Madame Guillotine

by Jason Anspach

  She nodded, and they moved toward the doorway, falling into step as a team.

  The incoming fire was instantaneous as they stepped into the hall. Rechs held the body of the large dead man out in front of him, and blaster bolts thumped into it as they advanced down the corridor. Behind Rechs, crouching low, Sergeant Almond poured return fire at the defenders. Barely aiming, squeezing until the frenetic little Jackknife had dumped its full charge. Slick as synth oil she had another charge pack in and opened up again.

  The dead man’s body began to come apart from the hits it was taking. Rechs’s armor took a few glancing shots, the bolts streaking off into the walls and ceiling.

  Another charge pack spent, Amanda swapped in a new one and targeted the nearest defenders. She spat burst fire at the figures hugging wall at the end of the hall or firing from empty rooms and alcoves. The weapon Tyrus Rechs had given her ripped their bodies to shreds with needle sprays of bolt streams.

  As the body of the dead man nearly disintegrated under overwhelming incoming fire at almost point-blank range, Rechs tossed the man’s shredded remains at one of the pros, who recoiled in horror. The bounty hunter pulled his hand cannon lightning-fast.

  The narrow hall shook with the thunderous rapid booms of Rechs’s weapon on auto-fire. He shot down two men ahead of them, pivoted fast into a room another pro had escaped into, and shot that one several times.

  Amanda covered the way toward the elevator and kept their attackers back and pinned behind cover. One stuck his head out, and she made sure it was the last thing that guy ever did.

  They made the elevator, firing at those still covering nearby, and entered, blaster fire smashing into the doors as they closed.

  The elevator was headed down to street level.

  Rechs pulled the panel apart and fused several wires together. He’d made sure no one would stop it or recall it.

  “Now comes the hard part,” the bounty hunter said.

  61

  Loth was out on the street, interfacing with the recently arrived extraction convoy commander, when the shooting in the lobby started. The only warning the hardened mercenary received was the barest of one-line reports that indicated “someone’s coming down” over the comm. That there had been a major firefight up on nine was evident according to the comm traffic. That had been nearly two minutes ago, and the channel silence since then had been overwhelming.

  Loth knew he needed to clear his men out of the building, but he found himself waiting until he could get a handle on what had happened. They remained staged in the lobby, nervously checking chronos to make sure their boss hadn’t lost it and was expecting them to all go down together with the exploding building.

  The first thing Loth’s pros in the lobby saw was the elevator opening and Tyrus Rechs stepping out, scatterblaster pointing at the nearest group of hired guns.

  “Wait—” someone tried before the roar from the powerful weapon went off at near point-blank range. Rechs tore three black-and-red pros to shreds with one blast. He pivoted, racked another charge pack into the scatterblaster’s chamber, and fired again. The successive deafening blasts erupted out onto the streets as Rechs made short work of those stationed inside the lobby.

  At this point, Loth was between a hull and a defense shield. There was no easy decision. He’d lost control of the prisoners, who somehow had survived against overwhelming odds. He had to admit that to himself.

  He had three choices.

  Continue the attempt to recapture the legionnaire and lose more of his people. Maybe even his own life in the process.

  Kill them with the overwhelming firepower he had access to on the street via the mounted weapons.

  Or…

  Just forget the whole mess. Call the freighter in for a dust-off in some quiet section of this ruined world, make the rendezvous, let the captain know about the double-cross Zauro had planned for her and her crew, and then stay ahead of the information curve. Get lost somewhere out along the edge. Wait for killers to show up for the rest of his life. Always sitting with his back to every cantina wall, eyes forever on the exits.

  He parsed all three of those options as Tyrus Rechs shot down everyone in the lobby. Some distant part of his mind worked the self-preservation side of the equation. His crew had tried to take down the armored bounty hunter with blaster fire, but the man moved swiftly and violently, working the scattergun like it was second nature. It only carried six shots, but in the hands of someone as skilled as Rechs—and Loth knew the man’s reputation wasn’t unfounded—it was more than enough to ruin everyone’s day.

  When the scatterblaster finally ran dry, Rechs tossed the weapon aside. The tac bag was already low on charge packs and he was allocating what remained for the little Jackknife the marine carried.

  Rechs trotted back to the elevator the marine covered him from and hefted the wounded legionnaire onto his back once more.

  “Lyra, bring in the Crow as close as you can get to my loc. We’re coming out.”

  Rechs turned toward the marine.

  “I’ll clear everything in front of us. You keep them off our backs. My ship is coming. We keep moving. Copy?”

  She had that faraway look in her eyes. Like she had reached her limit. Or had been elsewhere mentally and wasn’t sure where she was now. Understandable. Rechs had been there many times.

  “Copy, Marine?” he said again.

  There was no other way than this. She had to see the last fifty meters through on her own. It was the only way.

  “Copy,” she said, suddenly coming back to the present.

  Rechs nodded. “Fifty meters and we’re out.”

  He could already hear the howl of the Crow coming in, the whine and roar of the starship’s engines erasing the blaster fire they were about to move out into.

  And Tyrus Rechs didn’t hesitate to take that first step. “Let’s move.”

  62

  The old light freighter registered as the Accadian Comet came in hard and fast, swooping down over wagon wheels rising to needle points. The sky began to settle from red to purple twilight, and lights were coming on across the city, competing with the fires in the streets. Smoke and haze gave everything that soft-focus look, as though all of this were some late-summer harvest festival.

  Even as the Crow set down in the wide plaza before the Excelsior Arms, flaring her repulsors, venting engine gases, and deploying her three massive landing struts, the bomb in the building detonated, fracturing the structure’s spine around the fifth floor.

  Loth had his mobile blaster teams, hidden inside commandeered sport utility sleds, ready to engage anyone who came out of the building. He’d decided there was no running from Zauro. Best case for him now… they wounded the prisoners and recaptured. Most likely outcome… they killed the legionnaire. And that would just have to be explained. Not great. But probably not bad when it was all added up.

  Loth had wired and placed the explosives himself. His EOD training had been expert level. The device would fracture the spine of the building high up enough to drop the upper levels down onto the lower levels, creating a cascade implosion. The thing would essentially collapse down on itself and not out into the street where it had the possibility of hitting the convoy if it was still in the area.

  The original plan had been not to be anywhere near the area, but plans had a way of coming apart at first contact. So this had been an excellent bit of operational foresight on Loth’s part. Not dropping the building onto its side in the street the way an amateur might.

  And just as an unidentified freighter sat down in the wide plaza where four major streets intersected among the burned-out stores and general ruined lifelessness of the old city, floor five erupted, blowing out debris and glass in a sudden blossom of explosive force. Spectacular, but no real threat to anyone not directly inside the building.

  An ominous and titanic groan sou
nded from the building’s central spine.

  The entire thing would fully collapse in the next thirty seconds, but to Loth that seemed well back on his list of things to worry about. For at that moment, Tyrus Rechs, the man himself, carrying his legionnaire prisoner, came running out of the collapsing building, the entire time shooting a massive sidearm in staccato automatic bursts at everyone on the street. And that damn female marine followed close behind, putting blasts into the armored sport utility sleds, killing one of the drivers in her first shots. Ruining his plans.

  Reaction teams from the convoy erupted with return fire from their vehicles at the same instant the top floors began to collapse. Maybe they weren’t aware the building was coming down.

  Or maybe shooting back seemed more pressing.

  All of this was about to get very messy.

  Overhead, a marine SLIC came in hot.

  Loth started to doubt he was getting out of this. But that wasn’t going to stop him from trying. If he had to kill his way to an escape pod, he would. In that moment he switched over from running a crew—leading—to focusing on his own survival.

  His people just didn’t know it yet.

  A tidal wave of debris and dust flooded out from the collapsing building and drowned the street in its wake. It was all-consuming, billowing out to demand that everyone in its path surrender to its force. Men coughed, their mouths full of the stuff. And as the dust blew across the street like a rolling storm front, the building offered its last residual groans and crashes. And then there was an ominous silence through which nothing could be heard except distant warning sirens and sled alarms.

  Loth reached out in the blinding swirls of dust. He felt his lieutenant next to him. And then he heard a voice.

  “KTF, losers!”

  Someone in the smoke and drifting dust opened fire with a heavy blaster. A SAB from the sound of it. Or so Loth guessed as a bolt tore off the head of his lieutenant.

  63

  Something was going down. In the seconds before the ship came in and the building fell, as the shooting started in the lobby across the street, Baldur began to whine.

  Puncher knew this was the spot. That was clearly an extraction convoy on the street. Players and shooters in abundance. If he was going to have any chance of getting his hands on his brother Shaker, and whoever else had survived, this was the moment.

  She here, thought the dog.

  Puncher charged the SAB, shucked needless gear, and made ready to assault across open ground. “Good boy.”

  Then a junky old light freighter came down out of the sky, flaring and venting, gears deploying, and the pros on the ground didn’t seem to have anticipated that.

  “New player,” he muttered.

  Friends? thought the dog, being optimistic. Helpers.

  “Maybe.”

  Baldur barked an affirmative.

  “Be ready, boy,” ordered Puncher. “Find her, we find Shaker. I’ll follow.”

  The dog whined and began to pace back and forth. Opening his mouth in large snaps. Tasting the air.

  “Got her?”

  Baldur barked that he had. He had the scent of the marine, and that meant the legionnaire.

  “Hold on,” ordered Puncher. There was firing coming from the building and the dog was whining.

  Ready to go.

  “Hold on, Baldur buddy!”

  Puncher tapped the cybernetic assist on his armor for the heavy SAB he was carrying, disguised the entire time by the homeless camo. His HUD identified armed targets coming out of the convoy. And now there was a marine gunship on station above, and Baldur was telegraphing that he wasn’t crazy about that either.

  And then, as if everything happening at once wasn’t already too much, the building exploded.

  Puncher swore.

  Two figures, one carrying Shaker, emerged from the collapsing building, engaging targets on the curb and running for the convoy as the building came down behind them.

  A tidal wave of dust and debris chased them. Puncher had just enough time to cover Baldur’s eyes and ears as the wave of gray destruction swept past them and covered the entire street.

  Then maybe thirty seconds of stunned silence as things settled. Distant alarms crying mayhem and shouting for attention.

  Puncher’s armor was identifying mounted heavy blasters supporting the pro teams on the street now sheltering on the near side of the convoy.

  And he could make out the two figures who had come out shooting. The big one was carrying what looked like his brother leej, hunkering on the opposite side of one vehicle from a team of very armed operators looking to do them harm.

  Once eyes were cleared and bearings were reacquired, that was.

  A short and very deadly firefight with not-good odds for anyone was about to break out in the next few seconds as the dust began to clear.

  And as if all this wasn’t improbable and surreal enough, Puncher saw a small Nubarian gunnery bot rolling through the dust, headed for the freighter’s lowering boarding ramp.

  Puncher cleared a field of fire for the powerful squad automatic blaster, shouted “KTF, losers!” and opened fire.

  * * *

  Rechs and the marine had barely made the side of the convoy as the building collapsed, the bounty hunter shooting down men as they surged across the sidewalk, blazing heavy caliber at the pros as he ran, the marine behind him and to the right, working the Jackknife over one of the sleds deploying a heavy blaster right at them.

  For all intents and purposes they’d walked right into an ambush. And there was little chance they were going to survive once it fully opened up. Their only chance was to shoot first and fast.

  Then the building fell behind them, pushing dust and debris all over everyone. Rechs lost sight of the marine, and the EMP effect blast sent his armor offline.

  The legionnaire on his back coughed, but Rechs could do little to help him. The guy needed real medical attention fast. Anything else was a death sentence.

  “Hang in there, Leej,” Rechs said. “You’ll make it.”

  The Crow was out there somewhere in that sea of dust, and Rechs impatiently waited for his reboot so his armor could find the thing.

  Someone yelled, “KTF, losers!” before squad automatic blaster fire in high cycle came from somewhere ahead.

  Rechs figured legionnaires had arrived to finish the fight.

  The dust was just beginning to clear when incoming blaster fire erupted across the street from all quarters. It was hard to tell who was shooting at whom.

  Rechs yelled to the marine, not sure where she was in all of this. “Sergeant Almond, c’mon! We’re leaving!”

  Then he ran for the next vehicle, shifting positions and withholding firing to avoid drawing attention.

  The heavy squad automatic blaster fire was shrieking across the plaza. Rechs could hear the Crow’s engines, but he couldn’t isolate a direction until his helmet worked again. It was taking longer to reboot than it normally did. Maybe just being tricky, or maybe as a result of the pounding the armor had taken already.

  Blaster fire rained down from above.

  Through the clearing dust, the sniper teams in the surrounding buildings were shooting at him… and at the legionnaire on his back.

  * * *

  Amanda could hear them all about her. Red-and-black Soshie pros. Taking cover on the far sides of all the vehicles along the street. If they rushed her, there was little she or the armored man carrying Lopez could do.

  Dust swirled through the air. Her ears were still ringing from the blast. Still ringing from the flashbang. Still ringing from the drubbing she’d taken at the hands of Mean Eyes. But she could hear the high-cycle whine of automatic blaster fire somewhere out there. Sounded like a SAB. And the huge roar of a ship’s engines.

  She looked to her left through squinted eye
s, the dust clumping on her lashes, and saw the armored man with Lopez shifting to another vehicle, massive sidearm out but not engaging. He was almost duck-walking with a legionnaire in full armor on his back, keeping a low profile.

  She thought she heard yelling, maybe her name being shouted, but couldn’t make it out for sure.

  Then fire began to rain down from the surrounding buildings. Targeting the man and Lopez. Poorly trained snipers going for the kill. And her blaster was all but useless against ranged targets.

  As they’d charged out of the building, she’d seen that some of the pros had been carrying blaster rifles. Weapons good for medium- to long-range engagements. She scanned the street near two dead men the armored man had shot down in their race to the curb and cover. But neither had those type of weapons. Their light blasters lay in the gutter nearby.

  She checked her blaster’s charge pack. Without thinking she swapped in a new one and rolled over the hood of the sled she covered behind, firing into the three men she found waiting on the other side. She squeezed hard on the Jackknife, literally shaking it across them. Hundreds of needle-sized bolts shredded the men in red and black.

  That was the last of the charge packs Rechs had given her. Her pockets were empty. But one of the downed pros had a medium-engagement blaster rifle with a scope on it. Looked like a Balt Optics x4. Good enough. She slithered under the sled’s open door to get to it, avoiding the blaster fire that smashed into the vehicle. Another pro had seen her pull that move, and he was responding.

  She let go of the little Jackknife blaster, pulled the rifle off the ground and quickly checked its load.

  Charge was solid. About three quarters full.

  Lying on her back and with little regard for her own safety, she focused in on the first sniper team she could spot in the buildings above.

  She landed the scope, checked that she was getting a good zero via the side-scroll telemetry within the picture, and pulled the trigger. Her target was leaning over the side of the roof, and her shot took the guy through the throat and sent a red spray up into the air behind him.