Then he finally spoke.
“Supreme Commander Ogilvie departed aboard the Porter with almost no evacuees… and bolted for the core. Declared it was of supreme importance that he personally advise the UW of this development in the Savage situation, then promptly turned evacuation operations over to the navy. Me, to be specific.”
Rechs made a sound through his teeth, something along the lines of “Figures.” The pure mutual disgust for Ogilvie dialed the mood down between the two men.
“They’re up to something here, Cas. Something big,” said Rechs. “We both get that. You and I have talked about this particular scenario before. We always wondered if someday they’d finally start working together. Well…” He nodded toward the sky. “It looks like that day is today. Whether anyone likes it or not… the game just changed.” He let that hang in the air between them for a moment. “We have to annihilate them once and for all, Cas. If humanity, and every other race we’ve encountered out here, is going to have any chance… we have to do it. Plain and simple. And that starts today. Right now.”
Sulla dropped his head. Rechs knew that meant his oldest friend was thinking. Or rather coming to a conclusion he hadn’t wanted to be true, but was finally willing to accept in light of current events. Rechs had seen it before. They’d been through hell and back and all the hot spots in between, before, and after. They’d known each other longer than any of those watching ever would have imagined.
“So,” continued Tyrus Rechs as he pulled on his gauntlets. One containing an interface that ran comm and other armor functions. The other fitted with a small yet powerful grappling dart. “Gears up on the Chang and get everyone out of here. I can finish this now. And if I don’t, then get back to the worlds and tell them, whether they like it or not, it’s time to form a galactic-wide government that can field a single military force to finally deal with the Savages.”
“Just like that,” Sulla said, despite the fact that Rechs was telling him to do exactly what he’d been wanting to do for ages.
“Yeah.”
“These things… they’re complicated. Lots of moving parts. Concessions, threats, coaxing. I’m not sure—”
“You can make it happen.”
Rechs threw one gauntleted arm out across the destruction in the dark that surrounded the evacuation point. “Today wasn’t one hundred percent Ogilvie’s fault. Too many independently developed weapons systems and tactics trying to work together… they were ripe for interference. A disaster like this was bound to happen.”
Sulla nodded. “The man should never have been in charge in the first place. It was a symptom of the Coalition’s mutual distrust. Their fear of a strong leader arising from any one faction.”
Rechs shrugged. “We’ll learn from it and make a fighting force that’s cohesive. And Casper… we’ll make it the best the galaxy has ever seen.”
“That’s your job, Tyrus. I just fly starships.”
“Like hell.”
Sulla let out a sigh bordering on annoyance. “None of it is going to happen if you blow yourself to nothing just to take down a couple of hulks. Unless you’ve got your own freighter stashed somewhere nearby…”
Rechs turned to look at the city. One of the massive Savage ships was crossing the night sky overhead. Smaller ships were dropping away, flaring jets of blue flame as they set down along the ruins of Hilltop.
He turned back to Sulla.
“I’ve got to set this thing off. And I’ve got to get it inside that big hulk to do it. I’m optimistic, but I’m not unrealistic. We can det this thing right here and maybe hurt them. But det it inside, and I’m sure to destroy at least one of their ships before it lifts off. And in the end, that’s how I’ve done it every time before, more or less. Get the one you’re shooting at. Worry about the next later, or let that be someone else’s problem. Slow is smooth, smooth is fast.”
Sulla laughed scornfully. “Someone else’s problem. Sure, Tyrus. Except it’s the galaxy’s problem now.” And then he nodded once, seeming to reach some kind of decision. “All right. I’m not going to talk you out of it and I’m not going to fight you over it. I’ll get the wounded and the survivors out, and then I’ll be back before sundown tomorrow to pull you out. Dark, we lift off. Be here. And don’t let me find a big smoking crater, Tyrus. I mean it. Game’s changed. That’s true. But that only means we need you now more than ever. We need you to form that cohesive force. I’ll do the rest.”
Tyrus nodded slowly, appraising his oldest friend. “So you’re in.”
“No. I’m not in. Not unless you promise to come back alive. It’s either that or…”
“Or what?” asked Tyrus.
“Or…” said Sulla, deadly serious, “I’m going in there with you to set off this trigger-nuke, and I’ll let everyone else figure out how to get off this planet and how to save every other world. Because if you’re not making it back to the LZ alive, neither am I.”
“That’s stupid.”
“No, Tyrus. You don’t comprehend just how important your being there on the other side of this is to making the galaxy what it ought to be. What we both know it’s capable of becoming.”
Rechs held his friend’s gaze for a long moment, trying to figure out how serious he was.
Then he nodded.
“Deal. I’ll be here when you get back.”
In the small crowd watching them, no one said a word. A few had snapped pictures on their personal devices. If just to get a shot of the legendary hero, war criminal, and all the other titles Tyrus Rechs had acquired in his almost mythic trek across the galactic frontier. How much was rumor, how much was true… no one really knew. No one ever would. Some of those stories were so old—even going back to the days when the first worlds began to hold forth as going concerns out in the stellar dark beyond distant Earth—that there was no one left to confirm or deny.
Except Tyrus Rechs himself.
And Casper.
“I’m going with you, Rechs.”
Both men turned to see the female UW naval officer, Captain Ivy Davis, standing close by.
Rechs shook his head. It was better if he just did this alone.
But that didn’t stop her. “I have a mission to complete, Admiral. Going in with… Tyrus Rechs… is my best chance. And I can probably be of some help.”
“What’s your mission?” asked the admiral.
“Classified. Can’t say.”
“I think we’re beyond that now, Captain Davis,” said Sulla. “I have a pretty good idea what department you’re assigned to, and I have a fairly good idea of who sent you here, and why, even if the specifics elude me for the moment.”
She thought about that for a second. Then she spoke.
“UW knew New Vega was developing an advanced communication system that could use hyperspace to establish direct comm.” She stepped closer to the two men. “While my original mission of getting it for United Worlds might seem… petty… in light of current events, the truth is, it’s probably even more important now. Strategically speaking.”
“How so?” asked the admiral.
“Sir, if the Savvies are working together, then they’re communicating. Probably at the same speed we currently use. Unless they’ve made some wild intuitive leap we haven’t yet, and from what I know… that could be possible. Either way, the hypercomm is of significant value in future operations against them. If they haven’t developed advanced communication over interstellar distances, and we do, that gives us a huge advantage. Whereas if they have, or get, access to that tech, and we don’t have it, then their ability to communicate in real-time over vast intergalactic distances, while we’re limited to current capabilities, gives them the distinct advantage. Wouldn’t you say, sir?”
“I would,” said Admiral Sulla soberly.
“So, my mission is this. I either go back in there and get it, or I
destroy it so that they don’t get it. But I have to make sure either way. I have to know. Because we, every planet in the Coalition, if that actually becomes a thing, need to know the situation. If the Savages can comm faster than us… well, we will adapt and overcome. But only if we know.”
Captain Davis cleared her throat. Shook her head once like she knew she was giving up too much. Classified stuff that would have gotten her a stiff treason sentence, probably landing her on the cleanup crews in the nuclear wastes of some old war-torn UW planets. Which was basically a death sentence.
But somehow, Savage hulks fighting together like a fleet, the ruins of New Vega, and the destruction of the mighty and much-touted Coalition strike force, seemed more important than her doing time in a paper-thin hazmat suit in some jungle cesspool crawling with mutated poisonous snakes, bloated disease-carrying flies, and background radiation that would cook her insides slowly over the course of twenty years. If she lasted that long. Which few did.
She sighed and showed the rest of her hand.
“When U-Dub intel got the word that New Vega was under attack, they sent the Raven in with a team of marines. The original colony ship of the first planetary settlers, buried beneath Hilltop, has become New Vega’s research base… a kind of house of secrets. Most likely members of the government are down in there right now waiting for you guys to pull them out. But they weren’t our mission. Our mission was to break in and snatch the device regardless of the outcome of the Coalition effort.”
“Before the Savages… or, say, any other government… got their hands on it?” asked Rechs sharply. “UW wanted it all for themselves.”
She didn’t answer. Didn’t need to.
Rechs shook his head. “Good old U-Dub. Some things never change, do they, Sulla?”
The tension between the three was thick enough to cut.
“The situation makes that comm device valuable to everyone now,” said Captain Davis. “I get that. But… all the more reason to complete the mission. And I’m your best chance of doing that.”
She folded her arms and stood back. Daring them to challenge her.
“Best chance?” asked Rechs, like a poker player calling in order to see some cards.
She didn’t blink. “Yes. Best chance. Because I know the way. The entire place is like an underground fortress, or labyrinth, and for the last five weeks, until you showed up, I’ve been surviving down in the underground bunkers and tunnels below the city and avoiding the Savages who were trying to get in. Which means I’m also your best chance to get your weapon”—she nodded at the trigger-nuke—“into the Savage ship alongside Hilltop. You help me get the comm device, and I’ll take you through the maze and right to the Savage doorstep.”
Tyrus Rechs said nothing for a moment. Everyone watching was sure he was going to tell the tall female United Worlds captain that there was no deal. That he’d do it his way, which meant any way he had to. Even the hard way if necessary.
But instead…
“Grab some gear,” he said. “We leave in thirty.”
She turned on her boots and went to scavenge from the discarded gear piles that had been left behind to make room for more evacuees.
“Sir,” said Sergeant Major Andres, stepping forward. “If it’s all the same… I’d like to go along with you too. You are still my commanding officer.”
“Yeah,” said Specialist Martin softly from the shadows near the crawler’s rear. “I’m in, sir, if you’ll have me.”
Rechs eyed them both.
And then Captain de Macha, whose tanks had all been destroyed, smiled and stepped forward as well. “I think I could come along and help.”
A big black shaven-headed sergeant with burning eyes, a cav trooper whose LCE was open, and whose tag read Greenhill, coughed once. “I’m in too, sir.”
“We won’t quit on you, sir,” said Sergeant Major Andres. “Even if you are Tyrus Rechs, we’ll get this done.”
“Yeah,” said someone else. “We’ll go all the way. Together.”
And finally, behind all that, was a man in no kind of military uniform. Surplus fatigues, civilian pants, and old work boots. He was carrying a massive sniper rifle, cradling it like it was the most precious thing in the world.
He was horribly scarred.
He tried to talk, but nothing came out. Just a croak.
He hadn’t spoken in a long time.
And for a moment, he felt her behind him. Watching him with baby on her hip.
He swallowed to get more saliva across his long-unused vocal cords.
Everyone eyed this stranger who was odd and out of place even among the haphazard mishmash of military organizations.
He tried to speak, and still nothing came out. He swallowed once more, hard, and said, finally… “Me.”
It was all he could manage.
And then he felt her smile. Proud of him. And that was a good thing.
Do another one, babe.
45
They followed Tyrus Rechs—infamous war criminal, hero, or legend, depending on whom you asked—from the wan red glow of the emergency lighting beneath the Chang’s rear cargo deck.
Sergeant Major Andres. Point man Martin. Sergeant Greenhill, late of the Three-Six Cav. Captain Ivy Davis, former commander of UW assault frigate Raven. Captain de Macha of the First Royal Espanian Armor. And a large, wild-haired, and scarred man carrying a massive sniper rifle. The kind that still fired bullets. Though this man’s bullets were as big as the micro-rockets fired by some of the high-speed anti-armor systems that had been fielded of late.
“You look like a wild man,” said Sergeant Major Andres of the civilian as they loaded into their transport. “You got a name?”
After a long moment the big man answered. Slowly. His voice rusty and tired like an old door unopened in years. “N-nno… Not—anymore,” he said haltingly.
And the sergeant major, who had trained more men, led more men, and saved more men than anyone else he knew of, understood what kind of man he was dealing with. Someone broken. Someone lost.
Earlier he’d asked Tyrus Rechs, whom he kept addressing as “Colonel,” as though “Colonel Marks” had been a real person all along and not a cover, and Rechs didn’t bother to correct the error, “You sure that this civilian is good to go, sir? We’re gonna need to count on everyone in there.”
Rechs looked up from the industrial-sized repulsor pallet they were busy loading the trigger-nuke onto. Truthfully, Rechs had been impressed by the big sniper rifle the strange man carried. And he’d thought that someone, during all the hubbub of the battle for Triangle Square, and maybe even earlier, had been shooting a very powerful old-school heavy-caliber weapon in support of Coalition forces. Yes… playing back the images in his mind, he was convinced that some of their foes had been knocked down by old-school lead. In all the chaos of killing and trying not to get killed, it had been hard to catalog who and what was shooting with what and at whom. But now that he thought about it… he was sure that someone other than the Savages had been firing hard caliber.
“Pretty sure his skills are tight, Sergeant Major,” Rechs responded. “And this is what we’ve got to work with.”
He didn’t really want to say what he felt. That he’d rather have gone it alone without any of them. Less risk. More control. But Rechs wasn’t the kind of person to think too highly of himself. And if he failed, they might succeed. Which would mean one less Savage hulk. One step closer to making sure humanity remained viable in the galactic scheme of things. Had a chance to go on and not be annihilated by their ancestors.
And maybe…
Maybe this was what Sulla had been trying to push him toward in all those years he’d been out destroying Savages alone. Work with others. Because if, in the end, everyone was depending on one man to save the galaxy from the worst threat it had ever known…
Well.<
br />
That was a recipe for failure.
For sure.
Men died alone all the time.
Even Tyrus Rechs, Sulla once told him.
“If you’re sure, Colonel,” Andres said, keeping step with his notorious new commander.
“Yeah,” Rechs said to the sergeant major. “He’ll do.”
And there was one more. One last late addition. A spider monkey of a shirtless man. Just battle dress pants and dirty engineer boots that had never seen a lick of polish.
“Also, sir,” said Andres, “there’s a Private Makaffie wants to come along. Says, and get this… he ‘knows the ways of the universe.’ But he seems pretty good with mechanical and tech. Kinda guy who knows too much and tells you about it all the time whether you want to hear it or not. Could be handy in a pinch. Also could make someone want to frag him. Your call.”
Rechs indicated with a mere hand gesture that this too was okay. The more the merrier. If they wanted a chance to get killed, who was he to deny them their opportunity?
And when he thought about it that way, he realized that he wasn’t liking the odds on this one.
Feeling a bit fatal, Tyrus? he heard some voice inside his head ask. But he didn’t answer. He never answered. Just kept moving. Keep moving and try to avoid being hit—that was the only way forward.
The ideal method of transport to deliver Rechs’s doomsday weapon was nothing less than Ogilvie’s personal command vehicle. It sat abandoned, ripe for the picking: a low, flat, wicked-looking armored personnel carrier that ran on four ceramic balls shielded by armor plating. It carried one automated heavy pulse gun that could be controlled internally.
The case carrying the nuclear weapon just barely fit inside the vehicle’s troop compartment. Everyone else was forced to either ride forward in the comm station, in the driver’s compartment, or up top behind the heavy twin-barreled pulse gun.
When they were ready to go and carrying as much in the way of weaponry and reloads as they could, the admiral and his security detail saw them off from the deck of the Chang. The ship would lift off shortly, but a small group had volunteered to stay behind and try to hold the LZ. So that Tyrus Rechs, and anyone else who survived this mission, if anyone did, could be picked up. Whisked away. To live and fight another day.
Galaxy's Edge: Savage Wars Page 21
