Madame Guillotine

by Jason Anspach

  And then, coming to the surface of his hearing… the sound of waves distantly crashing against rocks, like a low rolling thunder.

  “I have to go now, Gabriella.”

  “Tyrus…” she protested, not sure where she was going or what she could offer.

  But he was already gone… replaced by the ghostly howl in the ether of the hypercomm between them.

  * * *

  Tyrus Rechs felt someone come close to him on the hovering sled. His armor should have shown him who was coming. Told him how close and what threat level. Identified weapons. Should have. But a slicer had done a trick on his armor.

  Rechs wondered if the hacker was nearby.

  Other sleds, most likely filled with brutal thugs, vicious killers, and steely-eyed mercenaries acting as palace guards, swooped close in and zoomed off within the soundscape he was trying to put together. Like this was some kind of festival, fair, or special event instead of an execution.

  A circus even. Or a carnival, with an incredible sideshow made up of diverse aliens who’d gathered at the dark end of this section of uncontrolled galaxy some called the Maelstrom. Spacers and smugglers thought of these distant reaches as the real edge. Last stop before you reached the great void where nothing inhabitable existed. And not for a lack of exploration.

  As with every big-top circus act, this one had a main event. The execution everyone had shown up for. And its time had come.

  A hush fell, so that all Rechs could hear were the waves.

  “Victims of the terrible and mighty tyrannasquid…” began the court jester who ran the show for the prince lord of the Hegemmy Cartel.

  Another prisoner near Rechs crashed to the deck of the sled. Fainting at the fate that had just been revealed.

  “Now would be an excellent time,” continued the jester, “to make your peace with your various belief systems. You are shortly to be torn to pieces by the mighty leviathan in the depths below… and then horribly devoured. Your last seconds are sure to be the most atrocious you have ever experienced. I can assure you your suffering will be great.”

  The hacker turned on Rechs’s bucket. Allowing him to see.

  “Wouldn’t want you to miss the view,” said a Samurian standing right next to him. Her voice a hiss.

  Samurians were arachnotaurs. Half humanoid, half spider. And this particular green-skinned beauty with arterial-bleeding red hair had managed to shut down his armor and deliver him into the hands of his enemies. No doubt for an incredible price. Tyrus Rechs had been stalking the crime lord, who had accelerated the scheduled executions so that the bounty hunter could be swiftly dealt with once and for all.

  “Thanks,” said Rechs, finding she had also reactivated his external vocal system. “You’re a real peach.”

  She laughed wickedly. “The thought occurs that you might want to beg the prince for mercy, Tyrus Rechs. But, spoiler,” she said, moving in close and hissing, “there’s no mercy here. So don’t bother.”

  Rechs blinked his eyes, fighting the sudden glare of Suracaõ’s three suns. One massive burning orb. Two smaller, distant, lesser stars. The armor dialed in a shadow filter, and Rechs was able to see what was going on. Turning that filter to full opacity must’ve been how the slicer had made him blind.

  The jester continued to assure the prisoners they would die badly. Recounting the various ways a humanoid might be eviscerated by beak, tentacle, or razor-sharp sucker, for the general amusement of all who came to witness.

  A small, rocky island came into view off of Rechs’s left. The place was stuck in the middle of a vast aquamarine ocean, and apart from its one rocky, sea-vulture-laden spire there was little to distinguish it from any other rock poking up out of the water as far as the horizon extended. It didn’t seem to be a place where anything lived.

  Save the vultures.

  The sled charted a path along an exposed tidal reef lagoon that jutted jaggedly away from the lonely island rock. Other speeding sleds, already circling the island, came into view.

  The armor began to do its number-crunching thing, counting those who’d gathered to watch Tyrus Rechs’s public execution. Accounting for any who were armed. Long story short… everyone was armed.

  But that was the Maelstrom.

  Even dangerous people thought twice about running this section of the galaxy. The Republic didn’t even bother most years unless someone important got hurt. Then it came in with an expeditionary force and laid the Legion hammer down—if only to serve as an example. Or more likely to stroke the Republic’s ego. A get-tough show like that was just the thing to win re-election campaigns and keep House of Reason delegates in power.

  Below the circling sleds lay an angry churn of foam, the ocean rushing in and out and throwing itself against the jagged black volcanic rock that formed the deep lagoon. And if one looked closely, one might catch through the foam-tossed aquamarine a glimpse of massive tentacles undulating down in the depths below the surface.

  “If anyone wishes to throw themselves on their faces and do obeisance to the all-powerful Prince Gat Hathor,” advised the jester, “the possibility of mercy may be extended at this time. But seriously, you unlucky bastards… I wouldn’t bank on it.”

  Gat Hathor was currently the most wanted being in the galaxy. Officially. Unofficially, Tyrus Rechs held that dubious honor. The House of Reason’s secret bounty on Rechs had doubled as of late, and rumors were that some freelancers were making noises they’d like to try. The worst thing that could happen right now—and Tyrus always expected the worst—was that one of the Nether Ops kill teams assigned to get him would show up right in the middle of his plan and ruin everything.

  He scanned the skies.

  From beyond the slave sleds, out of the burning blue of Suracaõ’s sky, descended a floating pleasure palace, lumbering into the pattern over the Whirlpool of Death, as the jester had called it during his rant. It was a tri-hulled pleasure-maran fitted with heavy blaster turrets aft and fore on the outer hulls. The central hull was laden with partygoers, all pushing toward the rails to watch what was about to happen.

  And on the topmost deck, surrounded by guards and what was clearly some kind of inner circle, a throne worthy of any fantasy barbarian prince reigned supreme over the spectacle. Ensconced on that throne was a hulking crocosaur draped in fine silks. In one claw rested an ornate stun mace that could have crushed a human body in one blow.

  At least it was of only average size. An average-sized crocosaur was a little over nine feet tall.

  Gat Hathor, lord prince of the Maelstrom’s largest criminal enterprise, had lived a long time. And as both the jester and the Samurian had promised, he was merciless. He had recently unleashed a bio-plague on a fringe Maelstrom world that had refused to pay for protection.

  It was then that Tyrus Rechs had decided to come and collect the bounty. Enough was enough from this particular lizard.

  Except crafty old Gat Hathor hadn’t lived long by being stupid and available for termination or capture to every usurper, assassin, and bounty hunter that fancied the job. He never showed his scaly hide in public, opting instead to run the Hegemmy Cartel from a network of shadows one couldn’t quite get ahold of.

  Rechs had chased down leads on twelve worlds within the Maelstrom, leaving a trail of bodies to make it clear he was coming for the old dragon regardless of the opposition.

  Gat had set a trap for him on Jint’s Folly, a played-out old mining rock deep in the Maelstrom. It was there that Rechs’s armor was hacked, and from there he was brought to Suracaõ—Gat’s rumored hideout world. Rechs had cased the world early on in the hunt, but no one had talked, because everyone was working for the malevolent old lizard. After three gunfights and a running battle to get to the Crow, he’d had to pull back off world, hoping to nail his target out on one of his inspection tours of his many criminal operations bases throughout the Maelstrom.


  But instead he’d been captured.

  Or so they thought.

  Have to leave your armor powered down until they throw you in, came the message over the HUD’s comm.

  This was part of the plan. The Samurian’s double cross. There was no way Gat Hathor would have been found within a hundred kilometers of Rechs if he believed for an instant that he might regain the use of his armor. The spider-woman was the key to making him think just that. She was taking a big chance that someone higher up within Gat’s organization wasn’t keeping an eye on her hack. The prince would surely have some kind of command and control center on the pleasure-maran running a constant sensor sweep to make sure Rechs was locked down.

  “The Invulnerable Gat Hathor, ruler of all that he surveys, will now listen to your cries for mercy,” announced the jester across the vast swarm of sleds, maran, and lagoon. “Seriously.”

  All around Tyrus, on the deck of the floating sled, pathetic souls who’d somehow double-crossed the fearsome crocosaur’s criminal organization, or who had been found wanting in the take, began to do just that. They wept and pled with an emphatic abandon the greatest of actors would have admired. Some even threw themselves onto their faces and tore their clothing.

  High above, on the third level of the pleasure-maran, Gat shook with laughter at these woeful displays. The slow tilt of his croc snout indicated he was indeed enjoying their immense suffering. And what he intended to reward it with.

  There would be no mercy on Suracaõ this high noon. The jester hadn’t lied about that.

  The first victim was unceremoniously tossed by two of Gat’s thugs into the churn and froth of the violent lagoon below. This action was done so suddenly that the man didn’t even scream. Or at least, he didn’t scream until a tentacle snaked out of the water and caught him seconds before he hit the surface. An instant later another tentacle surged forth, and the two limbs tore him apart before pulling the bloody pieces down into the gaping maw of the monster below the water.

  One massive eye leered up at the spectacle above, conveying a primordial horror that cut through the violence taking place among the sleds as more victims were shoved into the water. Some hit the foam and waves, flailing and trying to swim, while others were again caught in midair and torn apart, or coiled and squeezed until their juices oozed from eye sockets, ears, nose, and mouth.

  The crowd aboard the pleasure-maran erupted with joy at the bloody spectacle.

  A hundred thousand credits, Tyrus, came the message over his HUD. It was from the slicer. The Samurian spider-woman.

  The trap that had caught Tyrus had in fact been part of a more elaborate snare set by the infamous bounty hunter himself—a snare intended to lure the reclusive Gat Hathor into public. Executions were a surefire way to get an appearance out of the legendary kingpin. Nailing the prince at any of his satellite businesses had proven… difficult. And costly. Most were guarded like small Legion fortresses. And the help was on point. No one working for the prince wanted what was currently happening to the victims on the sleds to happen to them. A base’s entire security team would be fed to the tyrannasquid if anyone allowed a threat to Gat to get even remotely close.

  That sort of thing was a strong motivator.

  Below the hovering sleds the monster surfaced from the waves, its tentacles pulsing to drive it through the water like a jet engine. It reached a swimmer who’d been making for the rocks and, with little effort, flicked out a tentacle and tossed the screaming woman into its grotesquely toothy mouth.

  Revealed, the tyrannasquid was a cross between an ancient Earth giant squid of myth and legend, and the Tyrannosaurus rex of its prehistory. It was the living embodiment of the word “monster” to all unfortunate enough to view its terribleness in person. The enigmatic leviathans existed on almost every world that had a compatible ocean, and it was surmised by the scientists who studied tyrannasquid that the fearsome lifeform had once been some kind of guard dog for the mysterious Ancients who’d once ruled the galaxy. There were, of course, other theories about how the species reached so far across the stars, but this one was the most popular, even though much of the scientific community viewed the hypothesis as nothing more than a conspiracy theory, given that it relied on an unverifiable hypothesis.

  And here one was on Suracaõ… truly terrible to behold. Especially if you were on the verge of being tossed into its gaping maw and devoured. And despite the number of victims it had already consumed, it seemed ravenous for more.

  As it roared volcanically like some prehistoric beast from the lost ages of time unknown, its cry was matched by the excitement of those aboard the pleasure-maran hovering less than three hundred meters off the sled’s port side—well out of reach of the monster’s whipping tendrils. A thousand bad choices ended in seconds of greedy gobbling for the victims, and their moments of judgment were punctuated by choruses of “oohs” and “ahhs” from the self-righteous spectators above.

  As one of the guards moved behind Rechs, the thug controlling the sled yanked on the yaw controls and slipped the sled almost directly over the open chasm of the mighty creature’s mouth. The tyrannasquid’s two liquid eyes rolled upward knowingly in anticipation of more tossed “treats.” It had been trained to be worshipped and supplied with food and adoration by the minions of Gat Hathor. It was an actor playing its part. A psychotic thing that had fallen for all its own lies. And… something worse. Something older, that knew things about the nature of the galaxy mortal man could not handle. Things hidden inside the pyramids of the Ancients no modern Republic scientist had been able to penetrate.

  Rechs was to be given over to his doom. No special address from the jester. No final judgment from the prince. This was Gat’s way of making a statement. Of saying to Tyrus Rechs, the most feared and notorious bounty hunter in the galaxy, that he was no different than the petty larcener to his left or the insolent hitman to his right. Not to the leader of the Hegemmy Cartel. Not to the crocosaur prince.

  The guard kicked Tyrus off the sled, his hands and feet still bound by ener-chains.

  For a free-falling moment Rechs was helpless.

  Of course, that was all part of the plan.

  She hadn’t really been able to hack into his armor, but it was important that Rechs made her think she had. Because the one piece of the plan Rechs couldn’t achieve without her was making the cartel head believe he was safe around the armored bounty hunter. So Rechs gave her access, but with so many restrictions that she had no idea how insignificant her journey into the system truly was. The armor was powered down, that much was true… but it was totally under his control. As it had been all along.

  The bounty hunter’s immediate goal was to control the fall. Because he had to stick the landing… or the swallow, as it were.

  Instantly the armor powered itself up. Jump jets came online and Tyrus bumped them as he fell toward the monster’s gnashing jaws. The thing was looking to snag him with a bite and then cut him in pieces with razor-sharp teeth more akin to a shark’s than to those of a carnivorous dinosaur. Rows upon rows of massive bone triangles working up and down in anticipation as he fell.

  But at the last second, he bumped the jump jets and shot past the toothy centurions drooling with caustic saliva. And faster than he could realize he was well beyond the vicious mouth and stuck in the thing’s throat. Clinging to the slimy flesh as the beast gave undulating shudders—what passed for coughs—to try and dislodge the bounty hunter.

  The monster then apparently decided to swallow rather than keep trying to regurgitate him—and its powerful throat muscles sucked Tyrus Rechs down into its belly.

  Down he went into a deep, dark hole, alive and seething with digestive acids.

  06

  Tyrus Rechs had sold the little Nubarian gunnery bot in the Bot Pits of Suracaõ. This was during Tyrus’s brief stay on the planet during the early days of the hunt, when he concocted his
plan to draw out Gat Hathor. The bot had once served on ships of the line for the Republic Navy, making it a very valuable piece of equipment, highly sought after in any bot bazaar.

  That was also why Tyrus had acquired it in the first place: it could operate the omni-cannon aboard the Obsidian Crow.

  The little bot had whooped and hectored Rechs angrily for daring to enter the Bot Pits with him in tow. Hadn’t Captain Rechs set the bot free upon purchase? And then offered the bot a crew position aboard his ship?

  Had the bot displeased “Boss Captain Rechs”?

  “Yes,” Tyrus had said stoically as they entered the shadowy bazaar. A place of pleasure bots in various stages of assembly offering themselves from the shadows while the sweet incense of lotus hash mixed with the smells of a hundred races come to sell and acquire the galaxy’s version of a slave. “You’re your own machine. I’m not your owner.”

  The bot whistled angrily at the inconsistency between words and actions.

  “Because this is a mission,” Rechs told the murderous little thing. “And I need you… to go undercover.”

  The bot bounded up and down on its small motivator ball and rolled around in a circle cackling digitally.

  “It’s not a secret kill mission,” began Tyrus patiently.

  The bot beeped stridently, alerting Tyrus that it would indeed be much better if it were a secret kill mission instead of just a plain old secret mission. Kill missions were more effective in dealing with problems, as far as the bot was concerned.

  The bot was patently homicidal. G232 never ceased to warn Rechs of its concerns about the angry little thing. And in turn, the little Nubarian bot complained that G232 constantly plotted against it. It knew this as sure as anything could be known. Let the Nubarian kill the mincing admin bot and all would be well. Just give it weapons. Sweet, beautiful weapons and it would burn the galaxy down around G232 and everyone else that opposed Captain Rechs.