by Nick Cole
The marine looked just like every other kid who’d ever joined to go exciting places and kill exotic people. But the squint in his eye told Rechs that while he might not be putting all the pieces together, something was bothering him. Probably the fact that Rechs looked nothing like the other refugees. Or maybe the kid was picking up on all the passive-aggressive Sinasian contempt being directed toward Rechs from those around him.
Maybe, thought Rechs as he watched awareness dawn in the marine’s eyes, the kid won’t put it all together before I’m clear.
He kept walking toward the far end of the pontoon bridge with all the other refugees. But the kid’s suspicious look had Rechs picking up the pace. The old bounty hunter was so close to the end of the bridge that he allowed himself to think he was going to make it without incident.
But then the kid pulled back the charging handle on the mounted N-50 and swung its long barrel right at the crowd of Sinasians surrounding Rechs.
In a blur, Rechs brought his N-4 to bear and shot the kid in the chest, shouting “Down!” as he did so. The marine slumped in his gun emplacement, and Rechs shot him again. Served the kid right for thinking he was going to unload on a crowd of innocent bystanders.
Is that why? the voice asked. Or do you really mean that it serves the kid right for wanting to take down Tyrus Rechs?
Rechs broke into a sprint as the rest of the Repub marines sprang to life. Some seemed to have only a vague sense of what had just happened, but others had seen it all, and opened fire on the man responsible. Their blaster bolts chased Rechs as he scrambled behind a parked command sled that had been left by the side of the bridge. He still had another hundred meters to cross before reaching the entrance to the escalator terminal up to the docking bays.
Rechs weighed whether to return fire or get ready to boogie for more cover.
Time was running out.
Two marines appeared at the terminal entrance, drawn by the action, already snapping their rifles up to fire. It was a clear shot, so Rechs’s decision was made. He moved immediately, barely avoiding a slew of shots that slammed into the space he’d just occupied.
Rather than fire back, Rechs dashed toward a small building that would protect him from their fire, but unfortunately not that of the marines he’d first come in contact with. Their plan seemed to hinge on getting the amphibious assault vehicle into the game. The thing’s repulsors kicked in, sending up a spray of dirt and grit. Marines crawled along its compartmented hull to pull the dead gunner out of the mounted blaster hatch.
Seeing the start of a death trap, Rechs rolled out from his cover and engaged the two marines at the terminal, moving straight for them.
Both were busy swapping out charge packs at the same time. They’d managed to use up an entire pack apiece in the burst that had chased Rechs to the building.
They’re new, decided Rechs. New with no NCO to guide them, and amped up by the unexpected firefight.
Something paternal—and maybe a feeling of guilt for icing the kid back there—prevented Rechs from shooting at the green kids as he moved along the portico that fronted the terminal, using blaster-pockmarked columns for cover.
Only after the marines had swapped their charge packs did they cover behind a small duracrete wall that fronted the plaza before the escalator terminal.
Rechs couldn’t help but think their NCO would die of embarrassment at how these two pups were handling what was most likely their first real firefight.
And he knew right then and there that killing them wouldn’t be a hard thing. This was the galaxy, after all. A galaxy where men carried blasters. Where they shot at each other. Killed each other. A thing Rechs did especially well.
But only when he felt he had to.
Right now, he didn’t have to.
He cooked one of the bangers he’d taken off the leej back inside Hess’s cordon and tossed it at the terminal entrance. The second it went off, Rechs sprinted forward, knowing the two marines would be down on the ground wondering if they’d ever hear again and whether the world would ever stop spinning.
Behind him, Rechs could hear the amphib coming. As the replacement gunner shouted, “Engaging!” Rechs vaulted the steps into the terminal and threw himself down on a floor covered with shattered glass, likely from the previous day’s mayhem.
The weapon opened up, sending hot, short bursts into the front of the building. Blaster fire careened off the face of the transportation terminal and slammed into the duracrete wall.
Rechs waited, readying himself for his next move.
And then he caught a break.
“Pack’s dead!” shouted the gunner. He raised the N-50 to pull back and link to a new charge pack. That was bad luck for them—a faulty charge pack hard-mounted in the bowels of the amphib.
But Rechs would take it.
He heaved himself off the ground and sprinted for the escalator amid a flurry of small-arms fire. The amphib roared forward, right into the terminal, firing once more, but by then Rechs was already moving up the escalator toward the second level.
Marines dismounted to give chase.
At the top of the escalator, legs pumping, arms pulling, Rechs ran.
Blaster fire chased him down the vast passage that fronted the bays. The blast doors of bay 221 were wide open, and Shurrigan’s Goose was ready for departure.
Whether it was spaceworthy or not was another story. It was an old Arcturian raider, still sporting the classic Arcturian design—a crescent with the curved edge forward, four massive landing gears splayed out from the belly of the crescent. But it looked like it had been converted to freight hauler years before, and a job badly done at that. The pilot’s cupola was mounted along the portside edge of the crescent, while the rest of the ship had been modified to hold modular storage blisters, which were scattered about in a slapdash, haphazard fashion, resembling nothing so much as overgrown barnacles. In short, a once elegant and graceful ship, one that had probably participated in the wars between Arcturus and her rival trading enemy Maelstrom Fringe, now looked like a gypsy caravan come in to trade. Possibly after having a complete breakdown and then remaining derelict for twenty years.
Rechs saw Jacobson waving from inside the illuminated, bulbous pilot’s canopy. “Hurry up and get inside!” she demanded over the comm.
He pounded across the docking hangar, his body threatening to crash on him. He’d been running on pure adrenaline since the shootout in the oceanside bar. Now it was fading, and every limb felt like it was turning into duracrete as he pushed himself toward the boarding ramp.
The old freighter’s engines screeched to life in a perfect hum reminiscent of the latest military interceptors. Shurrigan’s Goose didn’t look like much, but it sounded wicked.
The marines reached the massive blast doors that opened up onto the hangar, and to their credit, they shot to disable the light freighter. Rechs sent a few unaimed shots their way just to distract them. Who knew what they could break on the junky old ship?
As if on cue, blaster fire hit something beneath the ship, sending sparks flying and smoke gushing from one of the landing gears.
From the sound of the spooling engines, Rechs knew the ship was leaving with or without him. The pilot didn’t want a pile of credits bad enough to stick around and get hauled in by the marines.
Rechs fired once more from the boarding ramp as it retracted into the belly of the crazy freighter… and then it pulled him inside and sealed behind him. He felt that sudden shift from natural gravity to artificial as the ship lifted off the dock, drew up her gears, pivoted for departure, and went to engines full amid a hail of blaster fire.
26
Inside the light freighter, everything was util-
itarian and well-used. Almost nothing was new. Every hatch rattled, as did the internal walls as the ship climbed like a banshee through the atmosphere. Rechs had moved forward to where he tho
ught he’d find the flight deck when he heard the telltale shriek of starfighter blaster fire above the screaming engines of the freighter.
Jacobson and the pilot were busy on the flight deck when Rechs found them.
The Nether Ops captain was re-angling the deflector shields to meet the interceptor threat while the pilot swam his long fingers across the control panel and watched the canopy and digital feedback like a H8 junkie staring glassy-eyed into oblivion.
Rechs had only been able to give the pilot a cursory glance in the bar seconds before the blaster fight had erupted. Now that he got a longer look, he saw a tall, gangly, bug-eyed man with a giant Adam’s apple and tremendous teeth.
The ship shuddered from a strafe by a Lancer. As the Lancer overtook them and sped past, Jacobson looked down at her controls with a puzzled look. “Hit… but not bad.”
“That’s good,” said the pilot.
The Lancer swung around for another run.
“Interceptors,” Rechs called out. When working with others, he found it was best to call out the obvious until he was sure of everyone’s capabilities.
“No bunga, my man,” shouted the pilot. Though he wasn’t really shouting. He just had one of those voices. Loud. And like he always spoke from the back of his throat with a serious sinus condition. “You have well and truly karballed my livelihood in the Sinasian smuggled goods trade, mate.”
More shots raced across the deflectors. Rechs’s eyes went to the damage readout. Superficial. Again.
“It’ll be a good long time before they’ll let me do the run now that the Republic’s all over our back,” the pilot moaned.
Rechs had the feeling that he was protesting too much. “This is supposed to be a beacon jump? How much longer until we go to light speed? Your ship won’t stand up against these interceptors.”
“It’s a beacon jump, my man,” the pilot said. “Problem is I need a nice long straightaway to match the jump calc to the beacon’s last updated signal. She updates every twenty minutes. Normally we do this jump in the dead of night out along the Darshell Reefs in the southern continent where the Repub could care less what goes on. Now, with interceptors all over me, it’s proving a bit hard to match course and calc.”
That’s not how Rechs knew beacon jumps to work. He quietly thumbed the selector on his N-4.
The pilot brought the old freighter through a full yaw rotation until the sky was the ground and the ground the sky, then the ship dove for the wide ocean and a small island chain. In that world-spinning moment, Rechs saw at least a full squadron of fighters. And directly in front of them, streaking to intercept, was the super-destroyer.
“Not to worry, my man,” announced the pilot to some question he’d thought was most likely plaguing Rechs or Captain Jacobson. “I’m full of all kinds of tricks.”
In seconds the freighter was down, skimming above the ocean and speeding directly into a chain of volcanic islands. Some of which were active. Dancing among the volcanos might allow them to pull away from the less-maneuverable Lancers, but they were still on a direct course for the super-destroyer.
“If your big trick is going real fast,” said Jacobson as she tightened herself in the navigator’s chair, “then you might want to think up some new ones. They’ve got us in the next thirty seconds.”
But the craft kept its course, moving inevitably closer to the super-destroyer. Rechs crept up behind the pilot and pressed the barrel of his N-4 against the back of the man’s head. “Get us out of here. Now.”
“What are you doing?” shouted Jacobson.
“He’s not taking us to the beacon. He’s setting us up for capture by that super-destroyer. Aren’t you?”
Beads of perspiration formed on the pilot’s lip. “Listen… I can’t just give up the location of Shangri-La. I can’t just take you there because you have credits. You don’t have enough credits to ever pay for something like that.”
Rechs pushed the barrel harder against the man’s head. “How many credits is your life worth? Do we have enough credits for that? Because if you don’t get us out of here right now, your head is getting splattered all over this Arcturian console.”
The pilot seemed to weigh just how much Shangri-La, a bounty on Tyrus Rechs, and his life were worth. He decided that living beat out all. “All right, all right. But when we get there we make a point of saying you forced it on me. And I still get paid.”
“Fine.”
The pilot changed course, flying straight into the face of a tropical volcano before rolling the ship over on her starboard axis at the last second and pulling up hard to fly along the steep face of the cone. The two closest pursing Lancers couldn’t make the turn and dashed themselves into the volcano. But the rest, a veritable swarm of angry hornets, backed off their speed, pulled hard, and rolled out on their new course heading aft of the freighter’s tail.
“Better,” Rechs muttered.
“Ain’t seen nothin’ yet, my man,” bragged the pilot in his swallowed yet loud voice.
Streaking along the face of the tropical paradise, rolling sporadically but still following the same course heading, the freighter found a crack in the line of small mountains that fell away from the volcano and dove into it. The gap widened into a narrow canyon that ran off toward the island’s interior.
Jacobson checked the back-scan sensors and remarked less than enthusiastically, “Still on us.”
“Not for long,” said the pilot. He swiveled away from the controls and turned his attention to an ancient nav comp that had been jury-rigged to a dish-assisted hypercomm. “Now for the finishing touch.”
Blaster fire rocked the hull of the ancient ship. The deflectors collapsed, and more blaster fire raked the engines. The faux pursuit of moments earlier had ended; now they were shooting for real.
“Never mind that, folks,” said the pilot distractedly as he brought in the automated damage control systems. “All part of the show…”
“They’re closing,” said Jacobson, the fear of being shot down in the next ten seconds evident in her voice. “Do something. It’s now or never, flyboy!”
Rechs turned around, studying the various control panels along the side of the cockpit. He’d removed the N-4’s barrel from the pilot’s head, but still had it on him. And probably would for the rest of the flight.
The pilot cast a quick, worrying glance at the bounty hunter, and then down to the rifle. Despite his assurances, he seemed to be out of tricks as the freighter shot down the tight length of the canyon.
Rechs spotted a U-handle release marked “WARNING: Cargo Disconnect.” He slammed it from the lock position and up to release.
A normal freighter would’ve never had such a simple system so lacking in redundant safety features. A smuggler, on the other hand…
“What’re you doing, mate?” shrieked the pilot—knowing full well what Rechs had just done.
“Saving our lives and your ship,” grunted Rechs. He pounded a green-lit contact button on the panel.
“No! Not that…” whined the pilot forlornly.
There was a series of loud thumps and bumps as the ship suddenly accelerated forward. Cargo modules along her upper hull came loose and flew into the face of the fighter swarm closing in for the kill. Some Lancers slammed into the sides of the canyon while trying to avoid the loose cargo modules. Other fighters crashed into one another. Others still collided with the modules at full force, their forward deflectors quickly overpowered.
No one was shooting at the freighter now.
As Rechs had anticipated, the nav comp beeped and then turned over to a steady tone indicating the jump solution was as good as it was going to get.
The pilot looked like he’d lost a small fortune in abandoned cargo. “Toranga’s not gonna like that even a little bit.” He reached forward and moved the jump throttles to full. “Well… here comes nothing… litera
lly.”
And then the old freighter was gone, leaving the few still-trailing fighters nothing to follow but blue sky.
27
“What’s Shangri-La like?” asked Jacobson. “And
no more tricks.”
“What’s it like, mate?” repeated the pilot. “It’s crazy pants. It’s Sinasia five hundred years ago and yesterday. It’s half circus of freaks and carnival of nightmares, and half… I don’t know. Something out of our shared history from way back. Earth. If you believe that place ever existed.”
The pilot held out a hand. “I’m Shurrigan. Hence the name of the ship. It’s my goose. I’m also a businessman and occasional raconteur when stories are needed.”
“And someone I can’t trust,” Rechs said, gripping his rifle. He’d relaxed to the ready position, no longer aiming the weapon at Shurrigan’s head, but that was as far as he would go.
The pilot winked, which surprised Rechs. “You kidnap me and try to justify it by offering me far too few credits to give up Shangri-La. I try to turn you in to the Repub for a bounty. I’d say we’ve canceled each other out.”
Jacobson leaned back in her seat. “Getting to Shangri-La was too important to take no for an answer.”
“Well, we’re on our way there now,” said the pilot, sounding like he’d adjusted to the situation.
Rechs didn’t figure the pilot would risk crossing him again. That would be an instant death warrant.
He got down to business. “We need to get on-planet without being noticed.”
“Oh, trust me, I have no intention of letting anyone know that I brought you there.”
“And we need to know what the situation is like on the ground.”
“The trick is this. There’s only one field I’m allowed to set down on. And that’s the only one I’d chance. What’s going on right now? I don’t know. I’ve seen things. Things out there in the mist. But… ah… that doesn’t mean I know what’s going on.”
“Explain,” said Jacobson.
The pilot rubbed his stubbly, nobby chin, then massaged his gangly neck with long, piano player’s fingers. “How about I tell you a story.”
