Rika Unleashed
Page 23
Granted, the pinnace was small—only forty meters long, squat and ugly.
The ramp began to descend, and Alison strode down the walk toward it, wishing she had ammunition for something other than her electron beam so she could shoot his legs out the moment he appeared on the ramp.
Waiting for Del—the tall, dark-haired, cocksure bastard that he was—to clear the ship was taking all her self-control at the moment. He was almost past the aerofin on the pinnace’s tail, when Jaka called out from behind her.
“Alison. What the hell are you doing out here?”
She turned toward Jaka, ready to take the two quick steps required to drive a fist through his face, but Del called out from behind her.
“Jaka! An informant caught sight of Yakob and the woman. She’s only two kilometers from here, down on Mida Street!”
“Do we have an ID on her yet?” Jaka called out, anger and excitement tinging his voice.
“My guy saw her face, but didn’t make an ID. Sending you her picture.”
Alison had stepped back as Jaka blithely walked past, so she got an up-close view of his face losing all color as Del sent him what she assumed must be Alice’s image. His steps faltered, and he stumbled, reaching out and placing a hand on her arm to steady himself.
“The fuck…” he whispered. “No. She’s dead. The Niets killed her years ago.”
“Who is she to you?” Alison asked, gazing down at Jaka, who suddenly seemed to realize he was leaning up against the deadliest person he’d ever encountered.
“She’s…she’s my mother.”
“Damn,” Alison shook her head. “If I’d made a bet, it would have been on sister. But that was mostly to do with the fact that I can’t actually picture Alice in the throes of passion.”
Jaka spun on her. “You lied?! You knew what she looked like all along?”
Alison shrugged. “Yeah, I just wanted to make you squirm a bit. As much as I’d like to put a bullet in Alice’s head, I figured that if you knew who she was, you’d stay till the last minute, searching her out, and…well…I want your ship over there.” She finished the statement by gesturing with her GNR, pointing it right at Del.
She was about to fire, when she decided that she really would like to know where Alice was—and then get her hands on the woman. There were still twenty minutes before the station would be hit, and then roughly another ten until it came down.
Dammit…I’ve never stalled so much in my life.
“But the Discipline…” Jaka muttered as he stared up at her. “How?”
“It doesn’t work on us anymore, the chip port is just a placebo so that folks like you will think you have us under control. Now, Del—”
“Hold it right there!” Illumine said from the house’s doorway, her golden lips set in a thin line as she leveled a large-caliber rifle at Alison. It would be enough to smart, but Alison was certain the flow armor covering her skin could hold up to a few shots from the weapon.
Or I take door number two.
She reached out and grabbed Jaka by the neck, lifting him into the air while he squirmed and grasped her arm to relieve the pressure on this throat.
“You were saying, Illumine?”
“Fuck,” the red-skinned woman whispered. “Please, don’t hurt him.”
“That’s right,” Del shouted from next to the pinnace, hands hovering over his pistols, eyes fixed on Alison’s GNR, which was still pointed at him. “You kill Jaka, you have no leverage over either of us.”
“Well,” Alison shrugged. “Other than your lives.”
Illumine set her rifle down, then kicked it away. “OK, look. Just let us go, we won’t come after you.”
Alison found herself far more conflicted than she’d expected to be. When planning out her escape, she’d intended to kill all three of these people without any hesitation, probably with a healthy dose of extreme prejudice to boot. Now she was considering letting some of them live.
“Where’s Alice?” she asked Del. “Address on Mida Street.”
“Building 4314. Suite 22.”
Something in Del’s voice caused her to peer into his eyes, where she saw a deep, simmering rage. She realized that this was the sort of man who never hesitated to kill, and would hunt her down years later if he lived.
Like I need that.
Her electron beam lanced out, drawing a straight blue line from the barrel of her GNR to Del’s head.
A second later, the man’s corpse fell to the ground, and Alison strode to Illumine’s discarded rifle, and stomped on it while the woman let out a series of small shrieks, backpedaling and tripping over the doorway’s threshold.
Alison didn’t pay her any heed and walked to the pinnace, still holding Jaka aloft by his neck. She strode up the ramp, only glancing at the headless body as she passed it by.
At the top of the ramp, she reached for the control, only to hear Illumine wailing for her to stop. A moment later, the woman fell on her knees at the base of the ramp, golden eyes wide with fear.
“Please, take me too. Please, I don’t wanna die here.”
“Oh for starssakes,” Alison muttered. “Up. In the cockpit.”
She stepped aside, and Illumine ran past, giving Jaka—whose face was turning beet red—a terrified look.
Alison followed her to the cockpit and then let go of Jaka. “I assume you can fly?”
He looked up at her, tried to squeak out a word, and then nodded mutely and climbed unsteadily into the pilot’s seat.
“Then let’s go,” Alison said, clamping her feet to the deck plate while Illumine sobbed softly as she pulled on her harness.
Once it was in place, Alison reached down and placed a hand on the woman’s neck, delivering a dose of her now-replenished nano into the woman’s body and rendering her unconscious.
“Thank stars, finally some peace and quiet,” Alison said with a smile.
* * * * *
“We’re close, Colonel Rika,” Shoshin said as the pinnace streaked over Cartegena.
Rika glanced at the Huro Girl, whose name turned out to be Hannah, and the woman nodded meekly. “Almost there.”
“Wait, what’s that?” Kelly pointed out the window as a pinnace rose into the air a kilometer away.
“That’s gotta be them!” Fred exclaimed. “Look, that’s the Huro logo on the nose.”
“He was supposed to wait for us!” Hannah squeaked. “The bastard didn’t even call out to check.”
Rika directed a cold glare at the woman, and her mouth clamped shut.
Shoshin didn’t need to be told to follow the other ship, and banked the pinnace sharply, turning toward the other craft, which flew a short distance and then disappeared behind a long row of apartment buildings.
Rika rushed to the ramp to see Jenisa and Kor already lowering it. The moment Shoshin had the ship over the street, the three jumped out and hit the pavement next to Jaka’s pinnace, only to witness a perplexing tableau.
Alison stood at the base of the pinnace’s ramp, holding a man in her right hand, the tips of his boots just barely resting on the ground.
Her GNR was extended and trained on a tall man, who stood next to a hovercar, holding a woman in his arms. Between them was another man, shorter, with dirty blond hair. Both his arms were outstretched, one palm raised toward Alison, one directed at the man holding Alice.
“Please,” Rika heard the man in the middle say, right as she hit the ground. “Please, don’t shoot, we can settle this peacefully.”
“I’ll be the judge of that,” Rika said as she approached.
Jenisa was on her right with her GNR trained on the man holding the woman, while Kor came around the other side, PR-111 aimed at the man in the middle.
Alison visibly sagged, and the soles of the man’s feet touched the ground.
“Sweet stars, it’s good to see all of you—you especially, Colonel,” she said, shaking her head. “I thought I was about to ge
t it from more of this guy’s weird girls.” She gave the man she was holding a light shake, which caused him to whimper softly.
“Glad to see you, too,” Rika said, trying to keep too much jubilation from her voice until she knew what was going on.
Suddenly a woman rose from the car, a GNR of her own aimed right at Rika.
“How’s about we all lower our weapons,” she said in an easy drawl. “No need to get carried away, here.”
“Gloria,” the man in the middle hissed, looking over his shoulder. “That’s not helping.”
Two figures materialized behind Gloria, GNRs extended. “Yup. Really not,” Kelly said as Keli nodded.
Gloria raised her GNR and held up her other arm. “Look, we don’t need guns in play; you all out-muscle us. I just don’t want anyone to get hurt.”
“Fair enough.” Rika lowered her weapon and gestured for the rest of her Marauders to follow suit.
“Kor,” Alison glanced at the AM-4, “I knocked Illumine out in the cockpit. Make sure she doesn’t fly off.”
“Illumine?” Kor asked.
“She’s like…the alpha Huro Girl.”
Kor chuckled as he turned toward the ramp. “Rad.”
“OK, for starters, I assume that’s Alice?” Rika asked, gesturing to the woman in the arms of the man next to the hovercar.
“Sure is,” Alison said with a sneer. “And this dickwad,” she gave the man she held a shake, “is Jaka Huro, her son.”
Rika’s helmet scan gathered vitals from Alice, ascertaining that the woman was awake. By the slight shaking of her shoulders, she could also tell that the lieutenant colonel was crying.
Rika nodded slowly, turning her focus to the man standing in the middle of the mess. “And you are?”
“Umm…I’m just Tremon. We’re trying to help this woman—Alice. Jaka has one of his thugs, a guy named Del, going after her.”
“Not anymore,” Alison said with a laugh. “Del kinda lost his head.”
“OK, ‘Just Tremon’,” Rika said, noticing that the man holding Alice had relaxed a hair at the news of Del’s demise. “I’m Colonel Rika of the Marauders. We’re here to bring Alice in.”
“I told you,” the other man said to Tremon. “This woman’s a trouble magnet.”
“You’re not wrong, there,” Rika said as Shoshin set their pinnace down a hundred meters behind them. “Jenisa, place the Lieutenant Colonel under arrest for dereliction of duty and mutiny.”
Tremon’s shoulders slumped as Jenisa all but skipped toward the man who held Alice. “Damn, and here I thought I was helping,” he said.
“Good riddance,” the other man muttered as he handed Alice over to Jenisa.
“Tremon, how did you, Gloria, and your other friend, here, get mixed up in all this?” Rika asked.
Tremon watched Jenisa carry Alice to Shoshin’s pinnace. “That’s Yakob. He and I were just trying to do the right thing when we saved her.”
“We need to go,” Yakob said, gesturing to the hovercar. “There’s not much time.”
Gloria turned to Yakob, her eyebrows halfway up her forehead. “Yakob, don’t you realize who this is? This is the woman that is liberating Genevia. Where else are we going to go but with her?”
“I can think of a lot of places,” Yakob said, eyeing Rika suspiciously.
“Either way, that car’s not going to get you far enough,” Rika said. “Not if the station really does come down. We have room, though. Come with us.”
Over the past several minutes Rika had noticed a few people appear in the doorways along the street. None had made a threatening move, and she’d paid them no more heed than necessary as they’d watched the scene unfold.
At Rika’s words, a woman called out, “Please, I have children. We have no way to get out. The feeds said the maglevs were backed up and there’s…no hope.”
Tremon gave Rika an imploring look. “We’ll go with you, but you have to help these people.”
Rika counted thirty-three desperate-looking people who had crept out onto the street. She gave Tremon a curious look, wondering why he’d demand she help everyone else to get him to come along.
Not that it mattered, she wasn’t going to turn anyone away
“OK, folks. Hurry. We don’t have much time.”
FINAL COUNTDOWN
STELLAR DATE: 12.23.8949 (Adjusted Years)
LOCATION: Event Horizon, Cerulean Shipyards, Malta
REGION: Iberia System, Old Genevia, Nietzschean Empire
“Mona!” Saris called over her shoulder. “Have you got those forward beams back online yet?”
“Almost, Lieutenant,” the woman said without looking up from her console. “This freakin’ ship is like a relic. You’re lucky I spent a week working with the mechs on the Undaunted on this backward tech, or we’d be outta luck.”
“I’ll have to put you on repair rotations more often,” Saris said with a raised eyebrow. “Good for the team.”
“Or you could do one,” Mona muttered.
Saris pulled the destroyer out from amongst a series of cargo nets in the Cerulean shipyard. Scan caught sight of their pursuers, and Saris was glad to see that the final seven fighters they’d drawn off were still with them and hadn’t returned to the battle around Ferris’s ragtag fleet.
“What was that, Sergeant?” she asked, suddenly realizing what the other woman had said.
“Eh? What?” Mona asked.
“Funny.”
“Oh baby, we’re ready to rock and roll!”
The Event Horizon’s chaotic route through the shipyard had caused the pursuing fighters to follow the destroyer single-file, stretched out over several kilometers. With the twisting path Saris had taken amongst the hulls and cargo nets, the enemy ships had only gotten off a few shots, but Saris knew that when they reached the far side of the shipyard, all that would change.
Luckily, with Mona’s repairs, it would change in the Marines’ favor.
Seconds later, the Event Horizon burst into clear space, and Saris punched the rear starboard thrusters, spinning the ship around, its straining dampeners barely keeping them in their seats as she fired the port thrusters to halt the motion.
“Eat this, suckers!” Mona yelled, firing the four functional beams.
Two struck one fighter, and then two hit another. Both enemy ships died fiery deaths just two seconds later, and Saris let out a cry of joy.
Then three of the enemy craft burst through the expanding clouds of plasma and debris, two firing beams at the nearly crippled destroyer, while the third launched a pair of missiles.
“Charging!” Mona called out. “Three, two, firing!”
The Event Horizon’s beams lanced out again, this time one pair focused on the missiles, while another pair targeted the ship that had fired them. One missile made it past and splashed against the shields, its kinetic energy barely absorbed by the grav field, but the fighter that had launched them didn’t move fast enough, and one of the beams tore right through its cockpit, and the ship was no more.<
br />
“Down to four!” Saris cried out in triumph.
“We’ve drained the batts,” Mona said in worried tones, glancing at Saris. “Must have been an error in the capacity measurements.”
Saris wasn’t surprised. The Event Horizon was on its last leg, barely more than a glorified troop transport at this point. Enough to keep the locals in line, but as evidenced by its inability to hold off less than two dozen equally ancient fighters without falling apart, not much else.
The old ship groaned as the thrusters fired, turning it around once more, while the main engines’ grav field distributed the payload that Kali had pushed out into space.
For a moment nothing happened, and Mona asked. “Were those limpets all duds? Please don’t let them be duds.”
Then one of the fighters exploded, followed by another, causing Saris to let out a cheer, while Mona screamed out a string of obscenities at the Nietzscheans.
By some miracle, the final two fighters turned away, apparently deciding not to follow in the footsteps of the rest of their squadron.
“Oh no you don’t,” Saris said through gritted teeth as she brought the destroyer around once more, praying it would hold together just a few minutes longer as the deck bucked violently under their feet.
“Charged!” Mona cried out and fired the beams at the fleeing attack craft.
Only three fired this time, two striking one of the fighters’ engines, causing a small explosion, and the ship went dark as it tumbled through space.
The other fighter made it away unscathed.
Saris fired the main engines again, attempting to pursue, but the ship lurched and began to slew to the side. Her board lit up with an alert that the starboard engine had lost its fuel supply. Then the port engine sputtered out, a control system error showing up on the engineering console.