by M. D. Cooper
Rika gave Chase an approving smile before looking at Leslie. “Yeah. Plus, you don’t want to piss Barne off after he modified your armor for you to have a sheath for the thing.”
“There’s that, too,” Leslie said with a short laugh before taking a bite of her wrap.
“You should get a tail, Rika. That would be amazing.” Chase grinned at Rika, and she considered swatting him.
Instead she only raised an eyebrow. “ ‘Amazing’ as in ‘hot’, or ‘amazing’ as in ‘great for combat’?”
Chase shrugged. “You say that like they aren’t the same thing.”
Leslie snorted, then coughed and smacked her fist against her sternum. “Shit, Chase. Warn me before you say stupid stuff like that.”
Rika winked at Chase. “Then he’d be warning you all the time. We’d have to tattoo it on his head.”
Chase just grinned and shrugged. “I’m not ashamed to say that I find you beautiful, Rika. And it’s not just skin deep, either.”
Rika felt a blush rise on her cheeks. Chase never did have an issue with public displays of affection. “Good thing, too. I don’t have much skin.”
“I bet you say shit like this to all the mech girls,” Leslie smirked at Chase. She preferred to bait Barne, but when he wasn’t around, Chase became her favorite target.
“Are you kidding me” Chase asked, eyes wide. “I’ve seen Rika tear people in half. She’s a bit terrifying. As far as I’m concerned, other SMI mechs are just AM models with extra batteries on their chests.”
Rika laughed, imagining AMs with breasts. Unlike Barne, Chase could roll with Leslie’s needling.
At first, Rika had wondered about Leslie’s recent spate of jokes and insults. The teasing had seemed like a new development until Barne reminded Rika that she’d only known Leslie for a few days before she lost Jerry.
That sort of thing took a long time to recover from. If she ever would.
Leslie often grew distant, staring off into space, oblivious to the goings on around her. Rika would have worried, but honestly, they were all prone to such behavior.
Rika identified the query as coming from Moshe, the Perseid’s Dream’s ship AI.
A thought occurred to Rika, and she asked Niki privately,
Rika replied to Moshe.
Moshe sent a low chuckle across the Link.
Moshe didn’t sound upset about it, he spoke more as though he was simply stating a fact.
Rika brought Niki into the conversation.
Rika had never considered that an AI could feel pain before.
Niki made one of her strange mental sounds; sometimes Rika had trouble parsing the AI’s emotional communication. This one seemed like a sad sigh.
After a moment, Niki answered.
Rika let that soak in. She’d never thought of AIs quite like that. She assumed their minds were entirely as they desired, and that they were infinitely resilient to coercion—though that didn’t align with what she knew of the world, so she wasn’t certain why she believed that to begin with.
Moshe sent a smile over the Link.
<‘I will accept the rules that you feel are necessary for your own freedom. I am free, no matter what rules surround me. If I find them tolerable, I tolerate them; if I find them too obnoxious, I break them. I am free because I know that I alone am morally responsible for everything I do.’>
Moshe’s words hit Rika like a hammer. She understood all too well that humans feared a thing such as herself, how they placed additional rules and restrictions on her—restrictions that existed so they could feel safe.
Rules that one group placed on another to safeguard the first group’s freedom.
Rika whispered in her mind. That was a numbing thought.
“Whatcha thinking about?” Chase asked, placing a hand on her arm.
Rika’s attention snapped back to the table to see both Chase and Leslie peering at her.
“I was chatting with Moshe and Niki for a moment,” Rika replied, her voice wavering despite her best efforts.
“Must have been a heavy conversation,” Leslie said. “You look like you got punched in the gut.”
Rika looked at the tables around them, and released a drone from her arm to emit a sound cancelling field around the table.
“Oooo…must be serious.” Chase said as he leant back. “What’s up?”
Rika looked between her two former teammates. “This doesn’t leave your mouths or minds until it’s underway.”
She waited for both to nod. When they did, Rika continued.
“I’m going to free the AIs on the ships.”
Leslie’s eyes widened, and Chase whistled. “Damn, you’re just all about the liberation lately.”
“Free the AIs….” Leslie stopped and chewed her lip. “I remember what it was like, back before the government in Genevia started conscripting them all—honestly, I think it’s why we lost against the Nietzscheans.”
“Really?” Rika asked. “Why’s that?”
Leslie’s brow lowered.
“AIs talk, and they talk fast. When word got out that AIs were being tried and convicted over trivial matters, being offered military service in order to avoid other punitive measures, Genevia saw a mass exodus of their kind.”
Rika gave a soft grunt. “Huh, I don’t recall that—granted, I was just a kid back then.”
“Same here,” Chase added. “Though it stands to reason.”
Niki said.
“I lost a good friend in that time,” Leslie said quietly. “I had to let her go. For her safety, and mine.”
“You had an AI?” Chase asked.
Leslie nodded. “Sammy. She and I had been together about as long as we could and had to separate…lest things go badly. Separation from her, the Diaspora, my own conscription…. Stars, that was a shit week.”
Leslie looked down at Rika’s abdomen, where Niki’s cylinder was safely tucked away. “I may take you up on that. Knowing Sammy is OK would be very nice.”
Chase waited a moment, twisting his lips. “Not to change the subject, but you think we lost to Nietzschea because we lost our AIs?”
“I do,” Leslie replied.
“But Nietzschea doesn’t have a lot of AIs, either. Non-human intelligences go against their whole mantra.”
“Yeah, but they have ridiculously advanced humans.” Leslie waved her hand, palm up. “Their whole perfected humanity thing they have going on; it’s why we had to make the mechs, to stand up against them. Not to mention the other altered humans—the P-COGs, NAISCs, the other poor souls our government butchered.”
Rika had spent a lot of time thinking about the P-COGs and NAISCs in the Marauders’ ranks. One of her current goals was to build a comradery between the mechs and the other altered humans. She had initially thought it would be easy to get the disparate groups to establish friendships, but like everything, it was an uphill battle.
Empathy was one thing, but trying to view the mobile frame of a Non-AI Sentient Computer—essentially a brain in a case—as a human comrade was hard. Even for a mech.
P-COGs were easier—some even looked perfectly normal, if you didn’t look too closely at their oblong heads, and ignored the cooling fins.
Of course, half the mechs had trouble looking at themselves, let alone other altered humans.
“I guess that makes sense,” Chase admitted. “They did have a head start on us when it came to fine-tuning people for tasks.”
Rika snorted. “That’s one way to put it.”
“Back to what you said.” Leslie fixed Rika with an unblinking stare. “How are you going to free our AIs? They’re owned by the Marauders—which makes me sick to say. It’s the one thing I never liked about this outfit, though it’s hard to find a place where AIs can’t be owned.”
“Septhia recognizes AI freedom,” Chase countered.
“Yeah,” Leslie nodded. “For AIs who are already free. Ours aren’t.”
Rika nodded and gave a slow wink. “But they were free.”
“Oh!” Leslie exclaimed, a smile lighting her yellow eyes. “You’re going to leverage the whole proclamation they made about Genevia’s mech program.”
Rika let a smile creep onto her own lips. “Yup, and we’re going to claim asylum for our AIs. If the courts approve, then Marauder ownership of the AIs would be illegal in Septhian space….”
“And the Marauders’ HQ is in Septhia,” Chase finished.
“Not to mention that the Septhian government is one of our biggest clients.”
Rika smiled at her friends, glad to see that they approved of what she was planning.
“Not even thinking about what Major Tim or the Old Man will say, you realize you’ll have to get this past the company’s GC, right?” Chase asked. “If he gets wind of this, he could ship them out before you get the wheels rolling.”
Leslie took a sip of her drink, her brows knit in concentration.
“What are you thinking?” Rika asked.
“Well, our general counsel is a P-COG.”
“Exactly,” Chase said. “He’ll pick up on this little endeavor pretty quickly.”
Rika had only briefly met with David, the company’s GC. The man sported the large cooling vanes on his head typical of P-COGs—humans whose mental abilities had been greatly improved to recognize patterns and minute details.
He seemed amicable enough, but she didn’t know if he’d assist or quash an effort to liberate the company’s AIs.
“I think you need to worry more about the ship captains,” Leslie cautioned. “Technically, all the AIs but Potter and Dredge report to them.”
Leslie was all too correct about that. Though General Mill had given her command of the company, her rank in the Marauder organization was that of captain. She was outranked by Major Tim, captain of the Golden Lark. And though they shared the same rank, Captain Penny—who commanded the Perseid’s Dream—had significant seniority over Rika.
Though the mission to train the mechs and build a cohesive unit was hers, the ships’ captains had their own orders and directives. They had to go where Rika required, but how they went about getting there was up to them.
Twice already, Major Tim had leveraged both his rank and seniority to ‘adjust’—as he put it—Rika’s orders.
Rika had felt more at ease with Captain Penny, though she wasn’t certain if that was because the captain of the Perseid’s Dream was a woman, or if it was because she spent less time on the other ship, and hadn’t had as much opportunity to come to loggerheads with its captain.
“My plan is to get this rolling before they get wind of it,” Rika replied as she considered the difficulties she faced.
Leslie shook her head. “Feel out your GC. I have a hunch about David. I think he’d be understanding.”
Rika sighed. “And if he shuts me down?”
Leslie raised her hands. “Then we’ll figure out some other way to help the AIs—just don’t make it seem like you’ll do anything drastic if he doesn’t support you. If he thinks you’ll accept the status quo, we’ll have other options.”
“We?” Rika asked.
Chase nodded. “Yeah, ‘we’. If it’s important to you and Niki, it’s important to us.”
Rika found Chase’s hand and gave it a careful squeeze. “Thanks, guys. That means a lot to me.”
A TRIP DOWNWORLD
STELLAR DATE: 08.09.8949 (Adjusted Gregorian)
LOCATION: Golden Lark
REGION: Iapetus, Hercules System, Septhian Alliance
From what Rika had learned, a company HQ having its own general counsel was not the norm within the Marauders. Either General Mill thought she needed the oversight, or he was worried that a company of mechs might run into trouble.
He was likely correct on both counts.
David was down on Iapetus with Barne, working on securing supply contracts for the training facility they were establishing. ‘Supplies’ being everything from food to housing.
Just the thought of all the work Barne was managing made Rika more than glad that General Mill had let her former teammates join her.
Her old CO, Captain Ayer, had groused about losing one of her best teams, but the general had informed her that Rika would need support, as well as people who could display a good working relationship with a mech.
A more understanding view than Rika would have expected the Old Man to have.
With Patty gone, ferrying Silva and Amy to Pyra, Rika got one of the dropship pilots, a lieutenant named Ferris, to take her down.
As she approached the ships, she noticed that the words ‘The Ferryman’s Barge’ were stenciled on the nose of Ferris’s ship; a bit scorched from atmospheric entry, but still rea
dable.
Niki chuckled.
“ ‘Scuze me, Captain,” a voice called out from behind Rika, and she turned to see a dockworker with a hoverpallet filled with crates.
“Sorry,” Rika said as she stepped aside to let the woman pass.
“Captain Rika,” another voice called out in greeting, and she saw Ferris emerge from the back of his dropship. “Going to be a bit crowded in my bird, sorry about that.”
Rika followed behind the dockworker with the pallets, and saw that the dropship was already half-full of crates and miscellaneous gear.
“Damn, I didn’t realize you were making a cargo run,” Rika said as she saw only one drop seat available for her to sit in.
Ferris chuckled. “You and me both. As soon as I filed my flight plan with the ‘Lark’s dockmaster, stuff just started showing up.
“Don’t blame me,” the woman with the hoverpallet said. “When the First Sergeant says ‘get this stuff planetside on the first ship that goes down’, you do what he says.”
“Barne ordered all this?” Rika asked.
“Yeah,” Ferris replied for the woman as she grabbed a crate and carried it onto the dropship. “He sent me a little note, too—told me where to set down, and to get a move on.”
Rika chuckled. “Sounds like Barne, alright. Surprised he didn’t let me know.”
“You’ve not worked with a lot of first sergeants, have you?” Ferris asked.
“No,” Rika said with a shrug. “But I have worked with Barne…which makes me wonder why I said that. Disregard my previous surprise.”
“Done.” Ferris gave her a wide grin.
Rika grabbed a crate off the pallet, catching one of the handles under a hook on her GNR mount to lift it. Seeing the company captain join in, Ferris helped out as well, and they made short work of the load.
“That it?” Rika asked the dockworker.
“Yup, last one. Thanks for the hand—er…sorry.”
Rika laughed and gave the woman—Sally, by the ident on Rika’s HUD—a warm smile. “Don’t worry, I’m not precious about stuff like that.”
