by M. D. Cooper
Even though Rika’s helmet blocked and filtered most of the sounds of combat, there was little it could do to dampen the concussive force of the rounds bursting from the K1R’s weapon and slamming into the bots and wall.
Rika took a moment to glance around the level, noting that half the company was engaged with swarms of crawlers. Beyond the edge of the level, she could see masses of the hover drones forming up, ready to bring about a second wave of destruction—some already firing missiles into the level. Most were shot down by the mechs, but a few struck, damaging mechs and cratering the greenspace.
A few of the drones attempted probing strikes, but winds began to whip through the garden level, destabilizing the flying bots whenever they tried to fly over the perimeter.
Rika saw what the AI meant, as the drones began to concentrate on the windward side of the tower.
Rika tapped his company’s feeds and saw hundreds of tiny surface-to-air missiles rise up from the rooftops of the lower buildings in the Tarxien District. They spread out and then disappeared from optical and thermal view as they went ballistic, engines offline and barely detectable as they sped toward their targets.
A second before they hit, the missiles’ engines fired again, making the corrections required to strike their targets. Those flares preceded a veritable firework display of exploding drones, and hundreds of flaming wrecks fell from the sky, raining down around the massive tower’s base.
Another volley of SAMs launched before the first batch of drones hit the ground, and a minute later, Crudge called back.
Active Combat indicators lit up all around N Company’s positions, and Rika tapped their feeds to see a type of crawler similar to the ones that had just hit Q Company, swarming up the buildings the SAM launchers were positioned on.
Captain Ron doled out the specifics, and seconds later, four hundred mechs moved to the edges of the level and leapt to the tower’s exterior struts.
Rika was one of the last out, making sure that there were no injured mechs left behind, though the combat net showed none with serious mobility damage.
Then she moved to a nearby viewing ledge, took one look at the city ten kilometers below, and backed up to take a running leap. She sailed across the thirty meters of open air before reaching one of the external struts that ran alongside the tower.
Rika wanted to reach out to the captain and tell him that she would be fine, but knew that wasn’t the right attitude to strike with her people.
Despite her words, Rika moved slowly enough to stay at the rear of Q Company’s Second Platoon, which was scaling the strut above her.
The view from this high up was breathtaking, and as they climbed, Rika marveled at the sight of the city laid out below—while keeping an eye out for more airborne attackers.
Thirty kilometers to the south, she could see the bulky shape of Sorna Tower looming above the city, light flashing around it as Chase’s M Company took the objective.
To the north, Ceru Heights was under assault by Adira’s Demons, some of the Skyscreams-turned-dragons wheeling about the structure, blasting defensive emplacements within the building.
No signs of combat were visible around the city’s fourth huge tower, named Upper Mdina. She wasn’t surprised by that. Leslie was leading a covert strike on that structure; if a visible firefight broke out there, things were going wrong.
Despite the fact that she was clinging to a near-vertical strut rising high above the rest of the city, Rika felt at peace. More at peace than any time since the assault on Memphis in the Blue Ridge System.
How is it that I’m happiest when in combat? she wondered as the company continued its climb, trading intermittent shots with defenders within the tower.
She wondered if it was because battle was where all of her strongest bonds had been formed. Be it with the women of Hammerfall, the members of Team Basilisk, or her battalion of Marauders, combat was when they all came together. Petty differences, squabbles over inconsequentialities, preferences, and tastes; they all disappeared. Everyone knew that the unit fought as one, or the unit died.
Most mechs were not familiar with that style of combat. They’d spent the war operating in small groups, being outcasts in their own armed forces.
But the training Barne and Silva had given them—coupled with the never-ending drills and simulations during the long flight to Iberia—had taught the mechs what it was like to have their own kind at their backs.
It was exhilarating.
A few of the crawlers were scaling the tower, keeping pace with the mechs and firing on them as they climbed. The mechs responded in kind, blowing the bots off the structure with casual precision.
Skreed sent back a meek apology, and Rika stifled a laugh after checking the feeds to ensure that her mechs hadn’t inflicted any civilian casualties, relieved that they had not.
Still, perhaps a little too exhilarating at times.
It was ‘a tough row to hoe’, as Silva used to say. Niets loved to tuck important targets within civilian populations. Dealing with that had been difficult in the war, but was even more so now as they took back Genevia.
Not only were the civilians being used as shields, but oft times, those civilians were siding with the Niets against the Marauders—either willingly, or under duress.
Rika shook those thoughts out of her head and glanced up at their target. The topmost level of the tower—only four hundred meters wide at that point—was laid out like an ancient villa on a hill. Low stone structures were surrounded by gardens and pools, with a forty-meter stone tower in the center that had a waterfall cascading down one side.
Based on their intel, the target would be within that central structure.
The struts that supported the tower rose up above the uppermost level, and then arched down to the edges of the top level. Other than the spindle of the central shaft, and the tops of the four massive struts, the top level was entirely disconnected from the rest of the tower, almost making it appear as though it floated above the city.
Rika had to admit that the design was breathtaking—everything about the tower was surprisingly well crafted and maintained for a backwater world like Malta.
I suppose even places like this have an upscale area.
The mechs of Q Company’s four platoons formed up at the tops of the arches, and Rika was surprised that they’d not taken any fire yet from the top level.
All their intel showed it to have heavy automated defenses, as well as a host of human guards.
It wasn’t clear whether they were about to face missiles or projectiles, but whatever they were, the incoming objects were moving fast.
Captain Ron was already ordering his company to move, and the mechs shifted toward the leeward side of the struts, some firing chaff and scattershot into the air, while others began to fire beam weapons at the shield umbrellas protecting the top of the tower.
Rika wished they could have taken out the tower’s power source to disable the shield, but their study of the structure showed that it utilized active supports and a-grav systems to remain standing.
While it theoretically should be able to stand without power, that hadn’t been put to the test in over three hundred years. Given that the tower had taken some damage in the war—damage that Barne believed to have only been cosmetically repaired—a full blackout would likely kill the structure’s millions of residents, along with their target.
In the time it took Rika to consider those other possibilities, she’d slid down around the side of the strut, adding her e-beam’s fire to the barrage hitting the shields atop the building.
Her cry was interrupted by the deafening cacophony of DPUs hitting the struts, giving the company its answer as to what had fired from the hillside outside the city.
Four of the mechs descending the strut’s arch were picked off, flicked away from the building like specs of dust—though, thankfully, the rest of the squad made it down.
Captain Ron was calling for starfire on the hillside, while Rika tracked a second barrage, worried that it was something other than DPUs, given the relative ineffectiveness of the first volley.
In a spare moment, she saw that two of the mechs who had been knocked off the strut had activated a-grav systems, arresting their fall, but the other two were still tumbling through the air, kilometers above the ground.
From the data on the combat net, they were both alive, so Rika sent remote commands to their armor to deploy emergency chutes, only to receive no response.
Clenching her jaw in dismay, Rika couldn’t tear her gaze from the two falling mechs. Suddenly, a pair of shapes banked around the tower, matched speeds with the falling Marauders, and latched onto them.
Rika didn’t pay attention to Kelly’s response, as the second barrage from the hillside struck. At first she thought it was another salvo of DPU rods, but suddenly, explosions began to burst all around the mechs, showering them with sharp carbon shrapnel.
Rika’s attention was drawn by beams lancing through the clouds, briefly lighting up the western hillside. Seconds after the beams ceased, Heather called down from the Fury Lance.
The mechs of Q Company were making their way down the struts to the holes they’d opened up in the upper level’s shields, but Rika held her position, keeping an eye on the western hills to see if the enemy would get a final salvo out before Heather’s rounds hit.
They did not.
Eleven seconds after Heather’s pronouncement, a rain of white-hot tungsten fell from space, rail-fired kinetic rounds boiling away the clouds as they streaked down. When they hewed their way into the planet, each round released energy equivalent to a tactical nuclear explosion.
Molten rock sprayed into the air as sections of the granite hillside were vaporized by the rounds.
Then again, it’s either the grapes or us.
Rika followed the rest of the platoon down the strut, almost within the shield when the sounds of the kinetic rounds hitting reached her.
The entire tower shook, and Rika wondered how many windows in the city had blown out when the shockwave passed over them. She hoped the population remembered the instructions from the war: ‘Keep windows open, move to interior rooms.’
The sound went on and on, echoing through the city, the thundering roar deepening as it reverberated off the hills of Gibraltar Heights and came back over Tarxien tower.
To Rika’s ears, it seemed as though the very planet was groaning in agony as the humans above smote it with their might and rage.
It wasn’t the first time Rika had heard that sound, and she knew it wouldn’t be the last.
And so the mechs began their slog across the top of the tower, taking out swarms of crawlers, drones, and human troops, all of which fell back against the Marauders’ inexorable assault.
Ten minutes later, the top of the tower was cleared, and all that remained was the stone spire in the center.
Captain Ron directed two fireteams of SMIs to run a heat flush, while another squad kept up suppressive fire on the stone tower’s final few defenders—none of whom seemed interested in surrendering.
Once the SMIs had reduced their external temperature to levels their stealth gear could manage, they approached the structure through avenues clear of incoming fire, and then proceeded with their breach.
Rika watched their feeds, admiring the skill and efficiency of the mechs as they quickly neutralized the final defenders and came to the innermost room.
Following Captain Ron, Rika and her fireteam of protectors entered the structure, coming at last to the thick door to the central chamber.
“We don’t need to take you alive,” Ron called out. “If you don’t yield, we’ll just blow you to bits.”
“I don’t believe you!” a rage-filled voice called out from within.
“Ladies, set the charges,” Ron directed the SMIs, who began to plant explosives around the exterior of the tower’s central room.
Once they were in place, the mechs all turned to leave, with Ron calling over his shoulder. “Ciao!”
“Wait!” the voice called out, and Rika turned, GNR held ready, as the door opened.
Within, there was nothing more than a large SAI node core, and Ron directed the other SMIs inside first. They surrounded the cube, searching for any hidden traps or weapons.
“That’s it?” she asked. “No final surprise?”
“I had an antimatter bomb ready to go, but Niki disabled it,” said the node core, sounding dismayed that the bomb hadn’t gone off.
“Antimatter?!” Ron exclaimed. “Shit, thanks Niki.”
“Why didn’t you mention it?” Rika asked her AI.
Rika laughed and reached out to pat the node. “Well, Piper, you gave us a good run.”
“I matched my skill levels to that of common AIs and humans,” Piper responded. “If I’d been playing for keeps, you’d all be dead.”
“Oh?” Ron asked. “How so?”
“I would have dropped down through the tower and blown the entire top level as soon as your company was on it. The upper levels of the tower could support the collapsing topmost level—though roughly ten thousand people would have died, by my estimation.”
“Damn,” Ron muttered. “Good thing you were playing at ‘mere mortal’ level.”
“Or ‘care about people’ level,” Rika added, then accessed the command net.
Rika smiled as Ron let out a curse. The other company commanders all reported successes, though Adira had lost two dragons in her assault.
All around her, mechs were rising from the full-immersion sim couches that applied the realistic a-grav-generated sensations for the simulated combat. Better than just a mental sim, these couches put real twitch reflexes to the test, just like actual combat.
Next to her, Chase sat slowly, carefully rubbing his head.
“What happened to you?” Rika asked with a slight grimace.
Chase glanced over his shoulder to where the rest of M Company was sitting up.
“The Van fell on me at one point. Damn sim is really good when it comes to making you feel it.”
Rika laughed. “Think you need time in the autodoc?”
“Funny, Rika.” Chase rose and stretched before offering her his hand. “Did you have fun?”
“I did, yeah. Tomorrow I think we’ll focus on ground targets and use the fighters to keep the towers in check, see how that goes.”
“You going to hit the dirt again?”
Rika considered it for a moment. “No, I think I’ll take the Lance, and get Piper to add in a Nietzschean fleet or something.”
“He sure enjoys this a lot.” Leslie approached, a cheek-splitting grin on her lips. “Though he’s pissed that my team just slipped past all of his defenses. We ran three groups, and alternated misdirection strikes. He didn’t even know we were on his core-level when I strolled into his chamber.”
