Madame Guillotine

by Jason Anspach

  The bounty hunter then pulled the fire alarm. The building’s sirens began to wail. He hadn’t been sure they’d still work. A deep automated voice, calm and professional, began to advise everyone to evacuate the building immediately. For their own safety.

  He hoped that would give all the prisoners time to get out.

  Assuming, again, they hadn’t been tied up.

  It was all he could do for them.

  He stumbled toward the door and into the still-smoldering hallway, again dropping in on the pros’ comm. Listening for their movements.

  He’d try to hit them on the street.

  That was all there was left to him now. A hard capture against a lot of blasters, supported by at least two QRFs and several sniper teams.

  He gave himself a twenty percent chance of success. And a zero percent chance of survival for the leej and the marine if he didn’t rescue them now. This was the last, best shot they’d have.

  So… he went for it.

  54

  In the hours leading up to Rechs’s assault on the Excelsior, Amanda had lain there, next to Lopez, in what had once been a pantry inside one of the upper-level apartments. Just a few floors below the penthouse Loth had commandeered for his headquarters.

  Lopez was all but passed out due to the drugs and meds they’d given him. Things she’d traded information for. Information that would probably get her court-martialed on the back side of this fiasco. After all, the beating they’d given her, and some of the torture, hadn’t been that bad. She could have just refused, or even held out a little longer. But when they’d started talking about going to work on Lopez… that’s when she’d begun to trade. She hadn’t been able to save all them of them in that alley, but maybe she could save just this one. Not as a sniper, a Reaper bringing death, but here, as a prisoner.

  She’d prayed to anyone who could hear her while they tortured her. Anyone who could’ve helped her. Even though she didn’t believe in anything, she’d prayed all the same. Not for herself. For some way to save the legionnaire.

  Yeah, sometimes you pray even when you don’t believe.

  When they finished with her, promising more later, they left her and Lopez in the pantry. Sealed in with a lock and alarm. She heard them entering a code. Still, she’d gotten to her knees, restraining a groan from where they’d twisted her wrist to the point of breaking during the early part of the interrogation, and checked to see if maybe that locked door would open. If maybe someone out there in the galaxy was listening.

  It was locked.

  But she could hear them talking on the other side.

  She went back and checked Lopez’s breathing. Slow and shallow. Not good.

  But alive.

  She went back to the door and listened again.

  Things were coming to a head. She could tell that much. Beers had been executed. They’d shown her the stream just to make clear how serious they were about what they were doing. Chances were they were going to do it again. Maybe not now. Maybe not in the next few hours, or even days. But they’d do it again. They’d kill Lopez.

  Why?

  Because taking lives is power.

  And power is intoxicating.

  Part of Reaper school screening was that you couldn’t have that thrill-kill gene, whatever it is. Gotta be wired differently to be that kind of lifetaker.

  To be a Reaper.

  More like a shepherd, they’d said. Subtlety. “We’re the good shepherds,” one of her instructors had once told her. “We take care of the wolves.”

  She felt for the knife she’d stowed in Lopez’s boot.

  They’d battered her and stripped her and tortured her. They would have easily found the knife if she’d kept it on her. But as much as they threatened to torture Lopez, they never even touched him. They needed him alive if they were going to kill him, and the legionnaire couldn’t have survived time with the man who’d tortured her. The man with the beady, mean eyes.

  And they’d already searched Lopez when they first brought him in. No need to search him again.

  She listened for a long time and didn’t hear much of anything. Like some calm before the storm. In fact, she heard so much of nothing that it got creepy. Just like in the hour before they took Beers. Who never came back.

  The hour of the slaughter.

  She moved the knife to her palm. Then clenched it into a fist.

  That’s a bold move, Amanda Panda.

  I know, she practically whispered to herself. It was a gamble. Every time they’d moved them, she’d made fists to fight. They’d never paid any mind to that, instead focusing on her wrists and getting the ener-chains around those. Who cares what’s in her hands? We’ve already searched her, right?

  Just like they’d already searched Lopez.

  Assumptions are a breeding ground for loopholes.

  Dad? Or some Reaper instructor. Someone had given her that bit.

  Hard to say. And not important now.

  When she heard the first ground strikes of the HK-PP, a sound she’d heard before as a marine, she knew something was up. Not just far off, but close at hand. Her guards on the other side of the door were freaked out. She could hear them nervously talking inside the dirty old suite.

  “Think it’s headed for us?”

  “I ain’t gettin’ paid enough to face off against one of those things. Whatcha think we’re gonna use… blasters? Slogans about equal treatment for alien races, like them stupid kids?”

  That got a graveyard laugh out of the crew watching over her and Lopez. She could tell they’d moved to the windows to get a glimpse of the mighty battle machine coming toward them.

  “Thing is huge!” someone said.

  “It’s gotta be twenty blocks away and already it’s a monster!”

  “Tell Loth I’m out.”

  “You tell him!”

  But they stayed. And she heard the transmission that came in next.

  “Loth says we’re moving the prisoners,” the voice said over comm. “Stand by to get ’em ready.”

  She got herself ready. As ready as she could. Felt the knife and knew it was all she had.

  She heard the main gun of the mauler fire. Heard some section of a distant building explode. Alarms went off down the block beyond the high windows of the old apartment tower.

  She heard them gathering outside the pantry door. Gathering to storm the room and take them to a new loc. She knew for a fact she and Lopez wouldn’t survive what someone would one day call “crime scene number two.” Wherever they were being taken to. That was crime scene number two. They’d do the executions there. And quick.

  Which meant she had to do this right. If not, this pantry would become crime scene number two. These men would kill her before they’d let her kill them. Prisoners and propaganda streams be damned.

  She laid down next to Lopez who was gurgling out ragged breaths. He needed professional medical treatment soon. And that was probably why they’d make their kill holovid sooner rather than later. Lopez wasn’t going to last much longer. She knew it. They knew it.

  She lay down and palmed the knife.

  It was all she had, she reminded herself.

  They stormed the room and took her first. No tranqs this time, which was a blessing. Maybe the someone she’d prayed to was listening. Maybe that was all she’d get. Maybe that was all she needed.

  She threw up a quick thought of a prayer. While you’re handing out miracles, Oba, or whoever you are, I could use a blaster.

  Nothing.

  Okay then, she told herself. Just the knife.

  Prayers get answered. Just not always the answer you want, Manda. Her dad.

  Okay.

  But she’d take this one. This one miracle of not being drugged when they came in to take her to her death.

  Ener-chains on. They
focused on her wrists and not her fists. Not opening her hands. Not seeing the knife she hid there. Because it wasn’t supposed to be there and so they didn’t look for it. As they started dragging her through the pantry door, the leather sack went over her head.

  She felt the knife.

  She concentrated on it.

  In a galaxy of unknowns… it was known. And a kind of compass by which she might cross the gulf of the next few minutes.

  Knowing they might be her last.

  They readied Lopez and began moving both prisoners out of the dingy suite. Through enclosed areas and out of this place. Down long and silent hallways. All of them chattering in their operator speak like they knew exactly what they were doing. Certain in their certainty. But she could hear them stutter every time the mighty planet-pounder struck the city streets. And that made her happy. Because maybe…

  “Tha’s marines,” muttered Lopez ahead of her. “Comin’ to get us, y’all… kelhorns. Kill every last one of you…”

  Then he faded off and he and Amanda were dragged down the stairs in some dark well they’d been pulled into.

  She needed a moment. Something.

  Remember, she said to the galaxy. Remember when I prayed…

  She heard distant blaster fire. Small and tiny. Several floors away. Frenetic and deadly.

  Like to have a blaster of my own right now, she thought to herself. Reminded the galaxy.

  If wishes were fishes, beggars would ride, Manda.

  Grandma. Daddy’s mama.

  There was a boom.

  An explosion? Or was that just the building shaking from another one of the planet-pounder’s thunder strikes?

  The building’s fire alarms erupted through the dark of her leather hood. The men started shouting. They didn’t know what was going on.

  If she had to guess, there were six of them. Six of them around her and Lopez. Six that needed to die for them to live.

  She stumbled. Someone let go of her arms. Someone else swore.

  Prayers get answered. Just not always the answer you want, Manda.

  She shrugged off the hood, flicked open the knife, and plunged it into the throat of the shadow closest to her. She felt it puncture cartilage and then pipe. Pushing in easily at the last. Windpipe. Heard a hot breathy gurgle as clear as day above all the shouting and the blaring alarm deafening everyone in the stairwell.

  Prayers…

  The stairwell was bathed in the bloody red light of murder.

  Lopez was right next to her.

  No one even noticed the guy she’d just stabbed in the throat falling into her, flailing and bleeding. They were busy on comm. Checking the stairs below. And the route out to the convoy and Loth, who was supervising the loadout.

  There were two others above her on the stairs, but one was leaning over the well, pointing his blaster down onto the landings below. The other just had a look of fear on his face. Like he wasn’t there.

  She let go of the knife and pulled the blaster away from the dying man bleeding all over her. She was trained on how to handle it with her hands bound. She fired the new weapon at both men. Fast. Gunfighter fast.

  The frightened one got it in the gut and grunted on the other side of the blaster’s whine. The one aiming down onto the level below, leaning over the rail, turned to her and she blew off the bottom of his jaw because her aim was somewhat constricted. In a perfect world, at this intimate up close and personal range, she’d have drilled his skull.

  The guy whose mouth was shot away bent over the railing and slid down it past her as he died.

  Amanda pivoted with the weapon and fired at the two men on the landing below as the dying man slid their way, what remained of his face a smoking horror show coming straight at them. Both shots missed, but they got her captors’ attention.

  And what they saw was a pissed-off marine with murder in her eyes.

  This was no Dodge Ridge Shootout like people read about from back in the stellar frontier days. No stand and deliver at point-blank range like Cassandra’s Folly. Both of her new opponents were pros and they knew cover was more important than return fire. The first one dove head-first down the stairs to get away from her fire. The second one dropped to his knees and tried to put the railing and the dying man between himself and the killer marine who’d somehow obtained a blaster.

  No matter.

  Amanda shot him a second later and didn’t bother to add any finesse in the targeting. She just started squeezing, filling the guy’s jerking body with blaster bolts. Watching it twitch and jump and getting a grim sense of satisfaction out of the whole experience in some distant background app in her mind.

  The revenge app. Brought to you by Nemesis and Elektra.

  Then Reaper training kicked in and she was the shepherd. The good shepherd who protects her flock from wolves.

  Keep the boys and girls on the ground from getting hit by a shooter they can’t see. Reaper training. Dad, too.

  Death on demand from the deck of a SLIC.

  She grabbed Lopez and dragged him back up the stairs and through the first landing door she came to. To his credit, the legionnaire remained on his feet. And that was the best any badly wounded leej could do.

  She could hear her remaining captors in the stairwell behind her. They were shouting. The surprise had passed and now they’d come to kill her in the hopes they could still take the legionnaire alive. And kill him later.

  Sometimes life is only guaranteed from one second to the next, Manda. So make every second count, Reaper.

  Dad. And Reaper instructor.

  55

  The stories-high mech was within three blocks of the target AO Rechs had identified for the little Nubarian gunnery bot. Bring a distraction in—and the bot felt it had really come through there—and provide overwatch while “the captain” extracted the prisoners had been the orders, and that was exactly what the little bot was doing when Captain Hess stopped the HK-PP in its tracks.

  You didn’t get to be the commander of a Nether Ops tip-of-spear kill team without skills. Hess was that rare House of Reason–appointed officer who was more than capable as a legionnaire also. Despite the fact he was entrenched in the appointed officer’s typical self-aggrandized thinking.

  The marine SLIC gunship variant had hit the HK-PP with its full complement of AGMs. The air-to-ground missiles had sidewindered in and struck the walking beast all across her upper frame.

  Inside the bot’s interface compartment, the little machine rerouted motive power to extinguishing fires breaking out inside the hull. Not because there was a pilot on board to save, but because damage to the electrical systems that powered and controlled the mech’s actuators were threatened by an out-of-control fire.

  In front of the bot’s control section, where the driver would strap in and move the machine forward with guns blazing, a sudden array of electrical sparks exploded in all directions.

  The bot whooped digitally and tried to engage the retreating SLIC within its forward blaster turrets, deciding the threat overrode Rechs’s orders not to fire on military craft or personnel. Which was dangerous, because it meant the bot was crossing that line where its programming began engaging in behavior defiant of its master’s orders. That was typically met with a memory wipe and system restore. Something the little bot had avoided ever since it came online for the first time.

  Sensing the maneuver, the SLIC retreated as the mech suddenly turned to the right and sent forth bright fire. Explosions ravaged an old condemned apartment tower as the speeding SLIC dropped away down the canyon of buildings.

  Stay on target, the little bot reminded itself, and it sent the mech forward toward the target AO once more.

  A moment later Captain Hess’s SLIC reappeared from its evasive maneuvers, coming in from a different angle of attack and spooling up her CGS-66 ground-suppression blaster pods.
The incoming fire from this close-ground-support engagement system, usually meant for light-skinned vehicles and troops, tore into the mounted mauler gun atop the walker. A vulnerable spot Hess had pointed out to the pilot.

  Flying the SLIC now as Hunter Oh-Two was Captain Kirk Walters, formerly Reaper Oh-Two. Hess had insisted on the Hunter call sign. And while the pilot formerly known as Reaper Oh-Two didn’t necessarily like the arrogant Legion officer, he seemed like he was the only one who was going to try to go in and get Amanda out of what she’d gotten herself into. Which was all that mattered to Kirk Walters. So if flying the close attack run against the mech got him a chance to pull Amanda out of this hellhole, he was taking it.

  Sweating and fixated on the targeting reticle, he raked the hull of the HK-PP with a stream of blaster fire at a dangerously close range and almost ludicrous groundspeed.

  “Get in closer,” berated Hess over the comm. The captain was holding onto a strap on the rear cargo deck of the SLIC. The flight crew consisted of one pilot, one co-pilot bot, and one crew chief.

  Hunter Oh-Two took the dropship in closer, crabbing to slow forward motion and allow the weapon arcs of the blaster pods to still maintain a good engagement window on the walking leviathan below.

  Hess knew exactly where to hit the HK-PP. The blaster pod fire from the CGS-66s destroyed the formidable mauler cannon, exposing the dorsal mounted weapon chargers that exploded and overloaded with Hess’s next shot.

  Hunter Oh-Two slammed on the SLIC’s reverse as the massive cannon exploded, the heavy barrel flinging itself up and away from the walker, going end over end down to the smoke-filled streets below.

  The mech wobbled awkwardly once, looked like it was going to lose its balance, and then at the last moment regained its footing. It tried to continue forward. One massive foot—really a central pad with four articulating grappling wings that secured it to the ground with each strike—rose and fell as it continued on toward its objective.