by M. D. Cooper
The closest attacker was twenty meters away, and Rika rushed toward him brandishing the arms she still held, as the assailant fired before ducking behind a crate for cover.
It didn’t help.
Rika slammed into the crate at full speed and pushed it back against another stack, crushing the man in between. She strode around to see him struggling to get up, his right arm hanging limp at his side.
Wordlessly, she swung one of the severed arms, striking him in the head, before grabbing him by the throat with her foot and tearing him free from the crates. At the apex of her swing, she let go, and he flew headfirst into a nearby support pole.
She wasn’t certain if he died before or after he hit the pole, but as his twitching body landed on the floor, she knew it didn’t matter.
Gunfire sounded from Barne’s position, and responses came from two locations.
Rika selected her next target—the sentry entering through the south door—and ran toward her. The woman didn’t fare any better than the rest had.
Rika circled around the enemies in the warehouse, getting behind the one furthest from Barne, who was trying to move into a flanking position.
She smashed the farthest sentry’s head. Barne opened fire once more, and then stopped and called out that he was clear.
Rika returned to Barne’s position. “You got two?” she asked.
“Yeah,” Barne said with a nod, as he dropped the rifle and walked over to one of their supply crates.
“So Cheri sent them, did she?” Rika asked.
“Yup,” Barne said with a grunt, and pulled out a tank of light brown liquid. “Bring all the bodies over here; we have to clean up.”
“’Clean up’?” Rika asked.
“Yeah, we have to get out of here, and we can’t leave it like this.”
She grabbed two of the closest bodies and carried them back to where Barne had pulled all the equipment out of a case and was pouring the liquid into it.
“Nope, the crates on the far side of this warehouse are fireworks. We’ll just set something up so it looks like a spark from a truck started it, and then we’ll watch, well, the fireworks.”
“What are fireworks?” Rika asked, walking away once more.
Rika gathered all the bodies and then walked to the east side of the warehouse where she had spotted a cleaning closet. Inside, there was a hose and some cleaning supplies. Rika spent the next twenty minutes getting the bits of bone, blood, and hair out of her armor.
Rika sighed. Have a nice stroll through the city, enjoy a latte and a walk through the woods…check. Kill a bunch of people, dissolve their bodies, and steal a truck…double check.
She grabbed a hack unit from the staging area before walking outside, and carefully surveyed their surroundings. By some miracle, the commotion within the warehouse didn’t appear to have drawn any attention. Rika didn’t see another person as she retrieved her robe and pulled it on, wrapping the shawl around her head once more.
The cluster of warehouses had no shortage of trucks, though most were too big for their needs. Something with a box only eight meters long was preferable.
Rika was walking around the fourth building when she spotted the perfect candidate: a white box truck with no markings on it whatsoever. She pulled the lock off the back and lifted the rear roller door. A bench ran along each side of the interior, and duffels filled the space in between.
Rika walked around the truck and opened the driver’s door. She pulled out the hack unit and then slapped it on the truck’s control panel. The Marauders’ tech was good. Thirty seconds later, the truck started, and Rika climbed in and drove the truck to their warehouse’s loading docks.
It occurred to Rika, as she pulled the truck up to the building, that this was the first time she’d ever driven anything with wheels.
It was strange to feel it bounce and jostle over the uneven pavement, but it also gave her a sense of power. It took her two tries to back it up to the dock, and then just fifteen minutes to load all of Basilisk’s gear.
“You’re pretty damn fast at that,” Barne said as she approached where he was carefully pushing the last body into his makeshift vat of acid.
“I have a lot of experience,” Rika replied. “Why do you use acid for that? Can’t you get nano to do it better?”
Barne nodded. “Yeah, but it’s hard enough getting what we need planetside for missions like this—like your rifle’s rounds. Acid, we can source locally and make out of stuff that no one will wonder about.”
Rika nodded silently, watching one of the attacker’s faces dissolve. She knew that she should feel something—be sad, angry, something.
Mostly she just felt disappointed. Disappointed that she had killed so viciously, disappointed that her perfect day had ended like this.
She had noticed, however, that Barne hadn’t said a single insulting thing to her since the fight. It seemed like he couldn’t decide to be wary of her, or grateful that she had saved him.
“Can you help me with this?” he asked as he closed the case. “There’s a drain over where you cleaned off. We can pour this down, and rinse it out.”
“Sure,” Rika said, and lifted the case, carrying it over to where Barne had directed.
“I gotta ask,” Barne said from behind her. “Why did you save me? I didn’t order you to.”
Rika set the case down next to the drain and shrugged. “I don’t know…it never occurred to me to do anything but help you. I know you don’t really want me here, but I’m on the team.” She gave him a slight smile. “Even if it’s like how your rifle’s on the team.”
Barne’s face reddened as he opened the crate and carefully drained its contents.
“I’m sorry about that. I can be a bit of an ass sometimes.”
“A bit?” Rika asked with an arched eyebrow.
Barne laughed, “OK, a lot. And probably more often than ‘sometimes’.”
“How bad do you think they’re hurt?” Rika asked, changing the subject. No point in making Barne feel like she was going to forgive him just yet.
Barne grabbed the hose and began spraying out the case. “Hopefully not too bad. Jerry’s sweet on Leslie, and if Cheri’s worth her salt, she probably picked up on it. A few good bruises and cuts on Leslie, and Jerry probably spilled it.”
“Shit, I thought he’d let her take a bit more punishment before he ratted us out.”
It was Barne’s turn to give her a raised brow. “He wanted to make sure they hit me here before you came back. That way you would have the element of surprise, not them. He knew I could take whatever that woman had to dish out.”
“So you don’t think he ratted us out?”
“No,” Barne replied. “He wanted us to live so we could come save them. Which is why I’m so glad you decided not to make a run for it. Looks like his trust in you wasn’t misplaced.”
“I guess I have a trustworthy face,” Rika said with a smile.
“Or something. Just don’t shriek again, like you did when you tore that woman’s arms off. Scared the shit out of me.”
Rika laughed and clapped Barne on the shoulder. “Good, I think you could use a little less shit in you.”
THE ROMANY
STELLAR DATE: 12.16.8948 (Adjusted Years)
LOCATION: Enlisted Commissary, MSS Romany
REGION: Interstellar Space, near the Praesepe Cluster
Chase settled into his seat in the Romany’s commissary and eyed what the cooks were trying to trick him into eating. It looked like steak and eggs, but he doubted that the Marauder ship had enough steak to feed their entire crew such a meal.
“Wondering what the mystery is with the meat?” a voice said from across the table, and Chase looked up to see Ralph—one of the squad sergeants from Chase’s new platoon—settle into the seat across from him.
“Aren’t you?” Chase asked.
“Nah, we’re just out of port; it’ll be the real thing. Once we’re a week in, then you can start to worry about what the protein really came from.”
Chase stabbed a fork into one of the steak tips and gave it a tentative bite. “Damn! This is real meat…or such a good fake that I don’t care.”
“Oh, you’ll know when they start faking it,” Sergeant Casey said as she sat next to Ralph. “We’ve got good cooks, but they’re not that good.”
Chase took another bite and shook his head. He’d never expected to be sitting on a warship, talking about how shitty—or how good, in this case—the chow was with his ‘toon-mates again, but here he was.
For a woman, he thought to himself.
But he knew that was oversimplifying things. Rika wasn’t just any woman; she was the woman. He was going to find her, and then…and then they’d figure something out.
“What do you know about where we jumped to?” Chase asked.
Ralph shrugged, but Casey gave a conspiratorial smile. “Command’s not talking, but I can recognize the stars out there, easy. We’re still in the Praesepe Cluster.”
“That’s not saying much,” Chase replied.
“Well, what if I said that we’re on the rimward edge of the cluster…and that we jumped very close to a system?”
“Still not following,” Chase said with a shake of his head, but Ralph exclaimed, “Thebes!”
“Got it in one!” Casey grinned at Ralph. “Thebes is key. Powerful, small; some might say it’s ripe.”
“We’re attacking a sovereign nation?” Chase asked, his eyes wide. From what he knew of mercenary outfits, they disrupted trade routes, harassed settlements, or operated as hired security. But he had never really thought about them being part of an invasion force.
He wasn’t sure that it sat well with him. Still, he supposed it was better than oppressing civilians on some backwater world. An invasion force would at least be fighting a military.
“What’s wrong, Chase?” Ralph asked. “You look like you just ate something that didn’t agree with you.”
“Just thinking about what the action might involve.”
Casey shrugged. “Hard to say. For all intents and purposes, the Marauders are pretty new—even though we have a large force. The Old Man has been selective in what jobs he’s taken, but it’s usually stuff that will piss off the Niets in some way or another.”
“Plus a few jobs for the Septhians here and there,” Ralph added.
“Yeah,” Chase said with a nod. “They covered some of that in orientation. “But they didn’t say anything about taking on something like the Theban Alliance. I kinda thought we’d be going after bad guys.”
Casey shook her head. “Seriously, Chase. You were in the Genevian Armed Forces. Can you really say that there were ‘bad guys’ in that last war? Sure, the Nietzscheans were—and are—raging assholes, but our government wasn’t exactly sunshine and roses, either.”
Chase didn’t reply—his thoughts were on Rika and what his own government had done to her. She had never told him any stories from the war, but he knew what the mechs were made to do. Any mech that made it to the end of the war had a lot of blood on their souls.
“Not to mention that our fleet admirals were built from buckets full of stupid,” Ralph added.
“I’m curious,” Chase said, pulling his thoughts away from what Rika might be doing at that moment. “How did the Old Man get so many ships, anyway? He wasn’t in Fleet Command. He was ground assault, right?”
“Right-o,” Ralph said. “I was in his division back in the war. We kicked a lot of Nietzschean ass, but we kept losing because we had no space-support. Slowly, as dumbass fleet commanders got blown into space-dust, the General drew more and more ships under his direct control. Even though he wasn’t fleet command, he was the senior officer after a lot of losses.
“He was good; could do more with twenty ships than some admirals could manage with a thousand. So, the top brass let him keep them. Gotta say, it was nice knowing that if you needed to call down starfire, it would hit.”
“There were a lot more than twenty ships outside when we jumped here,” Chase said.
“A lot of people didn’t just lay down arms when the government surrendered,” Casey said. “Some joined the Marauders. Plus, there are two other outfits I know of that are made up of Genevian ships and soldiers.”
“I heard a lot went pirate, too,” Chase said. “Mind you, I was inside the Nietzschean Empire. They’re not subtle with the propaganda, and I didn’t buy most of it, but I still didn’t expect so much organization. I just figured that most defectors were solo operations, hitting soft targets for supplies and credit.”
Ralph nodded. “Yeah, there are a lot of solo ships out there; people who think that they can make a difference on their own. Every few months, a handful come to the Marauders with their tails between their legs. Old Man takes ‘em in, but he breaks their crews up to integrate them. At the beginning, a few took advantage of his refit and resupply and then took off again.”
“Bastards,” Chase said. “I may be new here, but I can appreciate what the Old Man is building. Maybe if he’d been in charge of the Genevian Space Force, we’d still have a nation.”
Ralph raised his glass of milk. “I’ll drink to that. Maybe someday we’ll kick the shit out of the Niets and get it back, too.”
The three touched their plastic cups, though Casey shook her head. “I don’t want Genevia back, but if the Old Man were to set up a little corner of space under himself, I would settle down there.”
“So,” Ralph said after he downed his milk. “What is it that got you to enlist? Got tired of living in Niet-land?”
“You could say that,” Chase said. “I wasn’t like you two; when the orders came down to surrender, we just had our asses handed to us. The ship’s captain turned off the shields, and allowed us to be boarded. I was pissed—more than pissed. I’d just watched half my platoon die, and he was just giving up. Some of the crew fought when the Niets boarded us; I would have, if I could have gotten to a weapon in time….”
“Heard a lot of stories like that,” Casey said. “What happened?”
“They tossed the whole lot of us onto Mortlach. Took me half a year to get off that shithole.”
“Damn! You got off Mortlach?” Ralph asked, his eyes wide. “Half our freaking people are still down there.”
“Yeah, how’d you swing that?” Casey asked.
Chase shrugged. He knew, but he wasn’t ready to share it yet, so he related his customary story.
“They were letting people off for a while. Since I didn’t fight the boarding, I was on the ‘good’ list. I’ll be honest…it made me sick to leave. So many left behind.”
Ralph and Casey nodded in agreement.
“Maybe someday…” Ralph said again.
Casey snorted. “Don’t get your hopes up, Ralph. It would take the overthrow of the Nietzschean Empire to get our people off Mortlach.”
“A guy can dream, can’t he?” Ralph asked.
From the faraway look in his eyes, Chase wondered if there was someone down on Mortlach that Ralph was holding onto hope for. Not that there was much hope to be had, with a place like that.
“So, Chase…nice little bit of evasion there, but you were dicking around out there for years. Coulda joined the Marauders long ago. Why now?”
Chase figured it would slip out some time. “Looking for someone.”
“Oh, yeah?” Ralph’s eyes lit up, and the eagerness in his voice solidified Chase’s earlier suspicion. “Who’s the lucky girl?”
“What makes you think it’s a girl…or even romantic?” Chase asked, not entirely comfortable discussing his search for Rika with people he had just met a day prior.
Casey chuckled. “It's a girl because you’ve glanced at a couple of the prettier Marauders to pass us by, and may have let your eyes linger on my tits; though I’ll give you a pass since I spilled gravy on them when you did it—”
“You got nice tits,” Ralph interjected with a grin. “I glance at ‘em all the time.”
“Yeah, Ralph, you have the subtlety of a supernova; I kinda notice. Plus, I have to keep a napkin handy for the drool.”
Ralph took on a wounded look while Casey leveled a stare at Chase.
“It’s good to know your teammate’s motivations. Helps them bond,” Casey said. “OK, we know it’s a girl, and suspect your interest is romantic. Where is this girl, that you’d join up with the Marauders to find her?”
As Casey spoke, a look of understanding dawned on Ralph. “Casey! Chase’s girl is in the Marauders!”
Casey snapped her fingers. “By the Old Man’s wrinkly ass, I think you’re right! Look at Chase, red as a tomato!”
“Don’t talk about tomatoes,” Ralph said with a shudder. “I fought on Boston where they have those freakish tomato forests. Fucking juice off the stems could peel the camo layer off your armor. And house-sized tomatoes? Are you fucking kidding me? Some things just can’t be unseen.”
