Madame Guillotine

by Jason Anspach

  “Missin’ in action,” Lopez had coughed almost deliriously, and then gone quiet on her. That was hours ago, when they’d first arrived at this location.

  She’d wondered for a moment if maybe Lopez was so unimpressed with the way her “rescue” had turned out that he’d simply up and died out of disgust for her incompetence.

  Silly thought.

  But she was embarrassed enough to have it. Self-critical enough to think it was possible that all of this, even the riot, had somehow been her fault.

  Her people, her family, they were the type who took responsibility. They had to, out on that hard and unforgiving frontier world she’d come from. She’d enlisted in the Repub marines to get away from it for a bit. If only to have one adventure that didn’t involve the quarry, the grange, or any of the other no-account landmarks within fifty kilometers of where she was born.

  Just one adventure. Like her dad had once had.

  On that hard farming world you took responsibility for everything. It was the first step in making things right when the fields flooded in winter. Or fixing things without a spare part for several parsecs. There wasn’t anyone else to blame in the nine nearest systems.

  “Are you dead?” she’d outright asked in the darkness that surrounded them. Because… maybe he was. Maybe she was that much of a failure. “Lopez…”

  Maybe… maybe he was.

  “Nah,” Lopez said after a moment. “But I might as well be. Sergeant ain’t supposed to come back without his men. Legion don’t like that.”

  Maybe all of this was her fault. Even this part.

  “We don’t know…” she said after a moment of thinking what to say and how to say it. “Anything.”

  But what she really meant was, We don’t know if Beers is dead. Not for sure.

  “I already lost Cave and Lightspeed,” Lopez said, his voice a croaking whisper. “Speed’s vitals grayed out during the ambush. So he’s dead. I looked over and saw Cave got his head blown off by a high-powered blaster at close range. Musta been from one of the ground-floor shooters.” He coughed. “Was an ambush. Plain and simple. Led us right into it. Fell for it like a damn basic.”

  He didn’t say anything after that. Because what could you say? And she felt the same as Lopez. Going over everything she’d done only confirmed that she’d done everything wrong.

  That brief conversation had been followed by long hours of darkness and thinking in which each of them judged themselves with little pity or mercy. Reviewed their actions as leaders and found them wanting.

  Now she was being dragged down a tight brick corridor barely illuminated by wan light sources. She was surrounded by masked pros, working fast and efficiently to get her hustled down the dingy hall. In a small room at its end, she was ener-chained to a chair and blinded by a massive, hot, white spotlight.

  “What were you doing over Detron yesterday?” asked Mean Eyes. She recognized his voice. She couldn’t see him, couldn’t see anything but the bright white light. Couldn’t shield her eyes. Wanted to desperately, but could only look down where the glare was a little less. Then she could see the dark silhouettes of the masked figures all around her. The telltale outline of their blasters at the ready.

  “Where?” she asked weakly, acting a little worse off than she already felt. Maybe that would buy her something.

  A solid backhand sent her head to one side. Her ears rang and that side of her face felt numb. She could taste blood in her mouth and her heart was suddenly running like a drive motivator on jump.

  It felt like she’d been hit with a chunk of wood rather than a hand.

  Perhaps she had.

  “You’re not regular marine combat infantry. You’re not an officer. We spotted your SLIC come down on the rooftop above our ambush. So what were you doing over Detron, Sergeant?”

  “Medic,” she tried.

  Silence. Mean Eyes laughed, but no one else did. It was a graveyard chuckle. She could hear the soft scrape of his hard boots as he walked around her inside the tiny bare room. His glove made a leathery rasp as he pulled it off. Then another.

  “Medic, huh? Operating off what was clearly not a medical SLIC with no med bot on board. Or even a crew chief. Or the standard one-door gunner. And we take you with an N-18 slung around your back. But that’s what you want to go with for this round? Medic?”

  She nodded and spat out a raspy “Yeah” like some gambler who was going to play her hand confidently, despite how bad it really was.

  “Round two, then,” muttered Mean Eyes, and she was hit again. Except this time the blow smashed down on her shoulder and it felt like her whole spine on that side had suddenly been dislocated. The blow knocked her senseless and rang every pain center her body had never told her she’d had.

  “By the way… Sergeant Almond… there are only ten rounds. Round ten… I tire of your evasions and blow your head off. Sooooo… I’d think more about cute answers real hard before I use all that E-and-E gibberish they tell you works. It doesn’t. Everybody talks. In the end, every… body… talks. Copy?”

  She wanted to cry. Right then and there. And she hated herself because she wanted to. People in the room probably thought the brief look of contempt and disgust that crossed her face was for them and Mean Eyes. But it wasn’t.

  Don’t be weak, Amanda, said her dad’s voice. Don’t be weak when they’re strong. We’re descended from the first colonists on this world. We came here with nothin’. And we made somethin’ outta nothin’. They can’t take that away from you. From us. We’ll always be free, Manda. Even when we ain’t. Copy, little girl?

  And hearing his voice in her head… well, that made her want to cry even more. One tear escaped, and there was nothing she could do to prevent its jailbreak from her eye.

  Mean Eyes leaned in close.

  “There’s no shame in it, Sergeant Almond. No shame at all. Believe me… I understand.”

  She shook her head and ginned up her old self. What her dad used to call her stubborn look. And sometimes her “up to your own ways, Manda Panda, ain’t you?” look.

  “Going forward,” continued Mean Eyes in an almost grandfatherly tone, “I want you to know there’s no shame if you want to cry. I’m going to hurt you in order to find out everything I need to. And when you start to scream… or when you beg me to stop… or even when you cry, Sergeant Almond… there’s no shame. I understand. So you just go ahead and cry and scream and beg for mercy if you have to, okay?”

  And then…

  “Third round, Sergeant.”

  The blow landed on the other shoulder.

  “Seven left to go. What were your orders as a Reaper?”

  31

  Rechs was moving swiftly through the surging crowd, tracking in on the earner he’d identified. Figuring him to be connected to the pros working to agitate the uninformed masses into a mob that could be weaponized for political gain.

  Rechs thought of them as maggots. Wherever the corpse of the Republic was rotting, they would be found. Consuming the decay, spreading the breakdown. He could never understand why they felt the need to destroy society. To ruin what he and Casper and many others over the long years of the Savage Wars had forged through sacrifice. A dam to keep back the darkness and make the galaxy a safer place for civilization to flourish. A place with room to grow. To spread out. And to somehow avoid the fate of the Ancients, whatever that fate might have been.

  This mob had no idea what lay out there in the darkness beyond the civilized worlds of the core and mid-core. No idea how fragile the Republic really was when it came right down to it.

  He’d spotted the kid, the earner, near the front of some action going down along a side street. Some local citizen, not connected with the riots but rather altogether tired of them, had come out to try and keep the front of his building free of protesters. It seemed like he was trying to get a sick older pers
on into a sled and maybe make it off to the last running hospital in the city limits. Most of the residents had barred themselves indoors, determined to hole up inside their towers, floors, and even stores, until the Republic decided to establish control of the streets. They were hoping their taxes meant something.

  But this citizen took a stand. However small and limited. And a fight had broken out between him and a group of jackals in red and black looking to vent their frustrations on whomever they could now that the marines had pulled back behind the Docks and their wire. This citizen provided a convenient target for their taunts, insults, and even a couple of punches.

  A media crew filmed the whole incident. They didn’t bother to de-escalate it or render aid in the slightest. To Rechs, they were as bad as the jackals in black and red.

  That was when Rechs spotted him—the earner. He looked like one of the kids—he was a kid himself—but he came in like a predator. From behind. Like a shark attacking from an unconsidered angle. While the citizen, a large beefy man, was fending off the group of youths spitting in his face and trying to work up the courage to rush him, the pro who was just a kid came in from behind and smashed a bottle of yellowish liquid all over the man’s shining bald skull. Instantly the man was down and the jackals he was facing were all over him, kicking, stomping, and throwing useless punches with nothing behind them. Not because they wouldn’t have punched harder if they could. They’d just never learned to.

  Brave, thought Rechs sarcastically as he tagged the earner in the armor’s HUD and moved off into the shadows.

  What marked the kid as a pro was how he attacked and then quickly darted off into the crowd. The media crew hadn’t been fast enough to capture a clear image of him. To focus on the agitator who’d made the sudden spree of violence possible. Instead they’d seen the blur and then the sudden melee on the ground, and of course they focused their attention there as some hero-journalist tried to act like he was reporting live from a war zone. Pretending to be in personal danger despite the team of private armed contractors watching over him and the crew.

  But again, none of that was Rechs’s concern. The earner was everything. The kid was already off and moving through the crowd. Tossing pyrotechnics and pushing groups of kids forward to go after some other resident, or to target the minimal police presence that was, despite orders to stand down, trying to guard some of the higher-profile buildings surrounding the central protest if only because there ought to be at least one small part of the city that didn’t fall to madness.

  Rechs hit the street and followed the kid for an hour. The earner was busy like a mummy-bee looking for corpses. Moving everywhere. Stirring up trouble and never sticking around long enough to see the end of it.

  Starting it was enough. “Starting” was probably the extent of his orders.

  The earner had long loping strides, and his backpack seemed to be a never-ending bag of trouble. Small explosives. More bottles. Even a collapsible iron pipe he handed off to someone who was about to go to work on a storefront in full view of the police and over a sonic background dominated by a speaker talking about things like “basic human rights” and “alien fairness.” And of course, wealth redistribution.

  The people here, surmised Rechs as he followed the oblivious kid through the crowd like a shark swimming through dark waters, looking for its next victim, liked to think they were fighting for some kind of system of justice where everything must be given to them. Their outrage was over the fact that they had to demand it in the first place. It was a right. A basic right.

  That was the political veneer, as far as Rechs was concerned. But really, he concluded, they were just fighting to take something away from people who had something.

  He’d seen a lot of it in his time. It was cyclical. Had been there leading up to the downfall of old Earth, before so much history was lost to time and the chaotic nature of the Great Migration. Tyrus Rechs knew the inevitable outcome. The only variable was the body count.

  Thousands if you were lucky.

  Millions if you kept it to a single city like Detron.

  Billions if it spread across systems.

  Untold losses during a galaxy-wide war.

  And each time it started over, it was because of a proud certainty that this time, they were going to get it right. Succeed where others had failed. Because history is a liar if you haven’t swum in its currents long enough. Especially when you don’t agree with the conclusions.

  Nobody cares, old man, Rechs told himself.

  He closed in on the kid. It was important to be close now. To execute the next step. The takedown. Then move to a temporary secure location for a quick chemical interrogation.

  That was all there was time for. Because time was running out for the legionnaires. There was no doubt about it. This crowd wanted blood, and the only blood currently available to them was their own. Plenty of fights between competing groups under the same Soshie banner were already taking place. Purging. Seeking a greater purity. Like the Savages had before they finally united and let loose true terror on the galaxy.

  But more blood would be needed in order to keep the energy and momentum up. In order to prop up the belief that change was really happening. That old every-time lie of the constant demagogue. And those who’d taken the legionnaires and the marine… they were in the best position to deliver that blood. Rechs had no doubt they would do so at a time most opportune to whatever their agenda was.

  Another high-profile music act was coming on stage as a speaker walked off to thunderous applause. Head down in humility like he’d just read out the Andaara Address after the bloody battle that drove the Savages of Id off Britannia and freed the last of the old core worlds. Back in the early days.

  Back when…

  Rechs saw his moment. Forming the takedown on the fly. Everything was too chaotic, too fluid. He had to improvise as he moved. Not the bounty hunter’s best play, but the one he had to make if he was going to get hands on the missing legionnaires and pull them out of this mess.

  “Tyrus.”

  It was Lyra over the comm. Now that he was above ground, he had comms with the ship again.

  “I’m tracking you. Our docking berth is still secure. The quarantine ruse is working. Also I have a comm request from the Guild. Ready to connect.”

  “Not now,” grunted Rechs as he sprinted for the kid, who was only ten meters ahead but moving away from him. Most likely leaving the festival atmosphere to connect with someone or pick up more supplies.

  The mark was on the outskirts of the mass of disgruntled “freedom fighters” when Rechs rammed his armored shoulder into the kid’s side, sending him flying through an already shattered glass window of a looted liquor store.

  The kid stumbled into the darkness, smashed into something, and went sprawling. Rechs had hit him with everything he had, and for a moment he was concerned he might have paralyzed the kid and made him unable to talk.

  The bounty hunter checked the street to see if anyone was feeling heroic enough to come to a fellow rioter’s aid. But no one did. No one even seemed to notice, which was a good break to catch.

  Rechs stepped through the shattered glass store front and found the kid lying tangled in a rack that had once held snacks. He was bleeding from a dozen little cuts. Probably from the shattered glass on the floor.

  Rechs moved quickly, assessing and then hauling the dazed kid to his feet in one jerk and dragging him through the smashed and shattered debris into the darkness at the back of the store. And then even farther back into a shadowy storeroom the looters hadn’t yet fully stripped.

  The kid was dazed and confused. Unsure if Rechs was helping. He quickly realized the man dragging him like a rag doll wasn’t looking out for his best interests and began to squeal in protest.

  “Hey, man… wh-what’re you doing?” cried the indignant little turd who’d just smashed a bottle of piss ov
er an unsuspecting citizen’s head so the guy could get curb-stomped by a pack of gutless jackals who thought they were really something.

  Some part of Rechs’s mind told him he was taking this personally. No matter whatever else he might tell himself. And that wasn’t good. Professional was always better than personal. Mistakes were made when it was personal. And since other lives besides his were on the line, he needed to keep it professional.

  Rechs threw the kid into a pile of stacked liquor boxes. The bottles shattered as they tumbled out of their packaging, and the place smelled like bad Calpurian synth gin. The kind of stuff that rotted your gut on just one pull. Ghetto bums drank it because it was the only thing they could afford.

  He stowed his scatterblaster on his back, letting the magnetic smart clamps grab it with a dull clack. Then he got down to business, popping one of the armor’s pneumatic cargo slots and pulling out an interrogation kit the size of a miniature datapad. Rechs flipped the lid, removed the parallax hypo, and hit the kid with a full dose.

  The kid fought for a few seconds, throwing a sudden fury of kicks and blows against Rechs’s armor, hurting himself more than anything else. But once the small yet powerful hypo went to work, he was finished with all that.

  Parallax immobilized everything except sensory and cognitive functions. The House of Reason had declared possession of it to be a criminal offense worthy of twenty years in the mines on Herbeer or a penal equivalent. Dark Ops used it until the law was passed. After that, it was only used by the House’s pets in Nether Ops, especially on the secret rendition worlds. That was okay because, after all, it was being used on the House’s behalf, and well out of the public eye. It was a crime when someone else did it; it was state security when they needed it done.

  Still… Rechs had his sources.

  The parallax would take two minutes to fully complete its work, but after the first twenty seconds the kid wasn’t moving at all. Rechs stepped over to the supply room door to check the street in front of the smashed-up liquor store. Nothing to see there but more protesters streaming down the street beyond the broken shards of glass they’d helped create.