by M. D. Cooper
Amy nodded and gave Leslie a bit of space while Rika pulled her helmet back on.
“Are we going to be OK?” Amy asked, her voice wavering as she watched Leslie.
“You bet we are. You saw how we took out those bad people holding you. Here we are, hale and whole,” Rika replied.
Amy looked at the gash on Rika’s thigh where bits of biofoam stuck out from the wound.
“That looks bad, though.”
Rika glanced down at her leg. The pain had died down to a dull throb; more because she was practiced at ignoring injuries than because of any lack of severity in the wound.
“Yeah, looks worse than it is, though. I’m pretty tough.”
Amy nodded seriously. “You look tough. Do you work for my father, ma’am?”
Rika let out a quiet laugh. “Rika. You can call me Rika. We were hired by your father to bring you home.”
A strange expression crossed Amy’s face, and Rika couldn’t tell if the girl was happy or sad about the news.
While she was processing that, Leslie handed her the pixie dust.
As Rika moved away, she saw Amy tuck against Leslie’s side once more. Rika ventured out into the tall grass surrounding the granaries, stopping when she had walked five hundred meters.
The pixie dust was a fine film, deposited from a canister onto the grass and ground that the team’s sensors would pick up. It was expensive. Rika wouldn’t use it to detect humans—there was no way those could hide in the dry grass.
The aracnidrones were a different story entirely, and worth the cost of the pixie dust, in Rika’s opinion.
She held the canister out at arm’s length and began to walk in a wide circle around the granaries. She started on the southwest side, determined to first lay the dust down on the side facing the farm.
Behind her, the dusted strip of grass glowed brightly on her HUD. So long as no one else knew the variable set of wavelengths at which the dust reflected, it would be entirely invisible.
If any of those drones came through and picked up the dust, they’d be as bright as searchlights.
Let them try me then, Rika challenged.
She had almost walked a full kilometer when the surveillance drones alerted her to the gunship lifting off from the farm.
It wasn’t that they had been sloppy; traversing ten kilometers of waist-high grass, in armor, was going to leave some broken stalks—even if one avoided the denser patches.
The gunship was flying low and slow, sweeping back and forth across the terrain. Rika and the team had used a few game trails as they moved across the terrain; with any luck, their pursuers would follow some of those, and buy the team enough time for Patty to arrive with their ride.
Chase said.
Rika ignored the barb and continued on her route, depositing the pixie dust. As she passed one hundred and twenty degrees of her circle, she saw movement to her right.
Rika’s lips split into a grin. Not so easy this time.
She took a moment to gauge the drone’s movement and then fired a depleted uranium round. The sabot burned its propellant then fell off, leaving the high-density dart, which hit the aracnidrone with the force of a building falling on it.
Debris fountained into the air and when it settled, there was no more movement.
From that drone.
Rika sprinted back toward the granaries, putting more distance between her and the pixie dust, as two more aracnidrones passed through the line.
They all knew what that meant: either the pilot of the gunship was very subtle and didn’t want to reveal the presence of the aracnidrones until they struck, or they were dealing with two enemies.
Rika had to assume two separate foes. Apparently Amy is a hot commodity.
The two aracnidrones didn’t know that Rika could see them, and continued to move slowly through the tall grass, trying to stay in cover. Rika took quick but careful aim and fired two more sabot rounds.
The first one hit its target, and another explosion of dirt and aracnidrone limbs flew into the air; the second missed, and the drone raced forward, passing within the minimum range of Rika’s sabot rounds.
“Eat this,” Rika said aloud as she spun up the chaingun and fired at the onrushing drone. The thing picked up speed, dodging left and right as Rika tried to hit it.
She clipped one leg, then another, and shot down two missiles that the drone fired at her. Then it opened up its own minigun as it wove through the grass, and Rika dove aside, losing sight of her foe in the tall grass.
The entire engagement took less than seven seconds, and Rika rose to a crouch. The drone suddenly leapt at her, intent on tearing her limb from limb like the one back at the farm.
She was ready for it, and swung her chaingun into the drone’s path, slamming it into the underside of the thing, firing as she raised both the gun and the drone over her head.
The drone flew through the air and slammed into one of the concrete silos, whereupon Rika expended the remainder of her chaingun’s ammo, shredding the thing.
Barne didn’t respond, but Rika knew he was right. Ricochets and shrapnel could damage her weapons. She unlatched the chaingun, dropping it to the ground, and ran a check on her GNR’s three firing modes.
They all checked out clean, and she breathed a sigh of relief. If she fouled the GNR in combat, Barne would never let her live it down.
There was no time to celebrate her victory against the drones—or spar with Barne further. The gunship had just passed within the five-kilometer max range of her rockets, and Rika signaled the launcher to fire a pair.
The gunship’s pilot jinked predictably as the rockets streaked toward his craft, and Rika fired her electron beam at the ship, striking it in the stern.
The gunship dropped to five meters as it crossed the one-kilometer mark, but—contrary to Rika’s prediction—it did not slow.
Dammit. It’s now or never.
Rika fired her last two rockets as the side door slid open, and the gunship slewed to the side, avoiding the rockets. Two armored figures half-jumped, half-fell out. Rika circled the rockets back around and slammed one into the gunship on its right side, while the second struck the ship in the tail, spinning it wildly.
A third figure fell from the ship’s side door, and then the gunship pulled back, circling high in the air.
Rika peered through the silos to see their ride coming down from the heavens on the southern side of the structures. A pair of missiles streaked out from the Marauder pinnace, lancing through the night toward the enemy gunship. The pilot of the gunship managed t
o evade one, but not both.
Patty’s missile struck the ship near the bow and swung it sideways, the tip of one if its stubby wings hitting the ground and spinning the gunship around to slam into the loamy prairie turf.
Rika switched her vision to the overhead drone feeds and saw a trio of missiles, plus two electron beams, streak out of the tall grass directly under Patty’s drop ship. The ship fired countermeasures, but the enemy had fired from too close a range and their weapons all struck true.
The backend of the Marauder pinnace exploded, and the ship flipped over, spinning end over end before slamming into one of the silos.
Barne called out, and passed the targeting data over the combat net.
Rika acknowledged before running a quick scan to make sure all the drones were down. Satisfied that she wasn’t going to get attacked from behind, she dashed out into the prairie and fired two sabot rounds, followed by an electron beam. Then she turned to her right, toward the enemies who had jumped from the gunship before it went down.
Rika’s high-altitude drones had tracked the mercs as they left the ship and hadn’t lost sight in the chaos. The feeds showed that two were in heavy armor, while another was in lighter gear.
She fired a trio of rounds at the lightly armored enemy before diving to the side as a spray of kinetic rounds swept across the prairie.
Rika rolled to her feet and strafed around the three mercenaries at top speed, firing two sabot rounds. She hit one of the heavies before she got the downed gunship between them.
The overhead drones showed that the figure in the light armor was down, but the two heavies were still on the move, getting in position to come around both sides of the gunship.
Rika glanced inside the cockpit, noting that the pilot was alive but unconscious, and that the ship—despite the hole in the back and the shattered ablative plating—was otherwise intact.
She was considering her options when one of the heavies broke into a run and leapt atop the gunship.
Shit, I was going to do that, Rika groused.
Even without her drones overhead watching the battlefield, she would have heard the enemy slam into the ship. He moved toward the edge. Two can play the jumping game.
JE84 in hand, she leapt into the air, flashing past the enemy—who was too startled to react—and unloaded a full magazine from her weapon into his head and shoulders before coming down behind him.
A spray of rounds from the other heavy hit her in the back, and Rika spun behind the soldier atop the gunship, using him for cover.
He had just recovered from her barrage—which had dented his armor, but not penetrated anywhere—when his teammate’s weapons fire slammed into him.
His armor cracked around the shoulder and right arm, and Rika dropped her rifle, grabbed the broken armor, and pulled.
By then, the man—the troop had the build of a man—was raising his rifle to fire point-blank into Rika’s head.
Until she ripped his arm off.
He shrieked like a banshee, and Rika kicked him off the top of the gunship and leapt into the air, forgetting her JE84, brandishing his detached arm as she raced toward the third enemy, who took off running the other way.
Rika threw the arm after him and considered giving chase, but Leslie spoke up.
Rika looked back at the downed gunship.
The gunship lay thirty meters from the northern side of the silos, protected from the approaching enemy on the southern side.
Rika wondered who had shot down Patty. Are they K-Strike, or is the gunship K-Strike’s?
Missions like this had been much simpler during the war. There was her side and the Nietzscheans; that was it. Now everything always seemed to involve three or four competing groups.
The thing was tough as nails.
She touched the initialization panel on the console hoping the ship would not be in a secure mode.
“Dammit,” Rika muttered. There wasn’t time to hack the controls before the next enemy arrived. However, there was someone in the cockpit who had the correct tokens and knew how to fly the craft.
Rika’s scan suite showed the pilot’s heartbeat to be steady, though his blood pressure was a touch low. His breathing was regular, but shallow; could have to do with how his chin was against his chest.
“Hey,” Rika said as she pushed his head back and shook it side to side. “Wake up, buddy.”
The pilot moaned as Leslie and Amy came on board, the girl tripping over a dislodged seat.
“Ow!” she cried out, and the pilot’s eyes snapped open.
“What? Where?” he said, looking around with unfocused eyes. He turned his head—which was at crotch-level with Rika—and his eyes widened noticeably.
“Eyes up here,” Rika growled, and the pilot leaned back, looking up at Rika’s helmet.
“Uh…hi?” he said.
“Get her ready, we’re about to fly out of here.”
“We are?” the pilot asked, obviously still dazed from the crash.
“Yeah,” Rika said sweetly. “There’s a bunch of unfriendly types on their way here to take the girl. I’m pretty sure they’re not your pals, so being not here would be in your best interests.”
“Wait…what about my team?”
Rika shook her head slowly. “Unless you want to join them, I’d suggest you get us airborne.”
The pilot nodded and turned to the console in front of him, muttering under his breath as he activated a repair system and powered on the main grav emitters. The gunship lurched sideways, and Amy cried out with alarm.
Rika looked back to see Leslie with her helmet off, shushing the girl as she buckled her into one of the remaining seats.
“We’re almost out of here, Amy,” Rika reassured her. “Just have to wait for the rest of our friends.”
As though on cue, Chase appeared at the side of the gunship, lifting Patty up in his arms.
“I got her,” Leslie said as she leaned over the side and gently lifted the unconscious woman into the vessel.
Rika saw that Patty’s face was bloody and her left leg looked torn up. A scan from her armor showed a rapid pulse and shortness of breath.
“I’ll stabilize her,” Leslie promised as she settled the team’s pilot into a seat.
“Is she going to be OK?” Amy asked, her voice a mixture of fear and concern.
“Yes, dear, she’ll be fine,” Leslie replied absently. “You’ll see.”
Chase pulled himself up, and Rika leaned back to clasp his shoulder.
Rika nodded and shuffled around Chase in the gunship’s tight confines. When she reached the opening on the side of the ship, she met Barne, who was pulling himself up.
/> “Let’s get gone. Head north,” Chase ordered the pilot.
“Yeah, north,” the man replied.
The gunship pulled into the air and slowly turned before speeding off to the north.
Rika peered out the hole in the side of the ship, searching for the adversaries who had been approaching from the south. As she scanned the granaries, a figure appeared atop one of the silos. Its shape was familiar, and Rika directed her drones to get a closer look. One managed to send back an image before enemy drones started taking out her surveillance.
There she was, clear as day: an SMI-2 mech, her GNR raised but not firing.
“Kick it up a notch,” Chase commanded in the cockpit, and the gunship accelerated, leaving the vision from Rika’s past far behind them.
LAYING LOW
STELLAR DATE: 02.15.8949 (Adjusted Years)
LOCATION: Stolen Gunship, Edge of Kandahar City
REGION: Faseema, Oran System, Praesepe Cluster
“You sure this location is secure?” Chase asked as the gunship’s pilot lowered the craft into a deep ravine outside of Kandahar City—a mid-sized city on the coast of the Oran Ocean.
Barne barked a laugh from where he had been standing behind the pilot, silently menacing the man. “Chase, we’re on an ass-end planet in the ass-end of an FTL route that goes nowhere worth going in Praesepe. I don’t think there’s a single safe place on this rock.”
“I get that, Barne; we know your glass never even gets to half-full. I just wanted to know if the surveillance drones you dropped here were still reporting,” Chase replied.
“Oh, yeah, that. Nothing bigger than a lizard has come through in the last three days. But once we land and check over the gear, we need to blow this ship and get gone.”
From her seat in the back—with Amy still all but embedded in her side—Leslie asked, “Don’t think you disabled the ship’s transponder?”
“I disabled two. That doesn’t mean there’s not another that’s on a dead-timer with no EM ‘til it phones home.”
“And…uhhhh…what about me?” the pilot asked as the gunship wobbled slightly in a sudden updraft.
“You just get us on the ground, and then we’ll worry about what’s next,” Barne grunted.
