by Nick Cole
The entrance was an old radiation shield door from a Galactic Lightship. One of the first to reach the inner worlds back in the day. Big, fast beasts that got up and went like no tomorrow. State of the art. Back then.
He remembered standing beneath one on a world he could no longer name. Feeling hopeful. Feeling like everything was beginning again. It was the same feeling as being in love. And there was someone… someone who went with all those memories. And smoke. And music. And laughter.
But that was long ago.
He strode to the massive door, determined, like his mere presence should cause it move aside.
There was a security code.
It was in Maktow. Digital pictoglyphs swam across the screen as the thing chittered at him.
“No time,” he grunted.
He ripped the ancient door from its anchor bolts.
That little maneuver cost him more than he liked. In his HUD, an indicator signaled that the gyro power from the battery was low. The armor’s available power was below thirty-five percent. And no spare power slugs. The old armor didn’t hold a charge like it used to.
Peering through the entrance into a cavernous darkness below, he detected multiple targets. All of them carrying blasters. Waiting in the dark and shadows. Beyond their trap, ground radar showed him the graphed lines of a massive set of stairs rising up to two large doors deep within the remains.
This oughta be fun, he thought grimly as he rushed through the open doorway.
Blaster shots were immediately everywhere. He took cover in the vent housing for the main engines of the old battleship. The superstructure of the massive nacelles that had once housed the mammoth engines rose up and away above. Blaster shots exploded across the cold engine systems all around him, knocking off caked coke hundreds of years old.
He engaged one of Junga’s mean little thugs, hiding in a housing opposite his position—nailed him with a single shot. He killed two more, targeting them in the shadowy darkness with light-enhancement software.
Then a lucky blaster shot destroyed his rifle. The explosion rattled his hands through armored gloves. As he threw aside the heavy blaster, he heard, through the helmet’s sonic amplification system, the enemy leader crowing to his whelps that they had him right where they wanted him.
Rechs drew the old hand cannon from his hip and switched to automatic. He felt the weapon connect with the ammo feed in his right gauntlet as the load indicator blinked to life in the upper corner of his helmet’s screen. Then he was knocking them down with ten-round bursts.
Each set of staccato explosions tore Junga’s thugs apart worse than any blaster ever could. But they continued to fire back at him. The few shots that struck the bounty hunter’s armor merely ricocheted off into the dark vaults above. Only a direct hit, close up, would punch through. Well… in theory. Fact was, the armor was old. It’d been through a lot. Who could tell when it would fail? And where? Best not to get hit at all. Or as little as possible.
“Captain,” purred a voice in Rechs’s comm. “Someone is trying to steal me.”
More of Junga’s men appeared at the top of the massive steps that led out of the ancient engine housings. Once long ago, the flames of hell had surely blazed through this space when the old Ohio-class had fired up for battle back in the old frontier wars. The frontier then. Not now.
“Well… don’t let them,” he growled. He zeroed in on a fast-moving thug.
“It’s just one, Captain. One person is trying to steal me.”
“Lyra!” he barked in frustration. He didn’t need this too. “Don’t let whoever it is steal the Crow.”
“I understand, Captain. I will endeavor to do my best. Containing… now.”
“And—” Blaster fire exploded near his helmet; he ducked just in time. “Stand by to pick me up. My location.”
“Oh, I don’t think that’s such a good idea, Captain,” said Lyra hesitantly.
He leaned in and targeted the runner. He led him with a burst and cut the legs out from under the thug. Rechs paid for the exposure with more close and untrained blaster fire all around him.
“It’s gonna have to be, Lyra. This one is getting hot.”
“Captain, may I remind you of my landing on Noba V? My attempted landing, I mean.”
“Lyra! You’re a ship!” cried Rechs. He took cover behind some old injector nozzles at the bottom of the stairs. New reinforcements were overwhelming his position with blaster fire. He had to keep moving along their line. Now he was popping up in different spots to take random shots, and not hitting every time.
Armor integrity was dropping. As was mobile power.
“Finish this up soon,” Rechs grunted to himself.
“What, Captain?”
“Lyra, get the Crow in the air and maneuver to my location. You might have to fly through the superstructure of an old Ohio-class battleship. You can do this.”
He was down to half his ammo. He switched to five-round bursts. The targeting enhancement system was having trouble compensating on the larger bursts, and he was wasting ammo.
“I’ll try, Captain.” But the ship didn’t sound too sure of herself.
Like there’s any other option, he thought as he took out a leader of some sort. The guy had been shouting and waving his arms, trying to get a bunch of cowardly murderers to rush Rechs. Blowing his head off provided an effective counterargument.
But still, they were closing in on the housing. They were the type, collectively, who knew how to take advantage of any situation. How to harass and intimidate the weak.
Then they’re in for a surprise, thought the bounty hunter.
Now they came on, sensing an advantage, or perhaps just knowing they didn’t want to face Junga as failures. Firing as fast as they could, they closed their semicircle about him in the darkness of the ancient drive engine. At close range, their blasters would tear his armor to shreds.
The critical mistake they made was when the end of their semicircle—seven bloodthirsty and desperate criminals in total—came close enough for Rechs to roll away from the disintegrating fuel inducer housing they were concentrating fire on and right into one of his attackers: a Tenaar holding four blasters in its tentacles.
Like greased lightning, Rechs was up and behind the humanoid squid. He punched it once in the throat, then struck right through its main heart with the industrial diamond blades he deployed from the knuckles of his gloves. Then he pulled the body close and used it as a shield.
In its frenetic death throes, the Tennar squeezed the triggers on all four of its blasters. Wild shots went in every direction around the engine compartment, some striking other hired guns, others dancing off into the high darkness of the superstructure.
In the face of this wild, untargeted fire, near at hand and danger close, the rest of Junga’s thugs began to duck and seek cover. Rechs seized the advantage provided by this moment of chaos. Grabbing one of the neurotic tentacles, he secured a blaster. Then he was squeezing off shots on the rest of Junga’s cowering thugs, taking them all down, one after the next, his movements automatic, mechanical, lethal. When the last enemy fell, Rechs tossed the lifeless body of the squid off into the darkness and advanced up the stairs.
The door at the top had once been the main engine fuel cutoff gate within the engine housings. Now, Rechs was certain, it was the door to Junga’s inner sanctum.
Time to finish this, he thought. And there’s not much of that.
With the armor’s diagnostic emulator, he scanned the blaster he’d taken off the Tennar. He found he didn’t like its targeting alignment or power. It was the kind of weapon some second-rate thug on a back-end world carried, hoping he’d never have to use it as anything more than a fashion accessory.
But guys like this, thought Rechs as he looked around at all the corpses on the deck, guys like this are always dying to use it on someone. It’s what gives them power.
And then that voice inside him whispered, If that’s what you need to sleep… just
keep telling yourself that.
Rechs hadn’t slept well in a long time.
There were too many dead who liked to talk to him when he closed his eyes.
Too many things done that he had to live with long after the doing.
Far too many.
Lifetimes’ worth. Plural.
“Hey!”
It was the voice of a small girl. Plaintive and helpless, with an edge of fear, like all the other voices he’d ever heard on all the countless worlds he’d ever soldiered on. Flown to. Flown from. Killed for. Or just killed. Forgetting where it all began. Knowing its end was somewhere ahead.
Soon.
“Hey!”
Rechs turned amid all the carnage he’d wrought. The dead at his feet. The burnt flesh. The gore.
A little girl and an old war bot stared at him. In the depths of an old battleship that was now some gangster’s hideout.
And suddenly she was crossing the blackened main engine chamber. She was the opposite of everything real. Everything terrible. She was small. Young. Determined. The war bot skittered after her.
He remembered the war bots. They’d been with him at Kungaloor. When the rains came and the Goliath went down in flames and thunder. When the line was so thin. He remembered it all in that moment, as if he could reach out and feel that long-ago rain on that first of all alien worlds he’d been to.
No…
Kungaloor wasn’t the first. It was later. The first was all red desert and sand. And winds. Winds that would flay you alive. And the winds sang. He remembered that. They sang to him.
That was the first.
She was talking to him. The little girl. Earnestly. Honestly. No guile. Not yet.
We learn that when we’re older. This one was still young and innocent. A believer in right and wrong.
The galaxy hadn’t ruined her yet.
But it would. It ruined everyone.
He was holding the almost worthless blaster. Not pointing it at her. Not pointing it away. As though either option was just that… an option. Yet another in a series begun long ago.
“Are you a—”
She halted when he finally turned his helmet to look at her.
***
Prisma was struck by the bounty hunter’s fearsome appearance. Armor and weapons. Killing tools. Faceless because of the helmet. A cold and ruthless killer of others. He looked just like the ones that had…
Her legs went out from under her. No—they just wanted to. Wanted to buckle and not remember what had happened. To be small and insignificant once more. To hide.
But she didn’t. She held. Held her position as best she could. Held her feet and fought to continue doing so.
“Are you a bounty hunter?” Her voice came out as small as she wanted to be. Because the galaxy was big, and it had a way of making everyone feel so very small, so very helpless. Especially when your father was being murdered right in front of your eyes every time you closed them. There was no justice. Not really. For some, but not all. And that’s no kind of justice, really.
Justice is a form of mercy. For the innocent. Isn’t it?
She was suddenly full of anger and fire. Cold fire.
“I’m looking to hire a bounty hunter.”
***
“What…?” murmured Rechs.
This was all too surreal. He wondered if he was having another one of his episodes. Another reality-gone-askew moment in a life too long lived because you were too good at not dying. A little girl, familiar in some haunting way he couldn’t name just yet. Maybe the war bot had something to do with that. Inside the tomb of an old Ohio from a long-lost war no one remembered, one of many, all of it colliding with what he’d become. What he’d never been meant to be.
What he was.
A bounty hunter.
The thing you will be, you are now becoming.
And then… there was something in that. No. he wasn’t that. That was just… something for now.
***
“Some men…” she began, as though she were about to recite some speech and she’d memorized all the words just right. In all the long hours alone when there was no one to blame but herself. As though the speech would make it all right. Except that when she began it… all the words ran away and left just her, Prisma, holding the bag that contained all the grief. Standing there all tiny and far away. Feeling rage, and anger, and fear, all of them competing to master her when she’d told herself she was their master. They laughed at her now.
“… they came and killed…” The fracture appeared in her because it had always been there. “… my father.”
But what she meant was, my daddy.
That’s what she meant to say as her shoulders began to shrink and KRS-88 scuttled forward to somehow comfort her. As if a bot could ever be capable of such a thing.
The tears were falling now. Streaming down her cheeks.
“And I need someone to go kill them because…”
She sobbed again, making that silent ugly crying face she said she’d never make again every time she found herself making it. She moaned softly between breaths, begging the galaxy not to be as cruel as it was. Begging for everything to be different. Begging the universe not to be made of stone and low men.
“He was my daddy!” she cried. “I know he wasn’t perfect. But he was mine. And they took him.” And then she was sobbing in full, arms at her sides. Helpless and uncontrollably sobbing.
***
Rechs let the weapon drop and bent down on one knee. He felt every pop and buckle in his old frame, his old armor. Every injury. Every hurt. Everything missing where there should’ve been something left besides scars.
She fell like a tiny pole into his armored front, and he held her. Because he was once good. Because she was lost. Because he was an adult. Because she was a child. Because the galaxy was cruel. Because she needed comfort. And safety. And justice.
Through his armor, the armor that had protected him from the worst the galaxy could throw at a man, he could feel the shaking grief. And humiliation. And fear.
And so he just held her.
Which was the most human thing he’d done… in years.
And then the Legion showed up, supported by basics.
“There he is! Blast ’em!” cried the officer in charge.
Armored troops flooded the massive engine compartment of the ancient battleship. At least two squads.
“Oh, my!” rumbled the war bot as blaster fire struck the steps all around them, exploding in sharp bursts of static electricity and smoke.
Rechs picked up the little girl and ran through the portal leading into Junga’s inner sanctum.
“Crash!” she screamed.
“Move it, Tin Can!” Rechs called to the bot as he turned and fired twice. He hit nothing, but he kept the legionnaires too busy to shoot back. “Stay here and you’re parts!”
They dashed through the ancient main flow shutoff valve, return blaster fire ricocheting off the walls.
10
Rechs, with the girl under one arm, pounded down one of the main engine’s intake flow channels. The mincing war bot followed as best it could. The space had been converted into some kind of smuggled goods storage warehouse. Containers of actual Republic goods, probably pirated from bulk haulers, lined the walls.
Pursuing legionnaires tried a few shots, but Rechs skidded around a corner, poked his blaster back out, and fired wildly to cover the war bot.
Three quick turns later through the maze of scavenged ship conduits and shadowy maintenance tunnels, with legionnaires trailing them, they reached a canted main corridor that had probably once run the length of the battleship’s spine. Dust and shadows were all that remained of a starship that had been filled with life long ago.
They’d gained some breathing space after Rechs had discouraged the lead pursuers with well-aimed blaster fire. The corridors behind them were dotted with dying legionnaires. But in the distance, the boots of the legionnaires still clanked in discordan
t cadence against the deck plating.
“Oh!” rumbled the war bot. “This ship still has an active intelligence. I’m in communication with it now.”
“Flight deck,” said Rechs to himself as he set Prisma down. Taking out Junga was off the table now. Too many legionnaires running around. And in all likelihood, Junga was on his own freighter and trying to run the blockade.
He had to get the girl out of here too. Why? asked some ancient part of himself. A very young-sounding part. He didn’t bother to reply.
“Will you?” she said. Almost devoid of emotion now that her storm had passed. “Will you help me get revenge?” she whispered softly.
Not now, he wanted to tell her as he spun about, trying to get his bearings, still absently holding the substandard blaster.
“I’m talking with the ship, sir,” said the bot. “And he says—”
“This way!” cried Rechs. “C’mon, move it!”
He grabbed the girl’s hand and headed up the spine of the ship. If they didn’t get off the main passageway, they’d be easy targets for the pursuing legionnaires.
“Sir, the ship is indicating that the flight deck is—”
“Spit it out, Tin Can!” shouted Rechs as he scanned the dark cross passages ahead. He’d been on an Ohio once, long ago. Maybe even this one. He knew the flight deck was… There were two flight decks! He suddenly remembered. Both were on the ventral wings. And he also remembered… something else. Then it was gone. And all he knew was that it was somehow important, and not important now. Or anymore.
“Sir, the ship says both flight decks are missing. They’ve been salvaged.”
The first blaster shots went wide, sailing off in front of them down the massive dark passageway where crew and troops had once thronged day and night. Rechs could still see them, as if they were still here, still racing to battle stations at Engador, or off the Jether’s Folly asteroid field.
Focus!
He jerked hard on the girl’s hand and pulled her down a dark side passageway. Switching on low-light imaging, he saw that the passage led to the lower decks. Gunnery stations would be down there, if one went all the way to the hull.
