“I guess we all have our crosses to bear,” Vargo replied with a wink. “Shit, we’re coming back around. You ready to nuke some Nietzscheans?”
Ashley tossed Vargo a winning smile. “And you say we never get to have any fun!”
FAMILY
STELLAR DATE: 10.14.8949 (Adjusted Years)
LOCATION: NMSS Spine of the Stars nearing jump point
REGION: Blue Ridge System, Old Genevia, Nietzschean Empire
<We’re getting there,> Rika said to Niki, as the power levels finally made it up to forty percent. <Are things ready to start eating the net?>
<Yeah, I can recall the nano we used to build the induction loop, and start them on the net. Once they get going, it shouldn’t take long.>
<Good,> Rika said, groaning softly as she tried to shift. <I’m cramped in places I didn’t even know could cramp.>
<Really?> Niki seemed curious. <Where?>
<Stars, Niki, it’s just a saying.>
<Oh…> the AI sounded disappointed. <I thought maybe you were yearning for Chase with your intimate bits.>
<Niki!>
She laughed in Rika’s mind. <Sorry, I’m getting bored, trapped here. I want to breach this network, crush the Niets, and get the hell off this ship.>
<Solid plan. I like it.>
<Are you mocking me?> Niki asked, sounding perturbed.
<Just a bit.> Rika couldn’t help but laugh at her AI’s attitude.
<I don’t think it’s funny.>
Rika let out a groan. <What? A few days laying on the floor with no Link, and you get all twitchy?>
<Even when I’ve been stuck on ships in the black, I still had a network to stretch out on, a crew to interact with, a ship to maintain,> Niki reminded her.
Rika thought back to all the time she’d spent in isolation as a mech. <I once got racked for transport, and they didn’t set up the enforced sleep cycle. I was awake for over seventy hours before anyone noticed.>
Niki was silent for a minute. <OK, that’s worse.>
<Great thing about having been a mech in the GAF: no matter what happens, I always have a worse experience to look back on. It’s the gift of never-ending perspective.>
The AI chuckled. <I guess you earned that. You know…almost a year in your head—well, some of it in your gut—and you’re still a mystery to me.>
<How so?>
<Well, you should be jaded, cold, hard…mean. Stars, even without what the GAF did to you, without the war. Just losing your parents, and growing up on the streets….>
<Shit, Niki,> Rika replied, laughing aloud. <You trying to depress me?>
<I don’t know if I could. You’re like the eternal optimist. Never once has the thought crossed your mind that we might not make it out of this, has it? How do you do it?>
<Easy.> Rika gave the mental equivalent of a shrug. <I’m not going to let them win. I won’t give them the satisfaction.>
<See? That! That should make you cold and jaded.> Niki’s voice was filled with frustration. <Why aren’t you?>
<Why?> Rika was surprised to get this line of questioning from an AI. <Because my own state of mind is the one thing I always have full control over. I can choose to perseverate on all the bad things that have happened to me, or I can think about the good. I can change my emotional state through what I choose to focus on.>
Rika’s statement was met by silence from the AI. Eventually, she asked, <How did you get to be so wise at such a young age?>
A smile graced Rika’s lips, and the three-sixty view of the cell faded from around her, replaced with visions from the past. <I had a great teacher—more than one, actually. They taught me that family is always with you, if you let it be. Deep down, everyone hates feeling lonely, and they want to connect with others. Sometimes they give up on that, but if I had, I’d be dead. Family is what got me through everything.>
<You’re a glorious mystery, Rika.> Niki’s voice was filled with appreciation. <I assume one of these teachers was Silva.>
<Sure was. But she wasn’t the first. The last time I ran away from foster care—and it wasn’t because of them, it was because of me—I met this station gang. They were rough, they weren’t afraid to get into it and draw blood in a fight, but they always protected their own. It was the first time I’d felt that since…since my parents died.
<The state never treated us orphans like we were of much value to them. Foster parents cared, but they were usually overwhelmed by kids who were dealing with the loss of everything in their lives. But Bro…he cared.>
<Bro? What kind of name is that?> Niki asked.
Rika laughed at the memory. <Bro was the leader of the gang. I guess the name came from a speech he always gave the newbs. He’d start by pacing back and forth in front of them—usually in the old sanitation bay we hid in—and say:
‘I’m not your father. If you’re here, your father is dead. I’m not your mother; chances are she’s gone too. If you do have a mother and father—and you know where they are—you’d best get your sorry ass back to them before one of us kicks your ass for leaving family. But if you got no family out there, then you got family here. Us. This gang.
‘But keep one thing firmly in your scrawny, little heads: there are no parents here. I’m your brother. Means I’ll kick your ass if you’re being a dickhead, and I’ll probably make fun of you half the time, ‘cause that’s what brothers do. Ain’t that right, Jeb?’>
Rika chuckled before continuing, marveling at how clear the memory still was.
<At that point, he’d always look at Jeb, who usually had a black eye or a busted lip—more often than not, courtesy of Bro—and Jeb would just laugh and say, ‘Yup, but don’t worry, I’ll take your licks if you’re too scared.’
<Everyone knew that was true, too. If you really fucked up, you could tell Jeb, and he’d go tell Bro it was his fault, and Bro would kick Jeb’s ass in front of everyone. He’d make it look good, but never really hurt Jeb much.
<When you watched Jeb take licks for you, you straightened up and got your shit together. Plus, if you asked Jeb to take a beating for you a second time, he’d give it to you himself. Bro would slap him on the back for it and maybe throw a punch or two himself.>
<That worked?> Niki asked, surprise mingling with disbelief in her voice.
<Most of the time,> Rika allowed. <I only saw Jeb lay into someone twice. Once, we had a guy who touched some of the younger girls and boys in a way that wasn’t right. It got out that it was going on, but the little ones wouldn’t say who did it. Finally, the guy came to Jeb and confessed. Jeb killed him on the spot.>
<Shit, Rika. Did you ever have it easy?>
Rika thought back to her youth; the faint memory of her mother’s smile on a warm summer morning, and laughing as her father tickled her. <I did. I had alot more happiness in my memories than a lot of kids in Bro’s gang. I always considered myself one of the lucky ones. Anyway, Bro always finished his speech with:
‘But anyone outside the family picks on you, beats you, hurts you…I’ll be the first out of the gate to take them down. And I’ll let you get some licks in on ‘em too. Teach you how to stand up for yourself. Make you a fighter.’>
Niki laughed at that. <Rika, even your happy memories are on the hardcore side of things.>
Rika chuckled, wondering where Bro and his gang were now. She’d been out raiding another gang on the station, and got scooped up by the feds a year after joining his troop. The Genevians took her planetside and stuck her in an orphanage in Tanner City. It wasn’t too much later when she got framed and turned over to the GAF for mechanization.
<Bro was a big part of how I made it through what the GAF did to me. He really taught me how you could make the best of even a terrible situation. Silva carried on that trend.>
<You really look up to her, don’t you?> Niki asked.
<She’s the reason I’m here today. I probably would have gone out of my way to eat a bullet if it weren’t for her. I’d only been a part of
&
nbsp; her team for a day when she pulled me behind a stack of ammo crates on some stars-forsaken moon we were protecting for reasons that still don’t make sense to me. She jammed a finger in my chest at least a dozen times while telling me that she wasn’t going to have any mopey whiners on Team Hammerfall. Told me that there was still a woman’s heart in my chest—that she’d seen enough of them shot out to be sure—and that she’d take care of me and my heart, but only if I proved to her that I was going to put in my share of effort in the job.>
<Shit, Rika,> Niki said with a laugh. <You just got the tough love speech coming and going.>
<Except for Chase,> Rika said wistfully. <He’s never given me the tough love speech…though I might have given it to him once or twice. End of the day, though, I don’t forget my past; I don’t push it down and try to pretend it didn’t happen. That may work for some, but I keep it close. It gives me strength.>
There was one other thing that built her up and gave her strength, but Rika didn’t share the vision that Tanis had put in her mind, the image of the pillar of strength, standing on the bald prairie, holding out against the raging storms, and sheltering those around her. That was just for her. That was her last bastion of strength, if all others gave out.
<I guess I can see how this really isn’t much of a tribulation for you,> Niki said after a moment. <Oh, the net’s weakened enough for you to get through.>
<And the guards? We should probably get eyes on the corridor before I bust out of this stupid thing.>
<Already on it. I have a passel of probes getting around the door right now. The Niets have decent countermeasures, but they’re not prepared for an airborne nanocloud.>
<Say the word.> Rika checked her lightwand’s status, ready to end the Niets who thought they could hold a mech captive.
Niki set a twenty-seven-second countdown on Rika’s HUD. When it hit zero, Rika stretched her arms and legs out, shredding the back of the net. She was on her feet a second later, net hanging from her GNR’s ammo feeder, fingers digging in between the door and its frame.
<And go!>
The lock snicked, and Rika wrenched the door open, flinging the net at the closest of the four guards, and kicking him in the gut as he stumbled backward. Across the narrow passage, a sharp-witted woman raised her rifle, but Rika’s lightwand was already out, and she slashed the weapon in half, cutting through the power supply in the process.
The energy cell exploded, knocking the woman back against the bulkhead.
One of the two remaining guards had brought his rifle to bear, and fired a pulse blast at Rika that she easily shrugged off before slamming her barrelless GNR into the woman’s head, smashing her faceshield.
The staccato beat of projectile rounds struck Rika in the back. She’d seen the soldier behind her taking aim, but knew her armor could withstand a few shots.
He only got seven off before she pivoted and tore the rifle from his grasp with one of her clawed feet. She continued to spin around, slamming the rifle into the woman with the smashed faceshield, then completed the rotation to bring the weapon all the way back to its original owner, driving the gunstock into his neck so hard that the weapon crumpled, bending around the soldier’s shoulders.
He went down in a shrieking lump, and Rika kicked him in the head to silence his wailing.
By that point, the first guard had gotten free of the net, only to have Rika’s hand clamp down on his head. She lifted him off his feet, and hurled him down the corridor into the fleeing back of the woman whose weapon had exploded.
Moments later, Rika was upon them. She dispatched the man before kneeling atop the woman, lightwand held close enough to her faceshield that tendrils of electricity arced from the electron beam to the woman’s armor.
“Where are my guns?” Rika demanded.
“Wha-what?”
“My GNR’s barrel and my rifle. Stuff that goes ‘pew pew’. Where. Are. They.”
The woman’s hand rose, pointing the other way down the corridor. “First left, second door on the right.”
“Take your helmet off,” Rika growled.
“What—”
“I don’t have time, you Nietzschean asswipe. Take it off, or I rip it off. Trust me, you won’t like that.”
The woman’s trembling hand rose to her helmet, and she gave it a sharp twist, lifting it off.
Beneath the black visor was a woman who still had the freshness of youth about her. Rika imagined the girl wasn’t much over twenty years old. Her blonde hair was shorn close to her head, and her green eyes were wide with fear.
Rika lifted her hand to strike the woman on the side of the head, but she paused, staring down at the girl who was the same age she’d been when the GAF conscripted her.
In that moment, a weapon discharged, and Rika felt rounds ricochete off her armor. She glanced down to see the Niet holding her sidearm against Rika’s torso.
“Stupid,” she muttered, and brought her hand down into the woman’s temple. Not hard enough to kill, but hard enough to make the woman wish she’d never enlisted.
Then she turned and ran down the corridor in the direction the woman had indicated, hoping she hadn’t been played.
<That’s what I get for thinking of them as people,> she said to Niki as she rounded the corner. <Maybe when all this is over, they can be people again, but until then, they’re just enemies. It’s my life or theirs.>
<I get that,> Niki said in a quiet voice. <You still didn’t kill her, though.>
<I’m no murderer.>
Reaching the prescribed door, Rika kicked it in to reveal a small armory and a very surprised looking Nietzschean in his service uniform.
“I’m here for what’s mine,” she growled.
The man hesitated, glancing at a nearby rifle.
Rika took a step closer, not having to manufacture any menace in her voice as she said, “You even think twice about trying it, and I’ll pull your tongue out your asshole.”
The Nietzschean swallowed nervously and pointed to a bench across the small room, where Rika’s GNR barrel and AC9CR lay. “I’ll get them,” he whispered hoarsely. “Don’t do anything like that, please.”
“Chop chop, buddy.”
<‘Someone’?>
<It’s Leslie, they have her trapped.>
* * * * *
Leslie fired a series of pulse blasts down the corridor with a pistol, while swapping a magazine on a projectile rifle she’d taken off a dead Nietzschean.
She wasn’t certain how many of the enemy she’d taken out yet, but it had to be at least fifteen—though three of that number were iffy. If the ship had a good med suite, they might be back in the fight before long.
Her probes alerted her to movement on the other end of the corridor, and she lifted the rifle, firing on a Nietzschean who was crossing an intersection aft of her position to get a better angle on her.
Fuckers are going to totally flank me!
She lobbed the last of the pulse grenades she’d lifted off a dead Niet down the fore end of the corridor, and turned to run aft, glad to have reached a section of the ship that was aired up.
Just an hour earlier, the Niets had vented half the ship, and killed the a-grav systems. Leslie didn’t mind either one of those situations—she was better in zero-g than the enemy soldiers—but half her pilfered arsenal was made up of pulse weapons, and they didn’t work in vacuum.
She reached the intersection that the enemy soldier had rushed across seconds earlier, and turned the corner, ducking low and catching him in the legs as he leant around the cover to fire on her.
The impact bowled him over, and Leslie slashed at his faceshield with her lightwand, cutting through the dense plas, and into his jaw.
A warbling shriek came from the Nietzschean, but it was cut off as Leslie twisted the blade and drove it up into his brain.
Stars, I’m never going anywhere without one
of these ever again.
Shots streaked over her head, and then a searing pain erupted in her shoulder.
Leslie’s three-sixty vision highlighted a pair of drones swinging around the corner twenty meters forward of where she crouched. They were large, meant for ground operations, and were having trouble staying stable in the narrow confines of the passage, but that wasn’t stopping them from firing on her.
She took off running, and another round pierced her below the ribs on her right side, causing her to stumble and nearly fall.
Keep going, Leslie. You’ve made it this long; a Nietzschean drone’s not going to be the end of you!
She reached the end of the corridor and turned left, toward the entrance to the engineering bay. Before she even reached it, she could see the door glowing hot on her IR overlay, and she realized that it must have been welded shut.
“Fuck!” she swore, knowing that there was nowhere left for her to run.
One of the drones came around the corner, and she spun, unloading a magazine of projectile rounds on the thing and knocking it out of commission.
“You may take me out,” Leslie screamed down the passageway. “But you’re going to have to do it yourmotherfuckingselves!”
A Nietzschean soldier in heavy armor rounded the corner, a chaingun leveled at her.
“You want it up close and personal? You got it,” he growled.
A flash of abject terror came over Leslie. I’m gonna die!
She drew from unknown reserves, and forced the fear down, a feeling of sorrow-tinged peace taking over.
I tried, Rika.
She squared her shoulders, and threw her head back. “Go on, then, asshat” she swore at the Nietzschean, determined not to let him hear the sadness she felt. “I’m not going to fuck you first.”
The Nietzschean chuckled as the chaingun spun up.
I won’t close my eyes. I won’t…plus I can’t…stupid helmet, Leslie thought with a manic laugh as she stared down the weapon that would be her demise—only to see it explode as a white-hot flash tore through the chaingun. The remains of the weapon were wrenched from the soldier’s grasp and slammed into the thick bulkhead that divided the engineering section from the rest of the ship.