by M. D. Cooper
Her armor reset, and she got enough movement back to kick a foot out and knock the weapon away from the woman’s hand, then rolled over to check on the other Huro Girl, grunting with satisfaction to see her laying still in a pool of blood.
The air was still thick with free electrons, and all of Jenisa’s drones were down—along with her armor’s stealth capability.
“Dammit,” she muttered while struggling to her feet. “I’m supposed to be the only one that hoses people with an e-beam.”
Her armor completed its mobility reset, and she checked her weapons only to see that her lightwand was fried, as was her PR-111.
She looked down at her GNR. “Well, baby, at least you’re not letting me down.” Then she flexed her left hand, deciding that it may be time to give her new toy a try in the field.
* * * * *
Randy lobbed another shot from his coilgun at the never-ending supply of Huro Girls that seemed to be growing out of the park’s very soil.
He’d just blown away a fountain they were using for cover, when his armor’s sensors registered a massive EM spike, and Jenisa fell off the combat net.
“Dammit,” he muttered, edging around the corner and firing at a tree before moving forward to a column on one side of the passage.
No response came back, and Randy forced himself to remain calm, there were a dozen ways an EM burst like that could have happened and she’d be fine. It was just disrupting comms.
He considered pulling it off his left forearm, but his armor read only eighty-percent stealth effective, even without the heat source bolted to him, and he decided it wasn’t worth it.
He was about to move further down the passage, across the final twenty meters or so to the park, when a series of rounds hit the column he was crouched behind. His drones triangulated the source, and showed that there were now enemies targeting him from three locations.
“For all the stars’ sakes! Where are you all coming from?” he shouted, considering backtracking to follow Jenisa’s route, when his drones picked up movement further back in the park.
He moved one of his drones toward the overhead. It circled and got a clear view of Jenisa as she ran down a path at full speed toward where several Huro Girls were clustered.
A sigh of relief escaped Randy’s lips as he saw that she was OK—though her armor was covered in scorch marks.
He shook his head, realizing that she was going to take out the remaining Huro Girls in close-quarters, and switched from his coilgun to his PR-109 rifle in case she needed some support fire.
In the time it took for him to do that, the overhead view from the drone showed that Jenisa was within a dozen meters of the rearmost enemy.
Suddenly, her right arm elongated into a five-meter whip, and Randy almost shouted with glee. He’d wanted to see one of the new whip-arms in action since Jenisa had shown hers off the day they were all upgraded.
Jenisa swung the whip, its tip catching a Huro Girl across the back, cutting through polymer skin, muscle, and bone. The woman let out a bloodcurdling shriek, but Jenisa jerked her arm, and the whip coiled around the screaming enemy’s throat, choking the life from her.
He saw one of the other Huro Girls spin to face Jenisa, and was ready to send a few shots as a distraction, but the SMI-4’s gun-arm was already firing, and the would-be attacker’s head turned into a fine spray of grey matter, blood, and bone.
Even as the second enemy collapsed, Jenisa was already onto the next, her whip-arm lashing out, cutting away an obscuring hedge before slashing back at another Huro Girl, cutting her right arm from her body.
There were two more of the black-skinned women in the park, and one rushed Jenisa from the right side, earning a series of rounds to the head from Randy’s rifle as he stepped out of cover and walked into the open.
Jenisa didn’t slow as her whip came around again, cutting an obscuring branch off one of the oaks and then wrapping around the fifth Huro Girl and pulling her from her perch.
As the fifth enemy died, Randy approached Jenisa and fired a round into the head of the woman who’d only lost an arm.
“I had them all, you know,” Jenisa said as she flayed open the last woman’s body.
“You can’t hog all the fun. By the way…I thought it would be cool, but your whip-arm thing is really just gross.”
Jenisa looked down at the long, sinuous appendage that hung from her right elbow, and shook it, pulling the flowmetal back up into the form of an arm and hand.
“You’re not wrong…but it was still pretty awesome.”
“Is your Link totally out?” Randy asked as he stepped past Jenisa, scouring the park for any more enemies that his drones might have missed.
“Yeah, antenna is fried. Both the armor’s and the one running down my back; safeties tripped before the surge got to my noggin, though.”
“Repair time?” Randy asked as they both began trotting across the park.
“My HUD reads fifteen minutes—for the internal one, at least. It’ll be low-gain inside the armor, though.”
Randy nodded as they approached the far end of the park. “What happened, anyway?”
“Dead woman spasmed, and her e-beam hosed down the corridor.”
“You decapitated her with your lightwand, didn’t you?” Randy asked, as they moved into a wide passageway, only a hundred meters from Alison’s last known location.
Jenisa shrugged. “It’s just too much fun! Though my lightwand got fried.”
“Serves you right. You know dead people do the chicken dance as often as not when you do that.”
“Seriously. Who made you the fun police?”
“Dammit,” Randy whispered, gesturing for Jenisa to move back against the passage’s bulkhead. “Probes have picked up movement ahead…. We got Niets!”
“Why do you sound so upset?” Jenisa asked, and he could just imagine the grin she wore behind her helmet. “This is the main event.”
“Shut up, they’re up where Alison disappeared. I’m getting my drones close enough for a—yeah, there are some dead Huro Girls and damage that is consistent with a GNR. No sign of Alison, though.”
“I guess if the Niets are searching, they aren’t the ones that got her,” Jenisa said, apparently undaunted by his admonition to remain silent.
He nodded absently, holding up a hand. “Yeah, yeah. OK…there’s EMP damage there. I think someone hit her with a pretty big burst to take her down. I can hear some of the Niets’ chatter, and they’re not sure who did it either.”
“Damn…that sucks. Do they have any leads?”
“They’re talking about Huro’s known accomplices—I can’t believe all these women work for one guy—”
“Maybe they’re clones,” Jenisa interjected.
“Everyone knows clones become unstable if they realize they’re copies,” Randy replied.
Jenisa shrugged and leant back against the bulkhead, examining her rifle. “Maybe that’s why the Huro Girls all have that creepy light-show skin. To keep them from realizing they’re clones.”
“They’d figure it out the first time they went for drinks,” Randy shot back. “Stars, why are we talking about this? All that matters is that the Niets think some guy named Del was onstation and may have taken Alison.”
“Wait, I thought only girls worked for Huro—though I don’t know if you can call being cloned ‘working’ for someone.”
“Oh for fuck’s sake, Jenisa, would you give that a rest? I guess at least one guy works for Huro. Who knows, maybe there’s a whole other segment of his organization called ‘Huro’s Boys’. What does it matter right now? We need to get on that dude’s tail—if he’s still onstation.”
Jenisa punched Ran
dy in the arm. “So see if Fred and Kor have taken command yet. I can’t, since I’m Linkless. There can’t be too many ships coming and going right now, though.”
“Right,” Randy nodded. “On it. Let’s go kill us some Niets in the meantime.”
“Fuck! Now you’re talking!”
REINFORCED
STELLAR DATE: 12.23.8949 (Adjusted Years)
LOCATION: Maltese Falcon, Malta
REGION: Iberia System, Old Genevia, Nietzschean Empire
Fred finally got to the top of the staircase, having given up on not killing any of the locals, when they started firing crew-served rails at the pair of mechs.
The death toll was low, though. Only two from what he could see, and he tried not to think about it too much.
Rika had talked to the mechs about how going into Genevia was going to be hard. There would be times when they’d be fighting against their own people, people who had thrown in with the occupiers, or who had little choice, depending on circumstance.
Knowing that didn’t make anything easier, though.
Kor laughed aloud in response.
“Think you can do that?” a disembodied voice asked, startling both men.
Before they could reply, a figure appeared in the corridor, their body covered in the unmistakable matte-grey of the ISF’s Mark X FlowArmor.
Fred was about to ask who they were talking to, when the man’s face was exposed, revealing the speaker to be Colonel Borden.
“Nice of you two to provide one hell of a distraction down there. Gemma and her team are inside, taking control of the facility. I just thought I’d let you know so you didn’t come in guns blazing.”
Fred shook his head, unimaginably glad to see a friendly face. “Colonel, how did you get here?”
“In a ship,” Colonel Borden replied with a wry twist of his lips. “Captain Chase got the beacon you dropped, and I volunteered to come after you so the rest of the Marauders could go after Colonel Rika.”
“So they found her?” Kor asked eagerly.
Borden nodded. “Her and Captain Leslie both. Plus they found a massive Nietzschean shipyard that was refitting a bunch of big cruisers called Harriets.”
“Fuck,” Kor muttered. “I hate those things.”
“Well, they’re back at Pyra now, getting put to good use.”
Fred slapped Kor’s back. “Now that’s the best news I’ve heard in months. Everyone’s safe, and the Niets got stomped on.”
“Damn straight,” Kor said with a nod. “Everyone’s safe ‘cept Sergeant Alison.”
“We picked up some of the chatter,” Borden said. “She got taken out down near Randy and Jenisa’s position?”
Fred nodded. “Nearly forty minutes ago, now.”
“Lieutenant Saris dropped my team off before circling around to where that Nietzschean destroyer docked. She’s breaching it now. They’ll meet up with Jenisa and Randy once they have it.” He paused and looked Fred and Kor up and down. “Why don’t you to come into the ops center while your armor gets that stuff off you?”
“Shouldn’t someone watch the entrance, sir?” Kor asked.
“Already here,” a voice said from next to Kor, causing the man to jump.
“Dammit…you guys really like doing that, don’t you?”
A laugh was all that came in answer, and Borden turned and began walking down the hall. “Let’s go see if we can hunt down this Del person. Kev will let us know if we get any company he can’t handle.”
Fred glanced at Kor and shrugged as they followed after Borden, then he realized that Randy would probably like to learn that help was on the way.
Fred sent a laugh in response.
There was a moment’s pause before Randy replied.
Fred rolled his eyes as they arrived at the ops center, noting that there were a dozen station personnel huddled in one corner with Private Kali standing over them. Daphne and Gemma stood in the center of the room, gesturing at the central holotank, while two visibly sweating station administrators worked at the consoles before them.
Randy chuckled mischievously.
Fred closed his eyes, wishing it would wipe away what he’d imaged.
Kor punched Fred in the shoulder. “I’m saving that conversation. That’s a contender for the hall of fame.”
“What did I do to get saddled with you yahoos?” Fred asked as he followed Borden to the room’s center.
“Look, just tell that freighter to dock at Bali Station out by The Moon,” Gemma was saying to one of the administrators. “It’s what you tried to tell us to do.”
“Fat load of good that did,” the man muttered. “OK, I gave them the orders. What do I do if they don’t change course?”
“What do you normally do?” Borden growled.
The man glanced over his shoulder, paling further at the sight of the bulky man who was dwarfed by the pair of AM-4 mechs.
“Uh…we tell them again?”
“And then?” Gemma pressed.
“Well, after a few more attempts, we’d fire a shot across their bow.”
“Good,” Gemma nodded. “If they don’t comply, we’ll just go right to that option.”
The man swallowed and nodded.
“How do things look?” Borden asked once the man had sent the message.
“Well…” Gemma glanced at Fred and Kor. “Pretty much everyone in the system knows that Maltese Falcon is under attack by mechs—or they will, once the calls for aid reach them. The surface government and the other stations are all on the horn, alternately demanding updates, asking if they’re safe, and offering assistance. The public is mostly listening to shelter-in-place orders, though there’s some looting. Based on what I see, we have five hours before that cruiser out at the edge of the system gets word that things have gone south here.”
&nb
sp; Borden nodded slowly, stroking his chin. “We’ll have to assume that they’ll get updates from other stations and their own base on The Moon. So five hours from now—at the latest— they’ll be boosting for us here. I make their best time to be, what…just over a day?”
“Give or take an hour, yeah,” Fred replied. “Depends if they brake or do a fly-by and drop assault ships before slowing to come around.”
“That would be preferable,” Gemma replied. “Rika’s fleet is three days out, based on their last updates. We just have to hold on that long.”
“Updates?” Kor asked.
“What sort of surface weapons does Malta have?” Borden asked the two men sitting at the consoles. “Can they hit the station here?”
“Uhhh…the Niets got rid of most of it. There are a few missile silos, but most of the defensive stuff is on The Moon,” one of the station’s administrators replied.
“John, what are you doing?” the other man hissed.
“Are you an idiot, Sal? These are our people. You heard the rumors: the mechs are coming to destroy Nietzschea. They smashed them at Albany, Sepe, and then at Blue Ridge. Now they’re freeing us.”
John turned in his chair and looked at the group surrounding him, some of the color returning to his face.
“Right? That’s what’s going on. You’re not just some pirates coming through to strip us bare, are you?”
“Rika’s Marauders are not pirates,” Fred said without equivocation. “Our business is killin’ Niets.”
“And business is good,” Kor added.
“Easy now, guys,” Borden said with a laugh as he shook his head. “You’ve heard right, John. The Marauders have joined up with the Alliance, and our mission is to topple Nietzschea. We’re the vanguard. We got started a bit early here, but when the fleet arrives, there won’t be anything the Niets can throw at us that we can’t handle. All we need to do is hold out three days, like Gemma said.”
