by Nick Cole
“Dark ops?” Ravi suggested.
“No, I don’t think so. The red wouldn’t fly. Too visible. This is something else.”
“Something else like what?”
“I’m not sure. When I shook down that Kimer fellow back at Corsica, he mentioned legionnaires that looked just like this. I figured he was just confusing some mercs with painted knock-off armor. These are definitely with Sullus.”
Ravi stroked his beard. “And are they legionnaires indeed?”
Keel didn’t have an answer. And even if he did, the opportunity to give it was taken away by a call over his comm.
“Wraith, this is Rechs,” the comm barked.
“Go for Wraith,” Keel said.
“Where’s the girl?”
“She’s fine,” Keel said, making himself sound wounded at the insinuation that she would be anything but.
“She’d better be,” came the menacing reply.
“Yeah,” Keel said, every bit as annoyed with this conversation as he was curious about the odd legionnaires in the docking bay. “Because I agree to take an obscenely amount of money off your hands just as an excuse to do the one thing that would make me lose it.”
“Lotta sickos in the galaxy, kid.”
Keel muted his mic. “I know, I’m talking to one.”
Ravi hooted at this.
“What do you have on the Siren and Sullus for me?”
Keel flicked the mic back on. “I’m watching the Siren now. No sign of Sullus though.”
“Why not?”
Keel rolled his eyes. “I don’t know. Maybe his quarters have a vibrating bed. I’ve been here since before the sun came up, and nothing has left the docking bay.”
“Did you do a cross-sectional particle scan? Check against the Siren’s radiation signature?”
“Of course,” Keel said impatiently. He muted the comm again. “Did we, Ravi?”
The hologram nodded.
“Good,” said Rechs. “So where’s the Siren?”
“Docking bays thirty through forty. I’m looking at it right now. Sullus seems to have recruited his own legionnaires, too. Black armor. They’re all lined up in parade rest inside, by the ship.”
“That’s lucky.” Rechs’s voice was almost drowned out by the roar of the Crow as it came in low and fast. It hovered just above Sullus’s hangar. “And where is the girl, exactly?”
“Having breakfast by docking bay ninety-eight.”
“Perfect.”
A swirling cannonade of missiles jumped from the Crow and erupted on the docking bay’s roof. This was followed up by a scorching barrage of blaster cannon fire. Spacers ran in panic. Ships violated every safety protocol in the book, taking off in an attempt to avoid the coming fight.
The Crow’s ramp lowered, and Rechs leapt from the ship, firing thrusters to slow his descent. He hit the ground with a thud, his ponderous MK1 armor leaving a dent in the paved street. No sooner had he stood than two Brotherhood mercs came running for him. Rechs put two gaping holes in them with his hand cannon as he turned to Keel. “You shoulda worn your armor.”
“I was incognito!” Keel protested.
Blaster fire sizzled past the trio.
“Not anymore. Besides, KTF, Leej. What else did you think I would do?”
The old maniac seemed to be enjoying the chaos. In fact, he seemed lost in it. Aim, shoot, kill. Aim, shoot, kill. It was like he was an unthinking machine.
And above it all the Obsidian Crow hovered, pivoting and firing, at mercs and the strange dark-armored legionnaires.
Keel drew his blaster and leveled a pair of dark legionnaires. The holes he left in their armor caught fire. He looked down at his blaster. “Looks like the new armor still can’t quite stop you, eh, girl?”
“We go inside the ship,” Rechs ordered, running toward the docking bay.
Keel gladly allowed the armored Rechs to draw most of the lead fire and pick off Brotherhood and Legion alike with well-placed shot after shot. Ravi’s sword wreaked havoc on any combatant who drew too near. Dying men screamed in bewilderment about the phantom they could not touch, but who could touch them only too well.
“Perhaps I should be the Wraith, yes?” Ravi crowed.
Rechs and Keel reached the inside of the hangar just as the scattered mercenaries and soldiers began to regroup. A volley of counter-fire by the legionnaires sent the invaders diving for cover behind a massive recharge cell.
“If these are the real deal,” Rechs said as he loaded archaic bullets into his archaic slug thrower, “they’re gonna try to get around us on either side. Flank—“
“—and spank,” Keel finished. “I’ll take the left.”
The pair fired at the advancing dark legionnaires, dropping soldiers before those soldiers were close enough to get a clear shot.
“If it were me out there,” Rechs observed between reloads, “I’d have tossed a fragger.”
“They are probably afraid of the damaging our ‘cover,’” Ravi suggested. “Were they to damage this recharge cell we are hiding behind, it would cause a feedback detonation large enough to level the entire docking bay.”
“Right, but I have good armor, see?” Rechs said. “So I’d toss the fragger anyway.”
“Good for you. What I have right now is thin and prone to paper cuts,” Keel shouted, sending a blaster bolt into the forehead of an advancing Brotherhood merc, dropping him in a heap. “So if you’ve got any grenades, send them that way.”
“I’m saving those,” Rechs said. “But our equalizer just showed up.”
The massive frame of the war bot darkened the docking bay’s door. A medium-range frag-launcher popped from its chest and sent a series of explosives into the legionnaire lines.
“Oh dear,” the war bot whined in its servile house-bot voice. “This all feels… so unnatural.”
Skrizz loped into the hangar, viciously blasting anyone who attempted to crawl to safety after the blast. Every bit the evolved predator.
Rechs holstered his slug thrower and stood. “Your coder did a superb job taking control of the war bot. Took me a while to undo it,” he said to Keel. “I consider myself more of a tinkerer than anything else. But with time, you become a master of lots.”
Keel followed Rechs toward the carnage. All the firing had stopped. The Brotherhood sentries and legionnaire guard had been made entirely inoperative. “So what now? Board the ship? You’ll notice that reinforcements didn’t come running down the ramps once the fighting started.”
“Which probably means that Sullus is locked up,” Rechs called over his shoulder. “That, or you lost him.”
Skrizz growled and waved Rechs over. The wobanki stood on top of a battered Brotherhood merc.
“Survivor, huh?” Rechs asked.
The wounded mercenary was struggling for breath. Skrizz seemed to revel in grinding its paw into the wounded man’s chest.
“Let him up,” Rechs ordered.
The wobanki obeyed, and the merc gasped for breath.
“Goth Sullus,” Rechs said, his voice spectral through his helmet speakers. “Where?”
The mercenary wheezed a profanity in a language Keel couldn’t identify.
Rechs nodded. “You’re not wrong.” He bent down, grabbed the merc by the throat, and lifted the wounded being until its feet dangled helplessly off the ground. “Sullus,” he commanded a second time. He squeezed, and alien cries of pain issued from the merc.
“Korba che Sullus,” the merc rasped. “Suma lerich che.”
Rechs dropped the merc at his feet. “That wasn’t so hard, now was it?”
Before the merc could answer, Rechs fired a bullet from his slug thrower into the merc’s head.
He turned to Keel. “Looks like Sullus left ‘with the others’ before the sun came up. You sure you were watching for him?”
“Yeah,” Keel said. “Must’ve been before we landed.”
“Would you like for me to clean up this mess?” the war bot queried.
/> “Leave it.” Rechs moved outside into the warm morning sun. And froze. The ground rumbled. Then rumbled again. And again. And again.
Keel followed the old bounty hunter’s gaze and heard himself gulp. Down the street, a four-story-tall HK-PP mech, bristling with heavy cannon above its squat torso and oversized legs, loomed above a veritable army of black legionnaires.
“We will enjoy a fifty-six percent greater chance of survival if we fall back to the Indelible VI,” Ravi.
“Yeah,” Keel said, taking a few steps backward. “Let’s do that.”
Rechs made no argument. A Hunter-Killer Planet Pounder would make Swiss cheese of even his MK1 armor. Soon the whole entourage was running headlong toward the ships while blaster fire ate up the ground at their heels.
28
The dark legionnaires were practically on top of them.
Rechs pushed through the terrified crowd stampeding around him. He’d lost sight of Skrizz and Keel, but those two could take care of themselves. And the bot… no one would bother the bot.
Rechs dashed down a side alley, dropped a proximity mine, and sprinted away. He heard its telltale whine just before it exploded. He didn’t pause to assess the damage. He quickly made his way back to the high canyon walls of the docking bays and the warrens of maintenance corridors that ran like arteries for vagabond ships.
Above the street, the massive mech seemed to be firing at random targets. Its huge cylindrical blasters moaned and whined, and large sections of the starport went up in sudden debris clouds.
He needed to get Prisma out of here. Needed to be sure she was alive and that she could reach safety. And he needed to kill Goth Sullus. For her, and for the Republic.
More of the dark legionnaires poured into the crowd. No sign of Sullus. But the sound of an Intec heavy blaster alerted Rechs that Keel was nearby. He saw five leejes fall in rapid succession. The kid was good, no doubt about it. And as long as he saved the girl, he could call himself the greatest. Rechs wouldn’t argue. All that didn’t mean anything in the final balance.
Keel was swapping out a charge pack while his holographic navigator did some technological wizardry with a sword, somehow slicing through armor that was meant to be impervious to melee weapons. Something about the way the Sikh moved reminded Rechs of… of… nothing, probably. What was real, and what was a product of his aging mind and memories that belonged to who-knew-what? It was all jumbled together now, into a life he could no longer piece through. Not with any reliability.
The Sikh was fighting, and fighting well. That was enough. Mercs and a few legionnaires were going down like harvested wheat at summer’s end.
Some dim vision tried to force its way into Rechs’s mind. Some memory of a day when the wheat had been cut and harvested and there’d been a rocket’s red glare.
Aren’t you tired of the memories? the voice asked. And the voice was himself. As it had been all along. Drawing him back from a past he didn’t want to remember, a past he missed at the same time.
“The past is gone,” he swore at himself as he ran.
And the future is right now.
Forward for what remains of the time left.
He spotted Keel sprinting toward his ship’s docking bay, blaster fire chasing his every step. Then the kid paused and covered for Rechs as he did the same. They found the agile Skrizz and the behemoth war bot hunkered down behind cargo modules outside the docking bay.
“Where’s the girl?” Rechs asked Keel. He looked around almost frantically.
Ravi held up a palm as if to calm the old warrior down. “I am communicating with the Indelible VI. She is safely inside.”
“Good,” Rechs said. “Get her out of here. All of you. Get out now. I’ll lead them away from the bay. Get clear and get out of this system now.”
Skrizz growled a query.
“Yeah, you too.”
Keel pulled out his blaster and fired it into an advancing squad of legionnaires being rallied by an officer. “You can’t handle all these on your own.”
“Have to, kid. I think there’s no coming back from this one.” Rechs pulled a fragger from his belt, cooked it, and hurled it at the oncoming troops. “But you work for me now, remember? So get going and don’t look back.”
Dark legionnaire squads swarmed the maintenance corridor leading to the bay. The blaster fire was instantly overwhelming. Keel hesitated only a moment before running toward the docking bay where the Six waited.
Rechs blasted straight into the air. He was careful to conserve jump fuel, but he wanted to get both elevated and visible. He fired down at the swarming legionnaires below, picking off several and causing the rest to scramble. He disappeared onto a high overhanging rooftop before they could return fire.
He looked up. High above, in Tusca’s burning blue sky, the dim outline of a fleet of destroyers appeared in orbit.
The admiral had arrived.
***
Keel ran toward the Six. The war bot had already lumbered aboard. “You joining us?” Keel asked the wobanki.
Skrizz held up his remote slave cylinder and shook his head. Already Keel could see the Crow moving in a straight line on approach for a quick pick-up.
“Suit yourself.”
Blaster fire struck the walls around them. Rechs had distracted most—but not all—of the mercs and legionnaires. The wobanki and Keel returned fire.
Keel was about to offer to stick with Skrizz until the ship landed when the wobanki began to shake and smack the slave cylinder. Rather than landing, the ship turned and moved in the opposite direction. The catman hissed its jabbering expletives.
“Told you,” Keel said. “C’mon!”
Skrizz dashed up the ramp of Indelible while Keel stopped to send two more blaster bolts into the advancing legionnaires. When the wobanki was safely aboard, the captain disappeared inside his ship as well. The dark leejes were now struggling to set up a medium blaster cannon.
“Go! Go! Go!” Keel screamed as he ran up the corridor. Ravi, already in the cockpit, waited for Keel to strap in.
“Everyone is on board,” the hologram announced.
“Punch it!”
The Six lifted up on repulsors, rotated, and roared out of the docking bay hangar, its repulsor backwash sending the legionnaires and their partially assembled blaster cannon flying.
The wobanki and Leenah joined Keel and Ravi in the cockpit.
“How nice,” Keel said, dodging anti-starcraft fire. “A party in my cockpit.”
The wobanki growled in nervous, stuttering tones.
“Not yet,” Keel answered, pushing the throttle hard and putting distance between the ship and spaceport. “I need to tie up a few loose ends before we leave Tusca. How’s the girl?” he asked Leenah.
“Frightened,” the pink Endurian princess replied. “She’s with her bot, and that seems to have a calming effect. Garret is showing them some tricks with the machine that Prisma didn’t know about.”
Keel nodded and gave Ravi control of the craft. “Speed us out on a southerly course, Ravi, then swing back around to the spot. But take your time. Not so fast that they see us come around.”
“Garret told me about another trick,” Leenah said, grabbing Keel’s arm before he could depart. “The one you’re looking to pull. You’re honestly planning on staying planetside during a Republic invasion by an entire sector fleet?”
“Yeah.” Keel looked down at the hand gently gripping his arm. He tugged himself free and strode quickly to his quarters, locking the door behind him and removing any chance for further discussion.
As Indelible raced across the planet, Keel slowly put on his—Wraith’s—armor. Legs and boots, torso, shoulders and arms. All that was missing was his helmet. He moved to the old chest at the foot of his bed and pushed aside the heavy wool blanket. Two helmets stared up at him. The first, his merc gear: optimized for combat, near indestructible. The second, his old leej bucket: black, unworn for years.
He put the old bucket on hi
s head.
***
Small cylinders of black smoke rose from the spaceport. The HK-PP was still rampaging through the streets, and legionnaires swarmed toward a central point. From the cockpit, Keel had a pretty good idea who they were swarming.
Shuttles were landing, sent planetside by the Republic fleet in orbit. But the legionnaires and basics that issued forth were not hostile toward Sullus’s forces. There seemed to be an eerie, unspoken truce. It didn’t smell right, but none of that mattered to Keel. He was out of the Indelible VI the moment it landed. He moved with determined speed to the sniper’s nest he’d built earlier that morning. The one that overlooked the dead starport.
All that mattered—the only thing—was being here now, before the shuttle carrying the admiral landed.
Keel dropped to his stomach, picked up his weapon, and looked through the scope at the scene some five kilometers away. No one was around. Had he miscalculated? Arrived too late?
The crew of the Indelible VI crept out from the ship behind him. Keel knew they were there. He could hear their breathing above the silent desert, where only the barest of breezes crossed. It didn’t matter now.
This mattered.
“Just a little while longer, boys,” Keel whispered to all the ghosts of his past that had followed him in the days since Kublar. “I promised.”
As if on cue, the shadowy figure of a commander in high-shine armor strode onto the scene, rallying legionnaires to a focal point in the battle down there. He was accompanied by an honor guard of dark legionnaires with high-speed, low-drag weapons, their armor still gleaming.
Keel ripped his gaze away from the man and looked skyward.
There!
There was the Elixir-class shuttle. The admiral’s preferred transport.
Keel watched through the sniper rifle of an old friend, long in the grave. He watched and knew that Admiral Silas Devers, “the Hero of Kublar,” was descending in that shuttle.
Part of Keel wanted to squeeze the trigger then and there. To shoot until the landing craft spiraled downward into a fiery crash.
Twenties could have made that shot.