by Nick Cole
Keel knew what Devers was after. He wanted Sullus. Wanted an alliance. Was willing to pay a quarter billion credits and hand over a sector fleet to get it. The old man was right. This was all bigger than they’d ever imagined. This was the beginning of the end of the Republic. This was regime change, and that scumbag Devers wanted to meet the new boss first. Sullus would be a fool to turn down such an offer from a sector admiral. Instant fleet at his command.
And the moment the agreement was made, Keel would end Devers’s life.
The shuttle drifted down. Almost achieving landfall.
Almost…
Keel’s vigil was interrupted by the distinct thrum of an overhead troop transport very close at hand. He could feel the dust fly up around him. Could hear Ravi and the others screaming for him to get back to the ship. But he wouldn’t take his gaze away from the scope. He couldn’t if he tried. It was an addiction now. A drug that had to be fed. A song that had to be finished. Watching the shuttle. Waiting for Devers. Ending Devers…
He would not let them down again.
He would make it all right.
29
Ravi shouted for Keel’s attention as Republic legionnaires fast-roped down from their troop transport. “Captain, we must leave now!”
It was no use. Keel was deaf to all entreaties, caught entirely by the lure of his revenge.
Blaster fire sizzled around the ship as the legionnaires closed in. Skrizz and the others were forced to retreat inside the Six, but Prisma found herself cut off somehow, lost in the sudden confusion of a chaotic firefight among the main landing gears. A pair of dark legionnaires lunged for her, and she screamed.
“Maydoon! Surrender!” one of the legionnaires shouted over squad audible. His electronically amplified speech made him sound soulless and machine-like.
Crash appeared. He fired two single blasts from his wrist cannon that freed both legionnaires from their appendages. Prisma felt sick at the sight. She looked away, and saw Ravi coming to her, cleaving his way through armored killers.
More legionnaires were swarming around the ship now. One swung around the ramp and fired and EMP shotgun at the bot, shutting down its primary drive systems. They’d come prepared.
Prisma cowered behind Ravi as he flashed his brilliant sword at any legionnaire who dared approach—and many did dare. They fell. Scores of them. Confounded by this ghost among men, the legionnaires fired, aiming high to avoid hitting Prisma.
Even as he fought, Ravi sought to assure Prisma. “There is a four percent chance that we will survive. And even against such odds, there is still room for hope.”
Prisma was dazzled by his every stroke. Until the blaster fire thickened. Until he flickered and wavered. Until the TT-3 bot exploded in a shower of sparks and it seemed like Ravi would fade away. And then he did fade away, growing thin and stretched like a dusting of snow on too much ground.
The legionnaires closed in around Prisma. This was the end. She was going to die while Sullus and the rest of the galaxy lived on. It wasn’t right for Sullus to live and for her daddy to… be dead. That darkness wasn’t right.
And then, Ravi came back.
He was so thin that he had all but disappeared, but he came back. Came back and fought the legionnaires, forcing them to fall back.
“I don’t want to die,” the little girl screamed.
Ravi graced her with a kindly smile. “The body is mere clothing for the soul and is discarded at death. Look at me…”
And then a darkness stirred in the sky—and Ravi again flickered and faded.
And Prisma saw him no more.
The legionnaires swarmed toward her, their blasters raised.
Prisma screamed again.
***
Buy time for them, Rechs thought as he waded out into the last gunfight of his life.
Goth Sullus was headed for Breakheart Pass out in the Salt Desert, somewhere across the rocky, barren wastelands of Tusca. There, high on a granite ridge, the sleeping ruins of the Ancients had waited long before the first humans had ever jumped out into the Big Dark. Why some old scout or desert rat had decided to call them the place Breakheart Pass, no one would probably ever know.
Rechs knew the kid, Wraith, would be doing everything he could to get them out of here now. That’s the best I can do for you, Prisma.
And then he began to shoot down as many dark legionnaires as he could, falling back a block at a time. Making them pay for each yard. One last battle for the T-Rex of the Legion.
But these guys weren’t stupid. They weren’t making sudden flanking rushes or firing in the open. They were moving low and slow and calling in for support from the big AK-PP. Hidden behind cover, they’d take shots and cover for another squad to shift forward, forcing Rechs back a block at a time. Snipers were shooting at him from the tops of habs and warehouses, and from well back within dark spaces. Not hanging out of windows where he could shoot them down.
They were pros. They’d been trained just like he and Caspo had trained the first leejes. Back in the early days. Before the Golden Age, as some had once called it.
Whatever this Goth Sullus was up, to he’d hired the best. Or at least the pretty good.
Rechs’s next shot struck a Brotherhood gunslinger mixed in with the dark legionnaires. The hulking killer went down onto the sand-swollen street, bleeding out in the dust of this ancient world.
Blaster fire careened and ricocheted all around and off of Rechs. He took a certain satisfaction in each missed shot. His legionnaires would’ve gunned him down for wading out into the open like this.
His armor’s integrity was dropping, though.
He saw the Indelible VI blasting out of the hangar bay and climbing off above the street battle.
They made it.
Rechs fell back another block. Moving farther and farther from the empty hangar Wraith’s trick ship had just left. He hacked the bucket of a dead dark legionnaire and found out exactly where Goth Sullus had gone. A place called Breakheart Pass deep in the Tuscan desert. Ancients’ ruins marked the spot.
Now he ran down a cargo-strewn street.
“Lyra” he said into this comm as he ran for his next firing position. “Land at the port. Pick any open dock and stand by.”
He continued his slow retreat.
It wasn’t long before the Brotherhood and the dark legionnaires had him pinned in a crossfire. There literally was no easy way out of the spot they’d run him to ground in. He passed some kind of reflection pool and backed into the ancient chapel beyond. He pulled his last fragger and tossed it through the open portal at them. Its explosion seemed to check their rush.
His right arm was on fire. A direct hit from a blaster had destroyed the armor there. He quickly ripped off the melting impervisteel turning to slag and tossed it aside. His neoprene suit below was burned through. Burnt flesh greeted him underneath.
The suit told him how bad it was.
It was bad.
Rechs crouched down behind some shipping containers someone had piled in the old chapel. Heavy blaster fire from the rooftops was coming in through the old stained-glass windows, the glass shattering into warm sprays of colorful shards.
There was no way they were letting him leave this building alive. There was no way they were letting him reach the ruins out in the desert, or Goth Sullus.
Why?
Who was Goth Sullus?
And then the ground began to shake. And shake. And shake again. Shards of stained glass began to rain down onto the floor of the old place.
The HK-PP had arrived.
He heard the mechanical whine of massive servos hauling the feet of the Cyclopean mech toward the battle. Through one of the high smashed windows he saw its terrible head across the rooftops. It fired—and tore off the upper reaches of the ancient chapel.
Mercs and leejes rushed the building.
Rechs swept their ranks with his hand cannon on full auto, cutting them down as they came for him.
The ent
ire building was coming apart around him as the HK-PP closed in for the kill. Through the gaping hole in the wall he could see its immense guns and massive legs sweeping toward him.
Rechs killed three more, but it seemed as though twenty dark legionnaires immediately took their place, crawling forward through the disintegrating building. Their fire was concentrated on his position, pinning him down. Waiting for the mech to deal the death blow.
The Mark I wouldn’t stand up to that level of firepower.
He crouched down behind cargo containers and cycled through his suit menu, looking for an old trick that hadn’t worked in years. When was the last time you used this one? The image of Mother Ree when she’d been the girl Mara appeared on the wonky old hard drive of his mind.
Long time indeed.
It hadn’t worked since then. He’d tried to have the energy disruptor batteries recalibrated since, but no one had ever been able to fix that fantastic tech from long ago. Still, occasionally—and this was what he was hoping for now—the suit’s enigmatic nano-tech would just fix itself when it felt like it.
The blaster fire stopped. They weren’t interested in coming in to get him. Once the giant mech was finished, they’d come in and get the body. What remained would do for their purposes.
He found the menu.
Incredibly, the old trick was active. A personal energy field disruption bubble. It used to hold for a full five minutes. Who knew how long it would work now.
Who knew anything?
“Lyra,” he said into his comm.
“Here, Captain.”
Rechs had never been sentimental. And he wasn’t now. “Detonate the Romula nuclear mine.”
The killers hovered around what remained of the building, crouching behind cover, screaming at him to come out and die now.
Rechs activated the energy disruption bubble.
“As you wish, Captain. Goodbye.”
The ship detonated the weapon, taking the star port and about two miles of everything else with it.
30
“No,” Keel said to himself. “Not like that.”
He had just watched Devers’s shuttle abruptly scream away from the starport—and then Tusca had erupted in a small nuclear explosion.
He had seen it all in slow motion. First, a blink-of-an-eye wave of energy passed through every structure—and then the blast seemed to chase this wave, carrying everything with it out into the lifeless desert. And finally, the cloud began to rise.
It wasn’t even a mushroom when Keel turned his head, bereaved and utterly lost.
He became vaguely aware of danger. He looked for his ship, but where it had stood in the distance, he now saw nothing other than a pile of dead legionnaires.
And then a scream filled his ears over the distant din of the coming fallout. The scream of a little girl.
Keel bounded down the hill. Prisma was running for her life, and a squad of legionnaires was giving chase. The few clouds above appeared to join in the race, swept away by the advancing shock wave.
“Set for stun,” called out one of the dark legionnaires.
This was a trick. Something to get him to lower his guard. Keel raised his rifle and sent a powerful blast through the soldier. The legionnaire’s comrades dove to the ground, and Keel could see their minds processing this new threat.
Keel ran at a pace unknown to most legionnaires. As he rushed right through the startled leejes, he dropped a fragger in their midst. They scrambled to escape the blast. Keel just kept racing toward Prisma.
He scooped the girl up in his arms and ran. Prisma screamed, apparently mistaking Keel for a legionnaire. She smashed her tiny fists against his helmet in a feeble attempt at resistance.
“Knock it off, huh, kid?” he said through his bucket’s external speakers.
Prisma wrapped her arms tightly around his neck and began to sob.
The Indelible VI appeared from behind a boulder, hovering before them.
The shock wave hit. Dark leejes behind Keel were swept away like toys suffering the tantrum of some massive child beyond understanding.
The Six hovered languidly, waiting as long as possible for Keel and the girl. Keel reached up into the gear well and grabbed hold of the landing gear.
The air turned into a sudden scream, and the ship literally rocked over onto its side, its spatial hydraulics unable to fully compensate.
“Ravi!” Keel screamed into his comm. “Get us out of here! I think that crazy old man just nuked himself and everyone else. Don’t raise the gear until we get inside the internal maintenance hatch.”
Instead of Ravi, the wobanki growled an affirmative.
As Keel felt his feet fall away from the ground, the blast from the nuke tried to suck him out into the maelstrom. He held on tightly to the landing strut with one arm, pushing Prisma, her hair whipping across her face, up closer to the maintenance hatch with the other.
The internal hatch locks popped, and the maintenance door spiraled open. Leenah and Garret helped them inside, and the ship took on altitude.
Keel tossed his bucket to the deck. Leenah’s eyes had told him everything he needed to know. Ravi had not jumped back into the ship.
Leenah took care to strap in Prisma. The girl looked with concern at Crash, who lay motionless on the floor.
“We’ll get him up good as ever,” Garett said.
Leenah strapped herself in next to Prisma and looked up at Keel. “Skrizz is going to take us to hyperspace as soon as we clear Tusca’s atmosphere. You’d better just strap in back here.”
Keel gave a lopsided grin. “No way I’m letting some cat fly the Six.” He disappeared into the cockpit.
***
Rechs ran through the apocalyptic maelstrom of irradiated dust and dirt that was rapidly turning into a mushroom cloud above him. Even with the disruption bubble active, the suit was struggling to maintain its heat sink. He ran hard, knowing the shield wouldn’t hold for much longer.
It didn’t. He was mostly out of the crater when it collapsed, but still within the whirling cyclone of irradiated debris and dust. Temps were approaching two thousand degrees. He fired his jump jets and roared off through the storm, navigating only by temperature, his arm on fire, the flesh melting as though the hottest white poker of all time and ten of its buddies were beating on that exposed piece of flesh.
He emerged from under the stalk of the mushroom cloud. It towered high above him, already rising above ten thousand feet. The jump jets gave out, and he smacked hard into the burning, blackened landscape, rolling several times through ash and fire.
Unconsciousness reached for him like the mouth of some hungry being from the outer dark, threatening to swallow him whole.
“No,” he grunted. To pass out now was to die of heat and radiation poisoning.
He’d had the Crow for a long time.
He struggled to his knees. As the cloud climbed higher and higher, he fumbled with a skin pack. He slapped it over the exposed area—little good it would do—and felt the tranqs shut down all the pain centers. It would try to save the flesh and fight infection, but the arm was gone. Rechs knew that. It hung limply at his side, useless.
All around him, the scrub and low twisted trees of Tusca had been blown to the ground in one direction. And everything was on fire.
Rechs stood. He halfheartedly saluted what remained of the Obsidian Crow—irradiated particulate matter rising higher and higher into the atmosphere. In time it would settle and drift across this dead world.
And over your body, he thought.
His armor easily handled the radiation. It was space-rated, so rads were nothing for it. In fact, ambient radiation was converted to energy via the energy recharge cells.
Rechs brought up a map and found a weigh station to the east. He set the course on his HUD and began to trudge toward it.
***
The twin suns beat down on Rechs’s armor. He turned at the top of an iron-gray ridge and looked back at the remains of the star port
. Wildfires were sweeping up and away, driving a thousand black smoky torpedoes and the remains of the mushroom cloud out over the desert.
He faced forward once more. The weigh station he’d been heading for was visible far below.
He would find transport there.
And then he would find Goth Sullus.
31
The lev cycle was the only thing that still worked in the dusty old remains of the place. The weigh station hadn’t been an actual station in years. More recently it had apparently been the crash pad of some old H8 junkie who’d probably wandered off into the desert on a binge, never to return. Who knows how many years ago that was.
But the lev cycle still worked. It was a junky old Hogg cobbled together out of a hundred different other hoverbikes. Rechs sat down within its wheel-shaped frame and kick started the ancient engine. It whirred to life, and moments later he was pedals up and flying across the desert toward the granite ridge his HUD told him was called the Breakheart.
To the west, one of the suns was falling into the desert, and the landscape was turning a burnt orange. Twisted trees, bent low by the wind, seemed to watch him pass. He felt an urgency to finish this before Goth Sullus got off planet. Sullus’s ship, the Siren of Titan, had gone up with everything else in Tusca, but there was still a Republican fleet overhead. Rechs was taking no chances.
When he made the winding road leading up into the Breakheart, he expected to find some kind of vanguard waiting to ambush him.
Instead he found nothing and no one but the silence of the lifeless desert.
No Brotherhood.
No traps.
No war bot in ambush mode.
He scanned the red rock above for signs of life. When he saw none, he swallowed some pain meds and continued on. He climbed the twisting pass, doubling back in and out of the low saw-toothed mountains, and emerged onto a high windswept plateau.
He’d caught sight of the Ancients’ ruins as he was racing along the curves below. They were massive, like they all were. Angular and strange, enigmatic and weird, like all the ruins they’d ever found on any of ten thousand worlds throughout the galaxy.
