Galactic Outlaws (Galaxy's Edge Book 2)

by Nick Cole

  But why had Goth Sullus come here?

  Just another madman who thought the Ancients had given him some kind of prophecy with which to light the galaxy on fire? That had been done before.

  Or…

  … was this all just a trap?

  Rechs made the burning ridgeline and looked out at the complex of ruins spread across it. As with all the Ancients’ ruins, the only structures present were squat, leaning pyramids of no apparent purpose. No door had ever been found to lead within these structures. They were impervious, though they were seemingly made of ordinary stone; the rock used in their construction was always native to the world. But it was impossibly tight-fitting rock, almost hyper-compressed, or even fused together. Completely inviolable.

  No telegraphy or radar had ever been able to probe the secrets of these structures. So the galaxy had ultimately disregarded them and moved on with its business. Yet there they sat, always watching from just beyond the perimeters of all those tiny outposts out in the Big Dark.

  Rechs brought the Hogg to a stop on the wide flagstone-paved court before the main and most alien pyramid. There was no one here. He dismounted. The soft hush of the wind came to him through his armor’s local ambient audio detection. It made the same ghostly whisper it always did around the ruins.

  He spun about, facing one of the smaller pyramids. He had that overwhelming feeling he was being watched. That sixth sense every leej gets when they know there’s a sniper drawing a bead on you from some hidden place. But there was nothing beyond the sigh of the wind and the silent pyramids.

  “Rechs!” shouted a voice.

  But when he turned, there was nothing there.

  Except now he could hear some kind of low, furtive whisper. And then a chorus of whispers. And more. The whispering threatened to drown out the world and his sanity as it crescendoed. He slapped the side of his helmet to make sure it wasn’t a bucket malfunction. He told it to run an audio diagnostic. Everything was in the green. Yet he could still hear that low, whispering chorus. Or was it the wind?

  He took off his helmet and held it under one arm.

  The ghost whisper chorus stopped. Everything was dead silent again.

  The wind felt cool on his face. He could smell the old yet familiar smell of the alien desert. It smelled of sage and dust and burnt wood, as all deserts do. A low, pulsing energy surged through the air. He tilted his head and concentrated, trying to detect its source.

  He never would have anticipated what happened next.

  A small section of the grand pyramid ahead folded in on itself brick by brick. Across its face, the ancient rocks unstacked themselves and fell inward toward nothingness—like some event horizon had swallowed them. What lay beyond them was only a waiting blackness. It had the feeling of being not just empty space… but a sort of mind-bending nothingness that rational minds could not comprehend.

  And then that voice spoke again. The one that had been speaking to him all along and for so many years. The voice of an old friend long forgotten. Near and at hand. A voice so known it had almost seemed his own.

  Maybe because of all the guises they’d been forced to wear, he hadn’t recognized it. But hearing it now…

  It was Admiral Caspo.

  And Asper Sulo.

  Daq Sula.

  Jasen Solis.

  John… John something from way back when, in the age of nuclear fission light-huggers hauling out into the first worlds. That had been on Outer Vangora. During that war… where all those people died.

  Josh Sulliman.

  Mars. No, not yet.

  On Mars he’d been… Sullivan. Cyrus Sullivan.

  Lieutenant Commander Sullivan, NASA. First Officer on the Intrepid.

  Sullivan was the voice. And the whispers. And the calling from the dark within the Ancients’ pyramid.

  “It’s been a long time… old friend. A very long time.”

  Rechs started slowly toward the gaping maw, staring in utter disbelief at the darkness within. Some part of him wanted to go… to finally know all the secrets that haunted the forgotten places of the galaxy.

  What was within these Ancient places was the knowing of such things.

  And yet how could it be anything other than destruction?

  He stopped. He felt drugged by the pain meds, or the calling void, he didn’t know which.

  Even now his mind, or what was left of his mind, was coming apart at the seams, as though the event horizon were whispering and pulling at the same time. How else could he hear his old friend’s voice coming from within there?

  “You’re dead!” he shouted at the darkness.

  A dry chuckle. It reminded Rechs of all the grave dust that ever waited on all the tombs of all the dead. It came from that blank space in the universe… the space waiting in front of him.

  I’m losing my mind, he thought. That’s all this is.

  “No you’re not, Rechs.” The voice was clear as day. “You’re not. And this is as real as it’s ever been. I didn’t go down with the ship that day on Telos. I let her burn up once she hit atmo. It was a nice place to exit… stage left. It was a perfect time to disappear and begin my search.”

  “Why?” Rechs asked. Why?

  “You know why!” The voice rang out through the forgotten rooms of his mind. “I was tired of watching what you and I and the others had built with our sweat and lives get ruined by the meddling herd of do-gooding scolds. The pack animals were finally in charge, and they no longer needed the lions.”

  “Where… where have you been, Sullivan?”

  That dry grave whisper chuckled again.

  “Do you remember the Quantum Palace, old friend? I followed all the clues you chose to forget, Rechs. I’d been working on it all along. I unraveled what that place really was and what it had done to us, and I followed those clues. I found something wonderful out there beyond the edge of the galaxy. Way out there in the emptiness between here and far Andromeda. It’s forever out there, Rechs. The distances are mind-numbing. On a tiny planet orbiting a lost star, I found the answer to all the galaxy’s problems. And now I’ve come back to heal, and to destroy. I’ve come back with the power to do everything that needs doing.”

  “Why?”

  “You know why. You know exactly why, my friend. And you have this chance to stand with me, right now, and make things right one last time and forever… even though, let’s just say, oldest of friends, let’s just say I already know the answer you’ll choose.”

  The wind began to hush and whisper. The sky turned a bloody red as the last sun began its final descent. The hot day was done, but the fading heat remained.

  “You’re going to take over the Republic, Sullivan.”

  Goth Sullus.

  “No, Rechs. I’m going to destroy it. It’s dead anyway.”

  The wind hushed and moaned, crossing dusty flagstones and picking up small swirls of grit to shift along a few inches more.

  “And then I’m going to build an empire the likes of which the galaxy has never seen. The strong will protect the weak as it always should’ve been. I’m going to do all the things that need doing, Rechs. Just like I always said I would. It’ll last ten thousand years… and so shall I.”

  The desert winds of evening begin to rise. The last sun remaining in the sky touches the horizon and begins its final descent. Out over the desert, everything, even the pyramids and the paving stones, is washed in rusty, dried, ancient blood.

  The end of the day on Tusca.

  The end of everything.

  “Choose, Rechs.” Pause. “But I think we both know how this plays out now.”

  “Maydoon?”

  “He was one of the best spies the Republic ever made. Quite an assassin, too. He knew where all the bodies were buried. All the access codes were his for life. They kept him as a sort of failsafe against themselves… if you can wrap your mind around that sort of dithering foolishness. Typical herd thinking. They never wanted any one of them to have too much power over
the others. Afraid someone might rock the boat and do a little good. So he was the insurance. An ambitionless man, given all the secrets, so he could protect them from themselves. His data globe gave me access to the sector defense network. The orders that guard the Republic from itself, and stand ready against unimaginable boogeymen from the outer dark.”

  Rechs thought of Prisma.

  He wasn’t perfect, but he was my daddy.

  “Well… their boogeyman is here now. But there is a way for you to live through this, my oldest friend. You can join me, and we’ll rule the galaxy together. But for that to happen, the Maydoons have to die. Have to. He buried a chip inside her. A chip that contains the location of the WarMind. An AI-driven bot army and fleet that circles the galaxy, ever asleep and waiting to protect the Repub against a doomsday scenario just like this one. Choose now, Rechs. Choose whether you can be the general you once were… or just some down-and-out bounty hunter on retainer for something as base as petty revenge. We can do great things together, Rechs, you and I. We’ve been through too much to not do the big things that always needed doing. I would hate for it to be any other way. I would hate for it to be without you.”

  Rechs waited, considering all that Sullivan had said from inside the void in the pyramid’s face. Whether it was true or not, it didn’t matter. He’d seen too many tyrants and genocidal potentates who’d had their way in their low little nightmares. Too many times he’d been ordered to put them down.

  Too many times he had seen that power corrupts.

  And ultimate power… corrupts ultimately.

  There would always be those who thought they could rule over others without the consent of the governed. There would always be tyranny and tyrants. Always…

  And then there was Prisma.

  “He wasn’t perfect. But he was my daddy, and I loved him.”

  Rechs raised him helmet like some old knight going out to the lists once more, one final turn, then fitted it back over his head. It locked in place and sealed with a slight hiss.

  He heard that whisper in his head, coming from the blank space in the galaxy that shouldn’t be.

  “I see you’ve chosen, old friend. Stupid… so very stupid.” That grave whisper that was once a friend chuckled dryly again. “Then it’s time you met your replacements, Legionnaire.”

  Targets appeared on Rechs’s HUD. Four of them. He wasn’t getting any kind of reading on their armor, but he could see that their weapons were ready. He turned to the right and saw the first one materialize as if dropping from some sort of cloaking device.

  Leej armor, but far better than the new stuff, or even the stuff of those other dark legionnaires back in Tusca. Skinned in black with no red stripe.

  Rechs turned and saw another one of them appear on top of a smaller pyramid. Same armor, and this guy had a heavy sniper rifle that practically spelled out the word “lethal at long range.” The next one to appear had some kind of bionic rig to help stabilize the largest, most wicked-looking heavy blaster he’d ever seen. It looked like a tri-barrel N-50.

  The last trooper stepped right out of the event horizon darkness within the face of the pyramid. He was all in black, and carrying a hand cannon just like Rechs’s. A hard-caliber slug thrower. Except this weapon was new, and somehow its graphite appearance made it seem much more deadly.

  “Allow me to introduce my legionnaires, Rechs. The armor is just like yours… but not really. I’ll be honest—it’s as close as we can come. Yours… yours was once in a lifetime. Nothing like it. But this will do against the legionnaires of the Repub. They, as they say, ain’t what we used to be—are they, old friend? I’d like you to meet my legionnaires, General Rex. I call them shock troopers.”

  Rechs simultaneously keyed his jump jets and fired at the leej with the tri-barrel. The sniper fired a high-density energy blast, but missed—just barely. A series of blasts from the N-50 chased Rechs across the burning red sky. He landed behind the guy with the hand cannon in a swirl of grit and dust. The blaze from the tri-barrel centered on that trooper and ventilated him in seconds.

  Rechs pulled the hand cannon out of the dying man’s hand, dropped to the ground, and rolled, firing at the trooper with the subcompact blaster. He had to use his left hand—his right was useless.

  The trooper deployed an energy shield and closed, crouched and firing, as Rechs put ineffective rounds on target. As many of them as he could. The trooper’s shield collapsed, and he switched to a two-hand firing position, bearing down on Rechs. Rechs closed and put six rounds all across the guy’s armor. Six smoking vapor trails raced off into the red desert behind that trooper as he tumbled to the flagstones.

  Rechs surged into a run, and the sniper atop the smaller pyramid nailed him with a high-powered charged shot. Searing hot pain went through Rechs’s midsection, and his legs gave out. He tumbled to the pavement of the ancient temple complex.

  Suit integrity warnings lit up all across his HUD. Med seals locked in place and began to repair. But the pain was blinding. He could smell his own burnt flesh, and it felt like his leg had been blown off.

  It hadn’t been.

  But it sure felt like it.

  The HUD announced that he was down to two bullets in his own hand cannon and half a load in the one he’d taken off the first trooper. He let both weapons fall to the ground and reached into a cargo pouch for a pain tranq. He slammed the whole load in above the thigh of the shrieking leg.

  Not even a second later, all the pain was all gone.

  The medicine flooded the damaged area, knocking out local pain receptors all the way up the spine. All he felt now was numb. It wouldn’t last, but it would do for what remained.

  He heard the hard strike of boots on the pavement, coming for him.

  He rolled over onto his belly and tried to push off the ground. Tried to stand one last time.

  Instead he got a tremendous kick that sent him sprawling.

  He momentarily lost the ability to breathe, but he forced himself to his knees. Warnings on his HUD signaled all kinds of dire things that were starting to matter less and less.

  The man with the tri-barrel gun reared back to smash in Rechs’s helmet. Both of Rechs’s hand cannons were out of reach. One on the flagstone behind him, the other within reach of useless hand. A distant thought occurred, through Rechs’s pain-shrouded brain, that he should reach for his machete.

  There was no time. The trooper brought the tri-barrel down, hard, on Rechs’s helmet, sending him to the pavement once again.

  He was only out for a second, yet his body seemed to scramble and tumble away on some kind of autopilot. As though the will to live that was within him wasn’t ready to go, even if he was dead. Or maybe the guy had simply sent him flying with a series of savage kicks.

  When he came to, he heard those same hard-soled combat boots coming for him once more. They sounded just like leej boots.

  Hell, he thought, they are leejes… just different now. New somehow. But not better.

  Never.

  Again he barely pushed himself to his knees.

  The trooper raised the tri-barrel to deliver another blow.

  But this time, as the heavy weapon ascended, Rechs drew his machete and in one swift motion lopped the man’s arms off at the elbow.

  The N-50 clattered to the flagstones. The trooper backed away, hyperventilating as he looked at both stumps, then fell onto his back.

  The sniper fired, and Rechs threw himself to the ground. The high-energy shot sizzled overhead. Rechs slither-scrambled like a sidewinder across the pavement, toward his dropped hand cannon. It was a race. Could the sniper re-center and re-charge the rifle for the next shot before Rechs reached his weapon?

  As Rechs felt his glove wrap around the grip, he knew the sniper’s shot was coming. Atop the bloody pyramid, the black-armored trooper was drawing a bead. The dying sun reflected off his telescopic lens.

  It was an impossible distance for most hand weapons.

  Suit targeting to
ok over and calibrated. Rechs squeezed off one round. There wasn’t time for more.

  The slug tore through the sniper’s throat. The long blaster rifle clattered down the smooth face of the pyramid, and the man fell back and out of sight.

  Rechs struggled to his feet, leaning heavily on the one leg that would support him. He turned to face the yawning event horizon void in the face of the pyramid.

  Out walked the man in the hooded cloak.

  Sullivan.

  Or…

  Goth Sullus.

  Where did he come from in the moment before he was here? Where did that dark nothingness void lead off to?

  Nowhere… old friend. And… goodbye.

  His old friend was walking out of nothing.

  All the questions, thought Rechs. And all the answers.

  That dry chuckle rose above the last of the day as the last sun finally disappeared below the horizon.

  “Well done, old friend. Well done indeed.”

  Rechs raised the hand cannon and centered it.

  The man drew down the hood of his cloak without the least concern for the bullet Rechs was about to put through his skull. Like Rechs, he looked young for a man who’d lived a thousand and more years. Barely middle-aged. A smooth, bulbous head, a high, intense forehead. Iron-gray hair swept forward. And gray eyes that seemed alive with some kind of other life.

  Did he always have gray eyes? wondered Rechs in the nano-second before he pulled the trigger.

  It doesn’t matter who he was. He’s Goth Sullus now. And Goth Sullus killed a man. And a debt must be paid.

  Rechs fired.

  I should have given Prisma the picture back, he thought as the bullet spat forth, racing at Goth Sullus…

  … who merely waved one hand absently, sending the slug racing off on some other, unconsidered course.

  Rechs’s leg gave out. He collapsed onto the still-hot dry pavement of this ancient place, his armor making an understated and pathetic clunk as the man who was now Goth Sullus walked toward him.

  “I told you,” Goth Sullus said, “there’s something wonderful out there beyond the edge. Goodbye, Rechs. Second star from the right… straight on ’til morning, oldest of friends.”