Rika Rising Page 3
Rika was about to leave the platform to help Shoshin’s team when Niki flashed an updated log entry on her HUD.
Shit.
Kelly snorted.
Rika shook her head as she turned and loped across the platform.
Rika nodded absently as she sent a pair of drones down the passageway at the end of the platform.
Rika smiled to herself as she rushed down the corridor in the wake of her drones, reaching a lift that would take her down the two levels.
She sent a drone in to activate the conveyance, and lobbed a grenade inside before the doors closed. She set the drone to detonate the explosive the moment the doors opened on the lower level. No staircase provided an alternate route down, but there was an access shaft with a ladder a few meters away.
As the lift descended, Rika pulled a panel off the shaft and jumped inside, certain that the Niets would not have had time to secure it against her advance.
She was halfway down to the lower level when it turned out that she was only half right.
A soldier eased into view below her and fired up at Rika as she fell. She didn’t have a good angle with either of her rifles, so she weathered the barrage, rounds chipping away at her armor, until her three-clawed feet were in range, and she clamped one on the Niet’s head.
Her momentum pulled the soldier into the shaft and finally provided Rika with a good firing angle for her GNR. A trio of kinetic rounds burst from the weapon’s muzzle and tore the enemy’s shoulder off.
The Niet screamed as he fell, and Rika sent a few more rounds his way to make sure he wouldn’t come back up.
She caught the edge of the opening onto the lower deck and was pulling herself up into the corridor when the lift doors opened and the grenade exploded. She saw a body fly past, and used the distraction to leap out and fall prone in the passageway, firing with her AC9CR rifle at a stunned-looking enemy soldier a few meters ahead.
Another Nietzschean was on her left, clearly dead, and Rika turned away, sending out a fresh pair of drones to scout ahead as she rose.
The drones barely stayed ahead of her as she loped down the hundred meters of twisting passages, no further enemies in evidence until she caught sight of the bay.
She slowed her pace, triggering her armor to shed heat and resume full stealth before she approached. Her drones ranged closer and gave her a view of two soldiers standing next to the ramp while the colonel paced back and forth in front of it.
Rika was surprised at Niki’s suggestion.
The AI laughed.
Rika crept up to the pacing colonel, stopping just a meter from the point where he turned, and reached out, flicking a small blob of infiltration nano onto his back during his next passage.
The colonel spun, his eyes searching the bay, and Rika froze—though she knew there was no way he could see her. A second later, something hit her in the back, and she swore, realizing she’d been hit by a gel bomb, the sticky substance ruining her stealth.
“Dammit. How’d you spot me?” Rika asked the colonel, noting that both the soldiers had raised their rifles, though curiously hadn’t yet fired.
I wonder if they know I’ll drop them before they get a second round off.
“Not about to share that with a mech,” the colonel said. “I take it you’re not my courier.”
The idea that the Niets might have figured out a way to outsmart ISF stealth tech set Rika’s nerves on edge, but only solidified her desire to take the colonel alive so she could learn how he’d managed it.
“Well, I have a message for you, does that count?” she asked him.
“Not really, no,” the Nietzschean replied. “You’re an SMI, from what I can see of you. Not Rika herself, by any chance, are you?”
Something in his voice told her that she’d best keep her cards close to her chest, and she shook her head. “No such luck—well, luck for you, I suppose. She might just kill you. I have orders to capture.”
“You’re going to find that a bit hard,” the man said, and Rika found herself wondering what reason he had for such a high level of confidence.
She decided to remove his options, and two bursts fired from her GNR, tearing the two guards’ arms off, sending the soldiers to the deck while their weapons spun away.
The colonel appeared nonplussed. “Brutal, just like all your kind.”
She didn’t rise to the bait, instead nodding at his sidearm. “Your weapon. Drop it.”
The Nietzschean shrugged and pulled his weapon free, tossing it away.
Alerts flared on Rika’s HUD, indicating security breaches all across her armor. Her right leg suddenly gave out, and she fell to a knee, her body beginning to spasm.
Rika knew that she was about to be out of options, and triggered a rapid blow-off of her armor in an attempt to keep more nano from breaching her systems. At the same time, Niki triggered a defensive surface charge that electrified Rika’s skin.
Only half her armor fell off, and though the measure helped, the control systems in her legs still weren’t responding. She tried to bring her GNR around to fire on the colonel, but her arm wouldn’t respond, either.
“Always nice to watch a mech in its dying throes,” the Nietzschean said as he walked over to one of his soldiers’ rifles and picked it up.
Rika managed to gain enough control of her gun arm to bring her GNR around, but there was no strength in her limb, and the enemy colonel took two quick strides forward and easily kicked it aside.
He brought his own weapon to bear, aiming it at her neck. “Might be something useful in your head.”
Rika was about to offer her surrender to buy time, when the colonel’s head disappeared.
“Nothing useful in yours.” The Van’s deep rumble came from behind Rika.
“Shit, Van!” she swore, collapsing to the deck. “What the hell?”
“You’re welcome, Colonel?” the K1R asked.
Rika wanted to rail against the mech, but he knew he’d done the right thing. It was she who had stupidly trusted her tech too much, putting herself in needless danger.
“Sorry, Van,” Rika said as she fell back to the deck. “Any chance you have an armor rack tucked in somewhere in all that gear?”
RETREAT
STELLAR DATE: 05.18.8950 (Adjusted Years)
LOCATION: NMS Kraska, 45 AU from Luxuom
REGION: Genevia System, New Genevian Alliance
Admiral Hammond’s lips drew into a thin line as he reviewed the latest report from within the Genevia System. Most of it was what he expected: defeats.
He’d held out hope that Colonel Florin’s mission on Lisbon Station would have met with success, but unfortunately, it had not.
For the time being, the plans were lost to him.
An overwhelming urge to smash something came over Hammond, but he tamped it down, knowing that, at least now, the Nietzschean Empire would have strong leadership, not Constantine’s grasping ambitions.
With nothing left to fight for in Genevia—or nothing that they could secure—the admiral knew that there was nothing for it. It was time to return to the Nietzschea System.
The news of the defeat at Genevia would not go over well with the High Council, but it would be nothing compared to how they’d received the news of the emperor’s death. Constantine had ruled for over thirty years and had no heirs, a deliberate decision on his part intended to keep grasping children from assassinating him.
With no clear succession, control of the empire would go to whoever made the strongest claim. Though Hammond had long been at Constantine’s side, he was not the highest-ranking officer in the Nietzschean space force. There were several admirals with more seniority than he, topmost of which was Admiral Yara.
She would make an immediate play for control of the empire. That would likely involve the immediate death or arrest—on some trumped-up charge—of Lord Poulos, leader of the High Council.
“It’s going to be a civil war if we’re not careful,” he mused, rising from his desk and turning to face the window, which showed a view he would have seen, should the window have been real, and were he not deep within the bowels of the Kraska.
The ship was over fifty AU from the Genevian star, the brightest point of light in the display. Nestled close around that ball of fusing hydrogen lay the fleet that had utterly defeated his forces and now put all of Nietzschea in peril.
The Marauders.
But it was not just their ships. The vaunted ISF fleet was present as well, come to the mercenaries’ aid. Every one of those ships was equipped with stasis shields that were impenetrable when pitted against standard weaponry. Had the Pinnacle’s main weapon been in place, it would have been able to destroy the enemy, but even so, just one stasis-killer wasn’t enough to defeat an entire fleet.
And that was the real problem. Hammond understood it well, but he was certain that the power-hungry lords and admirals back in Nietzschea would not. They would not easily be convinced of the magnitude of the threat.
Key to that was the fact that Colonel Rika and her Marauders had not eased their way through the former Genevian Alliance, liberating key systems and building up support; no, they’d lanced straight through the systems of Old Genevia and attacked the heart of their former nation.
Because of that, Hammond believed that Rika would not slow to engage Nietzschean occupiers in neighboring systems.
They’re going to drive straight for core the Empire. Rika’s next stop will be the Nietzschea System itself.
It felt absurd, thinking those words. A month ago, he would have laughed, should anyone have told him that.
What he needed was time. Time to convince the other admirals that the Marauders were an existential threat, and that the war with Genevia was back on.
The name sparked immediate recognition, and Hammond initiated a privacy field in his office.
The door opened, and a slim, unassuming man stepped in. He moved with a casual grace, his face calm, almost serene—completely out of character for a civilian doctor on a warship fleeing after a defeat.
But Hammond knew that this was no simple doctor he faced.
“I didn’t know you had made it aboard, Xa,” he said by way of greeting, gesturing to the chair across from his desk, while he returned to his own seat.
“I almost didn’t,” the man replied as he sat. “I got off Belgium and onto one of the corvettes. The ship’s captain wanted to engage the Marauders, but I convinced her otherwise. My life is not to be so cheaply squandered.”
The admiral nodded. “I understand your sentiment.”
“So the emperor is dead.” Xa’s voice contained no emotion as he uttered the words. “And you are returning to Nietzschea to attempt to keep the fools there focused on the real enemy, I assume?”
Hammond let out a weary sigh. “That is my primary goal, though I am going to dispatch couriers with orders for a few nearby systems.”
“Oh?” the doctor asked. “What are you going to have them do?”
The admiral’s eyes narrowed. “Scorched earth.”
“You want to slow the Marauders down.”
“Yes. We’ll create humanitarian crises in neighboring systems, split Colonel Rika’s focus, and force her to move to protect other systems before we do the same there. I need to buy us time to prepare for her assault against Nietzschea.”
The doctor shook his head. “What will that do? When they show up—and they will come—no fleet will be able to stand up to their stasis ships. What you’re facing now is a steady retreat toward a final stand in some backwater system on the far edge of the empire.”
Hammond’s calm veneer slipped away and a sneer formed on his lips. “Oh? Well what would you have me do, great Chief of Spies? Please, tell me this brilliant strategy you have.”
“You need to sue for peace,” Xa said.
The admiral barked a laugh. “Maybe that’s why we lost and the emperor died.”
“What is?”
“Because you’re a fool!” Hammond roared. “If you think that C
olonel Rika and her mechs are going to stop before they raze Nietzschea to the ground, then you’re an idiot. You know how Psych has profiled her. She won’t stop for peace negotiations—and why should she? It’ll take her a few years to wipe us out, but like you said, the empire’s days are numbered.”
“You are correct. Rika is the enemy’s galvanizing force. Undertake your scorched earth strategy, Admiral. Nothing so extreme that it will galvanize the Genevians against us, just enough to weaken nearby systems to the point where the Marauders will have to provide aid and protection.”
The other man paused, and Hammond raised his hand, twirling his finger in a circle. “Carry on, spy.”
“Then I cut the head off the snake.”
“You think you can kill Rika?”
Xa nodded. “She’s just a woman—not even that, less than half a woman. A machine with another machine embedded in her mind. Even more, she’s young, foolish. She may be a formidable opponent on the field of battle, but once she’s forced to stop moving, pressed to consolidate her power, she will be playing my game. The game of politics.”
“You think you can get close to her?”
“Yes. Many of our assets are still in place…. I’ll rebuild the network in Genevia and leverage it to gain access to the Marauder colonel. She’s not defenseless, so I’ll need time to assess her weaknesses. But your activities will distract her, tire her, wear her down. And then I’ll strike.”
“And then, with her dead, the Genevians will keep their focus within their own borders.” Hammond lifted a hand to his chin, running a finger along his jawline. “Then we extend an olive branch to her successor.”
“Not to them,” Xa corrected. “Rika is an agent of the Alliance’s field marshal. We plead our case to Tangel. If reports are to be believed, she is fighting a war across half the Orion Arm of the galaxy. Having one less front to fight will not displease her.”
Hammond knew the devil would be in the details, but the spy’s plan had merit. At the very least, it would buy more time to mount some sort of defense against the enemy.