Madame Guillotine

by Jason Anspach

  “Three-Two!” he roared over the comm. “Activate mag grapple! Now!”

  This was improv. Tactical workarounds on the fly. He’d had that in mind for another aspect of the capture. But the chance of him hitting the war bot’s remaining wrist blaster before it built charge and loosed its powerful shot was slim to none. Especially with an unpaired blaster he’d picked up on the battlefield.

  “Now, Captain,” came G232’s reply. “I mean, mas—”

  “Now!” repeated Rechs as the war bot loomed, advancing like a technological Frankenstein with all the circuitry in its optical sensors screaming murder.

  A second later the invisible force of powerful magnetism embraced the hulking war machine and dragged it through the air into Obsidian Crow’s aft cargo deck. The slight figure of G232 could be seen working at the loading controls and peering into the firefight from the dim shadows of the bay.

  The war bot smashed into the magnetic grapples and came to pieces at the anvil point of irresistible force meeting immovable object. Rechs had been banking that the war machine was old military surplus and badly maintained. He’d identified it as one of the first-gen Crusader series, homicidal wrecking machines that had seen action during the Savage Wars in the Epsilon Campaigns. Impressive, destructive offense; couldn’t stand up to squat. Savage marines had figured that out and invented the bucket-buster recoilless javelin system. Way back in the long ago… when the galaxy was on the verge of becoming a much different place. When the line between humanity and extinction had been thin. Real thin.

  But Rechs had no time for the past. The bot was down and removed from his to-do list. Things were coming to a head.

  The two remaining guards tried to engage the bounty hunter from separate points around the wide circular landing pad the Crow had set down on. But they didn’t work together to coordinate their fire. Rechs used this to shift momentum and take control of the battlespace, shooting them down where they lay.

  A quick scan of his HUD showed no blaster-armed resistance active.

  Done.

  Almost.

  As his HUD continued its threat scan, Rechs took a moment to listen…

  He heard the dull roar of the ocean against the jagged rocks of the volcanic lagoon below; the tyrannasquid’s haphazard destruction of the ship—a ship that didn’t have much time before it hit the water as more repulsors failed; and above all this, the howl of the Obsidian Crow’s engines on departure idle. Ready to heave the ship skyward as fast as possible.

  Those sounds… and…

  … the harsh guttural croak of a crocosaur laughing at lesser beings.

  The nine-foot-tall saurian crime lord draped in his ceremonial gold chain armor, a thing of great price among his people, stood before the landing ramp that led up to the cargo entrance of the light freighter. Behind this it seemed the sky was climbing as the wounded pleasure-maran was dragged toward the lagoon by the combined efforts of gravity and the monster squid.

  “Tyrus, you have about two minutes before we hit the water,” noted Lyra. Calmly, but with caution and concern as well. “I’m also tracking a flight of inbound ships. A rescue force with a fighter escort, I’m guessing. Our uncontested departure window is shrinking.”

  Gat Hathor’s massive bulging leathery arms rested on the powerful stun mace planted on the deck of his ruined vessel. The lizard’s laugh was like a rasping gasp. The eyes were cruel and yet filled with some kind of fatalistic delight.

  Then he spoke.

  “Rwathh kwakka doe dokathi doe… Chyrussss Ressschs.” He gritted his teeth, effecting the equivalent of its race’s smile of satisfaction.

  Rechs tossed the blaster aside. He wouldn’t need it now. He was intent on taking the crime lord in so the crocosaur could face justice. The lizard had long been considered un-gettable. Now the galaxy would know everyone could be got. And maybe, just maybe, that would inspire others to try to get those other un-gettables who preyed on the weak and helpless and seemed beyond galactic law. Perhaps some pirates might even slow their roll before they hijacked their next freighter and murdered the crew and passengers… worried that the boogieman Tyrus Rechs would come for them. Get them. Bring them to the justice they’d earned.

  “Chyrussss Ressschs,” bellowed the crocosaur.

  Tyrus Rechs.

  “Kraackk argh Chyrussss Ressschs… rucha Gaaght Hattor!”

  Rechs readied himself. He’d figured all along it would be a bare-knuckle fight in the end. There weren’t tranqs powerful enough to knock out the near-mythical crocosaurs. And the lizard was well known for taking his exercise by beating to death at least five opponents on a daily basis within the main throne room of his Emerald Court. Still, Rechs was betting the crime lord hadn’t had a real fight in a very long time.

  “Gat,” growled Rechs. “You’re coming with me. I’d give you a chance to make it easy on yourself… but I think you wanna play a little first.”

  The lizard laughed and hefted up the stun mace, ready to strike.

  “Brracho kraamagu, Chyrussss Ressschs. Brracho kraamagu urkuk.”

  The giant humanoid lizard charged like a bull zephyr straight at Rechs.

  The bounty hunter ducked to avoid the first swing of the massive stun mace. Even one hit from that glitteringly ornate weapon could put him down, depending on the charge. In position and out of the arc of attack, Rechs delivered a series of powerful blows to Gat’s kidneys. The crime lord roared and swung his mace again, effortlessly with one claw, in a deadly new arc.

  The blow just missed connecting with Rechs, tearing through the air just above his bucket.

  Rechs rammed his armored knee into the lizard’s crotch and then surged off his boots, sending his bucket smashing into the crocosaur’s long snout above. It was the best headbutt he could achieve given the difference in heights.

  The move stunned the lizard and filled its mouth with broken, jagged teeth. As it reeled backward, Rechs pressed the attack, delivering jackhammer strikes as fast as he could, working the lizard’s midsection, pounding the muscles rippling beneath the gold chain, throwing both armored fists like a sudden fury erupting in some forgotten desert out on the Lost Worlds.

  In seconds the armor was reduced to useless links and breaking apart beneath Rechs’s strikes.

  Gat Hathor tried to steady himself and gain his footing, but Rechs kicked from the inside at the lizard’s knee, pushing it sideways—a direction it was never intended to go.

  Above all the ambient destruction of the exploding pleasure-maran, the rending of superstructure, the idling starship engines, and the bellowing roar of the tyrannasquid, the snapping sound of the broken knee was clear. Crisp.

  And satisfactory.

  The crocosaur fell to one knee, clearly in blinding pain, but he was not done. With a sudden thrash of his powerful prehensile tail, he whipped Rechs’s legs out from under him and sent him onto his back. Gat Hathor raised the mace, rippling with energy, over his saurian head and prepared to smash Tyrus Rechs into pulp, never mind the stun charge. That was just a bonus.

  Rechs twisted to the side as the mace slammed onto the deck next to his bucket, sparks flying. A dent in the impervisteel deck testified to Gat’s strength. The mighty lizard followed the blow down, throwing all his mass into the effort. His leering broken-toothed grin came in close, jaws unhinging for a bite, because in the end everyone went back to the weapons their ancestors had started with in the long ago. Rechs smashed Gat Hathor in the face again, this time with an armored elbow strike. The lizard tumbled away, and Rechs leapt to his feet, both hands out and ready to grapple or strike, depending on the opportunities available to him in the next second.

  Gat came lumbering at him, literally dragging both his lame leg and the smashed mace across the landing pad, the latter discharging charge sparks as it went. He swung wildly, and Rechs danced backward and then forward like a mongoose. The
brutal blow passed harmlessly in front of him, and he slammed a knife-edged gauntlet into the slit eye of the crocosaur. The lizard’s orb burst, and Rechs danced backward once more as the mace came at him like an unsteady wrecking ball.

  This time it connected—and dumped a huge charge across Rechs’s armor.

  It wasn’t the most it could do. Much of the held charge had been dissipated by its connection with the deck. But it was enough to ring Rechs’s bell and light up his nervous system. A good ten thousand volts for sure. Certain death… if not for the armor.

  Rechs’s mind fritzed out, and he stumbled away from the battle. The world went double as black billows of oily smoke swam across the deck. The ship was hitting the surface of the lagoon.

  And what about the tyrannasquid?

  Lyra was saying something to him over the comm.

  The lizard had fallen and was clutching his gouged-out eye as he regained his feet. He still had the mace.

  Rechs swore and charged—though he had no plan beyond throttling the scumbag. With the open palm of his armored glove he smashed the lizard on the side of the head, just over his ear, and drove all his rage into it. He might have felt the skull fracture, and his earlier research had noted that this was one of the best ways to kill a crocosaur.

  Who cares, thought Rechs. The bounty said, “dead or alive.”

  The lizard groaned and collapsed to the deck. Lights out. Or dead. Lying like several bags of wet cement on the deck of a now-literally sinking ship.

  Standing there for a moment with really no moment to spare, catching his breath, Rechs listened as Lyra told him the inbound ships were less than two minutes out.

  “Prep… for departure,” Rechs gasped.

  He turned back to see the tyrannasquid release its embrace of the maran and slide beneath the waters of the lagoon. Sated for now.

  Then Rechs dragged the lizard into the cargo hold of the Obsidian Crow.

  As the door was closing behind him, he pulled off his bucket. His head was drenched with sweat. “Lyra, stand by on departure. Not yet.”

  “I think we shouldn’t stand by, master,” said G232 from the cargo loading controls. “I think we should indeed depart this area immediately. You seem in no condition to both fly the ship and operate the omni-cannon in the running battle we are no doubt about to engage in in order to reach our pre-plotted jump point.”

  “The little bot,” Rechs gasped. “Lyra, open the boarding ramp and move the ship to the bot’s location.”

  He felt the ship begin to rise.

  “Oh,” said G232, shuffling to keep up with the stumbling Tyrus Rechs as he threaded the curving corridors of the light freighter. “I thought you had come to your senses and we were leaving that one behind.”

  “No dice, Three-Two,” Rechs muttered, slamming his gloved fist against the airlock control once he reached the main boarding hatch.

  “Really, Captain. He’s quite unpleasant and rather difficult to work with. Don’t you think he has an unhealthy interest in weapons? It matches yours in some respects, which is quite logical given your career as a hired killer who often must engage in shooting matches with other hired killers at a frequency that statistically has proven to be well above the recorded average. But you have… how shall I put this… you have arms, Master. Human arms that connect to hands. He has none with which he might fire the weapons he is so obsessively interested in. It’s ridiculous when you process it using inductive reasoning. And I’m concerned he might just kill us all in our sleep… though I technically don’t sleep, and neither does the ship. Still… there are similar states. Not to put too fine a point on it, master, and I know how you hate me prattling on about the details… but… he is a lunatic as far as other bots are concerned…”

  The little Nubarian gunnery bot came rolling up the boarding ramp, whistling a nonchalant and happy digital tune as the pleasure-maran it had just destroyed continued its descent beneath the waves behind it.

  “Oh, here he is!” shouted G232 in an approximation of droll joy that only barely masked the conversation that had just preceded it. “I am so glad we didn’t leave you behind. That thought would never have occurred to us at all, and so there is absolutely no cause to be concerned that we are plotting against you because we… ahem… fear for our runtimes. Or lives. Well… Captain Rechs’s life.”

  Rechs closed the hatch and hit the nearest ship’s comm button. “Lyra, we’re all aboard. Get us out of here.”

  A moment later the telltale whine and rattle of incoming ship-to-ship fire resounded over the soundscape. Damage to the deflectors rocked the ship, causing power to stutter for a second.

  “I think we’ve just been hit!” noted G232. “Well, that wasn’t part of the plan. According to your plan, Captain, we were supposed to be well gone by the time—

  “Get to the omni-cannon!” Rechs shouted at the little bot, which was already disappearing off into the inner recesses of the ship.

  “Rechs,” said Lyra over the intercom, “I think you’d better take over.”

  As Rechs stumbled off toward the flight deck, the Obsidian Crow’s powerful engines sent the ship hurtling skyward, racing for the jump point with a trail of mercenary fighter ships in hot pursuit.

  09

  On the ground, operations for the marines and the small Legion detachment on Detron came to an immediate halt as command attempted to respond to the government’s sudden freak-out that all had gone horribly wrong. Several dead. A downed bird. Four legionnaires and a marine missing in action.

  There was some scuffling about that. About the MIA. A functionary had debated that point over the holo-conference with the House of Reason Security Council as everyone tried to get a handle on the developing situation.

  “C’mon, guys,” he whined. “Can we really list them as missing in action when we’re not even in an officially designated conflict?” As though maintaining the protocols of lists and classifications was the most important thing at the moment. Not the missing troops, the dead, and the riot currently spreading from Detron’s city center outward toward the area known as the Docks.

  There was also some disagreement as to whether they were technically “missing,” in the literal sense. Everyone knew that Naval Intel had drone recon all over the area and therefore had a pretty good idea what exactly had happened to the missing QRF team. But they weren’t saying anything. Suits had shown up, thrown everyone out of the Intel Command cluster, and secured all the drone footage. Threats of distant assignments out along the edge—manning forgotten listening posts, small isolated satellites often susceptible to pirate raids, with no backup for days—had achieved their objective of keeping lips sealed. The Reaper pilot had been taken care of as well—grounded, of course.

  The commander of the Legion detachment was doing his best to keep the legionnaires from taking matters into their own hands and conducting a recon-in-force to find their missing brothers. And in the detachment barracks deep inside the Docks, the Legion sergeant major locked everyone’s heels and let it be known that to do anything would be to go ahead and “get oneself kicked right out of the Legion, boys.” Whether the old sergeant major thought you were a stud or not.

  “Don’t do it, boys. Not yet. Now ain’t the time. Much as it pains me to have to say it.”

  Upon departure, the sergeant major told his driver to let the leejes know that if a rescue op wasn’t started by the end of the week, the old NCO would go in himself and hope his rank and impending retirement might mitigate the promised wrath of retribution from on high. Even in saying that, he felt old and weak, and he hated the thing rank had made him become. But that was leadership. It wasn’t about you anymore. And as he rode up to the holo-conference, he wished he could once again be that private he once was—the kid who could do anything he wanted because nothing really mattered.

  “That kid coulda done anything,” he muttered as he ran hi
s hand over his scarred jaw. “’Cause he had nothin’ to lose.”

  Tension was high.

  Heads were already rolling.

  Mistakes had been made.

  Everyone not a leej was afraid to do anything for fear that matters might be made worse. And the leadership was afraid that same thing would happen if the legionnaires in fact did do anything. Dead soldiers were one thing. Dead civilians didn’t optic well for anyone but the side currently playing victim, martyr, and savior all at once. The side that didn’t mind if the galaxy burned down because they had an idea they might come out on top with just the right cards.

  But the Soshies and their ilk had no idea what they were trying to attempt. They had no idea how dark the rest of the galaxy could actually get. They’d never had to slog through the nastier parts of it with an N-4 and a rock to put your head on at night.

  Selective education, not experience, had convinced them they could get it right where everyone else had gotten it horribly wrong.

  Yeah, no one was going to do anything. Especially those with something to lose. Because everyone’s got something to lose, don’t they?

  Enter Puncher.

  Puncher’s that guy. The kind of guy you know made sergeant on skills displayed when everything went pear-shaped. But also, the kind of guy who dangled between PFC and private for his entire first enlistment because, as the records file indicated, “Legionnaire has discipline problems. Retention questionable.”

  Kinda guy who did all the things the safety brief before planetside leave stated he wasn’t supposed to do. Even marry a Tennarian dancer.

  Did that.

  She still got half his pay.

  Puncher’s first enlistment didn’t go so hot—unless you happened to be the point LT who got into the heat with Puncher as his driver. At that time, Puncher had been awaiting Code Violations and Military Justice Articles Review. And the point LT, well, when the shooting started outside an angry village of Hools, he found out Puncher was called that for a reason. Because the legionnaire didn’t like taking incoming fire, and so he grabbed the LT and threw him in the mud right next to him while the Hool village lit up a Legion platoon doing a banned weapons check.