Rikas Marauders
Page 110
The sergeant unslung a weapon, but he was too slow. Leslie was already at his side, clawed fingers stabbing through a weak point in his armor where his pauldron met his chest plate.
He cried out, but still had the presence of mind—and ample strength—to swing his rifle at Leslie’s head.
She’d been ready for a counterattack, and blocked the blow with her right arm, while drawing her lightwand and slamming the blade into his neck.
It tore right through his light armor and jutted out the other side.
She took a step back and watched the large soldier crumple, before the sound of footfalls coming from around the corner sent her running further aft in the ship.
* * * * *
“We’ve got her cornered on the aft end of Deck 7, sir. She might have made it down to Deck 8, but we have it cordoned off as well,” Sofia reported as Admiral Gideon strode onto the bridge.
“She?” Gideon asked, scowling at the display showing the bloody mess on the port side of Deck 9.
Sofia flicked a finger, and the holodisplay shifted to show a woman in black armor, half-covered in blood, sprinting through a passageway on the ship.
“Is that a tail?” Gideon asked.
“Yes. This is the woman who breached the MacWood Building with Colonel Rika. I can only assume that she was in one of the mechs that pursued us down the maglev line.”
“Tenacious bitch,” Gideon muttered. “I want her dead; we have enough trouble going on. Vent the entire aft half of the ship if you have to.”
“She’s in armor,” General Decoteau joined in the conversation from where he sat at the back of the bridge. “Vacuum may do her no harm.”
“Kill grav too, then,” Gideon said with a sweep of his hand. “Whatever can disadvantage her.”
“I advise against that,” Sofia said, her voice deferential and cautious. “It’s entirely possible that she’s more adept in those conditions than our own soldiers.”
“I don’t care about our soldiers,” Gideon shot back. “It will disadvantage her. One shot in the right place, and she sucks vacuum and dies. The same is true for our troops, but we have over fifty of them.”
“Forty-eight,” Decoteau said, both his tone and his posture shouting that he was entirely disinterested in the situation. “But who’s counting.”
Gideon was about to lay into the general, but saw that the pair of ensigns manning the bridge consoles were staring at the exchange with wide eyes.
“Attend to your duties,” Gideon thundered before pointing at Decoteau. “You. In my office. Now!”
The general rose, his posture still one of insolence, and sauntered off the bridge and into the passageway.
Gideon’s office was the first on the left, and Decoteau ambled in, the admiral storming after him, slamming the door once they were both inside.
“What the fuck is your deal, General?” Gideon demanded as Decoteau sat in one of the plas chairs next to the desk.
“My deal?” the general coughed out a laugh. “Well, I took a bullet today; that was fun. So I’m basically just waiting to die at this point.”
Gideon frowned. “From the shot? You’re already patched up. You’ll be fine.”
Decoteau’s expression darkened, and he rose to face Gideon. “No, no I won’t be fine. You saw what these Marauders can do; they dropped a company to take a planet. A planet, Admiral. And two of them—fucking skinny-assed women, at that—killed their way through our HQ, and almost took us out, too.”
“Almost,” Gideon shot back.
“Well yeah, we survived. But you seem hell-bent on giving them as many fucking chances as you can. You should have killed that mech colonel—or left her behind. That might have slowed them down. Now she’s on our ship, and so is one of her friends. They killed hundreds of our soldiers already. Do you really think that the fuckheads on this ship—lazy assholes who’ve never seen combat in their lives—will stand up to one of them?”
“Watch it, Decoteau. Don’t forget who you’re talking to.”
The general leant back in his chair and looked Gideon up and down. “From where I stand, it’s a dead man walking. Only way we make it out of this is if we kill the mech, set the reactor to blow, and get on a shuttle. Any other scenario sees us dead within half a day.”
Gideon couldn’t believe what Decoteau was saying. The general wasn’t the brightest, or most ambitious of men, but he had never seemed so…pathetic before.
“You’re a fucking coward!” the admiral screamed. “I’ll have you court-martialed!”
“You?” Decoteau snorted. “You’ll be dead. You’re not having anyone court-martialed.”
Gideon ground his teeth together as his vision turned red. He took a step back, snatched his sidearm from its holster, and pointed it at the general’s head. The man’s eyes grew wide, then he slowly rose from his chair, the two men standing still for a moment, staring at one another in silence.
Suddenly Decoteau lunged for Gideon, and the admiral squeezed the trigger three times. After the general’s body fell, he emptied the magazine into the former officer’s head, turning it into a bloody pulp, smeared across the deck.
PURSUIT
STELLAR DATE: 10.13.8949 (Adjusted Years)
LOCATION: Karl’s Might on outsystem vector
REGION: Blue Ridge System, Old Genevia, Nietzschean Empire
“You sure we’re headed to the right jump point?” Jenisa asked while frowning at the navigation console. “The rest of the fleet is breaking up. Heading for these other three jump points.”
“Smoke screen,” Lieutenant Colonel Alice replied, her tone nonchalant. “We don’t want to spook the Niets. If they think we’re not hot on their tail, they’ll let their guard down. Half the civilian ships in the system are headed for jump points right now. We’re just blending in with the pack.”
“Why not just come after them with the Lance, and crush them?” Fred asked. “I don’t care what the Niets have, if they stay stealthed, the Lance can catch them, no problem.”
Alice turned in the commander’s seat to glare at Fred, who sat at the weapons console. “And what if they break stealth and do a hard burn for the jump point? Yes, the Fury Lance is fast, but we know there are plenty of corvettes and destroyers that are faster. You wanna lose Colonel Rika?”
Fred’s cheeks reddened as he shook his head. “No, Colonel.”
Alison gave the lieutenant colonel a sidelong look.
Fred’s laugh filled her mind.
* * * * *
Alison and her mechs crewed the bridge in two-person shifts, staying well-rested and alternating between card games and training sims, in which they practiced infil and takedown ops on ship-types similar to what Rika’s captors were flying—or what Alison suspected they were flying.
All the while, Alice stayed on the bridge, excepting short san breaks. Alison had kept tabs on the lieutenant colonel, and so far as she could tell, the woman hadn’t slept in the forty hours since they’d lifted off from Memphis’s spaceport.
Under her direction, the Karl’s Might continued to boost at the maximum velocity possible while maintaining the ship’s stealth systems. The fact that the ship had stealth systems capable of functioning
effectively under heavy boost was impressive in and of itself.
Though the Karl’s Might was registered as a civilian craft belonging to Karl’s Shipping and Trade, the mechs were certain that it was really a smuggler’s ship, possibly even a pirate ship. Whenever they weren’t on duty—or playing Snark—the mechs were scouring the ship, trying to find evidence of what the Might was really used for.
There was quite the pool for whoever found concrete proof of either option.
Fred and Kor were both of the opinion that it was just a smuggler’s ship, or perhaps a mostly legitimate courier vessel that sometimes hopped into systems that were less than friendly. Randy was on the fence, and had wanted to put fifty percent of his credit on either outcome, but Jenisa had scoffed at him, asking what the point of a bet like that was. In the end, he put in for smuggler.
Certain that the ship was a pirate craft, Jenisa had spent half her time tracing power conduits, trying to find where the hidden guns were located. Alison had recently discovered that the woman had pulled half the panels off the bulkheads in the lower decks, and made her put them all back on.
The last thing they all needed was Colonel Alice going on a rampage.
No matter what the outcome of the mechs’ hunt for the ship’s true purpose, Alison was certain of one thing: Karl was likely pissed that his ship had been taken by the Marauders.
The system’s public feeds were running rampant with speculation over what was really going on. Some people thought that the Marauders were just pirates, while others were hailing them as saviors, come to lift the Nietzschean boot from their necks.
There was worry about trade, and the damage to Memphis, Asmoian Station, and the locations that Third and Fourth Platoons had hit.
The strangest news of all was that Vargo Klen was functioning as the system’s governor pro-tem until the locals sorted themselves out.
Jenisa had laughed for a solid ten minutes when they got that news.
During that time, she’d managed to wheeze out seven words: “Captain Chase is off his fucking gourd.”
Kor had commented that he had no idea what a gourd was, but he agreed that Chase was off something. Fred, however, had nodded sagely, saying that Klen had prior experience with system administration, but wouldn’t elaborate, saying it was Klen’s story to tell.
Despite the fact that the mechs were making the best of the situation they’d found themselves in, Alison worried about what they’d do if the ship they were pursuing jumped to a heavily populated Nietzschean system, deeper in the empire. The mechs were all too willing to breach an enemy ship, but they were less enthusiastic about assaulting an entire system—at least, with Alice at the helm.
“Any updates?” Alison asked as she entered the bridge and settled into the navigation station’s low seat—too low for a mech to sit comfortably.
“Yeah, I picked up their shadow a few minutes ago,” Alice said, gesturing to the bridge’s secondary holodisplay, which showed a corvette class vessel very similar to the Karl’s Might.
Alison plotted its route and shook her head. “They’re going for this jump point, all right, but we’re five hours behind. Even if we pour on full thrust, we won’t catch them before they make the jump.”
“I know,” Alice said, scowling at the display. “We’ll have to follow through. I sent a tightbeam to Chase; he’s going to shift course as soon as the Niets leap out—we don’t want them to know we’re onto them.”
Alison glanced over her shoulder at the lieutenant colonel. “Where could they be going, Colonel? There aren’t a lot of systems in this direction…not for fifty light years. And then we’ll be on the far edge of old Genevia…just a dozen light years from where the border with Nietzschea used to be.”
Alice nodded. “Yeah, their trajectory is almost directly aligned with the Iberia System. Last time I was through there, it wasn’t anything special, but maybe the Niets have a sector HQ out there or something. Either way, they’re not going to get Rika.”
Alison gave a resolute nod, but didn’t feel nearly as certain as the gesture made her seem.
Kor made a gagging sound.
Alison simultaneously felt marginally better, and exponentially worse. Either this was the smartest thing she’d done all week, or the dumbest in years.
Probably both.
THE JUMP
STELLAR DATE: 10.14.8949 (Adjusted Years)
LOCATION: MSS Fury Lance on outsystem vector
REGION: Blue Ridge System, Old Genevia, Nietzschean Empire
“Sir!” Chief Garth called out from the scan console, twisting in his seat to catch Chase’s eye. “I spotted a ghost! Three and a half light seconds from the jump point ahead.”
Chase turned from where he’d been standing at the main holotank, contemplating his options and considering whether or not he should send a message back to Thebes for help.
“A ghost?”
“Just for a moment. It looked like a strange heat bloom, and some ionized gas. Best guess? A ship venting atmosphere. It could have mixed with the engine’s plasma, and fouled their stealth systems for a moment or two.”
Chase glanced at the Fury Lance’s position. They were fourteen light seconds from the jump point. Too far to catch an enemy vessel before it would be able to transition to the dark layer.
“Chief Ona,” Captain Heather said, rising from her chair. “Shift us off our current vector a degree starboard, and cease thrust.”
“Heather?” Chase asked, glancing at the captain as she approached.
“We don’t have enough data to gauge their trajectory, and if we fly through that cloud of gas, we’ll lose any chance of carefully examining it. We need to slow up and send out probes. They can gather more data, and we can build up a model of exactly where the ship that vented atmo was headed.”
Chase hated the idea of more delays, but he knew that a blind jump outsystem wasn’t a viable option. They needed to know precisely where the Nietzschean ship was headed, then they could see if it lined up with a system.
Then they would have a target.
“Good thinking, Smalls,” he acknowledged.
“I know, right? I’m not just all beauty and great aim with a GNR. Some brains up here, too.”
Chase snorted and turned back to the holo. “Wherever that ship is headed, it has to be our Nietzscheans. Ferris hasn’t found any signs at Tellus Station that their brass fled there. The Republic and Capital haven’t spotted bupkis, either.”
“Bupkis?” Heather asked. “That a technical term?”
“Yeah, means we’ve only got one lead, and it’s weak as all get-out.”
“It shouldn’t take too long to get probe data,” Heather said. “Once we get it, we can boost hard to the point, and jump. Our other ships can catch up afterward.”
Chase nodded and settled back into waiting. He tried to be patient, but worry constantly gnawed at his gut. Fear t
hat Rika would end up in some interrogation chamber on the far side of Nietzschea, and he’d never find her. He knew that the longer the pursuit dragged on, the less likely he was to ever see her again. This wasn’t like when she’d been sold at auction. The Niets didn’t want to use her because she was a mech; they’d extract what they wanted, and then kill her because of what she was.
Twenty minutes later, the probes had reached the slowly dispersing cloud of ionized gas. Data fed back to the ship, and Potter used the Fury Lance’s tactical systems to build up a model of the gas’s motion and origin point.
As the Nietzschean vessel’s flight path came up, Chase frowned.
Potter assured him.
“Dammit,” Chase muttered. “That—”
“Sir?” Chief Ona said from her station. “I might have something.”
“I’ll take anything right now,” he admitted.
“Well, I have a copy of some old charts that General Mill kept of Genevian space—he shared them with all the ships’ pilots. They have a bit more detail than what are in the Lance’s astrogation systems.”
“Aaaaand?” Heather asked.
“Well, it’s not much, but there’s a marker seven light years from here that’s on our ghost ship’s vector. It’s a Q9.”
“Q9?” Chase asked.
“Large mass rogue planet,” Heather supplied. “Just a cold ball of gas, drifting in the interstellar darkness.