by Nick Cole
The engagement took place on [redacted] at [redacted] as designated by Operator 901. Due to superior positions on the field, the ambush that destroyed enemy forces resulted in few casualties. Most of the fighting was done by the locals under the direction of Operator 901.
Of note: Operator 901 has so captured the hearts and minds of our allies that the local war leaders allowed him the first drink of the dead Pashwanda’s blood once the body was recovered. The ceremony cemented an alliance between the Republic and the local forces.
Operator 901 has proven himself to be the kind of officer I have always attempted to be. Given the nature of the non-traditional operations our command engages in, I highly recommend him for advanced training, and eventual command as my replacement, once I am promoted.
LTC Ajax
Commander, Operation Cavalier
21
Rechs made his way back through the burning wreckage, wandering the ruined streets for several hours in the long march back to the Crow. His ancient armor was covered in so much ashy grit and black soot, scorched by the blast, that it seemed none of the survivors he passed thought of him as anything more than a legionnaire who had somehow survived the destruction. Or maybe just a lucky bounty hunter who’d managed not to get killed in the shootout between rampaging mech and everyone else.
Rechs listened in to L-comm chatter, switching channels until he found some high-level intel. Taijing’s Legion commander, along with a special Dark Ops shot caller running a pair of kill teams, were putting the pieces together, based largely on data provided to them by drones. The Dragon, it seemed, had ejected just before the mech detonated. At first there was some debate over whether he survived, but about an hour after the explosion, a Legion squad reported visual confirmation of the Dragon, under heavy fire, boarding a fast freighter bearing Kungaloorian ident codes. The ship blasted out of the port and jumped from low altitude. That took some stones—atmospheric jumps were always a tricky proposition. Unless you could afford a solid beacon via hypercomm constantly updating the necessary calculations, it was a good way to get yourself killed.
Rechs had a pretty good idea where the Dragon was headed. It was a place that didn’t exist, officially, on any of the stellar charts.
Shangri-La.
And therein lay the problem. No one knew where that fabled planet really was. There were rumors, but the galaxy was big enough to get lost in for a very long time if your only option was running down the whisper of a rumor.
Rechs needed hard intel. Someone had to confirm where Shangri-La was and how to access it. He would need to stick around on Taijing longer than he’d anticipated.
As soon as he’d made it back to the docking bays, Rechs found a local supervisor and bribed him to move the Obsidian Crow down into the delayed freight storage sections of the massive dock system burrowed into the side of the coastal mountain range, and to keep it off the records. Rechs waited on board his ship as preparations were made.
The smart play is to get in the air and clear out of Taijing, he told himself. The Republic was about to get even more interested in this place than before, after the rampage and detonation of the Sinasian Samurai mech. A weapons system that wasn’t supposed to exist anymore.
And if the clandestine search for the Dragon had seemed chaotic and overwhelming, what would come now that the House of Reason had a public excuse to go after the operator… well, it would be nigh-impossible to keep in front of. The Republic would be swarming all over this planet in search of a very definite lead on their number one target.
And with all those extra eyes, someone was sure to score a sighting of the galaxy’s second-most-wanted man.
Still, with the Crow hidden from anyone checking docking registrations for a medium freighter, Rechs had a little bit of room to maneuver. He only needed to stay out of sight, and he’d remain out of the Republic’s mind so long as the Dragon occupied its interest. Besides, he wouldn’t be here long—just long enough to find out how to follow the Dragon’s ship.
A tug came into the bay on repulsors, tractored the Crow, and began the deep and dark journey into the freight levels. Eventually the ship was hidden behind a large wall of Duranium-loaded shipping containers awaiting verified transport.
Rechs racked his battered armor and treated his wounds—of which the blaster graze on his arm was the worst. Once everything was cleaned, sterilized, and bandaged, he took a good look at the armor. Its nano-systems would repair given time, but right now it was pretty much shot to hell.
Rechs’s stomach had been empty and complaining ever since his adrenaline levels had died down during the march through the city. He now devoured two steaks out of the meat locker and then forced himself to eat some vegetables. Sated, he swallowed a tranquilizer and passed out.
Eighteen hours later, he came to.
Someone was banging on the outer hatch of the supposedly hidden and untraceable Obsidian Crow.
***
Captain Jacobson was standing at the top of the boarding ramp. For a moment Rechs just watched her, still rubbing the sleep out of his eyes.
Then he opened the external hatch comm. “What?”
“He’s not dead,” she said rather stridently. Like somehow it was Rechs’s fault.
“And?” grumbled Rechs.
He debated whether he should just start the engines, clear her off, taxi to the main exit tube the big freight lifters used, and make the jump. If she knew he was here, hiding down in stores, then who else knew?
“I haven’t told anyone you’re here, General,” she said as if reading his mind from the other side of the lock.
Rechs didn’t like that. How she called him General. She didn’t know him. Didn’t serve with him. It was a manipulative piece of work—using a title of intimacy to make their relationship seem like it was deeper than it actually was. But he was too busy trying to clear the cobwebs from a mind mummified by sleep to point out that he wasn’t her general.
“Who is she?” asked Lyra quietly. Ethereal and present all at once on Rechs’s side of the hatch.
“Nobody,” muttered Rechs, ignoring the complications that seemed to be multiplying by the second.
He hadn’t even had his coffee yet.
He decided to open the lock and let the Nether Ops captain in.
A few minutes later, over steaming cups of instant coffee in a lounge nearly overtaken by the sprawl of Rechs’s weapons and special projects, Captain Jacobson sat studying Rechs from above the rim of her cup.
Lyra had been silent since the pretty blonde had come aboard.
“So the legends are true,” she remarked, looking Rechs up and down. This was her first time seeing him in the flesh sans the Mark I armor. “You look like a perfectly fit middle-aged man. Or do you prefer… man of a certain age?”
Rechs raised his eyes from his coffee, hoping to convey how stupid and silly he felt the comment was.
“Is it always so dark in here?” she asked, changing the subject. Trying to start over.
“Yeah,” said Rechs. Dark was how he liked it.
That ended the small talk.
But this wasn’t just Rechs being his usual laconic self. Jacobson knew something, and Rechs didn’t completely trust her. Sometimes, he had found, going silent caused people to spill what they knew out of sheer nervousness. Out of some need to fill up the very silence Rechs so preferred with the noise, chatter, and constant babble of galactic civilization.
“I guess… Shangri-La?” Jacobson said.
Rechs wondered how much she knew about the lost, supposedly mythical Sinasian world. Fantastic temples and actual dragons. Mist-shrouded mountaintop fortresses and rivers of death where legendary, mystical lotus grew. A place supposedly protected by the Sinasians and never touched by the Republic.
Anyone in the Sinasian government in a position to know always laughed off questions about Sha
ngri-La. Like it was a running joke and they were playing their part yukking it up for political good will. Operating from a desire to be viewed as relatable. Down to earth.
But the rumors persisted. Lingered. Had never really gone away.
She was betting that Rechs knew about Shangri-La, too. And that the knowledge of such a place might make them unlikely partners in finding the Dragon. The question for Rechs was how much he was willing to give away.
He sat stoically, almost defiantly, as she watched him, taking occasional sips of her coffee. Her sculpted eyebrows and model good looks made her innately enigmatic. She looked like the movie version of how everyone thought a spy should look. Beautiful, cagey, intelligent.
In reality, the best spies always looked ordinary. That had been Rechs’s experience. The kind of person who wouldn’t make you think to take a second look. Those were the ones who had done the most damage.
“Why there?” grunted Rechs, draining his mug. He got up to make another cup.
“Where else?” Jacobson asked, rising to follow. “Six months ago, the Dragon got involved in a local dispute and killed half the local police force on some backwater planet. He’d been out for a year by that time, just… wandering.”
“Huh,” Rechs grunted noncommittally. Like none of this mattered to him.
“But he surfaced enough to provide us with enough reports to keep tabs on him. Our liaisons at the House told us he would be needed for something big in the near future involving the zhee. A counterinsurgency to turn all four tribes against each other for good. Let them wipe each other out and stop blowing up legionnaires. They thought the Dragon was the one to do it for them. He certainly had the track record.”
She held out an empty cup to be refilled. She was standing close to Rechs, still wearing her black tactical LCE, cargo pants, boots, and a tight tank top. The cap and sunglasses were back on the table where she’d been sitting. The wicked little Python was on her shapely yet narrow hip.
She’s dangerous, Rechs told himself. The old bounty hunter had been around long enough to spot the type. In more ways than one.
With weapons, for sure. But also with the beauty she knew she had. That much was obvious from the way she’d approached him, a sort of sultry walk that promised romantic sparks—a physical closeness not warranted for a simple refill of coffee.
Except Rechs was thinking about Lyra. He didn’t want to hurt her. And he knew how crazy that sounded. He didn’t want to hurt his AI.
You spend too much time with too many machines.
Rechs stepped away, leaving her holding her empty mug in an outstretched hand. He moved to the table and picked up a Maas subcompact auto-mag used for assault operations. He didn’t like the weapon all that much. It burned through a charge pack in about thirty seconds of high-cycle fire, it sprayed wildly, and barrel control was impossible. But in a pinch, it would keep everyone’s heads down long enough to take control of a situation and move to Plan B. Plus, he could use two, one in each hand, if he needed to clear a room. And they were extremely lightweight.
“General?”
Rechs looked back at Jacobson and set the weapon down. He picked up his coffee and took a fresh sip. “Sorry.”
“That’s why they were keeping him around,” she continued. “They wanted to kick off something big.”
“Okay.”
She sighed. Took a deep breath and drank some of her coffee, wrinkling her nose at either the temperature or the strength of it.
“That’s about the time when his old group leader got involved. Colonel Ajax. Man’s the real deal. Don’t get me wrong, he’s not a… superhero like you or the Dragon. But he’s a real operator from the Darks Ops glory days not long after you… disappeared.”
Rechs waited, sure that the whole backstory was coming.
“This is the part almost no one on the hunt for the Dragon knows: Ajax busted him out of a Republic prison vessel on its way to Herbeer.”
“They had him?” This surprised Rechs. He’d assumed the Dragon had been untouchable this entire time. To know that the Republic had once succeeded in capturing the man… Rechs was impressed.
“Oh, I see you’ve decided to come out of your shell. Yeah. They sentenced him to twenty years for wiping out half that security force I told you about—though from what I’ve gathered, he was justified. The hicks on that backwater got in over their head and pissed off the wrong drifter; the Dragon was just passing through. Security just happened to try and strong-arm the sort of guy who was especially skilled at giving people a hard time.”
“So I’ve seen,” mumbled Rechs and drank more coffee.
“Anyway, Ajax busts him out. And Dark Ops is waiting for about two weeks for them to show up back together.”
“So he wasn’t acting rogue in breaking him free?”
“We didn’t think so. Not at first, anyway.”
“But you do now.” Rechs shrugged. “It happens.”
He raised his eyebrows when she stopped and just stared at him. As if, to her, it was impossible that anyone would ever do such a thing. Betray their orders. Not show up for duty. Walk away from the Republic. The Legion. Everything that really meant anything.
“Well,” she finally whispered. “They became ghosts.”
They fall silent. Both content to think and finish their beverages.
But not for long. G232 scuttled into the lounge. Rechs was surprised it took the bot this long to interject himself into things.
“Oh!” G232 flailed awkwardly, as though startled to see the pretty blonde talking to Rechs. It seemed to be caught between fleeing toward the flight deck and backing away toward the engine room. “I am sorry to interrupt, master. How dreadful of me to have happened upon this intimate moment in your life.”
Rechs waved a hand and the bot went off, looking awkwardly over its shoulder for a first, second, and third glance.
Captain Jacobson took the bot’s appearance as a cue to restart the conversation. “We went digging into Ajax’s background. He had a whole other life. He was very dissatisfied with how the Legion was running its operations—a real hawk. Thought the Legion commander should have gone Legion on more of its enemies. Accused the Republic of rot.
“I have unconfirmed intel that he’s actually active with the mid-core rebels. The long story made short is that he thinks the Republic is weak. That we’re open to the threat of external invasion from an extra-galactic entity. Crazy, I know. And now he’s been working with the Divine Hand, a Sinasian freedom group, that wants to turn on the old war machine and liberate Sinasia and, according to what we were able to dig out of some of his contacts, replace the Republic with a benevolent dictator, someone like the Dragon, if not the actual Dragon.
“He saw his protégé… the Dragon… as the kid that could make this happen. A half-Sinasian orphan who had no real connection to the worlds other than a big blank space inside himself he was trying to find his identity in.”
“You knew he was coming here all along?” asked Rechs, sure that she did.
“I knew it,” she said, shaking her head. “Everyone else thought he was just on the run, wanting to disappear. I felt like he wasn’t finished with something.”
That was a lie, but Rechs didn’t say anything. If the Republic thought the kid only wanted to disappear, then why would they bother with the massive bounty and a spot as the galaxy’s most-wanted high-value target?
“But you don’t think he’s dangerous.”
“Oh, no.” Jacobson’s eyes went wide. “I do. I think he’s very dangerous. But that doesn’t mean we kill him. It means we bring him in, treat him, and put him somewhere where he can be free to live out the rest of his life. That’s the least we owe him, General.”
There was that undeserved familiarity again. Rechs held back a snarl.
The captain continued. “Not a bolt in the back of the head b
ecause we’re afraid the monster we created might use his skills against us. My reports—what I submitted to the committee involved at the highest levels on this—all place the blame on Ajax. The colonel is a like a father to the Dragon. After that little science project that was Project Phoenix—and I wish I knew more about that, whatever that was—after Legion Basic and some time in the One Thirty-First, it was Colonel Ajax who made him into what he is now.
“Ajax has power and control over our best infiltration and killing machine. A machine that doesn’t merely kill but teaches others how to kill. The Dragon makes armies. That’s what makes him so dangerous. Especially to the House of Reason. They want him dead right now because they are well and truly afraid of him. Justifiably.”
Rechs nodded. “And you?”
“I want to save him. Give him a chance to be someone besides the Dragon. Grow old. Have a family. Die in peace.”
Rechs watched her eyes.
She’d switched over from being a high-speed low-drag Nether Ops killer to… someone who cared for the Dragon. That was plain.
“The reports?” he asked.
She blinked. Came to herself. Put her coffee down and took a deep breath. “My background is psyops and profiling. They brought me in, gave me the parts of his file that hadn’t been redacted, and asked me what I thought. I told them about Ajax, and not a single person believed me.” She flicked the side of her mug, making a tink sound with her manicured fingernail. “But lo and behold, we’re here with a division of legionnaires and a super-destroyer plus escort in orbit. I’d bet my captain’s bars that ship is on standby for planet-wide orbital bombardment just in case. If they’d thought for a second this shot at the Dragon was all they were going to get, they’d have razed the entire city. They’re that serious, believe me.”
After what Rechs had seen… he didn’t blame them.
“And in spite of everything that’s happened, you still think you can get to him, clean up his mind, and disappear him?”