by Nick Cole
Contents
01
02
03
04
05
06
07
08
09
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
The Last Battle
Epilogue
More Galaxy’s Edge
Get a free, exclusive short story
Other Galaxy’s Edge Books
About the Authors
Honor Roll
CHASING THE DRAGON
BY JASON ANSPACH
& NICK COLE
Galaxy’s Edge: CHASING THE DRAGON
By Nick Cole & Jason Anspach
Copyright © 2018
by Galaxy’s Edge, LLC
All rights reserved.
This is a work of fiction. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise without the prior written permission of the publisher and copyright owner.
All rights reserved. Version 1.00
Edited by David Gatewood
Published by Galaxy’s Edge, LLC
Cover Art: Trent Kaniuga
Cover Design: Beaulistic Book Services
Interior Design: Kevin G. Summers
For more information:
Website: GalacticOutlaws.com
Facebook: facebook.com/atgalaxysedge
Newsletter: InTheLegion.com
The man was dying. But he was not alone.
That was the important thing. He wasn’t alone.
Remember that. He did not die alone. Which is a bad fate—a bad death—in a galaxy that specializes in such things.
The man was surrounded by his family first, his wife and children. Then his friends. And finally his colony, small though it was. He had tamed this harsh yet beautiful alien world. He had survived where so many others had not, and because of him, so had his family. They had prospered.
Now, as he looked out on this life, the last of it that was left to him, he saw his wife crying. His children weeping. Especially the little girls. The boys too, in their own stoic way.
This was very sad for all of them.
Very sad for the man because he knew he was leaving soon. He knew he was dying. But that they would miss him meant that he had done at least one thing right in the galaxy, no matter how else it chose to remember him.
He was ready to go now. Except his mind just seemed to be hanging on for something. Waiting. Waiting for one last person to come and say goodbye.
The man had decided days before, when the dying began in earnest, that he would wait as long as he could. And so he had. Long ago he had been raised to think a thing before he did it. That thinking, that will, the determination was the iron that allowed one to go on doing even when the odds, the body, and the galaxy were against you.
The man had made up his mind to wait for the one he wanted to see one last time. And so, death too could wait.
All around him his family grieved. Death had made its appointment. It lingered by the door, waiting just as the man waited for a stranger to come and say goodbye.
01
The man with no hope stepped out onto the ledge. He was sobbing. Ugly and hard at first, then gently as he resigned himself to his fate. Soft as the rain that lashed at his face.
The histrionics and terror that had gripped him for the past three months had faded. First with prescribed pharmaceuticals and high-grade, mood-altering biologics. Then with premium illegal drugs. The best, because the man on the ledge with no hope was incredibly wealthy. You don’t invent the latest pleasure entertainment smart device that everyone simply has to have that year and end up broke. Not without some real bad luck.
He’d had no problem scoring the best finely chopped jade lotus to keep shoving up his nose and feeling like he was on top of the galaxy despite the facts of his situation.
His situation…
The man on the ledge had an estimated wealth in the trillions of credits due to intellectual property patents.
His circle of influence consisted of all the insider elites who shaped the culture that was the Galactic Republic that year. Who told them what to watch. What to wear. What to think and who to vote for so that change, change for the better that was just around the corner, always just around the corner… could finally be achieved.
He dated models when he wasn’t hiring high-end escorts. But that was just for the entertainment streams, because his passions had led him down some pretty dark alleys. And it was one dark alley in particular that led him, a man with no hope, out onto this ledge on a dark and rainy night.
Except there’s one last aspect of his situation to consider. Security. In the months since the massacre on Cassio Station, when some crazed bounty hunter—the crazed bounty hunter—carved a path of blood and vengeance across the Reach to settle accounts, his situation had been all about security.
The best he could buy. Which was pretty stinking good. Because his was the last account that needed to be settled.
So he hired a state-of-the-art, high-end private firm with a hundred ex-legionnaires carrying lethal Fokke and Crowe high-cycle medium blasters along with a full suite of fraggers, bangers, and a variety of support weapons. Including two full dropships with air-to-ground-capable missile packages.
That was the man who gently weeps’s level of security. Combined with the regular security that guarded this elite tower section of the Olympia District of a city devoted to tech dev and pleasure, the total force surrounding him had numbered at over a thousand.
And those weren’t mere hired blasters. Every one of them was a highly trained security professional with military experience. Most with trigger time in the various conflicts the House of Reason had needed to address in recent years.
But that wasn’t enough.
The corporate cabal that had formed around the man’s brilliance—his genius—and who traded heavily in the stock that was the man with no hope on a ledge on a dark and stormy night… they simply could not suffer a loss. Not the loss of him. And so, as the man slowly lost his mind, the cabal cut him off and insulated him in hopes that this “situation,” as they called it, would pass. And that their stock would come out of it a new man with new ideas to sell.
They hired him a trainer. Two trainers and a nutritionist. All of these professionals were also ex-military and carrying blasters. They’d spend their lives, in theory according to digital contract, to save their client’s.
But he was just fine with the jade lotus and the darkness of his film room. Watching action movies and surrounding himself with expensive and stylish blasters he thought he knew how to use.
If it ever came down to it.
To protect their investment, the cabal even cut off his net access, dialing it down to a highly protected channel that served the thirty-six-story tower where the man
on the ledge was the only occupant. Unless you counted the guards. But that was enough for him to get his action flicks. Watching them as they flashed in the dark. As impossible heroes did impossible things right after delivering just the right hardened phrase.
In those moments the weeping man lied to himself and said he’d somehow come through this. That it wasn’t really a death sentence. That the thing he did on Cassio to the girl—the machine—he didn’t even do it. He only tried. He tried. He didn’t go through with it.
And so he told himself that it wouldn’t come back on him.
Three months before, they’d warned him that the crazed bounty hunter was looking for him. That’s when his fellow elites surrounded him and buried him here. Protected by the best money can buy.
“No one will ever get you here,” they said.
The man with no hope, the man on the ledge gently sobbing, screamed out into the dark and stormy night from the thirty-fourth-floor hangar deck. The one only he had access to. The one the security forces had mined in case the bounty hunter came in hot and fast in some tricky dropship. Or HALO-jumped from the dark skies of Minaron.
One last time, the man flicked on the holo feature on his smart ring. The device that stored his most precious files. Where he kept the darkest secrets only for himself.
The things he’d hoped would make him happy and never really had. Which was what he’d said each time he found some new lust to throw himself into.
Maybe this will make me happy.
Each dark fantasy made real.
The warning had come during his enjoyment—or at least his consumption—of one of the tamest of these fantasies. As he watched Antonio Becerra mow down right-wing insurgents in yet another installment of the Justice Warrior film franchise, an innocuous little file download had appeared in the flickering dark of his movie room. Drop file. Coming off one of the devices in the room.
Someone was sending him a secret message.
And after all these months of isolation and fear, this contact—this uncontrolled contact with some stranger—was received with unexpected welcome. At first. The man who at that time still had hope thought, Maybe this will make me happy.
For the umpteenth too many a time.
Then the man who would soon be on the ledge opened the file and saw the holo message from Tyrus Rechs. That crazed bounty hunter he’d been running from since Cassio Station.
A bounty hunter in old Mark I Legion armor. All battered and scarred.
A voice of iron and gravel spoke from the miniature blue-hued holo. A real man who stood in stark contrast to a galaxy forever chasing its tail and changing its mind.
“I know who you are, and I’m going to kill you tonight,” promised the hologram of Tyrus Rechs.
That’s when everyone got good and scared.
The first security teams flat-out walked away when they heard the name Tyrus Rechs. No sense in getting killed for a guy who probably deserved it. And even if he didn’t… no sense getting killed. Replacements were hurriedly hired and not told who was coming for their client. Only to protect him.
I know who you are, and I’m going to kill you tonight.
The man with no hope on the ledge of the thirty-fourth-floor hangar flicked on the holo feature on his smart ring and watched the holographic figure of Tyrus Rechs promise death one last time. Violent, painful death for what the man had done to the girl becoming a machine.
Turns out she was some kind of a friend to the killer. Back luck.
And so the man with no hope stepped off the ledge and out into the open air.
It was a long fall onto the rocks jutting from the deep dark of an ocean filled with almost-prehistoric predators. Minaron was a violent and toothy world. But that death was far better than what he’d imagined waited for him at the hands of the crazed bounty hunter who never stopped until all the accounts were settled.
That’s what they said about Tyrus Rechs. That’s what the falling man had gathered about who Tyrus Rechs really was. What he did. And how badly it had ended for almost everyone in his path.
This way was better.
The long fall was better.
02
Tyrus Rechs lowered the high-powered laser-designator rifle and disconnected the uplink from his bucket as he watched the dark figure fall from the thirty-fourth floor over half a mile away.
“How’d you know?” asked Gabriella in his ear.
“Know what?” muttered Rechs. He stripped the rifle and tossed pieces of it in a nearby pile of refuse. The homeless who lived on the outskirts of the Olympia District would search through it tomorrow. Maybe they’d get some credits for the after-market tech. Probably they’d just get themselves some trouble.
“How did you know he’d jump?”
Time to leave. Rechs was walking quickly now. Needed to reach the hangar bay and get going fast. Already massive klieg lights were scanning the storm clouds over the Olympia District in the distance—bone-white searchlights shooting up into the midnight blue and boiling clouds. The rain was not intense, but it was enough to keep everyone along the swollen sides of the favela under cover and dry. Huddling under their makeshift tents and drinking hot teas and lotus-infused elixirs. Hoping tomorrow might be their lucky day. Hoping to be of service to the bright and shining luminaries who lived beyond the massive walls of the district that kept the haves free of the have-nots.
Sirens rose up in the night, and already the two dropships from the security company, Dark Skies Solutions, were hovering over the tower. Searching the waters that surrounded the fantastic glittering offshore towers where the rich lived and played.
For now they would think he was inside their perimeter. That Tyrus Rechs had done it up close and personal. They wouldn’t be able to imagine the chain of events that had started from bouncing a data package off some low-level device inside the building. That the data worm that ran the package had found the desperately lonely and isolated man and offered to share a file.
A tech guru, and a lonely frightened one at that, couldn’t resist a look. A peek at some new pleasure. And then he’d gotten the simple holo-message and its promise.
“I know a jumper when I see one,” said Rechs into the ether of his bucket.
There was silence from Gabriella on the other end of the comm. He didn’t care what she thought. The galaxy was a hard place. Stick around and you’ll see enough to figure people out occasionally. And Rechs had stuck around for a very long, long time.
“This ends it then?” she asked as Rechs made the main thoroughfare through the favela, walking quickly. This way led back to the supply hangars built along the trash-strewn swamps of the mainland. The broad street was the only viable option back. The favela was a dangerous place with over a hundred desperate local gangs controlling synth, lotus, and every other vice. Rechs didn’t have time to pay their “passage taxes” or get involved in a dispute.
“It does,” whispered Rechs after a long moment. The Medusa account was settled in full. You could tell just by the corpses.
He heard her sigh on the other end of the comm being fed to him from his ship. “Rechs, something else big is going down.”
“How big?”
“Big enough that you’ve just been moved down to number two on the unofficial wanted list of the House of Reason.”
“Really?” asked Rechs with an uncharacteristic dry chuckle. “And who’s the lucky dead man who beat me out?”
“The guild isn’t sure, really. All we know is that our contractors—your fellow bounty hunters—have all gotten unofficial contact requests for an open termination contract on someone codenamed The Dragon.”
“That’s unusual?” Rechs rarely concerned himself with the details of guild protocol.
“It’s more than unusual. It’s downright strange. They’ve bypassed the guild altogether. Which, you know, happens when someone w
ith credits wants one hunter. But this went to everybody. And the bounty is huge. Ten times the one on your head. Whoever this ‘Dragon’ is, they want him dead. And very badly, Tyrus.”
“Sounds like it.”
“And here’s what bothers me…” she almost whispered to herself.
“Uh-huh.”
“There’s no credible tag for any criminal, bounty hunter, or operative known as ‘the Dragon.’”
“I can think of at least ten different dragons off the top of my head. It’s not exactly an original name.”
“They thought of that. There’s a do-not-kill list with most of the hunters, gamblers, and pirates you’d think of on it. Don’t kill the dragons, kill the Dragon. In other words, this particular Dragon doesn’t exist, officially.”
“And why does that bother you?”
“Because maybe it’s you. Maybe they’ve re-tagged you as ‘The Dragon’ in hopes of getting people dumb enough to come after you to actually take the bait. Wild thought… I know. But… they could be that desperate. Going up against Tyrus Rechs is a death sentence. No one wants to try.”
“I’ll—”
The two dropships hovering in the distance turned, banking hard and away from the towers. They were coming straight for Rechs. Bright searchlights lanced out into the poverty-stricken streets where the party never seemed to stop despite the squalor.
A slitherne offered him a good time, her voice purring and her tentacles crossing her more than ample chest and hips that contrasted with her ironically tight frame and rock-hard abs. “Oma-se!” she gushed. “Warrior need love-love?”
“Lyra… fire up the engines,” muttered Rechs into the comm.
That’s when the blaster fire started.
“Tyrus Rechs!” shouted one of the legionnaires who’d been hiding along the street, disguised as pilgrims from some desert world where denizens hid underneath black robes and cloaks to avoid blistering suns. More legionnaires were already throwing off their disguises and firing.
“Spotted,” Rechs told Gabriella, and dropped behind a long-abandoned sled.