Chasing the Dragon (Tyrus Rechs

by Nick Cole

  “You called them in as soon as I started up,” he grunted as he pulled.

  “I did. I figured you were right that this was the place, so I took the chance of calling in the cavalry before I’d confirmed visual.”

  “Guess you made the right call.”

  “No hard feelings, okay, Tyrus? This is my job. My duty.”

  Rechs pulled himself farther up the ropes, grunting as he said, “So much for not all of Nether Ops being the bad guys.”

  “Let’s just say… there are layers, Tyrus. And turning in the Dragon, with you to boot, is going to fund a lot of black book operations for us. We make a lot of trouble for the House of Reason’s enemies.”

  “I make trouble back.”

  “Not for much longer,” she replied. And then the comm went dead.

  Rechs climbed, still expecting the rope to be cut at any moment by a Dragon who’d changed his mind. The sensation didn’t leave him until he reached an overhang and saw the summit of White Plum mountain above. At this height, the mist was beginning to clear.

  He pulled himself up onto solid ground. Someone had left a medium blaster and a ruck full of charge packs. But what looked even better than the weapon was the canteen full of water and a square of rice and fish wrapped in seaweed.

  Rechs sat down tiredly. Every muscle in his back and arms screamed like rusty old tension wires at the verge of snapping. His hands were trembling as he shoved the sweet fish and rice into his mouth. His jaw shook so much that he practically had to bite down on the canteen as its cold water poured down his gullet.

  He picked up the blaster and checked its charge pack. Ravens—the actual birds—would sometimes leave baubles and other prizes for those who took care of them in the wild.

  Ball.

  “Ball,” said Rechs.

  ***

  Rechs was refreshed and heading toward the summit. Shangri-La’s sun turned everything gold as it penetrated the green, otherworldly mist. The old and broken trail Rechs followed led to a low, flat temple that seemed as old as the ruins of the Ancients.

  There was a flash and then the sound of thunder, with more rolling claps following. Rechs looked up and saw the newly arrived super-destroyer moments after it jumped directly into the atmosphere, tearing apart the sky with the shock waves in her wake. It was a reckless maneuver, testifying to just how much the Republic wanted the Dragon.

  He didn’t know exactly how, but he was sure there was a way out of this that didn’t involve the Dragon’s death. And he would die trying, if he had to, to save…

  He didn’t finish the sentence.

  To be worthy, he told himself.

  As the bounty hunter began to jog toward the temple, up through the slop of scree and stone, Republic Lancers screamed out from the super-destroyer’s hangar bays. By the time he reached the outer edge of the temple, the Lancers filled the sky above him.

  The temple was built from ancient stone, and covered in runes that didn’t look Sinasian. There were no dragons ornamenting the structure, but beasts of a lost and mythical age were depicted in carved relief on the crumbling gray stones.

  Rechs ignored all this lore as he entered.

  Lancers buzzed the temple, causing it to rumble. And then Rechs heard the engines of the strange interceptors that had shot him down on his arrival to Shangri-La, a lost planet now found. The telltale exchange of blaster fire followed, marking either a skirmish that would end today, or a second Sinasian Conflict that would plague the galaxy.

  Rechs ran, blaster out, deeper into the massive open spaces of the temple. He came to a garden of stone and sand.

  The sound of a gong—the thing must have been massive, judging by the sheer volume it produced—stopped Rechs in his tracks. It was low and ominous, rattling the very molars in his jaw. Surely even the ships in the sky above would’ve heard that.

  A warning. A call. An alert.

  An old man, fat and scarred, with wispy gray hair and wearing the robes of the Sinasians, though not Sinasian himself, waddled out from the darkness of the temple beyond the garden.

  “General!” the old man bellowed gustily.

  Rechs studied the person before him, recognition coming to him slowly. All the photos that had accompanied the redacted files he’d studied on the long flight out to Taijing…

  “Colonel Ajax,” said Tyrus Rechs.

  “General, you have no need of that,” Ajax said, gesturing to Rechs’s blaster. The weapon was aimed at the colonel’s chest.

  Rechs didn’t lower his blaster. He stared into the face of the man who was behind it all. The Ogre. The magician who’d focused the Dragon’s abilities, twisted the Dragon’s longing to be part of something more than the Legion, leveraged him to start a war.

  A war that was supposed to right all the wrongs.

  Rechs had seen a thousand petty tyrants playing for the big seat across all his years. They always thought they were the ones who knew the way forward. That their plan was the thing no one had ever thought of. That only they could save the galaxy.

  “I served under you at Telos,” crooned the old colonel. “Was a lieutenant back then. What a day when we took that cruiser!”

  The old man smiled, leaning against a pillar. Rechs could see that he was holding a very long samurai sword. Not a katana—it was much longer than that—but Rechs had forgotten the exact name.

  “Old times, General,” guffawed Ajax as though there were nothing but sentimental memories between the two old warriors.

  The battle in the sky raged on.

  “There’s still time to get the kid out of here, Ajax,” said Rechs. “I can save him.”

  “Save him?” exclaimed the fat old man. “He’s going to save all of us. Like we should have. After the Battle at Telos, the Republic needed us so badly that we could have invoked Article Nineteen and put the Legion in control of the galaxy. They would have welcomed it. Begged us for it! Remember?”

  Rechs remained silent. Starfighter battle, a sea of screaming banshees going at each other hammer and tongs, filled the air with its chaotic ambiance. Dropships and some of the newer shuttles were deploying. Soon legionnaires and marines would be all over the place.

  Time was running out for Tyrus Rechs. And the Dragon.

  “I remember,” said Rechs.

  “It could’ve been different!” shouted Ajax, a hint of melancholy in his voice. “It should’ve been!”

  “But it wasn’t,” Rechs replied simply.

  Ajax seemed genuinely surprised by this response. Or at least that was the look he’d affected. The old, fat man walked out onto the sand of the garden, raked in smooth lines. He dragged the long sword after him like a forgotten thing. A vicious dog following its master no matter where he led it.

  “Join him, General. With the two of you working together… we can rule the galaxy. You know it. I know it.”

  He was coming closer. Dragging that sword, making new lines in the raked sand.

  Rechs didn’t want to have to kill him.

  “Where is he, Ajax? I’m getting him out of here. Someplace safe.”

  The old colonel laughed again. “There’s no place safer in all the galaxy, General. Only your presence has made it otherwise. But even so, he’s very safe here.” Ajax squinted up to where the super-destroyer would be, as if he could see it through the roof of the temple. “None of them will survive Shangri-La!”

  The colonel laughed again, but it was drowned out by other sounds. Two dropships coming in hard and fast. Quick ropes, and then the boots of legionnaires hitting the roof. A door gunner opening up his N-50 on unseen targets.

  Ajax looked around, taking in the sounds, a certain crazed delight dancing in his eyes at the start of this sought-after war.

  Rechs surged forward and knocked the old colonel to the sand.

  The drowning ghost-howl of a Sin
asian interceptor rattled the temple. The report of its blaster cannons made the swirling lines in the sand vibrate. The fight was right above them. One of the dropships exploded, crashing down onto the roof and causing several stone blocks beside the sand garden to shift and partially collapse. But the temple held.

  “We’ll fight them to the death, General!” screamed Ajax from the sand. “We’ll make things right this time. First Sinasia… then the Republic!”

  “That ship is carrying a crustbuster, you old fool!” Rechs shouted at the raving old man. “They’ll kill the whole planet just to get him!”

  Colonel Ajax, once a golden boy of Dark Ops, sat up, the side of his jowly face covered in sand. “And you, Rechs! They’ll kill you, too!” The colonel snarled. “And that’s something you couldn’t stand for, is it? That’s why you ran! Why you left the Legion. Left all of them! You’re the fool. One so blind that you don’t realize they’ll kill anyone to get their way! When will you learn that lesson? How many—”

  Rechs jerked the colonel to his feet.

  “Where is he?” he shouted above the blaster fire in the sky above and now resounding out through the temple quarters.

  “He’s coming!” Ajax shouted, his eyes wild with delight. “He’s coming! He’s coming!”

  The entire mountain began to shake. The pillars within the temple portico began to crumble. The rooftop at the other end of garden slid over on itself and collapsed across that section of the complex, kicking centuries of dust into the air, making every breath a choking ordeal.

  Ajax hooted and howled, screaming, “Here he comes!”

  Through the holes in the roof, Rechs could now see the super-destroyer turn to port, bringing her powerful guns to bear on the top of the high rock temple. But the almost alien Sinasian interceptors, agile and fast, were getting the best of the outnumbered Lancer squadron. The Republic had walked into a hornet’s nest.

  The earth shook and the sand began to sink and fall away as the very ground split open. A massive, hidden blast door was opening. And from it, up rose a vision from Rechs’s past. Real and horrible all at once in this present nightmare.

  The Samurai mechs had been unholy terrors on that long-ago battlefield Rechs and the Legion had fought on. Rechs had seen the havoc they wreaked on divisions of unprotected legionnaires. They were like a hot knife slicing through butter. Even one Samurai on the battlefield was a game changer.

  The mech paid no mind to Rex or Ajax. It simply tore down the roof and climbed to the top of the temple.

  Rechs could now see the smoking trails of missile pods—enough of them to have been launched from dozens more mechs—rising toward the massive super-destroyer looming in the sky above. They slammed into the massive engine cowlings along the aft section of the Republic’s premier combat vessel.

  But the super-destroyer was not without its own response. Almost instantly her powerful blaster cannons—guns meant to disable other capital ships, or destroy planetary targets through orbital bombardment—were brought to bear. Their hot fire sizzled across the landscape, raising the surface temperature as the massive attack sheared through large sections of the temple. Several of the mechs must have been incinerated in the blast—Rechs heard them exploding across White Plum like massive bombs. The temple was rapidly becoming a death trap. Rechs couldn’t stay here.

  Some of the other Samurai mechs must have deployed some sort of advanced shielding, because although the super-destroyer’s blasts sent the machines flying skyward, they remained operational, gathered themselves, and continued upward under their own power.

  Smart move, thought Rechs, and not just because their leaving the temple likely saved his life. The destroyer’s blaster cannons were not made for precision firing, and would have trouble tracking the airborne Samurais.

  As the bounty hunter stared up at the brilliant battle overhead, Ajax repeated shouts of “Yes! Yes!”

  In the melee, Rechs spied a Samurai that was larger than all the rest. And more heavily armed. It was leading the assault on the super-destroyer from the front.

  The Dragon.

  “Captain! Can you hear me?”

  Rechs shook his head. “Lyra?”

  A moment later the bounty hunter saw the Obsidian Crow streak past the super-destroyer, weaving through blaster fire meant for the incoming mechs.

  “I’m tracking your comm signature, Captain. We will pick you up shortly.”

  That was the best news Rechs had heard all day.

  The old man was raving like a lunatic at the unfolding spectacle. The Samurai mechs closed in on the warship, downing Lancers attempting to intercept and then firing everything they had into the super-destroyer’s hull. Explosions rippled across several decks. The damage was devastating, and though it was nothing close to what was needed to actually bring a ship like that down, Rechs doubted that the destroyer’s captain had ever been in a fight like this one before.

  Which meant, and Rechs knew this deep down, that the destroyer was probably requesting clearance to use the crustbuster to end this before it got any further out of hand. A firing solution was probably being calculated even now.

  “Lyra, I—”

  Rechs was interrupted by legionnaires entering the temple. Looking to KTF, they engaged immediately. Two blaster bolts struck Ajax square in the chest while Rechs ducked for cover behind one of the few remaining pillars, leaning at a sharp angle from the toppled stone roof that had fallen all around it.

  “Are you hurt?” called Lyra.

  “I’m fine!” Rechs replied as he attempted to keep the legionnaires back with the blaster the Dragon had left for him. “Just get here as soon as you can!”

  The Crow arrived, flaring her repulsors hard amid the battle and trying to pivot for landing. But there was too little space to put the ship down.

  “Master,” said G232 over the comm, “I hope we have not ruined your plans by arriving without your express consent. And on a side note… this is all quite thrilling.”

  “Tell the Nubarian to start firing!” shouted Rechs as he moved to a new column to get closer to the hovering ship.

  “Oh!” exclaimed G232. “I have forbidden him to fire at anything unless we are in direct danger, Captain. I was attempting to minimize damage to your often complex and enigmatic mission plans.”

  Rechs sighted a moving legionnaire and dropped him with a single blast to the head. Above, his hovering ship was having a hard time getting in close due to the mass of the rubble from the super-destroyer’s strike against the temple. Big, uneven mounds of stone slabs had Lyra constantly dancing to avoid slamming into them. She couldn’t stay level long enough for Rechs to run on board.

  “You are in direct danger, Three-Two. Tell him to open up!”

  The admin and protocol bot came back over the comm. “Good heavens. Disabling his restrictors now.”

  A moment later the omni-cannon started firing wildly. At everything.

  “Lyra, lower the boarding ramp. And hold position if you can!”

  Rechs chanced a look as more blaster fire came at him from across the ruined garden. The legionnaires were advancing, passing Ajax’s corpse, its bulging eyes staring sightlessly up at the sky battle.

  Rechs ran. He jumped up onto a pillar that had fallen on its side and leapt for the boarding ramp, grabbing the ramp’s edge. He barely held on as Lyra pivoted the ship and made to depart, everywhere legionnaire blaster bolts scoring hits where he’d just been, their aim thrown off by Lyra’s erratic flying.

  Rechs pulled himself up onto the ramp, putting it between him and the blaster fire. The ramp began to retract into the ship, and he had to quickly crawl forward. He just barely made it in before the ramp would have taken off his feet.

  Panting, he lay on the rubberized walkway within the ship.

  “Lyra…”

  “Yes, Captain. Preparing to jump—”


  “Negative. Evasive maneuvers. Stick close to that super-destroyer.”

  “Captain! I—”

  “Do it.”

  Rechs pushed off from the floor and ran for his armory as the ship streaked across the battlescape.

  The Last Battle

  Rechs put on his armor faster than he ever had before. And then he waited an interminable ten minutes as Lyra flew increasingly desperate maneuvers to get closer to the gigantic hull of the super-destroyer. G232 attempted to call out enemy movements, but with little to no military expertise, he might as well have kept silent.

  Rechs scoured his workbench, grabbing his heaviest automatic blaster, the N-34, and a cutting torch. As he made his way to the boarding hatch, the Obsidian Crow jerked and jinked across the battle.

  “Situation, Three-Two!” he barked.

  Through the hull, the sound of ship-to-ship blaster fire and explosions roared and cascaded like it was the end of the galaxy.

  The galaxy has to end someday, Rechs told himself. As do all things.

  “Well, master, those rather large bots—what’s left of them—are using their weapons. I’m not sure what one would call them, some kind of missile. They’re firing them rather prodigiously along the upper hull of the wounded capital ship. Several of the bots have now gone down inside the ship, while the large one you’ve tagged as ‘Dragon’ seems to be overseeing operations along the hull after disabling the nearby blaster cannons. The humans you’ve told me to refer to as ‘marines’ are attempting to fight off the machines on the hull. But I fear their efforts are in vain. Or so it appears.”

  “Lyra!” shouted Rechs, one gloved gauntlet raising the boarding hatch and lowering the door position. Below and beyond the hull he could see the battle underway. “The time is now!”

  The super-destroyer was under reverse power, backing away from the planet and heading for the upper atmosphere. Protocols for releasing a crustbuster included a requirement for extra-orbital positioning, but with the ship being boarded by Samurais, the Repub commanders on scene weren’t likely to wait for protocol if it seemed the ship was going down.