by Nick Cole
“Lyra, put me down on the hull, and watch out for those Samurais.”
The Crow came in hard and fast over the white hull of the sprawling ship. Down here, close to the surface, it was large enough to have its own horizon. It looked like a city of towers and boxes in the sky.
A flaming Lancer slammed into the cockpit of a Samurai, causing the mech’s magnetic system to fail. The starfighter and mech tumbled together toward the planet’s surface, intertwined in death.
Rechs jumped and fired his jets to land on the super-destroyer’s hull, as though he’d just taken a bounce on a trampoline.
“Get the ship clear, Lyra!”
He moved forward, dodging blaster fire from both marines and mechs who were engaged in the “valley” of the central transportation cargo rail that ran the length of the ship. The Dragon’s forces had breached all along its length and were holding that position. Possibly fighting their way down into the main launch tubes to prevent the crustbuster from being fired.
That was assuming they even knew it was there. But that’s what Rechs would do if he were in the Dragon’s situation.
Marines were getting chewed up by the few mechs holding the breach. But they had no choice: it was very clearly a matter of stopping the monsters or having their ride go down hard. So they kept fighting for all they were worth. Rechs imagined the super-destroyer’s Legion element was entirely on the ground, with perhaps a company held back to defend the ship. If so, that element would likely be fighting the mechs inside.
“Captain—er, master—no, captain was right,” began G232 over the comm.
Rechs was engaging a detachment of marines who were out onto the hull with an MPRGS, a rail weapon system. An old-school guaranteed mech killer they’d most likely had to break out of stores. Rechs’s N-34, a special Legion weapon he’d purchased on the black market, over-cycled into high-speed automatic fire. Blaster bolts blurred from its long barrel like streaking lightning and cut the marines down in an instant. Bodies tumbled off into the atmosphere or slid toward the outer edge of the hull, where they cartwheeled down to the planet below.
“Still monitoring transmission over the L-comm, and it seems the ship’s personnel have lost the launch tube control room. Which would seem to be good news,” said G232 triumphantly. “Alas, the command bridge now has fire control and will launch the weapon shortly. Shall we come pick you up now that all is lost, master? This is all getting rather hazardous, or so it would seem.”
More MPRGS teams were coming out onto the hull. Soon those portable rail gun systems would make quick work of the remaining mechs.
Rechs used his jump jets to bump himself up to a destroyed air-defense turret. The ship’s current elevation was twenty-eight thousand meters and climbing. Still too close to use that crustbuster safely.
If the captain still cared about being safe.
Rechs tagged the Dragon’s mech with the laser comm. “It’s over,” he said. “They’re going to fire. Come with me if you want to live. There’s still time to get clear of this. You can live. Have a life. A family. All those…”
He trailed off.
All those things I never had. Or had… long ago.
The bounty hunter watched the battle along the valley of the main rail line. The marines were turning the tide, dwindling the Samurais down to four. The hullbusters closed in from all points.
“Can’t,” came back the voice of the Dragon over the comm. “They’re determined to use it. I need to stop it.”
The massive Samurai turned and boosted off toward the launch tubes at the bow of the ship. The Dragon’s mech was holed and trailing debris from several internals.
Rechs boosted his jets, praying there was enough jump juice to keep up as he bounded after.
“Lyra…”
“Here, Tyrus!”
Not Captain.
Tyrus. Like she…
Rechs shook his head. No time for that. He raced for the retreating mech.
The marines dropped the remaining Samurais and began firing hopeful rail gun shots at the bounty hunter.
Altitude was now reading thirty-three hundred meters.
“Lyra, stay close to me. I might not have much time to get away.”
The mech reached the bow and began to climb down the burning bridge stack. Initial missile assaults had ruined this section of the ship. Primary control was most likely coming from the auxiliary bridge.
“Captain!” called G232. “I think this is very important. The missile is in the tube. They’re preparing to fire. Orders to go to jump upon weapon release are confirmed by engineering. I estimate this is not fruitful to your plans.”
Rechs gave up almost all the jump juice he had to reach the burning bridge stack. The ship was on fire across massive sections and bellowing ominous black smoke from her portside hangars. The mech had disappeared, and was most likely climbing down to the tubes along the ruined face of the bow.
He’s going to block the firing tube with his mech, thought Rechs.
The weapon would still detonate; they’d probably disarmed all the altitude safeties just to get it to fire this close to the planet. But it would detonate here, rather than on planet. The ship would be destroyed in that instant. The planet, and the Sinasians with it, would live another day.
How do you know he’ll do that? asked that other voice.
Because, thought Rechs as he peered over the bow of the ship and saw the mech climbing down three decks below to cover the launch tubes with its bulk. It’s what I would do.
Rechs climbed down after the Dragon. If he slipped, he’d fall right off the front of the ship. It was a long way down, and not even the old Mark I armor could stand up to that.
A moment later the missile appeared, slowly thrusting its way from the ship as if being birthed. The Dragon was too late to stop the launch.
But not too late to hitch a ride.
Rechs watched in horror as the missile began to streak away from the ship, with the Dragon holding on and trailing behind it. The bounty hunter used the last of his juice to fling himself from the ship after them, arching out into the void.
His gauntleted fingers caught hold of a coupling hose on the mech’s leg.
It must have been quite a spectacle: Rechs clinging to a massive Samurai mech, which in turn was hanging on to the largest piece of ordnance the Repub Navy carried.
“What are you doing?” groaned the Dragon.
He’s wounded, thought Rechs. Badly, by the sound of it.
“Can you disable it?” the bounty hunter asked.
“Trying…” grunted the Dragon. “Hydraulics are going. I can’t do much else besides hold on. Attaching mag-grapples…” He cursed. “Hydraulics are dead. That’s all I can do now.”
The massive mech was spraying fluid everywhere. Debris was coming off of it in sections. The mag-grapples were locked on to the missile, ensuring the mech would be carried along with it. But the Dragon was helpless to do anything that might disable the Republic weapon.
Except…
“Setting the mech to detonate.”
“Don’t!” shouted Rechs.
“It’s okay… don’t think I’m going to make it.”
Ball.
Rechs fought to think of something. Anything out of what was shaping up to be impossible.
“Sorry…” said the Dragon. “I think you’re along… for the ride.”
“Kid?” called Rechs.
There was no reply.
“Stay with me!” he shouted into the comm.
The weapon was picking up speed now. Boosting its engines to achieve relativistic speeds. Eventually it would activate a small charge that would micro-jump the weapon into an identified planetary fault line and destabilize the surface. For all intents and purposes, the planet would die as the crust popped and fractured. The ecological r
uin would be immediate, and within hours the planet would probably tear itself apart through its own eruptions and the local effects of gravity violently trying to correct its established orbit. The clincher would come when the poles reversed, and the planet literally came apart in sections.
“Stay with me!” shouted Rechs again. His voice sounded frantic in his ears.
And in his heart… he knew the Dragon was gone.
But you don’t know that! his mind screamed.
And the memory of some old NCO, some long-dead sergeant from way back on the Earth that no one believed in anymore, hectored Rechs.
You don’t quit till I get tired.
Rechs pulled himself along the body of the mech, despite the storm of wind and speed buffeting his every movement, knowing that one missed handhold would tear him away from the streaking Samurai and cast him off into an oblivion from which he would never emerge.
“Captain Rechs,” said G232 over the comm. “Lyra is detecting an energy surge within the mech you are currently… next to. She indicates it is highly likely that it will explode once its reactor reaches an uncoolable cascade.”
Thus destroying the weapon and saving the planet, thought Rechs grimly.
He reached the pilot’s smashed cupola and looked inside. The Dragon was there in a flight suit, bleeding out. He looked dead.
The weapon they rode streaked across the surface of the planet, thundering through the mist-green skies. The landscape raced by below, and Rechs knew they were homing in on the fissure the weapon had identified as most likely to destabilize the planet in the shortest amount of time.
“Lyra. I need you to fly the Crow right beneath us!”
He could feel her saying no. He could feel himself saying no, telling himself all the ways this wouldn’t work. All the ways this would end badly.
But he heard the engines of his ship coming closer.
Dangerously close. If ship and missile connected, that would be the end right there.
Rechs magnetized his boots and pulled the cutting torch from off his back, forcing it through the windstorm and gripping the mech cockpit with his other gauntlet.
He had no free hand with which to switch it on.
“C’mon!” he shouted at no one.
He bashed his bucket into the start button.
The cutter spouted to life.
“Captain…” said Lyra in a warning tone. The Crow’s engines whined, and the ship suddenly dove lower in a jerky movement to get away from incoming blaster fire.
“What’s going on?” asked Rechs as he began to make his cut lines in the mech’s hatch.
“The weapon has started its descent, Captain,” said G232 forlornly.
Rechs continued to cut. Time was running out. Growing thinner by the second. Either the mech would detonate very shortly, or the missile would find the fault that would destroy this world. Either way ended up with him being atomized.
Rechs cut fast and had the hatch half open when the storm of wind tore it away with an abrupt metallic groan. Within the cockpit lay the Dragon, lifeless and being thrown about in his straps by the gusty storm.
Rechs let go of the plate cutter, letting it disappear in the wind to fall thousands of feet below.
“Get in closer, Lyra!” he shouted over the comm. The wind was slamming his bucket from side to side as he struggled to get into the cockpit.
He could feel the missile descending. Its final flight path was established. He could hear a sort of hum, even through the wind. Was that the missile or the mech? Which would it be?
“Tyrus, it’s almost impossible!” said Lyra quietly. Fear and frustration permeated the AI’s voice. Something supposedly impossible and yet there.
“Lyra… you can do this. I need you to. Otherwise… I lose him.”
And I’m not letting go, he thought as he reached into the cockpit and grabbed hold of a man with his DNA. A man Captain Jacobson referred to as his son. Rechs realized that the inference had found a place somewhere deep inside of him.
The Dragon was his son. Rechs was responsible for his being in the world.
I won’t let go. Not now. Not ever.
The Crow came in, its hull just beside the missile, so close it seemed the two might touch. Lyra had deftly positioned the upper cargo access right below and a bit behind Rechs. Two meters distance at an altitude of twenty-one thousand meters moving fast across the sky.
There was no guarantee that they wouldn’t just streak off beyond the hull, Rechs and the kid in his arms. Maybe bounce off the engines and begin the long fall to the planet below. But Rechs had to make the jump, with no jets to guide him.
He let go, holding on to the Dragon, holding on to his… son… as the galaxy tried to drag them away. He let go of everything that could happen and dove across the void between the two vehicles. The missile and the old freighter speeding at the edge of sanity.
Margin for error: none.
Possibility verging on the impossible.
But some poet Rechs had once read said, Gravity is love in the swimming pool of the universe.
Maybe that was true.
For a moment they hung between the missile that destroyed worlds and the hold of the Obsidian Crow. All things, all the horrible endings, were possible in that instant.
The mech blowing up and killing them all…
The missile jumping into the fault line, liquefying Rechs from the inside out just from the energy of the sudden acceleration…
Missing the cargo hatch and flying off into oblivion at this high altitude of mind-numbing insanity…
Or smashing into the inside of the cargo hold, holding your son and seeing the cargo hatch closing behind you…
Which was what Rechs saw. That and the evil shape of the crustbuster, firing its engines right beside the ship. Surging to ready for the micro-jump and final impact.
“Break off, Lyra!” shouted Rechs. “Close the hatch and climb for jump!”
The Crow’s engines howled in response, and the mech exploded a second later somewhere beyond the ship… sending the Crow into darkness.
The ship was falling. Unpowered and dead. All systems knocked out by the powerful effect of the mech’s detonation.
In the dark of the hold Rechs held the Dragon, not knowing if he was dead, or alive, or just hovering between those worlds waiting to be greeted by what lay in the strange and undiscovered country.
Ball.
“Ball,” whispered Rechs.
If death was coming for him now, after all these years, then this wasn’t the worst way.
All was silent as the ship fell through the atmosphere. The explosion pulse seemed to have knocked all sound out of the galaxy.
Emergency lighting came online. The ship was shaking like it might throw itself apart. The squeal and whine of the engines roared to life as if that were the most natural, and yet unexpected, thing in the galaxy. And then the ship was boosting, climbing away from that world.
“We’re clear, Tyrus!” said Lyra over the ship’s internal comm. “I got you.” And then the AI repeated herself like she hadn’t believed it the first time.
“I got you.”
You certainly did, thought Rechs. You certainly did.
“The weapon?” he asked. His voice was a dry croak. He pulled off his gauntlet and began to search his son for a pulse.
“Detonated. No harm to the planet. I got our deflectors up just before it went off.”
“Well,” said G232. “This is enough excitement for one bot’s life. I thought for sure this was the end of our runtime.”
Rechs searched the Dragon for a pulse. That blue hammer inside of all of us, pounding out life for as long as it can. That gift no matter the circumstances.
He found it.
It was weak. But it was there.
Refusing to sto
p.
Epilogue
Rechs turned the Dragon over to Doc and Chappy. The two operators made sure the kid disappeared. Healed. Became human again.
The Dragon left behind what he had been made to be. A killing machine like his father.
In time he found a woman.
They left for the stars and founded a world, violent and hard. They made their home there. A place for family and tribe.
A place missing from the stellar charts.
Occasionally the old bounty hunter who never aged would come and stay for a meal. And look on all that they had done. And watch his son grow a family of his own.
***
The man is at the end. The dying has begun in earnest. Long his days have been after those events in the Sinasian worlds when he was known as the Dragon, among other names.
His loved ones gather at his last, weeping and begging him not to go.
To stay just a while more.
But death has made its appointment.
It is not the first time he has died. He has died before. As the Dragon he once was. He knows what dying is like, and he is not afraid of it. He has lived a better life than he deserved. He had a family. And a chance.
And that was all anyone might ever ask. Despite their circumstances. He has learned the wisdom of that.
But he waits for the stranger to come and have the last goodbye. He is waiting before he goes, and he is not altogether sure if the one he waits for will arrive.
The light fades. The sickness, a cancer really, that once kept him young and able to heal like General Rex—like his father—is what now destroys him. There is no more Colonel Ajax. No more Project Phoenix doctors to put him through the torturous process of being cured just so the dying can be pushed back again.
Is it afternoon or night?
It no longer matters. There will be no more days on this side.
He is going now. The lamentations of those who love him break his heart. And it is good, too, at the same time. He made something. A family, a life, a place. Instead of destruction.
But he fights and holds on. Just like he did when he was at… at… that place…
… that battle.
