by M. D. Cooper
Chase pursed his lips. “Some sort of black site?”
“Heather, get us on course for that Q9. Inform the fleet that they’re to follow us immediately. That’s our target.”
“You got it, Captain Chase. I’ll coordinate a rally point on the other side,” Heather replied. “Will you go get some sleep now? You’ve been pacing across my bridge for two days.”
Chase grimaced, but nodded. “Yeah, I should be rested for when we kick those Nietzschean asses clear across the galaxy.”
“That’s the spirit,” Heather said with a laugh.
At the door leading off the bridge, Chase paused to look back at the holodisplay just as Garth half jumped out of his chair. “I got them!”
“Them?” Chase asked, striding back onto the bridge.
“Uh, sorry, sir. Alice and Alison. Well, Alison at least; she sent a message via a relay drone.”
“This better be good,” Chase muttered. “Put it up.”
Garth nodded, and Alison’s voice came over the bridge’s audible systems.
“Yeah, yeah, I know. Shut up, Kor. Shit! It’s recording already? Why didn’t you—nevermind. Captain Chase, this is Sergeant Alison. Lieutenant Colonel Alice pulled us onto this mission saying she has intel on where Colonel Rika is, but she’s being mighty tightlipped. It smells to us, but not so much that we’re ready to mutiny over it. If you know all about this, then hopefully you won’t be too pissed. But if you don’t, we’re going to the Iberia System. One hell of a jump, so we’ll be playing a lot of Snark. Alice says that you’re all going to follow after once the Niets jump out. So, given that we’re jumping into the lion’s den, here, I really hope that’s the case. A burst is following with our coordinates, vector, and route. Hope we see you on the other side. Sergeant Alison out.”
“Aw, shit,” Chase muttered, rubbing a hand against his face, forgetting that it was a mech hand, and stopping before he scratched his forehead.
“Borden is still on their tail,” Ona said. “He’s twenty light minutes behind, though.”
Chase sighed, nodding slowly. “Doesn’t feel right to send the ISF after them and not mechs.”
A hand touched his shoulder, and he turned to see Heather’s serious eyes. “Borden’s the best of the best. You’ve seen the ISF in action—good as mechs. He’ll bring them back.”
“Pass him Alison’s intel. Tell him to bring them back here. This is where we’ll regroup.”
Heather gave Chase a light push. “We know how to do our jobs. Go, get food, sleep. Come back when you smell better.”
A laugh slipped past Chase’s lips. “I’m a mech, I don’t smell.”
“Mech yeah, but you opted for real skin on your noggin.” Heather leant closer and sniffed his hair. “Go wash it.”
Chase shook his head, and walked to the bridge’s exit. “OK, I can take the hint. Let me know if anything changes.”
“Go already!” Heather said, rolling her eyes.
CHORES
STELLAR DATE: 10.14.8949 (Adjusted Years)
LOCATION: MSS Asora, in orbit of Kansas
REGION: Blue Ridge System, Old Genevia, Nietzschean Empire
“Do what you can, Abs,” Vargo said from where he stood on the bridge of the Asora. “I’ll try to keep piracy at bay while you keep the populace from panicking.”
Abs folded her arms and glared at Vargo, two of the mechs in her squad visible behind her in the Memphis spaceport’s CIC. “Easy for you to say from up there, Klen. Normally, I’d say a squad of mechs are enough for any task, but I’ve got a whole planet of people down here, and at least ten thousand Nietzschean soldiers still holed up here and there. Shit’s a bit nuts.”
“Soon as we complete our next orbit, we’ll lob shots at that bunker Musel’s team found,” Vargo assured her. “Make sure they stay clear; we’re gonna nuke it, to save our kinetics for more surgical strikes.”
“What about this senator who’s shown up, demanding to be put in charge?” Abs asked, a look of worry on her face. “I can shoot Niets all day, but politicians scare the fuck out of me.”
Vargo coughed out a laugh. “Not what we thought we’d be doing on this mission, is it?”
“Fuck, no,” Abs groaned. “I hate sitting back here, babysitting, but these are our people, right? They’re the ones we’ve wanted to free from Nietzschea for the past decade. It’s just…”
“Just why are they all such a bunch of whining assholes?” Vargo completed the sergeant’s statement.
“Yeah…that’s the nice way of putting it. Thought we’d get more gratitude, less bitching,” Abs said, her voice dour.
“Don’t let the few complainers get you down,” Vargo replied. “People really do appreciate what we’ve done here—or, they will eventually.”
“I could do with ‘eventually’ showing up really soon.”
Someone yelled something behind Abs, and she rolled her eyes.
“So what about li’l Senator Naia?” she continued.
Vargo sighed and closed his eyes for a moment before responding. “Send her up here in a shuttle. Hopefully it’ll make her feel all important, and maybe I can talk some sense into her. What I really need Senator Naia to do—and Lieutenant Governor Wilcox, if we can get him out of hiding—is rally the people to support us, not pester us with inane requests. Getting all up in arms about every little thing that has peeved them off over the last decade is not helping.”
Abs snorted. “Well, good luck with that. Honestly, she’s not that bad, but she keeps trying to get involved in every local detail. Maybe once she’s up there with you, it will help her see the big picture. Oh, shit, I have a bunch of locals demanding that we round up Nietzschean sympathizers. I have to go.”
“Good luck with that, Sergeant. Vargo out.”
“Sounds like a blast down there, sir,” Chief Ashley said from the Asora’s weapons and comms station.
With the Marauders stretched thin, it was just the two of them on the bridge, while warrant officers Glen, Jakari, and Lexi were down in engineering. One thing was for certain: four people on a five-hundred-meter destroyer made the place feel all but deserted.
Glen asked.
A laugh came from Glen.
Glen laughed and closed the connection without responding.
“Fuuuuuck,” Vargo muttered as he leaned back in his chair.
“Glen?” Ashley asked.
Vargo made a strangled sound. “How’d you guess?”
“You have a special sigh for Glen.”
He gave a slow shake of his head. “I blame Rika for all this. A month ago, I was the one that was all cocksure, mouthing off to the mechs and officers, flying like a maniac. Now I’m the captain, all respectable? How’d that happen?”
Ashley giggled, and Vargo shot her a cold look.
“You giggling at me, Chief?”
“Pretty sure I’m tittering, Captain,” Ashley teased. “Besides, you got your wish; you’re a mech now. And not a shitty GAF mech, you’re an ISF-built 4th Gen.”
A smile lit Vargo’s face as he looked down at his hands, and he smiled. “Yes I am, Ashley. Granted, so are you now. And here we both are, up on this ship instead of down in the dirt,
kicking ass.”
Ashley gave a four-armed shrug. “We’ll get our chance soon enough. I’ve been doing drills with the old-timers to get ready.”
“How have you been doing?” he asked the chief, who had opted to become one of the new LHO models. “I remember you were wishing you’d not gone for the extra arms, at the outset.”
The chief lifted all four of her upper limbs in the air, and snapped her fingers in time. “I’m starting to get the hang of it. The ISF medtechs warned me that it would take a bit for my brain to adjust to the mods they made.” Ashley stopped and giggled again—a sound that Vargo found himself liking more and more each time he heard it—before continuing. “For a while, I kept getting my second set of arms and my legs mixed up. Had some embarrassing moments in the mess—once I tried to pick up a tray with my foot for a solid minute before I got it worked out.”
“I guess we all have our crosses to bear,” Vargo replied with a wink. “Shit, we’re coming back around. You ready to nuke some Nietzscheans?”
Ashley tossed Vargo a winning smile. “And you say we never get to have any fun!”
FAMILY
STELLAR DATE: 10.14.8949 (Adjusted Years)
LOCATION: NMSS Spine of the Stars nearing jump point
REGION: Blue Ridge System, Old Genevia, Nietzschean Empire
She laughed in Rika’s mind.
Rika let out a groan.
Rika thought back to all the time she’d spent in isolation as a mech.
Niki was silent for a minute.
The AI chuckled.
Rika’s statement was met by silence from the AI. Eventually, she asked,
A smile graced Rika’s lips, and the three-sixty view of the cell faded from around her, replaced with visions from the past.
Rika laughed at the memory.
‘I’m not your father. If you’re here, your father is dead. I’m not your mother; chances are she’s gone too. If you do have a mother and father—and you know where they are—you’d best get your sorry ass back to them before one of us kicks your ass for leaving family. But if you got no family out there, then you got family here. Us. This gang.
‘But keep one thing firmly in your scrawny, little heads: there are no parents here. I’m your brother. Means I’ll kick your ass if you’re being a dickhead, and I’ll probably make fun of you half the time, ‘cause that’s what brothers do. Ain’t that right, Jeb?’>
Rika chuckled before continuing, marveling at how clear the memory still was.
Rika thought back to her youth; the faint memory of her mother’s smile on a warm summer morning, and laughing as her father tickled her.
‘But anyone outside the family picks on you, beats you, hurts you…I’ll be the first out of the gate to take them down. And I’ll let you get some licks in on ‘em too. Teach you how to
stand up for yourself. Make you a fighter.’>
Niki laughed at that.
Rika chuckled, wondering where Bro and his gang were now. She’d been out raiding another gang on the station, and got scooped up by the feds a year after joining his troop. The Genevians took her planetside and stuck her in an orphanage in Tanner City. It wasn’t too much later when she got framed and turned over to the GAF for mechanization.
her team for a day when she pulled me behind a stack of ammo crates on some stars-forsaken moon we were protecting for reasons that still don’t make sense to me. She jammed a finger in my chest at least a dozen times while telling me that she wasn’t going to have any mopey whiners on Team Hammerfall. Told me that there was still a woman’s heart in my chest—that she’d seen enough of them shot out to be sure—and that she’d take care of me and my heart, but only if I proved to her that I was going to put in my share of effort in the job.>
There was one other thing that built her up and gave her strength, but Rika didn’t share the vision that Tanis had put in her mind, the image of the pillar of strength, standing on the bald prairie, holding out against the raging storms, and sheltering those around her. That was just for her. That was her last bastion of strength, if all others gave out.
