by M. D. Cooper
The wave of gravitons flowing out from the ship’s emitters cascaded around Rika and almost made her stumble and fall, but she gritted her teeth and pushed through, bursting out of the far side of the gravity shower, catching sight of the two enemies firing on Leslie.
She raised her GNR and fired the electron beam at the one on the right.
Nothing happened.
Shit! Rika swore as her HUD flashed a warning that the weapon’s coils had been misaligned by the gravity field. They were undergoing recalibration—a process that made the entire weapon useless.
She reached for her JE84 and remembered that she had put it in the duffel so she could hold Amy better. And the duffel was back with Patty and the girl.
Rika considered her options, took a deep breath, and charged into the enemy on the right. She hit him at forty kilometers per hour, knocking him forward onto to the ground, and delivered a blow to the back of his helmet. His faceplate slammed it into the hard plas surface of the landing field, and Rika pushed off his back, leaping into the air as the other soldier—a woman, by the stylized, oversized breasts on her armor—fired her rifle at the spot Rika had been a moment before.
Rika sank her clawed feet into the hard plas of the landing field and spun the woman between herself and the crouching enemy. The man hit his female comrade with two shots before he stopped firing and dove to the side in an attempt to get a clear shot on Rika.
Not that Rika was there anymore. She had leapt into the air, flipped over, and dropped onto the man. Her intention had been to hit him center mass, but he had seen the two hundred kilograms of mech falling toward him and jerked backward.
He didn’t make it far enough.
Rika’s full weight came down on his head, crushing his helmet and everything inside with a snap-pop sound.
The woman had spun when Rika went flying through the air, and screamed something incoherent as her partner died. She drew her sidearm and opened up full auto on Rika, shredding her dress and denting her armor.
Rika realized she still held the woman’s rifle and swung it, trying to knock the pistol out of her opponent’s grip.
The woman strafed to the side, and Rika’s swing missed, but her GNR reported firing readiness. The range was too close for anything but its projectile rounds, so Rika jumped backward and fired three shots at the woman.
The first two cracked her armor, spinning the woman to the side. The third tore off one of the exaggerated breast domes and no small part of the woman’s chest.
Rika didn’t wait to see if the enemy fell. She turned and ran, leaping into the struts and armatures of a docking cradle and swinging through the gantries before dropping to the landing field on the far side.
Her chest twinged, and she glanced down to see that her own armor had been cracked in the engagement. There was no blood, but Rika realized her medsuite was flashing a warning that four of her the ribs in her back were bent, and several ligaments were torn.
She ignored the warnings to slow down and limit her motion, pushing herself to her max speed as the Persephone Jones came into view. She could see Patty and Amy rushing up the cradle’s long ramp toward the open cargo hatch. Barne stood at the top, firing at a target Rika couldn’t see, while Leslie crouched at the base, taking cover behind a crate. Chase had come down to meet her and was firing in the same direction as Barne.
When they caught sight of Rika, Leslie ran up the ramp, disappearing into the ship behind Patty and Amy.
She could tell by his mental tone that he had been worried, but not too much. They both knew it would take a lot more than a few low-rent mercs to take out a mech.
Rika fired two beams from her GNR, the blue-white lighting illuminating the underside of the Persephone Jones and the other nearby ships. The first beam burned a hole in the container, and the second passed through, scoring a direct hit on one of the enemy soldiers.
Nodding with satisfaction, Rika raced up the long ramp as the ship began to lift into the air. Ahead, Chase leapt across the gap and passed into the darkened confines of the vessel.
Rika poured on all the speed she could and pushed off, sailing across the twenty meters of space as the ship continued to rise.
Oh, shit.
The cargo bay’s entrance rose past eyelevel. Her hand stretched out as far as it could and caught hold of a lip at the bottom of the airlock’s opening.
One of her fingers slipped off and, once again, Rika cursed only having one hand. In a desperate attempt, she swung her GNR up just as the Persephone Jones poured on more thrust, and the protuberance she hung from bent under her weight. Then something struck her in the back, and Rika slipped free.
She felt a sickening moment of freefall, and was wondering if she could manage to land safely below in the jumbled structure of the landing cradle when she jerked to a stop. Rika looked up to see Chase leaning out of the airlock, grasping the barrel of her GNR with both of his hands while Barne held onto the weapon hook on Chase’s back.
Rika’s heart was pounding, and she couldn’t even think of a response until she was half-sitting, half-collapsed on the airlock’s deck.
PERSEPHONE JONES
STELLAR DATE: 02.16.8949 (Adjusted Years)
LOCATION: Persephone Jones, departing Faseema
REGION: Oran System, Praesepe Cluster
“What the hell was going on out there?!” Captain Sarn hollered as he strode onto Persephone Jones’s main cargo deck. “People were shooting at my ship. Shooting! At my ship!”
Chase looked up from Rika’s back, where he was pulling what he hoped to be the last shard of armor from her ‘skin’. He opened his mouth to respond, but Leslie put a hand on his shoulder and rose to face the captain.
“Captain Sarn, we’re really sorry about that,” she purred. “We didn’t anticipate any sort of trouble; we certainly didn’t mean to put your ship at risk.”
Chase only half-listened as Leslie used her charm on the captain, expertly soothing and mollifying the surly man. He checked Rika’s wound over once more, pulling back her matte-grey skin and pushing aside her carbon-fiber-enhanced muscles with a probe.
“Don’t worry, we’ll pay extra,” Barne promised the captain from Chase’s left.
Chase hoped that there was enough in the local accounts Barne had established to make good on that promise. They didn’t have unlimited funds, and the Romany was a long ways away.
Amy huddled by Rika’s head. It still bore her helmet, and the girl was stroking it and mumbling something about her being ‘too tough to die’.
“Don’t worry, she won’t die from this,” Chase told her with as reassuring a smile as he could manage. It wasn’t a lie; he wasn’t worried about Rika dying from the wounds she had received—not with her mods, at least. A vanilla human would have been torn nearly in half from the round that had hit Rika’s back, but a mech would be ready to fight again in an hour—he hoped.
“Are you sure?” Amy asked, her eyes wide.
Chase nodded. “I don’t think Rika knows how. Even if she does, she’s too stubborn to die.”
He pulled a tube of sealant from the small medkit and pushed Rika’s skin together,
applying the military-grade epoxy to the wound to glue it shut.
“Are you gluing her?” Amy asked. “Is that safe?”
Chase gave a soft laugh. “It’s safe for both mechs and humans, don’t worry. It doesn’t hold her epidermis together as well as organic skin, but she should start to knit back together soon.”
Rika stirred and turned her head enough to see Chase where he crouched behind her.
“I got some scratches,” Amy reported, holding up her arm to show not insignificant lacerations on the palm of her hand and wrist. “But I’m not worried about them; I was just scared you were going to die.”
Rika chuckled as she carefully rolled onto her right side and reached for her helmet.
“I know I can’t get you to stay prone—though you should,” Chase scolded Rika. “But at least let me get you sitting. If you lay like that, you’re bound to twist and open up the wound.”
“OK,” Rika replied and allowed Chase to gently help her into a sitting position. “Can you take the helmet off? I’d have to lift my arm across to do it, and would probably pull myself apart again.”
“Of course,” Chase replied and crouched before Rika, toggling the latches of her helmet open, then twisted the helmet to the side and back. He lifted it off her head to reveal a very tired and sweaty-looking Rika.
“Ah, that’s better,” Rika sighed. “I think my air exchanger was hit—it was starting to smell stale in there.”
“Rika!” Amy exclaimed and lunged forward, wrapping her arms around Rika’s neck.
“Easy, hon,” she advised, and Chase leaned forward to touch Amy’s shoulder.
“Careful. She’s tough, but even Rika needs a bit of time to heal up after getting hit that much.”
Amy pulled back, looking worried. “Sorry.”
Rika mused.
Chase glanced at Leslie. She was glaring at the departing figure of Captain Sarn, while Barne stood beside her, shaking his head.
Barne smirked at Leslie and walked to the side of the bay to sit beside Rika.
Leslie turned to the group, her brows knit together.
Barne shrugged.
Rika shook her head.
Leslie relaxed and shook her head.
“Are you all talking on the Link?” Amy interjected. “It’s rude, you know—when there’s someone who can’t hear you.”
Leslie walked to where Amy sat crouched at Rika’s side and patted her shoulder. “Sorry, Amy; we can’t say everything aloud.”
Rika nodded and pointed at the corners, where a few small cameras were visible. Amy’s eyes widened, and her mouth formed an O shape.
“Are we in trouble?” the girl whispered.
Chase laughed and shook his head. “No more than usual. Don’t worry, though; the captain seems like a good guy, and he’s on his way to the moon, like he said. Pretty soon we’ll pick up a ship headed outsystem, and everything will be right as rain.”
“ ‘Right as rain’?” Amy echoed. “What does that mean?”
Chase opened his mouth to reply and then cocked his head to the side. “You know…I have no idea; most people don’t like rain.”
“I like rain,” Leslie countered. “Better for sneaking up on people.”
Chase checked the data on the public shipnet. Based on the Persephone Jones’s current vector, they had twenty-nine hours before they would land on Baqara’s main spaceport.
He placed an arm on Rika’s leg, and her eyes met his. “You should catch some shut-eye, LT. We’ve got a ways to go, and you need to get healed up.”
“I suppose you guys aren’t going to burn the place down. I think I’ll do that,” Rika agreed. She closed her eyes and laid her head back against the bulkhead.
Chase rose from her side and walked to a crate a few paces away. “Come here, Amy. Let’s have a look at your hand,” he suggested quietly.
Leslie guided Amy to his side, and Chase took a look at the gash.
“It doesn’t hurt so much anymore,” Amy offered.
“That’s normal,” Chase replied. “But we have to clean it and close it up. We don’t want you getting infected.”
Amy looked uncertain. “Are you going to glue me back together, like you did with Rika?”
Chase gave a soft laugh. “Sort of. A patch sealer will work better here. Then we can be sure it’s all covered and will stay clean.”
To her credit, Amy only gasped once, when Chase had to pick a small rock out of the heel of her hand.
What sort of pain has she suffered before to handle this without even whimpering? Maybe she’s still just in shock over the whole ordeal…
With the first aid done, Leslie led Amy to a corner and they sat together, talking in low voices. Chase considered rejoining Rika, but she appeared to have actually fallen asleep, and he didn’t want to disturb her.
She looked so calm and serene when she slept, as though she was still a child herself. When awake, Rika rarely looked at peace—there were moments, but there were not many. Mostly, she appeared on edge—as though someone or something was going to spring up and attack her.
Given their line of work, it wasn’t the worst attitude.
But even back on Dekar Station, when they had worked together in Hal’s Hell, Rika had always behaved as though she was still in battle, still living the war in her mind.
Chase knew that, in some respects, she was. They all were. It was half the reason they were in the Marauders—well, half for him. It may be the only reason for Rika.
There she lay, hard steel and carbon fiber; a machine made to kill, death incarnate. But underneath the armor, the weapons, the mech, was Rika.
She had once confided in him that she still felt like the young girl who lost her parents to the war, the girl who was frightened and hauled off to foster care as a ward of the state.
He’d told her they’d all stopped aging since the war started and that it was OK to still be that young Rika inside. Their inner selves were frozen in whatever state they’d been when the terror first reached them, There was nothing wrong with it. No shame. He liked that she was still that soft girl deep down. Still vulnerable. Still tender.
They couldn’t be intimate, but that didn’t stop him from relishing in her touch, or her in his. What they had transcended mere physical attraction.
He cared for her, and she cared for him. Together, they were figuring out how to be whole people again.
Chase glanced at Leslie, who was cradling Amy, and wondered what the war had taken from her. The jet-black woman rarely spoke of her past— of what had turned her into the cunning killer she was now.
The easy answer was just ‘the war’, but it had always seemed like there was something else under Leslie’s surface. Granted, Rika had said the woman wasn’t so steely before Jerry died; now that he saw how she fawned over Amy, the distinction was that much sharper. There were two Leslies, as well.
Chase heard a low murmur and turned to see Barne and Patty speaking in low tones on the far side of the cargo bay. He pushed off the crate and ambled over to them.
“She gonna be good to go?” Barne asked softly.
“Yeah, don’t worry about Rika,” Chase assured him. “She can take a licking and keep on ticking.”
Patty snorted. “Thought you were supposed to be all worried and sensitive, being the boyfriend and all. She’s still just a woman in there, you know.”
Chase smiled. Patty’s thoughts echoed his own.
“I’m as touchy-feely as they come, but if there’s one thing I’ve learned about Rika in the years I’ve known her, it’s that she likes being a mech. She really is as much machine as woman. It’s just taken her a while to learn that wanting to be that way is OK; not exactly an easy mental place to arrive at, given how our people made her.”
Patty raised an eyebrow. “Really? Rika likes it? Is it a fetish or something?”
Barne snorted. “For Rika? No. For Chase, here, though…”
Chase reddened and raised his hands. “Hey, Rika’s hot, I’m not going to deny it; but I’m not with her ‘cause she’s a mech. Maybe someday she won’t be anymore, and that’s OK, too. I don’t plan on parting ways with her any time soon.”
“Not that it matters,” Barne said soberly. “None of us are in the ‘long life expectancy’ sort of business.”
