by M. D. Cooper
Niki’s argument made sense, and matched Kelly’s behavior well.
Rika rose and took a deep breath, wishing Niki hadn’t picked that time to dig into her feelings on leadership.
The words ‘Kelly, shut up’ rose in Rika’s mind once more, but she quashed them down and sent a simple acknowledgement before moving into the datastore and closing the door.
The room was cool, not that the chill in the air bothered her, and stretched for dozens of meters in every direction. Every two meters, a tower rose out of the deck, laden with mounts holding either rewritable storage systems, or immutable crystal storage.
Rika nodded absently as she moved to a console that stood several meters into the chamber. She connected her hard-Link cable to it, diving into the network, sifting through the endless information within, navigating through the Nietzschean data architecture.
Rika grunted in agreement as she traversed a datamatrix filled with thousands of entries for NSAI comm systems, looking for the one they wanted to update.
Niki’s statement pulled Rika out of her search, and she opened her eyes, looking around the room, a shuddering breath passing her lips.
An idea occurred to Rika, and she sent Niki a grin in her mind.
Rika snorted.
She knew what Niki meant, but try as she might, Rika couldn’t think of anyone—barring Tremon. Of course, he didn’t want the job, and there was a strong possibility that the people would outright reject him.
Rika considered that mindset and found herself nodding in agreement. It was the same sort of mentality she had with her mechs. She didn’t think that she was the perfect commander for her Marauders, she was just the best they had available at the time.
Of course, her suitability for that position was bolstered by the fact that her mechs seemed to idolize her.
A column ten meters away was highlighted on Rika’s vision, and she let out a sigh.
Niki said, laughing softly in Rika’s mind.
* * * * *
Constantine purposefully allowed a smug smile to form on his lips as he glanced at Garza. The Pinnacle was just thirty seconds from completing its full-thrust burn, and the ship was performing flawlessly.
Prior to the day’s events, the emperor had spent some time reviewing the specs from Orion, and he could see that the Pinnacle was on the cusp of outperforming the optimal numbers from the original designers.
It was just more proof that Orion was old, spineless, and weak. Once Garza’s people no longer possessed a technological advantage that they only held due to centuries of hiding, they would fall to Nietzschea.
It was inevitable.
“You’re to be congratulated,” Garza said when he caught Constantine’s eye. “I’m impressed. Putting our faith in Nietzschea was not a mistake.”
Though the words were meant to sound complimentary, Constantine could hear the insults in them. Everything was either a near slight, or cleverly worded non-praise. It was almost as though Garza were goading the emperor to take some sort of action against him.
For a moment, Constantine considered it. The room was lined with his guards, and though a few members of the admiralty had been swayed by Garza’s charm and promises, the vast
majority placed their fealty in the right place.
He could snap his fingers, and the man would be dead.
Not yet, he cautioned himself, willing his ire to fade away. Not until the jump gates are operational and under Nietzschean control.
“Congratulations, My Emperor!” Admiral Hammond called out a minute later as the ship completed its trials. He brought his hands together, starting a round of applause. “The Pinnacle is the perfect warship! Fleets of these mighty vessels will crush our enemies. The Might of Nietzschea will spread across the stars.”
Constantine inclined his head a centimeter, acknowledging the compliment before he turned to those assembled.
“You’ve done well. Continue to serve the empire with such fervor, and we will soon stretch across the Orion Arm. In just a month, we’ll begin our assault on Septhia. When they see waves of Nietzschean ships in their skies, they’ll rue the day they ever joined the Scipian Alliance.”
A cheer came from those assembled, and while it was still sounding around him, Constantine strode from the viewing chamber, Admiral Hammond keeping pace a step behind.
Constantine smiled, basking in the glow of success—until he realized that Garza was following behind. The man didn’t speak, but even his presence put a damper on the emperor’s joy.
Stars, can the man not leave me alone for one minute?!
He resolved that once he returned to Casa Mons, he would summon Danella and begin the transfer to his new body. He no longer cared if a hair follicle was out of place; a few miniscule imperfections would be worth it if he could free himself of the general’s dominion.
“Garza,” Constantine asked, not bothering to look over his shoulder. “Now that the fleet’s construction is back on schedule, will the gates finally be completed? I grow vexed that I’ve invested all this effort in building a great fleet that will take half a year to reach its targets without those gates. Need I remind you that we’re following your plan to make a simultaneous strike across the entire Septhian Alliance?”
“I’ve not forgotten that,” Garza replied. “They’ll be completed within the week. It’s no small thing to set up a hundred gates in secret, but my engineers are on schedule.”
Constantine wondered about that. From what he understood, the enemy built their gate components elsewhere and shipped them to their destination, where they only needed to be assembled. Spies who had recently returned from Thebes confirmed this.
In short, the Transcend could build gates in hours, not months. The only thing that explained Garza’s delay was that either Orion’s gate manufacturing site had suffered some sort of delay, or the general’s engineers were actually building them from scratch within the Genevia system.
Both seemed hard to believe, but it was what the evidence suggested.
He didn’t press the general further as they walked through the station, losing himself in thoughts of the dominion that would be his with the jump gates.
So deep was Constantine in his thoughts of conquest, that when Hammond first called out for him to drop, he didn’t even realize the cry had been directed at him.
Then something struck the emperor in the back, and he slammed his face into the side of a decorative fountain.
“Stay down, My Emperor,” a voice said next to his ear, and he recognized it as belonging to one of his personal guards.
The sounds of weapons fire echoed all around for nearly a minute, punctuated by shouts and screams, until all at once, they stopped and the guard rose, extending a hand that Constantine ignored as he climbed back to his feet.
He glanced at Admiral Hammond, who was standing several meters away, chest heaving and pistol in hand. He followed the admiral’s gaze and his mouth fell open as he saw a figure writhing in an a-grav suspension field.
“A Genevian mech?” he asked, shocked to see one of his old enemy’s killing machines up close and personal. “How did it get here?”
A laugh came from his left, and Constantine’s head whipped around to see General Garza chuckling as he approached the mech.
“I lured it; that’s how it got here. Constantine,” the general gestured at the woman, who had grown very still at his words. “Say hello to one of Tangel’s little pets—a mech named Rika.”
* * * * *
Fifteen minutes prior….
Rika stepped back from the data storage column, nodding with satisfaction that the crystal appeared to be completely unaltered.
She returned to the console near the entrance and confirmed that it was in the state she’d found it, and then locked the terminal down.
Rika sent her friend a sour-looking expression and then laughed.
Rika eased open the door and was resealing it when the SMI finally responded.
The three mechs retraced their steps through the station, Rika deducing from the feeds that Constantine was still in the viewing room observing the Pinnacle’s progress—or more likely celebrating its success by now.
Rika advised Kelly and Keli of her intentions, passing a message on to Shoshin about where they planned to intercept the Nietzschean Emperor—at the same fountain Rika had stopped at earlier.
The concourse widened there, and there were places for Kelly and Keli to hide on either side further down the wide passage, where they could cover her. Rika already knew where she’d hide: atop a beam that stretched over the concourse, out of the way of any flying drones or other pedestrians.
Four minutes later, the three SMIs were in position, waiting for the emperor to pass by.
Niki said.
W
ithout warning, the six soldiers in the lead lifted their rifles and fired their railguns at the beam where Rika was crouched.
Before she even hit the ground, electron beams were lancing down the corridor from Keli and Kelly’s positions, striking the Niets and driving them back.
For a moment, Rika thought the enemy would retreat, but then a heavy kinetic slug hit her left arm, ripping the armor plating off, then another hit her thigh just below the end of the organic section, pulverizing the side of her leg.
Shit…what are they firing?!
Niki was screaming for Rika to keep falling back, when suddenly she felt her body rise in the air, while her GNR was yanked straight down until it touched the deck. She tried to wrench it free, but her entire body moved instead, writhing in the grip of an a-grav field that felt like a giant’s fist squeezing her to death.
Suddenly, Rika realized that no weapons fire was coming from Keli and Kelly and that the combat net had cut out. She looked behind herself, and saw that a blast door was sliding down, trapping her with the emperor and his soldiers.
Rika’s question died on her lips as a soldier tossed three burn sticks, one after the other onto her GNR, the thermite compound eating through her weapon’s firing systems and melting the mounts. Then one of the Nietzschean heavy gunners fired on her weapon mount, shattering it and sending Rika flying upward, where she slowly spun in the field’s grip.
As she rotated above the deck, forcing herself to calm and take stock of her situation, she heard the man in the strange uniform speak to the emperor.
“Say hello to one of Tangel’s little pets—a mech named Rika.”
