by M. D. Cooper
“Good,” Heather stepped back.
Alice was visibly fuming as she stared at Heather, her lips pressed together so tightly that they were almost invisible.
“Stay the course,” Heather instructed, watching the timer count down past forty-five seconds.
“I’ve got an explosion on the hull of that frigate in Chase’s way,” Ona called out. “Point defense beams are firing.”
“Any hits?” Heather asked.
“Impossible to say,” Ona replied, giving Heather a worried look. “I don’t see anything, but they’re two klicks away, and the mechs are on the far side.”
“Doesn’t that ruin your timeline?” Alice sneered.
Heather glanced at the Lieutenant Colonel, glad the woman was finally showing her true colors. “It’ll take them a few seconds to get a firing solution and shunt the coil charge. Or didn’t you study the specs on the Nietzschean destroyers?”
Alice’s jaw snapped shut, and it took every bit of Heather’s willpower not to backhand the woman across the bridge. No one spoke further as the timer cycled down to zero. The moment it did, Heather sent out the order.
The Republic and Undaunted sent acknowledgement, and Ona released the Fury Lance’s docking clamps, pushing off the station with targeted grav beams, tearing free from the station-side clamps.
“Shit,” Garth muttered. “We crumpled the station’s hull something fierce.”
“Unavoidable,” Heather replied. “Ona, stasis shields.”
“Activated,” the chief replied, then she scowled at her display. “Aw, shit. One of the Niets’ assault shuttles is inside the shields.”
“Well done, Captain,” Alice grunted.
Heather imagined smashing the lieutenant colonel’s skull before calling down to the first backup shuttle. “Yig, get your fireteam to Bay 22. Prepare to repel boarders.”
Drawing in a steadying breath, Heather watched as the ships docked around Ursa Station began to activate shields and initiate emergency undocking procedures.
Most importantly, she checked on the Peerless.
The tactical NSAI estimated that Chase’s team was still fifty meters from the ship.
“Almost there,” Heather whispered.
Then the Peerless’s shields came online, and the ship’s point defense turrets lit up.
“Fuck!” Heather swore.
* * * * *
Rika fired her pilfered KZA rifle behind her, barely taking care to aim as she ran down the corridor, following after Kelly and Keli.
Keli was already on the next deck, ranging ahead.
Kelly landed on the deck beside Rika. At least, that’s what the marker on her HUD indicated.
Rika wanted to tell Kelly that splitting up was a stupid idea, but she was right. It was their best play.
Rika turned left at the next intersection, moving slowly and quietly, while Kelly fired a salvo at the ladder they’d come down and took off in the opposite direction, Keli on her tail.
Niki chuckled, and Rika got the impression that the AI was shaking her head—which was weird, given Niki’s lack of a body.
Rika didn’t reply as she sent out a passel of drones to scout ahead, something that was much more effective now that she was moving slower.
The drones ranged ahead and rounded a corner, where they found a squad of Nietzscheans filling the corridor.
* * * * *
The frigate fired a few shots at the mechs, as they flew across the final stretch toward the Peerless. Luckily, the Niets behind them seemed unwilling to fire directly at their flagship, and the beam shots all went wide of the stealthed Marauders.
Chase thanked the stars as the squad neared the fifty-meter threshold. If the Peerless’s shields matched the Fury Lance’s, that would be the limit of their outer fringes.
He crossed the marker a moment later, as did several other mechs, when a power surge registered on his HUD. Chase let out a string of curses when he saw that the readings matched shield activation.
Shit! Chase swore.
Two mechs hadn’t made it through the shield. Neither were squawking, hopefully because they didn’t want to give away their positions as targets. He fervently hoped that they’d been pushed straight back to the frigate, where they could land rather than drift through space—though that ship would be activating shields, too.
A second later, beams came out of nowhere and struck the frigate in a dozen locations, taking out its turrets and grav emitters.
Mechs landed at four locations on the Peerless’s hull, moving to their breach points, ready to bring the fight to the Niets.
Chase hit just ten meters from fireteam one-four’s position, and he moved to join them. Corporal Fred was already at the airlock, setting the ISF-provided Hackit into place, as the rest of the fireteam formed up at the airlock’s edges.
Fred backed away and moved to Chase’s side.
Chase rolled his eyes and stared down at the airlock as the outer doors slid open.
From their current perspective, the airlock was down, and when the inner doors slid aside, the passageway beyond would be a deep shaft. Any defenders would have to adjust their thinking to deal with the attackers positioned on all sides of the airlock.
In Chase’s experience, it was something that ground troops often had trouble with, but spacers managed just fine.
They’d soon find out who they were dealing with.
The mechs all signaled acknowledgement. Chase watched the Hackit as it signaled a successful safety override on the interior door, initiating an emergency open command.
Fireteam one-four was anchored to the hull, both by maglocks and their clawed feet, but when the burst of atmosphere erupted from the airlock, it nearly knocked Kor free. Chase reached out and clamped a hand on the AM-4’s arm to steady him.
The flow of air slowed, likely because passages sealed up further in.
The team waited a few seconds for enemy fire, but none came. Fred signaled for Jenisa and Kor to enter the airlock, and the two mechs slid over the edge and took up positions along the bulkhead.
Chase tapped their feeds as they peered around the airlock’s inner doors to see an empty corridor.
Though Alison’s fireteam was only sixty meters aft, it took over five minutes for one-four to get there. The team had to deal with two sealed bulkheads followed by a group of six Nietzscheans. Fortunately—or unfortunately, for the Niets—all of them were unarmored, and fell to the Marauder beams within moments.
Then Chase’s team rounded the final corner and saw an entire squad of Nietzscheans positioned in a wide intersection, protected by grav shields as they fired down an adjacent corridor.
Chase was impressed by Fred’s efficiency. Perhaps the corporal should get a squad of his own before long.
As the rest of the fireteam moved into position, Chase split his legs apart from the knee down, and unfolded the extra half meter. He flexed the second set of knees on each of his second legs, and then reached up to grasp a pipe overhead. Once he had a solid grip, he carefully lifted his legs up over his head.
The rear set of feet clamped on, and he pivoted around, now hanging from the overhead, crouching close to the conduits and pipes as the fireteam advanced.
He was almost over the enemy, when Fred gave the signal, and the mechs opened fire—the four members of one-four from the deck below, and Chase from above, his FN-88 and JE-84 raining death on the Nietzscheans.
Randy got a shot off at the shield generator, disabling the Niets’ shields, and beamfire streaked down the passageway from Alison’s team. A few Niets got shots off at the attackers, but the mechs’ armor held up to the brief assault, and thirty seconds later, the entire enemy squad was dead.
Chase was about to tell Fred he’d gone too far, when Kor punched the corporal in the shoulder.
Outside, he saw the frigate they’d run across in the distance. It was moving to the right….
* * * * *
Rika eyed the Niets standing in the node chamber’s entrance. There were two in heavy armor, but there was a small gap between the pair, which was a bit wider at their feet, maybe sixty centimeters.
She reached them without incident, and stood stock-still, calming her breathing, marveling at how she was less than a meter from two men who would kill her without hesitation if they knew she was present.
One of the Nietzscheans shifted, moving his rifle. Its butt stopped millimeters from Rika’s left eye.
Rika drew a long, slow breath, forcing herself to relax, glad that the stealth armor masked smack sounds—like the pounding of her heart.
She pulled herself further between the two men, carefully setting one foot next to the soldier on the left’s massive boot, then pushing herself forward, lifting her hips past the soldiers’ shins and then pivoting and setting her butt on the deck.
Pausing once again, she was about to pull through the rest of the way, when a soldier within the node rose from where he was sitting and walked toward the entrance
Dammit!
Rika quickly pulled her legs forward, tucking her knees into her chin, and then lifted them straight into the air. Placing her hands onto the floor next to her shoulders, Rika lifted herself into a handstand just as the soldier walked past.
“Corporal. I need out,” the Nietzschean—a lieutenant, Rika realized—said as he tapped one of the armored soldiers on the shoulder.
The man didn’t move, and Rika resisted the urge to groan.
Rika didn’t wait for Niki to finish speaking before she dropped her legs, her calves hitting the lieutenant’s shoulders, and locked her ankles in front of his face.
He didn’t even have time to cry out before she twisted s
avagely and broke his neck. Then, very carefully, she pulled him backward, out of view, before lowering his body to the deck.
She pulled the dead Nietzschean into one of the corners and walked around the node chamber, which was a ten-meter cube encircling several NSAI nodes. She came to the back of the nodes and smiled to see the tall titanium SAI column.
She touched her wrist, and a port opened, revealing a hard-Link cable. Rika spooled it out and connected it to a port on the side of the column.
KICKING ASS IN OUTER SPACE
STELLAR DATE: 09.20.8949 (Adjusted Years)
LOCATION: Fury Lance
REGION: Ursa Station, Sepe System (Independent)
Potter announced, as the Fury Lance boosted away from Ursa Station.
“Lay into the others,” Heather ordered before turning to Ona. “Do you have the channel open?”
“Yes, ma’am, you’re tapped into the Seppies’ emergency broadcast system.”
Heather rose and cast Alice a sidelong glance. Technically, the lieutenant colonel should be giving this address, but Alice hadn’t spoken since they pulled away from the station.
Heather snorted.
Heather squared her shoulders and nodded to Ona, who gave her a thumbs-up.
“Sepe System, this is Captain Heather of the Marauders, aboard the Fury Lance. We’ve recently come from the Albany System in Thebes, where the Nietzscheans got their asses kicked for the second time by the Central Allies. Of the seventy thousand Nietzschean scumbag ships that tried to crush Albany, the scattered few you have here are all that remains.”
