by M. D. Cooper
Rika rose and spun around with her GNR extended, its barrel centimeters from Stavros’s face. Pinches erupted across her body, and Rika gave a good show of bearing the agony.
“You’ve gotta be the toughest bitch in the galaxy,” Stavros laughed. “It’s amazing. It really is. Imagine what I could do with a thousand of you—a million. All of humanity would bow before me.”
Rika gritted her teeth and lowered her GNR.
“There’s a good girl,” Stavros cooed. “I wouldn’t want Meat to have to shoot you in the head.”
Rika turned to see Silva’s GNR raised and aimed to do his bidding.
“Tit for tat, then, is it?” Rika asked.
“A bit of that, yes,” Stavros agreed with a grin.
Rika looked past him at Amy, who was crouched on the sofa and peering over its back at the tableau before her. Rika wondered how often the young girl had witnessed scenes like this unfolding before her.
“I’m curious why you picked K-Strike,” Rika mused to Stavros suddenly before she turned back to look at Silva. “You know he hired them, right?”
Silva cocked her head to the side, peering around Rika at the dictator. Rika turned back and saw Aaron, John, and the goons all straighten—likely told to be on alert by Stavros.
“You ruin all my fun,” Stavros accused with a mock pout. “But stars, do I enjoy the variety you bring.”
Rika turned her back on Stavros and looked down at Chase, who had managed to pull himself up to a kneeling position after Silva let him go. Rika gave him a sad smile before turning her gaze to Silva.
“Take off the helmet, C319.”
“She doesn’t take orders from you,” Stavros sneered. “No one takes orders from you, Rika. I think it’s time for you to understand that, once and for all.”
Pinches erupted across Rika’s body and she smiled.
“I’m going to enjoy this,” Rika smiled as she took a step back, no longer standing between Silva and Stavros.
Stavros’s mouth fell open. “No…Rika…how…?”
“Your chip never worked on me in the first place,” Rika answered his incomplete queries. “I’ve never been under your thrall; now no one is.”
“Get her!” Stavros shouted angrily at the two AM-3s in the room, but neither moved.
“No,” Aaron said simply. “We’re done taking orders from you, Stavros.”
Stavros took a step back, looking around the room filled with people he no longer controlled. The two goons looked uncertainly at each other and at the AM-3s at their sides.
Rika noticed a small smile growing on Amy’s lips as she watched her father exhibit more than a little fear.
“Take off the helmet,” Rika urged Silva again. “Show her.”
Silva’s head slumped forward, and she reached up to release the clasps of her helmet. She hesitated a moment, and then pulled it free, revealing the featureless face of an SMI-2 mech. Only her eyes hinted at the living human beneath.
“Tell her,” Rika repeated.
“No! Stop!” Stavros cried, rushing toward Silva. “I order you—”
His words stopped the instant Rika’s hand closed around his throat.
“Not another word,” Rika whispered.
“I don’t understand,” came Amy’s small voice. “Why are you showing me your face?”
“Because…” Silva started brokenly, speaking aloud for the first time that night. She took a breath and tried again. “Because, Amy…I’m your mother.”
Amy’s face went slack, and she looked to Rika.
“She is,” Rika nodded with a smile as Stavros thrashed in her grip. “Stop, little man,” she scolded him. “You live only because I’m not the one who gets to mete out justice today.”
“I wouldn’t mind a kick or two on justice’s behalf,” Leslie growled softly.
“Aaron, do you think you could give Leslie a hand over there?” Rika asked.
“Yeah, no problem,” Aaron replied.
A plink echoed through the room as he broke Leslie’s chain, and Rika turned her attention back to Amy, who had climbed over the sofa and was approaching Silva with slow, tentative steps.
“I called you ‘Silver’ because I imagined that you were my mother,” Amy admitted in a soft voice. “You came to me sometimes—I could tell it hurt you to do it. He hurt you.”
“I loved that you named me Silver,” Silva responded quietly. “I knew what it meant.”
Amy looked at her father, and Rika saw anger burning in the girl’s eyes. Rika knew the revelation had to happen; Amy had to learn the truth. But to see this truth take its toll on her, for such a young girl to see such thorough debasement—it was one of the hardest things Rika had ever done.
“It’s OK, Amy,” Silva pulled the girl’s attention back to her. She kneeled down before her daughter and stretched out her hand. “I came for you. I came to take you away years ago, but I failed. I was captured, and Stavros—”
Silva stopped speaking as Amy crashed into her arms, and mother and daughter sobbed as they embraced one another.
Rika continued to hold onto Stavros, while Leslie walked to Chase’s side and helped him to one of the sofas.
“Really, it looks worse than it is,” Chase said.
“Chase, I can see your ulna sticking out of your forearm,” Leslie scolded.
“Well…yeah.”
“And there’s your radius,” she pointed.
“Stop talking about it, you’re making it hurt more.”
Rika glanced at Amy and Silva. Killing Stavros in front of his daughter was something she had really wanted to avoid.
In that moment of hesitation, all hell broke loose.
ASSASSINATION
STELLAR DATE: 04.04.8949 (Adjusted Years)
LOCATION: Basileus Residence, The Isthmus, Sparta
REGION: Peloponnese System, The Politica, Praesepe Cluster
Leslie fell first, screaming as she clutched the sides of her head. Silva wasn’t far behind, and Amy cried out in fear as her mother squeezed her eyes shut and began to convulse.
John raised his rifle, took aim at Rika, and squeezed off a round before Aaron collided with him, knocking him to the floor.
The shot caught Rika in the neck—right where her armor ended and her skin began. Pain flared, and she spasmed, releasing her grip on Stavros.
John pushed Aaron away and took aim at Rika, firing again, but not before she backpedaled and sent a burst from her GNR into the AM-3.
One of the goons was down on his knees, clutching his head, and the other lunged for him, clawing at his face. They rolled to the floor, and the report of a ballistic pistol sounded from between them.
Aaron leveled his rifle at John and emptied his magazine into the other mech’s right arm, disabling the limb before smashing his fist into John’s head.
John went down screaming and clutching his head, but he s
till managed to drag Aaron down with him.
Rika leapt to her feet, feeling lightheaded as blood rushed from her neck and drew a dark red line down her torso. She looked around the room, but Stavros was gone.
And so was Amy.
Rika didn’t respond, but rushed to Leslie’s side and delivered the nano dose, then moved onto Aaron, who had finally subdued John. She debated giving it to John, ultimately deciding that it was better than having him under Stavros’s control. Somehow, both the goons were dead, so there was no need to use the nano on them.
“Thanks,” Leslie panted as Rika walked back across the room toward Silva. “I had no idea how much that shit hurts.”
“It’s a hell of a thing,” Rika agreed as she knelt at Silva’s side and touched the covering over the data port on her left arm. A few seconds later, Silva stopped rocking back and forth, and her breathing steadied.
“He took Amy,” Rika told her firmly. “You ready to go kill that son of a bitch?”
Silva nodded as she rose. “Yes. Yes I am.”
“Where would he go?” Rika asked.
“There’s a bunker here in the Residence, but I don’t think he’d go to it. He once referred to it as the ‘coward’s hole’,” Silva recalled. “I think he’d go to The Isthmus’s Central Command.”
Rika looked to the group behind her. “Thanks for the assist, Aaron. Can you ensure Leslie and Chase get to their evac ship?”
“Rika,” Aaron responded solemnly. “Thank you. It would be my honor to keep them safe.”
“Go,” Leslie urged. “We’re not children, we can handle ourselves.”
Silva was already halfway to the door, and Rika followed, unslinging her JE84 to get ready for close quarters combat.
Silva put her helmet back on before poking her head out into the hall, and then pulled back as a series of shots streaked past. Rika sealed her helmet in place as well, grateful to finally be going back into combat with proper three-sixty vision.
Rika agreed.
Silva glanced up at Rika.
Rika counted silently and then rushed out into the intersection, standing on the ceiling, while Silva rolled across the open space, taking a position on the far side of the hall, while Rika fired twice with her electron beam, tearing holes through the lightly armored enemy.
Silva fired a shot with her rifle before moving on.
Despite how pissed I am at Silva for hurting Chase, it feels good to be working with her again.
They easily fell back into a rhythm they had developed over many dozens of battles. The pair of SMI-2s were out of the Residence a minute later, and Silva led Rika down a broad boulevard toward a maglev station. All around them, Stavros’s soldiers fought with each other and much of the citizenry. A few mechs were in evidence, and they seemed to be siding against the soldiers.
They fought two other groups of soldiers before making it to the maglev station.
Three AM-2 mechs and one K1R stood on the platform, and Rika skidded to a halt, raising her GNR.
The K1R’s chaingun spun up, and Rika dove out of the way as a hail of kinetic slugs tore through the air.
Rika turned to see a squad of nearby Politica soldiers retreating, half their number dead.
“Aaron said you needed a hand,” the K1R mech growled. “I’ll hold them back. You go.”
“Thanks,” Rika replied and rushed onto the maglev train. Silva followed, as did two of the AM-2s.
“You Rika?” one of the AM-2s asked as the train took off down the tunnel.
“Yeah,” Rika nodded. “And you’re…?”
“I’m Ben,” the AM-2 offered before gesturing to his friend. “This is Al. He doesn’t talk much.”
“Lot of that going around,” Silva grunted.
“We’re going to kill Stavros, right?” Ben asked. “This isn’t a capture op?”
It occurred to Rika that many of these mechs had never known freedom; they had gone from the war with the Nietzscheans straight to Stavros’s Politica. It had been just one long war for them. Mission after mission.
“Right,” Silva confirmed before Rika could. “Stavros dies. Then we kill The Politica.”
“You’re a woman after my own heart,” Ben replied.
The maglev train skidded to a halt half a kilometer before it reached the destination platform, and Niki spoke into all their minds.
Rika prised open a door, and the mechs leapt out before the train carried on. Niki highlighted a service door, and Silva led the way through. Rika was just passing through the exit when she glanced down the track and saw the train reach the platform. The moment it ceased moving, rail-fired pellets tore it to shreds.
Rika shook her head in dismay.
Niki’s pathway led the team through several maintenance corridors, until they reached a doorway that opened onto the main concourse that led to The Isthmus’s Central Command.
Rika scanned the concourse to the left, identifying several enemy emplacements. They were far enough down for sabot rounds, so she fired a trio of depleted uranium rods before taking off at top speed in the direction Niki had highlighted.
Silva was at her side, and they rushed down the wide corridor, firing on targets of opportunity—though leaving many for the AM-2s following behind to clean up.
By way of an answer, a
rocket flew past and airburst over a rail emplacement a kilometer ahead.
Rika and Silva worked their way down the concourse for another kilometer before they came to Central Command’s entrance.
Automated turrets sprayed slugs across their path, and Rika leapt into the air, sailing above the deadly hail of kinetic slugs and firing the last two of her uranium rods at the turrets, while Silva fired two bursts with her electron beam.
Rika looked around, spotting a group of soldiers moving into place a half-kilometer further down the concourse, and fired an electron beam in their direction.
Rika flipped through her vision modes, trying to spot the things, and saw the smoke from a burning body curl as something passed by. She fired her electron beam, and the bolt of lightning struck a drone, tearing two of its limbs off.
Silva stepped to her side and fired at another target.
Rika switched to her JE84 and shredded the first drone with kinetic rounds. Then she saw two more.
A rocket streaked past and exploded over a pair of drones, revealing three more approaching from behind.
“We’ve got this,” Ben claimed. “You get the door open.”
Another rocket flew past, destroying more of the drones. In the concourse’s enclosed space, the things had fewer maneuvering options, and the combination of rocket and chaingun fire from the AM-2s was more than the machines could handle.
Rika took the opportunity to look for a way to get the door open. Then she spotted it: a plasma beam. Insane to have on a station—thank the stars an electron beam killed the operator before he fired it.
