Madame Guillotine

by Jason Anspach

  Oh-Two checked the ground radar and scanned the streets below. There were lots of figures down there moving in toward the courtyard. Friendly or hostile… it was hard to say.

  “Listen, Amanda, we have a decision to make. Stay and watch—or get out of here. We’ve been ordered out, by the Legion OIC. In fact… I think I may have just gotten myself masted real good!”

  There was a pause he didn’t like. It meant she was up to something. They’d been flying together long enough for Oh-Two to know he wasn’t going to like what she was about to say.

  “Can you put down here?”

  A ping in the pilot’s HUD marked one of the rooftops that ringed the courtyard where the firefight had gone down.

  “Not following you,” he said.

  “I can go down and get them. Then we can pull them off the roof.”

  “No, Amanda. No way!”

  She didn’t reply.

  But neither did he leave.

  Sunlight and dust washed through the windshield. Smoke in the distance from the downed bird. People were dead and dying.

  He loved flying.

  Hated the military.

  Hated death.

  His dad had died when he was a kid.

  Hence all the afternoons spent at the star port wishing he could get away. Get away as his mom fell apart.

  He hated death.

  “We got to,” said Amanda.

  His jaw clenched. Teeth gritted. Technically, he outranked her. He was a captain. She a sergeant. But they’d both known who was in charge when they started flying Reaper together. She was the leader. The shooter. It was the nature of the team. The preeminence of the airborne sniper.

  He just wanted to fly.

  And make sure none of the good guys got killed.

  He swore again and brought in the repulsors for full flare, throwing out the landing gears though he knew he wouldn’t even touch the deck of the trash-laden rooftop she was asking him to put her down on.

  “Amanda,” he began. Like he was going to change her mind. Save her. Even as he did what she wanted him to do.

  “I can do this,” she said simply. “The alley cleared of hostiles once we started dropping targets. We have this window right now to go get them. We can’t leave them.”

  And then the SLIC was hovering over the rooftop, repulsors screaming to hold position. He cranked his head around and watched her drop off the cargo deck.

  A second later, sidearm out and rifle slung to her back, she gave a “clear” and he was on the repulsors and climbing out over the rooftops once more.

  * * *

  Amanda crouched as she ran along the rooftop, carrying her issue sidearm exactly as she’d been taught during the CQB phase of the marine sniper course. Just because you can reach out and put the touch on someone from three thousand meters, as the instructors liked to say, doesn’t mean it don’t occasionally get up close and unfriendly.

  Targets had a way of wanting to hunt down and kill those who stalked them.

  Being a sniper, she was authorized to shuck her carrying harness and standard BDU. But she always kept the blaster strapped to her thigh and three charge packs stacked in her cargo pockets, along with a bunch of other tools she’d learned snipers needed over the course of her two enlistments.

  The door leading down from the roof was hanging half-open, listing lazily on old-fashioned hinges. She kicked it in with a swift strike from her oversized combat boot and pointed the blaster pistol down into the dark well using as much of the opening for cover as she could.

  Nothing. And no one.

  She hit the stairs fast, feeling the worm-eaten wood, tired with age, give as she pounded down to the next level. She was five stories up, but close to the two wounded legionnaires on the ground. If she could get to them and pull them back inside the building, then maybe they had a chance to avoid detection until Kirk could put down on the roof and pull them out.

  Maybe.

  At the third level the stairwell was gone, disappearing into a shadowy pit from which the ruins of the rest poked out. Smoky orange light filtered down through boarded-up windows and occasional cracked panes of grime-laden glass. The building had obviously been condemned, but it seemed no one had gotten around to the demolition part.

  Chances were she’d meet some squatters in here. It seemed that kind of place—at least, judging by all the entertainment streams she’d ever watched. She didn’t really know. Slums, cities… none of that had been her reality growing up. She was raised on farms and in rural communities. The planets set aside to feed a galaxy. Places with smaller planetary populations than the city populations on the core worlds they fed.

  But that had been a long time ago and another life.

  Running down the decrepit third-floor hall, checking corners and rooms at the end of the blaster’s sights as she moved, she reacted quickly when the wounded pro in red-and-black ninja kit stumbled out from the door that had been flung open as he crashed through it. He was holding a Ross 224 medium-range engagement blaster. Trick scope and heavy vented barrel. Good for dropping armored targets at the one-fifty mark.

  She knew weapons.

  Part of the job.

  She shot him as he looked at her with a pained face, feebly trying to bring his weapon up and engage.

  Hit, he twisted away from her and fell across the hall. She approached him quickly and double-tapped him, just as she’d been taught, fighting against the training as a sniper to fire once and disappear. She had to be sure he was dead in case she came back this way with the two leejes.

  That the Soshie made it up here was a good sign. It meant there was another stairwell—or some other way up and down.

  She knelt, took the man’s weapon, checked the charge, and holstered her sidearm, preferring the new model. It would do just fine. Good to have some firepower once she made the street. If she had to, this would help keep the rioters back and off the two wounded legionnaires.

  If they were still alive.

  “They’re alive,” she told herself.

  Because this is damn foolish if they ain’t.

  She could almost hear her grandpa telling her that. The same voice that had told her all the other ways she’d played the fool in her life.

  Damn foolish to break that mustang, Panda.

  Damn foolish to marry that boy, Panda.

  Foolish to have a kid so young yourself, Panda.

  She made the ground floor and stopped. There were people on the street. More rioters, stripping the weapons off a few of the dead pros. These weren’t mercs—they looked like kids. Amateurs who thought a weapon would even up the fight against the marines and legionnaires out on the streets this afternoon.

  Not likely.

  “That’s foolishness,” she muttered.

  She gave them a chance and fired the heavier medium-engagement blaster into the ceiling of the entrance foyer she found herself in. Dust and plaster sprinkled down from the ceiling, spilling all over the worn-out checkered floor pattern that must have looked like something special back in the day.

  When she looked out the dirty windows, holding her position and not breathing, she saw that the scavengers had retreated. The sound of blaster fire had scared them off.

  Imagine if they actually had to face incoming.

  No one tested her as she raced from the building to the courtyard. The place was littered with the wounded and dead. Both of which were stripped of whatever they had of value.

  That had been fast.

  It wasn’t even five minutes since the furious firefight. Amanda had seen war, but was taken aback by the number of dead bodies she found. They were everywhere, but especially near the one big legionnaire who must have been shot at least twenty times.

  They’d tried to pull his armor off, but it was too ruined, too difficult to disconnect. Someo
ne had cut off his bucket, though. And his head. The bloody stump of his neck oozed out onto the dry cracked pavement of the old courtyard.

  Command would have to deal with that. She had come for the living.

  Blaster up, she followed the front sights out of the courtyard and into the alley, tracking an ominous trail of blood that had to have been left by the legionnaires. Sure enough, three quarters of the way down its length, dark figures were dragging the two leejes away. She counted five of them.

  The range was right for her N-18, so she raised the rifle and fired, hitting one easily. A second later she’d shifted to a new target, a kid rioter with eyes wide underneath his balaclava. She took the top of his skull off and advanced on the three who were already dropping the legionnaires and running for their lives.

  She didn’t let them get away.

  Seconds later she reached the two leejes.

  “Who’s alive?” she shouted, unsure how to check for vitals while they were in their armor.

  One had a nasty wound over his shoulder. He lay face down and she saw the bare rise of his back as he struggled to breathe. The other tried to push himself up off the ground, but collapsed. He’d been shot in the chest at close range. The bolt hadn’t penetrated, but it had most likely broken the sternum and a bunch of ribs. It wasn’t the chest that had made him collapse though. He’d been shot through one leg. The bolt had gone in and smashed some bone and burnt away skin.

  “Good… to guh-oh,” muttered the legionnaire who’d fallen onto his back. “Help me… up.”

  She got down on one knee and tried to pull him upright. He seemed to weigh three hundred pounds in his armor, and the best she could manage was to get his shoulders off the ground and force the man to sit up the rest of the way on his own power.

  Her arms scrambled for his helmet release and a second later she had it off.

  He gasped for air. “Can’t breathe. C-an’t… breathe.”

  He sucked in large lungfuls of the hot dry air and spat blood. His black skin glistened with cold, clammy sweat.

  In the distance she could hear movement. Blaster fire. Someone shouting orders over a loudspeaker.

  She checked the area and saw figures at the far end of the alley. Figures in Soshie gear. Gathering like a pack of Nogrodi jackal cats.

  “I can get you out of here,” she grunted as she tugged him to his feet, knowing that had he not been using what strength he had left to assist, it would have been beyond her.

  She began to help him back toward the courtyard and the rooftop, knowing it was far away, too far away for her and him and the state he was in.

  Never mind that, Panda.

  That was her mom’s voice. Some called her Manda. Some Panda. Sometimes Amanda. She was something to everyone.

  No one can do everything, Panda, even if it’s you.

  She could do it. Even if it was hard. She’d always told herself that.

  “Beers…” gasped the wounded legionnaire.

  She wondered if he meant the one behind them in the alley, or the one with his head cut off in the courtyard. Didn’t matter. She couldn’t save two at once. She could save this one. Maybe. She told herself this even as some other, ever-confident part of her mind assured her she could get this one to the roof for extraction and then come back for the other.

  “I’ll come back,” she said.

  The legionnaire said nothing and continued to move forward unsteadily, lowering his head and grunting as he tried to carry himself as best as he could.

  She saw them at the head of the alley. Knowing there was no way they were getting out of this. The entrance to the courtyard was blocked. Red-and-black Soshie pros with weapons pointed at her.

  She knew…

  Knew this had been foolish. Knew if she gave them an excuse, they’d shoot both her and the legionnaire. That they’d probably do it even without an excuse.

  She looked back quickly, hoping there might be some kind of exit. All the while knowing there wasn’t the slightest bit of space for her to maneuver before being shot down, even if there was a place to go.

  There wasn’t.

  Just more of them coming up from behind.

  She let the blaster rifle clatter to the ground, signaling her surrender. She’d done everything she could to save the legionnaire.

  It wasn’t enough.

  He passed out, collapsing against her as they came. Weapons out. Pointing at their heads and hearts. Moving like a trained unit. Definitely ex-military. Mercs. Pros.

  Then someone was right in her face, and a second later she felt a rifle butt strike her head. She didn’t pass out. She tried to hold on to the legionnaire, but they pulled him away from her and that felt…

  That felt like something she’d been running from.

  But she didn’t pass out. She didn’t go down. She fought for something, though her mind wouldn’t tell her what.

  She was on her hands and knees and the galaxy spun about her. She wanted to throw up. Maybe she had thrown up already. Spit in long thick strings ran from her mouth as someone kicked her in the stomach.

  She needed water, that other, distant part of her mind thought. That’s why her spit was so viscous. She’d been too focused on overwatch all day. She’d forgotten to drink water. That was what she was thinking as they hit her. Raining down brutal blows. Devastating her body.

  She felt for the legionnaire. For his armor.

  It had to be nearby.

  She’d cover him. Protect him with herself. Force life into him.

  Stupid Amanda, she told herself when her hands found nothing but the hard, cruel pavement of the alley. Stupid.

  And then she was gone. Lights out.

  Done.

  Stupid Amanda.

  05

  “…reporting that two legionnaires are dead and two are captured, Tyrus. Along with an enlisted marine. All in the hands of the resistance. It’s bad. Real bad. Feeds are going nuts.”

  There was a pause in the conversation, and the ghostly hum of the hypercomm became more present as both parties waited for the other to speak.

  “That’s all I know at this time,” said Gabriella finally. “I figured you’d want to hear about it.”

  Rechs said nothing.

  “Where are you?” she asked.

  “I’m not entirely sure,” replied Tyrus Rechs. “I can’t see right now.”

  “What? Are you hurt?” As though his health were her responsibility. Truth was, she’d become more to him than just a voice on the other side of the hypercomm, representing the Bronze Guild and handling his contracts as a bounty hunter.

  A friend, maybe?

  They’d never met in person. But he’d guessed from her voice what she looked like. And sometimes, he thought he knew what a young girl working for a clandestine organization’s business offices might do with her time. If she had someone in her life. Friends that thought she did some normal boring job relating to above-board galactic commerce. People who thought they knew her. But really didn’t.

  He’d told himself once, during some long hyperspace crossing from this place to that place to kill, capture, or deal with someone, that he was just adding all that in to complete some picture he needed. Making it up to fill in the story where the unknown and unspoken parts were just as real as the known and the business words they exchanged. He reminded himself that others had often told him he wasn’t very creative. His mental picture of her was of a normal twenty-something that could be trusted. Pretty. Efficient. Reliable.

  That would have been the only way the Guild would have hired her. She would have to have those qualities. And that lack of damage to be so young. They’d provide the things that would make her old and jaded before her time. But they needed a fresh canvas. Those with baggage need not apply.

  And discretion…

  Discretion wa
s key.

  Discretion was what kept bounty hunters working. Seeing as the hunters were usually wanted dead or alive by someone somewhere in the galaxy almost as much as the people they were sent out to bring back… dead or alive.

  “Seriously,” she said with that uncomfortable laugh of disbelief the polite and civilized have when occasionally confronted with the dark sides of the galaxy. “Where are you, Tyrus?”

  “I think,” he began slowly. “I’m on a slaver sled, somewhere over the Antibian Sea… on Suracaõ.”

  “And you can’t see?” More subdued, but maybe still a little concerned. Or it could have been simple disbelief. Tyrus Rechs wasn’t always good at reading people. There had been misunderstandings in the past. Even he had to admit that.

  He could feel the wind buffeting his armor. Pushing him as the bad gravity-decking and repulsor fields tried to keep the craft he was in aloft. But they’d shut down the armor’s systems in the hopes of preventing him from seeing, smelling, and hearing. With the restraining clips and ener-chains, he was virtually a prisoner in his own armor.

  But he did have a secret hypercomm link, being fed to him by Lyra from the Obsidian Crow. And the guards in the slave sled seemed to be ignoring him. No prodding, hitting, or attempts to communicate. Unbeknownst to them, and despite their best efforts, the bounty hunter could hear them chatting idly, but not about him.

  “Tyrus, Suracaõ is a no-go world for bounty hunters unless you’re working for—”

  “I know.”

  “Can you talk? Or are we being listened to?” Her voice was becoming frantic. “Signal me if you need help. No, wait—they probably just heard me say that, right?”

  He tried to move his wrists. Nothing. The shackles were dialed to their highest setting. The bad guys weren’t taking any chances.

  “No. Everything’s fine. I’ve got this under control.”

  The sled began to slow, and the wind cutting across the armor’s surface faded. Through his armor, connected to the deck of the sled by his boots, he could feel the throb of the badly synched repulsors shifting into hover while the engines throttled down to a low hum.

  Other sleds whooshed past, and he could hear catcalls and alien ululations coming from the passengers. In the distance he heard the big ship coming in. The one he’d been waiting for.