Rikas Marauders
Page 141
“No one has a soul,” Aleena replied with narrowed eyes. “That’s just nonsense that weak people spread to give themselves hope. Life is what you make of it.”
“Sheesh, I’ve really ruined your day, haven’t I? Besides, I don’t know about all that,” Rika replied with a shrug. “But if what you say is true, then I’m a lot better at making something out of life than you. How does it feel to know that a deformed and disfigured Genevian mech beat you?”
She leaned forward, unable to keep herself from giving the Nietzschean a smug grin.
“I’ll admit, when the Asora hit your shields, I thought we were done, but then we got the phasing right and passed on through. No wonder you surrendered—you don’t want to have to face your superiors after getting shield-breached while you were shield breaching.”
Aleena’s jaw tightened, and she spoke through clenched teeth. “Are you done yet?”
“Well…I wasn’t, but if you’re going to take all the fun out of it, I guess I am.”
The captain didn’t respond, her cold, blue eyes boring into Rika’s.
“OK, fine.” Rika straightened. “This is where you give me all your command codes and actually surrender the ship to me.”
The Nietzschean shook her head in disbelief. “You really think you’re just going to win without any trouble here, don’t you?”
“Without any trouble?” Rika asked, eyes widening. “Were you here a minute ago? When I was talking about breaching your shield breach and all our brilliant tactics? That wasn’t easy. For a bit, I thought the Van had died.”
“The who?”
“Guess I don’t need you now,” Rika said, gesturing for Kelly and Keli to take the Torrent of Fire’s captain to a holding room. “We have the ship, and in a day or two, we’ll have the whole system.”
A smile lit Aleena’s face. “Well, you’ll have most of the system.”
Rika turned to the holotank as a view of space surrounding Malta appeared. The planet floated on the left, with The Moon in the upper right. The Maltese Falcon was forty degrees from passing between the moon and the planet below. Trailing behind The Moon, out beyond the fourth lagrange point, was a cluster of small asteroids and an old mining platform.
In her initial review of the system, she’d noted it, and assumed that it was abandoned after being shut down during the war or some time not long after.
That supposition had just been proven wrong.
A group of twelve asteroids were moving away from the mining facility on a course that would lead them directly to the Maltese Falcon.
“We call them planet punishers,” Aleena said from the entrance to the bridge, a look of pyrrhic victory on her face. “We might lose Iberia, but you won’t win it, either. You can see that they timed it just right. When the Falcon falls, it’s going to hit Cerulean. One shot, a quarter of the planet’s population dies.”
Aleena’s calm delivery of the news that half a billion people were about to perish caused a burning rage to form in Rika’s chest, and she felt every muscle and carbon sinew in her body tense.
She could see that she wasn’t the only one that felt that way, as evidenced by Kelly’s fist rising slowly. Before Rika could order her not to, the mech’s hand came down, striking Aleena in the face and splitting the woman’s lip and half her cheek open.
The captain screamed in agony, trying to raise a hand to her face, only to have Kelly slap it away.
“Kelly,” Rika admonished without any conviction. “We don’t abuse prisoners.”
“Of course not,” Kelly replied. “Is it OK if I just kill her, then?”
Every fiber of Rika’s being wanted to say ‘yes’, but somehow she managed to mutely shake her head, and the two mechs hauled the captain—who was trying to ask for a medic—from the room.
Despite everything going on, Rika felt a small mote of pity for the ship’s captain. At the very least, Aleena had done the right thing in surrendering and sparing the rest of her crew a death at the hands of the mechs.
Rika had to admit that Kelly was right, but she could also tell that Aleena’s concern for her own people, and her pure loathing of the Genevians, was a sign that she’d been conditioned all her life to believe that ‘others’ had less value than her own people.
The conversation she’d had with Niki not long ago about what she was willing to do to win the war came to mind.
Rika knew there was a thin line, and she’d probably stepped over it more often than she cared to admit, but in this case, she was only going to sidle right up to the edge and no further.
Niki said on the command net, and Rika turned back to the holodisplay.
“Lay them on me,” she said with a resigned sigh.
Rika nodded. “I suppose that no matter what option we pursue, we need to get over there. Fire things up.”
“Can I fly her?” Vargo asked with a wide grin as he sat at the pilot’s console. “It might help my sorrow over losing the Asora.”
“Think this ship is good enough for the governator?” Rika smirked wanly at her weak attempt at levity as she glanced at Vargo.
“Gah…that’s gotta be the worst thing I’ve ever heard.”
“What about the Nietzschean destroyer Borden’s people have?” Rika asked Niki as she turned back to the holotank. “Are they close enough to engage those rocks?”
Rika nodded as the Torrent of Fire shuddered beneath their feet.
“Just lost the port-side main engine,” Vargo muttered as he quickly adjusted the ship’s thrust to balance against the load. “Shifting ballast, giving it as much as I can get.”
Rika pursed her lips as she watched civilian ships begin to boost away from the Maltese Falcon in droves.
“What about missiles?” Rika asked Niki.
“Crap.” Rika ran a hand through her hair. “First time I ever wished a Nietzschean ship had more missiles.”
Rika tapped a finger on her thigh impatiently during the seconds it took her message to get to Saris, play, and then for the lieutenant to send a response.
“Options?” Rika asked the team on the bridge—which currently consisted of her, Vargo, and Niki. The rest of the mechs were still busy securing the Nietzscheans and dealing with a few holdouts.
“Our dropships are still fueled up,” Vargo said as he worked to balance the Torrent of Fire on its starboard engine fusion and auxiliary boosters. “You know…this damn ship has an AP drive, but they don’t have any antimatter for—oh, I have an idea but it’s nuts.” He glanced at Rika, and she realized what he was suggesting.
Rika didn’t reply before switching to Chief Charles.
“Think this will work?” Rika asked Vargo.
He glanced at her, sounding more than a little uncertain. “Maybe? That plasma plume on the Asora cut out, so I don’t think the ship is gonna blow anymore.”
Rika bit back a curse as the relayed scan data from Saris’s destroyer showed twenty-two fighters peeling away from the inbound rocks, headed for the destroyer.
Rika knew it had to be tied up, otherwise it would be protecting the destroyer from the Nietzschean fighters.
“Crap,” Rika muttered aloud before sending Saris a message to hold for a minute. She fought down the worry that Gemma and Fred’s team had died before she could even get there, and glanced at Vargo. “Why the hell is this all so difficult?”
“If it was easy, anyone could do it,” Vargo replied through gritted teeth. “Stars, this thing’s a fuckin’ slug. Now I know why the Niets left it behind when they took their fleets to Albany.”
Rika told herself that Fred and Gemma would be fine. They had to be. Then she glanced at Vargo and gave him a reassuring smile. “She’s your new girl, Vargo, you should be nice to her.”
“My what?” Vargo glanced up, eyes wide, then stroked the console. “Oh, hell yeah, I have a cruiser now. C’mon, sweet thing, you know you want to do a good job for daddy.”
“What about our dropships?” Chase asked as he walked onto the bridge, giving Rika a quick embrace before turning to gaze at the holotank.
“Been following along?” Rika asked.
“Yeah, Niki gave me an audio feed from the bridge—I didn’t have any good ideas till now, so I wasn’t chiming in.”
Rika gave the necessary orders and then updated Lieutenant Saris with the multiple plans they had in play to help take out the rocks.
“Oh, for shit’s sake,” Rika swore, clenching her teeth as she looked up, wishing the overhead could give her some sort of answer.
“Go,” Chase said, placing a hand on her shoulder. “Get down there and save our team. It’s what we came here for.”
“You sure?” Rika asked. “You got things up here?”
“Me?” Chase laughed. “I’m just emotional support for Vargo. Look at that guy, he’s sweating bullets.”
“I’m a mech now, I don’t sweat,” Vargo replied.
“So what is that? Drool?” Chase chuckled.
“Shut up, Captain.”
“Niki, I need a ship that can get us down to the planet yesterday. If Ferris takes our pinnace and the dropships, what’s left on this tub?”
“This ‘tub’ you’re besmirching is my girl!” Vargo called out, as Rika gave Chase a quick kiss and pulled her helmet back on.
“Rika!” Chase called out from behind her, and she turned to see him standing at the bridge’s entrance.
“What?”
“You’re taking backup, right?”
Rika realized she’d been planning to drop to the planet alone.
Stars, he knows me too well.
“Of course. I’m taking Kelly’s team.”
“Right,” he winked. “Bring ‘em home. All of them.”
She nodded and then turned and ran to the lifts.
BRINGING THE PAIN
STELLAR DATE: 12.23.8949 (Adjusted Years)
LOCATION: Chusa District, Cerulean, Malta
REGION: Iberia System, Old Genevia, Nietzschean Empire
The Starskipper 192 streaked through Malta’s stratosphere, coming down over the Alboran Sea to Cerulean’s east. Given the missiles that had chased the ISF pinnace over the Pyrenees Mountains, they decided not to come in over the continent.
She knew the ocean wasn’t necessarily any better—the waters could hide all sorts of fun surprises—b
ut it was faster, and she also hoped that a civilian pinnace was less likely to be fired on than an ISF craft.
Of course, she knew that hope was not a plan, and the moment they were subsonic, she dropped as low as possible, flying just a few meters above the cresting waves.
Ahead, the four towers of Cerulean began to rise over the horizon, and she remembered the multiple training sims they’d run on the trip to Iberia, preparing to take the city.
One thing they’d never trained for was hitting it with just four mechs.
Rika’s original plan had been to only take Kelly and Keli, but Shoshin had informed her that he’d climb onto the back of the pinnace and ride it down if she thought he’d be left behind while ‘his girls’ went into battle without him.
Rika wondered if that was true. Back in the war, Kelly had worn her sordid past as a badge of honor, but now she seemed ashamed of it.
She gave Kelly an apologetic nod, and pushed the recollection from her mind, focusing on keeping the ship as low as possible as they approached land.