by M. D. Cooper
“No!”
The Discipline hit her harder this time, tearing at her mind, bringing unimaginable agony. It was as though white-hot knives were in her brain, slicing away every part her, cutting her to pieces.
The pain subsided for a moment, and she gasped for air, realizing that she was now sprawled on the ground, with her JE78 a meter away. She wondered when she had dropped it.
“Rika!” Cheri yelled. “Kill Barne now!”
Rika glanced to her right. Barne still stood, weaponless, and she wondered why he hadn’t made a move to grab his rifle and kill Cheri. She was unarmed; it would only take a second.
Maybe he wanted to see if she had the strength. Or maybe he worried that killing Cheri wouldn’t erase her last standing order—which it probably wouldn’t.
Crippling waves of pain wracked Rika’s body, but somehow, she managed to get back up to her knees.
She whispered, “No.”
Then she got her feet under her, and managed a crouch.
“No!”
Cheri kept screaming at Rika to kill Barne, to kill Leslie, Jerry, all three; but Rika barely heard it at all. What she did hear was Barne give a soft laugh behind her.
“I knew you had it in you, girl. Go get her.”
Something snapped in Rika’s mind. The compliance chip was still functioning, still delivering its debilitating waves of pain, but somehow it didn’t hurt anymore. Instead, the pain had become power; a rage that had been building ever since that dickhead technician named Jack had gleefully assembled her, and used the compliance chip and its Discipline to control her.
Years of real pain and anger gave her strength to fight against the artificial agony.
Rika sprang forward, flying over Jerry and Leslie, to land behind the woman who was now the focus of all her rage. Rika reached out, almost casually, and snapped Cheri’s neck.
She expected the pain to stop, but it didn’t. It seemed to get worse—something she had not thought possible. Rika realized that her heart rate and blood pressure were both dangerously high. She fell to her knees, looking up to see Barne rushing forward to tear the gag from Jerry’s mouth.
“Compliance systems off!” Jerry shouted.
The pain was gone in an instant. All that remained was the pounding of her heart in her ears. Rika pulled herself to her feet and scanned the room. The guards that had been closing in behind them were almost at the door.
Rika raised her GNR and fired three bolts of lightning, blowing a hole in the door with the first, and then tearing holes in four guards with the next two.
She saw three other guards run down the hall, two of them tossing aside their weapons as they went.
Barne had already cut the straps holding Jerry, and the LT stood on shaky legs, giving Rika a grateful smile.
“Holy shit, Rika. You are one hardcore woman.”
Rika smiled and rapped her fist on her chest. “No way, LT. In here, I’m a squishie, just like you.”
FLIGHT
STELLAR DATE: 12.16.8948 (Adjusted Years)
LOCATION: Northeast Berlin
REGION: Pyra, Albany System, Theban Alliance
Jerry and Leslie were embracing and taking deep breaths, while Barne checked the corridor to ensure that no more of Cheri’s guards were interested in becoming statistics.
“Did you get eyes on the ammo?” Rika asked, remembering their need to find ammunition for her GNR-41C.
Jerry pulled himself away from Leslie and nodded. “She showed the rounds to us.” He turned and led them through a door in the back of the room to a well-appointed office.
“I’m really sorry about this, everyone,” Leslie said. “This is all my fault. Cheri asked what we needed the rounds for, if we’d retrofitted a GNR onto a mount of some sort—stars knows none of us could fire that thing without it tearing our arms off.”
“No, it’s not your fault,” Jerry replied as he approached a cabinet on the wall. “You just slipped up.”
“Slipped up in the den of the lion, and let her know that we had an SMI-2 with us,” Leslie replied. “Sorry, Rika; looks like you’re a hot commodity.”
Rika nodded absently. She was still processing the fact that she had beaten Discipline—that she had weathered the torture and come through the other side. Even so, the rage she had tapped into scared her. It was worse than what she had felt during the war, worse than what she felt when she killed the woman attacking Barne.
It was raw, and primal, and not something she thought she could control.
“Hey, mission control to Rika,” Barne said, snapping his fingers in front of her face. “You OK? I gotta say, I think that counts as the second time you saved my ass in as many days.”
Rika focused her eyes and smiled. “You got a big ass, Barne; it needs a lot of saving.”
Rika looked to Leslie, realizing what the woman had been saying, and gently placed a hand on her shoulder. “It’s OK, Leslie. For all we know, Cheri would have done this out of suspicion alone. Never trust someone who combines fuzzy slippers and sweaters.”
“Uh…I frequently wear fuzzy slippers and sweaters,” Leslie replied with a grin.
“Well…maybe you should stop,” Rika replied, her voice dead serious.
Leslie’s face fell and she took a half step back.
“Leslie, seriously! Who doesn’t like comfy sweaters and slippers? I was kidding.”
“Rika! Don’t do that! I just watched you snap a woman’s neck like you were twisting the cap off a bottle. You’re a bit scary, you know that?”
I’ve noticed, she thought, her eyes turning downward.
“Hey! Leslie, be nice to Rika,” Barne said as he gave Rika’s arm a light punch.
Leslie’s eyebrows were nearly at her hairline. “What happened with you two, anyway? I thought you hated her, Barne.”
“Rika?” Barne asked. “I’d never hate her. She’s a Marauder. She’s Basilisk.”
Rika gave Barne a smile, and as her gaze swept across the room, she noticed Jerry was sagging against the cabinet he had been trying to open.
“LT, you OK?” she asked.
“Yeah. Cheri wasn’t gentle when she pulled the compliance codes out of my mind. I thought I was doing better, but…I seem to have developed one clusterfuck of a headache.”
Leslie rushed to his side and half carried him to a chair.
“I think…she might have the ammo in there,” Jerry said, pointing to the cabinet.
Barne looked it over. “Locked.”
Rika approached the cabinet, placed a hand on the left door, and prised her fingers into the small gap between the top of the cabinet and its right-side door.
It was solid, but Rika gave a quick jerk, and the door tore off its hinges. She pulled the left one open, and spotted a slim black case. Her rad counter crept up, and she flipped the latch, opening it.
Inside, lay the dull grey forms of five depleted uranium sabot rounds in mint condition. Just what her GNR-41C wanted to fire.
“Stars, you’re handy to have around,” Leslie said. “Who needs bolt cutters when we have Rika?”
“That’s me, your one-stop utility tool,” Rika chuckled, surprised that Leslie’s statement didn’t sting—and that her own response wasn’t caustic.
“Can we keep her, LT?” Barne asked.
Jerry pulled himself up straight in the chair. “Of course we can, Sergeant. Like you said—Rika’s Basilisk.”
Rika felt a lump form in her throat, and redirected the conversation before she had to find a cloth to wipe tears from her eyes.
“We have a car a ways down the valley,” Rika said. “But I don’t think you can make it that far, Lieutenant. We can steal one here, or I can carry you.”
“I don’t think my head would appreciate being slung over your shoulder for a run through the forest,” Jerry replied. “Let’s steal one of Cheri’s cars. Bitch won’t be using them anymore, anyway.”
“Want me to carry you through the villa, at least?” Rika asked.
“No. We need you ready for a fight,” Jerry said as he rose. “I might use Leslie as a crutch for a bit, though.”
Barne had been watching the entrance to the office, and moved back out into the foyer beyond, which was still clear of any hostiles. Careful not to get too far ahead, he led the way down the corridor to the intersection.
“This way,” he said, and turned right.
Rika posted herself at the intersection until Jerry and Leslie were past; then she moved in behind them, walking sideways so that her two-seventy vision could see both ends of the hall.
They were nearing the end when someone stepped out from an intersection behind them. Rika fired, and then caught sight of a telltale insignia on the figure’s chest.
Rika ran an active scan, looking through the walls as far as she could.
Jerry peered back over his shoulder.
All Rika had to do was disable the cruisers and take down the drone—which may be human-piloted—without killing anyone.
She considered her options. Not killing anyone wasn‘t really her specialty. Perhaps there was a side-window she could get to that would give her a good angle on the four cruisers.
Rika spotted a staircase, and took it up to the second level. At the top of the stairs, she rounded one corner, then another, and almost collided with two of Cheri’s guards.
Terror filled their eyes, and Rika grinned. These two, she could kill. She punched one in the face, caving in his nose and cheekbone, while the other fired his rifle into her side from only two meters away. The rounds ricocheted off, and one struck him in the chest. Rika felt a twinge of pain, and realized that a bullet had slipped through a point in her armor where two of the plates overlapped. She fished it out, and noted that it was clean. No blood. Score one for her carbon-poly skin.
“Stop!” A male voice called out, and she turned to see a cop down the hall, leveling a rifle at her.
“Uh…no?” Rika responded, and dove into a room to her left as the policeman fired.
Are they supposed to do that? she wondered. Details of police procedure—when they could fire on suspects, and all that—was not something she had ever needed to know in the past.
She stood inside the entrance to the room, waiting for the cop to step through. Five seconds ticked past, then ten, then twenty.
Shit, he must be waiting for backup. Smart man.
A moment later, weapons fire sounded, and a barrage of projectiles tore through the wall where she was standing.
I guess they have IR, Rika thought. She considered her options, and then did the exact opposite of what the police expected: She broke through the wall and rushed them.
There were two of them, and neither even had time to register surprise before Rika tore the rifle from the first cop’s hands, and smashed it into the head of the second—as gently as she could manage.
Then she hit the first cop on the side of the head with the barrel of her GNR, and watched him fall.
“Damn squishies,” she muttered, examining their vitals. “You’ll live.”
She returned to the room she had just burst out of, which had an excellent view of the four cruisers parked below—pulled up right in front of the broad stairs leading into the villa. Rika scanned them for occupants. Her luck, such as it was, had held; they were empty.
Rika took aim, and fired an electron beam at the first cruiser, blowing a hole through it and shattering its battery. She fired on the second, and then was lining up on the third when an all too familiar sound met her ears.
Gatling guns always take an instant to spin up before they fire, and that telltale whine was all it took for Rika to dive out of the window, as the room above and behind her was cut to shreds from the high-velocity rounds.
If those dumbasses kill their own people back in the hall, I’ll kill ‘em, Rika thought angrily.
She looked up and saw the drone only twenty meters above the cruisers. It had stopped firing, but was repositioning to shoot at her new location.
Rika didn’t give it time to take aim. She ran across the open space in front of the villa’s main doors, and leapt off the ruins of one cruiser onto the villa’s wall, her feet grasping a windowsill. She crouched, and a second jump propelled her to the villa’s roof.
The drone was turning, and its gatling gun was winding up once more, when Rika leapt from the roof, sailed through the air, and landed on the drone.
She looked inside and saw that there was indeed a human pilot in the cockpit. Rika leveled her rifle at him and screamed “Land”, loud enough that they probably could have heard her halfway down the valley.
Once they were suitably disabled, she brought the drone up over the villa, and pushed the manual control stick forward. The drone pitched, and Rika jumped out, landing again on the villa’s roof.
The drone sped forward and slammed into the escarpment behind the villa before falling to the ground in a twisted heap of metal.
Rika turned and scanned the road, easily spotting the car her team had stolen from Cheri’s garage. She leapt off the villa’s roof and chased after. A few shots came from the villa as Rika disappeared into the night. Most missed, but those that didn’t were unable to penetrate her armor.
She rolled her head back and laughed as she ran down the mountainside, not bothering with following the road. She reviewed her sensory capture of the battle. As far as she could tell, she hadn’t killed any of the police. Maybe she wasn’t just a killer after all.
Rika neared the location where the other car was hidden, and scanned the area to make sure it was clear. As she looked up, a flash of light appeared in the skies, and a scan showed that there was another drone closing in. IR indicated another human pilot; this time approaching at a much higher altitude.
Rika raced to the road, reaching it just
as the drone opened fire on Basilisk’s escape vehicle. Her electron beam wouldn’t be effective against the drone at its current range, so Rika sped up, racing toward it. Ahead, she could see Leslie leaning out of the car, firing on the drone. Her shots were hitting the craft, but appeared to make no impact.
Barne swerved the car wildly, avoiding the drone’s spray of bullets. It pulled around, coming in for a strafing run behind the car. Rika knew it wouldn’t miss this time, and scanned the trees for a good candidate to climb. They were all young and spindly, but then her eyes locked on a thirty-meter pine close by.
Without a moment’s hesitation, Rika leapt into the tree’s branches and clambered up its trunk. When she reached the top, Rika leapt toward the drone, closing the distance enough—she hoped—and fired her electron beam.
The straight line of lightning streaked out and hit the drone on its left side, taking out one of its a-grav units and sending the craft into a tailspin.
The pilot, either purposefully or by accident, opened up with the gatling gun, and fifty-caliber rounds filled the air in a broad circle around the falling drone.
Rika saw that the car with Team Basilisk in it was past the falling drone, but she was not. In fact, her trajectory still had her approaching it.
A round struck her thigh, then another hit her in the chest, and two more slammed into her left arm.
Rika hit the ground hard and rolled to her feet, her HUD registering severe damage to her left arm. She looked down and saw that an armor plate had been shattered below her elbow. She tried to flex her fingers, but they didn’t move.
She glanced over the rest of herself, and saw that her chest plate had a microfracture; but she was otherwise all right. Ahead, the drone’s damaged a-grav unit burst into flames, and Rika rushed forward to save the cop inside.
Within, she saw a woman slumped over the controls. Rika reached down to tear off the craft’s canopy, when she remembered that her hand wasn’t working.
Thank the stars for clawed feet, she thought with a smile, and smashed her foot through the canopy’s clear plas, and then pushed the eject button next to the woman’s chair.
