by M. D. Cooper
RESITUATE
STELLAR DATE: 12.17.8948 (Adjusted Years)
LOCATION: Northern Berlin
REGION: Pyra, Albany System, Theban Alliance
It had taken the team five hours to return to Berlin, and then another three to get the truck and drive it to one of their fallback locations.
It was another warehouse, but this one was smaller and newer—and decidedly cleaner. Leslie laid Jerry down on a cot in a nearby storage room and walked out rubbing her eyes.
Barne was away, taking the car to another storage location. That left just the two women to finish setting up.
“Jerry gonna be OK?” Rika asked as she attempted another reroute to get her arm working.
“Yeah,” Leslie nodded. “I gave him a brainfix. The kit should deal with the swelling Cheri’s methods caused; that appears to be the worst of it. The kit didn’t report any neural damage—thank the stars.”
“What about you?” Leslie asked Rika as she approached. “You took some hits, there.”
Rika shrugged from where she sat on a crate. “I’ve seen a lot worse. Except for the gatling guns on those air-cavs, nothing out there was high enough caliber to really hurt me.”
Leslie gave Rika a smile. “Well, I guess we should unload the truck.”
Rika grinned and held up her left hand. “I’m going to need a hand. Literally.”
Leslie covered her mouth and laughed. “Oh, shit. I totally forgot—you can’t get your gun-arm off to put on a good arm, because your other arm is shot.”
At first Rika wasn’t sure if Leslie was making light of her plight, but she decided to believe that Leslie was just laughing at the irony of it, and chuckled. “Yeah, like I said; I literally need a hand.”
“Where is your other one?” Leslie asked.
“In the cab of the truck,” Rika replied. “Tools are in the back.”
“I’ll have to pull your armor off first, won’t I?” Leslie said as she examined Rika’s arm.
“Yeah, a bit tricky otherwise,” Rika replied.
Leslie met Rika’s eyes, her own showing a look of worry. “Do you mind if I get the rack, Rika?” she asked. “I don’t think I can manage this without it.”
Rika nodded. “No, I don’t mind. I’ll help you get it out…I can at least shove things around, if you need me to.”
Thirty minutes laterLeslie had the rack set up, and Rika stepped back, settling her armor’s hardpoints into the hooks.
Leslie slid a tool into Rika’s armpit and gave a twist, loosening the armor on the shoulder.
“Is that weird for you, Rika?” she asked as she slotted in another tool and opened up the armor around Rika’s bicep.
“What, having someone else take my armor off?” Rika asked. “Not really; happened a lot in the war, especially when I took damage.”
“Well, I was referring specifically to me slotting a tool up into your armpit…”
“Oh, that? No, not really. It does kinda tickle, though.”
Leslie looked up at Rika, their eyes meeting before Leslie snorted. “Rika, the unstoppable killing machine, is ticklish?”
Rika had begun to smile, but the expression faded. “Please don’t call me that.”
“Shit, sorry,” Leslie shook her head. “I spend too much time around these guys. Lovable bundles of testosterone that they are, they get me acting like everything is up for being a joke…”
“It’s OK,” Rika said. “Some mechs like being killing machines. I…I don’t really know what I like.”
“Well,” Leslie grunted as she unfastened the armor from Rika’s forearm, pulling it free where the damaged plate had wedged into her arm. “I can tell you this: you’re a sight to behold when you’re at it. The way you leapt from the building and landed on that air-cav? That was one of the most badass things I’ve ever seen. And I’ve seen a lot of badass shit in my day.”
Rika shook her head as Leslie pulled the last of her arm’s armor off. “Last night was nothing. Shoulda seen the time that my team and I took out a nuke-flinging K1R. That thing was a nightmare.”
“How big was the team?” Leslie asked absently as she looked over the damage in Rika’s arm.
“Three,” Rika replied. “Though just two of us were on the K1R. I pulled a move like the one with that air-cav.”
“Just two of you took out a K1R?” Leslie shook her head in wonder. “You sure you need the rest of us on this mission?”
“Well,” Rika said with a laugh. “Looks like I need a mechanic to keep me running.”
“That you do,” Leslie said. “Let me get your gun arm off, and give you your right hand back. I’m not sure what we should do about that left one. It’s beyond my skill to fix, and we don’t have a replacement.”
“Maybe we could find you a big hook. Arrrrr,” Barne said with a lopsided grin as he walked through a nearby door. “I bet that would scare the shit out of the enemy.”
“Give me a hook, and I’ll use it to give you those friendly punches on the arm,” Rika replied.
“Huh,” Barne said. “Maybe a pillow attachment would be better. Think of it; you could lay that pretty head of yours down whenever you wanted and take a nice snooze.”
Pretty?
Leslie snorted. “Shut up, Barne. Go make yourself useful and unload the truck.”
Barne shrugged and walked away. “I’ll take a look at that arm you got shot up when I’m done unpacking. I might be able to get it working again.”
As Leslie removed the armor on Rika’s right arm, she chatted with Rika about the Marauders—describing some of the missions they’d been on lately, and what it was like to work in a mercenary company after being in the Genevian Armed Forces.
“It’s a bit different, for sure,” she said. “Everyone keeps their military rank—for the most part, anyway—but the structure is weird. I mean, Jerry’s a lieutenant. LTs aren’t usually in charge of four-person fireteams.”
“How does it work when you do platoon or company-sized ops?” Rika asked.
“Well,” Leslie smiled. “We’re spec-ops, attached to Alpha Company in the second Battalion. There are forty battalions now in the Marauders—which the Old Man has split up into four regiments.”
“So, about twenty-five thousand soldiers altogether?”
“Closer to twenty-eight,” Leslie replied. “There are a lot of spec-op teams like ours that aren’t part of the regular structure. We report right to Alpha Company’s CO, Captain Ayer. She’s a good woman; sometimes a bit soft on the guys when they need a sterner hand, but I like her.”
“And who’s the Old Man?” Rika asked.
“Oh, I guess we never call him by name, do we?” Leslie said with a grunt as she twisted off Rika’s gun-arm and stumbled backward, nearly dropping it.
“Shit, this thing weighs a ton! How do you just wave your arm around like it’s nothing?”
Rika shrugged as much as she could, hanging on the rack. “Seems light to me. I do have to adjust my balance when it’s on, though. It’s why I preferred it on my right arm…felt more natural there.”
“Well,” Leslie groaned as she set the arm and the attached GNR-41C down on a crate. “You may have to adjust it back and get used to its weight on your left.”
Rika nodded. That was her expectation, as well—unless Barne could work a miracle with her left arm.
Leslie picked up Rika’s right arm and slid it into place, giving it the required twist.
“Right, the Old Man. He’s General Mill. Was in the Genevian army for almost seventy years. Hates the fact that the war is over; some of the Marauders think that he’s building us up to eventually strike out at the Nietzscheans.”
“That’s nuts!” Rika exclaimed. “Even with a million soldiers, he wouldn’t stand a chance. “He’d need a fleet, for starters.”
“Hey,
” Leslie raised her hands defensively. “I said some. Not all; certainly not me.” She slid the bolts into place and locked them down. “OK, you’re good to go. Hold on while I reattach your right arm’s armor.”
Rika waited silently while Leslie finished the work. “OK, Rika. Right as rain on the right, right?”
“Wow,” Rika laughed. “You’re a regular comedian, Leslie.”
Leslie grinned. “Yeah, I get that a lot.”
“No, you don’t,” Barne said as he walked past.
“Shut up, Barne,” Leslie said good-naturedly.
“How’s the LT, by the way?” Barne asked as he stopped beside the two women.
“I think he’ll be alright,” Leslie replied.
“I hope so. Tomorrow’s the big day.”
Rika held her left arm up for Barne to see. “I doubt you’ll be able to fix this. Looks like the control mechanism and one of the actuators are shot.”
Barne grunted. “Yeah, you’re right. I could probably source the parts, but it may arise suspicion—especially this close to the job.”
“S’OK,” Rika grinned. “I’ll just get to relax here and watch you do the heavy lifting for once.”
“Need me to swap out your left arm?” Leslie asked.
“That’d be nice. I don’t think I could flip the mount back around on the gun-arm with one hand.”
“Hey,” Leslie said with a smile. “What are friends for?”
Rika and Leslie continued to chat as they reset Rika’s gun-arm to mount on her left. They talked about the Marauders, Basilisk’s past missions, and what the future might hold.
It felt nice—like maybe Rika had finally found a place in the universe, after all.
REPORT
STELLAR DATE: 12.17.8948 (Adjusted Years)
LOCATION: MSS Foe Hammer
REGION: Interstellar Space, near the Praesepe Cluster
Commander Siemens was off duty. By the time David had passed his findings through the CIC’s Officer of the Watch, who wanted to crosscheck everything he and Aaron had uncovered—with a particular focus on the amount of unauthorized time spent on the task—before finally getting the Commander’s attention, several hours had passed.
Siemens had entered the CIC with a furrowed brow and tousled hair, but paid close attention as David laid out the information, and grew more rapt as the P-Cog went on. When David showed the simulation Aaron had constructed, her eyebrows shifted from hanging low over her eyes to nearly disappearing into her hairline.
“Holy shit, specialist! If this is true, we have to call off the whole op!” Siemens exclaimed.
“That’s the point I’ve been trying to make,” David said, casting a hard look at the OOTW.
“Come with me,” Commander Siemens said as she rose and left the CIC. “I’m calling Colonel Niels; the operation command team is assembled. When they see this….”
David followed Commander Siemens through the corridors surrounding the CIC, and then up a lift to the Foe Hammer’s mission management deck. The deck was a beehive of activity; people were rushing about, checking and crosschecking the status of drop ships and assault teams, and reviewing status updates from ground coordinators.
Siemens led David into a meeting room filled with officers being addressed by Colonel Niels.
“Sir!” Commander Siemens said as she rushed in. “I know you said to wait when I pinged you, but this can’t wait. We have critical intel on Phoenix.”
“What are you talking about?” Niels frowned. “We’re running the intel on this op. What does fleet CIC have that could be relevant?”
“My specialist here, a P-Cog, has ferreted out a Nietzschean connection to Phoenix.”
One of the officers sitting at the table, a major named Sarah, nearly spit out the water she was drinking. “Are you serious?”
“Unlikely,” another said.
“Please!” Commander Siemens raised her voice. “This is serious! We believe that General Mill’s contact in the Septhian government is actually a Nietzschean operative!”
“Show me what you have,” a calm voice said from behind David, and he turned to see the Old Man himself standing at the entrance to the room.
“Yes, sir!” David said. He took control of the room’s main holo projector, and nervously began to outline his findings. As he spoke, the General’s face grew more and more red. David started to wonder if he would find himself on the wrong side of an airlock before he was done, but Siemens nodded whenever he faltered, so David pressed on.
When he was done and Aaron’s simulation results were floating over the table, the General blew out a long breath.
“Laura,” he said. “What do you think?”
she said.
“Colonel Niels, Phoenix is shut down. Initiate Operation Ashes. We jump for Pyra in t-minus fifteen minutes.”
“Sir! Yes, sir!” Colonel Niels said, and a moment later every person in the room was pulling up new displays, and the halls outside exploded with increased activity.
General Mill placed a hand on David’s shoulder, and he was surprised to feel the Old Man’s grip shaking slightly.
“P-Cog Specialist David, you may have just saved the Praesepe Cluster from the Nietzscheans…and my folly.”
THE HIT
STELLAR DATE: 12.18.8948 (Adjusted Years)
LOCATION: National Forest, North of Presidential Palace, Berlin
REGION: Pyra, Albany System, Theban Alliance
Rika walked through the forest drawing in deep lungfuls of the moist, predawn air. Her robe—a new one, since her old one was somewhere in the valley below Cheri’s villa—rustled quietly around her as she enjoyed what she knew to be the last few minutes of peace she would experience for some time.
She held her coffee lightly in her right hand and took another sip. Using that hand with fine control was taking a little work, but Rika was more concerned with using her GNR on her left.
In yesterday’s combat, when her gun-arm had been in place, it had felt like her proper right hand. A gun—a multi-function weapons mount with a GNR-41C—felt more natural than a hand.
She took another sip of coffee, raising her third finger off the cup as she did. This appendage, with fingers and the ability to grip and hold, just felt strange. Maybe that had been one of the things that had bothered her so much after the war, and she hadn’t been able to name it—or to admit it to herself.
She took a final long drink of the coffee, tossed the cup toward a trash bin, missed, and picked it up to deposit it more carefully. Even if she found herself with a gun-arm on her right side more often than not, she still needed to work on her fine motor skills. There was no telling when she’d need them, now that she was in the Marauders.
I’m in the Marauders.
Rika still wasn’t certain what she thought of that. Basilisk was one thing. She had bonded deeply with the team over just a few short days—something that life-or-death situations seemed to facilitate. However, the Marauders were a different story. Somewhere within their structure were people who thought it was OK to buy and sell humans. Her, specifically, and that wasn’t the sort of group she wanted to call family.
Rika was nearing the large glen with the tree that she had scouted out three days prior, and she turned off onto a smaller path that eventually faded away but took her close to the tree. She crouched behind a bush and activated her robe’s camouflage systems and then crossed the final few meters to the tree, carefully scaling it.
Once in position, Rika stretched her left arm out and reached under her robe with her right, drawing out the GNR-41C that had been strapped to her back. She carefully wedged it between herself and the tree while pulling out the shroud that would cover it.
Rika slid a loop from the end of the shroud over the weapon’s barrel, and then grasped the weapon and brought it up to her mount.
It took two tries to get it on, and at one poi
nt she almost dropped it; then the GNR-41C slotted into place, and her HUD updated with its readings and loadout.
Rika nodded with satisfaction as she saw the five uranium sabot rounds show up on the weapons loadout.
For the first time in years, Rika was fully functional.
With the weapon in place, Rika pulled her helmet from a pouch under her robe and wrapped it in the shawl before carefully placing it on her head. This time Leslie had helped her prepare by pinning her hair up, and Barne hadn’t made any jokes about shaving her head.
The helmet registered a positive seal, and Rika pulled the cloak’s cowl up over her head.
It was time to wait.
She knew that somewhere nearby, Leslie and Jerry were getting ready to take their positions. Not too soon, though; their hiding spots were closer to the presidential palace and not as well hidden. The pair would take their positions at the last minute, ready to finish the job and give Rika covering fire if she needed it.
Rika hoped that Jerry would be all right. He seemed better today—though he said his head still felt like he’d gone a few rounds with a starship. Rika had kept a close eye on him, and the LT had only wobbled once while the team got ready.
If it were up to her, he would sit out the mission—but there was nothing she could do to stop him. He was the LT, after all.
Rika checked the local time: just a few minutes after 06:00 hours. The Theban president wouldn’t be passing by until the end of her run at about 08:05. Rika couldn’t use the Link or anything else that could give away her position, so she started practicing her breathing while touching her thumb to each of her fingers.
It was something to take her mind off what she was about to do. Killing Cheri and her goons had been one thing, but she was now lying in wait to assassinate a head of state.
To topple a government.
Rika had researched the Theban president in greater depth the night before. From what she could tell, Ariana was a good woman. She had several grown children, and they seemed to love and respect their mother.
