Galaxy's Edge: Savage Wars

by Jason Anspach

  “Until now.”

  “How’s that?”

  “Total xenophobia for other Savages… until now.”

  Rechs grunted. “Until now.”

  He rolled his shoulders, feeling the tightness in his muscles. “I’m going into the Savage hulk today, and I’m going to blow it sky-high. Because killing more Savages is the only way to save the galaxy. And if I die here… then I die doing everything I could. And maybe someone else will go through what I’ve been through and realize how important it is that we kill them as fast as possible wherever we find them. Whenever we meet them. However we can. Total annihilation, or the galaxy will never go forward. They’ll always be there feeding on us and ruining worlds faster than I ever could. Because if we lose, think about it, if we lose and if they win and go out there and find the other big stellar civilizations we haven’t, then all those other civilizations will ever know about Earth, and humanity, is that we are utter and complete monsters. Because it’ll be the Savages standing in for us. Nightmares made real. If for no other reason, forget our survival, then we must stop them from eating the entire galaxy like the locusts they really are. They will never stop. They’ll just go on doing every world just like they did Stark 247.”

  Rechs clamped his jaw shut and swallowed. He felt confused by all this. By his need to say it. To tell it to someone other than Sulla. It was a month’s worth of talk for him babbled out in the span of a few minutes. But he needed the captain to know. To understand what he was doing.

  Because, deep down, he knew this was his last ride.

  Makaffie hopped down from the engine compartment and told Greenhill to “Give her a try!”

  “Win, lose, or draw,” finished Rechs, “my contribution to all this is that I deny these Savages the right to the galaxy, one nuked planet at a time. No one man can save the galaxy—that’s a fool’s dream. But a million of us committing a million small acts of defiance against the edge… that might do something. And until everyone catches up… here I stand. And that’s enough for me. If I have to kill everyone on this planet just to kill them… then yeah, that’s what I’ll do.”

  Horror. That was what was on her face. Her eyes. Her lips barely parted. Nothing like a dramatic silent scream. But the stark raving horror of what she’d just been told was there because there was nothing made up about anything he’d told her. No hyperbole. The near emotionless voice of Tyrus Rechs was pure truth. No more, no less. Like some needle that pointed toward true galactic north no matter what you did to it.

  She put her slender hand to her mouth, then lowered it just as quickly. She tried to compose herself.

  “How were you on a ship fifty years after Mars?” she asked, not knowing how to address anything else but the long years this war criminal was claiming to have lived. “That was hundreds of years ago.”

  Tyrus Rechs stepped close so that no one could hear what was said between them. He could see that she thought he was insane. A madman babbling about time machines and secret conversations with God. His eyes were blazing with fury. Fury at her. Fury at the galaxy. Fury for the Savages and what they’d done to everything.

  “A sect of Savages did things to me—things that gave me the same long life they had. Back when I was a Ranger with the old US military. When they made me their slave on a lighthugger called the Obsidia.”

  59

  Two lone headlights appeared from down the tunnel. At first it seemed, at least to Captain de Macha, who was pulling some quick primary maintenance on the APC’s turret, that it was a lone ground vehicle approaching. Just two headlights. But when the headlight on the right split off from the one on the left, it became clear that it was some sort of motorcycle pair streaking toward them at high speed.

  Greenhill and Makaffie had just gotten the delivery truck started when Savage gunfire erupted from the bikes. Both of them streaked in at incredible speed, firing at the rescued survivors who hovered near the vehicle’s cargo door. The wounded and dead fell to the ground; others screamed or froze in horror at this new assault right at the moment they thought they’d been rescued.

  Rechs returned fire, helmet in one hand, hand cannon in the other. The two bikes raced directly toward the crowd as if planning to drive right through them, full bursts opening up from mounted submachine guns on the fronts of their squat and long cycles.

  Captain de Macha jumped down to get the survivors out of the way, wincing through the Chill at the jarring pain this sent into his leg. A burst of gunfire caught him and sent him sprawling along the dark subterranean road. But it also diverted the speeding attacker, who had to maneuver to miss him.

  “Macha!” shouted Andres. “Macha! Damn it.”

  De Macha’s last action had saved most of the survivors from being hit directly by gunfire and then run down as an afterthought.

  A second later both bikes were red taillights moving into the darkness of the tunnel.

  But more were coming in fast.

  “Get them loaded now!” shouted Rechs at the soldiers and civilians as he slammed his helmet over his head. Pneumatic seals cleared and engaged. Internal HUD was active and showing targeting data. Behind them, the two initial attackers were turning back for another pass. A sort of tightening of the noose.

  “Switch places!” Greenhill shouted to Makaffie.

  Instead of listening to the clear, concise commands that would save their lives, the panicked survivors scattered everywhere while Greenhill and Martin did their best to cover and corral them. Makaffie gunned the delivery truck’s engine.

  Rechs tried to fire at the two closing bikers, Savage marines in light scout armor and faceless mirrored helmets, but survivors ran across his line of sight blocking any kind of effective engagement picture. So instead he kicked one biker as the scout Savage passed by and sent the rider careening into a wall. The bike exploded in a fireball behind him, causing the survivors to scream even more than they already were.

  “He’s dead, sir!” shouted Andres, who had dashed through the chaos to assist the downed Captain de Macha.

  The second wave of bikes was now streaking in at full speed, firing wild and indiscriminately at both vehicles, the road, and any targets running in the tunnel black.

  Rechs made his way to the APC, firing where he could get shots off and assessing the situation. Their quiet yet tense repairs inside the tunnel of just a minute before had now turned into a carnival of chaos and explosions punctuated by gunfire. Rechs had no idea what anyone’s status was or where they were. He found himself wishing he’d skipped the long talk and just gotten them all moving.

  “Sound off!” he ordered over the comm as he covered behind the door of the APC, firing barking bursts at passing riders.

  “Covering at the truck,” said Martin breathlessly. Automatic pulse fire reverberated in both real-time and over the comm feed. “Engaging!” he gasped.

  A second later Greenhill added a terse, “Same here, Colonel!”

  “Behind the wheel and ready to roll!” shouted Makaffie enthusiastically. If he was afraid, it didn’t show in the slightest. In fact his voice indicated he somehow believed that an epic road trip to a fabled rock concert was about to begin.

  “Andres!” shouted Rechs, knocking down a Savage rider with a brutal burst from the hand cannon at extremely close range. Several rounds struck the mounted marine, and the bike went down as the rider went tumbling across the pavement.

  “Loading survivors in!” said Andres. Then, breathlessly—“We good to go, sir!”

  “Get them out of here!” ordered Rechs.

  He ducked inside to check the APC. Captain Davis had gone forward toward the driver’s controls. His mind ran through who was left, and for some reason he couldn’t think of who he was missing… until Wild Man fired with a cacophonic boom that echoed down the tunnel, racing off into dark and hidden spaces like the bellow of some ancient monster.

 
The fuel tank of a closing bike erupted in explosive fire, spraying hot fuel across road and rider. Incredibly the burning bike kept rolling even as its rider, full aflame, tried to dismount, flames crawling greedily across his armor.

  Another bike zoomed in at the big sniper. Wild Man merely smacked the attacker in the helmet with the butt of his rifle, and the rider crashed a short distance later.

  “We’re leaving!” Rechs shouted.

  But the big sniper seemed to have his own plan. He jogged toward the bike he’d just unmanned, picked it up, and stomped the starter, firing it up. He slung his rifle and gave Rechs a thumbs-up.

  Good enough, thought Rechs, and sealed the APC.

  “Get us out of here!” Rechs said to Davis at the controls.

  A moment later the vehicle throttled up and lurched forward. Automatic gunfire ricocheted off its hull.

  Rechs squeezed past the nuclear doomsday weapon and toward the turret control station.

  “Where’re we going, Tyrus?” Davis asked, as though giving him another chance to spare the planet and the frozen population from a self-propagating thermonuclear annihilation. Daring Rechs to be hard enough to actually make the call she knew he’d already made.

  Rechs was still busy moving into the gunnery station, no easy feat in armor, when he noticed two little twin girls, dirty and shaking. He’d seen them in the crowd of survivors. In the chaos of the attack they must have fled into the APC, seeking safety in any cubbyhole they could find as the monsters that had devoured their family, friends, and everyone they’d ever known came howling out of the darkness.

  And now they were headed with him on a one-way mission to deliver a trigger-nuke into the belly of his sworn enemies.

  One screamed and buried her face in her sister’s dirty jacket, mistaking Rechs for one of the Savages. The other stared at Rechs, hard and cold, daring him to hurt her sister. Forcing her fear to the side in one last act to save the last person she had left.

  Aw hell, thought Rechs.

  And then, over comm…

  “I said where are we headed, Rechs?”

  The war criminal looked at the face of the defiant girl from behind his enclosed helmet—or bucket, as he liked to think of it.

  “Continue on mission, Captain Davis,” Rechs sighed. Resolute. Unchanging in a galaxy that seemed to want to change with every second. “We’re still hitting the Savages.”

  60

  Comm faded quickly as the two vehicles headed off in different directions. The last thing Rechs heard was Makaffie swearing exuberantly as Greenhill and Martin engaged pursuing targets from their tenuous positions on the delivery truck turned evac cattle wagon. The screams of the rescued survivors competed with the weapons fire in the background.

  But the APC had problems of its own. It was impossible to tell how many of the Savage bikers had broken off to follow them—Rechs wasn’t even sure how many were out there to begin with—but it was clear that it was a lot of them, and they were swarming. Perhaps Savage sensors were attuned to detect the chemical and energy signatures of the trigger-nuke. That would explain the response and pursuit.

  “Forty meters to a hard right!” shouted Davis over the comm. “Hang on!”

  Rechs was having a hard time acquiring targets on the guns’ control screen because the Wild Man on the bike was mixed in and firing at Savages with a blaster pistol he’d picked up somewhere. Maybe from the bike’s former rider. And when he wasn’t doing that, he was turning high-speed cycle racing into a contact sport as the pursuit shot through half-illuminated tunnels beneath the battle-ravaged city above.

  Rechs got a clear field for half a second along the portside aft arc of the fleeing APC. He opened up with both barrels blazing. Bright fire smashed into three Savage scout riders, riddling them with high-energy pulse shots and igniting their bikes. Parts and wheels went flying away and behind the APC, falling all over the tunnel back trail and filling the tunnel with black smoke, and for a moment Rechs wondered if he hadn’t jammed the Wild Man’s game. But then the clear and distinctive outline of the big sniper filled the IR overlay, shooting through the smoke and flames in his commandeered cycle.

  And if anything, it seemed they now had even more Savage scout riders in pursuit.

  “They’ve probably figured out we’re carrying the ball!” shouted Davis over the howl of the of the APC’s straining twin turbines.

  Rechs knew navy rats liked to call the big nuclear firecrackers “balls.” And she was probably right. The Savages had to know it would eventually come to this. If they were working together, as it now seemed they were, then they would know how he’d dealt with their kind in the past.

  Not for the first time did Rechs wish he’d just faded during the retreat after the initial battle and set out to do this all on his own. The opportunity for mission success had been highest at that pivotal moment—whether he’d lived or died.

  The APC pulled three gees and turned on a dime as all four ball-wheels heaved the vehicle in a new direction at top speed. Inertial gravity decking took some of the load, but the sudden drag on facial muscles made it decidedly evident that hard gees were being pulled.

  One of the girls—the one he assumed was younger, because the angry one was clearly the dominant—tried to scream at the sudden shift in direction, but the breath was yanked from her chest. The angry one clearly felt it too, and she glared bloody murder at Rechs, indicting him as a stand-in for all the wrongs of the last six weeks that had befallen her and her sister.

  Rechs understood that.

  And he liked her for it.

  She’d fight the galaxy hard for what was hers. And that was precisely how humanity had to behave if they were going to make it out of all this. The galaxy was loaded with civilization-enders. Ignoring them didn’t make them go away. Fighting them did.

  And in the end, if it, the big it, was going to take you… then make it pay. Always.

  Despite the pull, Rechs nodded at the defiant little girl who refused to die, making eye contact. Willing her to know they wouldn’t die in this moment of something they’d probably never experienced before in their entirely too-short lives. That there would be a next moment, and that he would buy those moments for them until he was no longer able.

  Her gaze didn’t soften, but the look in her eye as the gees reached their peak, trying to crush them all, indicated that she’d accepted his contract.

  He could make no promises for any of the moments that lay beyond the next desperate ones. But that seemed to be enough for her. Or maybe not. Rechs wasn’t particularly good with kids.

  Though Captain Davis was probably used to flying starships as opposed to driving ground combat vehicles, she was still a pro. And just as the hard-turn moment seemed like it might last forever, like all the worst fears of the little girls would come true and the black well forming at the edges of their vision might just grow and swallow them forever… the moment passed.

  The vehicle shot forward along a narrow circular tunnel. Accelerating hard to outrun the monsters that came for them.

  Rechs dragged his mind away from consuming unconsciousness and scanned the mounted gun’s targeting screen for the signature of the Wild Man. Nothing appeared.

  He watched the circular tunnel disappearing in banded illuminated lengths behind them.

  Still nothing…

  And then the Wild Man raced into the tunnel and right up onto the curving wall. Four Savage scout riders followed while others missed the turn or made it badly, spilling from their bikes amid showers of sparks like bright fireworks with chemical ignition trails.

  “This is a venting access,” announced Davis over the comm. “Gate controls are down. Brace for impact!”

  Rechs hadn’t strapped in, and neither had the little girls. And there was no time. He grabbed them both, one with each gauntlet, and jammed his legs against the gunnery bulkhead. The
vehicle surged forward and smashed through something amid two shrieking screams and a groan of rending metal. The sound of a witch’s brittle fingernails raked the outer hull of the vehicle that protected them.

  “Damn it!” Rechs swore as the girls’ high-pitched shrieks flared across his helmet. He swore not because the sound hurt his ears, but because they were here, and they had no place in this horrible moment.

  And then the APC was weightless. Falling.

  Sudden uncertainty once more.

  Because who knows how far it will fall, he thought.

  It crashed onto a new surface and continued forward.

  “Sorry!” said Davis from the controls. “Unavoidable. But now it’s a straight run ahead to the Nest. Let’s hope they left a light on!”

  Rechs was still clutching the two girls to him. Both had stopped screaming, but their eyes were squeezed tight shut. Then the youngest, the one he’d assumed was the most timid, looked up at him, her big dark eyes filled with tears.

  “Don’t be mad at us!”

  “What?” asked Rechs.

  “We just came looking for our brother,” said the older. “He’s all we have left.”

  And he knew in that moment that they’d faced fear and real monsters to find the last of their own. That they’d been brave enough to try. Even though there was fear. Which is what bravery is.

  “I’m not,” said Rechs, letting them go and moving them over to the troop seats. “I’m not mad. Strap in.”

  He looked back at the targeting screen. There was no sign of the Wild Man.

  61

  The Wild Man wasn’t thinking about her smile when he plowed into the four remaining cycle scouts as he came down the side of the curving tunnel after the hard turn.