And damage-control sirens.
Internals across all decks.
One minute until detonation.
No idea if the Chang would make it.
Medics were loading both him and the Wild Man onto stretchers regardless of the fact that the Chang was under fire and was most likely about to go up with three hulks and an entire city within the next sixty seconds.
Through his back he could feel the Chang straining to reach jump altitude. Maybe the nav comp was having to replot because of the two hulks on an intercept course.
Maybe…
Maybe they’d make it.
Maybe they wouldn’t.
It was out of his hands now.
And there was a peace in that. In things being out of your hands. Being out of your control.
But that wasn’t a peace that belonged to Tyrus Rechs. It didn’t suit him.
It wasn’t who he was.
Never had been.
And there was still one thing he could do. A thing only he could do.
A decision only he could make.
He brought up the trigger-nuke’s menu and watched as the clock hit thirty seconds.
Then he selected… ABORT.
He looked over at the Wild Man. They had fresh oxygen pumping through a mask over the big sniper’s face. His chest was rising. His eyes were closed and fluttering.
Rechs gave him a thumbs-up anyway.
No man is an island, he would think days later when he thought about this moment. Tried to figure out why. He would know after he talked to the little girl. The angry twin.
But in that moment he just raised one thumb of his gauntlet and said, his voice a harsh croak within his own helmet…
“We’ll come back. We’ll do it together.”
And then he passed out, and somewhere along the way, under fire, the Chang jumped free of New Vega. Leaving behind a world that hadn’t been trigger-nuked, and was under Savage control.
For the time being.
Epilogue
Three days later, ship time, Tyrus Rechs was released from medical holding. He stood without assistance and wandered the decks of the assault cruiser on his own.
When he passed the civilians in their bays, they thanked him and cried. Grateful that they, of all those on New Vega, had been spared. But in their eyes, despite the gratitude, he could see the haunted survivors’ guilt. The knowing that they were the few, out of the many.
And yet still they thanked him.
Tyrus nodded. And murmured things he couldn’t remember. Because what can you say to someone who’s just lost their everything, city, livelihood, planet… loved ones. All of the above.
What can you say?
Nothing.
So he didn’t.
Later he saw Greenhill in medical. He was still under sedation. But the big black cav sergeant had fought like a tiger. And so Rechs just sat there listening to the machines work. A doctor came in and told Rechs that everything would be fine. That Greenhill would make a full recovery.
Rechs nodded.
Everything would be fine.
And yet the doctor, like everyone, knew that the Savages were now working together. And that there would be no treaties, no peace agreements. There would be only war. War unending. And it would be either us, or them. He saw that in the doctor’s face when Tyrus was told that Greenhill would make a full recovery back on Spilursa. Saw that there was really no safe place left in all the galaxy now that all the Savages were one.
He saw the doctor smile in that way that doctors smile when they know the prognosis is grim. But the best doctors are like soldiers in that they’re willing to fight the good fight as long as the patient is willing to be the battlefield. The smile of yes, things are rough. But there are some treatments we can still try. There is always hope, until there is none.
Though Rechs might be near immortal, barring violent death, he’d seen enough death to know that smile.
The smile that said… well, we’re not done just yet.
Sergeant Major Andres was going through another surgery. Rechs waited some more. Having coffee. And when it was time to see the NCO, he went into the recovery suite.
The sergeant major was conscious but still on narcotics.
“I’m alrrrrigght, sir,” he slurred slowly.
Rechs nodded and listened. They talked for a while, which mainly consisted of Andres asking after everyone. Making sure they’d all made it back.
That’s what good NCOs do.
“Captain de Macha got killed before me, sir,” said the sergeant major. “He was a real good officer, sir.”
“Yeah. He was.”
Both men looked away when a tear ran down the NCO’s cheek. Every death is a failure for an NCO. Or at least… the good ones. The best ones. The ones charged with bringing back the galaxy’s children from all the worlds and wars they’re sent to.
“You put him in for an award, sir?” Andres asked.
“I was never really a colonel in the Spilursan military, Sergeant Major,” said Rechs after a moment. “So… I don’t know if I can. But I’ll ask Admiral Sulla to do what he can.”
The NCO made a comically hurt face. But maybe that was just the meds. Maybe he meant that hurt face.
“Aw, nah, sir. You was my colonel. That’s for sure. Wherever you end up, I’ll come make sure the grass is cut and the flag is hung right every morning, okay. You just let me know. You be the colonel and I’ll be sergeant major…”
The tranqs the nurse had given him were taking effect, and his eyes fluttered. But before he drifted off, one last time, he said it again. As though from some place far away and better than all this.
“You my colonel, sir. You… you all right…”
And then he was asleep.
On his way to meet Sulla for more coffee—he’d slept enough over the last three days—Rechs ran into Captain Davis. She didn’t say anything. Just looked at him.
Both of them thinking about the trigger-nuke.
“How come?” she asked.
Just that.
How come you didn’t cook the whole planet… Tyrus Rechs?
“I don’t know,” Rechs said. And paused. “I just knew…” He scratched his stubble and leaned against a bulkhead. “I just knew it was the right thing to do. This time.”
She thought about this, and when she’d made it all make sense in her mind she said, “It was, Tyrus. That it was.”
He nodded, and they just stood there for a while.
“When you go back… to rescue them,” she said, “I want in.”
And then she turned and walked away because she was afraid of what he might say.
In the officers’ mess, which was quiet and between meals, he sat with the admiral and had coffee.
The two of them saying little.
And then Sulla spoke.
“If you want,” he began, leaning in like the old conspirators they’d been for so long, “there’s a small ship on the flag deck. I keep it around for… emergencies. When we exit jump, you can take it and get away. They’ve already let me know I either place you under arrest or I face a court-martial.”
“And?” asked Rechs.
Sulla smiled. “I’m a little more powerful than they suspect. I have a lot of connections, Tyrus. I don’t know if you know this, but… I’ve been around for quite a while.”
They both laughed at this inside joke.
But it wasn’t much beyond a chuckle.
“But there’s another option, Tyrus,” continued Sulla seriously. “I’ve talked with most of my crew. Everyone agrees something needs to be done about the Savages… and that the Coalition had their chance.”
Rechs raised his eyebrows but said nothing. Instead he took another sip of the coffee. And listened.
“Yo
u were right, Tyrus. Stitching all those militaries together isn’t going to cut it if we’re going to deal with the Savages effectively. We’ll just get opportunistic peacocks like Ogilvie. We’ll get hamstrung, and hampered, and we’ll never be allowed to win. You and I have seen it in every other conflict we’ve ever been in. I get it now. So… I want to do it your way.”
“My way?” said Rechs quietly with no small amount of disbelief. He looked around. “Nukes?”
Sulla laughed again and then leaned in to explain.
They were whispering. Because most people didn’t need to hear, nor would they even understand nine tenths of what was spoken between two near immortal ex-slaves who’d become fierce warriors over the course of centuries. Fierce warriors who’d taken on the mission of saving humanity from itself. Or rather… from the Savages.
“That’s not your way, Tyrus. Your way is to fight. You want to kill them first before they kill us. You were just using the nukes because one man can only do so much.”
Rechs remembered the things the Wild Man had been saying in the elevator. Things that made sense then, and more now. Maybe that was why he’d aborted the nuke. To be honest, he still didn’t really know why. Maybe it was to save the Chang from burning up in the atmosphere.
Or maybe it was because of who was inside the bubbles. All of them. And what the Wild Man had said when he’d brought him out.
It’s forever in there.
No one should know that for the last of their existence. And he had a pretty good idea what the Savages had been playing with to make that possible. All that quantum voodoo they liked to get up to.
“What if there was someone to fight alongside you, Tyrus? Someones. A bunch of us. What if we formed our own fighting force? Our own army to find and destroy the Savages, and it was independent of any government body? What if we did that, Tyrus?”
“Like a…” But he couldn’t think of the term. It was there. And it wasn’t. He was getting old. He didn’t look it, but he was.
“A foreign legion,” said Sulla. “We could be that.”
“How?”
“Like I said, I have connections. A lot of groups, corporations, and people would finance this just to stop the Savages from destroying the fledgling galactic economy.”
Rechs looked at his oldest friend. A man he’d known since Earth. Since the Obsidia. And all the years in between.
“I don’t know. Outside interests and all, Cas. There’s a way it needs to be done and… I don’t want to sound arrogant, but I see it. And I don’t want someone controlling me for their own agenda. But I’ll keep fighting. You know I’ll do that. And one day the Savages will run out of ships. One day I’ll get the last one.”
Sulla gave him a look that said… You think so?
And Rechs nodded.
Despite the years.
Despite the new Savage alliance.
Despite everything the galaxy could throw at him.
One day he’d kill them all.
Or die trying.
And what if you do? What if you die trying? that other voice asked him. What if you die and no one else takes your place and the Savages end up the dominant life form in the galaxy?
What if that, Tyrus Rechs?
He thought about that dark alien thing from another reality that they’d met on the Obsidia—the Dark Wanderer. A being from beyond the galaxy that had already worked with the Savages at least once before. And the results had been supernaturally terrifying. Things that shouldn’t have been done… had been.
What if the Dark Wanderer finds this new Savage alliance?
“I’ll think about it,” said Rechs—with every intention, at that moment, of just going on killing them with trigger-nukes wherever he could find them.
Later, most of him was leaning toward being on that small freighter when they fell out of jump. Then he could get on with the business of handling the Savages on his terms. The best way he knew how.
The only way, in light of a more compelling argument.
With just hours to go until that decision moment, he ran into the angry little girl. The dominant twin.
“My sister says I should say thank you now.”
She stood there like she was confronting him. Or some monster, or stray dog that needed to be dealt with. That was how she held herself in all her smallness compared to the vastness of his age, skill, and size.
She stood there, confronting him.
She looked at the floor, stared at it hard, forcing herself to do something she didn’t want to even because she knew it was the right thing to do. Doing it because her sister had made her. And in the end she wanted to be more like her sister than herself.
“Don’t,” said Tyrus, standing above her in the quiet of the passage they’d found themselves in.
“I don’t want to,” she whispered suddenly. And Tyrus saw tears fall onto the deck even though he could not see her face.
“It’s okay,” he said softly. “You’re mad at the galaxy. Mad at the Savages. Mad at everything. I get that. You don’t need to thank me.”
“Why?” she whispered. Her shoulders were shaking as she tried to hold back the tears that were flowing freely now.
Tyrus sighed and looked off.
“Because you’re not ready yet to be thankful. You don’t… feel like you have anything to be thankful for. And so it burns in your mouth to say it. And… that’s okay for now.”
“It is?” Her voice small and uncertain. Afraid. Then he heard her moan softly. Still trying not to cry. Thinking of all that was gone and would never come back.
Of who was gone.
Who.
“You’ve lost everyone,” said Rechs. “You’re alone and you feel like you’re on an island. But you’re not. And someday… well, you’ll see that you aren’t as alone as you feel. But maybe not for a long time.”
She wiped her face with the sleeve of some crew uniform someone had tried to fit her with. It was much too large.
“How do you know that?” she asked.
He bent down and looked her in the eyes. They were coal dark and burning. But they were looking for help. Any help, any port in this storm of vulnerability and emotion. Looking for some light in the storm by which to find a safe harbor.
“Because I’ve been there,” Rechs said. “On that island. For a long time.”
She stared at him. Daring him. Testing him to see if he was a liar who told lies to little girls.
Then…
She saw that he was not.
“Austin was studying poetry. Before the Savages came and…”
Rechs remembered that they, the two little twin girls, had been looking for their brother. Austin.
“… he used to teach us about them. About being alone. Because… our mom and dad were killed before the Savages. In an accident. And it was just the three of us after that. Alone. And then… it was just us.”
Rechs said nothing. Because what can you say? that would make anything better?
So often he’d found the only answer had been… nothing.
“He always read us this one about no one being an island. That even though we were alone… we really weren’t. He always… read us that one.”
Her eyes began to run with tears, but she did not sob. Instead she continued staring straight into Tyrus Rechs. Soldier. Bounty hunter. War criminal. Killer of monsters.
Just one man.
“Is that still true?” she asked.
He pulled her to his shoulder and held her close. Because it was the right thing to do. The only thing he could do at that moment. And she began to cry in full, sobbing for all the wrongs that had been done to her. Sobbing as though there would never be a day not filled with the sorrow of what had happened.
He hated the Savages. Hated them for doing this to countless numbers of little children.
He hated unjust death. And those that caused it.
He always had.
And he knew he was just one man who thought he was an island in the universe. An island that could change the course of the galactic ocean. And he knew that he was no longer enough.
He knew that now.
He would work with whoever would do it his way, to stop the Savages once and for all. They would form Sulla’s foreign legion and… maybe… maybe… they could save those who couldn’t save themselves.
Maybe they could beat the Savages, and stop the tears of little girls. And everyone else. Maybe the galaxy would know humanity for its… humanity. Instead of the monsters the Savages had become.
Maybe.
This wasn’t the end.
It was the beginning of the Savage Wars.
And…
The Legion.
The Story continues in Savage Wars Book Two:
Gods & Legionnaires
Click Here to Experience it Now!
“No Man Is an Island”
No man is an island entire of itself; every man
is a piece of the continent, a part of the main;
if a clod be washed away by the sea, the world
is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as
well as any manner of thy friends or of thine
own were; any man’s death diminishes me,
because I am involved in mankind.
And therefore never send to know for whom
the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.
—John Donne
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