Somewhere on Micah Prime - Robot Federation Territory
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The laser punched into Kaya’s skull, just behind her ear. It shattered her helmet, cutting off the screams of her dying squad. The bomb-shattered base her orders told her to take blacked out, replaced with nothing. Then, in the void, words appeared. She’d been told to expect them, but the relief she felt hit her like a bomb. Death, even temporary, was scary enough.
At least it had been quick.
[Dropper Lost. You have suffered major head trauma (╥﹏╥) ]
[Preparing Drop-Ready Clone: 7/8 Clones Available]
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Ten Days Before, Ceres Orbital Drop Command Academy, Mars - First Republic Territory
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The laser stung as it bored through Kaya’s skull just behind her ear. She resisted the urge to reach up or flinch away; the operation was mandatory for every Dropper, especially the soon-to-be commanding officer of a Briseis-Class drop corvette. The MRC marked Droppers from everyone else; the elite of the elite. She had to have it.
So, as the doctor screwed a perfectly clean titanium cylinder into the perfectly round hole in her head, she sat perfectly still. The cold metal rubbed against her skin, and a moment later, the sting of a sterile alcohol pad burned as liquid squeezed in between the metal and her head to burn against the wound. Then, with a clap on the shoulder, he pointed to the door. “You’re done. Next station, then you can get uniformed up. Next!”
She stood up, wobbling in her hospital gown as a spark of pain ripped across her temple, and only after saluting the doctor—who, after all, outranked her for another twenty minutes—did she reach up to touch the Memory Recovery Capsule that would no doubt save her life a thousand times in the next two years. Sort of.
She’d still die, obviously. But then she’d live.
Her hand came away wet and bloody. That wasn’t strange. She couldn’t feel it dripping down her neck, but someone had sawed a hole in her head with a laser scalpel. There’d be blood. So, on her way to the last station, where an army of nurses would give her one shot after another and take her DNA for the corvette’s clone banks, she stopped to clean her face and hands.
The sink ran red, then pink, and her scalp itched just below the metal circle. In a minute, it’d start stinging like a motherfucker, and by the time she stood for her promotion ceremony, the pain would be unimaginable. The war needed them too much—humanity needed them too much—to wait for painkillers to kick in. They needed to get out in the galaxy and start protecting the Republic.
Finally, as she scrubbed the last of the blood off the sink’s steel frame, she looked in the mirror.
Oh fuck.
The first face she saw wasn’t her own. Instead, a pale, one-eyed man loomed over her, head devoid of any hair and body armor shining—except where a thousand enemy shots had abraded away its paint. Kaya flinched, her hand rushing up to salute. The General was a living legend; rumor had it that he was the only man in the entire Earth Armed Forces to survive a hundred drops. Most people didn’t survive one—at least not without the MRC and cloning process. Every Dropper aspired to be mentioned in the same breath as him. And here he was, in the hospital wing’s washroom, right behind her.
“At ease, Cadet!” The shouted order slammed into her like a mortar round.
She hadn’t even finished spinning around to salute before her arm snapped back to her side. “Yes, sir!”
General Gorsuch didn’t wait for her to assume parade rest in her hospital gown. “Cadet, you all make me damn proud, you know that? You’ve been through hell for three years, all to get shot out of a perfectly good god damn corvette. That blood on your face? That don’t matter! What matters is that you’re going to fight—and die—for lost Earth and the Republic until those bastards give up every scrap of territory, and you are going to like it!”
“Which ones, sir?” Kaya asked, shell-shocked from the verbal bombardment.
“Which ones?! Which ones?!” Gorsuch sucked in a breath, a vein on his forehead popping ominously. He reached up and pushed it down with one finger, eyes wild. “All of them! The bugs and the bots, yes! But the United Planets’ Syndicate, those terrorists on Orion’s Belt, and the cow-people to the galactic south, too! Every mother fucker who stands against the Republic must be taught the benefits of our system with the gun and the grenade and the thousand-pound bomb of freedom!”
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Somehow, Kaya managed to keep her feet. The general’s assault pressed home for another minute. Then, finally calming down and satisfied that his objective was secure, he held out a hand. “Anyway, Cadet, I’m damn proud of you. Now, get out there. You’re holding up the goddamn line!”
As she shook his hand—getting blood all over his armored fist—she fell back before General Gorsuch’s glare and hurried out into the Ceres Command medical bay. She expected to see an angry line of cadets waiting for her, but her classmates’ faces radiated awe instead of fury. “You survived Gorsuch?” One cadet asked, eyes wide.
“I heard he wrapped a boneskewer’s tusk around his armor, snapped it with one hand, then stabbed it with its own tooth ‘till it died.”
“Yeah, well, I heard he fought a bot tank with only a Bowie knife. Peeled it like a tin can.”
Kaya rolled her eyes and rejoined the line. A moment later, the first nurse beckoned her forward into the waiting minefield—or, more accurately, needle-field.
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Dressed in her Space Force whites, Kaya stood stock-still with the other hundred-fifty soon-to-be lieutenant commanders in her company. The base’s commandant stood stiffly, giving a speech about the benefits of democracy, the terror of the Fall of Earth campaign, and the promise that no matter the cost, no matter how many had to die, die, and die again, those responsible would be destroyed.
She wanted to look around. The Hall of Ceremonies was the only wide-open place in Ceres Command, and she’d seen it from the back of the hall but never from her new post before the dias. The Sword of Earth sat in Commandant Mikel’s hand, ready to be used. But she couldn’t see the other symbols: the Judging Woman, who presided over Earth in Exile’s courts; the Hammer and Blade, representing fairness for all; and the skull that would soon adorn her armor.
She knew they were there, of course. But she couldn’t see them. That would mean moving, and General Goruch was watching.
A massive figure stepped up, taking the sword from Commandant Mikel, who stepped back hurriedly as General Gorsuch’s power armor whined. Kaya listened as hard as she could and barely heard the commandant say, “What? I’m not denying him this. I heard he choked a robot to death.”
“Listen up, Cadets! I’m going to go hunt down Earth’s murderers, and I want the best of the best with me! That means you! You’ve earned your stripes of command, and your ships are waiting just beyond those doors. Now, let’s get you poor bastards pinned!”
Kaya’s chest swelled with pride as one of the midshipmen walked up and stabbed a medal through her dress whites. Pinning it deftly on, he nodded and moved to the next cadet, marking them a lieutenant commander in the Earth Armed Forces.
The process took less than two minutes, but Kaya could barely breathe the whole time. Her half-cleaned hand felt sticky, balled into a fist by her side and glued shut by the blood, but she knew she could never wash it again. General Gorsuch had shaken her hand, and now she was a lieutenant commander with her very own ship? It had to be a lucky charm, like the disgusting gym socks her brother had kept unwashed during murderball season.
Her mom had said it was impossible. The fleet didn’t need more Droppers. But now, here she was, only one assignment away from her very first drop—and not as a trooper, but as an officer. She’d fought hard to get here, suffered for three years under the drill sergeants and instructors. In a hundred weapons qualifications, she’d never ranked lower than twentieth in her class, and she’d only dropped a cluster bomb on her squad twice in simulations.
She stole a glance at her medal, then gasped. “The Steel Star of Excellence?”
“No way,” someone whispered next to her. She couldn’t believe it herself. That marked her in the top five. Maybe even the best in her class. And it gave her first pick of the Briseis-class corvettes and their assignments.
She couldn’t wait.
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As Kaya stared at the shipyard filled to bursting with identical black-and-gray corvettes, she realized her choice would be easier than she thought. “Let’s go with that one,” she said.
“The Champion of Democratic Intent? A good ship,” the midshipman showing her around said. “We finished her last week, and she’s had her trials. She scored identically to the others in speed, armor, and shielding. We’ve only got the basic weapons on board these, but as more roll off the factory planets, we’ll be able to upgrade the Champ, so fight hard, and Earth will provide.”
He saluted. After she returned it, he turned on his heel and left her with the hulking ebon vessel. Its guns hung ominously from its belly, ready to let freedom ring over a hundred planets, and its engines sat cold but ready, with only an hour’s notice, to throw her across the galaxy in pursuit of justice. She’d learned the Briseis-class’s specs by heart.
She took a deep breath and stepped toward the ship’s gangplank, but as she did, the massive form of General Gorsuch stomped past her. She saluted, and he returned it. “Lieutenant Commander, am I to understand that you picked The Champion of Democratic Intent as your command? Outstanding. Simply outstanding! We’ll be fighting the undemocratic enemies of lost Earth together!”
He shouldered his way through the narrow airlock, his clean-shaven head ducked to avoid the door’s titanium frame. Kaya followed, and as she did, she could hear a midshipman mutter, “I heard he wrestled a Juggernaut and won!”
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Close Micah Prime Orbit - Robot Federation Territory
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[Clone Prepared. Memories Installed. Good luck, Lieutenant Commander. O7]
The screams and silence cut off with a thud as Kaya’s first new body, already wrapped in its armor and locked into its drop-pod, howled toward the burning surface of Micah Prime. Her first breath ripped into her lungs, and she almost screamed from the pain, but another breath followed, then another. Before long, the breaths were comforting, not painful, a reminder that she was alive.
Not dead on Micah Prime’s surface. Alive.
The planet’s red, dusty surface filled her view-port, and the brilliant rings in its sky vanished as she stared down at the bomb-shattered world filled with pissed-off robots. She’d die again. But then she’d live, as many times as it took to save the planet.
Humanity depended on it.