by M. D. Cooper
Niki said after a moment.
Niki set a twenty-seven-second countdown on Rika’s HUD. When it hit zero, Rika stretched her arms and legs out, shredding the back of the net. She was on her feet a second later, net hanging from her GNR’s ammo feeder, fingers digging in between the door and its frame.
The lock snicked, and Rika wrenched the door open, flinging the net at the closest of the four guards, and kicking him in the gut as he stumbled backward. Across the narrow passage, a sharp-witted woman raised her rifle, but Rika’s lightwand was already out, and she slashed the weapon in half, cutting through the power supply in the process.
The energy cell exploded, knocking the woman back against the bulkhead.
One of the two remaining guards had brought his rifle to bear, and fired a pulse blast at Rika that she easily shrugged off before slamming her barrelless GNR into the woman’s head, smashing her faceshield.
The staccato beat of projectile rounds struck Rika in the back. She’d seen the soldier behind her taking aim, but knew her armor could withstand a few shots.
He only got seven off before she pivoted and tore the rifle from his grasp with one of her clawed feet. She continued to spin around, slamming the rifle into the woman with the smashed faceshield, then completed the rotation to bring the weapon all the way back to its original owner, driving the gunstock into his neck so hard that the weapon crumpled, bending around the soldier’s shoulders.
He went down in a shrieking lump, and Rika kicked him in the head to silence his wailing.
By that point, the first guard had gotten free of the net, only to have Rika’s hand clamp down on his head. She lifted him off his feet, and hurled him down the corridor into the fleeing back of the woman whose weapon had exploded.
Moments later, Rika was upon them. She dispatched the man before kneeling atop the woman, lightwand held close enough to her faceshield that tendrils of electricity arced from the electron beam to the woman’s armor.
“Where are my guns?” Rika demanded.
“Wha-what?”
“My GNR’s barrel and my rifle. Stuff that goes ‘pew pew’. Where. Are. They.”
The woman’s hand rose, pointing the other way down the corridor. “First left, second door on the right.”
“Take your helmet off,” Rika growled.
“What—”
“I don’t have time, you Nietzschean asswipe. Take it off, or I rip it off. Trust me, you won’t like that.”
The woman’s trembling hand rose to her helmet, and she gave it a sharp twist, lifting it off.
Beneath the black visor was a woman who still had the freshness of youth about her. Rika imagined the girl wasn’t much over twenty years old. Her blonde hair was shorn close to her head, and her green eyes were wide with fear.
Rika lifted her hand to strike the woman on the side of the head, but she paused, staring down at the girl who was the same age she’d been when the GAF conscripted her.
In that moment, a weapon discharged, and Rika felt rounds ricochete off her armor. She glanced down to see the Niet holding her sidearm against Rika’s torso.
“Stupid,” she muttered, and brought her hand down into the woman’s temple. Not hard enough to kill, but hard enough to make the woman wish she’d never enlisted.
Then she turned and ran down the corridor in the direction the woman had indicated, hoping she hadn’t been played.
Niki said in a quiet voice.
Reaching the prescribed door, Rika kicked it in to reveal a small armory and a very surprised looking Nietzschean in his service uniform.
“I’m here for what’s mine,” she growled.
The man hesitated, glancing at a nearby rifle.
Rika took a step closer, not having to manufacture any menace in her voice as she said, “You even think twice about trying it, and I’ll pull your tongue out your asshole.”
The Nietzschean swallowed nervously and pointed to a bench across the small room, where Rika’s GNR barrel and AC9CR lay. “I’ll get them,” he whispered hoarsely. “Don’t do anything like that, please.”
“Chop chop, buddy.”
<‘Someone’?>
* * * * *
Leslie fired a series of pulse blasts down the corridor with a pistol, while swapping a magazine on a projectile rifle she’d taken off a dead Nietzschean.
She wasn’t certain how many of the enemy she’d taken out yet, but it had to be at least fifteen—though three of that number were iffy. If the ship had a good med suite, they might be back in the fight before long.
Her probes alerted her to movement on the other end of the corridor, and she lifted the rifle, firing on a Nietzschean who was crossing an intersection aft of her position to get a better angle on her.
Fuckers are going to totally flank me!
She lobbed the last of the pulse grenades she’d lifted off a dead Niet down the fore end of the corridor, and turned to run aft, glad to have reached a section of the ship that was aired up.
Just an hour earlier, the Niets had vented half the ship, and killed the a-grav systems. Leslie didn’t mind either one of those situations—she was better in zero-g than the enemy soldiers—but half her pilfered arsenal was made up of pulse weapons, and they didn’t work in vacuum.
She reached the intersection that the enemy soldier had rushed across seconds earlier, and turned the corner, ducking low and catching him in the legs as he leant around the cover to fire on her.
The impact bowled him over, and Leslie slashed at his faceshield with her lightwand, cutting through the dense plas, and into his jaw.
A warbling shriek came from the Nietzschean, but it was cut off as Leslie twisted the blade and drove it up into his brain.
Stars, I’m never going anywhere without one of these ever again.
Shots streaked over her head, and then a searing pain erupted in her shoulder.
Leslie’s three-sixty vision highlighted a pair of drones swinging around the corner twenty meters forward of where she crouched. They were large, meant for ground operations, and were having trouble staying stable in the narrow confines of the passage, but that wasn’t stopping them from firing on her.
She took off running, and another round pierced her below the ribs on her right side, causing her to stumble and nearly fall.
Keep going, Leslie. You’ve made it this long; a Nietzschean drone’s not going to be the end of you!
She reached the end of the corridor and turned left, toward the entrance to the engineering bay. Before she even reached it, she could see the door glowing hot on her IR overlay, and she realized that it must have been welded shut.
“Fuck!” she swore, knowing that there was nowhere left for her to run.
One of the drones came around the corner, and she spun, unloading a magazine of projectile rounds on the thing and knocking it out of commission.
“You may take me out,” Leslie screamed down the passageway. “But you’re going to have to do it yourmotherfuckingselves!”
&nbs
p; A Nietzschean soldier in heavy armor rounded the corner, a chaingun leveled at her.
“You want it up close and personal? You got it,” he growled.
A flash of abject terror came over Leslie. I’m gonna die!
She drew from unknown reserves, and forced the fear down, a feeling of sorrow-tinged peace taking over.
I tried, Rika.
She squared her shoulders, and threw her head back. “Go on, then, asshat” she swore at the Nietzschean, determined not to let him hear the sadness she felt. “I’m not going to fuck you first.”
The Nietzschean chuckled as the chaingun spun up.
I won’t close my eyes. I won’t…plus I can’t…stupid helmet, Leslie thought with a manic laugh as she stared down the weapon that would be her demise—only to see it explode as a white-hot flash tore through the chaingun. The remains of the weapon were wrenched from the soldier’s grasp and slammed into the thick bulkhead that divided the engineering section from the rest of the ship.
“What the?” Leslie whispered.
A boom sounded—one must have accompanied the first shot as well, but she hadn’t heard it—and the Nietzschean’s head ceased to exist.
There was only one weapon she knew of that made a sound quite liked like that: an SMI’s GNR.
Seconds later, Rika raced around the corner, stopping atop the fallen body of the Nietzschean.
“Stars, Leslie, are you OK? You’re covered in blood!”
Leslie stood mute for a moment, gasping for breath, until she finally managed to say, “It’s not mine…well, most of it isn’t, at least.”
Rika glanced back the way she’d come. “Looks like engineering is sealed up. We need to get to the bridge.”
Leslie looked at her commander, the woman who just couldn’t be stopped, and began to laugh, feeling tears stream down her cheeks.
“What’s so funny?”
“You…Do you…” Leslie managed to gasp before gaining a modicum of control. “Do you realize that every time I try to rescue you, you rescue me instead?”
Rika shrugged. “Not my fault you’re the perennial damsel in distress, Leslie. We all have our part to play.”
“Damsel!” Leslie growled as she approached Rika. “I’ll show you a damsel. Let’s go kill some Niets.”
* * * * *
“Gotta love your gumption.” Rika was about to slap Leslie on the shoulder as the woman approached, when she saw the biofoam filling a wound there. “Damn, how many places are you hit?”
“Ummm…four that breached armor,” Leslie counted, glancing down at herself.
Rika snorted as she turned back the way she’d come.
Leslie put her tally on their combat net.
Leslie jerked a thumb over her shoulder.
Niki reported.
It was a hard slog through the ship. The Niets threw everything they had at the two Marauders, eventually venting atmosphere and killing the a-grav across the entire ship. Rika was surprised they’d made such a silly mistake; a mech was just as at home in zero-g as full gravity, and Leslie moved like a ballet dancer, floating through the passageways and holing everything in sight.
Thirty minutes later, they had reached the final ten-meter corridor that ran to the bridge. Executive offices lined the sides, and the last nine enemy soldiers had taken up positions in them, desperately trying to hold off the two Marauders’ unrelenting assault.
Leslie had picked up a chaingun a deck down and was spraying rounds into the corridor with wild abandon, the barrage tearing through the bulkheads and into the rooms beyond.
Niki laughed.
Rika interjected, firing a round from her GNR when her nanoprobes pinpointed another Niet’s location within the offices.
There was a reason people flew out to jump points before transitioning to the dark layer. She used to think it was just the risk of hitting dark matter, but after Tanis had told her about the Exdali, she had a whole new reason to fear insystem jumps.
Rika cleared the room, finishing off a wounded Niet when he raised his weapon to fire on her, and then took up a position to cover Leslie as she moved to the next office.
After Rika’s shot, Leslie swung into the room and unloaded a kinetic scattershot gun into the space, pumping out four rounds before reappearing in the entrance.
Leslie made a hissing sound at the AI, who laughed in response. Then she fired into the final room after Rika had kicked the door open.
Rika said as she walked to the bridge’s door.
Niki informed the duo.
