Galaxy's Edge: Savage Wars

by Jason Anspach

  All he saw was red murder.

  And here was the chance to get four for one even if it cost him everything.

  Fair enough. A good trade on any given day.

  Someone had once told him, some trader or storekeeper when they’d figured out what his Savage hunting game was, they’d told him vengeance made you blind. Because in the end, that’s all you saw and everything was about that. Even when it wasn’t.

  Like that’s a bad thing, he thought now as he slammed the bike into all four Savages. He flung himself from the bike moments before impact, having braked just enough to manage a non-fatal rolling landing. It wasn’t that he wanted to save himself—he just wanted to end a few more enemies in the last of whatever remained to him.

  That was enough. Fair trade.

  Two Savages were dead. Wrecked all over the long tubular passage. Ruined by their speeding bikes that had suddenly lost control. And two were down and slowly getting up.

  For a big man he moved fast, like a bear suddenly coming to life to chase and hunt you down no matter how swiftly you ran. He was like that as the fight began. No longer a wild man. Now a wild animal.

  His first instinct was to go for the one on his right. He pulled his rifle off his back with no time to spare as the Savage rose to one knee and pulled a sidearm. Wild Man fired from the hip and blew the Savage marine in half. And then the second Savage slammed into him, knocking him to the floor. Which was a big mistake for the marine. Like some liquid snake that had only ever known wrestling reversals, the big man was on top of the armored marine almost instantly, both paws grabbing at the Savage’s helmet, slamming it into the hard gray concrete. Again and again and again…

  “See that, darlin’?”

  I see it, babe.

  The Wild Man watched his own image in the dull reflective sheen of the faceless helmet. Watched himself go from far away to up close as he raised the marine’s head off the concrete floor, then suddenly rush away as he slammed the helmet down with a brutal shove.

  And again…

  And again…

  His eyes were like a mad demon’s.

  And when he’d finished, the helmet had just come to pieces. As had the brain inside.

  He came to himself and stood. His body suddenly breaking out into a cold sweat as he returned to the reality of the chase through the tunnel system and the realization that the APC had gone on without him. Certain that he was dead. Already he could hear more cycles coming down the tunnels after him. Picking up the trail their brothers had been intent on.

  They would come here, he told himself, grabbing the big rifle off the floor. They would come here right to him and he could…

  Do them all, babe.

  He went down on the floor of the tunnel and used a wrecked bike as a firing position. The next wave of bikes was coming fast. Throttling up and roaring as their riders electronically scented the prey they’d been ordered to hunt down and destroy. The APC. The people who’d been kind enough to take him along and make him one of their own. Coalition soldiers.

  That had been nice. It had been a long time since he’d had anyone else in his life. And they’d been good to him. Talked to him even when he gave them so little in return.

  Words had never been easy for him. Even before…

  The least he could do was give them more space to do what needed to be done. What they’d come to do.

  Rifle stabilized, he sighted in on the distant leader of the next Savage scout team.

  “How ‘bout him, darlin’?”

  That’s the one, babe.

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  And then she would smile. Smile so big that all the bad things just didn’t matter anymore.

  That would be good here at the end of himself.

  The rifle was roaring out in steady booms as his mind worked the shots and his fingers did that reloading trick he didn’t even think about. Smoke and cordite filled the tunnel as he shot them down, one by one.

  And still they came on.

  62

  The APC didn’t sound too good. Something had gone wrong in the undercarriage or the drive train, and it was growing worse by the second.

  “I’d stop, but I’d have no idea what to look for or what to do about it,” said Davis over the comm.

  “Keep moving,” said Rechs in reply. “How much longer until we reach the hulk?”

  “Ten minutes down this road and we’ll be right near one of her cargo hatches.” She paused. “Then what, Rechs?”

  Silence followed her question for a long minute.

  “Then we shove the weapon out the back, arm the trigger for detonation, and try to make it back to the Chang in time to dust off.”

  “What if the Savages try to disable it?”

  “Thought about that. Was worried they might. I worked something out back here so that any attempt to tamper will activate the ignition sequence. There is no way to disarm it except via my armor’s authenticating system.”

  “What if they try to dump it and just lift off?”

  “It’s geo-trapped. Moving it will cause it to detonate.”

  “It looks like you’ve got this all figured out then,” she said with contempt. Clearly she was frustrated that no amount of reason or logic would dissuade him from ruining this world forever.

  “Not my first time.”

  But she wasn’t done. She tried again.

  “And if they do tamper… because they either don’t care, or don’t understand the markings, then we get cooked too?”

  “Affirmative,” answered Rechs.

  They entered an eight-lane highway along the subsurface of Hilltop District. They passed the occasional abandoned vehicle, but it was wide open and devoid of Savage assets or patrols.

  “They probably didn’t think anyone would get this close,” said Davis as she called out distance and location markers.

  Rechs bent forward over the gunner station screen and then looked over into the troop compartment where the two twin girls were securely strapped in.

  “It’s gonna get rough for a few minutes…” he began awkwardly. “So…”

  He was going to tell them that they needed to be brave, but then he remembered that they’d come into the city looking for their brother on their own during the middle of a Savage invasion. So they already had bravery covered.

  “I need you to stay strapped in. Let me do the work I need to do and then we’re going to get out of here. I’ll get you to a ship that’s going to rescue you, okay?”

  The two girls looked at each other. Then the older one spoke.

  “What about Austin?”

  Rechs said nothing.

  It seemed they took this for confusion on his part. Not understanding who they were asking after.

  The younger one clarified.

  “He’s our brother. The one we came looking for. He’s—”

  “All you have, right,” said Rechs. “I remember. Just stay strapped in,” he added, and turned back to the gunnery station. Not knowing what else he could say to them that would be of any comfort.

  A moment later the massive entrance back into the daylight of Hilltop District appeared down the distant length of the tunnel. It was full daylight now on the surface. Rechs checked the time. Just barely afternoon. He felt suddenly tired as sunlight filtered through the opening, revealing swirling dust motes and falling ash in the forward view feed.

  It had been a long time since he’d slept.

  But he drove that thought from his mind and charged up the APC’s defensive gun. “I thought you said we’d come up underneath the hulk.”

  “Eventually,” Davis replied. “Gotta spend some time up top and then make sure of a pass-over.”

  The vehicle started taking fire as it neared the exit. The Savages did have a checkpoint set up. But not a great one. It didn’
t even slow them down. Captain Davis smashed right through the improvised barrier and the two marines who refused to move. It seemed they’d been optimistic about stopping the intruding vehicle with automatic fire. Instead they were crushed beneath its massive ceramic ball-wheels.

  The APC took the off-ramp and emerged midway up a street that ran from the base of Hilltop to its highest point. This area had been shelled badly by the Coalition. Here was where the stories-tall walking mech had finally been found and destroyed by Coalition artillery. Resulting in extensive collateral damage. But even the rubble and smashed ruin of the once-grand buildings of New Vega, a sight that should have been apocalyptically awe-inspiring, was dwarfed by what drew the eye and demanded that attention be paid.

  The Nest. Here, near and close, the kilometers-long colony ship loomed like the end of the world.

  The road passed beneath some sort of massive wing section, and beneath this wing, which was easily twenty stories over their heads, towers jutted down from the underside. Construction cranes and loading gantries raced up to meet these structures. At first they looked to be manned by repair crews, on an epic scale.

  At first.

  “They’re not repairing it…” said Captain Davis. Her voice was frantic, almost on the verge of hysteria as she drove hard to avoid hitting the ground structures. “They’re dismantling it! They’re staying!”

  Rechs had seen Savage hulks from far closer than most humans had ever cared to. Their gargantuan scale didn’t take away his breath like it did to others. Didn’t impress him. Didn’t make him question his place in the galaxy. The Savages weren’t gods. They were monsters. And monsters had to be slain.

  He existed only for that. And he’d accepted that fate a long time ago.

  Besides, he’d seen and destroyed far bigger ships than this one. If anything, this one was more like an escort for some of the more massive lighthuggers from the last days of Earth’s darkest hours. When the supposed best and brightest had fled the ruin they’d created. Telling everyone with such extreme certainty that they’d been right despite the lessons of history. The failure to properly execute their extreme thinking could be blamed on those they were leaving behind. But they would try again, out there in the dark, safe within their floating science experiments.

  Just like Stark 247. Just like Dachau and Buchenwald and every other camp that most of humanity had forgotten. Man’s inhumanity to man. Out here. Even out here.

  “They’re not human anymore,” muttered Rechs through gritted teeth at the grounded Savage hulk looming over them.

  The Savages were still collecting survivors. Still organizing the captured. Storing up calories for the winter like insects. Tearing apart their own ship to make a new, terrible, and twisted home.

  They’d get it right despite the lessons of history.

  If only because they were so certain this time.

  Just like they’d been every other time.

  “Colonel…” The transmission came in broken and distorted. It was Sergeant Major Andres. “Do you read…”

  There was pulse fire in the background.

  “In case you’re still operational, sir … proceeding on foot … government transit …”

  Rechs tried to get something through, but they weren’t receiving. They were too far down and, from the sound of it, engaged in a running gunfight on foot.

  They were still beneath Hilltop and on foot. They’d never make it in time to meet the Chang’s departure.

  The APC drove off the road, cut onto another one, and entered a tunnel. When it burst out the other side, it turned hard beneath an overpass, jumped the barrier, and shot up a very steep grade. Everything inside that wasn’t bolted down slid backward.

  “Hang on back there!” Rechs called out to the girls.

  Davis kept the engines roaring at maximum capacity as the APC zoomed up the hill and exploded forth, all wheels in the air, before landing hard on a hilly paddock. The vehicle rocked and threatened to fishtail from the rapid application of brakes, but at last it came to a halt in front a grand cargo ramp leading down from the Savage hulk onto the shattered streets of New Vega. There were dozens more doors erupting from the ship all down its length.

  Rechs scanned the surroundings through the up-top weapons screen. There were no Savages in their immediate vicinity, just the gently drifting grass that carpeted the edge of some park.

  “Can you get us inside through that ramp?” he asked Davis.

  But the captain had other ideas.

  “They’ll never make it, Rechs. You heard Andres’s transmission. Not on foot. Not down there and engaged. We’ve got to go back for them.”

  Rechs growled and then popped the hatch to exit the APC. He pointed a finger at the girls, growled, “Stay here,” then dashed back to the cargo hatch and accessed the lift control. A moment later the cargo deck was exposed, and so was the repulsor-palletized trigger-nuke.

  The wind continued to sweep the heights of Hilltop, and Rechs monitored his HUD displays for signs of oncoming trouble. But he saw nothing. No threats, no movement. This Savage colony seemed to be the type that thought so highly of itself and its occupation that the prospect of trouble coming to its front doorstep was unthinkable. They had thrown everything into holding New Vega when the Coalition forces attacked, but their overwhelming success had apparently caused them to overextend their perimeter.

  And now Rechs was but a few yards away. Close enough that he could inspect every pockmark on the hull, see every telltale sign of travel through the deepest and darkest of space.

  “Rechs?”

  “I’m pulling out the trigger-nuke. They made their choice when they left the Chang with me, same as you. Keep an eye out for Savages. They’ll pick up the signature soon enough.”

  He disconnected the nuke from the travel locks and pulled it from the cargo deck. It came toward him as easily as a cloud drifts across the sky, and he let it wander out onto the dark and ruined street that climbed skyward beside this beached whale of an old starship. This Savage dream of a new world long ago on Earth. Now a nightmare unfolding on this world.

  “Here they come!” shouted Davis. “Whatever it is you’re doing, do it fast, Rechs. We got Savvie responders moving in on foot!”

  She knew what he was doing. But even now she was distancing herself from the act, the weapon, the solution to the Savage crisis… even if she didn’t realize it. She knew the people on this planet—those trapped in the storage bubbles below the surface, those awaiting transfer to that gruesome fate, and those who had fought along with them to reach this apocalyptic end-all—would pay the price. And she couldn’t live with that. So she’d begun to distance herself. To find some way of living with what was going to happen in the next few hours.

  As Rechs popped the shell on the trigger-nuke, the first rounds zipped through the artificial night the giant ship created beneath its bulk. Tracer fire from some heavy automatic tried to range the APC.

  Rechs entered a code and unlocked the arming display. Nothing fancy. He enabled geo-trap and set the timer for eighteen hundred local.

  And as he turned away, he heard a distant noise—a voice. So faint that at first he thought he’d imagined it.

  “Help us!”

  He heard it more clearly that time. Perhaps amplified by the wonderment that was his helmet’s tech. Someone was screaming from… somewhere.

  Rechs took a few steps toward the edge of an embankment, and looked down.

  He saw hundreds of people pressed up against a wire fence, their haunted eyes suddenly hopeful. Their skeletal arms straining through the wire. An internment camp.

  He looked back. The United Worlds emblem was proudly painted on the side of the APC near the twin guns, and was likely just visible to the camp over the crest of the hill. It was that emblem that caused the prisoners to scream for help.

  And scream they
did. A myriad of tired, frantic, and pitifully hopeful voices, all pleading for the same thing.

  Help. Help us.

  Heavy machine gun bullets zipped wildly above Rechs—sent by the approaching Savage marines. For now, they were still too far away to be a threat. But that would change soon enough.

  Static came over the comm. It was Specialist Martin. “Be advised: Any surviving assets on New Vega. We are engaged near the underground subway access at the bottom level of the Hilltop subterranean complex. We are on foot with civilian survivors. Sergeant Major Andres is down. Colonel… if you’re out there… we need help, sir. We’re not gonna make it.”

  Help us.

  They all needed it—demanded it—of Tyrus Rechs. And he was helping in the way he knew best.

  Rechs ran back into the APC. The trigger-nuke was armed, ready to blow if the Savages messed with it in any way. Then it would be all over. He’d done what he’d come to do despite everyone and everything.

  That was the way it had to be in the galaxy. The winner got all the marbles. So it was best to play for keeps.

  “Help us!” shouted the mass of prisoners, their shouting growing in fervor and pitch as Rechs disappeared from view.

  Now he would do what he could for the soldiers who had followed him—who had volunteered to see it through even after humanity’s best effort to contain their worst enemy had met with overwhelming defeat.

  “Do we just leave them?” asked Davis.

  She was talking about the scarecrows behind the wire.

  Savage weapons fire was growing in accuracy. It pinged against the hull and kicked up the dirt around Rechs’s feet. But it seemed to Rechs that they were firing tentatively—perhaps aware of what he had delivered and not wanting to set it off with an errant shot, were such a thing possible.

  “There’s thousands just in this section, Captain. We can’t rescue them.” His voice was plain. His words matter-of-fact. And she hated him for it. And hated herself because he was right.

  “We could at least set them free,” she offered, and heard herself begging. Trying to make a deal where none could be made. “At least give them a chance!”