by M. D. Cooper
* * * * *
Leslie crept up behind the Nietzschean soldier and grabbed his head, giving it a sharp twist to the left, snapping his neck, while also driving an EM spike into the base of his skull to ensure no alert was sent out.
Annie sent a mental whistle.
<‘This’?> Leslie asked as they crept down a corridor, now just a short distance from their destination.
Jeremy laughed, and Leslie could hear a faint sound come from him.
Leslie paused at an intersection, waiting for two soldiers and a servitor pushing a lunch cart to pass by.
She pulled up short, not paying attention to the engineer’s response. Her drones had just made it to the bay where their ride off the Pinnacle awaited.
It was surrounded by a squad of Niets.
Her probe established a line-of-sight comm link with the shuttle, and relayed it back to her.
The RR-4 sent back a strained laugh.
Leslie breathed a sigh of relief. She wasn’t too worried about automated turrets; she could avoid them with ease…her charges were a different story. She considered her options, and was about to ask her engineers for ideas, when the bay doors began to close.
Leslie rolled her eyes.
She signaled her two charges to keep following, and moved down the passage to the bay’s entrance. Once there, she ensured that there were no Niets nearby and slipped inside, crouching behind a stack of crates that were labeled as turret gimbals.
Ironic, she noted.
Leslie laughed.
She turned and looked at the entrance they’d just come through. Sure enough, a sign hanging next to it had instructions directing personnel to use the far panel if they wanted to get the bay doors open.
Leslie was about to ask him why that was a prevalent concern, but then she realized he was more worried about Annie than himself.
The two engineers signaled their affirmation and moved off. Leslie carefully climbed atop the stack of gimbals and unslung her rifle while passing an update to Yig.
She didn’t give a reply as she watched an access panel open on one of the uncrated turrets as Annie got to work. Checking Jeremy’s location, she saw that he was already on the far side of the dock, at the panel.
Satisfied that the engineers had reached their targets, Leslie began to wonder why the soldiers surrounding the shuttle weren’t yet doing anything other than staring at it.
A moment later, a scuffle came from behind her, and she turned to see a group of Niets pushing a rather large plasma cutter on a grav pad into the bay.
Well, shit.
“OK, in there!” the squad sergeant standing at the bow of the shuttle called out. “Time’s up! Say hello to our little can opener.”
Leslie carefully slid off her perch and followed the group of Nietzscheans pushing the plasma cutter. She eyed the thing, wondering if she could do something to impede it, when she saw that the cover of the emergency cut-off switch was flipped up.
Well, well.
Sidling in between the Nietzscheans, she reached out and toggled it off.
The a-grav pad shut down and the whole thing hit the deck with a resounding thud, one of the Niets howling in pain.
“My foot! What the fuck!”
“Shit, the e-cut got flipped.”
“Flip it back, you moron!”
Two of the soldiers came over to investigate, and Leslie backed away, rifle held ready. If Annie’s explosion didn’t go off in time, shooting the plasma cutter in its mag-pod might just—
An electron beam flashed in the far corner, burning a hole in the overhead before more beams slashed out, firing in every direction.
Leslie was about to admonish the woman to run, but Annie was already sprinting across the bay, her body faintly visible as the flow armor struggled to keep up with her rapid motion in the now-ionized bay air.
Then an explosion rocked the deck, sending the wildly-firing turret soaring through the air to land on the plasma cutter, where it burned a hole in one of the Niets before exploding.
At the same time, the bay doors began to open.
She checked the bay, surprised to see that all of the soldiers, barring the two who were standing next to the shuttle’s sealed door, had run toward the plasma cutter and exploding crates.
Leslie was about to signal Yig to open up, when the shuttle’s door did just that. Fiona and Cole leant out, both firing electron beams at the remaining two soldiers.
A second later, they were safely inside, and the craft was lifting off. Jeremy disabled his stealth systems, a cheek-splitting grin on his face as he reached out for Annie, finding her arm and clasping it firmly.
“Stars…now that was fun!”
A TRIP
STELLAR DATE: 05.07.8950 (Adjusted Years)
LOCATION: Capeton Command, Capeton
REGION: Genevia System, Old Genevia, Nietzschean Empire
Rika worked to keep herself calm as she was transferred to a large shuttle and then to a ship she assumed was the Belgara.
Certainly the most ornate shuttle bay I’ve ever been in, she thought as her cage was pulled from the shuttle and set down on the deck. An entire platoon of Nietzschean soldiers surrounded it, though neither Garza or Constantine came to check on her.
She felt a little put out that they were leaving her alone in the bay, but decided that it was preferable to having to look at either of them—or have them look at her like she was some sort of hunting prize.
Niki didn’t respond, and Rika watched as an engineer entered the bay and inspected the cage before making some adjustments and chastising the soldiers for messing up one of the fields.
Rika whistled aloud. The sound was barely audible from within her helmet, but two of the guards turned to face her nonetheless.
“Sorry guys, was just trying to entertain myself with a jaunty tune. Got any good vids or anything?”
“Stupid Neeve,” one of the soldiers said, shaking his head before turning away.
Rika barked a laugh, not caring that the Niets could hear her.
Niki’s tone carried a note of sarcasm, and Rika wondered if the AI was angry.
She decided not to dig into that, wanting to know more about the bomb Niki had dropped on her.
Niki let out a burst of nervous laughter, which turned into a sigh.
Niki sent an image of her avatar sticking out her tongue.
Niki explained what she knew of the process, of the AIs who had ascended during the Sentience Wars, and the effort that was made to destroy them.
From there, the conversation shifted to how ascending manifested, the pair going over what they knew of Tangel’s journey and what they’d seen her do in Jersey City on Pyra.
Niki replied.
Rika almost giggled at the absurdity of Niki’s statement.
Niki joined Rika in her laughter.
Rika closed her eyes and shut off the three-sixty vision from her helmet.
Despite her words, Rika hadn’t fully convinced herself that the whole situation wasn’t utterly ridiculous. Tangel was an incredible woman who had been through countless trials and tribulations. For Rika to be able to achieve even a sliver of ascension at thirty years of age seemed impossible.
All the same, she had no desire to be sliced up by Constantine’s scientists, so trying anything was preferable to that—no matter how crazy it sounded.
She slowed her breathing, letting herself feel everything around her. Her synthetic skin, the armor latched tightly to it, her mechanical limbs, the pistons, rods, carbon fiber bones within her body. She allowed herself to simply feel every part of herself. As she did, a strange feeling came over her, a feeling she didn’t recall e
ver experiencing before.
It’s almost as though my mind is filling my entire body, pushing at the edges….
The sensation was surreal, but as soon as it came over her, Rika doubted that it had to do with ascension. It was just a trick her mind was playing on her as she calmed down in the wake of the fight on Capeton Command, and her capture.
Still, she felt like, if she tried, she could push her perception of self beyond the physical bounds of her body.
Stars, I feel like someone who’s into magical nonsense. What I really need is an arm with an e-beam tucked into it. Then I could just shoot the shit out of these grav generators and get out. None of this ascension nonsense.
“Hey, get her loaded back into the shuttle,” a voice called out, and Rika’s concentration was broken, visuals from her helmet flooding back into her mind.
“What?” one of the soldiers asked. “Why’d we take her out of the shuttle in the first place?”
“Because you were ordered to, Lieutenant. Now put her back in!”
Rika saw that the new arrival was a major, and as the soldiers began to remove the stays holding her cage to the deck, he approached and stood arms akimbo, staring at her with an unblinking gaze.
“You’ve got guts, mech, I’ll give you that. That might be the closest anyone has gotten to the emperor in some time. He’s not happy about it, but from what I hear, he’s blaming General Garza.”
“I shoulda taken a shot,” Rika muttered.
“You’d be dead if you had,” the major said. “Though I suppose you might wish you were before long.”
Rika didn’t reply, and the man turned and walked out of the bay after another minute of staring.
Ten minutes later, her cage was back in the shuttle, and twenty minutes after that, she heard a muted thrum as the craft took off.
The AI laughed.
