by M. D. Cooper
Because of their mixed past, they’d been put out of service several hundred years before—shortly after Kunta had completed its democratic transformation into Genevia.
Rika was of a mixed mind about the mechanical beast. Seeing a Starcrusher crawl across the landscape would certainly be terror-inducing, but at the same time, the monstrosity was just a big target that needed to be defended.
Even so, she wasn’t against trying them out in some war games to see how they’d fare in different scenarios.
A voice called out to her as she passed the officer’s mess. “Colonel Rika! Do you have a moment?”
Rika turned to see Tremon striding toward her, and nodded, waiting for him to reach her.
The former Genevian president offered his hand as he approached, and Rika shook it while asking, “Do we still really need to have such formal greetings?”
Tremon looked down at their clasped hands and shook his head. “Uh…I suppose not. Force of habit, I guess.”
“I’m just taking a tour of the ship,” Rika said, altering her plans to accommodate Tremon. “Care to join me?”
“That’s very magnanimous of you, Colonel. Especially when you’ve been avoiding me.”
“Thanks, Niki,” Rika said, trying not to sound overly sour. “I’ve not been avoiding you…per se.”
“No, I suppose not,” Tremon said, his voice carrying a mischievous note. “Just the things I want to talk about.”
“Your topics are all above my paygrade,” Rika replied. “I’m just following orders.”
“Oh?” Tremon’s eyebrows rose. “I heard that you were originally going to go to Caulter after Iberia.”
Rika shrugged. “Plans change. The goal is the same. We’re headed for the Genevia System, just taking a little bit of a shortcut.”
“And what happens when you get there?”
“Well, we take out the Niets and find someone to lead Genevia,” she glanced down at the man beside her.
Tremon shook his head. “We’ve been over this a dozen times. I’m not presidential material. I never was, I can see that now.”
“Exactly,” Rika agreed.
“You know,” Tremon drew the words out as he gave her a sidelong glance. “The same could be said for you.”
Rika pulled up short, turning to stare at him in disbelief. “Are you on something? Do you need to see a medic? I’m not presidential material. I barely know how to run this battalion! If it weren’t for people like Barne holding it all together, I’d be screwed. I can’t…I can’t even fathom what it’s like to run even a single star system, let alone an alliance like Genevia. I’m not presidential material. At all.”
As Rika unloaded on Tremon, Private Jenisa strode across a nearby intersection. Upon hearing the word ‘presidential’, she whipped her head around and slowed.
“Keep walking, Private,” Rika called out. “You didn’t hear shit. Am I clear?”
“Hear what?” Jenisa asked.
“Shut up, Private. Get moving.”
Jenisa nodded and started walking again, but then stopped partway around the corner, leaning around to regard Rika with a look of utter sincerity.
“You’re right, Rika. You’re not presidential material.”
“Uhh…thanks.”
“But a queen…”
“Private!”
“But I heard nothing!” Jenisa called out as she disappeared from view.
“Guh,” Rika grunted. “That’s the last thing I need. Rumors circulating of me being the future Queen of Genevia.” She glanced at Tremon to see that he was regarding her with a curious expression. She directed a scowl his way. “You too. Forget you heard that.”
“I think Jenisa was right, Niki,” Tremon said. “Definitely more of a queen than a president.”
“Niki….”
Rika pursed her lips and sagged against the bulkhead. “Fuck. Why do I suddenly feel like the Lance is too small? I need to dive out an airlock.”
“Har har, Niki.”
Tremon wore a sympathetic expression and reached out to put a hand on Rika’s forearm, not even flinching one iota as his fingers clasped her metal skin. “When I was first sworn in, I felt like the entire world was trying to crush me, like the weight of the fricking galaxy had fallen onto my shoulders.”
“Did it go away?” Rika asked.
“Umm…a bit, but not much. Thing is, the feeling you get from holding one life in the balance isn’t too different from the feeling of holding a dozen, or a million, or a trillion. I guess what I’m saying is that it’s not much harder than running your battalion…emotionally speaking, at least.”
“Except Barne does half the work.”
Tremon nodded vigorously. “The same is true for a nation. You just need a lot of Barnes. Like…a hundred thousand or so.”
“What?”
[Rika.]
The word came directly into Rika’s mind, and she instantly knew it was from Tangel.
She held up a hand, glancing down at Tremon. “It’s Tangel.” He nodded, suddenly sober as she replied. [Hello, Tangel.]
[Chase has new intel. Constantine is at Genevia. Huge shipyards. You need to strike.]
It took Rika a moment to absorb the words, chills running down her spine as she let them sink in.
“What is it?” Tremon asked. “Your eyes are wide as saucers.”
“Constantine is at Genevia,” she repeated Tangel’s words, watching as Tremon’s expression suddenly mirrored her own.
Rika checked the ship’s location and did a quick calculation. [We’re eighty days from Genevia.]
[Make best speed. Assess plan. I’ll send Chase. Carson on standby.]
[You sure?]
There was a pause before Tangel replied.
[I’m sure. Need me, call me direct. Khardine QC pair burned out.]
[OK. On it.] Rika drew a deep breath, briefly wondering what had happened at Khardine to cause her QC pair there to burn out, before realizing the former president was looking at her expectantly. “Looks like we’re skipping past Parsons. Tanis is going to tell Chase to join us.”
“Where, exactly?” Tremon asked, eliciting a shrug from Rika.
“Not sure. We’ll have to plan that out, and then I’ll let him know.” She turned to walk back toward the bridge, but Tremon reached out for her arm as he caught up.
“Rika?”
“What?”
“Don’t forget what we talked about. If we get to Genevia, and Constantine is there—”
“And we kill him,” Rika interjected.
“Right, I’m all-in on killing that smarmy bastard. But when you do….”
She nodded. “It’s going to make for a hell of a power vacuum.”
“A black-hole-sized one.”
DIVERTING
STELLAR DATE: 02.06.8950 (Adjusted Years)
LOCATION: MSS Fury Lance, 15LY from Parsons System
REGION
: Interstellar Dark Layer, Old Genevia, Nietzschean Empire
The fleet had dropped out of the dark layer twenty minutes before, moving into a close formation to reduce light lag between the ships.
Rika stood in the Fury Lance’s CIC with Heather on one side, and Tremon on another. Gloria and Yakub, Tremon’s two erstwhile protectors, stood next to him. The other ship captains and company commanders were arrayed around the remainder of the table.
“OK, folks,” she said, bringing the group to order. “Since scuttlebutt is the only thing that can move faster than c, you probably all already know what Captain Chase learned in Parsons.”
“Yeah,” Captain Scarcliff replied with a lowered brow. “But can it be trusted?”
“Well, Chase figured it was solid enough to send on to Khardine. They relayed it to Tangel, and she reached out to me directly. She’s committed Admiral Carson’s fleet, so our job is mainly to get in and assess the situation. If what Chase learned about the shipbuilding facilities there is true, then it’s a high-value target whether Constantine is present or not.”
At the mention of the Nietzschean emperor’s name, murmurs rippled around the group.
“He’s not any sort of boogie man,” Tremon added. “In fact, he’s a bit of an annoying little prick. Shouldn’t be a problem for mechs.”
“It’s usually not the little pricks that are the problem,” Silva replied. “It’s the legions of soldiers that typically surround them that make for trouble.”
The major’s statement elicited a few laughs, and Rika couldn’t help but chuckle; she stopped when she saw Tremon redden slightly.
“Well, good thing taking down legions of Niets is what we were born to do.” She spoke the words with a note of finality, and the group quieted down, the laughter replaced with resolute nods. “Not a mech in here is afraid of facing down whatever Nietzschea can throw at us. However, we’re not going to throw away our lives. Chase confirmed that there is an active resistance in Parsons, and there’s probably one in Genevia, too. Our first task is going to be finding them, and then finding the Niets’ weak spots. Ideally, we can hit them like we did in Sepe—from within and without.”
“And what of Parsons?” Yakub asked. “Are we just going to pass it by?”
Rika was surprised to hear the president’s former bodyguard speak up regarding the system.
“That’s the plan, yes. As soon as we have a destination in Genevia, we’ll move onto our new vector.”
“What about the resistance in Parsons?” Yakub asked. “If Chase has intel like this, chances are that his actions have exposed them. They’re going to be expecting the Marauders. Instead, you’ll just pull out?”
The thought had occurred to Rika as well. The databurst that had made it to her via the Khardine relays indicated that Chase had done just what Yakub was suggesting.
“They’re going to have to hold out a bit longer.” Rika’s tone was resolute. “Once Genevia falls, systems like Parsons—ones with a limited Nietzschean presence—will start to fall. They’ll just have to wait a few more months.”
“Unless their resistance is exposed and destroyed before that,” Scarcliff said. “Then we’ll have to come back.”
“This is going to be about hearts and minds as much as anything else,” Tremon added.
Rika pursed her lips. She wasn’t willing to leave Chase in Parsons while she pressed on to Genevia, and putting off the attack on Genevia for another month wasn’t an option, either.
Her gaze settled on Adira, and she reached out to the colonel privately.
The SMI-3’s gaze didn’t waver, then she nodded.
Though the exchange had passed rapidly between the two women, the rest of the room had picked up on it. Once Adira nodded, all eyes shifted to Rika.
“You’re real subtle,” Silva said with a laugh.
“Yeah, OK.” Rika couldn’t help a sheepish smile. “Adira’s going to Parsons. With any luck, she can take it and meet us at Genevia before the show gets underway. Stars know that if they’re building a new armada there, it’s going to take more than just one battle to clear the place out.”
“Albany System whack-a-mole all over again,” Barne said, pantomiming slamming a fist down on an imaginary mole’s head.
Rika nodded, and then turned to Tremon. “What we need is a rally point. Somewhere we can scout out and use as a base of operations. I want to know everything that moves in the Genevia System before we go in. Especially if we have a chance to take out Constantine.”
“What do you think he’s doing there, anyway,” asked Leslie. “I always got the feeling that his Imperial Prickishness didn’t venture too far from Capitol if he could help it.”
“I suspect that he’s overseeing something in-person,” Tremon replied. “Which means he won’t be there forever.”
“I just wonder what the fleet is for,” Captain Ron mused. “They must know that a massed fleet is just a convenient target for the ISF.”
Rika nodded. “Well, there’s no way news reached them yet about the defeat at Albany. We’re still close to the leading edge. It’ll take another two hundred days before word gets to Pruzia. Whatever Constantine has planned, he set it in motion before we fought the armada in the Albany System.”
A round of nods came from those assembled, everyone looking pensive as they collectively wondered what the Nietzscheans were planning.
The holotable displayed a view of the Genevia System out to a thousand AU, where over a hundred dwarf planets drifted at the edge of the inner oort cloud. Hundreds more lay further out, but those were too distant to function as viable rally points.
“From the information we have on hand, a number of these could work for our initial base of operations,” Rika began. “But honestly, a lot of it is out of date. I was hoping that you,” she glanced at the former president and his team, “might have additional insight.”
Yakub and Gloria shared a long look before the SMI reached out and tapped an empty space, dozens of AU from any other dwarf planet, glancing at Tremon. “Faneuil. It might still be there.”
“It was when we left,” Yakub said, shrugging. “No reason to believe the Niets found it.”
“Can we cut the pronoun game?” Barne asked. “What is ‘it’?”
“There was a fallback base on Faneuil,” Tremon said. “A secondary location that the government could operate from. Mind you, we never got a chance to use it.”
“A fallback in the same system?” Adira shook her head. “Whose idea was that?”
“Not mine,” Tremon held up his hands. “A predecessor. I kept it stocked, though. There are a few scenarios where it could have been quite useful.”
“Like this one,” Yakub added.
“What’s there?” Rika asked.
“Faneuil was an old mine,” Gloria explained. “Thing saw its heyday about a thousand years ago. It has a highly eccentric orbit, so it got to be too remote for efficient mass extraction and fell out of use. When it came back toward the system, it was a pirate’s haven, and the GAF cleared it out. It went through a few clandestine uses before its current designation.”
Barne opened his mouth to speak, and Gloria held up her hand to forestall him.
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“I’m getting there. The moon has a very, very low albedo—practically invisible unless you know it’s there. It’s also been scrubbed from all the public charts, so very few people know about it. The thing is honeycombed with caverns. The GAF outfitted it with enough fuel and supplies to last a force your size a century. It has some heavy defenses, too, though should a Nietzschean armada come knocking, it wouldn’t last long.”
“Internal bays?” Heather asked.
“Yup,” Gloria nodded. “Not sure if it can berth the Fury Lance, but everything else could fit inside.”
“Looks like we have a target,” Rika said. “But let’s drop the fleet out of FTL an AU out and scout it out. Never know if someone else has taken up residence.”
“Excellent,” Barne rubbed his palms together, glancing around at the disapproving looks. “What? We have a plan, we have a base, we’re gonna kick some major Nietzschean ass.”
Rika laughed. “Well, that is our mission statement, after all.”
A SUGGESTION
STELLAR DATE: 11.29.8949 (Adjusted Years)
LOCATION: Capeton Orbital Habitat, Capeton
REGION: Genevia System, Old Genevia, Nietzschean Empire
Two months ago…
“They’re going to be singing your praises around here for some time, Jere,” Annie said as she lifted a glass to toast him.
“I know I am,” Par added, tapping the bottom of his glass against Annie’s. “I like sleeping in my own bed.”
Jeremy joined in the toast. “I’m all about sleeping in my own bed, too. Looking forward to it tonight. The Pinnacle may be the best ship the Niets have ever built, but you wouldn’t know it by the bunks they have in engineering.”
“Hear, hear,” Annie said a little too loud. “Ooops…I guess I’m just excited that it was only one night.”
“One night that you missed out on serving your clientele,” Par said with a wink.
Annie’s brows rose. “Remember, I bought this round. You’re drinking sex money, my friends.”
“Sex money never tasted so good.” Par tilted his glass back and guzzled his entire beer. “More sex beer!”
“Nuh-ah,” Annie shook her head. “This one’s on you. Remember? You and I are alternating tonight.”
