by M. D. Cooper
Rika saw a lone Marauder step out from behind a pillar and walk stiffly toward her. His right leg was hit. It didn’t look critical—just bad enough to disable the armor’s knee joint.
His helmeted head was fixed on her and he lowered his weapon.
Her mind was ready for combat, ready to kill; not ready for this. It took a moment—one that felt like hours—for her to process what she was hearing.
Chase is here, on Pyra, as a Marauder. Did he come to find me? He is going to get himself killed!
The thought turned her attention back to the entrance, certain that the Niets were there, ready to mow them both down.
But no enemies were visible.
Rika shook her head, barely remembering how to form sentences.
Rika stared down at Chase in wonder, as he cleared his visor and smiled up at her.
MOP UP
STELLAR DATE: 12.23.8948 (Adjusted Years)
LOCATION: City Center, Jersey City
REGION: Pyra, Albany System, Theban Alliance
Rika stood atop a building near a decorative garden in Jersey City’s center, surveying the destruction that victory had wrought.
The ground shook as three B’muths walked down a street, their forty-millimeter gatling guns pivoting as the gunners within checked for targets.
Rika suspected there weren’t any remaining.
The battle was over.
In space, the Marauders and Thebans had fought the Nietzschean ships to a standstill. Word amongst the troops was that the Niets were so used to a sweeping victory that they relied on overused tactics that the Thebans had been well-prepared for.
Plus, no one had retreated.
Still, Rika had to give the Nietzscheans some credit. They had held on until a Septhian fleet jumped in, apparently responding to drone-borne messages that the Old Man had sent asking for help.
A lot of Thebans were angry with the Marauders. There were already calls for the mercenary organization to be brought up on charges of war crimes by many in the Theban populace.
Luckily there were more Thebans who viewed the Marauders as their saviors—many of whom had apparently been concerned about Nietzschean aggression for some time.
That same group was pushing hard for Thebes to join the Septhian Alliance, and that movement was gaining momentum in the public forums.
Rika considered the irony in that. With Ariana dead and the Niets on their doorstep, that initial mission she had been bought for would likely be fulfilled. Thebes would become a province of Septhia.
Those local politics mattered little to Rika—though she did still keenly feel Ariana’s death. But what she felt most strongly was pride—and no small amount of amazement—that the Nietzscheans had been defeated both on the Pyran surface and in space.
It had been a long time since she had seen a victory like that.
A platoon moved through the streets below, falling back toward the muster site on the southern side of Jersey City. It wasn’t Chase’s but his was close, also moving back to the muster site.
As much as she didn’t want to leave his side, Basilisk had orders. There were still buildings to sweep and cover to provide.
At first it had surprised Rika that the Marauders were leaving so soon, but with the Theban regiment moving in from the west, Marauder command felt it was best not to have both forces in the city at once. Too much risk of an incident between the armies.
Rika leapt down from the building and approached Barne and Leslie, who were speaking with Captain Ayer on a street corner.
“I hear you found your long-lost love?” Ayer asked with a smile as Rika approached.
Rika laughed. “Yeah, first freedom, then this. Starting to wonder if maybe the universe doesn’t hate me after all.”
“He’s put in a request to transfer to my company already,” Ayer said.
“He’s what?” Rika asked.
“Yeah, I’ve put things in motion to approve it. He seems competent—served with distinction back in the war.”
Rika was at a loss for words. In the museum, Chase had told her that he had served in the GAF but they hadn’t had time to get into details before being given new orders for the final push to clear out Jersey City.
She wanted to reach out to him, to ask him to tell her everything; they were still in a hot zone, though, and she wasn’t going to distract him further. If he felt anything like she did, he was already distracted.
All this after just one night in a bar, Rika thought. How could it mean so much to me after so little time?
But she knew there was more to it than that. Chase had pursued her for months, always kind, always supportive. And he had searched for her and found her. With all the worlds amongst the stars, he had found her on this small piece of rock, drifting in space.
“Rika, you with us?” Ayer asked.
“Uh, yes. Sorry, ma’am.” Rika flushed, glad her helmet hid her embarrassment from her CO.
“Yeah, right. Get your head out of the clouds. I just brought Basilisk back up to full strength; I don’t want to have to replace its CO when you get your daydreaming head blown off.”
“Filled?” Barne asked. “With who?”
“Seriously?” Leslie asked with a broad smile visible through her cleared visor. “Are you an idiot? Who do you think?”
BASILISK
STELLAR DATE: 12.24.8948 (Adjusted Years)
LOCATION: Commissary, MSS Romany
REGION: Pyra, Albany System, Theban Alliance
Rika walked through the Romany’s mess feeling far more nervous than she would have expected, taking extra care to keep a steady grip on the tray of food in her hands.
Ahead, Chase sat at a table with Team Basilisk and three others that her HUD identified as sergeants from his old platoon. She saw Barne say something, and Leslie groaned while Chase and the man named Ralph laughed.
Chase looked up and smiled at her, sliding over on the bench to make room.
Rika sucked in a deep breath, suddenly feeling much younger and less certain of herself than she should. It felt as though she was in a cheesy vid about a young woman fawning over a boy at a school.
“You gonna stand there all day, or you gonna sit your metal ass down and dig in?” Barne asked around a mouthful of food.
“My ass isn’t metal,” Rika said with a frown as she sat.
“It’s true,” Chase nodded. “I’ve felt it.”
“Chase!” Rika exclaimed.
Chase wrapped an arm around her shoulders as she settled.
“Sorry, we’ve technically only been romantically involved for about two days…spread over half a year. I’m not really sure how to behave.”
“Like yourself,” Leslie suggested.
Rika leaned into Chase and let out a long breath. “Doesn’t matter how you behave. We’re together, we’re home, and our family is here.”
“So, you’re sure that you’re a Marauder now?” Leslie asked with a twinkle in her eye.
“Yeah, and this Marauder is hungry. These mods don’t feed themselves.”
“Dig in,” Chase said. “I hear this is the last of the real meat. We’ll be on vat-grown crap from here out.”
“Doesn’t matter,” Rika said w
ith a smile. “Beats NutriPaste.”
“Gah! Tried that crap once,” Ralph said. “Tasted like shit! No wonder all you mechs were so surly in the war.”
The table fell silent, no one certain how Rika would react. She saw the look of worry on Ralph’s face, and knew that he didn’t mean to say anything hurtful.
She smiled and shook her head. “Well, you’re not supposed to taste it. With us, it goes right in the stomach.”
“That’s Ralph’s problem,” Casey said with a laugh. “He’s like a dirty toddler, just sticking everything in his mouth all the time.”
The table broke out into laughter, and Rika closed her eyes, feeling Chase’s arm around her. She sighed and didn’t even bother keeping back the tears as a feeling of contentment settled over her.
She really was home, and these were her Marauders.
THE END
* * * * *
The next two stories in this collection are Rika Mechanized and Rika Crucible. These are shorter tales that take place during the war with Nietzschea (chronologically they fall between chapters 2 and 3 of the story you just read). While you don’t have to read them now the backstory they provide will add more depth to what is to come.
RIKA MECHANIZED
RIKA’S MARAUDERS – PREQUEL 1
HAMMERFALL
STELLAR DATE: 12.01.8941 (Adjusted Years)
LOCATION: Western plains of Naera
REGION: Parson System, Genevian Federation
“Alright, mech-meat, I want the three of you on that ridge to the south,” Gunnery Sergeant Myers said as he pulled on his helmet. His voice changed from his surly growl to a voice in their minds as his armor closed up around him.
The three scout mechs saluted, two with their right hands, and Rika with her left.
Myers cocked his head, and Rika knew that if he weren’t wearing a helmet, he would have spat. Maybe even on her.
Rika wished she could respond, swear at the gunnery sergeant; hell, she’d love to pound him into the dirt, and with the cybernetic limbs the Genevian military had given her, she could do it with ease.
If not for the compliance chip in her head. Even thinking about hitting the sergeant took her perilously close to a treatment of Discipline—excruciating pain that would tear through her body and drop her like a rock.
She glanced down at her right arm, its current configuration the cause of her left-handed salute. Where she once had possessed a flesh and blood limb, there was now just a rifle mount and ammunition feeder. The current weapon locked onto the mount was a twin-mode GNR-41B sniper rifle with a 120cm barrel. Not the ideal thing to attempt a salute with.
Her left arm, though it did not serve as a weapons mount, was also no longer hers, but the property of the Genevian military. Rika harbored no illusions on that front—she was the property of the Genevian military.
By some small miracle, the designers of the SMI-2, Scout-Mechanized Infantry—her model—had given her a real left arm. Not to say that it was a natural arm; her flesh and blood limb ended above the elbow there as well, but at least the cybernetic portion ended in a hand, robotic though it was.
When she first left the assembly plant, Rika had wondered why the military had replaced her left arm—until she felt the kick of an automatic rifle, and understood that the arm she had been born with could not have lifted, let alone fired, such a weapon.
Rika turned and followed the other two scout mechs in her fireteam as they sprinted out of the camp toward the ridge. They kept their run to a sedate 30km/h so as not to kick up dust in the arid hills and alert the enemy to their movement.
It was a shame, too; the double-kneed legs—reminiscent of a horse’s hindquarters—were able to propel the SMI-2 mechs over 100km/h, and a full-bore run was one of the few true joys Rika had in life anymore. It was the one time she could pretend she was free.
Ahead of her, Corporal Silva and PFC Kelly loped along a dry streambed east of the ridgeline where they would take up position, their lithe bodies wrapped in layers of dusty, matte-grey armor. Only long familiarity with the way they moved allowed Rika to tell the other two women apart. The things they had become were all but indistinguishable from one another; every trace of individuality cut off or covered up.
Some days it took a lot of effort for Rika to think of herself as a woman, not as a machine. The military would be happy if she was subsumed by what they did to her; to become just a cheap brain inside their hardware, little more than a robot. But robots didn’t fight as well as humans—not unless they were powered by AIs, and AIs were expensive and used for much more important tasks. Mech-meat, someone dumb enough to take military service over prison, was cheap.
It was Silva who had saved her, kept her sane. The corporal used to be a waitress—back in ‘the world’, as they called their former lives. She had been taking acting and dance classes at night, trying to make a life for herself. But the war was taking its toll everywhere. Times got tough, and she palmed a few credit chits, only to find herself standing before a judge, facing a prison sentence or military enlistment.
But somehow Silva’s spirit and sense of self were unaffected by what had been done to her—to them. She had forged Rika and Kelly into a team and given them a name: Hammerfall. Now Rika didn’t fight for the Genevian Military. She fought for her teammates, her sisters. She would do anything for them.
She raised the question on the fireteam’s private combat net, a direct and constantly open connection to Silva and Kelly’s minds—so long as they were in RF range.
Rika gave the countercall.
The three women all shared a mental smile as they worked their way through the thick brush to the ridge.
The Genevian military frowned on things like names for mech fireteams—hells, they frowned on their mechanized warriors having, let alone using, names at all. But Gunnery Sergeant Myers had more important things to do than to listen in on the three women talk over the Link—or if he did listen in, he didn’t care that they used their names from back in the world. Or that they had named their fireteam.
Either way, Rika didn’t care. What were they going to do to her team that hadn’t been done already?
She wondered if the army reviled the full-sized mech warriors like they did the scouts. Most mechs were massive, lumbering things, the shells of humans embedded within them. A full-sized mech could tear a ground vehicle in half with its arms, not to mention what one could do with the multiple weapons systems they carried.
The SMI-2 model that Rika and the other two members of team Hammerfall had been turned into was a new experiment by the military. Take smaller humans—namely women—and make a scout mech. A warrior that could carry a significant armament, but operate in environments and terrain that a full-sized mech could not. SMI-2s averaged 2.3 meters in height, and weighed in at no more than 230 kilograms, depending on their loadout. And though more of their human body remained beneath than with a regular mech, their bones and muscles were heavily augmented to give them the strength of a dozen squishies.
y’ll have any supplies? Maybe even Nutri-Stations. I bet their paste tastes better than ours,> Kelly said as they neared the top of the ridge.
Kelly laughed in response.
Kelly’s delivery was crass—as always—but the sentiment was one Rika shared. All the mechs she knew had been picked up for petty crimes. Her own had been stealing food; food she never even got a taste of.
Kelly said.
Rika wasn’t as optimistic. Their forced enlistment term was five years, but she didn’t see a happy ending to the war with the Nietzscheans. It had already been going on for seven years, and her side seemed to be losing ground.
No one spoke of it, but station-by-station, world-by-world, the Niets were pushing them back.
Even if the Genevians did win—in a stalemate, or some miracle victory—they had put too much time and effort into their mechs. They always talked about how the mechs—especially the women in the SMI-2 modules—were just barely adequate, called the humans within ‘mech-meat’…but Rika knew better. She had only been in four combat engagements in her six months of service, but each time, it had been the mechs who had saved the day.
