave a half-shrug. “They make me feel weird, like my senses are covered in a layer of foam.”
“Is that somehow worse than agony?” Chase asked.
The sergeant didn’t reply for a few moments. “Well, no…but Rika got her limbs cut off without any numbing.”
“Yeah,” Chase snorted. “And then she passed out. I need you functional, not slumped over unconscious, driving the B’muth through a row of houses.”
Crunch drew a breath like he was going to mount a defense against Chase’s logic, but then he slumped his shoulders and nodded. “OK.”
A moment later he seemed to straighten, and Chase resisted the urge to needle the mech about his obstinance.
The pair progressed the rest of the way down the alley, and came out onto the next block, which was named Burger Street—an oddity amongst the north-south numbered streets. Chase didn’t see a single burger restaurant, so he assumed it was named for something other than food. Though that didn’t stop him from feeling more than a little hungry at the thought of how good a double cheeseburger would taste right then.
They advanced toward the forward position held by Mitch’s fireteam, and then Chase helped Crunch settle onto another bench.
“Need Bondo to get us some sort of field crutches, or something,” Crunch muttered.
“Not a terrible idea,” Chase said with a nod, and then jerked to the side as a round ricocheted off his armor.
He spun to see a group of Niets attacking from the storefronts across the street.
Return fire came from his left, and he grunted in satisfaction to see that Crunch had slid off the bench and was lying prone on the sidewalk, shooting at the enemies with unerring accuracy.
His moment of appreciation over, Chase dashed to the right, taking cover behind a car on the side of the road. Once in some modicum of cover, he slid his chaingun off his back and hooked it onto his right hip mount.
Crunch’s armor was deflecting what incoming weapons fire managed to strike him, but Chase knew that wouldn’t last. His chaingun spun up, and he eased around the car, spraying a hail of armor-piercing rounds at the storefront the Niets were set up in.
He could see figures dashing back into the store, as the enemy retreated from his barrage, but the attack didn’t flag; a second wave of Niets appeared on the rooftops of three separate buildings.
Before Chase could raise his chaingun to respond to the new threat, sections of the balustrade running along the rooftops exploded. He turned to see Corporal Mitch advancing down the street with Private Lauren, both firing sabot DPU rounds at the tops of the buildings.
The pair of mechs were right at the edge of the minimum effective range—which was also the point where the uranium rods would hit with the most force.
Chase couldn’t tell if they’d hit any of the Niets or just forced them back, but within seconds, there was no cover to be had at the roof’s edge, and the enemy fire let up.
The miniature missiles streaked across the street and into the storefront. Each contained a plasma wave generator that sprayed molten star-stuff across a ten-meter radius. It was a brutal weapon, but they were facing a brutal enemy.
The two bursts were followed by screams, and the sounds of people flailing.
The SMI-4 released a pair of drones to get a bird’s-eye view before she leapt onto the closest building, her GNR firing an electron beam as she sailed through the air.
> Chase walked back around the car, and offered Crunch a hand, pulling him back onto the bench. “Not sure why you can’t just sit like a normal person.”
“Just want you to wait on me hand and foot,” Crunch replied, before gesturing over Chase’s shoulder with his chin. “Looks like the ferryman is bringing us our presents.”
MEMPHIS SPACE AND AIR
STELLAR DATE: 10.12.8949 (Adjusted Years)
LOCATION: Hornton Space and Airport, Memphis, Kansas
REGION: Blue Ridge System, Old Genevia, Nietzschean Empire
Jenisa groaned.
The SMI-4 highlighted her target on the combat net, and Alison gave a nod of approval.
Alison rolled her eyes, and wished Jenisa could see it. She’d have to find the private after the engagement and give her an eyeroll in person for good measure.