Galaxy's Edge: Savage Wars

by Jason Anspach

  Maybe I’m next, thought Greenhill. And he didn’t mind too much. He’d done his best to see it through. But your best didn’t always mean it was enough.

  His mama had tried to tell him that when she’d tried to teach him religion.

  And then he fell over and passed into unconsciousness for at least thirty seconds.

  When he came to, Tyrus Rechs was dragging him into the APC. And Sergeant Greenhill wondered if he might just live a few minutes longer.

  68

  There was no argument about what would happen next. Survivors were quickly loaded into the heavily damaged and shot-to-hell APC, occupying a space that had belonged to a trigger-nuke that would end everyone else they ever hoped could still be alive in short order. It was still going to be a tight fit. Both Greenhill and the sergeant major were no longer combat effective. And truth be told the sergeant major was in far worse shape than that. There were meds and a stabilization kit on board, but it didn’t look good for the senior NCO.

  As Davis supervised the loading of the civilians, the ragged and desperate survivors squeezing in next to the two twin girls in the troop compartment, Makaffie took Rechs aside. Martin was on rear guard, waiting for more Savage assets to catch up. Waiting for them to appear out of the darkness and come swarming in for the attack. For now, things were awfully quiet. But rather than soothing everyone, the absence of battle-rattle, incoming fire, return fire, and swarming and chittering Savages seemed to put everyone on edge and even more ill at ease. The silence was more ominous than the battles that had been fought. If such a thing was possible.

  “Hey-a there, Tyrus, old buddy,” said the scrappy artillery private. He spoke to the galaxy’s most wanted war criminal with a familiarity that hadn’t been established by any prior conversation Rechs could remember having with the man. “Heads up… but ah… Wild Man is still active. He’s still out there. He’s alive is what I’m tryin’ to say.”

  Rechs turned his head, but his emotions were hidden behind his battered and battle-scratched helmet.

  “Yeah,” continued Makaffie, running his grimy hand through a dirty-blond shock of barely military-cut hair. “He had a comm device on him and I folded it into our net when we joined up. Comm also came with a locator and vitals authenticator. So it must’ve been military and not civilian. Anyway, I just checked to see if he was still alive and he is… but his vitals are low.”

  The scrawny man didn’t wait for Rechs to get a word in. He just kept talking. “He was in one place for a while just after we split up and them cycle teams was after us. Then he was on the move to sub-level eight. And that’s where he is now.”

  Captain Davis had finished loading the APC and was now hovering over their conversation.

  “There’s no time, Tyrus,” she said almost immediately. “We’re less than two hours from the Chang’s dustoff back at the LZ. Not to mention the weapon you’ve set to detonate moments after departure. I’m sorry… but…”

  She looked away suddenly, realizing what she was saying.

  “It’s a hard choice. I get that…” she continued. “But we have to leave him behind. There’s not enough time.”

  Rechs could tell that half of her was hoping he’d remote-disarm the nuke. To give them more time. But that wasn’t going to happen. Not at all.

  “I’ll get him,” said Rechs. “Get these people to the dustoff. If we’re not there before departure, then tell Sulla it’s gears up and emergency takeoff, because that weapon will go off at eighteen hundred local.”

  “Hold on a minute, Tyrus,” said Captain Davis, putting up one knife-edged hand. “Just hold on a minute. I’m telling you right now, I’ve lived down in these tunnels for six weeks…”

  She bent over and studied the map on Makaffie’s battle board. She pointed a finger at a blip that identified Wild Man’s locator-transponder. Makaffie had even changed the tag inside the comm roster to read “Wild Man.”

  “… and you will not make it up to that level and back to the LZ in time,” she continued. “No way. No how. I guarantee it, Tyrus. It cannot be done, and you will die down here.”

  “Feed me his loc and identifier signature so I can track him,” said Rechs to Makaffie, ignoring the protestations of the captain.

  “You got it. Want me to go with?” asked the private with a maniacal grin that indicated he was up for just about anything.

  “Negative. Captain Davis needs you and Martin to get these people off-planet. Make it happen.”

  Makaffie saluted—badly—and scrambled into the APC. Maybe he hadn’t been as up for going back into the nightmare tunnel network as his initial enthusiasm had suggested. Getting out had seemed impossible at various points during this little jaunt into the Savage stronghold. Now there was the real possibility that they might make it. And that was not a chance to be thrown away lightly.

  But Rechs had always resolved himself to expect a one-way mission. That was his way. Every time. That way you played your hardest to be wrong about the outcome.

  Because if you were already dead, then what did you have to lose?

  Captain Davis stepped close and stared into the face of Rechs’s soulless helmet.

  “Clarify something for me, please, because I don’t understand this. You’ve accomplished your mission. The weapon is armed and will go off at just a few minutes after eighteen hundred local. Job done. The entire remaining population, captured or not, hiding out somewhere in the hills or whatever, is going to die when this planet starts to cook. And that’s fine by you. And now, with a straight shot to get to an inbound ship that’s got a chance of getting us off this doomed rock… you’re going back for just one man.”

  Rechs had grabbed a tactical ruck from the loadout and was busy stuffing it full of spare charge packs for the heavy, plus all the remaining fraggers.

  “Yeah,” he said as he closed the ruck and strapped it on. “That’s about it.”

  “That makes no sense, Tyrus! Not in any equation in this whole messed-up mess does that make even the slightest bit of sense. Then… why not shut down the timer on the trigger-nuke and just save everyone?”

  “Can’t.”

  “Why?”

  “Because they’re already dead. The Savages will either turn them into resources, or they’ll turn them into more of themselves. This planet was dead the moment those Savages set down. I’ve seen it too many times for it to be any other way, Captain. I can’t save them.”

  “So you’ll just let them all die?” she practically shrieked. “No… that’s not even right! You’ll actually be the one killing them, because that’s your device that’s about to do all the dirty work. It’ll be you who does them, Tyrus Rechs. Just like every other world you’ve tried to ‘save.’” She looked up and dropped her head back down, shaking it with her hands gripping her hips. “What a colossal joke. Both it and you.”

  She slammed her palm into the side of the APC as though she were finished.

  But she wasn’t. She was just opening her mouth to say more when Rechs spoke again, getting right in her face.

  “Or maybe I’m trying to spare them from a living nightmare that might last for hundreds, if not thousands, of years. Or, since these here on New Vega have gone cannibal, which is a new low I’ve never encountered before, some of these survivors might wake up out of one these frozen bubbles to be next week’s Sunday dinner. No, I don’t think so, Captain. What I’m doing may make me look like a monster to you and all the rest of the galaxy who want to always choose the path of least resistance. But I don’t care what all of you think. I never did. You and the rest get to have your pretty starships and snow globe civilizations because there are men, and women frankly, who are willing to do the hard things that need to be done when that’s the only way forward. We slaughter the cattle so you can eat steak. Spare me your moralizing. And I’ll spell it out for you so you get it in your head, and maybe if I don’t
make it back, after you’ve learned your lesson watching planet after planet get annihilated by these monsters, you’ll get it and figure out what needs to be done. Here it is:

  “There can’t be two of us. It’s either a galaxy full of Savages, or we humans get a chance. But we cannot coexist. It’s us or them. Because according to them, we have to be eliminated for them to go forward. We’re the part of the gene tree that didn’t make the evolutionary cut as far as they’re concerned. We’re the Cro-Mags. The dodo. Their first mission is to destroy us or turn us into them. Both options have about the same mortality rate. Trust me on that one. They want us dead. The quicker people getting around to believing an enemy that tells you time and time again that it wants you dead… the faster something can be done about it in which you don’t end up dead.”

  Through it all Davis just stood there, arms crossed. Eyes smoldering. And for a moment Rechs wondered why he was doing it again. Why it was suddenly so damn important to make her understand his point of view. It didn’t matter. She wasn’t going to stop him. And yet he went on, more worked up than he could remember in a long, long time.

  “And us… we have to, repeat have to, clear them before we can find out what’s out there. We can’t have these monsters they’ve made themselves into constantly tearing down everything we’ve built the farther out we expand. New Vega’s dead. This is all we could save,” he said, waving one gauntlet at the APC and everyone within. “This, and one more. I’m going to go get the last one.”

  She tilted her head after he finished, looking in no way convinced. “Why?”

  Rechs stared at her from behind his helmet for a long moment, saying nothing. He clenched his fists.

  “Because he said he would follow me. For that reason and that reason alone. In that, including you, we all became brothers. If just for now. If just for this battle. You fight together, you survive together. We’re something more than just the rest of the population. We’re family now. And to the best of my ability, if there’s a chance, I’ll bring my brother back alive. I have to take that chance. I wouldn’t be me if I didn’t.”

  “Tyrus Rechs.” She said his name like it was a dirty word.

  “Yeah,” replied Rechs dismissively. “Whoever that is.”

  She stared at him. Hard. Just like the twin girls.

  “I’m going now,” he said in the silence that followed. “Listen to me and get off this planet, Captain.”

  And then he was gone. Down tunnel. Trotting off into the darkness with several kilometers to cross. His pace looked too slow for the two hours that remained of the planet’s life. Too slow if he was going to accomplish what he’d set out to accomplish. Not enough in a time when so much would be required to merely go on drawing breath.

  But there are some who run toward the fire, despite the odds.

  She knew that much as she watched him disappear into the tunnel dark.

  69

  There were abandoned scout cycles all along the way. Most had been destroyed, either exploding against a tunnel wall or riddled so badly with pulse fire that they were now inoperable. But eventually Rechs found one still in working order, its rider shot down by one of his volunteers from Strike Team Ranger, and he got it started.

  Inside his HUD he had a good tag on the strange and enigmatic sniper that had just folded himself into their little ad hoc fellowship with barely a word. And he’d been one of the best snipers that Tyrus had ever fought alongside.

  That some horrific tragedy had befallen him prior to the battle was evident. That he’d once been a soldier was evident too. That he’d been horribly wounded was plain to see by anyone with functioning eyes.

  Rechs had met many such men in his travels across the stars.

  But this Wild Man, like all of them, had agreed to see it through no matter what. And Rechs had promised to do his best to get them all back.

  He owed them that.

  Now it was time to honor his end of the commitment. No one gets left behind.

  He set out along the tunnel riding fast. He was carrying Greenhill’s heavy along with his own hand cannon. He killed the high beam and relied on his helmet’s IR, low-imaging overlays, along with the bare emergency lighting, to see his way forward as he thundered along.

  And what he saw was a swarm of cycles approaching fast. With something bigger behind their speeding cluster. A mech even larger than the two they’d collided with in the APC. In fact, it was barely able to fit inside the tunnel.

  Rechs met the oncoming cycles like a comet headed into an asteroid field.

  Whether the approaching Savage scout marine riders thought he was one of their own—a survivor with a malfunctioning comm returning with intel—or another Savage unit from a different vessel, was unclear. But the riders parted to make way, and he shot through their midst and underneath the massive legs and gears of the following walker.

  Only at the last second did they realize he wasn’t a friendly.

  Rechs knew more about the Savages than any living soul. Even more than Sulla. And as frightening as this new alliance of Savages from different hulks was, he knew the chances were good that there was some miscommunication going on between them. The various sides might not yet be married up and cohesive. Everyone using the same playbook, the same codes and phrases. The arrogant nature of the average Savage culture was probably still on full xenophobic overdrive against any other culture, even other Savage cultures, that didn’t think exactly like they did. There was even a decent chance they’d start fighting one another again soon. As some old politician had once suggested… maybe the answer is to have two enemies so that they would kill each other.

  But right now, that was probably too much to ask for.

  His armor’s local radar showed that some of the Savage scouts had broken off from their pack and were heading back after him. Seconds later incoming rounds were streaking across his HUD. The armor kicked in, computing bullet-fire trajectories and anticipated cones of engagement. He had a good head start. They wouldn’t catch him unless they were packing something bigger in the engine department.

  The rest of the Savages continued on, no doubt in pursuit of the APC. But as long as the armored vehicle’s engines held, it would make it to the LZ. And then they’d be safe. Unless the Savages were planning on mounting another assault—and Rechs thought that unlikely. Despite their reinforcements, the Savages had taken a beating just as badly as the Coalition forces had. It would take time for them to regroup.

  Which meant this was the exploitable moment for Rechs and the others. Move about in the confusion between xenophobic cultures and try to get off-planet before the trigger-nuke detonated and cooked off every hydrogen molecule it could chain-react with.

  He’d seen a trigger-nuke crack a planet’s core before.

  It was horrible.

  Ahead, Rechs saw the wan half-light over a terminal platform. There was no way to get the bike up on the platform—at least, not quickly enough to stay ahead of his pursuers—so he ditched it and ran for an escalator, dragging the heavy from around his back and looking for a good ambush site. He found one at the top of the escalator with a good field of fire on the platform below.

  Unlike Rechs, the pursuing Savages did take the time to stop their bikes and drag them up onto the platform.

  A mistake.

  When they were all in view, some gunning their engines while others worked their bikes up off the tracks, Rechs opened up with the heavy.

  They were grouped together tightly. Whether they had no real military training or had merely gotten lazy after driving the Coalition off-planet, he couldn’t say. But it was bad soldiering, and they paid the price. Heavy pulse fire, on high-cycle automatic, spat out hundreds of shots.

  A normal squad heavy gunner would have had a hard time stabilizing weapon crawl on high-cycle automatic fire. The powerful rifle tended to jump and squirm at the blur of heavy
automatic fire spraying from the barrel. But the armor’s cybernetic stabilization system, coupled with the advanced targeting in Rechs’s HUD, stabilized the heavy and kept it on target working the tangos until they were good and down.

  All dead in fifteen seconds.

  Rechs stood from his concealed position at the top of the escalators and swapped in a new charge pack, letting the old one clatter to the floor. Smoke rose from the barrel of the heavy pulse gun.

  Then he turned and set off through the field of dead Savages his team had shot during their flight not long before.

  70

  Wherever Rechs went, there were more dead Savages. Both the hunters and the cannibal marines with the dull-finished mirrored helmets. Martin, Greenhill, and Andres had made the Savages pay all along the way. Mixed in was the occasional human—one of the New Vegan citizens who’d gotten hit in the crossfire. But there were many more dead Savages.

  There was no sense in picking up the Wild Man’s back trail; Rechs had a clear ping on his current location. And he had a pretty good idea what the Savages had in mind for the big sniper.

  Storage.

  He found a small passenger elevator, away from the big central transportation disc. Using the big lift would probably bring him into contact with more Savage elements. This smaller one didn’t go up as high as he needed to go to reach the Wild Man, but it was close enough, and more importantly… less deadly.

  He leaned back against the hard wire mesh of the small cage as he passed several unlit levels. He was tired, and any bit of rest, what he could get of it, was welcome. Some part of his mind asked him how much more he had left. He ignored it, as he always did. The moment you decided how far you’d go… that was exactly how far you would go. Too bad if you needed to go farther.

  Tyrus Rechs wasn’t a thinker. Never had been. Or at least, no one would have ever accused him of such. He seemed a man of constant action and determined purpose. But the galaxy was vast, and there had been many hours, days, accumulated years in hyperspace… to just sit and merely think. And because he’d lived longer than most—and was quite unsure exactly how long he had yet to live, thanks to the Savage experiments aboard the Obsidia—everyone he’d ever known, everyone he ever would know as the years progressed, had died or would die long before he did.