The man takes another swipe at me, but it seems almost playful. Like he wasn’t actually trying to cut me. Like he’s enjoying this now.
And why shouldn’t he? Time is on this suicide bomber’s side.
“See what you are? That should have been me,” the man says. “I was Legion. And I know that you know I was, because this is how the Legion teaches you to fight with knives. Of course, experience has led to some modifications on my part.”
He thrusts for my head. I dodge, and the blade glances across my bucket.
No harm.
“I was Legion, and I was good. Damn good. Best killer the Legion ever had, don’t you ever forget it. And what does a killer do but kill? So I killed who deserved it. Who I felt needed it. And a lot of buggers needed it.”
“You sound charming,” I reply, hoping to get him off his game.
“Thank you kindly. The legionnaires, they didn’t like the killing. Or maybe they did and it was the House and Senate who lost the stomach for it. They hate us, you know? They hate legionnaires because we remind them that they need men with guns to bring about the change they call ‘natural’ to the galaxy.”
Another swipe, another near miss.
“So they drummed me out. When they should have put me on a kill team. Put my talents to use.”
“They made the wrong call,” I say.
The man gives a half smile and inclines his head, as if to hear more. “Oh yeah?”
“Yeah,” I say, maneuvering myself behind a det-brick that fell out of my pouches while dodging. “They should have killed you.”
I kick the det-brick at the man’s face. It hits him square on the chin. He takes a step back, and I deliver a shoulder tackle, driving him into the deck.
The man howls with rage. He slices along my chest, but my armor absorbs most of it. The very tip of the blade finds home through my synthprene, enough to draw blood, but it’s nothing too deep. I grimace behind my helmet.
I don’t know if you remember, but I’m something of an amateur GFC fighter. And the ground game is where I tend to excel.
I rub my armored forearm across the bridge of the guy’s nose until he sends his non-knife hand to pull my arm away. I’ve got his knife hand gripped by the wrist. I let him pull my arm away because this opens up his face. Unlike him, I’m wearing my bucket.
I slam my helmet down with a head-butt that I don’t even feel. It hits him on the mouth, though I was aiming for his forehead. I see blood right away, and he spits out two teeth onto the carpet. I lift my head back to bring down another head-butt. He sees the opening he’s given me and lets go of my forearm, placing his palm over my bucket to hold me off.
I’m still in a good spot. I take a few jabs at his head, but they’re glancing blows. All the while, our legs are jockeying for position. He’s trying to roll me off him and I’m riding the wave, trying to stay on top. We’re both panting and groaning, putting all the strength we have into this fight. I know only one of us is getting up from the deck alive.
He must know it too.
I grope for his neck with my free hand, hoping for a choke. He tucks his chin, and my hand moves up and onto his face, even while his hand finds the opening beneath my bucket and begins to squeeze my throat.
This guy is a powerhouse. I feel my air supply dwindling, which makes the arm I’m using to keep the knife at bay grow weaker by the second. He’s starting to turn this around.
My hand rubs against his face until I reach his eyes. I gouge my thumb into his eye socket, pushing hard with everything I’ve got. In case you’re wondering, a human eye when crushed by a thumb feels more like a bag of jelly than a hard ball.
My opponent wails in pain and moves his head, causing my thumb to pop out of his eye socket. It lands by his mouth. He bites down hard, and I can feel the pain through my gloves. I scream inside my bucket. “You sonofabitch! Just die!”
He’s pushing the knife toward me and I’m hanging on for everything I’ve got. I get my hand free from his mouth and wrap it around his neck. We’re literally choking the life out of each other. I can see the color change in his face. I’ve got an advantage because my bucket is increasing the amount of pure oxygen I’m breathing as my breaths grow shallower. He’ll have to cut my air supply out entirely, and I don’t think the little guy has the stamina left.
I feel a knee attempting to ram home into my crotch. But that’s an armored area. I squeeze with every ounce of strength in my hand. I think I feel his grip loosening.
“Surrender,” I manage to rasp. My throat feels like it’s on fire.
He doesn’t answer. I squeeze tighter.
“Surrender!”
Still no reply, but now I can feel the strength in his knife arm ebbing. I’m getting more air. I begin to steer the blade toward his face. His lone intact eye looks at the weapon with fear.
“Surrender,” I say one more time.
My would-be killer is silent. He’s watching his own blade in his own hand move toward him. I stick the point of the blade into him, just below his mandible. He screams, but his voice is weak. I use the opportunity to tighten my grip around his throat. I slide the knife farther in and down, flicking it back and forth until, at last, I sever his jugular vein.
There’s a slick, wet sound. His strength fades rapidly now as the blood gushes from the wound. His hand drops from around my neck. His breathing grows faint. He pulls his hand off the knife and lifts it up. For a moment I’m expecting a final, desperate strike to my head. Instead the hand seems to caress my bucket, the helmet of a legionnaire like he once was, before drifting down to the floor.
He’s dead.
I roll onto my back and take deep breaths. I feel as though I have no strength left. A trickle runs down my arm. For a moment I fear that the blood I see on the deck is from the cut he made on me. That it’s my blood pouring forth as much as his. I’m afraid to look at my arm. But my sense returns. My bucket would notify me of such a wound.
I’m okay.
I’m okay.
There’s still a job to do. It felt as though we struggled for hours, but I know only a few minutes passed. I bring myself to my feet and retrieve my NK-4. “Okay,” I say to the ether. “Any more like that, or do I get to use my rifle on the bridge?”
I’m ready to go in hot. Just waiting for the bridge door to open. But it doesn’t.
I sense that I’m not alone. I turn and see Wraith step through the door. He’s still limping a bit, but it looks like the adrenaline has kicked in. Twenties, Masters, and Owens trail him.
“Where’s Kags?” I ask.
I don’t get a response. And then I remember that I lowered my L-comm volume to almost nothing. I turn it back up and repeat the question.
“Bro,” Owens said, “didn’t you hear on the comm? Kags is dead, man.”
“So’s the marine,” Twenties adds.
I feel so numb from the fight that the words barely even register. I move to the door. “Did you shut down the hyperdrive?”
Owens nods. “Remote detonation. That way we can control it at the last second. We breach, throw in fraggers and ear-poppers. Brace ourselves, kill the hyperdrive, let them fly around the room. KTF.”
It sounds as good as any other plan to me. “Let’s stack up.”
“Don’t you gotta blow that thing first?” Exo asks. He’s carrying Kags’s SAB. We’ll need it.
“Stack up,” I say, aiming my rifle and ready to blitz. “It’ll open once we’re set.”
My kill team sets up, but Owens steps back. He grabs two men by the shoulders. “Hold up.”
I can tell he’s getting something over his comm. Having a discussion on a private channel.
He looks up at the ceiling in exasperation. “Okay, Victory Squad, this kill team is not allowed to go in with fraggers.”
“Are you shittin’ me?” Masters asks. “That’s the only reason we even sniffed passing this in training.”
“Wish I was. There’s more. Under no circumstances are yo
u to EKIA any humans. Uniformed MCR or otherwise.”
“Why the hell not, dude?” Exo says. “I’m gonna kill every scumsack in that room.”
“So what’s the plan?” Wraith asks. “Because we gotta go now.”
Owens pumps his shotgun. “Same plan minus the fraggers. Door opens, I kill the hyperdrive, and we go in.”
We stack up in anticipation. I wonder what Andien, or whoever is watching me, is thinking about our little powwow. Doesn’t matter.
The door opens and Owens blasts the hyperdrive. I can hear the rumble. The corvette is ripped from hyperspace, and the sudden change causes everyone who wasn’t holding on to something—like we were—to go tumbling while inertial dampers struggle to minimize the change in momentum.
Our kill team pours onto the bridge. Exo is first. He goes blind corner right and sees nothing but some zhee to shoot.
Twenties is next. He goes straight down the middle. I’m behind him, going blind corner left.
I see a zhee crouching in Twenties’s blind spot, carrying a shotgun. He pops up his weapon. I swing mine over.
Not soon enough.
Twenties doesn’t see the blast. Probably doesn’t hear it either. It hits in in the back of his head and… his head… it… he dies.
I pump four shots into the zhee, sending him straight to hell for what he just did. “Leej down,” I call over L-comm.
We roll over the bridge, shooting every zhee we see. The humans, for their part, are on their knees with their hands up. But at least one in a Republic uniform goes for a blaster rifle. Masters makes him pay.
The bridge is secured within thirty seconds. Owens goes immediately to the helm. We can see Utopion in the viewport, coming up quickly. He keys in an emergency course adjustment and the corvette begins to nose up, narrowly missing the planet and skimming off into orbit.
We’ve left six humans—four in Republic uniforms, two wearing finely tailored civilian clothes. There’s also one zhee who stood with them. I’d guess he’s the big boss.
My boys are like rabid animals.
“Get on your knees!” Masters and Exo scream. They force everyone down, and I’m pretty sure they’re going to dust the entire crew.
I’m pretty sure I’ll let them.
But then one of the humans, a handsome guy—familiar. He drops to his knees, hands laced behind his head. He looks… sad. Relieved and sad. Like a living nightmare just ended. Then it hits me. This is the guy we saw in the holovids. The guy who helped knock off the dirty supply officer. The guy I tussled with was the ex-legionnaire. I’m looking at Tom. The same Tom the guy I killed was raving about. The same Tom who must have…
“Stand down!” I shout to Masters and Exo. “We have our orders and they’re there for a reason. Do not harm the humans.”
The zhee just looks at his dead crew, his eyes every bit as lifeless as his friends. Wraith walks up to him, removes his pistol, and shoots him once in his donkey head. The zhee drops hard. We’re all looking at Wraith.
“Orders were not to shoot the humans,” Wraith says.
“Looks like that zhee tried to pull a knife,” Owens replies.
We slow the ship. Men-at-arms come in and begin taking the prisoners away by shuttle. A crew of explosive-ordnance techs is trying to make the corvette something less than a super-bomb.
I notice that the two humans not dressed in Republic uniforms—Tom and the other guy—they get special treatment. Instead of a man-at-arms taking the other guy away, I see an admiral’s aide show up and remove his ener-chains. The man rubs his wrists, smiles a smug little satisfied grin, and follows the admiral’s aide to who-knows-where.
Tom stays cuffed, but his escort just screams Nether Ops. I think I picked up the look from Andien. As Tom walks by us he says, “Hey. This all should have never happened. I’m sorry. I need you to know, I’m sorry.”
***
The shuttle jump back to the Intrepid is devoid of any joy or goodness. My face is a mask. Whatever Owens is thinking, it’s hidden behind his beard and shades. Wraith, as always, is wearing his bucket.
Masters shows it though. His eyes have been perpetually wet and his jaw has been jutted out. The sign of a man trying not to lose it. I wonder how long he’ll be able to keep it in.
Exo is dealing with his rage by pacing up and down the shuttle deck, slamming his fists against armored thighs and growling curses to himself.
Twenties and Kags lay single file on the deck. Sealed in casualty bags.
I turn Kags’s bucket over in my hands and think about the day I first met him, when he asked what KTF meant. I told him, “You survive our trip to market, Basic, I’ll let you know.”
Kid ended being a good leej. He’ll be missed.
And Twenties. I don’t think about Twenties. I can’t think about him. Not now.
Captain Owens draws in a big breath of air. “Listen,” he says to the surviving members of our kill team. “I’ve been thinking. What happened here… I don’t even know what to say. Our friend Andien from Nether Ops filled me in some things. Stuff she shouldn’t have said.”
Exo stops his prowling. “Like what kind of stuff?”
Owens lets out a heavy sigh. “More bad times, man. Bad times like this. Like the Chiasm. Something’s coming. The whispers are there. Out in the shadows beyond the edge. And they’re coming worse than we can imagine.”
“Where you going with this, Cap?” I ask.
“It’s time Dark Ops acts a bit more like Nether Ops,” Owens says, rolling his neck and popping his vertebrae. “What you accomplished on that corvette was outstanding. But a kill team can only do so much, and our work comes after the bad times have already arrived. We need someone—I need someone—to get ahead of things. Or try, anyway. To drift out to the edge. Watch. Blend in. Become part of the fringe. Because when the bad times come… we’ve gotta know first.”
Nods begin to swell like a rising storm in the shuttle.
Masters sniffs. “If it means making sure our guys didn’t die for nothing—I mean, you all saw the same thing I did. Those two pricks on the bridge… they’re not gonna be dusted.”
“This is how we save lives,” Owens concludes. “But one of us has gotta disappear, and it can’t be me. So what I’m asking is: which one of you is our volunteer? Who’s starting a new life for the Legion?”
Wraith looks at the group. “I’ll go.”
Epilogue
X did not know the end of his puppet. Of Tom and who he returned back to being. The real end. The only end that should have ever concerned a human being, a being, a citizen of this Republic on the constant verge of collapse…
Who knew? Who really knew, he thought to himself, as he closed out the file. Beyond his tiny window the sky had turned dark with the coming of early night.
Not all things are known to those paid to know all things, thought X, and this thought comforted him. There are, he thought to himself anew, as he held a cup of warm tea and watched the darkness… there are some things that must remain private.
He had attended the ceremony after the recovery of Tom. After the rescue by the boys in the Legion. The killing boys. Shakespeare was right. The dogs of war was what they were… and when they were loosed… havoc.
X had attended to the debriefings of Tom. The endless debriefings, and then the hushed remonstrations in which everybody was reminded under pain of death, that to talk was to open oneself up to that particular option.
“After all, we can’t have people knowing the MCR almost got this close to slamming a starship straight into our House of Reason, can we?” That particular bureaucrat had cried aloud during one particularly horrific set of quiet afternoon meetings in the deep caverns of nowhere, located well beneath the most innocuous of government admin buildings.
And what was left unsaid by everyone, because X felt all their staring stares, was: And we can’t let them know it was our man who destroyed a starship and bombed a forward legionnaire base in a particularly contentious war zone.
Can we?
Our man being… Tom.
We can’t.
And of course it was all X’s fault.
But X knew where some of the bodies were buried, so everything was neatly annotated and then erased. Bureaucracy even in deception. Even in grand deception.
And what of Scarpia?
What of him? Someone had pulled enough strings to get him out of hot water. “Need to know, and you don’t, dear boy,” some Mandarin had warned when X went asking.
X was sure Scarpia would turn up again and be about as useful as he could be until one day when he wasn’t. And then X could have him like some devil waiting patiently for a particularity unrepentant sinner.
That was understood.
Until then… Scarpia was free to move about the galaxy and make his particular brand of mischief.
X made a note to revisit.
And of course there were awards and promotions. Not for X. But for everyone who wasn’t really involved. They got those things. It helped them in their constant upward quest to make all the right moves. All the House of Reason moves.
But the pimps…
Hookers…
Murderers…
And everyone else who served the Carnivale, except for one, got nothing. They got the privilege of a thorough dressing-down, and the chance to try again. Even though the Mandarins dressing them down knew that their continued failure was inevitable. In fact they looked forward to it, so that they might profit from it.
Yes… X had his enemies. Just like everyone else.
No one thanked him for saving the House of Reason. Instead, the way the narrative had played out, he was—and this was unspoken—he was the responsible party. It was as if he had planned and almost destroyed the House of Reason himself. Never mind Scarpia, the zhee, and the MCR.
X had played his little espionage games and counter-terrorism tricks, and “this mess” was all his fault.
X smiled to himself, sitting in his squeaky, old, yet comfortable chair in his tiny office. He smiled and sipped a cup of tea. Watching the loose leaves at the bottom swirl as he thought…
Kill Team (Galaxy's Edge Book 3) Page 23
