Chasing the Dragon (Tyrus Rechs

by Nick Cole

  Without fanfare, the sled slowed and made a half-hearted left turn into the hull of the battleship along the street, just a block down from the cantina.

  Rechs moved the scope across the developing battlefield. There was still no sign of Chappy or Doc, and the ambush had now coalesced into three elements, coming from the three major streets that led onto Battleship Row.

  Rechs chose the target he thought might best help the Dark Ops team get through. He engaged the group coming in the moment he had a new charge pack in. He blew off the head of a Hasadi sand raider. As the dead raider’s partner scrambled for cover, Rechs drilled him through the chest. The man collapsed behind an old rusting destabilization field container module, but Rechs was pretty sure he was down for the count.

  Firing a blaster sniper rifle had its advantages. Effective range and accuracy, because there was no bullet drop, was a big factor in the why-to-use column. That was why the Legion were switching to the N-19s despite the dead giveaway on position. Which was a big strike against. But then, Legion snipers had a whole company of legionnaires to keep ’em safe.

  Rechs had no such luxury. But he was making it work for what he wanted to accomplish.

  All three elements of the ambush quickly got wise to the counterattack as Rechs continued to fire at targets of opportunity. For a moment, the noose was stopped. If the extraction team came out on the street right now, there was a chance for them to get clear. Even if Rechs needed to be a target for the collective shooting gallery that was the junk-laden streets below.

  The bounty hunter had both cover and height. The old crane had been built to cover the workers inside from the brutal winds and sandstorms that swept the planet at random times. And Rechs was able to move about on this level of the crane, finding new vantages from within its fastness to fire down on the attackers.

  He nailed a vuline, a real go-getter wearing tactical gear and sporting a Maas subcompact blaster with all the bells and whistles. Rechs sent him spinning down onto the street a hundred yards from the bar. As he scanned for another shot and considered shifting position, he spotted Chappy moving out of the bar with his primary, engaging targets on the street all around him. Doc followed with the captured target.

  The Hool was bagged, and he was held by a shock-and-rod collar, with ener-chains in place. Doc was using one hand to work the rod that connected to the collar, and the other to fire his blaster pistol.

  These two were still expecting a ride out of town, but they had to have known things outside had gone sour when they heard the shooting. At least that had given them some warning. If Rechs hadn’t been there to start that shooting… they would have walked unawares right into a trap. It would have been a massacre.

  Rechs tapped the side of his bucket and sent a laser-designated message straight at Doc. Then he centered the scope on a human who looked more scumbag than hired blaster and pulled, blowing the guy’s legs out from under him. The heavy blaster the creep had been carrying went clattering out across the rough street.

  Rechs got a Connected message. Doc had recognized the incoming encryption and okayed it for contact. Only a few who ran L-comm knew Rechs’s identifier. Doc was one.

  “Your ride’s blown, Doc. Get off the street!”

  “Copy that, General. Which way?” Doc was a generally talkative and friendly guy when he wasn’t busy being a cold-blooded Legion life-taker, but in this firefight, it was all business.

  “Alley. Straight across the way,” directed Rechs, looking down from his vantage on the crane. “Keep moving for two hundred yards and then hang a right.”

  “Acknowledged.”

  Rechs set to making the ambush pay while covering Doc and Chappy’s egress from the street. Blaster fire rang out in an epic shooting spree as Rechs kept on firing. He rarely missed, and when he did, it was usually intentional—to keep someone pinned, or to freak them out enough that they’d try to get clear of his ranged fury. In those instances, he let them run and then tagged them in the back a second later.

  He liked to call those kills… motivational. As in a warning to the rest: Keep back or I will kill every last one of you to get my leejes off the OBJ.

  “End of the alley,” huffed Doc, the adrenaline making the operator breathy.

  “They’re moving to cut you off,” Rechs said, still observing the movements from above. “Lost a team behind the buildings… south end of the street. Proceed with caution next two hundred meters. Putting eyes on an exit in thirty seconds.”

  That meant for Doc and Chappy to keep moving along the exit route. In thirty seconds Rechs would check, give a status update, and tell them if it was clear to proceed—and if not, he’d tell them what obstacles they’d be dealing with.

  Rechs returned to firing at the two elements he’d pinned in front of the bar where the snatch had taken place. Some of them attempted mad dashes for the entrance to the alley the two operators and their boss had disappeared down. They died trying.

  Rechs fired dry, then scanned the street as he slapped in a new pack. A speeding sled was coming straight for the crane. It was probably remote operated and loaded with explosives. This was the ambush’s response to Rechs on overwatch.

  Rechs fired at the sled, tagging it once. That didn’t slow it in its collision course with the base of the salvage crane that lay alongside the beached wreck of the ancient dark battleship.

  Thirty seconds were up.

  Rechs repositioned, fully aware that the crane was about to be destroyed—with him in it. He put eyes on the alley’s exit Chappy and Doc were approaching with their prisoner. A technical sled arrived, mounted with a surplus heavy N-60 blaster oriented straight down the alley at the two legionnaires.

  The gunner pulled the charging handle back, his head centered inside Rechs’s scope. Rechs could hear the whine of the approaching kamikaze sled as the vehicle throttled to strike the base of the crane.

  Rechs pulled the trigger smoothly and shot the gunner center mass. Nothing fancy. A kill was all he needed right now.

  And a kill was what the bounty hunter got.

  The explosion below went off like some giant child’s firecracker, ripping through the superstructure of the crane in an instant. Metal groaned as the main lifting arm began a long slow collapse out in front of Rechs’s position inside the control housing. Rechs was thrown back against the engine winch, then smashed into an old rusty plate wall. The entire crane was falling. Going over on its side onto the scavenged skeleton of the old battleship.

  Still holding his rifle, Rechs pushed himself away from the wall and ran toward the exit from the control housing. The floor was getting steeper by the second. He felt he was looking almost straight up by the time he launched himself from the crane and into the night.

  He activated his jets and flew out into nothingness.

  The crane smashed down over the side of the old ship with a titanic groan, sounding like all the china dishes of a giant’s cupboard shattered in succession.

  11

  The ambush was broken… whatever it had been. Given what the Hool was supposedly up to, Rechs might even have been engaging the MCR. A first for him. Regardless, Doc and Chappy had escaped the kill zone.

  Rechs was relayed the link-up coordinates to meet the two Dark Ops operators a few streets over. Another sand-blasted alley shrouded in darkness brought them together.

  In Hell Supreme, there was no law. No emergency services. So the city was ominously quiet. As if the sound of the massive crane falling on top of the old warship had struck some attentive note all were supposed to heed.

  “Everyone all right?” asked Rechs as he came down the alley. “Anyone wounded?”

  The two operators were watching opposite avenues of approach into the twisting confines. The Hool lay like a sack of feed against a wall, but it was still dangerous. Its quills were full of toxins, and it didn’t take much of those to put a man d
own.

  “Negative, General,” answered Doc. “Low on charge packs but otherwise okay.”

  Rechs handed out what he had left from the rifle, slung the weapon, and pulled his hand cannon. He gestured at the Hool. “What about him?”

  “Oh, him?” asked Doc with a wry tone. “Tried to squirt on us. So I gave him five thousand to get him compliant, and twenty once we stopped. Hools can take a lot of stun, but not that much. If the scumbag dies… well, it’s no big loss to the galaxy. But we said we’d bring him in, so…” Doc swapped packs and charged his sidearm.

  Chappy, as usual, remained silent.

  They set off with the Hool stimmed and tranqed at the same time, moving quickly to get to the assault frigate disguised as a freighter that Dark Ops used for covert missions.

  “What happened to your team?” asked Rechs.

  The three men and their prisoner were threading a small night bazaar that had come out in the aftermath of the storm showing no concern over the blaster fight and crane collapse minutes earlier. The mystery meat vendors and arms dealers didn’t seem to mind the passing legionnaires in charcoal-dusted armor accompanied by a bagged Hool and what they probably took as a freelance merc in old and battered Savage Wars armor that must have seemed to them almost museum-quality. Bounty hunters and scavengers came in all shapes and sizes out here. A blaster, armor, a prisoner… these things were nothing special to see.

  “No team this time, General,” answered Doc. “Everyone’s been pulled to hunt down an HVT that’s got the House of Reason’s knickers all up in a bunch.”

  “Forced,” grumbled Chappy over L-comm.

  “Forced?” asked Rechs.

  Doc sighed. “That’s actually the more accurate term, General. ‘Forced’ is a good way to put it. But we didn’t want anything to do with it, so we picked up this little op. Sort of something we could go hide out on until everything blew over.”

  Rechs could feel the dark cloud that had fallen over the conversation. The two veteran operators didn’t like what they were being asked to do, so they’d faded. That was how it had to be sometimes. You took the fade or you stood up and got court-martialed with retirement just ahead.

  That was a tactic that the point officers the House of Reason had seeded throughout the Legion had been running as of late, to keep from paying veteran NCOs their much-earned reward for hard years of service. Rechs had heard that a lot of court-martials had been coming down the chain lately, with the standard reduction in rank to private and a bonus dishonorable on top of that—if they could make something stick. Even now Rechs felt himself grinding his teeth at how his leejes were being treated. The Legion should never have allowed the point program to get started. It would be a disaster.

  But then, no one in the House of Reason would’ve cared what Rechs had to say about it.

  A dark cloud of silence settled over the L-comm, and they didn’t continue their conversation until after they had reached the disguised assault frigate and gotten the Hool settled in a cryo coffin for containment and transportation. It was only then, when the three sat around cleaning their weapons, that Rechs, still wearing his armor save for the helmet, asked for more details on the House of Reason’s HVT.

  “Who is this that everyone’s being pulled for, that sent you out here with just a few leejes as backup?”

  Chappy and Doc looked at each other quizzically.

  “Leejes? Where?”

  “The kid at the panel sled?”

  Doc made a face. “Oh… that guy. He wasn’t a leej. Just some local blaster we recruited to drive. Told him we’d hunt him down and kill his family if he didn’t show.”

  Chappy made a small snort and returned to cleaning his sidearm, which had seen a lot of use in the bar, and even more in the hot desperate seconds as they made their escape. The alley leading away from the Bottom of the Barrel hadn’t been clear. It had been a run-and-gun series of engagements in the dark. But the two operators had handled everything with skill and professionalism. They’d fired dry on their primaries and moved to their backups, and they’d left a lot of dead bodies on their way to getting clear with their prisoner.

  “For a while there,” Rechs said, trying his best to make conversation—something he didn’t exactly excel at, “I was worried you weren’t going to make it to the green zone.”

  “The takedown inside the bar weren’t no picnic, either,” said Chappy with another disgusted snort, this one without the good humor of the last. “Hoolie didn’t want to go peaceable. Turned into a regular old firefight until Doc lit the place on fire. Then ever’body got all afraid of burning to death!”

  Doc gave a sanguine smile. “Fire does clarify people’s thinking, Chappy. It’s a real attention-getter. Especially when you’re willing to burn it all down with yourself inside. I felt that needed to be added to the discussion of how serious we were about taking in old Mohsaffa Huranzadi in and all.”

  Chappy looked warily at Doc. Rechs got the feeling Chappy had not been totally on board with the fire.

  Rechs brought the discussion back to what he wanted to know. “So what’s going on then? Who’s so important that backup and a full takedown team can’t be spared?”

  Doc’s eyes narrowed in contempt at the issue, but he kept his thoughts stowed as he set to cleaning the carbon scoring from his blaster with an almost furious intensity.

  Rechs sat there, arms folded. Waiting.

  Doc paused to look at Chappy. After a moment, Chappy nodded, as if giving some green light.

  “After you… got out, General,” Doc began.

  Left, thought Rechs. Left you all like some bad parent who just drove away one day. Really, isn’t it that?

  “After the Savages were defeated at Ontong Bay,” Doc continued. “After all that, and after what had happened on that raid to rescue the diplomat’s daughter… the Legion got involved in a little conflict on Psydon. I don’t know if you heard much about it… being off in Dark Ops and doing who knows what while we were still in the regular Legion.”

  “I heard. Came close to doing some ops on planet.”

  Doc nodded. “All right then, well, for clarity’s sake, I don’t know how much you actually heard.”

  “I heard it was bad and got worse.” Two harsh years of jungle fighting with a determined and homicidal enemy.

  “Yeah,” said Doc slowly. “It was pretty bad. Leadership was a big problem. And I don’t mean the points—they were brand new, not a factor. I don’t mean our Legion officers, either. It was the House of Reason. Psydon was the first time the House of Reason really got down to micro-managing a conflict. Lanes. Avenues we had to use that were conveniently TRP’d and full of IEDs any basic could have told them would be right there. Ambushes we were forced to walk into just to see if someone from a nearby village would take a shot. Bases in the middle of nowhere but ever in range of constant, nightly artillery fire. Calling in before we could engage. Just dumb, dumb, and real dumb stuff that doesn’t have any business being part of a fight, which is what a war is—two sides out looking to get into a good old-fashioned gunfight. No politics. That’s for back home. Okay… that’s my rant… and so I’ll get back to the story. This really isn’t my story. It’s Chappy’s. But he doesn’t like to talk about it.

  “Anyway, we both got platoons, and for a time I was over with the Red Devils, and we were fighting up there in the Aachon for this hill. Another story. Well, Chappy here, since he doesn’t mind me telling the story any further…” Doc looked to his friend. “Because if you do, pal, we’ll just stop there and let it go.”

  Chappy grunted. As close to an affirmative as he was likely to give.

  “Okay,” said Doc. “You’ll get the drift, General. Chappy was part of a long-range recon patrol team that got hit hard. Aftermath of the battle is that Chappy finds himself in a prisoner-of-war camp up above the lines of skirmish. Politics says we can�
��t get him out. The doros that own that land won’t let us in as long as they’re ‘neutral’ to the central conflict. Never mind that they’re allowing a POW camp inside their tribal lands.

  “I guess the House and its blithering diplomats were trying to get them to come over and all. And until they did, we can’t hit the camp. Did you ever hear of the Phoenix program? Hearts and minds and all that?”

  Rechs narrowed his eyes. He had heard of it, but couldn’t remember any of what he’d heard.

  “Part of Dark Ops?” Doc said. “Teach factions within our enemies to fight and hopefully flip ’em? Only highly motivated true believers need apply?”

  Rechs nodded. He knew part of this, once. But only a very small part. Nothing… sensitive in the least. But he started remembering. Putting a few more things together in his mind.

  “Anyhow, so Chappy sits in there for a couple of months. He sits through the beatings, interrogations, starvation… those are the good days. Bad days are worse by orders of magnitude.

  “A province away there’s an operation underway called Wooden Horse. The House of Reason has Dark Ops trying to flip a local affiliation of doro chiefs to their side. Guys who are half in and half out of the war. And that’s no easy task either. The doros’ special Red Band hit squads are out killing entire villages just on the strength of rumors that they’re leaning Republic. That was a dedicated rebellion, Psydon. The galaxy really hasn’t seen anything like it since.

  “But there’s a couple of villages the dog-men don’t have a lock on. High up in the mountains. Auwaroo tribes. And that’s the first time, in my personal history, that we hear of the Dragon.

  “Dragon is real deep in it. Red Band is trying to kill him. The doros have a price on his head. And the wilderness up there in the jungle highlands ain’t exactly hospitable. And throughout all this, the Dragon is all alone. He’s been sent in to train up a counterinsurgency to fight back in the doro rear. That’s Phoenix. High-speed, low-drag. Real crazy monkeys.