Madame Guillotine

by Jason Anspach

  The SLIC had barely missed being hit by the exploding cannon barrel and was now hovering off the aft quarter of the HK-PP moving toward its target.

  “I said,” bellowed Hess over the SLIC’s onboard comm, “take me in closer, you idiot!”

  Oh-Two wiped sweat from stubble with a quick swipe and throttled up to go in closer. It would be difficult maintaining a holding altitude just above the walking war giant, but it could be done.

  Whatever it takes to get Amanda out of there, he reminded himself.

  Hess leaped out of the SLIC from several meters above the walker. His high-tech Legion armor absorbed the shock of the landing and with little trouble the captain was running forward along the damaged spine of the machine toward the pilot’s command cupola. A second later he was down on one knee and pulling off a small access plate atop the hull, rising and falling rhythmically as the mech lumbered on its course, oblivious to Hess’s presence. Hess stood, pulled his sidearm, and fired into the panel he’d just opened, hitting the internal system now exposed.

  The mechanical leviathan began to stumble about drunkenly, and Hess pumped his fist for the dropship to come get him off the stricken iron beast.

  Never mind the fact that it was stumbling and swaying all across the broad street. Pay no attention to how dangerous an extraction under these conditions is, his very stance seemed to scream at the hovering pilot.

  Hunter Oh-Two pushed forward and came in close, promising himself he would only try this once. Either the Legion captain made it, or he was going down with the wounded mech.

  Then the ship reacted to the added weight, and Oh-Two knew the captain was on board—or at least hanging from the cargo deck.

  “Climb, you idiot!” roared Hess over the comm.

  Oh-Two was already doing just that as the HK-PP keeled over and smashed into the side of a building, dragging down much of the duracrete facade with it, burying itself in a waterfall of gray dust and rubble.

  56

  Loth had taken the suite’s private speedlift down to the lobby when the fire alarms went off across the building. He had wanted to be in the lobby and curbside to assess the situation on the street before he committed to moving his prisoners from this location.

  In the meantime he’d entrusted his best lieutenant with the task of transporting the prisoners via the stairwell. Committing them to the main elevator might get them trapped if the city’s grid went down, or if the rickety old lift just broke down all on its own. Everything in the building was badly maintained, and the last thing he needed was a hitch in getting them out.

  No. That wasn’t entirely true. The last thing he needed was to disappoint Mr. Zauro by failing at his assigned tasks. That was something one did not do. Or did only once, because there wouldn’t be a second opportunity. Even for someone as dangerous as Loth.

  Loth did not want to disappoint the old man. So he had the rest of his team, twenty-three shooters, ready to take charge and mount up with the convoy on the street. Ready to make the transfer to the inbound transport convoy. Add in the mobile blaster teams on the street and the sniper teams in the windows surrounding the plaza, and they were good to go if the marines had anyone on the ground. If the marines were following the inbound mech, they’d get a fight. More than enough of one for the convoy to get away.

  That was all contingency. And it needed to happen because there was no chance they could stand up to the HK-PP if it cornered them in the building. They had to leave. Get to the next safe house and axe the leej first thing, captured on livestream. The holocam equipment was already waiting at the next location. They could do the leej within the hour.

  And then Loth could get off this wreck of a world. And more importantly, get paid.

  “Sir!” There was blaster fire in the background of the incoming comm transmission. “Got a problem. Men down. Need—”

  The message halted as more blaster fire zinged in the background. “Need backup on nine. She got loose!”

  Loth swore and ground his teeth.

  The HK-PP was now just a few blocks away, and the bomb was due to bring down the building in a few minutes.

  “It’s just her?” Loth asked, thinking the trouble had to be more than some hullbuster he’d tortured into a whimpering sack of misery.

  Blaster fire filled the comm.

  “Got her pinned at the end of the north hall on nine! Need backup! I repeat…”

  “I heard you!” shouted Loth. “Do you have the legionnaire or—”

  “Negative. She’s got him!”

  Loth swore again on the street outside the tower.

  “Everyone!” Loth shouted as he ran back in to the rest of his team waiting in the lobby. “Move to nine and retake the prisoners. Go fast, because this building is coming down in five.”

  The look he gave his shooters indicated there was only one option. Obey. But everyone also noticed he wasn’t coming along. Perks of leadership.

  Pros in red and black, outfitted to blend in with the Soshies on the street, but carrying state-of-the-art automatic blasters and explosive devices, swarmed into the stairwells and elevators to get up to nine. In almost the same moment the prisoners from the lower floors, dressed in that same Soshie gear but without the weapons, came running down the stairs toward them.

  Seeing obstructions that were also potential loose ends, the pros unleashed volleys of blaster fire. “Make way!” they shouted, leaving several of the kids to die in the stairwells while others ducked in terror against the walls, leapt over the rails, or simply tumbled down to the bottom. Those who slipped past poured out into the streets. Shrieking and crying.

  “Kids got loose somehow!” one of the operators shouted into the comm, stating the obvious.

  “Ignore them!” Loth ordered. “Get to nine without delay!”

  He moved to tell the mobile heavy blaster teams what was happening. The convoy was just coming down the street.

  The HK-PP exploded and went down into some buildings farther along the avenue.

  “Nothing’s ever easy,” swore Loth. “Nothing.”

  57

  Rechs had been about ready to throw himself out the fifth-floor window and burn the last of his jump juice to intercept the extraction team on the street when the Soshie comm channel went wild with chatter.

  He immediately changed his plans.

  From what he could tell, the marine sniper had managed to overwhelm her captors and move the legionnaire out of custody.

  Thatta girl, thought Rechs. She’d given him the opportunity to make this happen here and now. That was all he needed.

  “Lyra… stand by to put down on my ping.”

  Rechs dropped a ping in the plaza directly outside the building.

  “I’m afraid, Captain Rechs,” interrupted G232, “that our little friend has possibly been destroyed, sir. The behemoth you had it commandeer erupted with him inside. Might I suggest we offer a moment’s silence for a fellow bot? Dangerous though it was.”

  “Damn,” muttered Rechs. He’d been counting on the HK-PP to provide cover fire so he could get the legionnaire and marine aboard the Crow. It was already going to be a hot LZ. Now it was going to be downright on fire.

  “It grieves me to tell you this tragic news, master,” continued G232. “But, alas, it is for the best. Though the bot and you share many of the same affinities for wanton violence, our little group will be the better off, mathematically speaking, now that there are less dangerous entities aboard… wouldn’t you say, Mast… ah, Captain Rechs?”

  When Rechs didn’t respond to the inane chatter, a somewhat cowed G232 said, “Just trying to find the bright spot in all this grief, sir.”

  Rechs ran for a window that loomed from floor to ceiling at the end of the dim hall he’d found himself in. He figured he might as well do it anyway. Only instead of going down, he’d burn the last of his jump juic
e to reach the marine and the legionnaire a few levels above.

  Level nine.

  58

  “Target terminated, Captain,” said Captain Kirk Walters, aka Hunter Oh-Two, over the comm. “Return to base, or do we have a line on the HVTs?”

  The marines were classifying the captured sniper and legionnaire as high-value targets.

  The SLIC was hovering above the streets and rooftops, above the smashed building and fallen HK-PP. Clouds of gray dust and debris filled the late-afternoon air.

  Hess leaned out from the aft cargo deck and studied the cityscape. “That thing was headed somewhere,” he muttered. “Where?”

  They’d run a bio-scan sensor sweep across the ruined HK-PP once her ECM generators went down in the fall. No signs of life. No signs of biologics. Rechs hadn’t been aboard, or if he had, he was now dead. But Hess was somehow sure this was part of Rechs’s plan. That the bounty hunter was behind it all. He could practically smell him.

  Up the street he spotted people fleeing from one of the tallest buildings in this section of the city. A few armed Soshies were out front. Hess’s bucket tagged and assessed weapon threats. The Nether Ops agent studied the scene as the howling dropship’s repulsors throbbed to hold altitude above the final resting place of the HK-PP.

  “He’s here,” muttered Hess.

  Got to be.

  Then, to the pilot: “Take us in close to that building up the street. Something’s going—”

  At that moment Tyrus Rechs himself, looking like some darting hornet at this distance, came crashing out of a fifth-story window in the very building Hess had been watching. Those fleeing below covered their heads and necks as a shower of glass rained down on them from above. A moment later the bounty hunter’s jump jets ignited and the armored figure roared up along the building’s face.

  “That’s Rechs!” screamed Hess. “That’s Tyrus Rechs! Get me to him!”

  59

  Marine Sergeant Amanda Almond had about ten shots left in the blaster she’d commandeered. She’d managed to get the badly wounded legionnaire—stumbling along, helping as much as he could—down the abandoned hallway that led out of level nine’s stairwell, to the last room on the left.

  They’d hold out here. Their backs to the windows.

  If there were marines in that inbound HK closing in on this location, then chances were they knew she was here. All she’d have to do was buy enough time for them to storm the building.

  She leaned out the apartment door despite the return fire and managed a shot on one of those coming for her and Lopez. She dropped him onto his back, his legs doing the kickin’ chicken. His buddies were crouching and moving forward, using each other as cover to take her. No one too excited about the prospect.

  But in the end, that they were close enough for her to even take a shot meant she was at risk of getting shot herself. And there were more coming, stacking farther down the hall, waiting to come in if these failed. Hoping they didn’t. Hoping to be one of the living on the other side of all this.

  In short, there were too many of them to even buy a minute more, not even with all the charge packs in the universe. She was just one against the galaxy, it seemed. And sometimes… one isn’t enough.

  She fell back inside the room knowing that she was done in the next few seconds. They wouldn’t bother with her. Lopez they’d keep alive if they could. At least for a little while longer.

  The legionnaire was on the floor where she’d left him.

  “Sorry…” she said, pointing her blaster at the door. “I did my best to get you outta here.”

  She heard their captors surging down the hall like a spooked herd. They’d shoot her down first and then take Lopez. The legionnaire was the real prize.

  Fine. That’s what she’d wanted all along.

  And she would buy him just a little more time—by dying in the next few seconds.

  Okay… she told herself, not ready for this at all. Make ’em pay for every second, Amanda.

  Maybe in the big picture that is the galaxy, seconds add up to something important for someone somewhere.

  Life.

  The first one appeared, and she had to use two shots to put him down. He refused to go down with the first and insisted on pointing his blaster at her. The second shot blew off his head, painting the wall beyond with smoking gray matter.

  She shot another one.

  Maybe a third.

  Then someone bounced a banger in and it went off instantly.

  Blind and feeling suddenly sick to her stomach, unable to hear… she just squeezed off everything she had left, hoping she was still aiming the blaster at the doorway. Not thinking about anything that had ever come before this moment or would ever come after it.

  Everything ends. For you, Manda… it ends here.

  Fine, she told herself again, determined to kill to the last.

  In her mind she saw the door and knew they’d come in as one. Everyone she shot down buying Lopez one more second of freedom.

  She fired until the blaster was dry. No kick. Just the soft tremble in the grip letting her know it was out.

  Finished. Done. Empty.

  Good going, Manda. Proud of you, girl.

  That’s the last shot, she said to herself as she began to see double. Double and then cloudy with vibrations over every surface and angle. Everything tilted on its axis. She felt proud that she still had blaster sights on the doorway despite being flashbanged. Proud that she’d heard her dad at the last.

  They were there. The red-and-black demons.

  You can only kill so many. Can’t kill everyone, Manda. Galaxy weren’t made that way.

  But they weren’t facing her. Their bodies were… but their heads were swiveling to face the end of the hallway to their right. And… and blaster fire was tearing them apart. From the direction of the big dirty window she’d seen at the end of the hall. The one that faced out into the big dirty city that looked like it needed a hundred years of rain and a fresh start to be free of its own self.

  Don’t we all, Manda Panda?

  Red-and-black demons, her and Lopez’s tormentors and captors, were being cut down in a fusillade of streaking needle-sized blaster bolts. High volume. Bodies were ripped to shreds, men and women flung back, their masks torn away to reveal terror and fear. And hate. Like some avenging angel, or some rival demon from the nether, had become all too real to them.

  Her hearing was coming back. She forced herself to her feet. She’d fallen when the flashbang went off. She could hear the howl of jump jets fading, or maybe that was just an effect of the ringing in her ears. Felt a warm blast of air come into the room and rush past her.

  Then an armored figure in what looked like the most ancient of Legion armors, the old Mark I from the early days of heroic legend when the Legion fought the Savages and saved the galaxy, stepped into view.

  The man in the Mark I armor slapped a fresh charge pack into a Jackknife blaster and then poured more fire down the hall at the others who’d been sent to recapture her and Sergeant Lopez.

  Lopez pushed himself up from the floor as the armored figure stepped into the room. Return fire filling the hall behind him.

  60

  Tyrus Rechs moved quickly to Lopez, shrugged off his tactical bag, then pressed the Jackknife blaster into the hands of the marine. She dropped her own spent blaster and took the weapon from the bounty hunter.

  “Sergeant Amanda Almond?” Rechs asked, more to bring her around to reality than verify what he already knew.

  Her small mouth worked up and down in a tiny ‘O’. Trying to form words she couldn’t make. Or believe.

  In the end she just nodded.

  “Cover the door,” Rechs ordered tersely. He handed her a few extra charge packs.

  She slipped them into her pockets, checked the charge already in the blaster,
saw that he’d made sure to hand her a fully loaded weapon, and flicked the safety off. Glad to have someone else taking charge for a moment. She was just a shooter. Not a leader. Never had been.

  “What’s his condition?” the armored man asked her. But the medical scan within Rechs’s armor was already telling him what the situation was. Critical. Combat support hospital recommended within the next two hours.

  She rattled off a litany of the legionnaire’s injuries and what she’d done to treat them as best she could. She made no excuses. Just gave a frank assessment of what had been done under the circumstances while she watched the now-silent and body-littered hall beyond the room.

  “I think they’re getting ready to push again,” she said from the doorway.

  “Three minutes left to exit the building,” said Rechs. “Bomb.”

  Amanda let out an involuntary sigh. Everything it had taken to reach this point and now… this. The galaxy wasn’t just a bad place. It was perverse.

  “There’re at least ten of those MCR Soshies down the hall between us and the main elevator,” she said.

  “Here’s what we’re going to do,” said Rechs, ignoring her comment about the Soshies being MCR because that was the first he’d heard of it and he didn’t have the bandwidth to factor it into the equation. There wasn’t time. He hefted Lopez in one swift yet economical motion, putting the legionnaire’s head over his shoulder and down onto his back. Fireman’s carry. “You’re going to stay low and close to me, Marine. Use the blaster to sweep.”

  Rechs grabbed a dead pro off the floor by the tactical vest and held the dead man so his back faced forward like a riot shield.

  “You’re gonna carry two men?” the marine asked incredulously.

  Rechs said nothing. Didn’t have to. He was carrying two men, his armor making it look easy.

  “Stay low and behind the dead guy,” he told her. “Use him as a shield to get close. Sergeant Lopez still has most of his armor on. You’re more vulnerable than he is. So stick close to me.”