by Nick Cole
But he was growing more and more sure about one thing: the kill order on the kid had been a good idea. The Dragon was on the verge of starting a major war inside the Republic. Sinasians would die. Legionnaires would die. And the House of Reason would find some way to line their pockets.
Maybe…
“We think we can get him out of this, Rechs.”
“How?”
“Because it’s not him. It’s Lieutenant Colonel Ajax. The Dragon is under his spell.”
That seemed plausible. Ajax wrote the book on psychological warfare. He was the galaxy’s foremost expert on creating and then recruiting factions to fight for a cause.
“With what we’ve been able to get our hands on in Section Six, our take on this situation is that the Dragon can be brought in, that his mind can be cleaned.”
“And then he can become an unstoppable hit man for your department.”
“No. And then he’ll be thanked for his service and hidden somewhere so he can live to a nice old age. We’re the good guys, General. We don’t want to kill him. He’s saved the Republic and countless soldiers several times over.”
Rechs studied her. Tried to find some fracture or lie in her that would allow him to pull the trigger and clear her from his back trail so he could concentrate on following the Dragon. What seemed like an eternity—probably to both of them—passed as Rechs, unmoving, weighed his options.
“Follow me,” he finally said, heading into the tunnel from which the evil sound of the twin engines was coming. It was like a war cry one never stopped hearing even though the battle was long over.
20
They ran for the end of the tunnel, passing through the darkness. Rechs didn’t slow his pace, trusting that Captain Jacobson could find her way without imaging assist gear.
Halfway down the tunnel they heard massive hydraulics engaging. Some ancient low creaking sound like a gate being winched open. Locks slipped out of place with ominous booms. And then the unmistakable hushed roar of water rushing in.
“The lagoon!” shouted Captain Jacobson. “Someone’s opened one of the old submersible locks!”
Water rushed toward them from the tunnel ahead. Rechs spotted a rung system built inside the tunnel leading to an upper level.
He pointed. “This way!” he shouted above the boom of the water hitting the walls.
Captain Jacobson didn’t hesitate to take the rungs. The water was rising fast. Without low-light imaging or breathing equipment, she would drown in the dark. She made it up several rungs and looked down. The water was now a stream around Rechs’s legs. He had ample room to climb up after her, but he just stood there.
“General! What are you doing?”
Rechs waded into the crashing waves, the weight and power of the suit keeping him from being swept away by the foamy iridescent green water now rising above his chest. “I’m going after him!”
And then he dove beneath the water.
His HUD confirmed breathing integrity and switched automatically to best imaging for underwater operations, which involved a combination of low light and the suit’s active lidar imaging the dark tunnel ahead.
It took some hard kicking, even with the suit assist, for him to reach his destination: an ancient submersible diving hatch. He got there just in time see the head and shoulders of the old Samurai mech made new as it dropped through the hatch and into the waters beneath the floating city.
The water pressure had eased off; it was easier to move now. Rechs swam through the hatch, and it was like traveling through a window into another world.
Down below the lily pad city on top of the lagoon lay the sandy bed of a strange ocean. Despite having a floating city above it, blocking out much of the sun, it teemed with strange serpent-like fish that glowed in the bare light of the now-risen cracked moon, which cut through the gaps in the pads as through breaks in clouds.
Rechs spotted the Samurai weapon system—a humanoid-shaped mech—pulling itself hand over hand along the bottom of the launch platform. And then it was pulling itself up into the city between two lilies.
He’s going for it, thought Rechs. He’s beaten the best his people have to offer, and now he’s going to show them that the Legion can’t stand up to him either.
Especially if he got to bring a Samurai into the fight.
The war machine moved fast, swifter due to its size than Rechs could hope to keep up with. In seconds it was totally out of the water and on the surface streets of the floating city.
Rechs grabbed the underside of a platform to pull himself toward an opening out of the lagoon. Tidal currents pulled at him; the water seemed to want to fling him off and out into the open ocean. He fought hard to hold on, and eventually reached a gap in this strange landscape where the sky was the bottom of a city and the ground far below was a sunken aquamarine desert.
Before Rechs could surface, a dropship plunged into the water, smashing right through a nearby lily pad. It sank rapidly to the bottom of the lagoon, trailing bubbles along with the debris from the tiny island neighborhood it had just destroyed. The pilot, still inside the cockpit, head down against the controls, did nothing to rescue himself from the watery descent.
Other people now entered the lagoon as well, jumping into various rifts in the floating city of ten thousand lily pads, apparently attempting to escape whatever mayhem was going on above the surface.
Rechs pulled himself from the lagoon. Water streamed off his armor as he rose to his feet on a dock that ran alongside a two-story apartment. Singsong violin music warbled out of a bot who seemed oblivious to the recent abandoning of a waterfront bar. Drinks were left next to still-smoldering cards and ivory tiles on round tables, the chairs all kicked over from a mad dash to get away.
Rechs moved quickly around the bar to a broader route through the city. In the distance, over the rooftops, he saw the four-story gargantuan Samurai mech moving away, leaving destruction in its wake.
He had faced these beasts back at the Battle of Ono. They had been the Sinasians’ elite armored fighting system. Paired with infantry, they’d almost been impossible to take out. Artillery strikes couldn’t pin them, and their anti-air capability had been state-of-the-art. Shooting their legs out from under them had been the only option. And that hadn’t been all that easy.
Republic R&D created the HK-PP model specifically to deal with this threat. Rechs wondered if any were stationed here on Taijing—though it would take more than one to take down the hulking Samurai.
A memory from the war came to Rechs then. Some forward legionnaire calling out over the comm, “Samurai inbound!”
And panic swept through the trenches.
Now the mech had returned.
Tracking the Samurai through the floating city required no skill; Rechs simply followed the wake of destruction. Whole blocks of housing were flattened or reduced to splinters. Fires were everywhere. The occasional Sinasian stared in horrified disbelief at what had become of their homes, their neighborhoods.
In the distance dropships were lifting off, their searchlights scanning the waters and area around the Repub base that watched over this area of the protectorate.
The Legion was inbound for a response.
But the first Legion dropship to get close had never engaged a Samurai mech during the Savage Wars. How could they have? That had happened years before any of these kids had been born. Rechs looked up as a pack of missiles, like a nest of smoking snakes, streaked out and slammed into the slow-moving dropship approaching on a direct intercept.
The other two dropships broke off their attack. Missiles streaked at them as well, but this time they didn’t find their target. Legion tech had definitely upped its ECM game since the days of the Conflict, and the confused missiles veered away. In the Savage Wars, those missiles wouldn’t have been fooled.
Rechs moved forward, aware that at any mom
ent the Dragon might check his back trail and send a slew of missiles straight at him. His armor was already badly damaged. If he couldn’t get the system’s personal defense shield up, an unreliable thing at best, Rechs would be cooked for sure.
Legion dropships were descending below building level now, dropping squads of legionnaires so they could deploy their anti-armor weaponry. And near the main bridge over the city a furious firefight was underway. The giant mech was using both of its wrist-mounted mini-blaster cannons, cycling them like ancient Gatling guns on some unseen target. A swath of fiery destruction erupted over that portion of the city.
Rechs was about to see if he could get ears on the general L-comm to find out how bad it was going for the leejes when he heard someone call his name.
Not Captain Jacobson. Someone with a voice gruff and harsh. Like a monster growling through a mouthful of bloody meat.
“Tyrrrusss Rrrechsss!”
The bounty hunter turned.
It was Harsk.
Harsk wasn’t a famous bounty hunter, more like… infamous. He took bounties indiscriminately, but preferred terminations. And he kept himself out of every other bounty hunter’s good graces by repeatedly violating a cardinal rule: Don’t collect on other hunters’ contracts.
Everything was fair game for Harsk.
The guild had suspended him a number of times. Rechs had no idea what his current status was.
Harsk was a Boson from that violent, almost prehistoric world of the same name. He looked like he was half Wolfman, half saber-toothed tiger. He didn’t wear armor, preferring a jumpsuit and a utility belt to better allow the use of his natural agility and speed. His clawed hands were ungloved, and he had a wicked double-barreled blaster strapped to his thigh.
Rechs had holstered his hand cannon, and was regretting that right about now.
“Maybe no collect bounty on Arrdraggggonssss…”
Rechs kept a close eye on Harsk’s hands as the beast-man crossed the rubble-strewn street that lay between them. In the distance, doomsday sirens resounded across the city. A hiss of more missiles was followed by a string of explosions.
“Maybe collect on Tyrrrrrusssss Rrrrreechhhssss.”
Harsk stopped a short way from Rechs, and the two bounty hunters stared each other down. Each watching the other like gunfighters on some ancient Earth street come out to settle grievances.
Rechs spoke calmly. “You can try, Harsk.”
A distant fireball lit up Harsk’s crimson fur and danced in his soulless, coal-black eyes. His fangs worked back and forth for a moment and then, with the speed his species was renowned for, he pulled the double-barreled blaster from his thigh.
Except he was already dead.
The pull hadn’t even cleared leather. It just hung there halfway out of the big holster. Harsk opened his mouth in disbelief to roar, or rage… something. But nothing came out. Rechs had shot him twice in the chest. Drawing lightning quick in the moment he’d seen the first muscles of the beast began to yank the weapon up hard to fire at Rechs.
That fast.
Rechs engaged the Mark I armor’s jump jets and bumped himself up to a nearby rooftop as Harsk dropped to his knees, blood now matting down the fur around his mouth.
The beast-man already put out of his mind, Rechs looked once more toward the action. The Samurai was now engaging a group of fighters firing from one bridge to another. Bounty hunters, by the looks of them.
The mech’s mini-blasters raked the bridge they were fighting from, chewing it to shreds. A micro-missile lanced out from one of the bounty hunters and slammed into the war machine, blossoming into an orange fire flower of an explosion—but the Samurai mech was unfazed. It unleashed a full suite of missiles, and a series of explosions erupted in apocalyptic red along the bounty hunters’ bridge.
Using his jump juice judiciously, Rechs hopped and bounced like a grasshopper from building to building, getting closer to the Samurai. Hoping to find a way to get the driver’s attention. Hoping for a way to end this without the loss of millions of lives.
Then he remembered the laser comm.
He took a knee, switched over systems, and lased the mech. If it had standard comms, the operator would get a message request.
The response was immediate.
MESSAGE DENIED.
Rechs sent another.
I know who you are. I’m here to help.
MESSAGE DENIED.
This is General Rex. I’m here to help you.
MESSAGE DENIED.
The mech shot down a dropship like a hunter bagging a waterfowl. The ship exploded in midair, no chance of survivors as its fireball expanded across the sky, drowning out the bone-white moonlight that revealed the mech in its updated form.
Gone was the old Sinasian grayscale and white. Gone were the enigmatic markings and the raging red war flag of the old Sinasian military. Instead, this mech was skinned in nano-graphene carbon. It was like looking at a moving shadow. Or a giant nightmare. Missile pods cycled and reloaded. Both of its mini-blaster cannons were smoking from overuse. Wisps drifted up in the moonlight.
Thicker smoke trails abruptly blossomed away from its massive shoulders, right beneath the pilot’s cockpit, and star shells streaked up into the night. All of this, Rechs knew, was part of its defensive package. Storm fronts of smoke and signal-jamming lighting.
Republic Lancer interceptors streaked over the battlefield, firing their blaster cannons.
The Samurai emerged from the cloud and strafed a retreating interceptor with deadly accuracy. The starfighter broke apart, its engines becoming vehicles of their own destiny as the main canopy exploded.
Then the mech moved back under its cloud of smoke and sent up more star shells like dying comets.
A second flight of Lancers swarmed in toward the mech. Catching glimpses of it through the billowing storm front it had shrouded itself in, the pilots released their ordnance. Old-school guided explosive munitions. Seconds of hang time were rewarded with a series of crescendoing explosions that ripped through that half of the city.
Squads of legionnaires moved into the mass of smoke, those with anti-armor launchers holding them ready on their shoulders. The dying infrared distracting flares the mech had fired were now falling onto the city, leaving defeated smoke trails in their wake. Starting fires at their landing.
Rechs had halted on a rooftop to watch all of this unfold.
The Legion, as always, had put together a sound battle plan. The noose around the Dragon was tightening, even if the kid was making the Republic pay a heavy price for it. And whether Rechs wanted to save the kid or not was about to become a moot point. Though the Legion had lost men and dropships, and the city it was charged with protecting was on fire, whole blocks having been destroyed, the mech couldn’t stand up to the combination of overwhelming firepower from the air and infantry with anti-armor capabilities on the ground.
The Samurai emerged from the smoke, moving swiftly now, mini-blaster cannons roaring in every direction, sending hot blurs of bolts across whole sections of the city from which the Legion troops emerged. Wooden buildings and even the occasional impervisteel structure came to pieces as though they were nothing more than back-country postal boxes being shotgunned at close range.
The mech moved fast toward the Legion base just off the main bridge. Too fast, in fact. And there was something Rechs was seeing that his mind told him didn’t add up.
Something that said this was a misdirection of some sort.
He wouldn’t see it until later when he ran his bucket’s playback over and over, again and again. But the recording was the truth: the Samurai pilot’s canopy had blown, and the Dragon had ejected. But in that moment, as the metal monster stomped through the city, tearing through structures that stood in its way and blasting everything else to shreds, the spectacle was too jaw-dropping to take your e
yes off of. Even for Tyrus Rechs.
And just shy of the gates to the Legion base, where dutiful legionnaires sent anti-armor missiles and a relentless barrage of fire from crew-served N-50s… the mech detonated.
The bright flash lit up the night. And then came the expanding debris wave. The base spared only because of its modern materials and designs. The bridges and the stews and all the other nearby structures either collapsed or were blown away.
And then the uncountable massive chunks of those buildings and stews and bridges slammed into the rest of the city, creating even more damage and destruction.
For someone seeking to save the Sinasians, the Dragon sure was putting a hurting on its residents.
Rechs threw himself down on the roof of the building from which he watched all this, expecting it to topple as the blast wave reached him. But he was still far enough away that the building miraculously held on and remained upright, though it swayed like a drunken point arriving to inspect PT.
And when the bounty hunter got back to his feet, a thousand fires were spreading their way across what remained of the city within the blast radius. Everything was charred black. And the structures of the few buildings that remained looked like the skeletal hands of a corpse sticking out from the grave.
[redacted]
After-Action Review
Operation Cavalier, Engagement at Howda Wells
On [redacted] an enemy force estimated to be well above brigade strength came out of the Suma Desert east of Fardur. Intel from Operator 901, embedded with loyal tribesmen of the Suntee faction, stated that this was indeed the force of the Grand Pashwanda of Sulitgo that we have been attempting to engage in battle.
The decision to commit our few on-planet forces to the battle was reached after conferring with Dark Ops Command and authorized by General [redacted]. It was further directed that the House of Reason is still not to be informed of our operations in this sector.
As we moved our main force out from the green zone via armored sleds, battlefield recon and planning was left to Operator 901.