Alice was situated atop the building across the street from the furniture store. The out-of-the-way position didn’t surprise Rika overmuch—she was still shocked that Alice hadn’t put up a fight about coming along in the first place.
For her part, Rika had decided to slip into the furniture store itself, easing past the door when a Nietzschean soldier walked out. Within, she saw several low-ranking officers milling around the front. She carefully moved through their midst and into a section of the store displaying artful seating arrangements—some of which had Nietzscheans sitting in them.
<Lazy bastards. They have a company about to engage, and they’re lounging around,> Rika said to Niki while clenching her teeth. <I won’t feel bad at all about mowing these assholes down.>
<Their network security is good,> Niki commented, ignoring Rika’s statement. <Not sure if I can slip in before you need to attack.>
<Don’t worry, I wasn’t expecting you to. We’re just going to crush these dickheads the old-fashioned way.>
<Well, try not to destroy their NSAI node in the corner, I want to interrogate it.>
Rika saw the black obelisk in a far corner of the room and nodded. <Noted.>
Near the NSAI was an ornate wooden table with two majors and a colonel standing next to it. A holodisplay above the table showed their view of the battlefield, and Rika was glad to see that it largely reflected the strengths and positions she had believed the Niets to hold. It also vastly overestimated the number of Marauders out on the southern side of Bridge Street.
From what she could see, the Niets didn’t believe that the force they were fighting consisted exclusively of mechs. Even more amusing was that they’d tagged several mech fireteams as entire platoons—and in one case, a whole company—of soldiers.
<I’m not sure if that benefits us or not,> Rika commented to Niki.
<See those tags along the side of the holo? Those are expected advance points for reinforcements. They’ve called in an entire brigade to hold Bridge Street.>
<Dammit,> Rika said. <That could cause issues…and probably shred this whole part of the city. We need to—>
Her statement was interrupted by a Nietzschean suddenly rising from a nearby couch and walking right into her, spilling a cup of coffee across her stealthed form.
“What the…” he said, stumbling backward. “Intruder!”
She knew she had only seconds before the Niets all spotted her. Relying on Niki to send out the call to the Marauders to begin the assault, Rika backhanded the soldier who had ruined her cover, while simultaneously firing three quick shots at the officers standing next to the wooden table.
The first two rounds punched holes in the heads of the colonel and one of the majors, but the third major—a brutish-looking woman—moved with surprising speed, and ducked behind the table.
Rika had no time to go after the Niet, as rounds struck her armor from a dozen shooters. She pulled her AC9CR rifle off her shoulder, and fired on the closest group of Nietzscheans.
Her opening salvo of rail-shot was punctuated by the front of the store exploding in a hail of brick, steel, and glass.
<You always did know how to make an entrance, Tex,> Rika commented as she sprinted to a new position and took cover behind a cluster of armoires.
<Just earning my keep,> he grunted, the words punctuated by blasts from his railgun and the whine of his chaingun.
Rika tapped Alice’s feeds to see that the lieutenant colonel was still atop the building across the street. After Tex’s explosive entrance, there weren’t many Niets standing out there, but she was keeping the remaining few suppressed.
Trying not to be actively disgusted with Alice, Rika pulled up the feeds from Kelly’s and Yig’s teams, noting with satisfaction that they’d hit the enemy in the rear right as the Nietzscheans had finished crossing Bridge Street, but before they had formed up to advance down the adjacent avenues.
Even though it was only nine mechs against nearly two hundred enemies, Rika considered the odds to be just about even.
<Can you get over to the NSAI so I can drop some breach nano on it?> Niki asked Rika.
<Sure, just checking on the kids.>
The AI laughed. <You’re one of the youngest mechs in your battalion.>
<Not true,> Rika replied, as she peered out from her cover and fired a series of rounds at a group of Niets who were retreating in the face of Tex’s onslaught. <Plenty of the mechs are younger than I am.>
<Thirty-two.>
<Thirty-two is plenty.>
<Clear up here,> Tex announced.
<Hostiles down outside,> Alice added.
Rika’s HUD showed no more motion in the room, though EM still pinged from the armor of several of the soldiers. And of course there was the major who was hidden under the table, apparently thinking Rika still couldn’t see her.
Rika kept an eye peeled for any hidden enemies while moving toward the NSAI tower. Once there, she placed a breach kit on one of the data access ports, and let Niki get to work. She followed along with what the AI was doing, enjoying her newfound ability to understand the quantum intelligence’s actions.
While picking up some new tricks from the AI, Rika turned to the planning table and the Nietzschean officer below it.
“I can see you,” she growled. “You’re the last woman standing; no one’s coming to help.”
The Niet didn’t reply, and Rika reached under the table and fired a light pulse blast from the emitter in her left hand.
A muffled cry came in response, and then a wavering voice followed. “OK, OK. I’m coming out. No need to pummel me.”
Rika snorted and took a step back, glancing toward Tex, who was approaching through the furniture store. “Don’t give me ideas.”
The stocky woman emerged and scrambled to her feet, pressing her butt against the table as she sought to put as much distance as possible between herself and Rika’s towering form.
<They don’t make Nietzschean officers like they used to,> Tex commented as he pulled a pair of restraints from a pouch on his thigh.
<You can say that again,> Rika replied. <Lock her down. We’ll see what the NSAI knows before we try to get anything out of this one.>
Tex grunted, and gestured for the Niet to come around the table. “Get over here, squishie. It’s your lucky day.”
“Lucky?” the woman asked as she edged around the table.
“Yeah! Colonel Rika, here, told me I’m not allowed to rip out your spine, so you get to keep wasting air.”
The Niet swallowed loudly as Rika turned her attention to the table’s holodisplay.
Rika’s HUD showed Potter’s overview of M Company’s status: Yig and Kelly had pinned the Niets across Bridge Street, where Karen and Aaron and elements of second squad had caught them in a vise. Several groups of the enemy had already surrendered, though a few squads were holding out against the pummeling that the mechs were delivering.
<Rika.> Leslie’s voice came into her mind. <You’ve got company coming.>
The holo before Rika lit up as Leslie spoke, showing a brigade moving in from the city center. She cursed silently while reviewing Leslie’s feed.
When the new enemy forces reached Bridge Street, the mechs would be forced to either retreat, or engage in a level of combat that would be detrimental to the city and the civilians hiding in their homes and businesses.
<Chase, you see this?> Rika asked.
<Damn…I do now. Things are about to get intense!>
A laugh slipped past Rika’s lips. <That’s one way of putting it. I’m going to take Kelly’s team and push through with Leslie. Borden and his ISF Helljumpers have hit dirt a kilometer behind this new battalion. We’ll meet up with them and cut the head off this snake.>
<How hard should we push against this wave of Niets?> Chase asked, not bothering to make an attempt at dissuading Rika from her plan of attack.
<Make them earn every inch, but don’t waste lives on it. Don’t cluster around the B’muths, eithe
r; once you knock out the flankers, keep those things further back, or they’ll draw too much fire from the enemy.>
<And if the Niets mass on Bridge Street, can I call for starfire?>
Rika looked at the view before her on the map, noting that most of the businesses on the north side of Bridge Street would be empty. <Targeted kinetics only. On Bridge Street, or sixty meters north of it. No further.>
<Understood,> Chase replied. <I’ll coordinate with Smalls.>
<Good.>
<Rika…?> His voice carried a note of hesitation.
<Yes, Chase?>
<Just…you be careful, OK? Don’t do anything stupid.>
She chuckled, shaking her head. <When have you known me to do anything stupid? Besides, isn’t it insubordination to say that to your CO?>
Chase sent a long groaning sound. <To your first question, almost all the time, and to your second, no.>
<No?>
<No. Now go kick Nietzschean ass, and don’t get anything shot off.>
<I’m a mech. We’re specifically made to get stuff shot off and keep on fighting.>
Chase groaned. <Your head, Rika…don’t get your head shot off.>
<Well, yeah…and you keep the company safe. We kill the Niets for their transgressions, not us.>
<Rika’s Marauders! Roo-ah!> Chase replied, a laugh coming through the Link. <Don’t worry, I know how it’s done.>
Rika closed the connection and smiled as she gazed around the furniture store, squaring her shoulders and preparing herself for what was coming next. Then she reached out to Alice and Tex. <I’m going to take Kelly’s team and meet up with Leslie. We’re going to slip around the Niets and take out their HQ with the ISF Marines.>
<Understood, ma’am,> Tex replied.
<You sure?> Alice said at the same time. <That seems…nuts.>
<Better than destroying Memphis or retreating. That HQ is our target, anyway. The whole reason we’re here.>
<OK,> Alice said grudgingly. <We’ll hook up with Corporal Yig’s team, and then return to Karen’s position once they finish taking out that company.>
<Good,> Rika replied before turning to the NSAI column. <How’s it look, Niki?>
<I’ve got their force deployments. Now that we know about the battalion coming up our asses, our intel lines up with the data here. They’re trying to pull in forces from elsewhere on the planet, but nothing will be here in time. They’ve committed what they have to stopping us at Bridge Street, so right now, there’s just a single company guarding the tower their HQ is set up in. If you can slip past the bulk of their forces, I don’t see this as being a huge problem for you.>
<Excellent.> Rika gave a curt nod, and glanced at the NSAI tower. <Need me to trash that thing?>
<Nope, I seeded a virus in it. If the battalion command comes through here and hooks up with it, they’ll be in for a rude surprise.>
“What should I do with her?” Gunnery Sergeant Tex asked, gesturing to the Nietzschean major.
Rika sighed. “Knock the coward out and leave her, we can’t be bothered to haul around garbage. Better to have a worm like her back with her people than in our way.”
“Fucken Niets,” Tex muttered as he walked toward the enemy officer and gave the woman a light kick in the back of the head.
“Shit, Tex,” Rika said, leaning over the table. “You didn’t break her neck, did you?”
“Colonel,” Tex placed a hand over his heart. “I would never do such a thing to a poor, defenseless Niet. She may have a bit of a concussion, but her bones are all intact.”
Rika shook her head and turned just as Leslie materialized in front of her. “Shit!” she exclaimed. “You trying to give me a heart attack?”
“If that’s what it takes to get your ass in gear,” Leslie replied. “Our window to slip past the Niet battalion is closing.”
“Right, let’s go.”
A minute later, both Rika and Leslie were on the rooftops, invisible and deadly as they leapt from building to building, moving deeper into Memphis’s city center.
The brick and stone flat-topped buildings gave way to older structures with steepled roofs, and Rika’s and Leslie’s progress slowed, as both women had to be more deliberate in their leaps from roof to roof.
<This world has such a fascinating history,> Niki noted as Rika leapt across a fifty-meter gap, landing as lightly as she could on the apex of a stone building’s roof.
<Oh yeah?>
<Did you know it was a lost world at one point? The people lost spaceflight, and went nine hundred years without any communication with the rest of humanity. They regressed all the way back to a pre-industrialization-level civilization.>
Rika gave a soft whistle within the confines of her helmet as she followed Leslie to the next rooftop.
<They’re on major trade routes, though. How did they go so long without any visitors?>
<There are indicators that a few may have come by over the years, but no one is sure. Problem is that all the nearby systems were decimated during the second wave of the FTL wars, so no one knew this place had survived—though it was barely survival, if what I see in their history books is true.>
<How’d they get uplifted, again?> Rika asked, catching a halt signal from Leslie, and moving into the lee of a spire on the rooftop.
<Believe it or not, the old Asmovian Empire used to stretch out this far. They sent scouts through the area and found this place just as it was getting back into space,> Niki explained.
<Asmovia…those were the people who genetically changed their skin to be blue, and had a thing for horns, right?>
<Wait…Kunta was the precursor to Genevia,> Rika said, wishing she’d paid more attention to the nations and empires that had hewn their way through space before the Age of Reconstruction.
<It was, yes. Eventually, their parliamentary government managed to pull enough power away from the ruling triumvirate to reorder the Kunta into a democracy of sorts. They renamed it ‘Genevia’, and it meandered along until it became the republic you grew up in.>
<And got crushed by the Niets,> Rika added.
A sigh came from her AI, causing Rika to frown.
<Sometimes I can’t tell if your single-minded hatred of the Nietzscheans is a strength or a weakness.>
<Easy. It’s a strength.>
<You sure about that? You know Major Carol, the woman you didn’t kill back in the furniture store?>
Rika shrugged as she eased over the crest of the roof to watch a column of Nietzscheans double-time it past on the street below. <The coward? Yeah.>
<Ever wonder what their story is? Soldiers like her?>
<What are you getting at?> Rika asked.
<Well, by her features, I’d peg her as Turan. They were a small, three-system alliance that the Nietzscheans subdued before they moved on to Genevia. They had a treaty with Genevia for mutual support against aggressors, but Genevia never came to their aid. In fact, there are a few stories like that. Genevians often complain that no one came to their aid when Nietzschea attacked, but half of their allies were already gone.>
Rika’s jaw tightened as she considered those implications. <Why are you telling me this?>
<I just think you need to remember that some people you’re fighting against may not have had a lot of options in life. Some of them, like Major Carol, may view Genevians as being just as bad as the Nietzscheans—something I imagine you can appreciate, given what your own government did to you.>
<Your point is diminished by the fact that so many of the people I’ve fought over the years may not have been born Nietzschean, but they became Nietzschean. They embraced the Niets’ twisted morality.>
<Do you think they all had a choice?> Niki pressed.
Rika gave a derisive snort. <Yes, I believe they did. I would never have joined the Nietzschean military. I’d’ve sooner died.>
<Not everyone has the same strength of conviction that you do.>
<I’ve noticed.> Rika was growing agitated with Niki’s line of reasoning. <Seriously, though, why are we having this conversation now?>
<Because maybe you should start seeing these people you’re fighting as people and not just ‘the enemy’.>
<Do you like it in my head?> Rika asked Niki.
<Are you going to have us separated because you don’t like my opinion?> Niki’s tone was cool in the extreme.
<No, but my head might get shot off if I start thinking like that. It’s my job to make life and death decisions all the time. If I start seeing the enemy as individuals who are just trying to survive, that gets exponentially harder.>
<Shouldn’t it be hard?>
<It already is.> Rika clenched her teeth and slowed her breathing. <Look I get it, this is a ‘the war will consume you’ conversation. And maybe it will, but I wasn’t looking forward to much of a life before I got back into the shit anyway.> Despite her best efforts, Rika’s tone contained a large dose of vehemence.
Niki didn’t reply, and Rika sighed, the fight gone out of her.
<Look, you make valid points. Can we just have this conversation another time? What we have ahead of us is enough to consume my mind for now.>
<OK, Rika, I understand,> Niki replied.
The AI’s tone was rather sullen, but Rika decided it would have to do for now.
The Nietzscheans on the street had passed by. Leslie signaled for Rika to begin moving once more, and after several minutes, they had progressed through the older stone buildings and reached a newer section of Memphis, featuring tall towers sheathed in a glowing polymer that resembled marble, but with shifting patterns of light and dark working their way across the structures.
<A bit of a change,> Rika observed, noting the high-rise that the Nietzscheans had claimed for their system headquarters. <They always seem to hole up in the tallest structure they can find. It sort of defies logic.>