by M. D. Cooper
There was only so much room in the bay; as such, only Major Tim and a few of his high-ranking officers were present. They had another ceremony scheduled for the following morning, when the crews of the Perseid’s Dream and Golden Lark would attend.
Rika wished that Tim hadn’t come, but it was his ship, so he had every right to be there. She’d considered having the ceremony on the Fury Lance to avoid his inevitable presence, but giving the general his honors just wouldn’t feel right on a Nietzschean vessel, even if it was home to her mechs, now.
Once the last of her battalion had filed out, Julia turned to Rika, a tired look on her aging face.
“Colonel Rika, after the major has his ceremonies tomorrow, collect the general’s remains and take them to your ship.”
Julia had yet to bring up Rika’s outburst from the other day. She seemed neither upset that Rika had behaved with such rank insubordination, nor pleased at her moxy. The uncertainty Rika felt was maddening, but she had begun to suspect that such was the general’s intent.
“Yes, ma’am. What would you like me to do with the general’s remains once they are there?”
“Keep them safe until you reach the Kellas System. That’s where Mill was born and raised. Send his remains into the star; it’s what he would have wanted.”
Rika nodded silently. They both knew it may be some time before she could honor the request, but she would see the general to his final resting place.
“I’ll be leaving tomorrow—after the ceremonies,” Julia continued. “I need to get to the Ontario System and see to matters there. However, the remainder of the mechs from the Politica will not be here for several weeks. I have a suspicion that the allied field marshal will need you to begin your mission before then.”
Rika frowned, wondering how she would deal with that eventuality. Having her mechs train together was important—even if they were going to have to do it in sims during the journey to their first target.
“I suggest you leave a team behind to train them,” Julia continued. “And to lead them when they head out to meet up with you.”
“I understand,” Rika replied. “However, I may need to promote someone to have the required seniority to command them on arrival.”
A wry smile slipped onto Julia’s lips. “You don’t want to leave them in Tim’s care?” Her gaze slid to the major, as he left the bay while glancing over his shoulder at Rika and Julia.
Rika did her best to keep a straight face. “No, ma’am, I don’t think that would be wise.”
The smile disappeared, and Julia nodded somberly. “OK, send me your recommendations within the hour. I want time to review them before I go. Tim doesn’t know this yet, but he’s coming to Ontario with me. I’ll be putting Lieutenant Scas in command of the Golden Lark, and they’ll stay behind to support your training endeavors, as was their original mission.”
“Yes, General. Thank you, ma’am,” Rika said as Julia turned and walked away.
Once the general left the bay, Silva pushed off the bulkhead where she’d been waiting, and walked to Rika’s side.
“I never really got to know him well, but he did sit with me one day in the mess,” Silva said as she reached the casket and looked down on the holoimage of the general within.
“Oh?” Rika asked, glancing at Silva before her eyes turned toward the general’s body. “He never did that with me.”
Silva winked at Rika. “You won’t like what he said to me. Well…you will, but you won’t.”
Rika’s lips curled in an involuntary smile. “I didn’t like a lot of the things he said. Usually because he was yelling at me for something I did. Mill wasn’t an especially soft or gentle man.”
“I picked up on that.” Silva nodded slowly before continuing. “He told me he would deny me entrance to the Marauders if I applied.”
“Really?” Rika looked into Silva’s eyes, her own grown wide.
“Yup. He told me a mother’s place was with her daughter, and he was right, but…” Silva’s voice trailed off.
“But?” Rika prompted.
“You know what the ‘but’ is, Rika. I have two other kids out there, sons, still in Nietzschea somewhere. Living under their regime.”
“I thought you said they didn’t make it through the war,” Rika said as gently as she knew how.
Silva shrugged. “That’s what Stavros told me. But that lying bastard loved to hurt me. Who knows if they’re alive or dead? But even if they’re not…I had a sister, too, brothers…. Rika, everyone’s talking about how they have family in the Empire, people living under the Nietzschean rule, and how we might get to free them. It got me thinking that maybe….”
Rika wanted Silva to accompany her into Nietzschea more than anything. To have her old mentor at her side…to have the woman she viewed as her mother at her side, along with Kelly, the woman she thought of as a sister, would be beyond wonderful.
“No, Silva. The general was right. Amy needs you, and you know she’s alive. Give me everything you have on your sons, and I’ll look for them when we’re in there. You know it won’t be a priority mission—stars, everyone is going to want to go off and try to find their family. We’ll have to stay focused.”
Silva didn’t respond immediately. She just stood, breathing slowly, her eyes boring into Rika’s. Finally she lowered her gaze and nodded.
“OK. Then let me train the mechs coming from the Politica.” Silva’s voice carried a note of pleading. “You won’t let me in on the fight, but I can’t run from it, either. I have to do something.”
“And Amy?” Rika asked. “Do you think it’s wise to keep her here in Thebes now? Even with the Niets driven back, this isn’t going to be the safest place for some time.”
“I was thinking about New Canaan,” Silva replied. “I heard you discussing it with Chase on the way back from Hudson.”
“The ISF’s homeworld?” Rika’s brows rose. “You know that they don’t let just anyone go there.”
Silva nodded. “Yeah, I got that impression. But I heard rumblings that General Julia was trying to get Admiral Richards to open it up as a haven for Marauder families.”
“Scuttlebutt, the fastest moving thing in the universe,” Rika muttered as she shook her head. “It’s true that Julia has asked, but it’s far from a done deal. Tanis is worried about introducing people with divided loyalties into her society. From what I’ve been able to gather, their population is very, very small.”
“For such an open-minded person, I wouldn’t have expected Tanis to be so nationalistic.”
Silva pursed her lips, but nodded. “I get that. Tanis has a lot of irons in the fire—”
“Silva,” Rika interrupted, smiling as she placed a hand on her friend’s shoulder. “I’ll ask. It can’t hurt to ask. And when you’re done training the mechs—essential integration only, mind you—you should go to New Canaan. Don’t come with them to Nietzschea. I bet the ISF could use an old sourpuss like you to whip their recruits into line.”
“Thank you, Rika. I think that could work. I have to feel like I’m doing my part, not sitting out of the most important fight we’ll ever see.”
Rika pulled Silva in close, and the two women embraced. When they separated, Rika looked down at the general’s image, hovering over the casket.
“I understand completely.”
ORDERS
STELLAR DATE: 09.18.8949 (Adjusted Years)
LOCATION: Pyran Sky Station
REGION: Pyra, Albany System, Thebes, Septhian Alliance
Rika stood in the observation lounge of the newly minted Pyran Sky Station, staring out at the fleet of ships moving into a wide ‘flying cross’ formation nearby.
She didn’t know what was more surreal: the fact that the twelve ships in the format
ion were all under her command, or that the station she stood on would someday be the anchor point for a space elevator, and later, a planetary ring.
It turned out that Tanis had decided to do more than just help Pyra rebuild—she was re-establishing it as the capital of the Theban Alliance. ISF ships had jumped into the Praesepe Cluster’s inner empire, deep within the FTL exclusion zone, and had set up a trade route, funneling the plentiful resources from within the cluster out to shipyards that would build a new fleet to stand against, and ultimately attack, the Nietzscheans.
A fleet for the Thebans, and excess ships, which Thebes could sell to Septhia.
Rika hadn’t learned all the details, but it seemed that Tanis was displeased with the Septhian Prime Minister, and had wrenched Thebes from him. She’d also sent ships to the Politica to ensure that the nations that had existed there before Stavros swept through were re-established.
Rika knew a few of the locals who would be ecstatic to see the Kendo Empire re-emerge from the Politica’s ashes.
But a planetary ring…. That would be something to see. Rika had only heard stories of such things, or seen them in the vids. Apparently it was Finaeus’s idea. He said the best way to control and save Pyra’s failing climate was with a ring, and with so much of the system devastated by the two battles with the Nietzscheans, it would provide new homes for the billions of refugees while their world was rebuilt.
What amazed Rika further was that Finaeus claimed the ring could be constructed in just a few short years. Already the strand was being run down from Pyran Sky Station, and another from Howe’s Glory on the far side of the planet. Once the stations were anchored and functioning as terminuses for space elevators, FGT ships would arrive to erect the hollow tubes that would form the ring’s support.
FGT ships…. Mind. Blown.
Her understanding of the process they’d use was limited, but from what Rika had gathered, the tubes themselves weren’t strong enough to support the ring. However, charged particles would be accelerated through the tubes, somehow making them rigid and able to support the load of the terraformed surface.
Finaeus had described this as a ‘g-ring’, one where the ring sat close enough to the planet that it would not use centripetal force, but rather obtain its gravity from that of the planet itself.
Which meant that the ‘terraformed’ surface of the ring would face up toward the stars, rather than down toward the planet, unlike the ancient rings in Sol and other places that she’d learned about.
Rika fervently hoped that she would make it back to Pyra to see it someday.
Beyond the engine glow from her small fleet, lights glinted around the L1 point between Pyra and its largest moon. That was where a new shipyard was being built, one that would produce the new Theban fleet—much of it from the hulls of Nietzschean ships—a project that would guarantee the security of the Theban people against new invaders.
Niki laughed.
Niki snorted.
Rika laughed aloud at the image and shook her head at her AI.
Rika turned and began to walk across the observation deck to a new vantage point, when Tanis entered the room, striding toward her as she pulled her hair back into a ponytail.
“Rika, you’re getting a pass on the meeting today.”
“I am?” She stopped short, as Tanis’s long steps brought the admiral to her.
“Yes. After the battle, I sent scout ships to the locations that General Mill had noted as ideal first-strike targets,” Tanis explained without further preamble. “We jumped the ships to the edges of those systems, where they waited silently to see what the Nietzscheans would do next.”
Cold dread swept over Rika. “Are the Niets massing another fleet? Are they coming back?”
Tanis snorted. “Well, yes, and probably not. Most of the ships that escaped the battle here at Pyra have retreated to the Sepe System.
“Sepe? That’s, what…only twenty light years from here? But it’s not in the Nietzschean Empire, is it?” Rika asked.
“Not officially, no, but they’re little more than a vassal state. The Niets are regrouping there, but our analysts don’t think it’s to strike back. Chatter they’ve decrypted on insystem comm relays leads us to believe that the Nietzscheans are going to do a scorched earth retreat back into their empire—create a humanitarian crisis to slow us down.”
“Shit,” Rika whispered. “Those bastards are doing it all over again!”
Tanis placed a hand on Rika’s shoulder. “Not this time. They only have about three hundred ships in the system, and half of those are in rough shape. They’re using the locals’ supplies to refit them, and then they’re going to start their death march.”
“So when do we leave?” Rika asked.
A grim smile settled on Tanis’s lips. “Not we, Rika, you.”
“Me?”
“Well, you and your battalion. We’ve already outfitted your original five ships with our stasis shields, and your two destroyers have our stealth tech. It won’t work as well as it does on our ships—the physical characteristics of the Nietzschean ships work against the systems—but it will be a definite advantage.”
Rika swallowed. “I know you think highly of me, Tanis, but five ships against three hundred? Why can’t you send more?”
“Because we just launched offensives in the Trisilieds, and Orion is renewing their attacks along the Spinward Front, while the Airthans have attacked a dozen systems near the Vela cluster. And that’s just what’s happened in the last day. I’m leaving a token force here in Pyra to defend it and to get the other ships in your fleet ready.”
Rika realized that this might be her last conversation with Tanis. The field marshal could be going anywhere next. By the time Rika finished this mission, the woman could be on the far side of known space.
But Tanis was no fool. Rika was certain of that. This would be her last chance to get any advice from the admiral, as well as the woman.
“OK,” Rika locked her eyes on Tanis’s. “You wouldn’t send us to die. So how will my five ships destroy three hundred, and save a star system?”
Tanis barked a laugh and shook her head. “I knew I liked you, Rika. Here’s what I’d do…”
SEPE
STELLAR DATE: 09.18.8949 (Adjusted Years)
LOCATION: Fury Lance
REGION: Pyra, Albany System, Thebes, Septhian Alliance
Rika stood on the bridge of the Fury Lance, watching a dozen status displays as the jump gate grew ever larger in the forward view.
Many of the displays in front of Rika monitored regular ship’s functions: engines, a-grav systems, environmental, the upgraded shields. But those were not the ones that had Rika’s eye. She was looking at the stress readouts on the docking clamps, where the other four ships in her little fleet clung to the Fury Lance’s hull.
Tanis had not been able to spare more than one gate tug for the trip—espe
cially since that ship would need to return to Albany through the dark layer, a three-week trip during which it would be out of service. This meant that Rika’s fleet had to travel through the jump gate as a single object.
Heather sat at the Fury Lance’s helm console, easing the group of ships toward the massive jump gate, which was still orbiting Pyra, thanks to the continued presence of the I2.
Though Rika’s Nietzschean dreadnought was tiny in comparison to an I-Class vessel, it was much larger than most other ISF ships and would not fit through the standard jump gates. Especially with its fleet attached to the hull.
The Republic IV and the Undaunted were stationed above and below the dreadnought, while the Asora and Capital were on either side. Bulky as that made them, it was humbling to think that they could still fit inside one of the I2’s habitation cylinders.
In addition to the concern over the stress on the docking clamps, worry about the use of something as foreign as a jump gate hung in Rika’s mind. There, it mingled with her concern over the four ships anchored to the Fury Lance’s hull.
And that concern was compounded by the thoughts of leaving Silva and Barne back in the Albany System, waiting for the remainder of the mechs from the Politica to arrive.
At least Julia already took Tim back. With Penny as the senior captain, they’ll fare much better. Not to mention knowing that Amy is safe at New Canaan.
Ahead, the jump gate continued to grow larger, and Rika couldn’t help but ask Niki,
