by M. D. Cooper
* * * * *
The frigate fired a few shots at the mechs, as they flew across the final stretch toward the Peerless. Luckily, the Niets behind them seemed unwilling to fire directly at their flagship, and the beam shots all went wide of the stealthed Marauders.
Chase thanked the stars as the squad neared the fifty-meter threshold. If the Peerless’s shields matched the Fury Lance’s, that would be the limit of their outer fringes.
He crossed the marker a moment later, as had several other mechs, when a power surge registered on his HUD, and he let out a string of curses as the readings matched shield activation.
Shit! Chase swore.
Two mechs hadn’t made it through the shield. Neither were squawking, hopefully because they didn’t want to give away their positions as targets. He fervently hoped that they’d been pushed straight back to the frigate, where they could land rather than drift through space—though that ship would be activating shields, too.
A second later, beams came out of nowhere and struck the frigate in a dozen locations, taking out its turrets and grav emitters.
Mechs landed at four locations on the Peerless’s hull, moving to their breach points, ready to bring the fight to the Niets.
Chase hit just ten meters from fireteam one-four’s position, and he moved to join them. Corporal Fred was already at the airlock, setting the ISF-provided Hackit into place, as the rest of the fireteam formed up at the airlock’s edges.
Fred backed away and moved to Chase’s side.
Chase rolled his eyes and stared down at the airlock as the outer doors slid open.
From their current perspective, the airlock was down, and when the inner doors slid aside, the passageway beyond would be a deep shaft. Any defenders would have to adjust their thinking to deal with the attackers positioned on all sides of the airlock.
In Chase’s experience, it was something that ground troops often had trouble with, but spacers managed just fine.
They’d soon find out who they were dealing with.
The mechs all signaled acknowledgement. Chase watched the Hackit as it signaled a successful safety override on the interior door, initiating an emergency open command.
Fireteam one-four was anchored to the hull, both by maglocks and their clawed feet, but when the burst of atmosphere erupted from the airlock, it nearly knocked Kor free. Chase reached out and clamped a hand on the AM-4’s arm to steady him.
The flow of air slowed, likely because passages sealed up further in.
The team waited a few seconds for enemy fire, but none came. Fred signaled for Jenisa and Kor to enter the airlock, and the two mechs slid over the edge and took up positions along the bulkhead.
Chase tapped their feeds as they peered around the airlock’s inner doors to see an empty corridor.
Though Alison’s fireteam was only sixty meters aft, it took over five minutes for one-four to get there. The team had to deal with two sealed bulkheads followed by a group of six Nietzscheans. Fortunately—or unfortunately, for the Niets—all of them were unarmored, and fell to the Marauder beams within moments.
Then Chase’s team rounded the final corner and saw an entire squad of Nietzscheans positioned in a wide intersection, protected by grav shields as they fired down an adjacent corridor.
Chase was impressed by Fred’s efficiency. Perhaps the corporal should get a squad of his own before long.
As the rest of the fireteam moved into position, Chase split his legs apart from the knee down, and unfolded the extra half meter. He flexed the second set of knees on each of his second legs, and then reached up to grasp a pipe overhead. Once he had a solid grip, he carefully lifted his legs up over his head.
The rear set of feet clamped on, and he pivoted around, now hanging from the overhead, crouching close to the conduits and pipes as the fireteam advanced.
He was almost over the enemy, when Fred gave the signal, and the mechs opened fire—the four members of one-four from the deck below, and Chase from above, his FN-88 and JE-84 raining death on the Nietzscheans.
Randy got a shot off at the shield generator, disabling the Niets’ shields, and beamfire streaked down the passageway from Alison’s team. A few Niets got shots off at the attackers, but the mechs’ armor held up to the brief assault, and thirty seconds later, the entire enemy squad was dead.
Chase was about to tell Fred he’d gone too far when Kor punched the corporal in the shoulder.
Outside, he saw the frigate they’d run across in the distance. It was moving to the right….
* * * * *
Rika eyed the Niets standing in the node chamber’s entrance. There were two in heavy armor, but there was a small gap between the pair, which was a bit wider at their feet, maybe sixty centimeters.
g legitimately scared and vulnerable for the first time since Leslie had sealed her inside her armor in that warehouse two years ago.
She reached them without incident, and stood stock-still, calming her breathing, marveling at how she was less than a meter from two men who would kill her without hesitation if they knew she was present.
One of the Nietzscheans shifted, moving his rifle. Its butt stopped millimeters from Rika’s left eye.
Rika drew a long, slow breath, forcing herself to relax, glad that the stealth armor masked smack sounds—like the pounding of her heart.
She pulled herself further between the two men, carefully setting one foot next to the soldier on the left’s massive boot, then pushing herself forward, lifting her hips past the soldiers’ shins and then pivoting and setting her butt on the deck.
Pausing once again, she was about to pull through the rest of the way, when a soldier within the node rose from where he was sitting and walked toward the entrance
Dammit!
Rika quickly pulled her legs forward, tucking her knees into her chin, and then lifted them straight into the air. Placing her hands onto the floor next to her shoulders, Rika lifted herself into a handstand, just as the soldier walked past.
“Corporal. I need out,” the Nietzschean—a lieutenant, Rika realized—said as he tapped one of the armored soldiers on the shoulder.
The man didn’t move, and Rika resisted the urge to groan.
Rika didn’t wait for Niki to finish speaking before she dropped her legs, her calves hitting the lieutenant’s shoulders, and locked her ankles in front of his face.
He didn’t even have time to cry out before she twisted savagely and broke his neck. Then, very carefully, she pulled him backward, out of view, before lowering his body to the deck.
She touched her wrist, and a port opened, revealing a hard-Link cable. Rika spooled it out and connected it to a port on the side of the column.
KICKING ASS IN OUTER SPACE
STELLAR DATE: 09.20.8949 (Adjusted Years)
LOCATION: Fury Lance
REGION: Ursa Station, Sepe System (Independent)
Potter announced, as the Fury Lance boosted away from Ursa Station.
“Lay into the others,” Heather ordered before turning to Ona. “Do you have the channel open?”
“Yes, ma’am, you’re tapped into the Seppies’ emergency broadcast system.”
Heather rose and cast Alice a sidelong glance. Technically, the lieutenant colonel should be giving this address, but Alice hadn’t spoken since they pulled away from the station.
Heather snorted.
Heather squared her shoulders and nodded to Ona, who gave her a thumbs-up.
“Sepe System, this is Captain Heather of the Marauders, aboard the Fury Lance. We’ve recently come from the Albany System in Thebes, where the Nietzscheans got their asses kicked for the second time by the Central Allies. Of the seventy thousand Nietzschean scumbag ships that tried to crush Albany, the scattered few you have here are all that remains.”
Heather paused, hoping the right people were listening to her broadcast, before drawing a deep breath and continuing.
“That’s right; they want you to think that they’re here for resupply after a successful engagement, but it couldn’t be further from the truth. They’ve been routed, and they’re here to pillage your system before retreating back into the empire.
“Don’t you fret, though. We’re here to stop that from happening. The Nietzscheans are going to fall, and the Central Allies are going to put them down. We’ve beat them twice in the Albany System, crushed them and stole their ships in the Hercules System, and we’re going to finish the job and wipe them out here.
“Marauders know what Nietzschean scorched-earth retreats look like. You don’t want that to happen in Sepe. You outnumber these bastards, so gird your loins and join us!”
Heather killed the transmission, and Garth chuckled.
“ ‘Gird your loins’?” he asked.
“I was adlibbing it,” Heather replied. “Any word from the station? Other than all the yelling so far.”
“Not yet,” Ona replied. “Wait…this is weird. The emergency alert system on the station just broadcast an all-clear.”
Heather watched as Potter fired the Fury Lance’s railguns at a nearby Nietzschean destroyer, breaching its shields and tearing away a chunk of its hull. “Sounds like Rika and the Kellies are getting shit done.”
Railguns slid out of housings on Ursa Station and began firing on Nietzschean ships—specifically ones without Marauder teams aboard.
Further out, Klen and Buggsie’s destroyers were engaging the orbiting Nietzschean ships, striking out at targets of opportunity while remaining stealthed.
Heather felt optimism blossom in her heart as she saw over thirty Nietzschean ships already flagged as disabled on the holodisplay. Sixty others had undocked, but of those, forty had Marauder teams aboard. The real threats were from the ships orbiting the nearby moons, and the Seppies around Crag. While they didn’t have the firepower to breach the stasis shields Rika’s Fury’s ships sported, they could take out the ships the Marauders were capturing.
They were still balanced on the knife’s edge; things could easily go either way.
“Got a call for you,” Ona called out. “Well, two. One from Admiral Fels, and the other from a guy named General Saz.”
Heather had studied the available data on the Seppies military and knew that Saz was a five-star general. Just the sort of person she wanted to get on the horn.
“General Saz,” Heather said aloud, sending a full visual from the Fury Lance’s bridge. “Glad you got my message. We’re going to do our best to take out every Nietzschean ship in the Sepe system, but we could really use your help.”
As she spoke, a stout man of middling height appeared before her. Heather wouldn’t go so far as to call him overweight, but he was certainly stocky. His stature, however, didn’t hide the sharp look in his narrowed eyes.
“Captain Heather? Of the Marauders?” he asked.
Heather nodded in response. “That’s me.”
“You’re a mech.”
Heather looked down at herself, mouth hanging open, eyes wide. “What the hell! When did that happen? How didn’t I notice?”
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“I don’t appreciate the tone, Captain,” the general growled. “I’m ordering you to stand down. The Nietzscheans are our allies, we’re not going to attack them, but if you don’t cease fire immediately, we will open fire on your ships.”
Heather shook her head, having trouble believing what the man was saying.
“Didn’t you see the dispatches we forwarded? The Niets are going to burn your system to a cinder!”
“I have Admiral Fels on comms, and he assures me that no such action will be taken, or has even been contemplated. It is you who are destroying this system, the debris field you’ve already created around Ursa Station is going to be a nightmare to clean up—if it doesn’t destroy the station.” General Saz’s eyes widened as he took a step forward. “Now cease this aggression immediately!”
“Shit,” Heather killed the comm and glanced at Alice. “We can’t take out the Niets and the Seppies at the same time. What do we do?”
Alice snorted. “Oh, now you want my advice?”
* * * * *
Chase led them down the passage, which was half-filled with pipes and conduit, for what seemed like forever. He was starting to doubt his instincts, when the narrow space finally dumped out into a larger corridor.
He pulled himself through and took up a position behind a solid-looking crate as the rest of the fireteam piled out after him.
