Rikas Marauders
Page 97
Niki laughed.
Moments later, a sound reached Rika’s ears, and the realization that she had a body—and that it was in a rather vulnerable physical location—flooded back into her mind.
She opened her eyes and pulled feeds from her drones. Two lightly armored Niets were trying to get past the locked-up guards at the node-chamber’s entrance.
Rika was surprised Niki hadn’t noticed. Perhaps the AI had been too focused on running the station’s defensive emplacements.
PUPPETS
STELLAR DATE: 09.20.8949 (Adjusted Years)
LOCATION: SAI Node Chamber 1A
REGION: Ursa Station, Sepe System (Independent)
Rika clenched her jaw as she slipped her consciousness into the armor of the Nietzschean soldier on the right side of the node chamber’s entrance. She felt out his weapons systems, the powered limb controls, the sensors, and optics.
Crude, even compared to my Genevian mech systems. And feels like it may as well be made of stone, compared to the ISF’s tech.
She shifted her vision to the feeds from the armor, and saw that in front of her stood two Nietzschean soldiers, both in light armor. They were yelling at the frozen figures, trying to get them to move and allow access into the node chamber.
“The fuck is wrong with you?” one of the Niets was screaming while pushing at the soldier Rika had taken control of.
She was tangentially aware of the fact that the man trapped inside the armor was freaking out. He was desperately trying to move the armor, to reach out on comms, or to get it to open up and release him.
Rika felt a small pang of compassion, and triggered the armor’s sedation systems. She informed it that the soldier was grievously wounded and needed to be put into a medical coma.
The armor obliged, and a few seconds later, the man inside was out cold.
Not wasting any more time, Rika lifted the railgun her auxiliary body was holding, and fired it on the closest enemy—the yelling man—and cut his body in half. Then she fired on the other Niet, killing him without a second thought.
Half the soldiers in the adjacent corridors had been watching the events at the entrance to the node chamber unfold, and within seconds, they were firing on Rika. Though her soldier had the heaviest armor of any deployed nearby, the odds said that the Niets would cut him down before long.
She considered the other locked-up soldier in the entrance.
In for a chit, in for a credit, she thought, and reached into his armor, as well.
It felt like she was splitting her mind in half, and the first soldier faltered for a moment, taking a beam round from a Niet down the passage to the right. She recovered and sprayed HE rounds from her chaingun in that direction.
OK, Rika, just like you have two arms. Right and left. Their limbs are your fingers. You can do this.
She dispatched a message to a group of Nietzschean ships, ordering them to take up a position further from Ursa Station. It wouldn’t make any sense yet, but when the Seppies got her new messages, it would look like the Niets were going to attack them.
While ensuring the ships followed her orders—appearing to come from Admiral Fels, on the station—she moved her puppet soldiers forward, allowing Irek to close the node chamber’s door behind them.
She unleashed the full fury of the Nietzscheans’ weaponry on the enemies, praying it would be enough to hold them at bay until the Marauders’ work was done.
One of her soldiers took a shot in the leg that blew out the armor’s knee actuators, and then the other’s railgun took a hit that bent the barrel.
Dammit, forgot about them. Talk about being distracted, Rika thought to herself before replying to Irek.
Niki’s tone was laden with awe, and Rika wondered if what she was doing was unusual for someone with her neural structure.
Finaeus had explained that while L1 and L2 humans had more neurons and greater interconnectivity in their brains than L0s, their strengths and weaknesses still manifested in different areas—just like with normal humans. Not everyone gained every skill imaginable; they usually just got better at what they already excelled at.
Rika flipped her focus back to the two soldiers she was almost absently controlling. With Irek’s atmospheric venting, the fire coming their way had diminished. She moved them to more defensible positions and prayed they’d hold up until the cavalry arrived.
Outside the station, the battle was intensifying. The Marauders had successfully taken control of forty-two Nietzschean ships. Niki, Potter, and Dredge were assisting in piloting those vessels, taking vectors from Rika as she coordinated the fleet action.
This is fun, Rika thought as she directed five destroyers to fire on one of the larger Nietzschean-controlled cruisers, breaching its shields before the Lance sent a pair of missiles into its engines.
As a result of the Marauders’ successes, the battlespace was becoming crowded with debris, and Irek’s firing solutions from the station’s weapons were becoming limited.
She divided her ships into four groups, one anchored by the Fury Lance, and the othe
rs by the Republic and the Undaunted. The fourth would move toward the Peerless—just as soon as Chase and Alison got full control of the thing.
All four groups moved away from the station and toward the second wave of Nietzschean vessels. The numbers were stacked three to one against them, but with the disarray she was sowing in the enemy ranks, she gauged the odds to be better than even.
In a straight-up slug-fest, the Marauders would win, but she’d lose half her ships, along with the mechs aboard them. What Rika really needed was for Chase to get control of the Admiral’s dreadnought so she could pull the Seppies into the fight—on the right side, she hoped.
* * * * *
Fireteam one-four was pinned down in a broad corridor by a group of Nietzscheans, set up behind more of their grav shields. The defensive fields were more than enough to stop the mechs’ dwindling supply of ammunition and energy charges.
To make things worse, the enemy had figured out that if they lit the concourse up with high-intensity targeting lasers, they could spot the stealthed mechs.
Which had led to their current dilemma.
Between the five of them, they had six grenades left. Chase considered lobbing them over the shields, but it was a gamble. If Alison could just hit the generators from behind, this would be a done deal.
Two seconds later, rail shots and a pair of DPU sabot rounds came from behind the Nietzschean emplacement. The weapons fire tore through the enemy and hit the shield generators.
Fred signaled his fireteam to advance, while Alison’s team kept the enemy pinned from behind. Ten seconds later, there were only three Niets left, all of whom stood up and tossed their weapons aside, signaling their surrender.
Alison signaled her acknowledgement.
Rika didn’t reply for a moment.
Chase rose to his feet, surveying the surrounding area, making sure no downed enemies were faking.
Rika laughed.
A laugh came back from Rika.
<‘Cause that’s not creepy at all.>
Chase reached a lift bank and saw that the cars were offline. As he prised open the doors, he sent back a lascivious smirk.
Rika laughed, her touch feeling light once more.
Chase swung out onto the ladder embedded in the wall of the lift shaft and began climbing.
* * * * *
Rika was starting to feel like her mind was being pulled in a thousand directions. A throbbing pain was beginning to pick up behind her eyes, its companion setting up shop at the base of her skull.
She rolled her shoulders and looked around the node chamber. It was strange to think that there were three people in the room—minus the dead Nietzschean in the corner—but she couldn’t see the other two.
Not unless she closed her eyes.
When she did, Rika could see the matrices of thought that were Niki and Irek. She marveled at them for a moment before pushing her focus back out to the fight, just on the other side of the node chamber’s door.
The first of her puppets was down, both legs shot off, though his armor was sealing his wounds. She considered getting his remaining weapon into a firing position, but that would just earn him a quick death, and she felt a little guilty for what she’d done—even though the Nietzschean would have killed her in a heartbeat, if he’d had the opportunity to do so.
The team of Marauders led by CJ had linked up with the Kellies, and were close to the node chamber, but Rika gauged that they were still five minutes out at best. Meanwhile, the Nietzscheans in the corridors outside had been reinforced by a second platoon, and her other unwilling defender had thirty seconds of ammo and charge left.
A thousand options rolled through Rika’s mind; ways to rush the Niets, defend the chamber, stall their advance. She shared them with Niki in an instant, and they both agreed that none would work.
Rika opened her eyes and pulled her right pinky finger from the NSAI node, then disconnected her hard-Link cable from Irek’s titanium tower.
Instantaneous, mind-searing pain crushed Rika, as her mind slammed back into her body. She looked through bleary eyes at the SAI column and saw that Irek had complied with her order. Rika reached inside the titanium pillar and pulled out his cylinder, cradling it to her chest as she triggered her MK99 skin’s stealth mode. After taking a moment to steady herself, Rika began to climb up the stack of NSAI nodes.
Below them, hammer blows sounded against the node chamber’s doors, and Rika prayed that the enemy would be in such a rush that they wouldn’t perform a physical sweep of the chamber once they inevitably breached it.
Her headache intensified, her heartbeat pounded in her ears, but Rika did her
best to ignore both while she checked to see if any of the nodes had hard-Link ports within reach. She didn’t spot any on the top, and leant out over the edge, looking for a place to jack in.
Just as the Nietzscheans began cutting through the door, she saw a port and spooled out her hard-Link cable, jacking into the node. The cable was in plain view of the doors, but she hoped none of the enemies would think anything of it in a room already filled with them.
She rolled onto her back and extended the hard-Link port on her pinky finger once more. She drew a deep breath, and slotted Irek’s core in.
Though it had felt like minutes, Rika realized that they’d only been disconnected for forty-seven seconds. Little had changed in the battlespace; the Fury Lance was still holding its own, but the Republic had lost propulsion. She hoped Travis would signal for evac.
Then Rika realized she could check for herself, and was relieved to see that he was getting his command team onto an assault pinnace.
OK, she thought, tangentially aware that she could pick up on some of Irek and Niki’s multi-layered conversation, as their data flowed through her. Just need you to get to that node, Alison. Then we can finish this.
Rika’s headache was intensifying, and a warning on her HUD alerted her to extreme levels of swelling in her brain. If she didn’t decrease her mental activity soon, it would begin to hemorrhage…or maybe it already had.
As if Rika had willed it, Alison’s voice came into her mind, the woman’s excited tones a stark juxtaposition to Rika’s current state.
Rika paused.
For a moment, Rika thought Alison would resist her. Letting someone proxy through your hard-Link was a risky thing. They gained high levels of access to your internal mods—even your mind, if you weren’t properly buffered.