Admiral Sulla called after Rechs, who was riding atop the APC. “I sent you when dusk is expected to come tomorrow night, in local time, Tyrus. Be here.”
“Do my best, Cas,” said the armored man, his head fully enclosed by a helmet, his voice coming forth in a mechanical growl.
And then they were off.
The APC moved a block into the shattered wastes of the industrial district surrounding the shot-to-hell stadium when the Chang lifted off, its massive struts retracting, its strobing landing lights suddenly switching off as it cleared the stadium bowl. Then max power to the engines and repulsors, and the ship rocketed for orbit and rendezvous with the surviving task force fleet.
“Why do you call the admiral ‘Cas’?” asked Davis, using the direct comm link they’d set up for the op.
Rechs gave no reply.
46
The command APC had not only been designed to move silently, it was skinned in UW’s latest battlefield stealth tech. Nothing was too good for the ancient republic’s finest flag officers in close-combat situations. The same wasn’t always true for the men those flag officers commanded.
Sergeant Greenhill was assigned as driver because he had the most experience with mechanized transport, being Cav. Captain Davis was serving as navigator since she knew the route into the subterranean labyrinth they were aiming for. Makaffie was aft with the weapon and the vehicle gun controls—partly because of his artillery experience, but also because he was small and could squirrel around inside the cramped APC.
The rest—Rechs, Sergeant Major Andres, Martin, de Macha, and “Wild Man,” as the sergeant major had taken to calling the big stranger—rode up top behind the automated gun.
They worked their way west through the industrial district beyond the stadium and below the dark towers of Hilltop. Some of the fires up there were still out of control, raging through streets and skyscrapers; others had burned themselves out, leaving nothing but the skeletons of ruin.
“Kind of funny that these fires haven’t spread,” said Martin, watching the distant glow. “Been enough wind.”
“Maybe the Savvies put ’em out,” remarked the sergeant major forlornly.
The clock moved into the late hours.
Along some of the blocks traveled, all was just as it had been six weeks ago on the day before the Savages came down out of the sky in their ancient ship from Earth’s past. Storefronts were untouched. Closed up, but not barricaded. As if only left for the night, until business opened up once more. Waiting for the streets to fill with the daily traffic of New Vega. And then at the next block they would find a crater taking up half the street and the buildings blown outward, beyond recognition, in stark contrast to the relative serenity they had just passed through.
As they reached the first streets in the lower part of Hilltop District, the power grid, which had come on to illuminate vast sections of the abandoned city, failed once more. And there was something about its sudden absence that seemed final.
“Switch to night vision,” ordered Rechs.
Goggles were lowered into place, and almost by force of habit suppressors were checked along the tops of pulse rifles. Not normal-issue gear, but made available for this little excursion into the belly of the beast.
There would be no rest tonight, despite the weariness in their bones. They had only until dusk tomorrow to get in, drop the bomb, find the tech, and get back to the LZ. Otherwise they were going up with the trigger-nuke. The deadline was tight to say the least.
But this was the only option to stop the Savages from actually taking this planet. Right now, the biggest advantage the civilized galaxy had over the Savages was real estate. Planets. Land. The Savages had their big ships, but vast as they were, they paled in comparison to even the smallest planets, and they were closed ecosystems with limited resources. If they were to get a foothold on a habitable rock—especially one already developed by human colonists—they would not only have access to resources, they’d have a launching point from which to plan future attacks. Especially now that it was clear they were working together.
And if the Savages got their hands on the galaxy-changing tech like the hypercomm, or worse yet, shared it with other Savage ships they’d made alliances with… that would change everything. In a heartbeat.
Stopping them here was essential.
“Why’d they build the top of the city over an old colony ship?” Andres asked over comm.
Captain Davis answered the sergeant major. “New Vega was a rough world when the first colonists landed in a big colony ship they’d built out in the American wastelands that used to be… Ohio, I think. Their ship wasn’t Savage large, but big enough. And, obviously, hyperdrive-capable. Back then this world had a vicious species called the nuelithiri. Highly intelligent tribalized raptor. Cross between a heron and a cottonmouth snake. They put the ship down on the flatlands next to the coast but kept getting killed when they tried to set up farms and villages nearby. So they just started building around the ship. It wasn’t the type that would ever be able to take off again once it landed. The settlers created a whole structurally reinforced hill, lots of packed earth, concrete, bunkers, deep massive tunnel systems until they could wipe out the raptors. That took decades, and most trade ships wouldn’t even call here because of the situation.”
“You seem to know much of this,” commented de Macha.
Davis nodded. “We were thoroughly briefed before our mission. To better understand the mind of the local populace.”
De Macha nodded. “So after the… aliens were eliminated?”
“Right about the time they wiped out the apex predator, pirates were having their heyday, so even the aboveground city became a kind of medieval fortress. It wasn’t until things quieted down and the pirates were cleared out that the city began to expand. That’s when the government took over the old colony ship. They set up in there with their labs, bunkers, secret prisons, and everything else they wanted to keep from prying eyes. Sold the rest of the hill to commercial developers. The New Vega boom, they called it. For the most part, the residents forgot about Old Colony, as the underground space is called.”
“And you been runnin’ around down there for weeks?” asked the sergeant major.
“Yeah,” she replied. And nothing more.
“Got something,” said Greenhill from down in the driver’s compartment beneath the ceramic-armored front of the vehicle.
Everyone had some kind of comm device to tap into. For most it was a mere headset. For Rechs it was managed by the advanced HUD inside his helmet.
“What is it?” asked Rechs.
There was a long pause as everyone hovered over the comm, waiting for Greenhill or Davis to tell them what they were seeing on the sensors. The vehicle had no windows, which meant they were reliant on a passive sensor system that imaged everything from night vision to thermal to allow the driver to visualize where he was driving. It even showed the surrounding streets at least three blocks beyond the current position.
It was Davis who answered. “Really not sure. I’ve seen this kind of activity during my time here, but nothing above the surface before. It’s… some kind of construction crew a few streets over.”
Rechs paused to consider this. “Can we bypass?”
No disbelief. No questions. No wondering why the Savages would be building anything in the middle of a battle. Because for all the Savages knew, the battle wasn’t over. Even though it was. A normal adversary would be waiting to see if combat operations resumed at dawn.
There was never anything normal about the Savages.
“Negative,” Davis replied. “We need to cross the intersection they’re near. Just past that is a raised roadway into Hilltop, coming in from the suburbs, that’ll put us a few streets away from the insertion access point for the underground system. It’s our best route in without being detected.”
Rechs thought through more silence.
“If we weren’t under a time clock, we could take another route in…” Davis added. “But…”
“Yeah,” said the sergeant major. “Time is a luxury we for sure don’t have. The only bus off this rock is leaving tomorrow night.”
Rechs made up his mind. “Those of us on top will dismount and work our way closer. Stand by to come forward on our signal.”
“Affirmative,” replied Davis.
Greenhill killed the whisper-quiet engine of the APC, and the dark street was utterly silent.
Rechs, Andres, Martin, de Macha, and Wild Man hopped down onto the street and checked weapons. Rechs pointed out the order of march and threw a knife hand toward the route they’d take—a narrow alley running along the back of some buildings.
With Martin on point, they threaded its tight quarters, checking corners and moving with stealth. The city was as quiet as a graveyard. Only if one listened closely could they hear the crackle and groan of fires along the eastern side of the hill. Wild Man barely made a sound as he brought up the rear with his massive rifle.
When Rechs judged they were behind a building located across the street from the Savage construction team, he knelt and handed his pulse rifle to the sergeant major and pulled a tool off his belt that looked like a flashlight. Martin watched one end of the alley while the Wild Man took the direction they’d come from. For apparently having no military experience, or at least none that he’d told them of, the big man knew his patrolling skills.
Rechs covered the building’s rear door with his body and fitted the flashlight-tool into the lock.
The lock exploded.
“Fancy, Colonel. Mag-breaker. Illegal on a lot of worlds.”
“So are a lot of things.”
“Gotta get me one of those,” said the sergeant major softly, holding out Rechs’s pulse rifle.
Rechs took back his weapon and gently pushed the door open. He tapped Martin and let the man enter first. Then the rest followed.
From inside the coffee shop, for that was clearly what the place was, a coffee shop on the edge of Hilltop District, they could see the Savage crew across the street. Except these Savages were different from the marines they’d been facing in the battle for Triangle Square.
Very different.
A big shuttle, like something out of Earth’s low-orbital commercial spaceflight days, was beside them. No repulsors were evident, meaning it must’ve used chemical rockets to put down after being dropped by one of the Savage hulks. Just like in the early, Neolithic era of space travel.
It was dirty and old, and strange words were written on it. Words that had no meaning to most anyone these days. Though they had once been vaguely familiar to Tyrus Rechs.
Android-Fiber Lifter.
In faded script.
A massive spotlight was thrown from the shuttle onto the Savage workers, and Rechs took a moment to study them.
Three figures moved out there beyond the bottom of the ship. They were emerald-skinned, and each had some kind of rebreather attached to its face. Their hair was long, albino-white almost. They had no weapons, and they worked like hunched monkeys. The trio kept busy at unloading something.
With them were three small yellow construction mechs with articulating legs, a pod canopy, and massive claws. The mechs were tearing apart the building across the street—breaking down materials and collecting them in neat piles.
As Rechs watched, three white-armored Savages walked down off the shuttle’s ramp. They had the swagger of soldiers, and matching weapons that said as much. Their body armor—ceramic-molded chest plates that covered their much-larger frames—seemed to add to the sense of their powerful build. The Savages’ skin was a vibrant red, their arms were long and huge, and their feet were… hooved. Their helmets were like something out of Earth’s ancient past. Open-faced helms like those once worn by ancient gladiators.
Rechs used the tech in his helmet to iris in on the faces of the soldiers, both red and green. These new types lacked the post-human, alien feel of the Savage marines—floating brains behind inscrutable full helmets. In fact, they had rugged good looks. Almost model perfect. Just like the ship he’d been a slave on. These, he could tell, these too worshipped themselves.
“What are they doing?” whispered Sergeant Major Andres over the comm.
“Don’t know,” Rechs replied. Though the real question on his mind was a different one.
Who are they?
The truth was that all the Savages had once been someone. Somebodies. Groups that had come together in support of some common interest, some mutual philosophical objective, and who had refined that objective into a unity of purpose, one to be achieved by any means possible out there in the dark between worlds.
The Savages on the hulk Rechs and Sulla had been slaves on for fifteen years—before the crew of a United Nations starship, the precursor to United Worlds, found them—had been formed from some major digital tech company from the past that had been closely allied with the entertainment and news networks of the day. Movie stars, they’d once called themselves. But their time in the dark had convinced some of them that they were Greek gods, capable of doing whatever they pleased to whomever they pleased. Or that they were demons come in from the outer dark, a minor distinction, as that too made them capable of doing whatever they pleased to whomever they pleased. But unnatural longevity, advances in medicine, and a taste for bloodsport had made the floating society a nightmare circus of mind-control experiments and haunting slaughters.
You never really knew what the Savages had once been. And it didn’t matter. What did matter was who they were now. What they had become. What new nightmare that would have to be dealt with.
“Uh, sir?” said the sergeant major in a hushed whisper. “Time’s a-wastin’, sir.”
And yet Rechs still didn’t move. He just watched the Savages like some frozen jungle predator patiently waiting for its perfect move at the perfect time.
To someone like Rechs, the entire galaxy was prey.
A moment later a figure with skin like pure gold came gliding down the ramp. A woman. Beautiful, austere, tall. She was followed by an almost equally tall figure whose skin was blue.
The reds and the greens knelt, though the gold seemed to be entirely unaware of their presence. The blue handed her an ancient holographic flexy, a smart device that could be rolled up and stowed like some ancient map. Tyrus Rechs had used those himself. Long ago.
The blue held it out for her to study, then with great ceremonial aplomb, she nodded and cast a long slender golden hand across the street.
“It’s like they gettin’ ready to build a house… or somethin’,” whispered the sergeant major.
The mechs continued to tear apart the building they were working on, oblivious to the stately ordeal taking place behind them between the greens, the reds, the blue, and the gold. The greens rose and hustled an ancient industrial-sized 3D printer onto the street from beneath the belly of the old shuttle. They were ripping packing material away from its sides when Rechs finally raised his pulse rifle and steadied it on the table he’d been covering behind.
“That’s all of them…” he whispered over the comm. “Smoke ’em. I got the reds.”
“I’ll take greens,” said Martin.
“Blue for me,” whispered Andres. “Wild Man, you got an angle on Goldie?”
The big silent man grunted once, and it sounded something like “Acquired.”
De Macha was at the rear of the restaurant on security.
“Engage,” whispered Rechs without ceremony.
He fired a single pulse at the first of the reds. The shot tore the Savage’s chest armor apart and sent him spinning into the shuttle’s landing gear. Rechs shifted his entire body to maintain the rifle’s stability and landed the pulse rifle’s scope on the next red, w
ho was only just reacting to the damage sustained by his comrade. Rechs flipped to burst and spat five pulse shots at that one, because he knew the Savage was going to move. The rounds hit, and he was down but scrambling away, dropping his old assault rifle as he moved for cover. Rechs followed the Savage and added another burst that cut him down for good.
The echo of the boom from the Wild Man’s rifle was the first thing that registered in everyone’s consciousness. It was so loud and concussive that it seemed like it had come after Rechs’s second burst, but in reality it had gone off in almost the same moment that Rechs had dropped the first red. The woman with gold skin was knocked over onto her butt and out of sight beyond the shuttle’s dirty landing lights. The Wild Man’s rifle’s massive shell ejected and hit the floor of the six-week-silent coffee shop, ringing out like some great brass bell that had been dropped amid the madness of ambush.
Martin and the sergeant major were easily cleaning up the blue and greens.
The last red managed to fire into the shop’s glass window. But he shot wild with no target acquisition. Distantly Rechs recognized that the Savage was using a next-generation version of the old SCAR-X. Matte-black. Drum mag. Tri-dot laser acquisition system dancing across the shattering glass and into the dark of the coffee house.
He was firing and not moving.
Mistake, thought Rechs as the storefront glass became pocked with bullet holes and shattered. He flipped back to single and blew the Savage’s head off with one clean shot.
All that had taken less than ten seconds.
Ghost images of burst fire, tracers, and such faded on the retinas of the ambushers. And soon it was all dark once again. The big industrial shuttle looming out there in the dark on her three ancient gears. Dirty light falling across the dead bodies that were slowly fading in color as dark blood ran out and pooled in the street.
Galaxy's Edge: Savage Wars Page 22