Galaxy's Edge: Savage Wars

by Jason Anspach

  Then he nodded. Once, and more to himself than to her.

  “You’re probably right, Captain. But I’ll still do everything I can to rescue him. I owe him that.”

  And then the admiral was off, heading back to the bridge of the Chang.

  But Davis called out after him. She felt a burning desire to know more of the man she’d just fought with, and something told her the admiral might be her last opportunity to know it. “Admiral!”

  Sulla paused and looked over his shoulder.

  “He said he was… hundreds of years old. Is he… is he mad?”

  Sulla nodded curtly. “Absolutely.”

  77

  Even inside the environmentally controlled armor, Rechs was sweating loads. In order to save the armor’s charge, he had cut off nonessential functions and dialed back the cyber strength enhancements, which meant he was largely on his own as he carried the giant sniper up flight after flight of stairs to reach the surface of New Vega. He might need that power later. If things were close at the end.

  He gasped for breath, and sweat ran down into his eyes. But he could hear the Savages below him on the stairs, coming up after him, and he pushed himself to move faster. Stair after stair. Flight after flight. It was a race to the top now. They knew he was going this way, and surely they’d try to cut him off ahead. He’d deal with that when he came to it.

  He pushed himself up another flight with the dead weight of the giant on his back, and he was glad he’d trained without the armor powered on. Like an ancient knight in a glimmering metallic suit. The armor was the greatest piece of military equipment he’d ever encountered in all his long years. But if relied on, it could make a man weak with dependence. And so he’d trained just like back in the army. Just like in selection for the…

  He couldn’t remember what he was being selected for as he humped his way up another level. There was still far to go, and it seemed by the sound of the Savages’ boots that they were gaining on him.

  Still far below, but gaining.

  He couldn’t remember the name of that course after Ranger school. Either because of how long ago it was, or because he was so tired.

  “Long day,” he gasped and pulled himself upward. “Long one.”

  The giant sniper on his back was dead to the world. But the armor assured Rechs that the man was alive, even though he wouldn’t be coming around any time soon.

  At this moment Rechs was actually glad the sniper had lost his terrific large-caliber rifle somewhere along the way. That thing had probably been sixty pounds alone.

  “Q Course,” he huffed as he hit the topmost level. “That was it.”

  He banged through a security door and exited out onto a red daylit street between two crumbling office buildings that were still on fire and raining down ash. Glass littered the sidewalk, and the dead bodies of Coalition forces and Savages lay thrown about like the forgotten rag dolls of careless giant children who had tired of playing war.

  His armor told him he had incoming messages from the Chang.

  He also knew from the map, range, and time, that he’d never make the LZ in time.

  Over the city streets, doomsday sirens wailed. It was hard to tell if the sun was setting, but through the inky wash of great billowing fronts of oily smoke, he could see enough of the sky to tell that dusk would be here soon.

  And then… booom. No more New Vega once the trigger-nuke detonated.

  He started off down the block toward a wide intersection, telling the armor to scan and see which buildings still had emergency power. He needed to know that before he contacted the Chang.

  There were Savages moving in on his position. The armor’s radar tagged incoming groups. And it identified a massive tower that was still running on an emergency backup generator. It was just across the intersection, in the middle of which lay a smoking Coalition tank. The crew had been burned alive trying to get out.

  He was halfway across and hustling for all he was worth, practically bent double and stumbling, when a Savage point man spotted him and opened fire. Rechs had already caught sight of him out of the corner of his eye and was running for cover by the melted tank. He could hear the Savage calling out to others as it slapped a new mag in and readied to engage.

  Rechs paused only briefly behind the tank before bursting forth, firing as he did, and running for the building. The hand cannon roared, its recoil sending Rechs’s un-powered arm jumping as the Savage scout dropped on the sidewalk, its body twisting and turning.

  More were coming at him from both sides of the intersection, firing wild.

  He made the smashed glass darkness of the tower and the interior beyond, and he activated the comm link with the Chang.

  Sulla was there at once in his ear.

  “Tyrus, what’s your loc?”

  Rechs lowered the sniper next to the elevator bank, slammed his hand for the elevator call, and ran back toward the lobby. He needed to keep them back for a moment.

  “Suit’s ping is coming through now, Cas. But you’re not the only one who’s gonna be able to see it.”

  He fired at two Savages storming the lobby as fast as they could, turning themselves into a cartwheel of limbs and arms. Two brutal bursts smashed into the chest of one, spinning the Savage back and away to die on corporate furniture. For the other Rechs had to overcorrect, because they were both moving at each so other swiftly—Rechs striding and the Savage spinning. He shot the Savage’s legs out from under him, and the thing flopped to the polished floor.

  Rechs put two bullets in the Savage thing’s skull-helmet almost as an afterthought.

  He covered as the rest of the mop-up platoon opened fire from the street outside. Sections of giant windows that hadn’t been fully destroyed in the madness of the previous day’s battle collapsed inward on the lobby, sending fragments everywhere. Luxurious corporate furniture exploded in tufts of synthetic stuffing as hundreds of rounds were thrown at wherever they thought Rechs might be. They were taking no chances. They wanted him dead.

  “I read you at Fifth and Horizon,” said Sulla over the comm. “You’re never going to make it back to the LZ in time. Suggest you—”

  “Negative, Sulla,” said Rechs. “I’m making for the roof. Bring the Chang in and pull us off this tower. Or get out now. But that weapon goes off in…”

  Rechs checked the countdown in the lower corner of his HUD.

  “… thirteen minutes.”

  Rechs couldn’t even chance return fire. Everything was exploding around him. Expensive woods splintered into the air. Rare leathers received gaping bullet holes. He crawled, shifting position for new cover, and employed his last two fraggers, ones he’d held back instead of leaving for the pursuers back on the stairs, just in case something like right now happened. Just to keep them from storming the lobby.

  “I’m coming in for you, Tyrus,” said Sulla over the comm. “Be there.”

  “Will do,” he responded and cut the feed.

  Rechs raced back to the big sniper and dragged him into the elevator. An automated voice was telling him that elevator access was currently restricted due to an emergency situation.

  “Come on,” huffed Rechs, pulling the fiberwire connector off his helmet.

  Savages were storming the lobby now. Their own version of frags and flashbangs were being lobbed in, followed by hurricane fronts of gunfire as they advanced.

  “They’re coming…” slurred the Wild Man from the floor. He raised one hand to point, forming a gun with thumb and index finger. “Boom.”

  Then his hand flopped down. His eyes rolled wildly.

  “Don’t worry about them,” said Rechs. Once he was hard-connected into the building AI, he released an algo-worm that covered the building’s emergency restrictions.

  He could see the Savages now, entering the lobby amid smoke and ruin, targeting lasers sweeping.r />
  Sweeping for him.

  And then the doors closed and they were on their way to the top.

  Seventy-five floors to go.

  ***

  Sulla already had the Chang ready for a hot departure. Crew were in position. Weapons online and engines at departure idle.

  Moments after losing comm with Rechs, he had the gears up, and the last of the Coalition presence was lifting off from the ruins of New Vega.

  “Two hulks on an intercept course,” said the captain from the co-pilot’s seat. “They’re going to try to take us before we make jump.”

  “This is going to be close,” said Sulla as he ran through the systems, flicking off everything they wouldn’t need. Then he brought in the deflectors and sent as much power as he could to the forward screens.

  “Sir,” the captain said. “I have jump coordinates pre-loaded and ready.”

  “We’re not going to jump yet, Captain. We have the opportunity to make an additional pickup that the Coalition cannot afford to miss.”

  “Admiral, we’ll be lucky to get out at all once the Savvies reach us. You saw what those hulks did to the fleet on arrival, sir.”

  The engines were whining toward takeoff power. The sun had begun its final descent behind the sea to the west, obscured by floating drifts of black and gray smoke. Sulla added power and set course for Fifth and Horizon. Rooftop of InterSystem Capital.

  “I didn’t get to be admiral by playing the odds, Captain.”

  78

  The elevator was the opposite of everything involved in the battle of the past few days. Whereas it seemed everything else had been shot, burned, exploded, or torn to pieces, nothing unmarred by the tremendous battle between both sides, the interior of the swiftly rising elevator was untouched by all the wrongs that had occurred at the end of New Vega City. It even played a corporate soundtrack of instrumental recordings of various pop songs.

  The Wild Man hadn’t lost consciousness again, though he was still lying on the floor and murmuring incoherently. Conscious but not necessarily lucid.

  Tyrus listened and held his hand cannon. Readying himself for whatever they were going to find on the rooftop. There were eight minutes left before the trigger-nuke entered its cascade sequence and detonated.

  “Sorry, babe,” said the big sniper on the floor. “I was gonna kill ’em all for you, but… but… they got me.”

  And then the man began to sob.

  “I’m not enough,” cried the Wild Man. And then he was looking at Rechs. “Nothing is ever enough to bring ’em back, y’know.”

  Rechs did.

  He also knew this man was suffering over some personal loss—that was why he’d been out here hunting Savages. Fighting his own one-man war. Thinking that was somehow doing something. That was how the Wild Man had ended up in the biggest fight between human and Savage there’d ever been.

  And perhaps that was really why Rechs had gone after him. Because this wild man, he was Tyrus Rechs on a smaller scale. Doing what Rechs did with trigger-nukes, just one bullet at a time. Each waging a one-man war.

  Chances were… this was the shape of the galaxy going forward. This was what it would be like for hundreds of years to come.

  Could be longer. And humanity… could lose.

  That was what Tyrus Rechs was thinking when the Wild Man said the same thing, clarity growing in his eyes.

  “Now that they’re working together, I won’t ever be enough to stop them. Thought I was. But I wasn’t. And they…”

  The elevator was nearing the top floor now. Rechs readied himself as the door slid open. Maybe they’d already have teams up here. Maybe there’d be Savage spotters or snipers up here. Or the spot had been zeroed in for a Savage artillery strike or interceptor strafing run. Maybe the roof would be on fire and there’d be no way to board the Chang. And maybe Rechs and the sniper would be forced to just watch as the ship throttled up and went for jump.

  But he had to try.

  The elevator door slid open…

  … and they were greeted by an empty rooftop.

  The sky beyond was gorgeous in its apocalyptic destruction. Storm fronts of black smoke covered the ruined city. Buildings burned, fires on many levels. And two big Savage hulks were closing in on the approaching Chang. He couldn’t see the smaller Coalition ship, but he knew she was there; he could hear her straining engines.

  And then the two hulks fired missile salvos at him. Or in his direction. Smoke trails of sidewinder snakes erupted across the impending night and drove in straight toward the rooftop. In that moment Rechs knew they were done for.

  He tapped the omni-defensive bubble on his arm controls.

  Nothing.

  It wouldn’t work. Sometimes it did. Sometimes it didn’t.

  This was one of those didn’t times.

  So. They were going to die here. If not from the blast of the missiles… then when the building fell.

  Some old soldier had once told him that. It ain’t the bullet… it’s the fall.

  But there was no fall.

  Not today.

  At the last second the Chang hovered into view and her PDCs exploded the missiles, causing a daisy-chain that cleared the sky and sent shockwaves to be absorbed by her deflectors. The air split with a sudden outrage of explosive thunder.

  “C’mon…” said Rechs, picking up the big sniper once more, using the armor’s servo-assist. Thankful he’d saved that extra power. “Here’s our ride, soldier.”

  “One man ain’t enough, darlin’,” moaned the drugged-out madman on Rechs’s back. “All the wives and babies gonna die now unless someone comes to help me kill, Rechs. Too much, babe. Savages too much now that they’re all one and together. I thought I might find you someday… but now I…”

  Rechs grunted and shuffled across the rooftop. It was right then the armor ran out of power. Came to its end. And he, too, was at an end. The end of himself. He’d never felt so much like just stopping right there and letting what would happen… happen. Regardless of the consequences. His legs were on fire and they felt incapable of moving any farther. This was how he trained. In a powerless suit. But never after having already endured so much. Gone so far.

  Everyone has a limit.

  “Wish we could be together,” moaned the Wild Man at the darling he was talking to. “Like they is. I’d kill ’em all for you, darlin’. But one man ain’t enough against the galaxy… is it, Tyrus? Tell her. One man ain’t enough! Damn it! I hate you all!” screamed the Wild Man at all the Savages there ever were. And at the galaxy that had taken away the two he had loved most.

  Rechs’s strength failed as he neared the hovering Chang. Another missile strike from the hulks slammed into the ship, the impact knocking the Chang’s lowest deck into the side of the tower, sending glass and steel cascading down into the Savage-overrun streets below. The tower groaned titanically.

  Sulla had put a portside cargo door onto the roof of the building while the ship’s massive repulsors held her aloft, impossibly adept flying for a ship so large.

  Drones were screaming across the rooftop. Ignoring Rechs and slamming into the Chang.

  Door gunners appeared in the cargo hold. And they opened up on him as he struggled to take another step. No… not on him. Behind him.

  The Savages must have finally gained the roof. But there was no time to look back. Just to stumble forward. The building shook. It was going to collapse.

  The armor’s HUD warned him that another drone strike was inbound. The helmet—Rechs’s bucket—was always the last thing to power down. And now it was telling him that the original hulk that had grounded on the capital of New Vega was sending more drones, giving everything it had to put down the last remnants of the Coalition on New Vega.

  Rechs willed his legs to move forward toward the open cargo bay. Crew chiefs beckoned him forw
ard from within while the door gunners continued to pour fire out onto the rooftop. The building swayed violently, steel crying out and then snapping somewhere in the deep levels below. Sheets of concrete slid down from the faces as the Chang hovered and maneuvered to get in closer. Rechs stumbled sideways and it felt like he was going to go down with the big sniper on his back. He could see Davis hanging onto a cargo strap within the hold. Calling out to him. Willing for them to make it.

  Above all this the looming Savage hulks closed the distance.

  Legs are fried, some part of Rechs’s mind told him as he continued to stumble forward. Moving slowly. A step at a time. One after the other.

  Just put him down and save yourself, said that other voice we all have. The one that tells us to live no matter the cost to others.

  He saw the trigger-nuke’s weapon clock in the corner of his HUD.

  Three minutes.

  If the Chang was still in atmo when it went off, she’d burn too.

  His mind told him he couldn’t go another step.

  He stood there, hovering between falling over and just freezing, legs locked and useless as bullets raced past him and the building collapsed beneath him.

  Yeah… Rechs told himself. Fine. Legs are fried. So what. You’ll rest some other day.

  And then he began to lumber forward for the last of the distance, the weight of the man on his back crushing him.

  But he didn’t care now.

  Not anymore.

  He was too tired to care. All he had left he gave to moving forward.

  A swarm of drones darted through the PDC fire and slammed into one of the Chang’s four main engines. It exploded, sending hull plating and fragments out across the skyline.

  Chang didn’t need four engines to get out. But losing any more would be pushing it.

  Rechs stumbled into the cargo bay. The crew chiefs caught the big sniper as Rechs crashed onto the deck. They were dragging him forward and he was blacking out as the cargo door sealed. Bullets slapping into the hull.