by Nick Cole
He opened his mouth to say he didn’t know why, except that maybe, the little girl was some sort of clue in and of herself. A lucky rabbit’s foot that would help him find the lock. And if he found the lock, he’d blast it open, because that had always been his way. But nothing came out of his mouth, because all of this was some new low about himself he’d never considered.
The low of using others for a reason you can’t name.
“Mara…”
“Don’t!” cried Mother Ree.
“I don’t know what it is, but yes,” Rechs said. “The kid’s somehow part of it. Something to remind me why—or what—I’m looking for.”
Mother Ree changed. The pity was gone. So was the anger. She’d learned long ago that one best not take those things with you one parsec more than you had to. Life was hard enough as it was. Keep your baggage light. So instead she had chosen love. Unconditional love for the man in front of her. It had worked before, even when it made no sense. It would work again.
“I’m so sorry, Tyrus.”
She leaned in close, put her arms around his head, and pulled him down to her. She held his face in front of hers and stared into what remained of his soul.
“I feel as though this is goodbye.” Her voice quavered. “And I don’t want it to be. Just know that. Know that, Tyrus, somewhere in all the galaxy you were loved for nothing more than that you were just you.”
And then he kissed her. Just as he should’ve done all those years ago.
***
The Obsidian Crow lifted off despite the fever pitch of the storm. The stabilizers held as the flat ship pivoted and the engines ignited for departure.
Climbing through the toss and buckle of the storm, the wobanki asked, “Nanchu deytanku jabberwongi?”
“Telos,” replied the bounty hunter .
The catman dialed in the coordinates for the next jump.
19
The Crow dropped out of light speed just outside the main debris field of the old Telos battle site. The scarred hulks of disintegrating warships careened and bounced off one another in a constantly colliding maelstrom of metal and ruin. At their center was an old dreadnought that dwarfed all the other wrecks. Its name escaped Rechs, but this was his destination. He took the controls from the wobanki and flew toward the drifting hulk deep inside the debris field.
“Ilatango dura?” the wobanki asked.
“Because this is where we’ll find the Brotherhood?” Rechs replied.
“Ruthbroodaru?”
“Of Vengeance. The big ship in the middle is one of their hideouts.”
The catman erupted in a series of mournful yowls, the meaning of which was all too clear.
“No,” Rechs said. “You’re not getting out of here. They know me. We’ll be just fine.”
Again the wobanki yowled a question.
“Because,” Rechs replied, “the mercs that were with the man who…” He nodded toward the rear compartment. “Well, they were Brotherhood of Vengeance based on the description she gave me. Besides being bounty hunters, they also sometimes work as guards and mercenaries for the less than legal business concerns along the edge. They’re classy that way. The clan that operates out of here will know which clan is working for Goth Sullus.”
“Sutaokru meto no-taki!”
“I know they work with the Gomarii, but I won’t sell you to them. You’re part of my crew now. You’ll be just fine. Now bring in the extra power to the spatial deflectors. We’re gonna take some hits going into that debris field.”
“No sutaokru meto,” the wobanki grumbled.
“Trust me. I’m in with these guys… sorta.”
Two ancient Rigelian fighter-bombers swooped in from above, forward auto-cannons blazing. As the Crow’s deflectors absorbed the strafing run, the lights flickered out across several panels at the rear of the flight deck.
The wobanki howled and began rerouting power to critical systems.
“Got it!” rumbled Rechs, reangling the deflector shields.
Two more fighters were coming in from behind at attack speed. He knew there would be six. Standard Brotherhood hunting patrol. And they wouldn’t be interested in discussions, wouldn’t even open the comms. Salvage was easier if no one survived.
Time to get out of the open, Rechs thought.
He rolled the Crow one-eighty and dropped down into the elliptic of the battlefield, barely missing the ruined remains of a smashed Republican cruiser’s tumbling bridge section. Memories tried to crowd in, but he fought them off. He was hunting now. The past would have to wait.
The Crow wove through the spreading remains of an exploded destroyer. Fire from the fighters stabbed out ahead of the freighter as Rechs maneuvered to keep them off his tail. He took the Crow in close to the bigger wreckages, and the Rigelian fighter-bombers re-angled their thrust foils into horizontal maneuver mode for slower flight, while the pilot canopies rotated into the bomber targeting configuration. One passed close enough that Rechs could see the pilot dialing in the targeting array spread.
Best guess, thought Rechs as he swerved to avoid the flower petals of space-frozen steel where some torpedo had long ago erupted from the skin of a destroyer, is that the pursuit craft are going to saturation bomb the debris field… with the Crow in it.
“Lyra!” Rechs shouted.
“Here, Captain.”
“I need you to spam jam their targeting computers, otherwise you’re gonna get holed in all kind of places.”
“Activating ECM countermeasures now, Captain. Power to radar disk… booting up for cyber warfare now.”
“Are we under attack?” It was Prisma, leaning in through the hatch to the flight deck.
“Buckle up, girl!” Rechs roared. “This is gonna get real hairy.”
Prisma hesitated, watching the star field spin and whirl as colliding debris and the prehistoric remains of behemoth starships smashed into one another. A fighter-bomber streaked just over the Crow’s flight deck canopy, its ion engines howling like a stuck pigazoar.
“I said buckle up, Prisma! Now!” Rechs shouted in his command voice. “Unless you wanna get sucked out into the Big Dark if we take internals.”
Prisma turned to leave the flight deck, but Rechs grabbed her and shoved her into the navigator’s chair behind him. “You ever play games on your datapad?” he asked
“Uh-huh!” said Prisma as she raced to draw the straps across her tiny body.
Another fighter-bomber made a strafing run across the deflector shields, its blasters sending hot bolts of energy into the Crow.
“Tabu tanaka!” the wobanki screamed.
“Forget it!” Rechs yelled, dragging the ship away from the hot blue streaks coming from the enemy craft. “We don’t need hyper-destabilizers! Re-angle the defectors to the aft display. I’m increasing speed.”
Rechs’s fingers swam across the controls.
“Prisma, I’m bringing down a targeting computer. This is just like any game on your datapad. Land that reticle over any ships that appear inside the display, then fire.”
“What am I firing?”
“Aft point defense turret.”
Below the ship, a tri-barrel blaster deployed from a secret hatch, powered up, and began to chase targets.
Rechs moved the throttle forward and dove into the heavier parts of the debris field. One of the pursuing fighter-bombers clipped a tumbling photon inducer from some obliterated Republican corvette and went spinning off into the field. It smashed into the tumbling wreckage of a shot-to-pieces dragoon fighter and exploded violently.
“Five,” Rechs muttered to himself.
The Crow flung itself through the debris field at dangerous speeds, trying to avoid the erratic and unpredictable drifting remains of the ancient battle. The proximity alarm went off, and Rechs scanned for the approaching target. A massive piece of twisting metal, still flinging debris from itself like some comet spraying ice, rolled into view. It was getting larger by the second.
Rechs
pulled hard at the controls and drove straight at the hazard. It was an old trick. Head where something that’s moving currently is, and you won’t hit it when you occupy the same space. Trying to avoid it usually meant you’d meet it head-on by meeting it in the place you’d steered to avoid it. The odds and the galaxy were weird that way.
The pursuing fighter-bombers were wise to this as well, except for one of the rearmost pilots, who managed to collide with the fighter-bomber next to him. Both ships were vaporized instantly.
“Three.” Rechs reduced throttle and angled in toward what remained of the massive dreadnought. One of the last great ships the Republic, in its brief heyday, had been able to build. Now the only ships the endless bureaucracy of the Republic managed to produce were cheap mass-production corvettes.
Rechs diverted power to maneuvering thrusters.
“Got one!” Prisma shouted.
Rechs checked the near-space tactical. It was true—she had gotten one. Now there were only two fighters closing in for the kill.
Some distant part of him wondered if she realized she’d just killed someone.
And…
Do you realize you’re the one who taught her how to do it?
“Good job, kid. Now stay focused!”
He spared a glance at her as the Obsidian Crow raced for the dead hulk of the dreadnought. Prisma was leaning forward into the targeting display, oblivious to all the chaos on the flight deck. She was biting her lip.
“Breathe, kid,” he reminded her.
He watched her tiny torso rise and fall once. She’d taken just one breath.
The remaining fighters began to hurl proximity torpedoes at the fleeing light freighter. The Crow bounced and bucked against the explosive storms of focused energy erupting all around the hull.
And then a massive tractor beam from the old Dreadnought grabbed the Crow, and the pursuit was over.
Which was just what Rechs had wanted.
“Tabu rust reeversaroos?” the wobanki asked as the ship began to shake violently.
“Negative. This is how we get them to stop shooting at us—and get them to haul us inside their secret base.”
The remaining fighters took up escort positions astern, blaster cannons ready, and the Crow was towed slowly onto the hangar deck of the massive ship. The wreck soon swallowed everything in the cockpit’s field of view.
So this is what remains of it, thought Rechs. The forward command structure had been blown off in the battle. He remembered that. He remembered going to life support. Remembered giving the order to abandon ship. Remembered the deck-to-deck fighting as Savage marines tried to board the doomed ship.
That was all so long ago.
And he had been someone else.
***
Keel gently guided the controls of the Indelible VI as a storm of ice and sleet battered the shield array. It was delicate work, but nothing he hadn’t seen before.
The storm gave way as the ship descended, the cockpit window briefly spidering with webs of ice crystals as moisture from one vapor cloud rapidly froze on arrival of another arm of the storm. Flying became easier in low atmosphere, and Keel nosed his freighter toward a lonely docking bay, the only sign of life he’d managed to pick up on sensor array.
A yawn crept from Keel’s mouth as he engaged an auto-run. It was early morning on En Shakar, but not for the crew of the Six. They were out of sync with the planet, and Keel would rather be in his bunk, snoozing away.
The cockpit door opened, and Ravi stepped inside. “Do you know what you are to ask?”
Keel rubbed his chin. “I was thinking maybe of asking about the weather, then casually inquiring whether they’d seen any killer war bots.”
“Under the circumstances,” Ravi said, his brown eyes twinkling, “this approach may be as good as any. But I have found something interesting in my analysis of L-comm voice logs from Ackabar.”
“Yeah?”
“A war bot was identified multiple times on planet during a series of combat engagements. The bot was associated with—prepare yourself—Tyrus Rechs.”
Keel laughed. “Tyrus Rechs? Sure, Ravi.”
“You don’t think it was him?”
“I don’t think there is a him. Just a bunch of legends. The real Rechs probably got dusted decades ago. And even if he didn’t, he’d be dead of old age by now. Nah, I’ll tell you what happens with legends. Some wannabe calls himself Rechs, gets some traction with the name, blabs at some cantina, and soon half a dozen other people are calling themselves the same thing. I’ll bet you your share of the credits that this fake Rechs the legionnaires on Ackabar were talking about is already dead and buried.”
Ravi inclined his head. “I would perhaps agree if not for the reports that Rechs escaped several squads of legionnaires and is suspected to have avoided the Republic blockade. With a war bot and an unidentified human female.”
Keel sat up straight. “Maydoon?”
“Perhaps this is so, but it is my suggestion that when you leave the ship, you see if the name ‘Tyrus Rechs’ gets a reaction. If so, we can expand our search for Maydoon without giving out her name.”
“Good call.” Keel stood and filed past the seats to exit the cockpit. “I’m gonna kit up for this one.”
***
“Ready?”
Keel waited for Ravi to nod his approval before lowering the ramp of the Indelible. A swirl of cold air blew up and into the ship. Keel shuddered. Frozen planets were something he could do without.
He put on his helmet, transforming himself into Wraith.
“If I may so say, Captain,” Ravi said as he followed Keel down the ramp, “you missed a most breathtaking sight as I guided the Six toward the landing beacon. It was as if I sailed a diamond-bottomed boat over a perfectly clear ocean.”
“I’ll see it on the way out,” Keel said. “Here comes the welcoming party.”
A procession of robed men and women seemed to glide forward to meet him. Leading the way was a middle-aged woman with silver hair. She stopped several feet in front of Keel and Ravi, and smiled.
“Welcome, travelers.”
Keel gave a brief nod.
“Thank you,” said Ravi, bowing. “I am Ravi. This is… Wraith.”
“I am called Mother Ree. I greet you both in friendship… and peace.” Mother Ree moved closer and gently pulled her hand through Ravi as though running it through the mists of a waterfall. “You are an enigma, Ravi. For there is nothing to you and yet… there is much to you.”
Ravi stood motionless, but Keel sensed a certain bewilderment hidden behind the face of his navigator.
“And you.” Mother Ree stopped in front of Keel, staring up at her own reflection in his helmet’s visor. “Wraith. You come here, a man hiding inside his armor. And not the first. Would the man inside find peace at my monastery? Would Aeson Keel show himself?”
Keel looked to Ravi, words escaping him. He turned back to Mother Ree. “How? How did you know…?”
“Remove your helmet, Captain Keel, and I will tell you what you wish to know about Tyrus Rechs and Prisma Maydoon.”
Keel hesitated.
“That is your quest, is it not?”
Keel removed his helmet. “Yeah.”
Mother Ree peered into Keel’s eyes. There was an intensity in her look that made Keel feel as though she could see into his very life. Watching the events that had made him.
“The galaxy reveals its secrets slowly,” Mother Ree said, her voice melancholy. “It shows me Wraith. And inside Wraith it shows me Captain Keel. And inside Captain Keel… it will not say.”
Keel shifted uncomfortably, but found he could not pull his gaze from Mother Ree. She had him entranced and yet… she was not a witch. There was nothing dark or impure about her. She was a creature of the light, and Keel was unable to comprehend her. So he listened.
“There are two paths before you, Captain Keel.” Mother Ree held up a palm. “On one, you will find that which you seek. And that whi
ch you’ve worked toward will come to be.”
“And the other?” Keel was surprised to hear himself ask the question.
“The Wraith, and the man inside the man, become one. And you live a peaceful life, forever free of the struggles and cares of the galaxy.”
Forever free.
Free.
Keel swallowed and opened his mouth to speak. No words came forth.
From the corner of his eye, he spied a man in priestly robes slowly backing away from the gathering of Mother Ree’s disciples.
“Cal Camp?” Keel asked in disbelief. He drew his blaster and aimed it at the robed figure. “Camp!”
The priest’s face registered terror—which gave way to a shocked death mask as Keel sent a blaster bolt squarely into his chest. The man slumped down in the arms of a priestess.
The voices of the other disciples rose in fury. Mother Ree silenced them with upheld arms.
She turned and faced Keel. “You have chosen to leave, then.”
Keel holstered his blaster. Whatever trick the silver fox had played was a good one, but he felt in control of his senses. “C’mon, Ravi.”
Keel strode to the corpse of Cal Camp and pulled out an optical scanner. The thumb-shaped device issued a green flash of light and a single beep. Keel laughed. “How about that, huh?”
Ravi’s eyes bulged at the sight of the dead fugitive. Cal Camp was a notorious murderer. The Child-Killer of Kandalar. The Monster of Mirshra. Wanted throughout the galaxy. The combination of bounties and planetary rewards would add up to almost two million credits, now that Keel had proof from the scanner. “The odds… are staggering.”
“How staggering?” a jovial Keel asked.
Ravi held his arms out at his sides. “Given the restrictions you have dictated, I am saying less than one percent.”
Keel grinned. “Go ahead and be specific, just this once.”
“Three billion and six to one.”
Keel moved back to Mother Ree with a spring in his step. “You can thank me later, Your Holiness, because I just killed one of the most notorious murderers in the galaxy today.”