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  RIKA INFILTRATOR

  RIKA’S MARAUDERS – BOOK 5

  BY M. D. COOPER

  Just in Time (JIT) & Beta Readers

  Jim Dean

  Lisa Richman

  David Wilson

  Alastar Wilson

  Timothy Van Oosterwyk Bruyn

  Scot Mantelli

  Scott Reid

  Marti Panikkar

  Gene Bryan

  Mikkel Ebjerg Andersen

  Copyright © 2018 M. D. Cooper

  Aeon 14 is Copyright © 2018 M. D. Cooper

  Version 1.0.0

  Cover Art by Tek Tan

  Editing by Jen McDonnell

  Aeon 14 & M. D. Cooper are registered trademarks of Michael Cooper

  All rights reserved

  TABLE OF CONTENTS

  FOREWORD

  PREVIOUSLY…

  MAPS

  BARNE AND SILVA

  ATTACK FORMATION

  ADMIRAL GIDEON

  GROUND POUNDERS

  MEMPHIS SPACE AND AIR

  THE DROP

  ON THE WALL

  TAKE THE FIGHT

  BERSERKER

  BRING IT HOME

  LAST STAND

  CHASING RIKA

  CAPTIVE

  LOST

  ORDERS

  AMONG THE MISSING

  PULLING UP STAKES

  STOWAWAY

  PURSUIT

  THE JUMP

  CHORES

  FAMILY

  VISITORS

  BACON

  ACCESS

  EPSILON

  A CHAT WITH SOFIA

  THE PROBLEM

  A GAME OF SNARK

  DRAGON’S LAIR

  UNEXPECTED PASSENGERS

  A SURPRISING DIVERSION

  JUST VISITING

  PIPER

  GETTING REAL

  AN UNUSUAL EVAC

  REUNION

  AFTERMATH

  MECH TYPES AND ARMAMENTS

  3rd MARAUDER FLEET 4th DIVISION

  7th MARAUDER FLEET 1st DIVISION

  9th MARAUDER BATTALION

  THE BOOKS OF AEON 14

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  FOREWORD

  Something that’s always a bit fun with the books that are being narrated is that I’m often listening to a book that is two or three releases behind the one I’m writing.

  While writing this book, I listened to Alison’s narration of Rika Redeemed (as well as a bit of Rika Triumphant), and was reminded of some fun and interesting interactions between the characters. While I don’t really want to put Rika through more of what she went through in the Politica (she’d probably show up and kick my ass), I did want to give her a chance to really shine on her own once more.

  That’s really where she does her best, after all.

  We’re also going to get to see the fight for Genevia from the eyes of more Marauders than ever before. Chase will be getting some more time in the limelight, as will Smalls, Alison, Kelly, Leslie, Silva, and even Vargo Klen!

  We’re also going to get introduced to some new tech that Finaeus provided the mechs with, as well as some great old standbys that the Marauders are all too happy to use against their enemies.

  And lastly, we’ll get to see a bit more of Rika’s journey down the path that Tanis set her on, with hints of where that may take us in the future.

  We’re getting close to the end of the Rika septology, with Rika Unleashed and Rika Conqueror still to come—but fear not, these seven books will not be the end of our time with Rika. There’s a whole new series on the drawing board, ready to come hot on this one’s heels.

  Michael Cooper

  Danvers, 2018

  PREVIOUSLY…

  It’s hard to believe that Rika’s journey started only a scant fifteen months ago, on Dekar Station—on that fateful day she was sold at auction to an unknown buyer. While it was arguably the lowest point in her life, it was also the event that turned everything around for her.

  When she woke, she was on Pyra, a planet that would play a pivotal role in the next year of her life. There, she met Team Basilisk, a Marauder spec-ops group that had been tasked with assassinating the Theban president.

  While Rika spearheaded that operation, she never completed the mission, unable to kill President Ariana. It was then that we learned what Rika was really made of.

  When the Nietzscheans—Rika’s hated enemy from the war that forged her—attacked Pyra, she and Team Basilisk were instrumental in driving them back. It was at that time that Rika both became a Marauder, and was reunited with Chase—a man who had always treated her like a person, even before she had a face and felt at all human.

  Not long after, Rika saved a little girl named Amy, and then saved her former mentor, Silva. As though that weren’t enough, she saved the Politica from the tyrant Stavros, and freed all the mechs he’d captured over the years.

  With a new force of mechs at her disposal, Rika was tasked by General Mill (leader of the Marauders) with training them on the world of Iapetus, in the Hercules system.

  There, she and her mechs thwarted a sinister plot hatched by the Nietzscheans, and carried out by Theban and Septhian traitors, to overthrow the system and claim it for the empire.

  Following that, Rika and her Marauders boarded and captured a fleet of Nietzschean ships that were hiding beneath the clouds of a gas giant. The coup granted her a fleet of five vessels, and the massive dreadnought, Fury Lance, became her flagship.

  The blood hadn’t finished drying from that battle before Rika got word that Pyra and the Albany System were under attack once more.

  The fact that Silva and Amy had taken up residence in the Albany System lent to her immediate departure from the Hercules System for Albany.

  Upon arrival, Rika found that a new player had entered the battle: the Intrepid Space Force. Rika’s AI companion, Niki, had told her of the Intrepid, so Rika joined up with the ISF, and led a secret mission to rescue the ISF’s leader, a woman named Tanis Richards.

  When Rika and her team found Tanis on Pyra’s surface, they witnessed things they had never imagined: a human ascending into a fifth-dimensional being.

  This was just the beginning of an eye-opening experience with Tanis, who—with her people’s advanced tech—aided in upgrading the mechs into new ‘4th Gen’ models. Tanis also hired the Marauders, supplying them with more ships, and tasking them with taking the fight to Nietzschea—a mission Rika was all too eager to accept.

  Before Rika’s full force was ready, Tanis received word of a system named Sepe where the Nietzscheans were regrouping. Seeking to deny the Nietzscheans any advantage—and as little direct intel of the battle in Albany as possible—she sent Rika and her original five ships to defeat the enemy at Sepe.

  When last we left Rika and her merry band of Marauders, they had just defeated the Nietzschean forces in the Sepe System, and lifted the empire’s boot from that system. During that encounter, Rika’s mind was expanded, and she learned of new, latent abilities she possessed as a result of the enhancements the ISF made to her mind and body.

  While she was recovering from that experience, Tanis contacted her through a quantum communication system she’d implanted in Rika, charging her with a new mission to take the fight deeper into the Nietzschean Empire.

  A week later, Rika’s fleet departed Sepe, on their way to the Blue Ridge System—once a Genevian System, now within the borders of the Nietzschean Empire.

  And a ripe target for Rika’s Marauders…

  Prominent Members of the Marauders

  Though there is a full list of all the mechs, pilots, and members of the Marauders at th
e end of the book, this is a listing of some of the more prominent characters and their current role in the battalion.

  9th Marauder Battalion Leadership

  Rika – Colonel, battalion commandeering officer

  Alice – Lieutenant Colonel, executive officer

  Silva – Lieutenant Colonel, training commandant

  Barne – Sergeant Major, command sergeant

  Leslie – Captain, intelligence officer

  Niki – AI, Lieutenant, operations officer

  M Company Leadership

  Chase – Captain, company commanding officer

  Karen – Lieutenant, company executive officer

  Tex – First Sergeant

  Aaron – Gunnery Sergeant

  Potter – AI, Chief of Tactics and Strategy

  The Seventh Fleet, First Division

  Heather (Smalls) – Captain of the Fury Lance

  Ona – CWO, bridge crew aboard the Fury Lance

  Garth – CWO, bridge crew aboard the Fury Lance

  Travis – Captain of the Republic

  Ferris – Lieutenant, commander of the Undaunted

  Vargo Klen – Lieutenant, commander of the Asora

  Buggsie – Lieutenant, commander of the Capital

  MAPS

  BARNE AND SILVA

  STELLAR DATE: 10.12.8949 (Adjusted Years)

  LOCATION: A1 Dock, ISS I2 in orbit of Pyra

  REGION: Albany System, Theban Alliance

  Silva leant her back against the bulkhead next to Lift Bank 771 in the I2’s massive A1 Dock, and closed her eyes, breathing out a long, ragged breath.

  Amy was gone—sent to New Canaan, where she’d be taken care of by Joe and Tanis’s daughters. The knowledge should have given her peace, and she was honored that Admiral Tanis’s own family would be watching over her daughter.

  But the goodbye had felt so final.

  In minutes, my daughter will be thousands and thousands of light years away.

  After spending so much of her life away from Amy—and only recently being reunited—the thought of being separated across such a vast gulf was almost too much to bear. Without the ISF’s jump gates, it would take decades to reach New Canaan, a perilous journey that would be all but impossible.

  Stop thinking like that, Silva admonished herself. We’re going to win this war, the ISF will still be around, and I’ll bring my boys to New Canaan to join their sister…not necessarily in that order.

  The lift chimed, and Silva opened her eyes, surprised to see someone standing next to her.

  “General Keller!” Silva snapped off a salute. “I’m sorry, I didn’t realize you were there.”

  The purple-skinned woman gave a kind smile, gesturing for Silva to proceed her onto the lift car. “Don’t worry about it. I heard you sent your daughter to New Canaan; it’s not an easy thing, to send your children away…or leave them behind.”

  Silva nodded while giving the general a sidelong look. “You sound like you have experience in that area. Do you have kids, General?”

  “Please, call me Jessica. I spend so much time away from the Intrep—I mean the I2—that being called ‘General’ is hard to get used to. Especially here. This ship is more like a home than a workplace for me.”

  “Fair enough,” Silva replied. “I’m not used to people saluting me…not even a little bit. So I get where you’re coming from.”

  Jessica laughed. “Tanis drafted me into her merry little military almost a century ago, and I’m still not used to it. Probably because she keeps sending me off on side-projects. But to answer your first question, yeah, I have sixteen kids.”

  “Sixteen!” Silva gasped, looking the general up and down. “I guess I shouldn’t be surprised you look so good, you have the tech to repair any damage that would cause.”

  Jessica glanced down at herself. “Well, this is a relatively new epidermis—I’m on my fifth or sixth now, depending on how you count—but my children are all AIs. Though I did bear half of them within a sort of expanse, and it felt entirely natural. Iris, who was the AI that I was paired with at the time, bore the other half.”

  “Iris ‘bore’ them?” Silva asked, trying to clarify and understand what Jessica was telling her.

  “We were at a place called Star City—which doesn’t describe the magnitude of the place at all,” the purple-skinned woman explained. “Anyway they had these powerful AIs known as ‘Bastions’ that were protecting it from the Orion Guard, but there was only one left. The city needed more, but they weren’t in a position to make the AIs themselves, so Iris, Trevor, and I had a little mental threesome, and bore our brood.”

  Silva shook her head, laughing softly. “I won’t even pretend to know how that works.”

  “It’s kinda weird, but kinda not weird, as well. Suffice it to say, I miss them a lot. Now that we have the—uh, well, I can’t talk about that…but I’ll be going to see them again before long, pretty freakin’ excited about that.

  “I bet,” Silva replied, unable to miss the glow that Jessica’s skin had taken on as she spoke. The general was almost blinding to look at.

  “Shoot, sorry about that,” Jessica said, apparently noticing Silva’s squint. “So yeah, long story short, being separated from your kids is awful. I mean, I got to be with them as they grew up, but when I left…well, I was worried I’d never see them again. It’s been over ten years now.”

  “Wait,” Silva held up a hand, counting out the years. “How is it that you got to raise them? Does that happen really fast with AIs? I’m not really familiar with AIs that are partially born from human minds.”

  “Well, Star City has some pretty wild tech—”

  “Damn, that really says a lot, coming from someone in the ISF.”

  Jessica snorted. “I suppose it does. Just goes to show, there’s always someone out there that’s above and beyond you. Either way, they had this thing called ‘The Dream’—sort of an accelerated life simulator that they were using to go through lifetimes of mental growth in days. Essentially a great big reincarnation machine. We were in for three days, and I got to watch my kids grow for over twenty years. Tanis is the oldest, she—”

  Silva couldn’t help but laugh. “You named your oldest ‘Tanis’?”

  The general cocked her head and shrugged, an embarrassed smile on her lips. “I didn’t know if we’d ever make it back, and I wanted to honor my best friend.”

  “Was she?” Silva asked. “Honored?”

  “I think so?” Jessica chuckled. “Tanis plays it close to the chest a lot—plus she has a lot on her mind. I can’t wait to introduce them someday. My Tanis is a lot like her namesake.”

  The lift chimed, and Silva realized it was at her deck.

  “Thanks for the chat, General—er, Jessica. It was really nice meeting you.”

  “You too, Silva. Good luck on what lies ahead. You Marauders have your work cut out for you.”

  It was Silva’s turn to laugh. “Stars, do we ever, but it’ll be good work. There are a lot of Nietzschean asses that need kicking, and Rika’s Marauders are just the mechs for the job.”

  The general’s skin glowed brightly, and she waved as the doors closed, leaving Silva with her thoughts once more, this time focused on completing the work of training the latest batch of mechs that had arrived from the Politica, and then joining the fight, at Rika’s side.

  * * * * *

  Silva’s thoughts were interrupted by Barne’s booming voice, echoing across the platform. Despite having taken a lift and talking with General Keller for a time, she was still in the I2’s A1 Dock, seven full kilometers from where she’d boarded the lift.

  Sitting atop the platform was the Terminus, a Nietzschean heavy destroyer captured in the recent battle around Pyra that was now a part of Rika’s fleet.

  Technically, it was the Marauder’s 7th Fleet, 2nd Division, but everyone called it Rika’s fleet—even the Marauders who had shipped in from the Ontario System in Septhia to lend a hand with the training of the mec
hs who were joining in.

  Not that the mechs needed training from squishies when it came to fighting. Their biggest obstacle was learning how to work together in larger units. A few weeks prior, Barne had assigned a platoon of the new mechs to help clear out a group of Nietzscheans that were still holed up on Pyra. When the enemy saw thirty mechs, including four K1Rs, forming up outside the small town they were holding hostage, they surrendered before the first shots were fired.

  From there on out, Silva and Barne had worked with the ISF and the local Theban forces, using some of the hairier jobs as training missions for the new mech units.

  The team helping load the Terminus, however, was not one of those units. It was a squad consisting of FR-2’s and 3’s who had not yet gone into the mech-tubes to get their 4th generation upgrades.

  They’d also not yet gone on any team building missions, and were barely able to function as a group. Silva imagined he had brought them along because they were otherwise unengaged, but as she listened to him bellow at the FRs, she wondered if he just wanted to blow off some steam.

  “I once saw a squishie with an arm blown off and the other holding in half his intestines walk faster than you lazy oafs!” the Sergeant Major bellowed. “I shoulda had the Colonel’s daughter move this gear before she shipped out! It would be done by now. Once saw that little girl shoot down a pinnace, kill seven Niets, and then save a wounded teammate while eating a sandwich. And that was on her first day!”

  “Sergeant Major,” one of the FR-3s, a rather cocky woman named Pence, said as she set down a crate on an a-grav float. “How did Amy have a ‘first day’? She’s not in the Marauders.”

  “Not in the Marauders?” Barne stalked across the platform to where Pence stood next to the crate, a finger raised in the air as he closed with the woman. “You’re in Rika’s Marauders when Rika says you’re in. Not a moment before, not a moment later. The old lady says she’s in, she’s in. What about you? Has Rika personally called you a Marauder?”