The Genevian Queen: The Complete Series, page 42
Alison nodded.
They reached the next corridor, a narrow service tunnel lined with network conduit. After following it for a few hundred meters, they reached a sealed hatch.
Kor nodded and carefully released the manual locks on the hatch. Once done, he took a step back and kicked it open, diving through and coming up on the far side of the corridor, his chaingun spinning, and shoulder-mounted beams lancing into the Niets to the left.
Before the enemy could mount a cohesive response, Alison leant out and fired a DPU at one of the two heavy Niets to the right. There was just enough distance for the sabot to fall off, and the uranium rod struck the enemy soldier right in the neck, blowing his head clear off.
Alison fired another DPU, but this time, the enemy soldier was ready for it, both arms coming up to protect their core. The round slammed into the Niet’s ablative plating, knocking chunks off, but otherwise doing no damage.
Behind her, she could hear Kor’s second target go down, and she picked up the pace. The Niet she was facing stood nearly as tall as her, though with layer upon layer of ablative plating, and carbon nanotube armor beneath, it was impossible to tell how large the wearer was.
Not that it mattered; the bigger they were, the easier it was to target them.
The Niet recovered from the electron beam blasts enough to open fire with their own electron beam, but Alison was prepared. She dove to the side, her clawed foot grabbing onto a support column, continuing to propel her upward. Her other foot grabbed onto an overhead conduit run. Hand following a moment later, she began a three-limbed run along the ceiling, her GNR barking sharply as kinetic rounds leapt from its barrel, smashing into the Niet’s helmet.
The weapon did its job, burning through the remaining armor and then the human inside.
The Niet toppled over, and Alison dropped to the deck.
Kor snorted from the other end of the passage where he was securing the next intersection.
Randy snorted.
Alison and Randy joined Kor at the intersection, the signal from Evy’s team finally strong enough for secure comms.
Evy let out a sound that was half laugh, half groan.
She switched to her team’s combat net and reached out to Fred and Jenisa.
The corporal didn’t respond for a second.
A dire laugh came from Jenisa.
Alison nodded to Kor and Randy before gesturing to the passage on the right.
Kor swapped his right arm’s loadout to concussion grenades.
Randy followed suit, and formed up behind the other AM-4.
Alison didn’t ask him if he was capable; that would be an insult at this point.
The AM-4s took off down the passage, picking up speed until they reached eighty kilometers per hour. For the first half a kilometer, they didn’t encounter anything more than a few scattered patrols, each one receiving a few grenades for their trouble before the AM-4s moved on.
Alison ran backward after each encounter, lancing out with her electron beam at any stragglers who attempted to mount a pursuit.
After another two hundred meters, they came around a bend to find themselves in a widened corridor that served as temporary storage for equipment coming off the maglev. A platoon of Niets was formed up inside, apparently ready to rush into the fray.
Kor and Randy didn’t slow, barreling into the enemy’s midst, lobbing grenades before swapping to their chainguns. The two men stood back to back, spinning in a slow circle as they fired, while Alison leapt onto a stack of crates before anchoring herself to the wall and firing on any Niets who attempted to engage the AM-4s.
The heavy mechs took their fair share of enemy fire, but most of the Niets attempted to reach cover before returning fire; though with Alison picking them off, none managed that feat.
A minute later, the mechs were the only ones standing. Kor swept his weapon across the room one last time, and then dashed out the door, Randy hot on his tail.
Alison followed, firing a trio of rounds into one woman who tried to get a shot off at Randy’s disappearing form before she was out the door, dogging their heels.
It only took a few seconds before they ran into another group of Niets, these ones stacked up at a doorway leading into the maglev station.
Randy and Kor slowed their pace, firing rounds into the squad, cutting them down like chaff.
the AM-4 replied as he surveyed the station beyond.
At first she’d been surprised that none of the Niets on the platform were firing at the pair of AM-4s standing out in the open, but the moment she caught sight of the space beyond, the reason became clear.
The station was three hundred meters long and a little over a hundred wide. Four tracks ran through the center, set into a two-meter-deep groove.
All around the station, sections of the overhead lay in heaps on the deck; in a few cases, there was enough debris that it looked like more than one level had fallen in. Water was gushing out of a pipe on the far side of the track, while smoke drifted toward air intakes, obscuring over half the battlefield.
There were so many Niets moving through the rubble that if it hadn’t been for the fact that they were laying down covering fire as teams leapfrogged through the station, she would have believed that the Marauders had already been overrun.
They’d briefly lost connection to Second team’s combat net, but after a moment it came back, and Alison was relieved to see that all four mechs were still in the fight.
Evy and one of her team’s AM-4s, named Arnold, were in the track trench. They were protected on one side by the deck and by a cargo train on the other. Keera, the team’s FR-4, was currently perched on a thick girder right above the tracks, her back to a large support column as she fired on targets advancing from the far side. The last member of the team, an XFR named Beck, was positioned behind a half-destroyed crate that had once contained SC batts.
The cacophony was so loud that Alison had to activate dampeners inside her helmet just to hear herself think.
The two men nodded, making enough room for her to slip out—which Alison did after enabling her stealth systems.
The readout on her HUD reported only seventy percent efficiency, with the worst part being on her left hip. She kept that side facing the station’s outer bulkhead, turning left to cross the two hundred and fifty meters that lay between her and the battalion leadership.
Alison doubted she was headed for the battalion leadership. Mostly likely, it would be the senior NCOs directing the soldiers in the station. The commissioned officers would be elsewhere, probably having coffee served as they watched the battle unfold from a safe distance.
Typical Nietzscheans….
She was halfway across the station when Kor and Randy joined the fight, both of their chainguns spraying HE rounds as they moved into the fray. In a matter of seconds, the Nietzscheans’ focus shifted to the far end of the platform, soldiers moving to cover that would protect them from the new angle while not risking exposure to the other mechs.
Alison sidestepped a squad as they rushed past, nearly colliding with one of the Niets, but otherwise did her best to ignore the enemy and the mechs laying into them.
Once she took out the battle’s commanders, the Niets would realize they were surrounded, and the tide would shift—so long as they didn’t have more reinforcements nearby.
She wanted to reach out to Fred and Jenisa, but knew that it would be foolish to do so while stealthed.
Almost there.
She’d reached a clear stretch with only forty meters between her and the mound of rubble that guarded her target. Just then, a sergeant stepped out of a passage and brushed her shoulder.
“What the—” he said aloud, turning to look at the empty air that had just assaulted him.
For a moment, she feared her stealth was blown, but then he shrugged and turned, jogging toward the heart of the battle.
His path took him around a pile of debris that lay beneath a hole in the overhead. Alison had begun to turn back toward her target, when a girder swung through the hole and slammed into the Niet. The impact picked him up and flung him into the bulkhead, where he fell to the ground, unmoving.
A second later, a massive shape descended through the opening, beams, rockets, and HE rounds spraying out of four weapons systems, tearing into the backs of the Nietzscheans.
A throaty laugh came across the comms.
All around the station, mechs descended through holes in the overhead, dropping into the midst of the enemies, chucking grenades, and firing missiles and HE rounds. It took her a moment to realize it was Sergeant Corin’s entire squad: fourteen mechs in all, with two K1Rs in the mix.
Not wanting to lose the advantage of fresh surprise, she turned back to her target and closed the final distance before coming up behind four senior NCOs, all sitting frozen as they stared at a field holo which showed their forces being annihilated by the Marauders.
A brief moment of pity overcame Alison, and she took a few steps back before lobbing a pair of concussion grenades. The blast threw two of the Niets into the air and knocked the others against the bulkhead.
Switching her GNR to kinetic mode, she delivered a trio of rounds to each soldier’s abdomen, leaving them to writhe in pain while their armor pumped biofoam into the wounds.
Turning back to the fray, she couldn’t help but laugh as the Van waded into a group of enemies who had clustered together, and swung the girder he still held like he was scything grass.
A group of Niets took off down the maglev tracks, only to encounter the business end of the other K1R’s rockets. That explosion seemed to tip the balance, and a moment later, the entire enemy force fell apart. Half of them threw down their weapons in surrender, while others broke and ran.
THE STAGE IS SET
STELLAR DATE: 06.14.8950 (Adjusted Years)
LOCATION: GMS Marauders’ Lance, near Outer Pruzia
REGION: Pruzia System, Nietzschean Empire
Ona glanced up from her console. “Everyone is back aboard their ships, Colonel.”
Heather steepled her hands, a smile forming on her lips. “And the worm, Potter?”
“Good. Ona, tell Ferris it’s time to take his ships back around the far side of OP, but make sure the Niets can tell he’s still there. If they stick to their standard protocols, most of their ships should make a close pass.”
“Can you fake some sort of malfunction?” Heather asked. “From the looks of it, we’ll just need to buy a few minutes.”
“Helps when our mess has a purpose,” the colonel replied before she turned to Garth. “We ready to fire?”
“On your command. Everything is fully charged, though Bondo has advised that we really need to hold a steady course.”
“Understood. I don’t plan to be slewing about, maybe just a few pivots to get shots off.”
The chief pursed his lips. “He said something about not ‘jerking around’. Not sure if pivots rate.”
Heather sighed. “Probably. Either way, we’ll do what we must.”
The Marauders’ Lance had fired almost fifty shots at the approaching enemy fleet, taking out as many of the enemy dreadnoughts as they could while also keeping the enemy from spreading out so much that they’d be out of range of Outer Pruzia’s beams.
As Heather surveyed the battlespace, another call came in from the station governor. She expected more posturing, probably in triumph over having driven off the Marauders.
“You’ll find out who was driven off soon enough,” the colonel whispered to herself as she triple-checked her small groups’ positions, confirming with each captain that they were ready to engage whatever enemies came their way.
“Ferris’s group is exiting the station’s structure,” Ona announced a minute later. “The Nietzschean fleet is at eighty thousand kilometers.”
Heather nodded in silence, watching the outer defense ring as it rotated around OP, waiting for it to come into range of the approaching Nietzschean fleets. It seemed to take forever, the only sound on the bridge was Ona’s fingers on her console as she managed communications between the ships, and readied the Lance’s weapons.
Finally, Potter spoke the word that Heather hoped would make it all worthwhile:
An instant later, a thousand beams lanced into the black, followed by a barrage of even more missiles and an endless stream of rail-fired kinetics.
The enemy’s forward formations consisted of destroyers and light cruisers, nearly a thousand ships in total. Potter kept her focus on the vessels closest to the station, tearing through shields and then hulls with impressive precision.
By the time the active batteries on the ring rotated out of range, nearly seven hundred vessels were little more than drifting hulls, venting atmosphere and plasma as they drifted on their prior courses.
“Oh stars…you should hear the things the Nietzschean commanders are screaming at the station governor. They have no idea—oh, even better, he’s telling them that his people have control now.”
Despite the governor’s assurances, the approaching fleet was fanning out in all directions, giving Outer Pruzia a wide berth.
