by M. D. Cooper
Rika said as she emerged from the smoke behind Crunch and Shoshin.
Kelly eased around the corner and walked past the six Niets who’d tried to take them out. One was moving, and she fired a round into the woman’s head without remorse.
Die, bitch.
With Rika bringing up the rear, the fireteam made it the rest of the way to the network access point without further incident.
Kelly rounded the last corner to see Kerry and the rest of one-three waiting for them at the NAP’s entrance.
Kelly took a corner at an intersection twenty meters from the NAP and nodded to Rika as she passed.
Kelly sent a probe down each of the two corridors she was covering and tucked each into corners, hoping they’d stay safe. She only had five more, and this party was just getting started.
* * * * *
Niki commented as Rika approached the door to the network access point.
< ‘Boss’?> Rika asked.
< ‘Boss’, adjective, meaning excellent, outstanding.>
Rika stopped at the door and grunted.
Niki laughed.
Rika complied, while Niki muttered,
Children with advanced nano seemed like a very bad idea to Rika.
Rika was suddenly very happy that she was not fighting against the core worlds. Thank stars the Hegemony of Worlds is eight hundred light years away.
The door slid open, and Niki let out a whoop as Rika entered.
Rika ignored the jibe and looked around the room…which wasn’t a room at all. She stood on a catwalk encircling the center of a ten-meter by ten-meter shaft that dropped deep into the ship.
Rika leant over the edge and saw that the bottom of the shaft lay almost a hundred meters below; the top was another sixty up.
In front of them was a five-meter cube, with conduit streaming out of it to points on the walls around them and stretching down the shaft to another cube far below.
“This is not what I was expecting,” Rika said aloud.
< ‘It’? The cube?>
Rika raised her GNR.
Rika drew another deep breath and approached the console.
Despite their promise to be open with one another, Niki seemed to constantly have more secrets that she’d allude to and never share. Rika knew the AI didn’t make slip-ups, so Niki was doing it on purpose.
Is it just to goad me into something? she wondered.
Rika ignored the feeling and pulled out the hard-Link cable and plugged into the socket Niki had highlighted. The cable was only a half-meter long, so she was stuck here for however long this took.
While Niki did her work, Rika checked over the other two squads’ progress through the ship.
Kristian’s squad two had taken some hits—only minor injuries, though. They seemed to be drawing the most Niets, likely due to the presence of The Van. Nothing like having a K1R-T stomp through your ship to make you pull out all the stops.
Third squad, which had Staff Sergeant Chris accompanying it, was nearly at the engineering bay. Rika saw that one of the AM-2s, a PFC named Kyle that everyone in the platoon called ‘Goob’, had taken a hit to the torso. He was still alive, but his armor had initiated an emergency coma. CJ and Yig had pulled his limbs off and were taking turns carrying him.
They were meeting with increasing resistance, and Rika was considering peeling off a fireteam from her squad to assist them, when Niki started swearing profusely.
Rika groaned.
Rika wondered if they could relay the updated data to Klen, or if someone would need to take it up to him.
As she was considering her options, something pinged off the catwalk, and Rika realized someone had fired on her from below. She circled her drone around and saw five Niets on a catwalk, twenty meters below, and moving to get a good firing angle on her.
The squad sergeant sent a quick affirmation, and a moment later, two RR mechs dashed through the open door and leapt off the catwalk, firing as they fell. Rika watched them take out a Niet each on the way down, then land on two others.
Ten seconds later, the five Niets were dead, and the RRs took up positions on either side of the lower catwalk’s door, ready to take out any other enemies.
Rika sucked in a deep breath and got ready for what she was about to ask the pilot to do.
There was a brief pause, then Klen replied.
Rika prayed he would. Once he started broadcasting the signal to the other teams, he’d make himself a target for every Niet ship out there.
Klen cut the connection, and Rika pulled a feed from Kim’s helmet. The dropship cut its weld-grapple free and lifted from the Fury Lance. A beam shot out from a point-defense cannon, but was bent around the dropship by the vessel’s grav shield.
Then the thrusters fired, and the Marauder dropship shot out of the relatively calm air within the Fury Lance’s shields and passed out into Armens’ raging storms.
Good luck, Marauder.
Rika briefly ensured that one-one was making their way toward the rest of squad one before returning her attention to Niki.
Rika sighed and returned to monitoring her various teams. Second squad had slowed to a crawl, but their goal was to cause chaos—which they were excelling at.
However, squad three wasn’t doing much better. They were still fifty meters from the engineering bay, and were fighting flanking attempts by the Niets at every turn. Staff Sergeant Chris was out of commission, a series of chest wounds placing him in an armor-coma, as well.
Rika considered sending one-one to assist them, but they would take too long.
Rika remembered all too well what it was like to get an internal brace jammed into her thigh. It was the furthest thing from fun she could think of.
Weapons fire echoed down the corridor and through the entrance to the shaft.
* * * * *
Kelly ranged ahead of Crunch and Shoshin, keeping her eyes peeled for Niets and firing indiscriminately at any she saw. She followed her probes around a corner and shot a woman in the head, then slammed a man against the bulkhead, crushing his neck.
A door down the passageway opened, and a Niet appeared with a rocket launcher. He wasn’t armored, and would kill himself in the explosion, but Kelly had no interest in dodging missiles. She took aim and fired a uranium sabot round at him.
The round struck the end of the rocket launcher, and shrapnel showered the man, tearing him apart.
Weapons fire came from behind, and Kelly turned to see Shoshin unloading his chaingun on a group of Niets that had tried to flank the team. The enemy ducked behind a bulkhead, but it wasn’t enough to save them.
Shoshin’s gun tore through the plas and steel, and Kelly saw blood spray out onto one of the walls.
The team resumed their mad dash through the ship until they came to a broad concourse that ran down the center of the vessel.
It was thirty meters wide, and at least two kilometers long. They stood on a catwalk, seven meters above the deck, with the overhead a broad arch, fifteen meters over their heads.
The center of the concourse was occupied by four maglev tracks, a stopped train occupying one of them.
Two of squad three’s fireteams were hunkered down next to the train, trading fire with a group of heavily armored Niets with CFT and grav shields on the far side of the concourse. Squad three’s other fireteam was working their way down the concourse, toward a staircase that led down to the engineering bay one deck below.
Squad three’s firing angles were terrible, with the maglev tracks giving the Niets plenty of cover. One-two, on the other hand, had a clear view of the enemy, who had not yet spotted them, thanks to an EM flare that Karen had thrown moments before.
Crunch signaled for Kelly and Shoshin to spread out. When each member of one-two was a dozen meters from the next, they opened fire on the Niets.
Kelly let her electron beam fire on max power, burning away CFT shields, and shorting out grav generators with the bolts of lightning that arced out as she raked it across the enemy line.
Shoshin followed after with his chaingun, filling the air with HE shells that tore through the Niets.
Crunch fired two missiles at a cluster of Niets that had taken cover behind a low bulwark alongside the tracks. Plas and steel flew into the air, exposing the enemy to Shoshin’s guns.
Below, the elements of squad three that were behind the train rose up and rushed the remaining Niets, cutting them down as the enemy attempted to flee.
Kelly looked around the concourse for a location with good cover, and her eyes were drawn to the arches that supported the ceiling.
Kelly rolled her eyes at the man, then realized he couldn’t see it through her helmet, so she sent him an image of her rolling her eyes at him over the Link.
&
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STEALING STARSHIPS
STELLAR DATE: 08.19.8949 (Adjusted Gregorian)
LOCATION: The Fury Lance
REGION: Within Armens, Hercules System, Septhian Alliance
Rika got a mental image of Niki shaking her head.
Rika considered her options. Fighting through over seven hundred Niets wasn’t impossible, but it would be a brutal slog.
Rika didn’t answer. Instead she turned to Sergeant Aaron, who was reloading in the shaft’s doorway.
“Sergeant, there are seven hundred Nietzschean soldiers out of cryo now. If you were them, what would your main goal be?”
Aaron laughed. “Escape pods. Think they can break free of Armens’ gravity well?”
“Seriously, Sergeant.”
“They need helm control. They’re all going to head for engineering.”
That was Rika’s summation, as well.
“We need to stop that from happening. If they mass, they could take us.”
“Then we should go for the bridge and draw some of their force along with us,” Aaron suggested.
Rika nodded. “I like where your head’s at, Sergeant.”
He fired around the corner and laughed. “Me too.”
