Madame Guillotine

by Jason Anspach

  Most of them seemed to be headed toward the big concert that was now working itself up into some kind of tribal thunder of rage and indignation crying out at all the wrongs that had ever been done to anyone. Both real and imagined. Promising vengeance on everyone who didn’t think the way they did. Some singer was shouting these things more than singing. Running through a list of atrocities that had nothing to do with the House of Reason, Senate, or the Legion, but would nevertheless serve for present needs.

  Rechs returned to the dark supply room. Phase two of the interrogation was next.

  He kept the interrogation mini-kit in one glove as he waited for the powerful narcotic to take its full effect. After two minutes had elapsed, he hit the kid with the next hypo. There were three in the full kit.

  This second hypo contained an off-market drug called NX34. It broke down the mind quickly, giving the interrogator full access to everything they wanted from the subject. It also destroyed short-term memory for up to forty-eight hours before and after usage.

  And there were other side effects.

  This was also a banned substance.

  Rechs got answers fast. So fast it was like the guy wanted to tell him everything all at once. Had to get it off his chest. Like he was dying if he didn’t.

  “I work for Zij. Zij is the main man for the ground team,” he babbled nigh incoherently. “Zij works with Franko and Dumali. They run with the crew that’s come in from headquarters.”

  The kid was sweating now. His eyes rolling and wildly seeking things not there as he talked faster and faster. Answering Rechs’s questions with little difficulty and few breaths between.

  “Yeah-yeah-yeah… this whole thing is being financed by big off-world credits. I’m from here, but I met some of the show runners. They ain’t from Detron.”

  “When’s their move?” Rechs asked, not bothering to give his voice an edge or intimidating growl. The kid would answer regardless.

  “I was just settin’ up for what’s comin’ next. They’re gonna make a statement in two hours… only, that might have been two hours ago—what is it now? Could be anytime, I guess. Big statement. Yeah. Real big. Like mammoth. Set this whole thing on fire. You’ll see! You’ll all see… gonna burn the galaxy down to the ground and the Legion with it.”

  “Where’re they being kept?”

  He watched the kid’s eyes as they rolled and fought hard not to tell him. But in the end the kid collapsed and had to give up what little he did know.

  “D-d-don’t know. N-not for sure. They were at Basement Six. Saw ’em there once.”

  “How many?”

  “Two. Two Legion kelhorned Legion boys and th-the… the… the… girl. The marine. Yeah I saw ’em there down in Basement Six but I know they got moved. Wasn’t safe. Soshies started talkin’ too much. Bragging. Had to have ’em there, though. Rah-rah for the kids to make ’em think they’re in the underground resistance. Freedom fighters.”

  The kid started laughing, the veins in his neck and forehead bulging. “They don’t know anything about anything. Posers. Losers. Rich kids. Screw ’em. They’re not switched on to the big scene.”

  Again he laughed like a madman.

  “So where are they now?” asked Rechs patiently.

  “Don’t know. Told ya.”

  “Who does know?”

  “Rat-t-t-clopp. Rattclopp knows.”

  A device in Rechs’s kit, monitoring his subject’s vitals, beeped to indicate a dangerously high heart rate. Rechs would need to wean him off the drug soon. Or maybe he should just let the bastard’s heart explode.

  “Rattclopp knows everything. Yeah. He knows where they went after that. He’s your man. You should… should… shouldgogetem!”

  Rechs stood. His legs were stiff.

  The kid wanted to twitch and writhe. His skin was crawling but his muscles wouldn’t move. He was frozen and yet all his senses were on overdrive. The ground would feel, to him, like it was made of molten lava. The intel was good. Pain clarified things for people and made cowards of those who’d vowed to stand up to what little the Republic could officially do. The Truth and Safety Councils had hamstrung most intel operations along with law enforcement, until in the end the lawbreakers had more rights than the average citizen. If you were in their hands, officially, you had nothing to fear.

  But this kid wasn’t in their hands. He was in Rechs’s.

  And right now, lying on the floor and wanting to fling himself about in utter agony despite his total immobility save his speaking functions, his only respite came from answering questions. Doing so released pain-killing endorphins that created the illusion he wasn’t suffering as much as when he failed to comply. Screaming made the pain worse. His mind was being trained, quickly, to give up everything he knew.

  Rechs got a detailed description of Rattclopp and a breakdown of Basement Six. Only then did the bounty hunter pull the third hypo and give the kid’s neck a quick jab.

  Instant lights out.

  The kid would wake up in two days as weak as a lamb and with no memory of anything that had transpired between them.

  Rechs stowed the used interrogation kit and hit the streets again, closing in on his target inch by inch.

  32

  The politician came back onto the stage. She came reluctantly. Or at least, that had been her intended effect. To look as though she didn’t want to be there, in the limelight, but that fate and the galaxy had brought her unwillingly to this moment. To this sacred duty. She was a better actor than she’d ever be a politician. But maybe both are really one and the same.

  Maybe.

  The singer of the jam band who’d played every riot or rally on every world for twenty years and yet lived on a private estate somewhere on beautiful Pthalo when he wasn’t performing as the everyman rebel voice of the disenfranchised, introduced her as the woman of the hour.

  “The one true voice in a house full of corruption and lies. The voice,” he crooned at the last, “of us all!”

  The crowd went nuts, and Syl Hamachi-Roi came forward out of her security cordon and to the front of the stage.

  She wasn’t even supposed to be here. Or so it was made to seem. She’d come on a fact-finding mission whether the House of Reason had wanted her to or not. That was the reason she was on Detron, so far removed from the sector of space that had elected her its junior delegate.

  Hers was one of the new voices that was the opposite of the old guard who didn’t comprehend the needs of the people of the galaxy.

  She’d come here for them. In defiance of the old guard, and for the love of the people.

  She started her speech. Telling them again that she heard them. And from there it was a short bus ride to a list of grievances that must be addressed. Demands she had recounted throughout her election campaign and on every holostream she’d appeared on after that. Demands that must be met.

  Stop the endless wars.

  Eliminate poverty.

  Abolish ignorance.

  Strip wealth from those greedily clinging to it.

  Pundits would naturally give their counterarguments. She wanted to stop wars but had no plans to deal with the bad actors who constantly initiated them. The galactic standard of living had never been better, and the standard of living for those in poverty today—in the core worlds, at least—exceeded that of any time in known history. Ignorance was defined according to her definition and standards. And stripping wealth, well, that wasn’t much different from what the House of Reason had been doing for decades.

  But those contrarian pundits weren’t on stage with her. She stood alone. It was the hour of the poor and she was their voice. She would give them everything. She had heard them. Now the galaxy would hear them.

  “And if they don’t hear us,” she called to the crowd baying for the blood of their leadership, ironically mistaking her, one of th
e most political of animals in the House of Reason, for one of them, “then we will take their heads!”

  The crowd didn’t just roar. They thundered. They would have their blood. They would have their demands. They would have it all. No matter the cost.

  An hour later, while Tyrus Rechs had the building where Basement Six was located under surveillance, Lyra opened the hypercomm, and Gabriella fed him a video that had just hit the streams only fifteen minutes ago.

  33

  Rechs waited in the shadows across the street from Basement Six. It was after noon, and the heat was still rising. Overhead, marines flying fully loaded SLIC gunships crossed over the buildings and rioter-swollen streets. Looking like they were storming the sands at Aeroc all over again.

  The bounty hunter noted the change in military posture. Something was up.

  That was when Gabriella fed him the live stream hitting the galaxy.

  “Here it is, Tyrus,” she said. She was every inch a pro at her job, but he could tell she’d been crying. Her voice was dry and husky. Hollow and angry. A small sniffle. Her words halted. “It’s… bad, Tyrus. Real…” She paused. “Bad.”

  And then the download began to run in a corner of Rechs’s HUD.

  The video shows one of the legionnaires. He’s been forced down onto a flat table in a nondescript room. His baby face—because don’t they all look like babies to a man who’s been fighting for two thousand years?—stares into the camera recording the scene. And yeah… there’s fear in his eyes.

  That’s a part of being brave. Don’t let anybody lie to you about that.

  “Absence of it just means you’re a fool,” an old sergeant major once taught Rechs long ago.

  But the kid is scared. Two red-and-black Soshies are holding him down. Except these two only look like Soshies. They’re not. Or at least, not just Soshies. They’re trained. A third one comes into frame and loops a leather belt about the legionnaire’s neck. Then moves to the front of the table and pulls firmly, stretching the kid’s neck. Practically pulling him across the table.

  Rechs can feel his hand tightening on the scatterblaster he’s about to use in order to bust his way into his latest objective along the trail to rescue. He’s seen these kinds of videos more than he cares to remember. They never end well. And Gabriella already gave him the spoilers with how shaken up she sounded.

  He tells himself to breathe. To think. To capture every detail. He’ll need all of it later when it comes time to pay back. But he doesn’t want to breathe and be calm and make a list. He wants to set the galaxy on fire like he did once long ago. He feels that old hate welling up within him that he only ever really unleashed on the long-dead Savages.

  It ain’t wrong to hate what’s wrong.

  Words he once lived by.

  Another Soshie, this one slight, small, and most likely female, comes into frame. When she turns to face the camera, though most of her face is obscured by the black mask she wears beneath her red hood, he can see that the eyebrows have been shaped. The lashes made up.

  Definitely female.

  Though he knows what’s about to happen, he somehow hopes it won’t. Even though it already has. The leej is struggling, but he can’t speak. They’ve gagged him.

  Rechs makes himself remember the girl’s eyes. He commits every detail to memory and makes sure the armor’s HUD is capturing. Of course it is. He will watch this video many times, making sure he gets his targets right. Because everyone who owes is going to pay.

  He consoles himself with what he knows he’ll do on the other side of all this. He doesn’t feel sorry for what they’re bringing on themselves. Brought, he reminds himself. This feed is fifteen minutes old at least. He doesn’t feel sorry for what they’ve unleashed.

  What have they brought? asks the old voice that never takes it easy on Tyrus Rechs. The voice that always challenges him and his actions. Keeping him honest to the legend he’s become. He’s so old who knows where it came from? Live long enough and you forget all the stops along the way.

  Me, he answers.

  They’ve brought me down on them.

  The little girl Soshie in the video makes that same tired old speech of misinformed power-grabbers who think they’re making the galaxy a better place by destroying another life. It’s the same one they always make. The one about how all the crimes committed against her and hers have been acts of war. About how what’s about to happen is what will happen to anyone who opposes them. Differences of opinion and challenging points of view are invalid.

  She makes that speech.

  And then she produces the blade. Hefts it up into frame. One of the long Sinasian katanas they all think are so cool and some keep on their backs like they’re ready to cross blades to make the galaxy a better place at any moment. Usually two of them, crossed like they’re some reckless ronin who serves no master. Not knowing or not caring that the Sinasians who make the real deal are barred from even exporting them off-planet. That whatever they have was made in some corporate factory, a hollow mimicry of the craftsmanship a real Sinasian blade is supposed to represent.

  She holds the blade up for all the Soshies to see, whether in the room or watching the holo. Never realizing they’re just tools in the greater game of order against entropy. Law versus chaos. Good versus evil.

  Things they laugh about as being outdated.

  And then she swings the blade down on the legionnaire’s head. Missing the neck. Sinking the blade into the back of his skull on the overreaching downswing.

  She seems stunned for a second at the sudden horror show she has just caused. She tries to pull it out and it’s clear how little, for all her acting, she actually knows about wielding a blade. Another red and black, one whom Rechs instantly recognizes as ex-military of some sort because he’s got the same compact yet powerful build as Rechs. Same economical movements. Same power. But the eyes are different. The eyes are… cruel. He takes charge and pulls the blade out of the leej’s skull for her.

  His contempt for her isn’t masked.

  The legionnaire is bucking. Or maybe his body is twitching. You can’t see his face or eyes. And maybe that’s a mercy.

  Rechs will one day be thankful for that when he tells himself to let this one go. On some night over some tropic ocean when it’s just him and the stars, drifting in a boat far from land. Far from the galaxy. He will be grateful for not having been able to see the kid’s eyes.

  The ex-military shoves the blade back into the girl’s hands.

  And this time she gets it right and severs the spinal cord and most of the neck. Either way it’s done. His life is over. The legionnaire is gone.

  Rechs has unknowingly placed one armored gauntlet against the old concrete of the building he shadows under. Absently he’s torn out a chunk of the masonry.

  There’s still one leej, he tells himself.

  I can still save the other one.

  “His name was Matt Beers,” says Gabriella over the comm. Her voice is dead. “Sergeant. Second enlistment. That’s what the networks are all reporting. Confirmed by Legion facial recognition.”

  She hears nothing on the other end of the hypercomm that connects her to Tyrus Rechs. Nothing other than the ghostly howl that lies beneath the sound. Like the howl of some lost soul forever wandering hyperspace. Stranded in a place of no comfort. And no mercy.

  34

  Giles Longfree walked into the Repub marine headquarters for forces on the ground and asked to see the general in charge of “this whole operation you got goin’ on here.”

  The duty lieutenant didn’t roll his eyes like the sergeant and PFC assigned to the fortified position behind the desk. The LT was all business. He had a degree in economics and when this was all over, after paying off his loans, he was going to hit the core worlds and make a million in high finance. Best to keep it professional. Even here.

  “T
he general is currently busy with operations,” soothed the LT. “Perhaps I can help you, sir?”

  A new directive had come down that morning to be more polite and officious to civilians behind the lines. Maybe that would somehow carry weight with the ones inside the city the marines were now threatening to retake in light of the beheading stream playing on endless repeat.

  The NCO standing next to the LT clamped an unlit cigar between his lips and tried to restrain himself from ripping Longfree’s head off and spitting down his throat. Politeness his butt. Payback was at hand. And he intended to be the hand. Not here with the green LT watching the front gate. That was babysitting.

  “Pretty sure the general in charge will want to hear what I have to say,” continued Longfree.

  The marine LT could feel the sergeant next to him literally swell two sizes bigger as his rage-fueled blood vessels and muscles expanded for beatdown. His platoon sergeant was a hardcore gym monster who had no qualms about using all the aftermarket supplements he could do to get as big as possible. Except none of the supplements, protein powders, and injections compared in performance with what the scumbag dock rat in front of him was affecting his NCO with right now. This needed to be diffused, because there was no way he was going to lock his platoon sergeant’s boots and tell him to about-face on out of the greeting bunker.

  Hell, thought the new LT. The platoon sergeant could’ve locked his boots and told him to do just that, and he probably would’ve done it. He had no illusions about who had the power, or who ran his platoon. Sure, he was an LT out of the schools. But that didn’t mean he was a dumb LT out of the schools.

  “Gimme something that’ll get his attention and I’ll see what I can do,” interjected the savvy LT.

  The LT knew that one smart answer from this Longfree, one denial, one game, and the platoon sergeant was going to assault the man right here on the spot in the greeting bunker. And that would mean… in the Repub marines… paperwork. Lots of it.