by M. D. Cooper
The pilot squeezed past, muttering something about not even knowing her name before brushing his ass against her.
Leslie replied.
Leslie looked down at Amy, her yellow eyes full of compassion.
Rika thought back to what life was like when she was ten—before the war had destroyed her life. In hindsight she could see that her parents had been worried about the struggle against the Nietzscheans, but they had shielded her as well as they could. It had been a good year for young Rika.
was the only response Rika gave before crouching down next to Amy.
“You’ve been really good; done really well, Amy. We’re going to check the area over and make sure our ground transportation is OK before we get on the move again.”
Amy’s big brown eyes looked up at Rika. They weren’t currently wet with tears, but the streaks on her face told of a recent bout.
“I didn’t know mechs could talk. You have a nice voice.”
“A lot of mechs don’t have mouths anymore,” Rika explained. “They can talk through speakers on their armor, but they usually talk over the Link.”
“I don’t have the Link yet,” Amy said. “I never get to hear them.”
Rika wondered how many mechs this girl had seen. Perhaps her father employed some for security.
“You’re taking me to my father soon?” Amy asked.
“Yes, Amy. But I’m really glad I got to meet you—you’re one tough girl.” Rika looked up and met Leslie’s eyes. “Leslie and I like to see strong girls like you. Gives us hope for the future.”
“I don’t feel strong,” Amy said quietly.
“That’s how I know you are, though,” Rika assured her. “Being strong, even when you don’t feel like you can go on another minute—that’s the real deal. I see it in here.” Rika reached out and touched the young girl on her chest, over her heart. Amy reached up and touched Rika’s index finger.
“Did it hurt?” she asked.
“Did what hurt?”
Amy looked at Rika’s arms, and then her face. “When they…when you…”
“When my limbs were cut off?” Rika asked gently, swallowing as the memory resurfaced.
Amy nodded silently in response.
“Yeah, it hurt a lot.”
“Does it still hurt?”
Rika smiled. “Sometimes, but not the way you mean. You’d be surprised what you can get used to.”
Amy frowned, and then a sad look filled her eyes, and she nodded. “I think I know what you mean.”
Rika wondered what the girl had endured at the hands of her captors. There weren’t any signs of abuse—but there weren’t always visible indicators. She could also just be referring to how one could even become accustomed to imprisonment. To obeying the orders of others, to not having a voice.
That was something Rika understood all too well.
“I’m going to go out and help scout the area. We’ll let you know when it’s all clear.”
Leslie nodded, stroking Amy’s shoulder, and Rika backed out of the gunship into the dimly lit ravine, settling her helmet on her head.
Leslie deferred, her mental tone laden with unspoken emotion.
Rika wondered what Leslie could be referring to. There was no mention of children on her record—though that didn’t mean Leslie never had any. It wasn’t as though Leslie’s record with the Marauders comprised her life’s story. The cat-like woman was over two hundred years old; a lot could happen in that amount of time.
Rika turned her attention back to the task at hand.
Barne chuckled.
Rika knew there was innuendo there, but chose to ignore it. Instead, she looked down at the pilot slouched on a rock.
“Name,” she said aloud.
“Jenny,” he replied.
“What?” Chase asked. “ ‘Jenny’?”
“No,” the pilot shook his head. “Jem-mee. With an M.”
“Huh. I don’t think I’ve ever heard that name before,” Chase said. “Seems a bit unfortunate.”
Jemmy scowled. “Why’s that?”
“Just sounds a lot like ‘Jenny’, is all. What’s it short for? I assume it’s short for something.”
“Jeremiah,” Jemmy replied. “I really don’t get what the big deal is. What’s your name?”
“ ‘Marauder’,” Chase replied tersely. “I always thought that ‘Jerry’ was short for ‘Jeremiah’.”
Jemmy scowled and gave a short shake of his head. “What? ‘Jerry’? That sounds stupid. I know a lot of guys named Jeremiah. No one goes by ‘Jerry’. Sounds like ‘Sherry’, and that’s a girl’s name.”
“And ‘Jemmy’ doesn’t sound like ‘Jenny’? That’s short for ‘Jennifer’, you know.”
“You don’t say,” Jemmy sneered. “I’ve neeeeeever heard that before.”
“This may be the dumbest conversation I’ve overheard in weeks,” Barne commented as he walked by.
Rika couldn’t help but give a soft laugh. Maybe some dumb conversation was just what she needed right now to take her mind off the other mech.
“So, you’re K-Strike, right?” Rika asked, getting to the point.
There had been no markings on the gunship, and Rika hadn’t spotted any of K-Strike’s logos on the soldiers it had disgorged—but it was still the most likely choice.
Jemmy nodded. “Yeah, but I’m not a fighter; I just fly ships.”
“Ships that shoot at us,” Chase replied. “Sounds like fighting to me.”
“We don’t care that you fought for your outfit,” Rika said in a mollifying tone. “That’s what we do, too. There are no hard feelings there.”
“Though our outfit doesn’t kidnap children,” Chase added, his voice dripping with disdain.
Chase gave a laugh over the Link while Jemmy defended himself against Chase’s verbal accusation. “Yeah, but you guys shot first!”
“OK, that’s enough,” Rika said sharply, turning her helmeted head to Chase. “Go check over the transport with Barne. I got this.”
Chase shook his head and stomped off, while Rika knelt beside Jemmy and pulled off her helmet.
“Sorry about him. He’s always a bit testy after missions.”
“I can tell,” Jemmy said. “Guy’s grouchy and a bit rude.”
“I’ll let him know to ease up,” Rika said with a warm smile.
“What happens now?” Jemmy asked. “You shoot me and leave me in the gunship when you blow it?”
/> Rika chuckled. “You seem pretty blasé about the whole thing.”
“I kinda expected to be dead already. I’m just living it up on borrowed time right now.”
“Marauders don’t execute prisoners,” Rika said.
“Oh, yeah?” Jemmy asked, his right eyebrow raised skeptically. “What about tying them up and leaving them to die in the bottom of a deep ravine?”
“I’d group that with ‘execute’,” Rika said.
“Wow, morals and everything.”
“Let’s get to my questions, then we can decide what we’ll do with you. First off, how many more from your outfit are on Faseema?
She could see that Jemmy was having a small crisis of conscience. He didn’t want to give away his own people, but he knew the game they were playing. There was the easy way, or the hard way.
He also knew that even a gentle slap from Rika was the sort of thing that broke jaws and knocked out teeth.
“Gunship was the backup team,” he finally said. “No one else on-planet.”
“And above?” Rika pressed. The gunship could do short flights and atmospheric drops, but it didn’t have food, supplies, or environmental systems for long flights. It certainly wasn’t FTL-capable. That meant K-Strike had a ship nearby.
Jemmy didn’t reply, but Rika watched on scan his blood pressure rise and heart rate go up, and then drop as he tried to regulate his stress levels.
When Basilisk had approached Faseema on Patty’s pinnace, there had been over two thousand ships in orbit, and thousands more docked at the various stations.
While many were certainly not the right class or configuration to be a K-Strike ship, capable of interstellar flight, there were hundreds that could be.
Space above Faseema even had three battlecruisers in orbit. Remnants of Oran’s military—such as it was.
Rika took a moment to consider the situation in the Oran system, and what that might mean for an evac. Twenty years ago, Oran had been in its prime; wealthy from being the last system on an FTL spur route that went five light years into the Praesepe cluster.
Beyond Oran, FTL flight was not possible in the cluster. The dark layer was suffused with dark matter, concentrations that heralded the end of any ship that dared transition into the DL.
Beyond Oran, only light-huggers plied the black, ships that employed massive ramscoops to draw in interstellar hydrogen as they continually boosted or braked between the stars.
But nineteen years ago, a new power had arisen in the region; a warlord named Stavros had built up an empire of ships and warriors that he had scavenged in the wake of recent wars on the edge of the cluster.
Unlike outfits like the Marauders, Stavros wasn’t interested in doing work for hire. He wanted to build a new empire—which he named ‘The Politica’—and he wasn’t afraid to subjugate, or obliterate, the occupants of any system he set his eyes on.
Oran had been one such system.
The Oranians had believed themselves secure in their alliances and trade agreements. As a result, they had not built up a large military. The other nations within the cluster were happy to work with them, as the people of the Oran System were fair, and efficiently facilitated the constant two-way handoff of cargo coming into and going out of the nations deeper within Praesepe.
Which had made them ripe for the picking when Stavros came.
Oran had fought back, and a few of their neighbors even came to their aid—but in the end, Stavros and his Politica fleets had forced the Oranians back to the three planets in the core of their star system.
Faseema was the only habitable world of the lot, and so became home to the remnants of the Oranian people.
Strangely, Stavros did not strike the final blow to destroy the original inhabitants of Oran. He contented himself with controlling the outer system, and the FTL jump points. He even allowed trade and commerce with the Oranian people on the inner planets.
It was a strategy that turned the inner worlds into a vassal state, dependent upon The Politica for trade and access to the rest of the Praesepe cluster.
From what Rika could tell, the three cruisers above Faseema may very well represent the entirety of the local space force.
If team Basilisk got into space, and K-Strike attacked, there may be no help from the military. Unless they were on a local ship.
Rika brought her attention back to Jemmy, who had not answered her last question.
“So, you have a ship up there,” she surmised. “Makes sense. Even without a hole in the side, your gunship wasn’t getting you home. And you’re loyal enough not to screw over your pals up there. I respect that. You’ll be interested in knowing that we didn’t kill everyone on your team—one of them ran off.”
Jemmy’s eyes narrowed. “That’s not what you told me last night.”
“I didn’t exactly say I killed everyone,” Rika pointed out with a shrug. “I kinda implied it.”
“Heavily.”
“Guilty.”
“Are you telling me this to get me to think you’re OK, to conclude that my team is a bunch of cowards, or to sow hope of rescue?”
“Hadn’t thought of that last one,” Rika admitted. “I suppose if your shuttle has a third transponder, that might happen—though I’d like to see them try. Unless they’re willing to do an orbital strike and risk killing the target, then I think we’re OK.”
“For now,” the pilot allowed.
“Yes, for now. We’ll let someone know you’re here before we go.” She reached out toward Jemmy, and he pulled back, his fear justified.
“Shit,” Jemmy muttered as a hypospray extended from the palm of Rika’s hand.
“Better than death,” Rika judged. “We’ll leave water.”
The hypospray injected him with a fast-acting neurotoxin, plus a batch of nano to make sure his own internal systems didn’t clear out the neurotoxin too soon.
“Shit,” Rika muttered aloud, though she supposed it could be worse—the hikers could have been right underneath them as Jemmy brought the gunship in.
She walked back to the gunship and stuck her head in. “All clear. Barne has the transport ready to the south.”
“OK, Amy,” Leslie said as she rose. “Time for us to go. I have to put my helmet back on so that I can keep my eyes peeled while we’re out there.”
“Do you have to?” Amy pleaded. “I don’t like how your helmets make you look.”
Leslie knelt in front of the young girl, smoothing her hair back. “I know. They’re meant to look dangerous, to make people fear us. It’s part of what we do.”
Amy nodded. “I know, my father says similar things. It’s just…they’re still scary.”
Rika backed out of the opening in the gunship’s side and stood guard as Chase ducked in to retrieve Patty. He lifted her carefully, and Rika touched his shoulder as he moved past.
Chase’s mental avatar gave her a knowing smile.
Chase turned his head, looking back, and gave a nod. She couldn’t see his face, but she knew there was a wink being given.
Behind her, Leslie finally got Amy out of the gunship, and began gu
iding her down to the floor of the ravine, explaining why they couldn’t fly a stolen gunship with a hole in the side to the city’s air and spaceport.
Rika leaned her head into the vessel and made one last sweep to ensure nothing identifying them had been left behind. Amy had left a few fingerprints on the hull, so Rika wiped those off before walking to where Jemmy was slumped over.
Should have gotten Leslie to help with this, Rika realized as she lifted Jemmy’s right arm with her left, pulling him up straight. Then she ducked down and slung him over her shoulder. Or not; guy doesn’t weigh that much.
A hundred meters from the gunship, Rika stopped and turned to face it, looking at the cliff rising above; there was a large outcropping of rock, twenty meters up. She took aim and fired her electron beam at it.
The ravine wall exploded, and rock showered down onto the gunship, nearly covering it. Rika changed her angle and fired a sabot round at the cliff face, shattering it further and dropping more stone onto the craft below.
One more shot and the final chunk of the overhang fell, likely crushing what remained of the K-Strike vessel.
Should do the trick. The hikers would probably see the dust and come investigate—or maybe they’d think the ravine wall was unstable and turn back. Either way, Basilisk would be long gone by then.
Rika carefully moved down the ravine, reaching where Barne waited in the ground transport a minute later. It was an off-road truck of sorts that had a small bed and three rows of seats inside.
Chase was settling Patty in the back row as Rika approached, and Rika spotted a shady spot where a bottle of water and some protein bars waited.
She laid Jemmy on his side and, once satisfied that he wouldn’t get baked when the sun reached its zenith, walked to the truck, getting in the front passenger seat.
“Good to go, LT?” Barne asked from the driver’s seat.
“Yup. Dropped the cliff on the gunship; no one’s getting to that thing for some time.”
“The whole cliff?” Amy asked. “The echo was kinda scary.”
“Not the whole thing,” Rika said with a soft laugh. “But enough.”
The drive out of the ravine was slow-going over the rough terrain—a combination of gravel and paved roads—but an hour later, they were in the rolling-hill-country to Kandahar City’s south.
