Madame Guillotine

by Jason Anspach

  There are a lot of other charges.

  Armies of lawyers, financed by Mr. Zauro, are dealing with the fallout. Some pundits say she might come back. Someday. That she’s still on the verge of greatness, a force the galaxy must acknowledge. They don’t believe the charges. They believe in her. Just as it had been on that day when she addressed all of her…

  …her supporters. On Detron, and across the galaxy.

  The Soshies…

  No.

  Her fans. They had been something more than mere political supporters. Because she had been something more.

  They hadn’t just believed in her. They’d worshipped her. Her entire life, everything, had been leading up to that divine moment when that sea of people in the plaza looked to her to save them.

  Looked to her to lift them up. Make their dingy little scrubby lives better.

  Every word that came from her mouth on that day had been treated as the spun gold of a prophetess. Dripping with pearls and pretty wisdoms. They’d come to her for all the truly important answers to what was wrong with the galaxy.

  Now she went to sleep each night with a bottle of wine and another handful of pills. She felt good about what she’d done then, as she drifted into the embrace of sleep. When she was sober… when the pills wore off and before the first glass of the day was poured… then she knew the score. It was all gone. The investigations, the document trail to Zauro, the deaths of the legionnaires blamed on her… it had ruined everything.

  The lawyers who seemed the smartest told her she’d be lucky to avoid the prison planets. She knew Zauro would pay a hefty fee to avoid that. But still. She was effectively ruined.

  The few millions she’d managed to squirrel away via influencer fees during her brief time in the House didn’t seem like much when compared with the fact there wouldn’t be any more coming for a long while.

  She remembered her first days in office, adding up how much she’d make over all the years of her service within the House. The figure had been the size of a mountain. Wide eyes had gone wider at the numbers she’d calculated.

  That was all gone.

  Maybe it might come back. Someday.

  Zauro had told her that. Had given her some hope on the other side of all this. Given time, maybe people would forget, and then she could come back—new, redeemed, wiser.

  Try for some real influence in the House. Develop a coalition that could make things happen.

  They were so close, Zauro had told her, to fundamentally changing the galaxy. For the better.

  She believed it.

  She believed in herself first of all, and maybe that was all one needed to get back on top. Or maybe that should be filed under things the pills can make you believe after the first glass is poured.

  The assassin raised her up in bed, gently. There was no need to be rough. No need to make this worse than it had to be.

  She woke up, but the effects of the pills and the wine made her sluggish. Slow to respond. Without the sense of urgency or fear that should accompany a home invasion.

  “Who’re you?” she asked the figure in the dark. As if still waking from some wonderful dream where everything had not gone horribly wrong. Where things had gone as they were supposed to have. According to plan. Where the crowd still roared their undying adulations at her very presence.

  The assassin gave no reply.

  “I don’t recognize you,” said the sleepy Syl Hamachi-Roi in the little girl’s voice of her drug-ravaged personality. Still cottony. Still pleasant. Still dreaming of all the things that never should have happened.

  She could see his face in the blue light of the last of the night. He’d left the dive mask down on the beach and had pulled back the synthprene hood for the killing. It didn’t matter if she saw his face. She wouldn’t live. And he didn’t care. He was already a wanted man. A very wanted man. The most wanted man in the galaxy.

  The assassin, a man on the young side of middle age, placed a pair of ener-chains about her wrists. She looked at them quizzically, as though fascinated by their design. He hauled her to her feet in a quick motion. Best to be about the work and get on with what needed doing. She wobbled for a second and her mouth formed the word, as she fought to both wake and dream in the same moment, before she spoke it.

  “Why?”

  “Come,” he said gently. “Follow me now.”

  And then he led her onto the landing of the villa’s second story. Away from the sumptuous and dreamy master suite full of soft cottons, drowsy fabrics, over-stuffed pillows, and a view of the garden below. Out of there and back onto the landing. Down the stairs and past the two dead guards whose look of surprise remained in death.

  Through the quiet house where no other living thing besides assassin and target breathed. Then out onto the pool deck and off into the night garden.

  The tree he’d spotted on the way in would do the trick.

  She followed numbly, as though in a light trance. He was holding her arm and pulling her along.

  She knew, inside of her, that the pills were keeping her numb. Pliable. Zauro’s doctors had prescribed them. And she’d taken them. Anything to get free of the depression and despair. And the anxiety. Especially that. It had been her constant companion through the whole impeachment phase in the House of Reason. Through her death as the galaxy’s savior. Allies had become enemies. Enemies had become victors. She’d been taught some hard lessons.

  The humiliation and the shame. Yes, those had been awful. But what had been the worst was the loss of relevance. The return to being just a “no one.” That. That had hurt the worst. Like some kind of endless void at just the beginning of some forever that would be the rest of her life.

  Like some kind of hell.

  She stood there in the wet grass of the garden, her bare feet coming to life, listening to the first birds begin to call out to one another in the predawn darkness. She knew this wasn’t just a dream. This was real. And that today would be a beautiful day. And that… was enough. What more did one need than just a beautiful day?

  She sighed.

  A beautiful day was something to be grateful for. Truly grateful for. She needed to be more grateful. When she came back… she would be grateful. But she would also pay them back. She would be grateful for her revenge. And for the victory she and Zauro would show the galaxy one day.

  Grateful.

  She took a deep breath as the man in front of her, the dark man as she’d begun to think of him, removed a coil of synthetic rope from around his torso.

  “What are you doing?” she asked, a little more awake. A little more concerned.

  Still the man didn’t speak. He coiled one end of the rope around the stolid tree he’d selected within the garden. The other end, thick and knotted into something already over a sturdy dark limb, she recognized…

  “Oh,” she whispered. “It’s a noose.”

  He drew her over, helped her up onto a stone bench beneath the tree, and placed the noose gently about her neck.

  And again…

  Why? she asked herself.

  “Why?” she asked the man in the dark. “Why are you doing this to me?”

  But still she didn’t struggle. Couldn’t.

  The man stood by her, steadying her in this moment at the edge of life and death.

  For some reason, she knew she wasn’t afraid… should be afraid, but wasn’t. There was something comforting about the man. Some constant in a galaxy of uncertainties that she could feel. She’d never felt that before. And now, so close to death, she felt it. Knew it for what it was. The opposite of everything she had chosen, pursued.

  It’s Mr. Death.

  Some boy she’d known back in college had read comic books. The man next to her reminded her of that character. That villain.

  Mr. Death.

  But in his presence, coming aw
ake now, just before the fear of what was about to happen descended on her, she felt… safe next to him. Like one might feel when they’re lost in the woods and they find a road sign that finally shows them the way out.

  Safe like that.

  Lost and afraid that you might never be found.

  And then… found. Hurray.

  Mr. Death.

  “I’m going to hang you,” said Tyrus Rechs in the dark. The sky above the trees was turning a soft shade of blue.

  Her mouth made that why shape, and he continued.

  “Not because you conspired to murder a legionnaire,” said the assassin in the darkness.

  “No?”

  “You deserve it because of that. But not because of that.”

  “I do,” she moaned. And he couldn’t tell whether it was a question or an admission.

  “Yeah,” said Tyrus as he checked the rope.

  He took a deep breath.

  But she began to speak before he finished. Fighting past the malaise of the pills and issuing forth a rambling plea for leniency.

  “You don’t have to do this. You don’t. I didn’t know. I didn’t know that was going to happen. I knew something was going to happen, but I really didn’t know…” She trailed off.

  The wind blew. The palms around them swayed. The hanging tree stood firm.

  “But really. Please. You don’t have to. I’m just trying to make the galaxy a better place. Trying to lift… trying to make it so… you know. Better. A better place. I’m… we’re… we see what needs to happen. What needs to change. What needs to go… for… for it to just be better. A better place for everyone. Is that so bad? Am I wrong? Was trying to make it a better place wrong?”

  She’d started to cry. The hysteria had started to creep in as she spoke. But to her credit, once she began to speak about her vision, her mission, her destiny, some ancient steel had come into her voice, and now the lost sleepy little girl he’d led down here stared at him with cruel and imperious eyes.

  “And that means some people don’t fit,” she finally spat. “What happened was… was… was… just an example. That’s all. Just a message. I may not have known it was going to happen, but… but… I damn well support it. And screw you for thinking you have a right to question that.

  “So some stupid legionnaire lost his head? Small price to pay. He joined up. He’s killed more innocents than he could ever atone for. He’s just some stupid kid who never could have made it in the real galaxy. Probably would have failed out of the university I went to. In time he’d have gone back home after the Legion with a drinking problem and a temper. Working some dead-end job and thinking he actually did something. Voting for all the wrong people because of some misguided notion that the Republic is a great place.

  “It’s not great. It never was. But it can be,” she sneered.

  She shook the ener-chains like they might just fall off, and when they did not, she gave a haughty frustrated exhale of exasperation.

  “Get these off of me!” she demanded.

  “That’s not why I’m going to hang you,” said Rechs patiently. “Not because you helped murder someone sworn to protect you.”

  “I don’t need—” she almost shrieked.

  “That’s not why.”

  The girl glared at him from her perch on the stone bench, the rope almost seeming like a necklace about her slender throat.

  “Then you’re a coward!” Her eyes were pure murder. “Just some assassin who can’t stand that the galaxy is changing. Because your barbaric career—killing for money—that won’t be tolerated in a new order.”

  “That’s not why,” said Rechs patiently.

  She stared at him for a long moment.

  “Then why?” she asked. Because she actually wanted to know. She was incapable of seeing any valid reason, or other point of view, that might possibly be valid as to why she should be… hanged. The man before her, a criminal assassin. He should be hanged. Their places ought to be reversed. The galaxy was playing a cosmic joke on her.

  Rechs cleared his throat and took hold of the rope. But gently. Not applying any pressure to Roi’s neck.

  “First, make your peace. It’s almost time.”

  She said nothing, just stared hate at him.

  “Because when I’m finished, I’m going to hang you. Do you understand me, Syl?”

  “Ha!” she laughed down at him. “You’re going to hang me for ridding the galaxy of another sanctioned murderer we just happen to call a legionnaire. Covering life’s losers in false glory and giving them armor to make them feel like men. You’re so stupid, whoever you are. That makes you just as bad as what you’re saying I’m guilty of. What are you going to do… hang yourself next?”

  “I’m hanging you because I’ve seen it all before,” said Rechs. “More times than you can imagine. It’s always someone like you. Someone with new ideas that are just old ideas ginned up to make the masses think you actually care without ever doing anything that actually shows you care about them.”

  “I do care!” spat the disgraced delegate. “Cared enough to actually do the hard, dirty work required to clean the galaxy.”

  Rechs clenched his jaw. “Don’t talk to me about cleaning the galaxy. Not without ever going out there into the stellar dark to slay the real monsters that howl beyond the limits of known space. Just waiting to come in and rape, loot, and murder everyone on their way to power. Just like you.

  “I’ve seen it more times than you can imagine. And the only distinguishing feature was the body count. It’s as old as Earth. It’s what the Savages were all about. The trouble here is, you think you came up with all these ideas on your own. So I’m gonna save the galaxy two million, twenty million, two billion, and just cut to the chase with you, Syl.”

  She was staring at him. Horrified. Because now she seemed to understand that he was serious about all this. Not angry. Not passionate like her. Just tired at having to do some job he’d decided to do. Like a man who goes out every day to sweep up the trash in the gutter. Doing it because it must be done. Because someone has to do it or the galaxy just overflows with trash.

  She was angry at him for being tired. She needed him to be as hateful and vitriolic as she was. Needed to feel as though she were being martyred at the hands of an ignorant zealot. She’d felt that way before. But not now. She had almost been excited about being hanged. Executed. It would make her a saint. Cleanse from her the stain that was her disgraceful exit from the House of Reason.

  She began to cry.

  “Why… you don’t…”

  He wanted to tell her he felt sorry for her.

  But he didn’t. Not even a little bit.

  It always ended in rope. If the dictators didn’t kill themselves the people found them. And then… it always ended in rope.

  Tyrus Rechs was never squeamish about killing. He was good at it. And he’d found it was better to get to that part over with sooner rather than later.

  She was sobbing when he gave her body a soft and gentle shove off the bench, and then jerked the rope with all his might, the expert knot he’d put in just above the back of her head breaking her neck instantly.

  There was no pain.

  Just a quick break and it was over.

  They’d find her body drifting in the morning breeze as the sun came up. After the cover-up. After the guards were erased and forgotten, their relatives paid off because what really happened doesn’t happen on Pthalo.

  Then they’d find her. Speculate it was suicide for a few media cycles and take part in handwringing over their own part in the nonstop gleeful coverage of the fall from power by one they’d propped up in the first place.

  But all that was after the bounty hunter returned to the beach, carried the mask and dive flippers out into the waves, put them on in the gentle surf, and kicked out into the warm tropical
water.

  After he swam away as the sun began to rise.

  And after the call.

  “Gabi. It’s done.”

  The End

  Tyrus Rechs will return…

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  Other Galaxy’s Edge Books

  Galaxy’s Edge Season One:

  Legionnaire

  Galactic Outlaws

  Kill Team

  Attack of Shadows

  Sword of the Legion

  Prisoners of Darkness

  Turning Point

  Message for the Dead

  Retribution

  Tyrus Rechs: Contracts & Terminations:

  Requiem for Medusa

  Chasing the Dragon

  Madame Guillotine

  Stand-Alone Books:

  Imperator

  Order of the Centurion:

  Order of the Centurion

  Iron Wolves

  Through the Nether

  The Reservist

  Stryker’s War

  About the Authors

  Jason Anspach and Nick Cole are a pair of west coast authors teaming up to write their science fiction dream series, Galaxy’s Edge.