Madame Guillotine

by Jason Anspach

  “Don’t worry. Joba protect you. Hooman.”

  But Rechs had a suspicion Joba wasn’t going to do anything of the sort. He felt that what was coming next was pretty clear. And this was an excellent place for it to happen.

  Ahead, between two massive cooling towers that rose out of the deep subterranean power core still far below, Rechs spotted hundreds of pairs of eyes in the darkness. In the gray and green wash of night vision, they appeared to be the eyes of demons, alight with fire.

  All of them were watching him.

  Giles had probably had some little toll booth game out here. The smuggler knew what the moktaar wanted. Meat. Human flesh. And in return, Giles kept the smuggled goods.

  Rechs wondered if the old man at the bar knew. Took his credit chit and sent him to die all the same. He hoped not. He liked that old man.

  There wasn’t much of a way through the awaiting moktaar without killing them outright. And even then, a swarm of the things wouldn’t be an easy assault to repel.

  “Old one,” Rechs growled over his bucket’s external speaker.

  “Yes, hooman?”

  “This little trap you’re leading me into… you’ll be the first to die.”

  Then he stepped forward swiftly and grabbed the moktaar by the neck, shoving the barrel of the shotgun into the shaman’s spindly rib cage at the same time.

  The chorus of screeching that came next was unholy. It erupted from everywhere all at once, bouncing off the far walls of the immense complex and into its many halls and chambers.

  Rechs did a slow turn to show all those demonic little eyes his prisoner. If they came at him all at once, they’d win through sheer numbers. That’s how they’d managed to finally put up a fight against the wobanki. Ferocity in numbers.

  Rechs was down in the deep. There was a real chance he’d never make it out alive. And no one would know. Unless his theory about Giles was correct. And then the gangster would probably make a few trades to get Rechs’s armor and bones. Dead or alive—that was the bounty. The smuggler would land himself a fortune.

  Not that any of that mattered to someone like Rechs. The only failure his mind would register when the monkeys swarmed and dragged him down, gnashing fangs and battering quick paws, attempting to figure how to get his armor off… would be that those leejes would get left hung out to dry by the scumbags in the House of Reason. Props for the next election cycle. KIAs without cause.

  “The children don’t care, hooman,” croaked the old moktaar, struggling in his grip. “They’re all mad now. Lost their hooman ways once the work stopped. Back to the jungles and deserts of our old worlds. Only… down here now. This is the dark jungle. And we owns it all.”

  He began to titter as Rechs jerked him this way and that, showing the weapon and making clear what he would do to their priest.

  Ranks of feral simianoids pushed forward from every direction.

  Maybe they’ve gone so wild they’ve forgotten what weapons do, thought Rechs for a brief cold-water moment.

  One of the younger moks, an aggressive male, surged out from the darkness and provided Rechs a chance to give another object lesson over what a scattergun did to an enemy closing with intent to kill. Rechs blew the thing’s brain and chest all over the floor. Hairy bowed legs went down with little else that remained of the corpse. Smoking blast vapor rose from the scattergun as Rechs jerked it forward and back in one practiced movement, racking another charge pack.

  Five packs left and then he’d have to go for the hand cannon. He could pull the Jackknife and lay down a ton of fire… for a little while. But in a full moktaar rage, would they even care? They’d just keep coming and coming.

  Rechs and his prisoner, the scrawny spindly old monkey-man, reached the top of the platform. They had let him go that far. So maybe the shaman was lying about how important he was. The bounty hunter could see one possible way out of this, but his window was closing fast. At the top of the platform was a large transport tube. Down the center ran a maglev rail where work crews were once brought into this section of the foundry to begin their workdays.

  The clustering moktaar snarled as they closed their net. They looked like a furry sea, weaving back and forth as they shambled forward with broken pipes, jagged cuts of steel, and anything else that could be turned into a rude Stone Age weapon.

  Suddenly Rechs flung the old monkey shaman away, ripped a banger from his carrying harness, thumbed it into activation, and tossed it into the crowd. Then he was running fast for the one possible exit.

  If the screeching had been unholy before the banger went off, it was pure descent-into-madness lunacy after. This bought Rechs a little time, and he didn’t waste it.

  Arms pumping and legs moving like pistons, Rechs ran into the entrance to the tube. Seconds later the monkeys were flooding in after him, sending a sonic wave of enraged insanity after him as he went.

  It was like fleeing from a screeching madhouse into the unknown, half expecting something far worse to be waiting in there.

  There was still some guardian ahead. Giles called it one thing, the old moktaar another. That came to Rechs’s mind as he fought to make it through the monkey noose closing about his neck.

  The Watcher in the Water, one had called it.

  The Sleeper in the Deep for the other.

  As Rechs reached the far end of the short tunnel at the top of the platforms, he spun and fired a blast into the mass of surging moktaar at his heels. The scatterblaster tore several of his pursuers to pieces and sent the others scrambling away from his fierce presence for a moment. That gave Rechs just enough time to reach the exit from the transport tube.

  He found himself in an open area that crossed a raised bridge. Beneath the bridge, dark waters spread away into a massive subterranean lake that must have been built to assist in the cooling operations for the foundry. Whatever was down below, Dreamer or Watcher, it would present itself shortly if it was going to.

  Running fast, Rechs tried to put as much distance as possible between himself and his mass of his pursuers. He made the bridge as the savage moktaar surged out of the tube behind him. There were hundreds of moktaar now, shooting out of the tunnel and swarming every direction all at once like some living infectious virus that could not be contained. Some screeching moktaar ran across the tracks of the bridge, loping fast to catch up with him, while others swung along the rail and supports below, hoping to get ahead with their natural monkey jungle-tree-swinging skills. Still others seemed to swim along the walls, moving like vipers as they took the long way around in an effort to circumvent his escape.

  In other words, they were trying to cut him off every which way they could.

  Rechs fired into a gaggle of the feral aliens and blew several off into the dark waters of the brooding lake. Various body parts followed their larger parts with a series of light splashes.

  Ahead lay Rechs’s next obstacle. As if things weren’t difficult enough, a portion of the bridge had collapsed into the waters long ago.

  Or was dragged down into it, some distant part of his mind thought darkly.

  A rickety rope bridge, probably one of Giles’s additions, had been suspended over the gap. Rechs chanced it and flung himself across it at full speed, feeling his chest heave and his breath come in ragged gasps as he pushed himself to keep moving.

  Some voice was telling him he could only run so far and so fast. And that even with the augmented strength of the armor, by running blindly he could end up in one of their traps, and then they’d swarm. But he ignored that voice, because listening was the first step in quitting. He would have to spend some jump juice. He knew that. But he was saving that to put some final distance between himself and the raging moktaar at the last second. And he was hoping maybe something would happen so he wouldn’t have to use it after all.

  Halfway across the rope bridge it collapsed, or was cut somewhere b
ehind him, and Rechs threw himself forward onto its falling breadth, staring upward at the ceiling as he clung to what remained of the rickety span as it slammed into the far pylon of the actual bridge.

  Moktaar behind him went shrieking into the water, screeching and enraged.

  Rechs didn’t have time for the wind to be knocked out of him even though it felt like it had been. He pulled hard, hoping what remained of the rope bridge didn’t give up its anchors. Suicidal moktaar flung themselves with abandon from far behind, thinking they could make the gap. They splashed into the dark waters below, and Rechs heard them claw at the surface in self-righteous fury.

  He would hold on. He had to.

  24

  Dawn was just breaking over Detron. Marine SLICs crossed above the city, still looking for any sign of the four missing legionnaires and one missing marine. Three were known to have been captured. Two, both leejes, were presumed dead. Their life signs had gone dark during the firefight.

  The captive leejes’ life signs were a different story. Someone who knew what they were doing had switched them off. And of course, the marine didn’t even report life signs to the Legion net.

  On Dock Street—the new focus of the protestor gatherings now that the galactic government had all but surrendered the streets and the city proper, like the local government had done before it—massive crowds geared in red and black surged out into the golden dawn light amid the smoke of cook fires and lotus they spent the night with, singing their resistance chants to the accompaniment of drum circles that seemed to form whenever and wherever. Sounds coming from anything that could be improvised to roll out a beat.

  General Charles Sheehan, commander on the ground of Repub marine forces, was busy fighting with the House of Reason delegates who’d been sent to Detron on a fact-finding mission. It was this delegation, led by Arjun Kun, chief investigator for the diplomatic corps, that had insisted the marines pull back their presence on the streets to de-escalate the brewing conflagration.

  “Brewing?” exclaimed Sheehan incredulously. “I don’t know if your understanding of current events is clear, Delegate Kun, but we’ve got six dead marines, four missing legionnaires, two of whom might still be alive, a missing marine who may also be alive, multiple civilian casualties, robbery, assault, mass looting, and no control over several fires currently consuming downtown structures. To use the word ‘brewing’ indicates that you somehow see things getting worse than they currently are. Are you aware of something I am not? Perhaps the House of Reason has opted to give the ‘People’s Council,’ as these rioters are now calling themselves, the self-destruct codes to the four reactors still currently providing power to the city? Because yes, then you’d be correct in describing the situation as ‘brewing,’ because that would indicate things are going to get a whole hell of a lot worse and far beyond the marines’ ability to influence outcomes.”

  “Investigator,” replied Kun calmly from behind his wire-rimmed smartlenses. Entirely unnecessary. A fashion statement. People no longer wore glasses unless they wanted to. “Chief Investigator Kun. I request that you, General Sheehan, refer to me, and my team, by our proper titles as mandated by the House of Reason’s Diplomatic Relations Committee. I am a delegate, yes. But I’m here as chief investigator.”

  The general couldn’t believe he was being talked down to by a mincing functionary who clearly had no idea how serious things had gotten. Brigadier Sheehan had been a no-holds-barred brawler who’d fought at Psydon, Muskovoplex, and a dozen other little adventures the House of Reason had seen fit to involve the marines in. Word was he was being fast tracked for a Military Council seat to advise and consort with the highest chambers within the House of Reason after this situation cleared up.

  But though that might be his job one day, it certainly wasn’t his job today. Sheehan was boiling over and fed up with the game that needed to be played. The House of Reason had read him wrong. He wasn’t a political animal. He was just capable and had yet to fail. He certainly wasn’t their man, yet here he was being told exactly the opposite—that he was indeed their man. So, shut up and let this Diplomatic Relations Committee steer things toward what the vast chamber of the House of Reason wanted. Which was a colossal failure, designed as such in order to make the current leadership look bad… and perhaps debut a new rising star.

  They’re setting things up for that little troublemaker kelhorn Hamachi-Roi, thought the general as he forced the look of disbelief off his face and ordered military bearing to take its place.

  Sure, he’d surrendered the streets. Pulled the platoons and squads off the SLICs and given up the rooftops and forward observation posts. That was obeying direct orders. But he wasn’t going to be complicit in letting the situation turn into some kind of political rally. Figure out a way to prevent that from happening and keep command of the situation, ready to take military action if the opportunity presented itself… that was of paramount importance to Sheehan.

  That, and keeping the legionnaires in line. They were breathing down his neck to get in there and find their missing men. And Sheehan knew the Legion. They’d be sending in a Dark Ops team to go looking as soon as they could get one into the system. Already one of the regular leejes was missing, even though it was being covered up by the guys in his detachment.

  The general realized he had not been entirely right when dressing down “Chief Investigator Kun.” Things could still get messy. Another captured legionnaire, or a massacre caught live by the media jackals, and all hell really could break loose.

  But if that’s what it took to get any of the missing five back… then Sheehan was fine with that.

  Screw promotion.

  “Listen… Investigator Kun,” Sheehan slowly began as he walked with the gaggle of government functionaries in their high-end-clothing-store adventure gear. Tan slacks. Dress shirts. Photojournalist vests stuffed with nasal retrovirals in case they came in contact with anything that was dangerous, or simply smelled bad.

  Just like the star of the stream they all wanted to be. That’s how they’d all looked when they were shown into the command TOC. Like the entertainments star who always went around uncovering all the military’s crimes against the galaxy and making sure every marine or legionnaire, not so much the navy or army, were that week’s bad guy. While still saying they respected the military on the whole and everyone’s service of course. Except that every real bad guy seemed to be in the military, using military skills to run amok and perpetrate all kinds of crimes from serial killing to bank heists.

  Ridiculous stuff.

  Ninety percent of his men and women would do little more than drink themselves to death on planetside leave in preparation for some epic quest to do the dumbest things possible. And on that list of dumb, drunk things to do, executing a casino robbery ranked at least six hundred and eighty-seven spots behind seeing how many stuffed Bannorian aphroshrimp they could feed a Tennarian call girl.

  What was the name of that stupid anti-military entertainment? The Right Side. That was it. With a hero, Cryson Hitch, who always seemed to have just the right insult for that week’s straw man military war criminal. The junior enlisted mafia had taken to calling any shamer a “Hitch” as of late.

  As he planted himself in front of Arjun’s crew, he couldn’t help but think that personally, as a marine and not a general, he’d like to beat the living sket out of all of them. Just for GP. General Purposes. And he was sure the look on his face said as much. So, he swapped it out again and got it right this time by clamping what was left of his cigar in his mouth to force himself to shut up. That did the trick, or so he told himself.

  “General…” one of his staff officers whispered in his ear. Probably trying to dial him back from a career-ending tirade in which Sheehan let these civilian document-pushers know exactly why they had freedom, and why that freedom depended on men like him doing exactly what needed to be done at this very moment. Which entai
led, in Sheehan’s operational vision, a full-scale street sweep with pulse and hydro cannons set to high into the heart of the seething downtown district and a nice game of find-the-HVT with his best door-kickers. He’d call it Operation Barracks Party so his men and women would know exactly what his intent was regarding the protestors on the street.

  “General… I think you ought to see something right now,” prompted the slight staff officer at his elbow.

  The general turned and searched his aide’s eyes for some reason why he should be interrupted. He wasn’t arrogant… he just didn’t like to be disturbed in the middle of a good imaginary beat-down.

  Behind the aide, a cluster of staff officers inside the MTOC, Mobile Tactical Operations Center, a heavily armored transport rigged for urban warfare operations, gathered around a bank of monitors assigned to monitor civilian news streams. Sometimes those proved to be excellent sources of intel. Sadly.

  Ignoring the “chief investigator” and his clutch of government peacocks, General Sheehan strode away to the monitor and pressed forward through an ad hoc viewing party comprising his staff.

  “Damn,” he muttered a second later.

  On screen the battered body of a legionnaire was being dragged through a mass of protestors on the street. The corpse was being pulled by two grav cycles, and resisters in red and black were kicking the dead legionnaire while others hit him with anything they could get their hands on as he passed by. The helmet was gone, yet the face was unrecognizable. The rest of the armor had been savaged but still clung to the lifeless body as the grav cycles gunned their motivators and dragged the dead legionnaire onward.

  Chief Investigator Arjun Kun had been right, thought the general soberly. “Brewing” had been an apt description of everything that had preceded this moment. Right now, the live feed of a dead legionnaire being dragged by citizens of the Republic was going out across the galaxy.