by M. D. Cooper
Captain Rika glanced at Lieutenant Heather, who sat at the Fury Lance’s weapons console. “Didn’t hurt them too much, did you, Smalls?”
Heather shook her head in amazement. “No…our weapons didn’t do a thing to their ships. I can’t even detect their shields. It’s like they don’t have any.”
“Didn’t you ever hear about the Battle of Five Fleets at Bollam’s World?” Barne asked from where he leaned against the scan station.
Heather frowned at the first sergeant. “I don’t think that’s a real place, Top.”
Barne snorted. “You wouldn’t, Smalls.”
“Whoa!” Rika stopped them short. “Barne. How come Smalls gets to call you ‘Top’, but I don’t?”
Barne shrugged. “Dunno. Guess I like her more.”
Rika wagged a finger at him. “Don’t make me tell people about that time at Cheri’s villa.”
“Oh?” Heather asked.
“Captain…” Barne rumbled.
Heather turned to Rika. “Is it juicy?”
“Not particularly, but it bugs Barne for some reason, so it’s useful leverage.”
“Can we focus on the mission?” Barne asked.
Heather rose from her station and stretched. “What’s to focus on? Biggest thing we have to worry about right now is avoiding the thousands of ships that are fleeing the system.”
“For the time being,” Barne replied.
“Well, we sent the message to Nietzschean Command telling them that Iapetus is secured and that we came to render assistance. Commander Kiers’ codes turned out to be useful once again. We’ll see what the Niets order us to do. At the least, they’re going to want to have access to our close-range scan logs to see if we learned anything about that massive ship.”
“Did you see some of those ship registries, though?” Heather asked. “I’ve never heard of the ISF or the Transcend. I mean, everyone knows of Scipio, and I’ve seen Silstrand on charts. Thing is, they’re a year’s travel from here. How does some weird-assed fleet with registries from all over show up right now?”
Barne laughed. “Not only that, but at Albany. Is this place some sort of crazy lightning rod?”
“Beats me,” Rika shrugged.
No one spoke for a minute, then Heather shook her head at the holotank and let out a long sigh. “One thing’s for sure. Those are a lot of ships out there. I’ve never seen so many.”
“I have,” Barne grunted. “Early in the war, some of the fleet engagements were this big. As many as a hundred thousand—counting both sides. That was back when both we and the Niets thought we could blitzkrieg our way past the other.”
Rika rose from her chair and paced across the bridge, tracing her fingertips along one of the bent consoles. “Well, no blitzkrieging, here. Just get in, nab the General and Admiral, and get out.”
“So long as our orders from Niet command allow for that,” Barne replied.
“Just has to be something that gets us close enough to land dropships,” Chase said as he entered the bridge. “Can you believe we’re going to pound dirt on Pyra again? Jersey City, of all places.”
Rika turned to Chase and leant against the back of her chair. “Not everyone is going down. It’s going to be a small strike team,” Rika said, looking from face to face. “SMI-2s only. We need to move fast and hit hard. Get in, grab them, get out.”
“Well, I’m flying your ship down there,” Chase said.
“You better than Ferris, or Mad Dog?” Heather asked skeptically.
Chase flexed his prosthetic arm. It wasn’t smooth and natural-looking like Barne’s, but the limb of an RR-3. “I’ve got some advantages.”
“I’ll think on it,” Rika replied. “I doubt anyone’s going to be sitting idle. I think we should consider some diversions, as well—but not ones that paint too big a target on anyone’s back.”
“What do you have in mind?” Barne asked.
“Well, we’re going to need supplies, right?”
“Yeah,” Barne grunted. “Would be standard for us to fuel up with a battle looming—fleet that large, they’ve jumped in supply ships for sure.”
“I wonder if maybe we can make one of those go boom,” Rika mused.
“Stars,” Heather muttered. “I can’t detect their ship, and it’s inside our freakin’ landing bay. I wonder if that motley fleet is a lot larger than we saw?”
“That would be nice,” Rika said as she straightened and walked past Chase, kissing him on the cheek.
“Rika,” Chase called back as she left.
“What?”
“You’re supposed to say who has the conn after you leave.”
Rika laughed. “I’ll never get the hang of all this crap. Uhhh, Lieutenant Heather, you have the conn.”
“Aye, Captain. I have the conn,” Heather said as she rose from her console and tool the command chair. “Sergeant Chase. You think you’re so good at flying, take the helm station.”
Chase shot Rika a dirty look, then laughed as he sat at the helm. “I’m gonna do loop-de-loops, Heather—show you what this bird can really do.”
“Sergeant! You crazy idiot!”
Rika walked off the bridge, smiling to herself. She wondered about that. Here they were, flying toward one of the biggest Niet fleets they’d ever seen, with just five ships.
We’re all certifiably crazy.
But then again, she was a mech, and those were Niets out there. What was her life about, if not killing them at every available opportunity?
Niki replied.
“I thought you couldn’t read my mind.” Rika frowned.
“Oh,” Rika laughed. “I guess there’s that.”
“Don’t worry, Niki-mine, there are a lot of Niets to kill. I plan to survive this so I can keep on wiping them out.”
“Liar.”
Niki didn’t reply, and Rika’s mind began to wander as she traversed the passageways to the barracks decks.
Niki sent an affirmative feeling.
Rika nodded, she had suspected as much.
Rika laughed. That was one way to look at it.
A moment later, she rounded a corner and saw a white woman walking beside Leslie, a column of soldiers behind them.
The woman was quite the sight. Surrounded by the grey corridor—not to mention contrasted against Leslie and her jet-black skin—the white woman all but gleamed.
Upon closer inspection, it was apparent that the woman was not wearing any clothing, and th
at her ‘skin’ was a thick, semi-flexible polymer of sorts.
Her long, black hair reminded Rika of braids, but as the mysterious woman drew near, Rika realized that her hair consisted of thick, black cords that seemed to move of their own accord. Almost as though they were drifting through water rather than air.
Despite all that, it was the woman’s completely black eyes that were most striking. They reflected no light, and, set against the pure-white skin, they looked like holes which had been bored through the woman’s face and into space beyond.
She was speaking with Leslie, gesturing emphatically as she strode down the corridor. A moment later, her gaze turned to Rika, and a warm smile graced her lips—though it was difficult to make out her expression.
“Captain Rika,” the woman extended her hand, showing no hesitation to shake Rika’s left, nor at the robotic, three-fingered hand that reached out to clasp hers. “I’m Priscilla.”
Rika noted the lack of title, military or otherwise. Neither was there any insignia on her…skin.
“Hello, very nice to meet you, Priscilla.”
Priscilla turned and gestured at the soldier at the head of the column. “This is Colonel Smith, he’ll be joining our ground team with his Marines.”
Rika extended her hand and shook the colonel’s, noting that he too did not seem at all perturbed by her mechanized body—that’s not to say that he didn’t look her over. But it was not in disdain or sexual interest. Instead, she got the distinct impression that he was evaluating her combat effectiveness.
She found herself doing the same. The colonel appeared to be completely organic, as did the group of men and women behind him. Even stranger, they wore no armor, and the packs they carried were not large enough to contain any meaningful protection.
Their bodies were covered in tight-fitting matte grey outfits, even their hands and feet. They bore insignia on their chests and ranks on their collars—which meant that these were uniforms of some sort.
“Very nice to meet you, Colonel. But I’m not sure unarmored humans are the right things to drop on the battlefield. We need strength, speed, and stealth, something my mechs excel at.”
“I imagine you do,” the colonel said with a nod. “I understand there are less than four hundred of you, yet you captured all these ships intact. Very impressive.”
“Thank you, colonel, surely you—”
The colonel held up a hand. “Captain Rika, we will be going groundside. Don’t let the packaging fool you.”
A moment later, the colonel’s body turned invisible. Not a simple light-bending that was visible at the edges; from the neck down, the colonel was gone. There was no IR signature, and Rika’s EM wave mapping showed signals passing directly through the space where his body was. She half wondered if she could reach out and put her hand right though him.
“Shit,” was all she managed to say, while Leslie nodded emphatically.
“This is what we call ‘flow armor’, Captain. Perhaps not quite as tough as what you’re made of, but sufficient to carry out the task. And we may look fragile, but you just might contain more organics than we do.”
The colonel shifted back into visibility, but now he was holding two pistols. She hadn’t seen his pack move at all, and there were no holsters on his body.
“How—?” Leslie gaped.
Colonel Smith twirled the sidearms and then slid them into his thighs. Thighs which had the IR profile of an organic human.
“As you can see, we’re not what the enemy will expect. We’re an asset you can ill-afford to ignore.”
“Ignore?” Leslie asked. “If I didn’t think you would just disappear, I’d jump you and steal that stuff you’re wearing.”
Colonel Smith turned and nodded to a sergeant behind him. The sergeant swung his pack around and pulled out a canister. He checked it over, and then tossed it to Leslie.
“Figured you might have some non-mechs that want to come along. We brought a dozen of these.”
“How do I use it?” Leslie asked, turning the canister over.
“Get naked, touch it to your chest, put your finger on the trigger plate, and hold it for a second.”
“And then it just flows over me?” Leslie asked, staring incredulously at the canister in her hands. “I mean…you said it was flow armor, right? Do I have to wear a helmet still?”
Colonel Smith shook his head. “Flow armor doesn’t have any ablative properties, so you may want to wear a helmet, but you don’t have to.”
As the man spoke, the matte grey covering flowed up over his head, somehow encompassing his hair without getting tangled or stuck in it. Then it flowed back down.
“See?” he asked.
“I’ve been standing for the last sixty-two days,” Priscilla interrupted. “Are we going to find some place to sit down and talk?”
“Uh, sorry. Of course.” Rika nodded and gestured for the group to follow her.
The entrance to the barracks wasn’t far, and they reached it in under a minute. It consisted of a common area, a small galley, and shared sleeping halls.
“Will this do?” Rika asked.
“Very nicely,” Colonel Smith replied. “Though I suspect her majesty, here, won’t want to sleep with us plebes.”
Priscilla swatted the colonel on the arm. “I’ll sleep wherever. But I am starved. Haven’t eaten in weeks.”
“You don’t sit, you don’t eat…what do you do, over on your ship?” Rika asked.
Priscilla smiled again, the expression no less strange than it had been the last time. “I’m one of the ship’s avatars.”
“You’re a what?” Leslie frowned.
“We’ll, not the ship, exactly. The ship’s AI. Bob is very complex, and his human avatars help him interface with people better.”
“Thought you had an AI,” Priscilla winked at Rika—again, a bit creepy. “Though she’s not neurally interfaced like normal. Curious.”
Rika imagined that if Niki had a body, she’d be jumping up and down.
“Easy, Niki. When we’re done kicking the Niets’ asses, we can all meet Bob.”
“Absolutely,” Priscilla replied. “However, before we get to the ass kicking, anyone going on this mission is going to need some upgrades.”
Rika’s eyes narrowed, and Leslie asked. “What kind of upgrades?”
Priscilla looked Leslie up and down. “Well, if you really want to use that flow armor, you’re going to need better nano, for starters.”
Leslie held out an arm, a huge grin plastered on her face. “Hit me, do whatever you have to do.”
Rika snorted. “You’re like a stealth junkie, Leslie.”
“Hey, I can’t take a rail shot and keep on keeping on like you can,” Leslie replied. “Not being seen at all is my jam.”
* * * * *
Rika sat in the small officer’s lounge near the bridge and watched as Leslie appeared and disappeared in different parts of the room.
She’d be standing on the deck, covered from head to toe in her new flow armor, tail and all, then she’d disappear, only to reappear a moment later on a counter, or on the far side of the room. Once, she was hanging from the overhead.
If it hadn’t been for the constant giggling, she would have been completely undetectable.
“I wonder why Priscilla is here,” Rika said after a few minutes.
Leslie reappeared, kneeling on the table right in front of Rika, about to grab her beer. She sat back and stroked her chin as her tail flicked back and forth behind her.
Rika had noticed that while initially Leslie had always been very conscious of her tail, it now seemed to have a mind of its own, and was an interesting indicator of the lieutenant’s mood.
“I mean…what skill set does a human avatar have? Which is really weird, by the way. Does she even have her own mind, or is she somehow inhabited by this ‘Bob’ AI?”
When Niki didn’t speak further, Leslie shrugged. “She must have some sort of special power or ability. Colonel Smith did say she has extensive combat training, and her skin is a very effective armor. Think she just moonlights as a spec-ops person sometimes?” Leslie’s armor flowed away from her face, and she grabbed Rika’s beer, downing half before sliding back off the table.
“Leslie! That one’s yours now. Go get me another.”
Leslie licked her lips and walked to the counter. “Say what you want about the Niets, but they make a mean brew. Maybe when we destroy their empire, we can keep their brewmasters.”
“I’ll take it under advisement,” Rika replied.
Leslie brought Rika a fresh glass of beer and then took another sip of the one she’d stolen.
“With these enhanced senses Priscilla’s nano gave me, I can taste notes in this I could never pick up before. And I can see in the dark; not just a little dark, pitch black. I can see UV, IR, pick up shadows on backscatter radiation. It’s like my eyes are the best tactical helmet ever.”
Rika nodded. “Yeah, I’m with you there. Carson was nearly beside himself when he saw what her nano can do. Bet he’s glad now that he transferred over from the Golden Lark, back when we were boosting out of Iapetus.”
“I guess that explains why everyone in the galaxy wants to get their hands on that ship,” Leslie replied. “And just think, this is the tech they were willing to share freely. What else do you think they have?”
“Stars if I know,” Rika replied. “I bet if they had anything that could help with this op, they’d provide it, though.”
Leslie disappeared again, giggling once more. “What could be better than this?”
PYRA
STELLAR DATE: 08.26.8949 (Adjusted Years)
LOCATION: Edge of Jersey City, Pyra
REGION: Albany System, Thebes, Septhian Alliance
“Finally,” Tanis breathed as she peeked around the corner, her eyes settling on the Nietzschean staging ground.