by M. D. Cooper
From there, they’d clear the smaller outbuildings before selecting the best location to breach the lodge itself. Though with passive scan, she wasn’t certain they’d be able to detect where the Nietzscheans were gathered—it would be a blind strike.
An hour later, Rika deemed that they were almost at the largest equipment shed, and, as if on cue, its dark, wooden walls materialized out of the storm. The pair worked their way around the building until they found a side door—though it was nearly buried in snow.
A few minutes of careful digging exposed enough of the door to pull it open. Rika looked at Chase and held up her three fingers, counting down before she snatched the door and pulled it wide.
It had been locked, but that didn’t matter; a second later, she was inside the structure, her GNR sweeping across the space in front of her.
Chase came through a second later, and pulled the door shut behind him.
The first thing that came to Rika’s attention was that it was warmer in the building than she’d expected—which meant the wooden walls were better insulated than their rustic exterior led her to believe.
Secondly, the interior was lit, albeit dimly.
The third was that she heard a cry of alarm—barely audible over the hum of equipment—from somewhere in the building.
Directly in front of them was one of the large vehicles that Rika had seen in the brochure. Emblazoned on its side were the words ‘Trigger Ridge Snow Express’. Given its paddle-like treads and skids on the front, she doubted that there was anything ‘express’ about the vehicle.
Chase pointed to the right, and Rika nodded before turning to the left.
Niki informed her.
Rika glanced up at the roof and gauged the building to be at least sixty meters deep.
She worked her way around the vehicle, only to see four more of what Niki had dubbed ‘snow crawlers’ lined up. The third one stood out from the line, in that its running lights were on.
After a moment’s consideration, Rika stepped back and pulled off her EV suit, glad to have the bulky clothing out of the way. She set her JE-84 on the ground—ensuring it was locked down—and activated the flow armor’s stealth system, walking as quietly as possible toward the running vehicle.
She peered inside and saw a Nietzschean soldier asleep in the operator’s seat, and a second one further back on one of the passenger benches.
She rounded the vehicle to see yet another Nietzschean leaning against the crawler, this one holding a pulse rifle and staring toward the rear of the equipment shed.
Rika crept up behind the man and nearly swore in disbelief. Behind the row of vehicles were at least fifty people, all huddled together for warmth.
Rika hated killing in cold blood, but it was too risky not to. She had to ensure that the Nietzschean closest to her wouldn’t cry out and alert any others or alarm the hostages.
She reached out, clamped her hand around the back of his neck, and twisted sharply. His spine snapped like a twig, and she leant him against the crawler, hoping he’d stay upright.
He slumped forward a bit, but didn’t topple, and though a few of the hostages looked up, none seemed alarmed. Perhaps he wasn’t the first guard to fall asleep on the job.
Rika glanced into the vehicle and decided to let sleeping dogs lie—for now. She walked to the back of the vehicle and saw another Niet. This one was glaring at the Thebans on the ground before him, patting his rifle from time to time.
Rika walked to his side and repeated the move she had used on the previous guard. Just then, a scream came out from the far side of the building, and a pulse rifle’s thump thump could be heard over the crawler’s engine and the building’s heaters.
Rika still held the guard at the back of the vehicle, but decided to let him slowly slip to the ground. Most of the Thebans were studiously not looking at the Nietzschean, but nearby, a young man frowned as Rika lowered the dead Niet.
“What the…” he whispered, and then his eyes went wide as Rika disabled the stealth armor around her head.
“How many?” she whispered.
The man’s mouth worked silently for a second, and then he seemed to understand what was happening.
“Seven,” he whispered.
A weapon’s report echoed through the building, and Rika rose to see the two guards in the vehicle come awake.
With surprising grace for two people who had just been asleep, they exited the crawler, rifles held ready. Like the other Niets, they were lightly armored, and Rika allowed herself to materialize fully as Chase reported that the seventh Niet was down.
Both of the Niets pulled up short when they found themselves staring down the barrel of Rika’s GNR.
“Going somewhere?” she asked.
“The fuck?” one of the Niets swore.
She fired a round from her GNR into one of the Niets’ heads, and punched the other in the face, crushing his skull.
Behind her, a few hostages cried out in alarm, but some cheers rose up as well. She heard someone say, “Look it’s a mech!” while another asked, “Are you here to save us?”
Rika turned and held out a hand. “Yes, we are, though we didn’t know there would be so many of you. Are the Niets holding others in the hotel?”
The young man who had first spotted her nodded. “Yes, at least a dozen, maybe more. We came here from up north, hoping to find refuge….”
“How did you get here?” Rika asked, looking around at the vehicles to see if any were not from the lodge.
“We hoofed it,” one of the others said. “Skis and a-grav snow shoes.”
“Damn,” Chase said as he emerged from behind a stack of crawler treads toward the back of the building. “You people have moxy.”
Chase rolled his head around on his shoulders before replying.
Chase nodded.
Rika surveyed the former hostages, seeing the fear and uncertainty in their eyes. The people of Albany had been through the wringer ove
r the last year. She wondered how many of the men, women, and children huddled on the floor were here on vacation from Pyra, trying to get back to normal after everything that had happened.
She didn’t even want to know.
Signaling the flow armor to recede from her head, she pulled off her helmet to show the people a friendly face. More than a few smiles emerged from the Thebans when they saw that they were dealing with a human, not a killing machine.
“OK, folks, this is what we’re going to do. We have to take out the remaining Niets up at the lodge and free the last of the hostages. But you’re all just one shoulder-fired rocket away from death out here, so we have to get you on the move.”
“The move?” a woman asked as she rose to her feet, a young boy in her arms. “Move where?”
Rika pointed to the crawlers. “Get in the crawlers and drive into the canyon. You’ll be safe there until we clear things out.”
“In the storm?” the young man asked.
Rika gave him a reassuring smile and a wink, attempting to lighten the mood. “Oh, I thought you were all hardcore, having ‘hoofed’ it here.”
“There wasn’t a blizzard raging around us, then,” another man said.
“Here’s the long and short of it,” Chase said as he walked around the group, peering behind the final row of vehicles. “Even if we all just sit tight, those Niets up at the lodge are going to wonder why their people haven’t checked in. They might already be asking themselves that. When they come down to investigate, there’s going to be a firefight, and that’s not something you want to be here for.”
One of the men heaved himself to his feet and looked at the other Thebans. “You heard them, get on the crawlers. I can drive one of these things, anyone else?”
Three other hands went up, and the man directed them to their own crawlers.
“Thank you,” Rika said as she approached the man. “Chase is going to escort you to the road through the trees. Once you’re there, you should be in enough cover.”
Chase walked behind the Thebans and windmilled his arms. “OK, people, get aboard, we don’t have all day. We need to be in that tree line in five minutes, tops.”
Rika nodded to the man who was directing people to the crawlers. “Be careful.”
With that, she put her helmet back on and walked to the building’s door. She considered putting the EV suit on again, but decided against it and only grabbed her JE-84 before slipping out into the storm.
The blizzard had picked up—something Rika would not have believed possible—with winds gusting over two hundred kilometers per hour.
As the powder got into her joints and melted against Rika’s skin, she began to regret her decision to leave her EV suit back in the equipment building. It was only two hundred and twenty meters to the lodge, but it took her almost ten minutes to make it there. When she arrived in the lee of the building, she was nearly covered in ice. The fact that her joints weren’t half-seized was only thanks to the flow armor that coated her.
Niki said after a moment.
Rika nodded as she crept alongside the lodge, wishing she was capable of shivering to warm up.
Just another five meters to that side door.
It felt like the final steps took forever, and by the time Rika reached the entrance, her feet were covered in centimeters of ice that kept sticking to the ground.
The door was half-buried in snow, so she placed a hand on the access pad, allowing Niki to deploy a breach drone, before digging away at the obstacle.
Three minutes later she was inside the lodge, pulling the door shut behind her, half-afraid that the wind would tear it off its hinges before she got it closed.
Then it was shut, and the howl of the storm dropped to a dull roar, punctuated by high-pitched whistles where the wind worked its way through the door’s seals.
Rika sagged against the wall, and her HUD showed that the temperature was only ten degrees inside. Not exactly comfortable, but far enough above freezing for the ice on her body to begin to melt.
Pulling up the controls for flow armor placement with a few eye-flicks, Rika attempted to do as Niki suggested, but the armor registered an error.
Niki gave a quiet laugh.
Rika replied as she knocked the ice off her shoulders and released a drone to scout down the long, dark hallway.
The drone showed the hallway to be clear, not picking up any heat signatures, though it was a bit hard to see, with the building’s heating systems working on overdrive to keep the place warm.
Hot air blew from the vents, and the heated floors glowed brightly, making IR almost useless.
She deployed two more drones to help with fidelity, and then grabbed her JE-84 rifle from her back. The weapon was still folded up, and she gave it a shake before the barrel slid out and the stock unfolded.
Rika said.
Rika gave a mental snort.
Rika rolled her eyes as she completed checking over her JE-84. It read ready on all firing modes, and she slid it onto her back. Her GNR-41C was sheathed in ice, and Rika carefully knocked it free, checking that the ammo feeders for the ballistic rounds and DPUs were functioning properly. The electron beam was a completely sealed system—a little cold wouldn’t bother it.
Still, I’ll wait ‘til that thing’s warmed up before firing it.
Niki guided the drones down cross corridors, scanning the building for life and finding none.
Rika shrugged.
Ignoring Niki’s pessimism, Rika crept down the hall, ice and water still falling off her, though to a much l
esser extent. Her flow armor’s status indicator flipped from orange to green for movement and kinetic deflection, though its stealth systems were still offline.
Rika felt a moment’s worry but brushed it off. She’d survived this long without flow armor; she could make it another mission.
The wing of the lodge she’d entered was only three stories tall, and the central block was seven. Rika found herself wondering if the building really was wooden, but decided it couldn’t be—no wooden structure this tall could withstand the storm that was tearing at it.
Or, she considered, it’s about to come tumbling down around me.
She reached the main hall that ran toward the central lobby and waited while her drones scanned the passage. They picked up two Nietzschean surveillance bubbles attached to the roof, and disabled them before moving on.
The two forward drones reached the building’s main lobby, which was filled with huge sofas, trees, and tables from a restaurant on the far side. The furniture was all arranged around a massive central fire pit that was currently raging with green flames that leapt high into the air, casting the atrium in an unearthly light.
High above, the storm raged, and Rika realized that the main lobby had no ceiling—just a grav shield to keep out the elements.
Rika pulled the feed and saw fifteen Thebans with only two Niets guarding them. Her flow armor still listed stealth as offline, and she silently cursed herself for not wearing the EV suit.
The drones flagged the rest of the room as clear, though they only found four surveillance devices, which seemed sparse to Rika—then again, the Niets were stranded on Hudson; it wasn’t like they had intended to take the Trigger Ridge Lodge when they had first set down.
For a brief moment, Rika wondered how the Nietzscheans felt about their situation. They had been abandoned by their people, stranded on a ridiculously hostile world, probably only with whatever resources they were carrying….
