by Nick Cole
The rules that governed Heaven’s Highway insisted that a way through be provided. Otherwise how would the cartels be able to get their goods in? Tolls were paid to the pirates, of course—but a way had to remain open.
Turning sharply to avoid hitting an old skeletal docking arm, Rechs spotted a gaping hole in the deck that had to lead down to the lower decks of the carrier. He couldn’t quite remember there being other hangar decks aboard these old battle carriers; in his ancient memories, the lower decks were stores. Not that it mattered. It seemed the only way out.
Rechs killed the thrusters, pulled back on the yoke, and executed a perfect roundlet. The Crow climbed and then fell over on her starboard engines to point straight down at the deck of the massive hangar. He angled for the ragged-cut hole and flung the ship down into its darkness.
Tri-hulled interceptors on full burn screamed in after him, flinging blaster fire in every direction.
His deflectors recharged, Rechs throttled forward, knowing that a dead end would amount to a very short trip inside the tight quarters of the ancient stores section. He flew through the darkness, the Crow’s running lights caressing a first-generation corvette that had been left inside the main shipping dock. Ahead lay the exit from stores in the form of a series of savage torch-cuts through the outer bulkheads of the big ship. With no other choice, Rechs took that channel and raced off, just barely ahead of the pursuing pirate fighters.
He ordered the Nubarian bot to cease fire. The omni-cannon was useless inside these tight quarters. A hit on the fast and agile fighters dancing all over the aft deflector of the fleeing freighter would likely cause just as much damage to the Crow.
The pirate flying the lead interceptor managed to lock on with a grappling tractor. Within seconds, two more had secured themselves to the Crow’s outer hull. The fighters were too small to reel in such a big fish, but that wasn’t their intent.
“Captain!” said Lyra with more than a little alarm in her voice. “We’re being boarded!”
Ahead, the run straightened out into a wreck-covered channel that, although not easy to navigate, was a far cry from the twisting labyrinth Rechs had already been through. He only had to avoid the occasional collapsing spars that had fallen across its length—a feat that could be managed by most competent pilots.
“Lyra, take the controls.”
He received no answer.
“Take over, Lyra!”
“I really don’t—”
“Do it, Lyra, unless you’ve got a way to physically manifest yourself so you can kill all these boarders cutting their way into you!”
Rechs scanned the controls and waited for the ship to show that it had taken over.
“All right,” Lyra sighed, devoid of confidence.
Something in the back of the ship boomed—like a localized explosion.
Rechs flung himself up from his chair. His hand cannon was in the shop with his armor, but he always kept no fewer than three blasters in the cockpit.
For situations like this.
He grabbed two. One for each hand. High-punch Pit Demon barkers he’d picked up from a blastersmith on Gilador. As he ran down the curving corridor leading away from the flight deck, he felt the ship slow from reckless to merely fast.
“Lyra!” he shouted. “Keep our speed up! We’ve got to beat that storm into port!”
“But Captain—”
“Keep the speed up!”
The first boarder had attached to the forward upper hatch—and had blown it open. A Tennar stalked down into the hab quarters of the old freighter. This wasn’t one of the two-tentacled humanoids who sometimes served in the Repub Navy, but one of the big eight-tentacled warrior males. Drug-fueled misogynists who ruled from a declining patriarchy around their submerged volcano temples. Not even their fellow Tennar could get along with them. Often they left their water world to become criminals, unwilling to adapt to a Repub society of equality.
Rechs fired at the new arrival with one of the barkers. Two rapid-fire shots left great, big smoking holes in the pirate’s chest. He was dead even before he hit the deck.
But more of the tribal Tennar followed, orange-skinned with all eight tentacles moving like pythons, clutching and grasping their way in or bearing lethal weapons ranging from blasters and wicked combat knives to wrenches and spanners.
Rechs fired, again and again.
Two more dead Tennar.
He reached the underside of the hatch and shot one more as it came down. He fired five times as he moved aside to avoid being hit by the falling, flailing thing. He put two more in its head when it hit the deck with a thump.
And then he felt a tentacle wrap around his throat like a whip. Instantly his air was cut off. He had to fight that age-old reflex to drop everything in order to simply get more air. That screaming banshee at the fear-racked front of his brain, demanding oxygen.
His mind railed as his body turned and fell, dragging the wild-eyed Tennar male down onto him. Breathe! his mind roared. Breathe now or you’ll pass out and die.
The only problem was… he couldn’t.
Instead he pulled both triggers on his blasters for as long and as hard as he could.
The Tennar’s body flew up and apart with the powerful impact of each bolt until finally the pirate released its hold. A limp tendril uncurled and slithered away from around Rechs’s throat.
Gasping for air, Rechs clawed his way to the ladder leading up to the hatch. He pulled himself through the tube that connected to the outer hull, and continued into the pirate’s interceptor. The ancient fighter smelled of old leather and dust mixed with burning ozone and melting plastic.
Rechs grabbed the docking handle and pulled, releasing the fighter. Then he dropped back down into the docking tube, watching the interceptor as it tumbled away and smashed into a trailing pirate ship. Both exploded across the waste of crimson dust–covered wrecks.
On the Crow’s outer hull were two other pirate ships. Neither had breached directly; instead the pirate boarders were making their way toward the omni-cannon, and its access hatch, via mag boots and tethers. Lyra came online to tell Rechs that one of the Tennar had been smart enough to fire an energy disruption gun into the omni-gun cupola, temporarily shorting out its ability to swivel and acquire targets.
The wind, filled with gritty sand, tore at Rechs, scouring his flesh, as the Crow rocketed through the junkscape. He shielded his eyes and spotted the pilots, both waiting behind in the cockpits of the interceptors. He changed blaster packs, raised a blaster, dialed it up with a flick of his thumb to full charge, and fired at the first pilot. And while he didn’t hit the pilot—aiming was impossible in this sand-laden hurricane—he did manage to smash the cockpit glass.
A moment later the pilot disconnected the grappling gears and tractor hook. The loss of friction allowed it to lift off, dragging the tethered breach team with it. The boarders seemed for a moment almost to float above the speeding freighter, shouting distantly up at the pilot, horrified at what was happening, what was about to happen.
Rechs turned his blaster on the second ship.
But its pilot wasn’t waiting to be fired upon. He was already emergency disconnecting, spinning up his ship’s engines… which immediately sucked in the breach team from the first ship.
The second ship’s two ion engines blew in unison. From Rechs’s perspective, it looked as though the ship was dropped to the bottom of a great well as it lost motive power while the Crow raced away from it.
The first ship, down its wingman and both its boarders, danced away from Rechs. The pilot pressed his luck and made to fire its main blasters at Rechs, who was still sticking halfway out of his own ship, but the Tennar never had the chance to pull the trigger. A collapsed spar that had fallen out over the course of Heaven’s Highway slammed into the ship at the pilot’s distraction. At the speed the ship was traveling
, annihilation was instant. Parts and components, both machine and organic, exploded in every direction while the Obsidian Crow raced away.
[redacted]
Med File Incident Report
Q-Selection Candidate 901
Upon medical inspection after the ten-day land nav exercise in the Panamanion jungle and mountains, Candidate 901 was found to have fractured his navicular bone near the intermediate cuneiform. Candidate 901 stated that he suspected something may have broken during the low-altitude jump insertion at the very start of the exercise, but chose not to report this as he (correctly) assumed this would have disqualified him from the rest of the exercise.
Instead Candidate 901 walked up mountains, crawled through jungles, and waded through swamps with a broken foot. All with a full pack, rifle, and combat load. He did not at any time remove his boot, because his foot was so swollen he feared that he would not be able to get it back on, making him unable to complete the mission.
It is this Chief Warrant Officer’s medical opinion that Candidate 901 is either too stupid to be a Special Operator and must be immediately disqualified from selection, or he is too hardcore not to be a Special Operator and should be successfully cleared for Advanced Warfare School.
Either way, you people are too crazy to be assessed by sane and rational professionals such as myself. I’m a warrant officer close to retirement and so I can speak the truth regardless of whether anyone wants to hear it or not. It’s good that Dark Ops exists. Someone needs to keep an eye on dangerous lunatics such as Candidate 901 and the people I submit my reports to.
(Signature Redacted)
CW4 [redacted]
Q-Course Chief Medical Officer
10
The Crow set down in the central stews of Hell Supreme. The swirling winds swept red dust, oxidized iron, and coarse sand over everything. The local automated weather system advised that the sandstorm was a cat-three in development. Rechs had no idea what that meant and where three stood in relation to cat-four or any other higher number. Out in the unincorporated worlds that had been flung across the galaxy, the local rules were often made up and purely that. Local.
The bounty hunter was in his armor and down the boarding ramp within ten minutes. The sandstorm had thankfully provided enough cover for Rechs to egress Heaven’s Highway and get into Hell Supreme with little notice, setting his ship down in a quiet hollow made by piled wrecks of starships. He was guessing that if Doc and Chappy were going to pull a snatch, they’d do it right now during the storm. The cover and confusion of the duster was perfect for such operations. But that also meant they’d already have gone dark. Rechs wouldn’t be able to raise them on the general comm. He might be able to eavesdrop on the specially encrypted team comm, but he couldn’t bring himself to do it. That channel was sacred and inviolable during the critical phases of any Dark Ops operation.
He’d need to find them in person.
And since he knew their target, Rechs planned to find the alien and simply wait for the team to show. Once he had line of sight on Doc, he could ping his bucket with a laser comm and let him know he was in the AO.
Tyrus Rechs carried his usual assortment of weapons, along with a medium-engagement Lurpa sniper rifle that he’d favored of late. Chances were that he would watch whatever was going down from afar through the weapon’s scope. Anything up close and personal would be met with his favored choices of the hand cannon or carbon-forged machete. Maybe even the bandolier of fraggers if things got too sticky. But the odds were that observing a Dark Ops takedown of a high-value target would be done through a scope. The rest was just in case things got interesting.
G232 was left with strict instructions to keep the ship locked down and to monitor comms in case Rechs needed him. Rechs didn’t like leaving that option open. Didn’t like to even think about needing someone. But he gave the bot the orders all the same.
Entering the stews surrounding the central warrens of Hell Supreme, Rechs noted that despite the fierceness of the storm, there was still traffic on the streets. An odd assortment of service and utility bots, each intent on some errand, made their way through the harshness of the oncoming sands, and Rechs passed small collections of huddling humanoids, their rendezvous set amid the storm to do trade or far more nefarious business under the cat-three’s natural cover. Glowing optical sensors mixed with the chitterings of strange languages in the dusky wan light of the end of the day on that harsh world.
“I need to buy some info on a Hool. The Hool, as it were.” Rechs tossed a five-hundred-credit chit into the midst of some chattering humanoids. One of them picked the money up and, just when it seemed like he would keep it without a word, pointed to a lone Ootari explorer standing by himself. The insect-like alien had ventured far from its strange and fungal world to be all the way out here.
It cost Rechs another fifteen hundred credits to get the info he was looking for. He could have gotten it for less, but time was of the essence.
Mohsaffa Huranzadi, the most wanted Hool in several of the surrounding star systems, had been seen of late in the Bottom of the Barrel cantina out in Battleship Row. Rechs accessed the local net, which was unreliable at best, and got a semi-serviceable map that would interface with his nav. The bar was located beside the ruins of a Repub battleship from early during the Savage Wars. A small-arms bazaar had set up in the shadow of the rusting hulk, and the cantina was located along its portside length.
Standing out of the wind, in a shadowy alcove, Rechs waited. He’d beaten them to the location. Now he only had to wait.
***
An hour later, the skies were clearing and what little of the atmosphere that could be seen was starting to appear. Rechs was concerned, or would have been if Doc and Chappy weren’t such consummate professionals. But the op should have happened by now.
Rechs had been watching the sands swirling around an old crane that had once been used to pull plating for salvage off a battleship that rose several stories over the main street. Since even that venerable old alloy was no longer rated for any kind of service, the battleship had been left to decompose, and the crane alongside it. As he was still the first one at the scene, he decided to risk leaving his alcove for a better vantage point.
Ten stories up, half the length of the crane, Rechs had a nice view of the cantina below. And he’d arrived to his overwatch location just in time. Through the scope of the Lurpa blaster rifle, he found the extraction team’s observers. There were two. Rechs wasn’t sure if they’d been there the whole time, obscured by the storm, or if they’d just arrived. One of them was on the street, and the other was inside a split-level shop across from the Bottom of the Barrel cantina. Rechs watched until he was content that they hadn’t made him, then expanded his search.
He spotted a paneled sled parked on a side street a block down from a bazaar that sold cured meats and a large array of anti-personnel mines. Because sometimes you got hungry when laying an ambush. It was a nondescript utility vehicle, but something about it twigged Rechs’s intuition. He kept an eye on it.
A few minutes later a shrouded figure, dressed like any one of the dozens of salvage nomads that wandered the Breakers, stepped from the sled. He walked around it once. To Rechs, the man looked like a disguised Dark Ops legionnaire, and the walk-around smacked of a last-minute check.
“It’s going down now,” Rechs muttered to himself. “But where’re Doc and Chappy?”
The two veteran operators should be the ones taking the Hool down, neutralizing the target, and getting it ready for transport. Hools were too dangerous for anyone without a lot of experience to handle. And there would be two other teams besides the extraction team, if everything was being run by the book. But that was the book Rechs had written a long time ago. Maybe they’d thrown it out and written a new one. Who knew?
Rechs scanned the lonely street once more. There was no sign of an overwatch team in all the locati
ons where they should have been.
And that’s when Rechs saw the blaster fire and heard the reports. He moved the rifle toward the flash and scanned the street around the sled. The fire could have been related to any number of a dozen other seething quarrels waiting to be settled at the conclusion of the sandstorm. Storms the locals called devil winds. According to native legend, the storms were dark, howling demonic spirits roving the lost sands of this world, keening over some long-forgotten wrong lost to the galactic twilight.
But Rechs didn’t find any thugs taking things outside to settle up with blasters. Instead he watched two cloaked figures drag the disguised legionnaire into a nearby alley. A moment later one of the figures re-emerged and slid behind the wheel of the sled. And the two observers were gone.
Rechs tracked movement from several points across the compass. Small groups of humanoids and vehicles—definitely technicals—were on the move from out of the ruins of the old battleship and the lesser wreckages that lay alongside it. Within seconds it was clear that they were all moving toward the Bottom of the Barrel.
Blaster fire sounded from inside the bar. Rechs didn’t catch it, but the Mark I armor’s audio detection systems did. A rapidly developing firefight. One that was getting out of hand.
Rechs moved the scope to cover the bar. If Chappy and Doc did it right, they’d be exiting, expecting overwatch to have their backs and extraction ready to go. Instead they were about to walk into the noose of an ambush.
“First things first,” muttered Rechs. He centered his scope on the driver’s side of the paneled sled. The windows were dark. Of course they’d be that way for the op. And maybe if Doc had had the time, they would also be blaster-proof.
Rechs pulled the trigger all the same. He used a full charge pack.
He’d had a good sight picture on the approaching sled, and the blast melted the window and probably blew apart the driver from the torso up. Full charge shots with a rifle like this did horrible things to bodies.
