The Last Reaper: An Intergalactic Space Opera Adventure

by J. N. Chaney

  A new battle roared to life just out of view. For a second, the pace of the gunfire confused me. Someone was shooting back at the spec ops commandos.

  I climbed onto a damaged ladder that ran up the wall to nowhere and looked out across the metal landscape. Several squads of ragged-looking Soldiers wearing old uniforms and carrying outdated gear engaged the invaders. It took a minute, but I’d seen them before

  Dreadmax soldiers. Their uniforms had the same patches and design as what I’d seen near the shipyards. This place was a microcosm, its own twisted society of good and bad. Slab and the Red Skull Gangsters left the engineers in the shipyard alone because they maintained the gravity generators, but also because they had some muscle.

  Elise had crashed closer to the shipyards than I’d thought, not like I’d been thinking about where I was until the fight with Jordan was over.

  “Why don’t you respond to my queries?” X-37 asked.

  “X! Good to hear you. Where have you been?” I didn’t bother hiding my excitement.

  “I’ve been right here,” X-37 said.

  Heavy machine-gun fire and grenades drew my attention. “Someone is having one hell of a fight.”

  “It’s quite literally the end of this world,” X-37 said, ignoring the fact that I was running now, and maybe not ready for chit-chat.

  I stepped over a smear of blood where one of the spec ops soldiers or recon ship crewmen had dragged himself clear of the destruction. There were others escaping the smoldering ship, dazed by the impact in their injuries. I picked up radio chatter of them calling for help and at least one spec ops team answering that they were inbound.

  The accelerated night and day cycle of Dreadmax cast shadows across the senseless battlefield. I searched through the wreckage, looking for Elise and her father.

  “Balls!” I shouted.

  There was always a point in a mission when everything went off the rails. Sometimes it was a small thing like not being able to make it through customs or losing valuable data I’d recorded during a surveillance session. Every time, it seemed important.

  Dreadmax put all my prior missions in perspective. I’d faced death more than was healthy, but this fiasco was one for the record books.

  I spotted Hastings and his daughter on the other side of the yard.

  “Elise! Stay where you are. I’m coming to you,” I shouted.

  “Why is everyone fighting?” she asked, sheltering her father with her body.

  It didn’t look like he was injured any worse than she was, but his physical courage was clearly faltering. I didn’t want to call a man a coward. That wasn’t it at all. He was just beyond any situation he’d ever been in.

  Elise had run the streets and trenches of Dreadmax and learned some hard lessons, I thought.

  “It doesn’t matter,” I said. “We’ve got several chances to get through this. Don’t shut down. Never give up.”

  “Thanks for the pep talk.” She chewed up several creative bits of profanity and spat them at me when she wasn’t ducking or looking for the next explosion.

  Her father chimed in, sounding like he’d been concussed slightly. “I do agree with you, in theory, Reaper Cain. Direct evidence suggests your theory may not hold in this particular instance…”

  The spec ops recon ship had left a long trail of destruction, smashing apart critical elements of the top deck and leaving pieces of the hull scattered along the slash mark. Civilians continued to scavenge for parts and survivors. The smarter ones went the other direction.

  I concentrated on Elise and her street savvy toughness. For a spoiled rich girl, she was showing some resilience. “The engineers at the shipyard have more resources than they let on. They’re not idiots. I’ve run into civilians who know they have a large ship for an evacuation. It’s missing a critical component, but I’d bet money they have at least a few smaller ships that they keep secret. There’s also Grady’s team if they’re not dead. Sergeant Crank and a few others are either out here on the surface or in the ship with Andrews.”

  She brushed her hair out of her eyes. “Andrews?”

  “Grady’s pilot. A real smartass. You’ll like him,” I said.

  Elise started talking before I was finished. “If he gets us off this place, I’ll love him.”

  “I need you to work your way toward the shipyard with your father. I’ve got something I need to do first.”

  “We’re coming with you,” she said.

  “Negative. Trust me on this one.”

  “Whatever. I can do anything you can do,” she said.

  I laughed out loud, regretting how shitty my tone sounded. “No, you can’t. Not even close. And you don’t want to.”

  She considered that somberly. “This doesn’t seem like a great place to sit and wait.”

  I swept my eyes across the area, scanning it for X-37’s analysis. It was a habit I barely thought about. One of the few romantic relationships I attempted in the early years had ended because the woman said it freaked her out. Like a one-thousand-yard stare combined with cybernetic inhumanity.

  “Wait here. Let me contact the Dreadmax Soldiers.”

  It didn’t take long to locate one of their squads near the wreckage of the spec ops recon ship.

  “I’m friendly,” I said, showing my hands before I leaned out from cover. “I was a prisoner on that ship.”

  “Step out where we can see you and don’t make any sudden moves,” the leader said.

  I did as I was told. The sergeant spoke to one of his men. I cataloged their worn but functional gear and ragged hygiene. By Dreadmax standards, these guys were spit and polish. Had they still been in the Union military, they’d be on some sort of detention.

  “You’ve got some of the spec ops weapons,” the sergeant said, not introducing himself. “Can you fight? There are at least two more teams moving toward this area to investigate the crash.”

  “I’ve run into some of them. We’re not on good terms,” I said. “I’ll fight, but I need to get down to the spine.”

  He didn’t laugh. “My team tried that. Can’t be done.”

  I assumed they were here looking for last-minute salvage, anything to get more people off the crumbling space station. They would probably still be looking for parts when the environment failed and the gravity generators went off-line completely. They were that type of soldier.

  “What about the speed lift?” I asked.

  He ignored me for a second to give orders to his squad leaders. They formed a perimeter around the ship while a pair of men went inside and started ripping things from the walls of the interior.

  “Have you ever looked at a speed lift? It’s not made for people. It’s made for equipment. Maybe you could take a weapon with you, but I doubt it. And with so many systems failing, there’s a good chance you’d have to hold your breath for a bit longer than I could. You’d be passing through energy fields and decks with no life-support.”

  I didn’t like the idea of crossing an energy field. X-37 was resistant to energy-based attacks, but I doubted the designers of the Reaper AI anticipated this scenario. Without X, it was unlikely I could figure out how to acquire and transport the slip drive regulator to the ship engineers.

  More fighting broke out near the ship. The Dreadmax sergeant spoke to someone on his radio, clearly annoyed with my continued presence.

  “There are two high-value targets tucked away near the ship. Can you look out for them?” I asked.

  “If they’re not Union, gang members, or cannibals, I’ll do what I can,” he said.

  “That’s good enough for me. I’m going after the slip drive regulator.” Nothing I’d done so far was worth a shit unless I pulled this off.

  He stared at me in disbelief.

  “We’ve got incoming,” I said as the sound of a determined assault by Union forces reached us.

  “I can point you toward the speed lift, but you may have to fight first. I don’t know who the hell you think you are, but I wish you wel
l. Something tells me you might actually have a chance to pull this off,” he said.

  I nodded, then ran to take a position against spec ops soldiers and Union Soldiers. I hoped Sergeant Crank and his team weren’t among them. We hadn’t become friends, but they were the last connection I had to Grady. Sure, he’d been a jerk at the end, but we’d been friends once.

  Two Union recon ships shot overhead, dropping flares and digital markers. The Dreadmax sergeant and his people didn’t quite know what to make of this.

  “Move! Change position!” I shouted.

  One man was too slow and was struck by a forty-millimeter laser-guided grenade. Running past the blasted corpse, I slid on one leg, then came up in a kneeling position to shoot.

  Assaulters dropped from the ship, hitting the ground running. Heavily armed and armored, they moved fast and fired on anyone who showed themselves.

  Two Union spec ops soldiers and a sergeant rushed around a damaged sensor array. Aiming for their midline, I shot all three of them just above their hips. It was a nasty tactic, but effective. No man could run with shattered hips.

  It still sucked, even though I hated these guys. They screamed in pain, calling for medics and cursing whoever had blasted them.

  Several of the Dreadmax soldiers went down and were dragged behind cover by their comrades. Without helmet comms, they relied on shouts and hand signals. It was like something out of an old action vid—bullets, explosions, and smoke drowning out most of what they were yelling.

  An RSG thug raced a motorcycle through the middle of the battle, firing a sawed-off machine gun at everyone. It took me three seconds to process the image. “Slab’s coming, you Union fucks!”

  This was Dreadmax, complete chaos all the way to the end.

  I looked toward the place I’d stashed Elise and her father. Far enough from the ship to be overlooked, I hoped, but still within the guard perimeter—I hoped I was doing the right thing.

  Good deeds never went unpunished. The smart thing to do would be to grab Elise, her father, and steal a small ship from the shipyard engineers. The absolute wrong, completely stupid foolhardy thing to do was go after the slip drive regulator and try to save everyone.

  “What do you think, X? Should we save everyone?”

  “Please rephrase the question. From the information you’ve provided me, this is impossible. Even if you fixed the freight-hauler and avoided the extremely motivated Union troops, there will be thousands, maybe tens of thousands of people below decks that are beyond help.”

  “Thanks, X, that was really fucking helpful.”

  “I endeavor to keep it real. Perhaps you should just complete your mission instead of trying to be a hero. It never works for you,” X-37 said.

  “True,” I said.

  “I suspect you will ignore my advice.”

  Why couldn’t my Reaper AI see the bigger picture? “There are children on this station.”

  “Many of which will die.”

  “You’re such an asshole. Why are AIs such dicks?” I asked.

  “Perhaps I am reflecting your personality.”

  “Whatever, X. Help me find a way to the speed lift. I also need a talk box. I want to check on Bug and see if he can help me.”

  “Searching ship schematics for optimal route.”

  “Thanks.” I made a mental note to invest in a software update for my friend.

  X-37 didn’t respond for several seconds. I ducked behind a pipeline and ran in a crouch, searching for a way to get clear of the impromptu battle.

  27

  X-37 FED ME DETAILED INSTRUCTIONS. I focused on what I had to do rather than what I had left behind. Running from a fight wasn’t my style. Fatigue made every decision seem wrong and every obstacle insurmountable. Visual static pulsed in my HUD in time with my heartbeat, and the pain from my augmented left arm was constant.

  If it stopped working, I’d have problems. For one thing, the bionic limb was heavy when not functional. I didn’t notice it the rest of the time, but there had been missions when it felt like I was dragging an anchor behind me.

  For all I knew, I was the last of the Reaper Corps. We’d been cutting edge once. Older and wiser now, I understood first-generation technology often had problems. Callus was likely the new and improved version.

  That cheered me up, because I’d kicked his ass. Fuck that guy.

  The sounds of fighting faded. Other conflicts raged across the top deck, probably RSG and NG vendettas being carried out against desperate, unarmed civilians. I pushed down memories of home and the neighborhood I’d cleansed of street gangs. Sitting on death row had been worth it. Now, a hundred slip tunnels away, I saw nothing had changed.

  Humanity didn’t need saving, which made what I was attempting to do all the more stupid.

  “Talk to me, X.”

  “There are three damaged communication towers ahead of you. A speed lift exists between the first and second, if you are viewing them from left to right. I have insufficient data to determine whether or not it is functioning. The Dreadmax sergeant wasn’t lying. The specs say nothing about the possibility of human transport via the mechanism.”

  “So it’ll be like getting shoved into a dumbwaiter,” I said.

  “Interesting. Dumbwaiter is not part of my vocabulary.”

  “That’s because I’m smarter than you, X.”

  “Unlikely.”

  The area was a ghost town compared to where I’d come from. Dreadmax was awesomely huge, one of the Union’s more grandiose projects before the sheer size of it caused it to fail. I couldn’t imagine the amount of fuel required to move such a monstrosity, and according to X-37, it had been intended for long-range use.

  “You’re approaching the speed lift,” X-37 said.

  The building was a low dome with no doors. I eventually found a hatch that was about two feet high, probably made for one of the maintenance bots. It opened when I pressed my weight on the rail leading into it.

  “Here goes nothing,” I said, then crawled inside. Darkness enveloped me. I focused on my infrared optics and a hazy picture of the room formed.

  “I really need to get this I fixed,” I muttered.

  “I doubt the Union will accommodate such a request,” X-37 said.

  “Because they’re assholes. After all I’ve done for them, they should give me a whole new set of Reaper gear.”

  “I wouldn’t hold your breath,” X-37 said.

  “I’m just making noise because it’s creepy as fuck in here.” I found a cluster of speed lifts that looked like coffins ready to take me damned straight to hell. A small person could probably stand in one of the boxes comfortably. Too bad I wasn’t small. “This is really going to suck.”

  X-37 talked me through the operating system. I powered up the system and noticed there wasn’t much light. With only the ambient glow of green LED power indicators to see by, I almost wished it had just stayed dark. The interior dome felt smaller than it had appeared from the outside. The inside of the speed lift looked unfit for someone my size, or a human, or a living creature.

  “One last thing,” X-37 said. “The speed lift will pull considerable G-forces even if the gravity generators of Dreadmax are completely offline.”

  “Thanks for the warning.”

  “It is not too late to back out,” X-37 reminded me.

  “What the hell ever.”

  I pulled down the lid, only to watch it bounce open. There wasn’t a mechanism to close it from the inside, so I had to reach out, yank on it, and hope I didn’t crush my fingers as the lid fell. Twisting into the fetal position, I reached up with my augmented arm and heaved downward, pulling my hand inside at the last second.

  The latch clicked.

  “The sequence has begun,” X- 37 said.

  “Can’t wait,” I muttered right as I heard something.

  “Was that a second hatch closing? Is someone sending parts right now? Like they’re actually trying to fix this place?”

  “Unlike
ly. I detected no one from Dreadmax prior to your decision to commit suicide.”

  “If you had a humor algorithm, that would be a lot funnier.”

  “Correct.”

  “Talk to me, X. What the hell is happening?”

  “My analysis suggests another person is taking a speed lift to the spine of Dreadmax station.”

  My ride clunked forward once, twice, then shot downward like a bullet into the guts of the station. With no crash seat or safety harness, I was at the mercy of physics. Each time the tube turned, I was smashed into a new and interesting position of pure misery.

  Spots danced in my vision. My pulse hammered the inside of my head. Electricity radiated from my Reaper enhancements. X-37 came on and off line, sometimes blaring random bits of dialogue as we passed through energy fields.

  “One last thing, Reaper,” X finally said. “There is no tube between the primary ring and the spine. Your pod will be fired across a short gap—about one hundred meters—and caught by magnetic locks.”

  “Great. I hope that part of the ship is working.”

  “Even a slight misalignment caused by recent events will result in the pod missing the catch and bouncing into the void.”

  “It’s been nice knowing you, X.”

  “What are you trying to say,” the Reaper AI asked.

  Crossing to the Dreadmax spine was nice, less getting slammed around and more gliding in a straight line as I started to freeze. The rest felt like mistiming a parachute landing onto concrete.

  “How’d we do, X?”

  “Let’s call it a success, shall we?”

  Twisting my feet forward, I kicked until the lid popped off. Moments after I climbed out, a second pod shot across the gap between the primary ring and the spine. Spiraling though the darkness, it would have been invisible without my infrared vision. There was a wobble that looked dangerous.

  Time slowed. The pod looked like it was going to miss but corrected course as a magnetic field pulled it in.