Rika shrugged as she approached the supply room she’d selected for her team’s meetup.
Niki groused.
Rika replied as she reached the supply room’s door, which stood at an intersection of two maintenance tunnels. She sent out a passel of microscopic drones to scout the area and ensure it was secure.
The microdrones might not have been as ubiquitous as Tanis’s nanocloud, but they were a damn sight better than the visible surveillance drones she was used to using.
Additional feeds appeared on the edges of her vision, highlighting items of uncertainty one by one before flagging them all as safe.
One of the drones picked up motion nearby, and Rika saw Keli saunter around a corner. At the same time, another drone slipped into the supply room and spotted Kelly already inside, pulling off her Nietzschean uniform.
Rika pulled open the door and gave Kelly a knowing smile. “Bet it feels good to get out of that thing.”
Kelly laughed. “You have no idea, Rika. I don’t care what Niki says, there’s no way to stop the itching.”
Niki commented.
“Whatever,” Kelly scoffed. “You’ve never had a body, what do you know?”
“I can know everything there is to know about dogs, but I don’t know what it’s like to be a dog,” Kelly retorted.
Niki coupled her question with an evil chuckle.
Kelly glared at Rika. “Do you really have an AI, or do you just fake her to mess with us?”
Niki’s voice grew serious.
She put a three-dimensional view of the surrounding area on the team’s combat net. A lone figure approached their position, moving down the right-hand corridor, already in view of Keli. However, that wasn’t the major concern: there were over three-dozen more Nietzscheans approaching, on the decks above and below the supply room.
“Shit!” Rika swore. “That’s Reg isn’t it?”
“Our friendly neighborhood major pain in the ass,” Kelly replied as she triggered her MK99 skin to convert to a matte grey, the covering absorbing her mouth, nose, eyes, and even drawing her hair beneath the surface of her skin.
Rika said as she turned to walk out of the room and confront Reg. On her drone feeds, she saw Kelly disappear from view and gave a smile of satisfaction.
Kelly said as Rika’s HUD showed the corporal stepping out into the corridor and toward the approaching Nietzschean, who was calling out to Keli, demanding she halt and surrender her weapons to him.
Niki replied in a droll tone.
“Major Reg,” Rika boomed as she rounded the corner, a meter from the man. “What the hell do you think you’re doing, ordering my people around?”
Reg stopped short, a look of alarm crossing his face before a sly smile took its place. “Oh, if it isn’t Major Jessa.”
“What do you want, Reg?” Rika asked, not rising to the bait he was obviously dangling.
“Oh, I was just curious what you were up to down here. I found it odd that your supply run took you into maintenance sections of the station.”
“Just stretching my legs,” Rika replied, knowing the excuse was lame. There was no good reason for her to be down here, and they both knew it. “What brings you to these parts?”
“Oh, I was following you,” Reg grinned. “Muenos has been acting a bit strange, and then when I ran into you on the docks, I noticed something a little odd.”
Rika sighed, wondering if she should just kill this man now, or see if she could reason with him somehow.
“You see,” Reg continued. “On the holos, my friend the colonel seemed to have a new little gesture, a repeated curling of the fingers on his left hand. Something I’d never seen him do before. Then, on the dock, you did the same thing.”
“Maybe he picked it up from me—” Rika began.
“Liar! It’s not that hard to fake a holoimage,” Reg snarled. “What have you done with Muenos?”
Rika said. “I haven’t done anything.” She held up her palms, trying to calm the man down. “You’ll see him in that meeting with the admiral in half an hour.”
“No,” Reg shot back. “I have you surrounded; you’ll take me to him now.”
Niki’s tone was uncertain.
Niki placed a dozen yellow markers in the corridors around them. Three were almost right on top of Keli, who had stopped a few meters away, standing with a hand ready to reach back and grab her KZA rifle.
Rika ordered her team.
As she spoke, Rika dropped to one knee and drew her pistol, firing from the hip at Reg’s torso. The gun was a chemical projectile weapon, and the rounds slammed full-force into the Nietzschean’s body, staggering him back.
A moment later, he had regained his balance, growling as he drew his own weapon.
Rika said as she flipped her pistol to pulse mode and fired a shot at Reg’s right knee, knocking his leg out from under him and toppling the Nietzschean.
A second later, she was atop Reg, smashing a fist into his face as he pulled his arm up and fired into her stomach.
The rounds bounced harmlessly off Rika’s MK99 skin, and she drove a knee into Reg’s groin before rolling onto her back, holding his body over hers as pulse rounds rippled down the corridor from the stealthed Nietzscheans a dozen paces away.
The blasts nearly tore Reg’s body from Rika’s grasp, but she held on, then got her feet up and kicked the major’s body over her head, watching as it sailed through the air and into one of the attackers.
Or at least she assumed it hit one of the invisible enemies, since the body collided with something unseen and fell to the ground.
Rika spared a moment to wonder if Reg was still alive before firing on the empty space where his body had stopped.
The rounds ricocheted off the empty air, making small black marks appear where the enemy’s stealth armor had been damaged by the shots.
Rika fired another trio of rounds to the left, tagging another enemy, then grinned as a series of pulse rounds fired next to the invisible figures, one of them flickering into view as she collided with the bulkhead.
Knowing that Kelly had those enemies under control, Rika reloaded her pistol and turned her attention to Keli, who was firing her KZA rifle with wild abandon down the corridor as she moved to cover.
Rika thought she’d make it, until the enemy returned pulse fire, and the concussive waves knocked Keli off her feet.
Keli swore.
Rika asked as she fired on the invisible enemies.
Niki instructed, highlighting a target on Rika’s HUD.
Without asking what for, Rika fired on the wide plas tube. It cracked after the first shot, then burst open after another, dumping brownish fluid over the enemy.
Keli yelled, backpedaling to escape the substance flowing her way.
Niki said with a laugh.
Kelly called out from behind Rika, who turned to see a Nietzschean rifle flying her way.
Rika snatched it out of the air and deployed a strand of nano into the weapon, silently thanking the ISF for the ability to hack a Nietzschean biolock in seconds.
She didn’t waste any time opening fire on the shit-covered Nietzscheans, and with Kelly’s shots added to the mix, two went down, and another trio fell back.
Keli was fighting a new group of stealthed enemies that was advancing down the passage on their right, and Rika ordered her to fall back while sending Kelly to keep the enemy pinned down.
Rika ordered as she tore her clothing off and triggered her MK99’s stealth systems.
Half a minute later, both Keli and Rika had disappeared and were slipping past the closest enemy.
Rika watched as Kelly attached a grenade to her rifle before throwing it down the corridor at the approaching Niets. Then she turned and ran toward Keli and Rika, dodging around the probable locations of the stealthed enemies that were marked on the combat net.
Keli commented.
As if prophesied, a second later, Kelly collided with a stealthed Nietzschean, but recovered and ducked to the side just as her grenade went off, the corridor behind them filling with flames.
The three women used the distraction to take off at top speed down the passage and duck around another corner, where they slid down a ladder to the deck below.
Rika said as they checked themselves over for damage.
Niki added.
Rika set off down the corridor at a brisk pace.
TIME TO FIGHT
STELLAR DATE: 09.19.8949 (Adjusted Years)
LOCATION: Fury Lance
REGION: Ursa Station, Sepe System (Independent)
“Confirm the Republic and Undaunted got the message!” Heather ordered the moment she saw Niki’s post on the job board.
Potter replied, pausing for a moment before adding,
“Good,” Heather replied as she rose and approached the holotank.
Alice was standing next to it, glaring at the view of Chase’s team as they drew to within two hundred meters of the approaching frigate.
“They’re moving slower,” Alice muttered. “Just four meters per second, but when they hit that ship’s hull…”
Heather nodded. For all her handwringing over Chase’s predicament, the woman wasn’t wrong about that impact. Frigates were not large ships. When the squad of four-hundred-kilogram mechs collided with its hull, the sound would resonate through the entire vessel.
“He’s not so stupid that he’ll slam into it at top speed,” Heather replied, hoping she was right.
“Captain,” Ona turned to address Heather. “We have a squad of Niets at the airlock demanding entrance. They’re saying that we’re under suspicion of mutiny.”
Heather considered her options. Though Rika’s dust-up would have alerted the Niets to something being amiss, it would take a bit to realize the scope of what they were dealing with. If she blew the docking clamps and pulled away from Ursa Station, all the other ships would go on high alert, and the breach teams would face more resistance.
The clock on the main display read four minutes and thirty-two seconds before all teams would be in position. But that countdown didn’t include the fact that Chase’s team had to get around the frigate, or the fact that Leslie’s would hit their target almost a minute early.
“Stars, this stuff never manages to line up right,” she muttered.
“Captain Heather,” Alice said, turning to face her. “We need to blow the clamps and pull away. This ship is too easy to breach right now. Other than the backup teams in the assault shuttles, we’re the only ones aboard.”
Heather gritted her teeth. Though the Lieutenant Colonel hadn’t worded her statement as an order, it wasn’t something Heather could just dismiss, either. “Ma’am, if they breach us, we can redirect one of the assault shuttles to the enemy’s point of ingress. The ship is also not without internal defenses. We just need to wait another four minutes.”
“Captain,” Alice began, but seemed to pause as she saw the steely look in Heather’s eyes.
Don’t say it, Heather all but prayed. Don’t give me an order that I might disobey. Neither of us will like where that goes.
“Potter?” Alice looked toward the central holodisplay. “Are they at the ship’s airlock, or the station-side one?”
It was common practice on civilian docks for the station-side airlock to become ‘ship’s territory’ when a vessel was docked. Because the Fury Lance was docked on the civilian side of Ursa Station, that may have held true for their berth. Heather mentally berated herself for not reviewing that.
Alice looked back at Heather. “Then we have another minute or two. But the second they get into that airlock, we blow clamps and push off.
“Understood,” Heather replied, breathing a mental sigh of relief.
Potter qualified.
“Aw, shit,” Heather swore.
* * * * *
Chase said privately to Alison, who signaled affirmative.
Alison addressed the mechs.
Chase was amazed at how Alison’s voice managed to sound chipper and upbeat even now. Maybe that was why her squad liked her so much. She never gave anything other than the appearance that she had complete faith in her team’s abilities.
He just hoped her confidence wasn’t misplaced.
And that the ISF stealth systems would keep them hidden from the frigate’s defense turrets as they ran across its surface.
The counter on his HUD ticked down, and below him, the hull of the frigate grew until it completely obscured the dreadnought beyond.
Then the counter hit zero, and Chase kicked on the thrusters attached to his calves, trusting his armor’s gyros to keep him balanced as he slowed from just over four meters per second to a hair under two.
He landed on the frigate’s hull, right next to an auto turret, activated his maglocks, then tossed a sticky charge on the turret. It hadn’t come online, but better to be prepared than be shot in the back.
The three-sixty view his helmet’s optics fed into his brain was still taking some getting used to, and Chase almost stumbled as he tried to watch where he was going while keeping an eye—so to speak—on the turret behind him.
Though the invisible mechs of Second Platoon’s first squad were all around him, it felt to Chase as though he was alone in his race across the frigate’s hull. He triggered his HUD to show full outlines for the mechs, and felt some comfort as their forms ghosted alongside him.
He had just reached the dorsal fin when the turret behind them came online, turning toward the squad.
he said.
Alison replied.
Chase triggered the sticky bomb and smiled with satisfaction as the turret exploded. With any luck, the reverberations through the ship’s hull would mask their final movements.
Alison called out, apparently on the same train of thought.
The mechs zig-zagged across the final few meters of hull, and then they were pushing off the dorsal ridge, each fireteam angling toward t
heir breach point on the hull of the dreadnought before them.
Chase shook his head at the name emblazoned on the side of the massive ship: Peerless.
We’ll see about that, he thought, anticipating the fight ahead. We’ll see.
* * * * *
Captain Ferris called into the Fury Lance’s bridge.
Heather sent back, catching a hairy eyeball from Alice.
She looked at the countdown, which now read just one minute and thirty-nine seconds.
C’mon, you stupid squishie. Just hold on for ninety-nine more seconds.
Heather wondered how many times a squishie like Alice had made the wrong life-or-death choice during the war just because they were scared. There was probably a reason why the woman had been flying a desk back at Marauder HQ.
Alice ordered. “You too, Captain Heather—blow clamps and move to position A1.”
Heather tilted her head to the side as she drew in a quick breath. “No,” she said aloud, while sending a message to Travis and Ferris.
Captain Ferris sent back, while Travis responded with,
“Captain Heather,” Alice growled. “I’m giving you an order.”
“Eighty seconds,” Heather spat back. “Dammit, Lieutenant Colonel, hold your shit together for eighty more seconds. Right now, all the other ships docked around this station have no reason to think anything is going on other than a security issue with a docked vessel. The moment we blow clamps, the alert goes out, and we become everyone’s problem. If those ships out there raise shields before our teams hit hull, mechs are gonna die for no damn reason.”
Heather took a step toward Alice as she spoke, and the woman visibly shrank before her, swallowing three times before mouthing, “OK.”
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