by M. D. Cooper
Rika considered the stealth coating that lay overtop her armor, what the ISF’s Colonel Smith had referred to as ‘Mark X FlowArmor’.
Chase and Barne left the bridge to review troop strength and ready the mechs for any boarding action, and Rika’s thoughts turned to what she’d learned from Priscilla and the ISF Marines during their flight through the Albany System. Specifically, something Priscilla had said:
“Rika, restoring your organic body isn’t so simple I’d call it trivial, but it’s certainly not noteworthy. If you wanted it, in a few days you could look exactly as you did the day they first changed you.”
Although Rika had always believed she would want to become fully human again someday, Priscilla’s statement had completely blindsided her.
Priscilla hadn’t been talking about getting a passably well-made organic body at some point in the future. She had been talking about getting a perfect body this week.
And the thought of such a thing had horrified Rika, and she still didn’t know why.
“Lifting off the cradle,” Heather announced as the Fury Lance eased into the air and moved toward the far end of the dock, which was a kilometer-wide gaping portal leading into space.
Leslie shook her head, laughing as the Fury Lance coasted through the dock. “You realize that the ‘Lance is the biggest ship I’ve ever been on, and these people have a docking cradle inside a ship that can hold it?”
Heather glanced back at Rika. “In all fairness, we settled onto four cradles, but your point is well made. If you consider that we first annotated the Fury Lance as Big Daddy, what does that make the Carthage?”
Rika snorted. “ ‘Grand Pappy’.”
As they spoke, the four-kilometer hull of the Fury Lance emerged from the Carthage’s dock and set off once again into the black.
“Stars, that feels good. I was getting claustrophobic in there,” Heather said, stretching her arms out before turning the ship and applying thrust to bring them into formation with the other four Marauder-controlled Nietzschean ships they’d seized in the Hercules System.
“How could you be claustrophobic in there?” Leslie asked.
Heather snorted, the RR-3’s shoulders rolling as she laughed. “Leslie, I was being ironic.”
“Oh, I couldn’t tell with your robot voice.”
“Oh! Burn!” Heather cried out. “I think the effects of your little burgeoning romance with Barne is starting to show.”
Rika glanced at Leslie, curious what her reaction would be, but the black-skinned woman’s face didn’t even twitch as she replied.
“Smalls, I’ve been working with Barne for years. Our…whatever…is not responsible for his crass ways seeping into my mind—this is just the result of long-term exposure.”
The RR-3 shook her head. “Sure thing, Cat Girl. Keep telling yourself that.”
Rika shook her head, the two women’s banter bringing a smile to her lips as she placed Pyra and a light second’s space around it on the main holo.
Despite the fact that the ISF fleet and its allies were decimating the Niets across the battlespace, the region around Pyra was a different story. Here, the Carthage, Derringer, and five ships under Rika’s command were a small grouping of green dots in a sea of red.
Granted, the Carthage was laying waste to the enemy with a brutal efficiency Rika couldn’t have imagined. The Fury Lance’s tactical NSAI couldn’t even fully quantify the number of offensive weapons on the Carthage. The indicator simply read ‘10,000+’.
“Is that strange?” Heather asked. “Isn’t she in charge?”
“Well, she’s not exactly normal.” Rika shrugged as she examined the sector they’d been assigned. “Looks like there’s a tight formation of Niets who are launching missiles at the surface as they run.”
“Let’s go,” Rika replied as she brought up the four commanders of the other Nietzschean ships they’d taken control of back in the Hercules System.
The first face to appear before her was that of Lieutenant Scarcliff, the company’s XO. He was aboard one of the cruisers, a ship named the Republic IV.
Next came Gunnery Sergeant Tex, who was the ranking Marauder aboard the Asora, followed by Lieutenant Crudge aboard the Capital, and Lieutenant Wilson aboard the Undaunted.
“Niki has passed the orders from Admiral Richards,” Rika said without preamble. “Our goal is to take out the Nietzscheans efficiently and keep collateral damage on Pyra to a minimum.”
“Good to see you’re OK,” Scarcliff replied. “But we’re not master tacticians here—none of us have ever run capital ships, let alone seen a battlespace like this. Is this a wise course of action?”
“You have your AIs, and many of our dropship pilots have flown bigger birds,” Rika replied, not begrudging Scarcliff his worry or inappropriate questions. This was new territory for them all. “We’re getting precise orders from Admiral Richards; follow them to the ‘T’. We’re going to do our part to stop the Niets from destroying another world. Am I understood?”
A chorus of ‘Yes, Captain Rika’ came back, and she nodded in satisfaction. “Good. I’m keeping the channel open, we’re going to get through this together.”
Rika looked at the space around the Fury Lance and saw a minefield of destroyed Nietzschean vessels and debris, all holed by the Carthage. Seeing the damage that the single ISF ship was able to inflict, she wondered if her small fleet was being given this task just to make them feel involved.
Well, if we’re going to try our hands at combat with capital ships, at least we’re doing it with one of the biggest, baddest starships in the galaxy at our back.
Heather guided the Fury Lance through the disabled Nietzschean ships, Chief Ona firing the ship’s beams several times to finish the work the Carthage had started.
The other four Marauder ships spread out, moving into position to encircle the Nietzschean formation they’d been directed to attack.
The formation consisted of over thirty ships, though only two were cruisers, the rest being smaller vessels: destroyers and a smattering of corvettes.
Rika pulled up the tactical NSAI’s assessment and saw that the enemy ships outgunned them three to one, but with so much energy going into grav shields and countermeasures, the Nietzscheans’ offensive options were limited.
Admiral Richards’ tactical directions were to have the Fury Lance come in close, only five thousand kilometers away from the Nietzschean ships. They’d take some fire, but every shot the enemy made would require them to create gaps in their shields, holes that the Carthage would be able to shoot through.
“Beams are hot and ready to rock, Captain Rika,” Chief Garth called out. “And this bird has some sweet ones. Already introduced some Niets to my friend Cold Vacuum.”
“Nicely done, Chief Garth,” Rika replied. “We’re going to come past at high v. Targets of opportunity at your discretion.”
The words rolled off her tongue like she’d said them a thousand times before—and she may have, once or twice, but that was on the ground. Out here in space, one mistake could mean a whole ship full of people were meeting Garth’s friend Cold Vacuum.
The Fury Lance flashed past the Nietzschean ships, and G
arth let loose with three dozen beams and fired four of the ship’s rails. Several of the enemy ships fired back, but the ‘Lance’s shields were able to shed the energy—though just barely. A dozen indicators turned red on the ship’s status holos around the bridge.
“OK, that was a bit rougher than I’d hoped,” Ona muttered while Heather pulled the Fury Lance into a wide arc.
Scan updated, showing the shots from the other four Marauder ships and highlighting the dozen Nietzschean vessels that had been struck, five of which had lost engines and were falling back, out of the formation.
Heather rotated the massive vessel and fired the engines on a new vector, slewing the ‘Lance to the side to avoid a drifting wreck, which Rika realized was an old Marauder ship…the Foehammer.
Shit! We’ll be back for you, she promised, as scan updated once more, marking a barrage of atom beams streaming from the Carthage and tearing through the holes in the enemy formation’s shields, created by the five ships that had fallen behind.
The massive ISF I-Class vessel fired for only ten seconds, but the time felt like minutes as Rika watched the enemy vessels get torn to shreds, a macabre glee filling her heart.
She glanced at Leslie and saw a toothy grin on the woman’s face as she watched their hated enemy fall by the dozens.
“Stars,” Chief Ona whispered. “It’s like the Niets’ ships are made of paper…”
“Paper Niets, my favorite,” Heather said, and though she was facing away, Rika could hear the grin in her voice.
Behind the Fury Lance, the last of the Nietzscheans in the formation went dark, and Niki relayed new orders from Admiral Richards, sending them to their next target.
It took almost thirty minutes for the ISF and Marauder ships to destroy or disable the Nietzschean ships that were burning Pyra as they fled. The work became simpler as more and more of the Nietzscheans realized that focusing on flight alone—not destruction—was a far better strategy when it came to escaping.
As the ships around Pyra continued their deadly dance, Rika watched the number of functioning Nietzschean ships in the main battlespace steadily diminish. Though they were clearly losing, the Niets did manage to take out some of the allied vessels, but not so many that Rika felt even the slightest bit of worry about the battle’s ultimate outcome.
Sixty-two minutes after the battle around Pyra had been joined, the last of the Nietzscheans broke off and turned to flee the system.
When it became apparent that the enemy was in a full rout, the Fury Lance’s bridge crew broke out into cheers. The enemy’s numbers were now less than a thousand, a far cry from the unfathomably large armada they had started with.
What amazed Rika even more was that the allied ships gave the Nietzscheans no quarter, firing beams and missiles into the engines of every vessel that tried to escape the battlespace.
“Stars burning in the black, we whipped their fucking asses!” Chief Garth said with a gleeful laugh.
“They’ll have had observers who’ll escape…and craft at other planets and stations,” Leslie said soberly.
“Why so glum, Cat Girl?” Heather asked. “We just wiped out almost seventy-thousand Nietzschean ships. This is going to be a day sung about for centuries!”
Leslie shrugged. “I’m happy about that, sure, but I wish we could get them all. I’d kill to see the look on Emperor Constantine’s face when he realizes that his massive warfleet just disappeared.”
“Trust me, Leslie,” Rika said as she rose from her seat. “It’s not going to be much different when a few hundred ships limp back showing him vids of how he was utterly crushed here. I don’t know how Tanis’s people got such a large fleet here today, but at this rate, we can have the Nietzschean Empire on its knees next week.”
Rika’s words finally put a smile on Leslie’s face. “Well, I’ll certainly drink to that!”
Tanis’s laugh filled Rika’s mind.
Rika didn’t know why, but for some reason, it felt less comfortable to call the ISF admiral ‘Tanis’ over the Link than it did in person.
Rika clenched her fist.
A genuine laugh came from Tanis, and she felt the warm glow of the admiral’s appreciation.
Tanis’s presence left Rika’s mind, but she felt as though a tenuous connection was still present.
She pulled up the targets Tanis had sent on her visual overlays and examined the details. Two were cruisers, one was a destroyer, and the other two were supply ships. Each claimed to have over a hundred hostages, and was demanding an undamaged ship to leave the system on.
Rika agreed, nodding absently as she summoned her four ship commanders for a virtual meeting. A half-minute later, they were all before her, reviewing the data packet she had passed around.
Rika said.
Rika wasn’t surprised to hear that from Gunnery Sergeant Tex. If ever there was a Marauder who embraced the life of a mercenary, it was him. She was about to reply when Lieutenant Scarcliff beat her to it.
‘Rika’s Fleet’. The words hung in her mind. Was she effectively the Old Woman now? Were Rika’s Marauders really the Marauders now? She knew it was unlikely; General Mill had a large command structure. Someone would have taken over.
She shook her head. That’s a question for another day. For now, they had work to do.
Tex grunted in acknowledgement.
Rika nodded.
Rika had heard of the tactic, but had never participated in one. Apparently neither had anyone else.
Crudge snorted.
Crudge snorted and cocked an eyebrow on the holodisplay.
LIBERATING LIBERTY
STELLAR DATE: 08.28.8949 (Adjusted Years)
LOCATION: Fury Lance
REGION: Pyra, Albany System, Thebes, Septhian Alliance
The Fury Lance’s target was named the Liberty. An incongruous Nietzschean ship name if ever there was one.
“They must have been scraping the bottom of the barrel at the shipyards when they set her keel,” Heather muttered as they drew close to the disabled cruiser, its name writ large and illuminated in Howe’s warm yellow light.
