Bear grunted. “You’ve been asking that every ten minutes since Chhun told you Wraith was coming.”
“Unlike some people,” hissed Masters, “I don’t like it here. I think this place sucks.”
“Masters is right,” said Chhun. He had set a chronometer in his bucket synced to the timestamp of Wraith’s message. “The Indelible VI should have already arrived. I think we have to entertain the possibility that Captain Ford was shot down or had to turn away.”
“Okay, so what’s the plan then?” Masters asked.
A legionnaire body slid down a pile of the dead, making a sound like armor clattering against armor. The three men went still and hushed themselves, practically holding their breaths.
When no war bot materialized, and no further noises came from the still graveyard, Chhun said, “I’m turning on our rescue transponder. We just have to hope that Wraith finds it before something else does.”
He turned on the transponder and hurled it as far as he could. It landed among a pile of dead kill team operators. If a non-friendly came to investigate, at least it would start away from their position.
“So we just wait for the sound of more repulsors?” Bear asked. “Hope it’s Wraith?”
“Yeah,” said Chhun. “We give it another hour. If he hasn’t shown up by then, let’s follow the original plan of getting back to the sea and finding someplace more secluded to hide.”
“I was thinking, guys,” Master said. “If we run out of ammo, I’m pretty sure I can destroy the entire war bot force by giving them a logic puzzle so perfectly contradictory that their circuits overheat until their processors explode.”
When no one answered, Masters said, “You guys wanna know what the puzzle is?”
Chhun sighed. “Fine. What’s the—”
“No!” interrupted Bear. “Don’t encourage him.”
“Glad you asked,” said Masters, mirth evident in his voice. “It’s this: How can a legionnaire as ugly as Bear—”
The joke was cut off by the familiar sound of repulsors streaking fast through the air.
“Wraith,” Chhun said, straightening himself. “That sounds like the Six.”
“Let’s pop some IR strobes to make sure he finds us,” Bear said.
The legionnaires tossed the infrared strobes where they would be most conspicuous.
The sound of a Naseen freighter grew louder, but it was joined by the whine of more of those hostile air fighters. Everything seemed to be streaking toward them at close to top speed.
“Here they come!” Masters said.
As the Indelible VI came into view, it was clear that the ship was being chased by a wing of invading fighters. Chhun felt conflicting emotions. Elation at Wraith’s arrival, and worry and dread at seeing him pursued.
The Six shot right by them, with six fighters screaming behind it, closing in on effective firing range.
Chhun opened a comm channel to his old friend. “Wraith, this is Chhun. You’ve got six bogeys on your tail and you just passed over our location.”
“Yeah, saw that,” Wraith answered over the comm. The sound of his voice sent a surge of adrenaline through Chhun. “A little busy to land right now though.”
“Rockets!” shouted Bear. “Find an AP and shoot ’em down.”
Masters and Bear scrambled out of their holes and went for the anti-vehicle launchers they had spotted during their earlier search of the area.
“Copy, Wraith,” Chhun said. He didn’t want to break the pilot’s concentration, but needed to let him know what they were up to. “Masters and Bear are arming aero-precision launchers. If you can lead them back over our zone, we can dust a few.”
A whoosh sounded behind Chhun. He looked up and saw that Bear had fired a missile in the direction of the departing pack. It burned hot in pursuit.
“I got a lock on the rear-most fighter,” Bear explained, watching the missile speed away, a tiny dot. “Hope it catches up.”
A distant boom suggested that the missile found something.
“Captain Chhun, this is Ravi.”
“I hear you, Ravi,” said Chhun. He had heard about the holographic navigator from Wraith, but thought that he had been destroyed. Apparently not.
“You have eliminated one of the starfighters,” Ravi said, his voice as calm and cool as Wraith could be while on the battlefield. “Thank you for this. I calculate that we will be able to destroy two more while leading the remaining three back in your direction. Can you meet them with three more missiles?”
“We need to take three more down!” Chhun shouted to the others.
“Can do,” said Masters.
“Indelible VI,” Chhun said, “we can do it.”
“Very good. We will lead them to you. Be ready.”
“Copy. Chhun out.”
Bear hurried over to his Dark Ops commander and handed him an aero-precision launcher, already loaded. Now each legionnaire had one, and they were ready to clear the skies long enough to allow their rescue craft to land.
“Uh, boss…” Masters’s voice made Chhun’s heart sink. Something about the way he said it. “My HUD’s showing what looks like a hella big war bot force moving on our position. Call it fifty.”
The machines had found them. It was do or die. Give Wraith time to land, or cut and run, and pray that they might get a second chance at rescue. Which seemed decidedly unlikely.
Chhun decided to fight. “Just focus on the ships chasing Wraith,” he ordered. “If he can’t get down here, nothing else matters. Can one of you take an extra shot with the AP rocket so I can try and hold the war bots back?”
“I might be able to,” Bear said.
“Wish Exo was here,” said Masters, his launcher at the ready.
Chhun began combing the field for a weapon he could use against the approaching war bots. Another AP launcher would be great if he could dumb-fire it into a column, but he wasn’t seeing one. He did find an N-18 sniper rifle cradled in the arms of a dead legionnaire. He pried it from the warrior’s hands and checked the charge pack. It was spent, so he changed it out. Lying prone on a mound of deceased leejes, he deployed the weapon’s tripods and made of stack of all his gathered charge packs. He would make every shot count.
The roar of the Six’s repulsors could be heard again. It approached, looping and dodging three trailing fighters, all of them firing on the freighter but missing wildly, unable to predict Wraith’s patterns.
Bear found a target lock and sent a missile streaking at one of the fighters. The ship attempted to break off, but was unable to shake the sophisticated seeker, which found its target. The fighter exploded in a ball of flames. Ruined parts scattered over the battlefield.
Masters fired second later. The missile arched toward its target and hit home while Bear loaded another missile.
The plan was succeeding, but surely more ships would come. The window was small. Everything needed to get done on this pass by Wraith.
Chhun’s HUD had long since confirmed what Masters had detected. And now he saw the threat with his own eyes. The giant war bots came into view from every direction, emerging from behind ruined buildings and blind corners. Chhun didn’t have time to assess their numbers; all he knew was that there were too many. Far too many. “Stay low! Hopefully they won’t pick us out among the bodies until they’re on top of us.”
He opened fire on the first war bot that fell into his sights. The shot struck the machine in its head, blowing a hole through its helmet-like protection and sending it falling backward. Chhun immediately found another target and squeezed the trigger for another kill shot. And then another. But he was picking ants off their hill one at a time. There were always more. It made no difference. Still he continued to fire, reminding himself that one less weapon that could be brought to bear on his position or the Six was a good thing. In combat, you never quite knew what the tipping point would be.
As Bear looked for a lock on the last remaining starfighter, the Six’s burst turrets blazed, catc
hing the pursuing ship and scrapping it.
“Okay, we’re clear!” Wraith shouted.
The freighter slowed—barely—and began to drop down to position itself to allow the three survivors to get on board.
Wraith shouted instructions. “Hurry up and—”
His cut himself off, and Chhun saw the vapor trail of a streaking rocket flying toward the ship.
Wraith deftly rocked his craft back, putting it up on its side and then sliding laterally as if on ice, cocked at a rakish angle. The ship moved perhaps a hundred meters and dropped down behind a grassy hill in the city square. The rocket passed harmlessly overhead.
But as the Six attempted to rise from its position, more rockets came streaking toward it. It was forced to stay low, out of the line of fire, but still seventy meters away from the legionnaires. It waited, hovering, just barely kissing the rubble of a blown-out building.
“I can’t get any closer than this,” Wraith called. “You’re gonna have to run.”
“Copy,” Chhun said. “Guys! Let’s go!”
But it was at that moment that the war bots closed within firing distance. A barrage of blaster fire impacted all around, striking dead bodies, and the three legionnaires had no choice but to drop onto their bellies.
They crawled over the bodies, meeting together in the hopes of putting together effective counter-fire. But there was so many incoming blaster bolts sizzling through the air that Chhun didn’t think they could so much as poke their heads up without being hit a half dozen times.
“They’re practically on top of us!” shouted Masters.
“Wraith,” Chhun called into the comm, “we’re pinned down and can’t move. If you can’t get to us… you should go. Better just us get dusted than you have to join us.”
“Great,” Wraith answered. “Just my luck.”
The Indelible VI lifted straight up, and another rocket zoomed toward it. The Six dodged the projectile and returned fire, sending a concussive missile into the swarming mass of bots. It exploded close enough to the legionnaires that they—along with several corpses—were flung in the opposite direction.
Chhun shook his head, trying to regain his senses. The war bot blaster fire had definitely slackened.
He looked up. The Six was still hovering in place, its ramp lowered. Two Black Fleet shock troopers, one tall and imposing, the other with a familiar swagger, stepped out onto the ramp and began to unleash a dizzying amount of SAB firepower into the war bots. The freighter’s illegal burst turrets blazed away as well.
“This is as hot as we can lay down fire!” Wraith shouted. “Get going!”
Chhun sprang to his feet. “Let’s go now! Now!” He fired at an advancing war bot, no more than twenty meters away.
Bear and Masters rose as commanded and proceeded to sprint toward the waiting starship. With his men on the move, Chhun broke off contact and followed in pursuit. As the shock troopers at the door sent blaster bolts sizzling past them, it seemed to Chhun that an equal amount of return fire was scorching the air from the other direction. Some bolts impacted practically at his feet, sending fragments of armor and flesh flying; others, aimed higher, were absorbed by the Indelible VI’s shield arrays.
Masters was the first to the ship. He sped up the ramp and inside without breaking his stride. Next was Bear, who likewise didn’t slow as he stomped up the ramp. Had he hesitated for even a half a second, a blaster bolt would have struck his heel.
The fire was so thick, Chhun didn’t see how the luck that had carried him safely through from Victory Company to Dark Ops would be able to hold out any longer. At any moment he expected a blaster bolt to hit him square between the shoulder blades. Or to slam like a fist of the gods into his helmet. But he continued on unabated, toward the guttural war cry of one of the shock troopers as he sprayed his SAB into the advancing enemy.
It was Exo. And though Chhun knew from Wraith that his former comrade had found a place in the Black Fleet, at that moment, their bond as brothers was solidified beyond speaking.
Chhun leapt on board the Indelible VI, not meaning to, but finding himself in mid-air and then crashing down onto the deck, safely inside. Already the ship was gaining altitude, rising upward as Exo and his fellow shock trooper fired down on the diminishing targets like door gunners on board an old Republic SLIC.
The ramp finally closed, and the two shock troopers lifted Chhun off the deck and strapped him into a jump seat. He could feel the ship vibrate as it exited the atmosphere.
I’m still alive, Chhun thought.
He felt like a man with a death wish that could never be granted. So many legionnaires remained on Gallobren, dead. But not him. Never him. And why? That’s what he wanted to know as he sat, strapped into his jump seat, gasping for air. He had seen so many good men die.
But not him.
He became aware of an odd sensation, like his thoughts were not truly his own. Like they were whispered out of his mind from some unknown part of his brain that labeled him an angel of death, sent with the purpose of leading bright, young, capable legionnaires to the killing fields, where he himself oversaw their demise.
And why?
He needed for there to be a reason.
He was alive… for what?
Evil and duty, he answered. Your duty is to destroy evil.
Chhun felt his eyes roll in the back of his head as someone removed his bucket.
“Dude,” Exo said, his own helmet off and concern on his face. Masters, Bear, and the tall shock trooper stood behind him. “You’re hit pretty bad.”
***
Sanctuary of Mother Ree
En Shakar
Chhun awakes in a rustic room, lit by a lone window and several flickering candles. He is lying on what feels like a straw mat. Coarse, disagreeable bed sheets cling to his exposed skin. A rainbow dances across the room’s ceiling. Chhun traces the source to the window, where a child’s mobile, decked with inch-long crystals, reflects the light.
Someone is sitting by his side.
Instinct combined with the unfamiliarity of the room has Chhun reaching for a blaster pistol underneath his pistol without thinking. His hand finds nothing. He is not in his bunk on board Intrepid, nor is he aboard the Indelible VI. He is somewhere… foreign.
The kindly face of a woman appears above him. She is old, but still retains her beauty. She must have been stunning in her youth. She leans forward, brushes the backs of her fingers against the stubble on his face, then caresses his close-cropped black hair.
“You are safe here.”
Chhun lets the woman continue to stroke his hair. It feels… nurturing. Good and pure somehow. The woman’s presence is so soothing. He feels utterly safe.
The galaxy is anything but that.
Duty. You have a duty to fulfill.
“The machines,” Chhun says, his voice rasping as though it has been some time since he last spoke. “I have to warn…”
“They have been stopped,” the woman replies. Cryptically adding, “Though not as they should.”
“Who are you?”
“I am Mother Ree.”
“Where am I?”
“Sanctuary,” Mother Ree says. Her smile is firm and reassuring. “Captain Keel—the man you call Wraith—brought you here. It was the safest and wisest course of action. The galaxy, I fear, is in grave danger.”
Chhun tries to sit up. “But you said…”
“Yes,” says Mother Ree, anticipating the question. “And so I did. The machines—the Cybar—were stopped.” A sadness seems to rest upon the woman. “But the galaxy has lost its last ember of freedom as a result.”
Chhun can’t guess what that means, and his head hurts trying to make sense of it. “How are they?”
“Your friends are all right. Much better than you.” Mother Ree smiles. “I speak physically, of course.”
“But they’re still here?” Chhun isn’t sure why he asked the question. He has no idea how much time passed since he collapsed on b
oard the Indelible VI. For all he knows, his friends are waiting just outside the door.
“They remain,” says Mother Ree. “For how long, I cannot say.”
A candle next to Chhun’s bedside begins to gutter and spit as it nears the end of its purpose. Mother Ree rises and puts out the struggling flame with a pinch of her fingers. “Captain Ford intends to leave you to recover, along with the young Prisma, who will remain in the hopes of living a peaceful life. Though… I wonder.”
“Did Wraith say where he was headed?”
“I do not think he knows.”
A knock sounds at the door.
“You may enter,” says Mother Ree.
The door swings open to reveal a large war bot bending down to peer inside. It looks as though it has been through a considerable scrap: its left visual receptor is little more than a gaping hole, and its armored chest plate is pockmarked and scorched by blaster shots. As it enters the room, it reveals an arm painted with a gray primer that contrasts with the bot’s otherwise dark finish.
Chhun begins to recoil at the sight of the war machine.
“It’s all right,” Mother Ree says soothingly. “This one is not a threat.”
The bot stops its advance. “My apologies, Captain Chhun. I should have been more considerate, given what you recently endured—a discredit to my kind.”
“You’re the girl’s war bot,” Chhun says, remembering. He regains his composure. “KRS-88.”
“I am delighted that you remember,” the bot says in its basso profundo that makes it sound less like a killer than a manservant. “Mother Ree, I have come with a request.”
“Yes, KRS-88? What does your gentle soul wish?”
The bot pauses to consider this. “I do not believe I possess such a thing as a soul.”
“Do you not? Well, tell me what you came to say, all the same.”
“Yes, of course. Garret sent me on behalf of Captain Keel. Evidently, a message has been received from the Legion commander.” KRS-88 turns to address Chhun directly. “It was agreed upon, by the cadre of warriors on the ship, that you should return to the ship to hear this message yourself. Immediately.”
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