by M. D. Cooper
“Thanks, Captain Rika. I’m not sure how to behave around a lot of the mechs…some seem a bit sensitive.”
Rika pondered Sally’s words. She had been so focused on working with the mech platoons under her command, that she hadn’t considered how the rest of the ships’ crews would deal with having so many of them around—other than to grouse about space and food.
“Thanks for the feedback, Sally. I’ll see if we can’t work on that. Cohesion with the crews is an important part of what we’re doing here.”
“That’d be great, Captain. I’d be more than happy to help out with any feedback.”
“Noted,” Rika said as she stepped into the dropship. “I’ll be in touch with your CO about your helpful attitude, and see if we can use your assistance.”
Sally smiled and gave Rika a salute before hopping aboard her hoverpallet and riding it back to wherever she’d come from.
“I’ve gotta ask, Captain,” Ferris said as he wove through the crates to reach the dropship’s cockpit.
“Speak freely, Lieutenant,” Rika replied.
“Well, sorry if this is weird, but wouldn’t day-to-day stuff be easier with a regular right arm?”
Rika held up her right arm, which ended in a GNR-41C, sans barrel, and gave Ferris a serious look. “What do you mean? This isn’t a regular arm?”
“Uh…” Ferris reddened, uncertain if he’d just offended a superior.
Rika raised an eyebrow, and Ferris appeared to shrink. She let him stew for a moment longer, and then clapped him on the back. “I’m messing with you, Ferris. I’ve spent so long with this as my right arm, I’m a lot more comfortable with it than a ‘regular’ one, as you put it.”
“Dammit, Captain,” Ferris grinned. “Gonna take years off my life, pulling shit like that. Patty warned me about you. I should have listened.”
“Oh yeah?” Rika asked as she took a seat. “Was that before or after she crashed her latest ship into a planet?”
Ferris settled into the pilot’s seat. “Since she hasn’t crashed her current ship, I guess it must be after. Either way, she said you can run a little hot and cold.”
Niki snorted.
Rika knew what Niki was getting at. In team Basilisk, cohesion had been paramount, rank had meant little. Now that she was a company commander, she had to be certain her orders would be followed without question.
“Does everything that goes into your ears come right back out your mouth?” Rika asked Ferris as she clipped the harness onto her hardmounts.
She said it with an edge, but Ferris only laughed. “Pretty much, yeah. Gets me in trouble sometimes, but I like being me.”
Rika couldn’t help but roll her eyes. “Well, you keep being you and just get us down on the planet pronto, or I’ll sic Barne on you.”
A sound at the rear of the dropship caught Rika’s attention, and she stood to look over the crates. Three mechs, an AM-3, an RR-3, and an SMI-2, were standing at the back of the ship, looking at the cargo crowding the space.
They were all helmeted, but Rika’s HUD identified the AM-3 as PFC Shoshin, and the RR-3 as a corporal named Crunch. Crunch was a bit of a celebrity amongst the mechs. So far as they knew, he had no other name, but that didn’t stop everyone in the company from trying to find out what his real one was. It had turned into a game with a sizable betting pot attached.
Rika didn’t need her HUD’s ident to recognize the SMI-2. Kelly, the friend she still hadn’t figured out how to reconnect with, still wore Team Hammerfall’s mark on her armor.
They pulled off their helmets and saluted when they saw Rika.
“Let me guess,” Rika asked. “Barne needs you three planetside for something?”
Kelly smiled, though the expression didn’t quite reach her eyes. Rika wondered if she was still getting used to having a face, or if it was something else. “Actually, it was Lieutenant Leslie that ordered us downworld. Something about enough slacking off, and getting dirt under our feet.”
“Which of course translates to being at Barne’s beck and call,” Crunch added.
“Well, looks like you three have standing room only,” Rika gestured at the narrow walking space between the crates. “Make yourselves comfortable.”
“Comfortable is what I do,” Crunch replied, and leaned against a crate whose label indicated it was full of grenades. The other two filed in as well and wrapped their wrists in overhead straps.
“OK, Ferris,” Rika called into the cockpit as she settled back into her seat. “Get this bird in the air—so to speak—or Barne will shove a boot up your ass.”
“Now, if I’d known contact sports with Barne were going to be in the mix, I’d’ve slacked off a little more.” Ferris toggled the rear door, and the dropship lifted into the air a moment later.
Niki laughed.
Rika wondered what Niki was getting at.
The statement bit into Rika, though she didn’t think Niki meant it to—or maybe the AI did. Niki wasn’t above driving points home from time to time.
Niki gave a surprised sound.
Rika had to hold back an audible exclamation.
Rika leant back in her seat, thinking about Barne’s interactions with Leslie.
“Clearance is approved,” Ferris called back. “Boosting for Iapetus!”
“Glad you’re so excited,” Rika replied with a smile—though Ferris couldn’t see her in the back, especially with all the crates piled around her.
“Are you kidding?” Ferris asked. “I live for this shit…uh, Captain.”
“What shit is that, screwing up protocol?” Rika asked.
Ferris snorted a laugh. “Well, yeah, that too. No, I mean flying! Gotta love making a bird soar, or dropping down into a combat zone.”
“Well, you’ll have to stow that glee for now,” Rika replied. “You’re just dropping us mechs and these crates off. Unless you’re referring to Barne again—calling him a combat zone. Because it works.”
“Shit, Captain, I shoulda been. That’d be perfect. Top’s a one-man battlefield.”
“First Sergeant,” Rika corrected.
“Sorry, what?” Ferris asked.
“You can’t call him ‘Top’.”
The AI had made the comment over the shipnet, and Ferris sighed. “Shit, I just can’t help but screw this stuff up. What’s the tradition here?”
“No weird traditions in the Marauders,” Rika replied. “Just have to be under his CO’s command, and not have pissed him off in the last thousand years.”
Ferris laughed. “Oh, so that drink I spilled on him three months ago probably still counts against me, eh?”
Kelly snorted, joining the conversation. “Oh, hell yeah. From what I know of First Sergeant B
arne, you’ll be able to call him ‘Top’ about a hundred years after you die.”
Ferris didn’t reply—aside from a rather pathetic sigh. No one spoke after that, and Rika brought up the latest data on the training facility they were setting up planetside.
She hadn’t had a choice in selecting the planet—that had been worked out between General Mill and Septhian High Command—but Rika was glad they’d been granted space on Iapetus. It was a relatively nice planet, as far as planets went.
Generally speaking, Rika had come to believe that planets were all covered with far too much mud. Squishies didn’t seem to mind as much, but they didn’t require anywhere near the same amount of maintenance as mechs when they got caked with grime. A quick shower, and they were right as rain—whatever that meant.
To Rika, rain just sounded like how you got more mud.
The local government had offered several locations for the training facility, and Rika had chosen a site on the eastern edge of Cassini—one of the continents in Iapetus’s northern hemisphere. The landmass was massive, and the prevailing winds blew west to east, making for less rainfall around the main site.
She pulled up the briefing holodisplay at the front of the cabin, and set it to show the forward view from the ship’s nose. Iapetus didn’t have any space elevators, but there were four large stations in high orbit. A steady stream of grav-drive cargo barges moved between them and the major cities on the planet below.
Rika had been through a lot of drops in the war, and had learned to gauge a pilot’s skill based on their approach vectors. She never commented or offered advice, but she could tell if the drop would be smooth, bumpy, or downright terrifying based on how the pilot approached a world.
From what she could tell, Ferris was lining them up for a nice, low-speed descent onto Iapetus. So long as he kept his eyes peeled, they wouldn’t need to worry about any of the crates falling onto them.
“You know…my last drop was onto Neara,” Kelly spoke up, apparently on a similar train of thought.
“Some might count you lucky,” Rika replied, glancing back at Kelly and the two mechs beyond her.
“Lucky?” Kelly asked sharply. “I got half my insides blown out onto my outsides.”
Rika could see anger smoldering behind Kelly’s eyes. It was an emotion that she remembered all too well from the years after the war ended.
“I remember—not likely to ever forget.” Rika’s voice was quiet, barely audible over the hum of the dropship’s grav drive. “I thought you died in my arms—that’s what they told me. Silva and I…”
Kelly’s expression softened. “She told me—before she left. You two held a little service for me. You always were too sappy, Rika.”
“What can I say? I’m a bleeding heart.”
“So what makes me so lucky that Neara was my last drop?” Kelly asked, her tone softened, but eyes still narrowed.
Crunch made a sound that was partway between a grunt and a rueful laugh. “Because after we lost the Parsons System is when things really went to shit.”
“I can’t imagine how they could get much worse than Parsons,” Kelly said. “I have a clear memory of playing dodgeball with tacnukes.”
Rika ran a hand through her hair and tried not to think in too much detail about the final years of the war. “Well, things did get worse. From there on out, the Niets just rolled right over us. Mechs got flung into more and more desperate defenses.”
“Command did a hell of a lot of flinging.” Shoshin shook his head. Unlike Kelly and Crunch, Shoshin had not had his face recreated, though he did have a mouth—something the AM models had not sacrificed.
Shoshin’s decision not to regain a flesh and blood face was not uncommon amongst the mechs of M Company.
The two psychiatrists helping with the mech rehabilitation had encountered a variety of reasons for why their patients decided against reconstructive surgery. Everything from liking how they looked now, to not even remembering enough specifics about their appearance prior to being turned into a mech.
The former group bore watching, while the Marauders were trying to source records to assist the latter.
Shoshin was in a minority, amongst a group that was perfectly content with what they were, and appeared to have no inner turmoil whatsoever about their lot in life.
Crunch was also accepting of what he was, but where Shoshin was calm and at ease, Crunch was always spoiling for a fight. Rika would have worried, but he was not one of the mechs rescued from Stavros’s Politica. Crunch had been with the Marauders for years, and was solid as a rock. A scary, RR-3, mechanized rock.
“But you got into the Old Man’s command, right?” Kelly asked Crunch.
The corporal nodded. “Saved my fine carbon-steel hide, too. The general has my undying gratitude.”
“Hitting atmo in thirty seconds,” Ferris called back to the mechs. “If we had windows, I’d tell you to look out your right for a beautiful view of the sun setting over the Aegean Ocean. On our left, we’ll be passing over the eastern edge of Hittis—a lovely city, if you’re into fish, fish, and more fish.”
“Been a long time since I’ve had fresh seafood,” Kelly said wistfully. “I might have to see if the Old Lady will let me have some leave to check out the sights.”
“Dunno,” Rika said, grinning at her old teammate. “I hear she’s a real asshat.”
“That’s the scuttlebutt,” Kelly smirked.
Niki sent a feeling of agreement.
Rika took a deep breath.
Niki didn’t reply, and Rika shifted the view on the holodisplay to the city of Hittis off the dropship’s port side.
Iapetus rotated retrograde, so night was rolling in from the west, and the city’s towers were lit against the oncoming night. One high-rise flared brightly, and Rika wondered at the glow before Ferris cried out, “Incoming!”
Rika tracked the light on the dropship’s scan system—it was a surface to air missile, fired from the top of a building. Ferris banked out over the ocean and deployed EM-chaff while the vessel’s point defense beams tracked the short-range air breather, waiting for a lock.
The SAM raced over the water, closing the gap, and then veered toward the EM-chaff, exposing more of its fuselage for the dropship’s defensive beams to target.
A moment later, the missile exploded, and Crunch let out a whoop.
“Way to go, Ferris. Send that thing to the underworld.”
“Thank you, thank you,” Ferris replied. “Try the veal, and be sure to tip your servitor.”
Rika ignored the banter as she opened a channel to the local air traffic control.
“Shit,” Rika whispered. “Ferris! I don’t know who shot at us, but expect more incoming.”
“Like those?!” Ferris exclaimed, and Rika saw a dozen SAM’s fire from ships floating in the Hittis harbor, rocket engines flaring in the deepening gloom, all homing in on the dropship.
Crunch let out a string of curses that were inventive, even for a veteran mech, and Kelly muttered a few of her own. Shoshin was silent, as was Ferris, as the dropship executed multiple counter-maneuvers and fired on the incoming missiles.
“Doesn’t Hittis have any damn surface to air defenses?” Kelly asked as four of the missiles made it past the ship’s defenses. “For fucksakes, we’re right on the edge of
alliance space! It’s not like we’re in the bosom of safety out here.”
“Damn things might be Iapetus’s SHORAD,” Crunch said.
“Civilian launch sites,” Shoshin said, his voice perfectly calm as the ship dipped and slewed through the air. “Not likely to be Iapetan short range air defense.”
Rika didn’t reply as the ship’s point defense beams took out another missile, but she wondered how someone could have so much hardware situated around a major population center.
Maybe Iapetus isn’t such a great place for the training facility.
“Fuck!” Ferris cried out. “Batts are dry; our beams are gonna take a minute to recharge.”
“What—” Rika began before Ferris interrupted.
“Hold on!”
The dropship was five hundred meters above the Aegean Ocean, traveling at seven hundred kilometers per hour. Ferris tipped the nose down, then spun the ship so the engines faced the water and decreased the burn. Ten seconds later, they disappeared beneath the waves.
“The fuck?” Crunch cried out, and Rika echoed the sentiment. If there was one thing she knew about dropships, it was that they were not rated for travelling underwater.
The holo showed lights flare above the surface, but Ferris kept the ship moving ahead of the concussive wave.
“Ferris!” Rika called out, and she saw a hand wave back at her from the cockpit.
“Shut up, Captain!”
The ship spun again, and then lurched out of the water, a strange whining noise coming from the starboard side.
“Shit!” Ferris cried out. “One of the engines got waterlogged. That’s never happened before; steam pocket should have kept it clear!”
“ ‘Before’!?” Kelly shouted, as the ship pulled up a dozen meters over the waves and limped toward the shore.
“I’ve simmed this maneuver. Always wanted to try it,” Ferris called back. “Now shush, this thing doesn’t fly well on one engine.”
Another salvo of air-breathers launched from the ships in the harbor, and Rika bit her lip as the dropship closed the distance to the shore.
“Ferris! You need to set down. We can’t keep dodging missiles.”
