The Last Reaper

by J. N. Chaney

  "When I found you, you were being beaten and interrogated by Red Skull Gangsters,” I reminded him, pointing back the way we had come. “How would you know anything about the rescue mission?"

  "The contingency plan was discussed prior to my assignment on Dreadmax,” he said too quickly. “I'm not excessively brave or a fool. I refused to go until they promised me a viable extraction plan."

  "For you and your daughter," I said, my tone flat but clearly calling him out.

  This caught him off guard. "Well, of course."

  The next tremor caught me off guard because they didn't normally come so close together. I kept my feet, but the doctor went down hard. Elise did a half cart-wheel round-off to keep from face-planting when the floor jumped.

  "Is everyone okay?” I asked.

  Hastings mumbled nonsense as he brushed himself off. Elise pushed her hair out of her eyes and nodded.

  Smoke drifted into the hallway.

  I checked the ceiling for a sprinkler system. There weren't any flames in this hallway, but the dense smoke should've set them off, covering the area with flame-retardant chemicals.

  "We have to run for it. If the smoke gets too thick, drop to the floor and crawl. That will kill you long before the flames get here," I shouted, urging them to run with me.

  "Always running. Gang members and rogue soldiers aren't bad enough. We have to have cannibals and uncontrolled fires to deal with? I mean, really?" Elise said.

  "No time to complain. Come on, Doc, pick up the pace." I found the next set of stairs approximately a kilometer from where we descended. My guess was they led up to another maintenance tower like the one where Callus and his team had nearly cornered us.

  We emerged far away from our last encounter with the man. Somehow, I didn't feel any better.

  21

  The best thing to do was haul ass. "Go, go, go! Don't stop until you get across the street. Duck behind that building and wait for me," I shouted.

  "Was that necessary," X-37 asked.

  I aimed to my rifle left, then right, scanning the area in between for possible attacks as I moved the weapon. "The doctor said this place should have blown up four hours ago."

  "Not precisely," X-37 said.

  "You know what I mean. I don't trust him."

  "You've made this observation before. Are you going to do something about it?" X-37 asked.

  "Yeah, I am."

  I caught up with Hastings and his daughter, then led them through several alleyways with pipes running overhead almost like a false ceiling. We came out into the open and I noticed gangs were creeping after some unlucky victim. Steam filled the low areas, reducing visibility but somehow carrying sound.

  If Callus and his team were still looking for us, it didn't seem to be in this area. Gangs, however, were always a danger.

  We reached a bridge to another major section of the top deck. Looking into the crevasse didn't give me a warm fuzzy feeling. Memories of the cable crossing caused my fingers to throb and my augmented left arm to twitch.

  “Are you all right?” X-37 asked.

  “Sure, X. Thanks for asking.” I stepped nearer the doctor and his daughter. “Elise, I need you to come with me. You’re not afraid of heights, are you?”

  She gave me a shitty look. “Are you?”

  Some questions were better left unanswered. “Come with me. We’re climbing this bridge support. I need your young eyes.”

  “What about me?” Doctor Hastings asked.

  “You’re fine right there. Just stay put,” I said.

  We climbed in silence, trying to ignore the on-again, off-again gravity the higher we went on the support beams.

  “What’s going on, Cain?” Elise asked. "What are we doing?"

  I touched a vest pocket that still didn’t have cigars or get out of jail free cards. "Testing a theory."

  "He looks exposed,” Elise said. “I don't like him right now, but he’s still my dad."

  "He's leaving breadcrumbs for our pursuers." I wanted to confront the scientist, but it was too soon for that. Things needed to play out for a bit.

  "Okay, I suppose that means something in your world. What do your breadcrumbs have to do with anything?" she asked. "You think he wants us to get caught?"

  "Yeah. I just don't know why," I said.

  "That really pisses me off. It’s just like something he would do." Elise looked ready to scream.

  I wanted to ask questions, but darkness fell hard and fast like it did often on Dreadmax. It wasn't long before I heard crazies screeching nonsensically as they climbed out of the grates.

  "We should let them have him,” Elise said.

  "He came here to save you, or at least demanded I save you when I could've left you to the RSG."

  She snorted. “He didn't come here to save me."

  I wasn't sure what to make of that. There wasn't time for psychoanalysis. It was decision time—abandon the mission, or get killed trying to save a man I didn't trust.

  Elise scrambled down the support beams but angled away from her father. "He did okay on his own before. Once we get away, we can find him and decide what to do."

  I followed her but stopped to look back.

  "You're going to let the girl make decisions?" X-37 asked.

  "Just watch," I said.

  A mob of crazy, animal-like humans surged toward the doctor. There were at least a dozen that would reach him before he could escape across the bridge below us.

  The leader of the charge fell flat on his face, blood shooting up from his head before he struck the ground. Two more clutched wounds to the chest and tumbled sideways. Others kept running after Hastings but couldn't catch up. He had a good lead and was very motivated to escape.

  I thought about what I'd seen as I made my own crossing of the bridge. There wasn't time to act on what I knew. Once we reunited with Elise's father, I took a stand against the poorly armed men and women while my principals fled to safety.

  “Stay back, you crazy flesh-eating freaks!” I shouted.

  A few of them look at me quizzically, but others saw my gun and were wary. It was tempting to stay here. I had a pretty good idea that the father-daughter reunion was going to be explosive.

  Who needed that kind of drama?

  Doctor Hastings panted as he turned angrily toward me, barely aware of his daughter, who was pushing between us. "You were going to leave me!"

  "We should have!" Elise shouted.

  I stepped back, knowing this had to happen sooner or later but worried about the noise. The man had never seemed like the father of the year. He had demanded I save his daughter from the RSG stronghold, but that was an easy measurement of his paternal devotion. What father wouldn't want his daughter rescued from a display cage in the middle of a prison gang’s hideout?

  “I’m your father. I risked my life for you. I could still be shipped off to one of those illegal mining colonies in the Deadlands for what I’ve done. Do you understand that? I risked everything to—”

  “Settle down!” I barked, my voice so loud it stopped the both of them. After a pause, I turned away and quietly spoke to my AI. “X, I’m looking for the spec ops ship. Not seeing anything. What’d I miss?”

  “Analyzing.”

  I heard the groan of twisting metal from somewhere far away and braced myself for another tremor that never came. It might’ve been my imagination, but it seemed the environment shield near the edge of the ring distorted just for a second.

  “No sign of the spec ops recon ship detected,” X-37 advised.

  “You don’t know what it’s like being your daughter!” Elise broke in, apparently not finished.

  “How could I? Stop being so irrational,” he replied.

  “I hate you, you aging piece of shit!” Elise stomped away then turned around to make another inarticulate curse.

  “I’m not sure why you’re allowing this,” X-37 said. “The volume and duration of this argument are concerning.”

  “They need t
o get it out of their system,” I said. “There will be worse times for this to happen. And I’m still testing a theory.”

  “Well, I hope it is a grand theory, because we have drawn the attention of the locals and an element of Callus’ team,” X-37 said.

  I trusted the Reaper AI’s ability to maximize my senses and use his analysis to provide an early warning system. It had saved my life many times before I fell out of the Union’s graces. “Doctor Hastings, Elise, we’ve got company. You both need to shut the fuck up.”

  Instant compliance was nice when it happened.

  I climbed onto one of the narrow footbridges and used the elevation to look back toward the main bridge. I heard the motorcycles at the same time I saw them. Callus’ scouts had requisitioned three of the combustion engine two-wheelers I’d seen from time to time since arriving here. These were the first that I’d observed since the RSG stronghold.

  A large group of Slab’s people swaggered through the street-like trenches in the other direction, heading toward their rivals by random chance, it seemed. The problem was there were too many of the local gangs. It made sense because they took what they wanted and it was better to be with them than against them. I’d seen that in other prisons I’d either done missions in or been shuffled through on my way to BMSP.

  My left eye twitched in perfect synchronization with the fingers of my augmented arm. I braced for pain that felt like I’d grabbed an exposed wire.

  “What’s happening?” Doctor Hastings asked, looking up wide-eyed, his expression a mixture of concern and hope. The man was tired and wanted this over. I could see that in his deteriorating posture.

  Elise, silent and sulking, had backed away from both of us, so far away that I could barely see her in the shadows.

  Descending rapidly from my observation post, I cut off her escape by hopping down to the deck. “Don’t make me chase you.”

  “I’m pissed at you too. Why can’t you just get us off this place?” she asked.

  “Always wanted an irrational teenager to babysit.”

  This rendered her speechless with rage and I thought I might’ve miscalculated. If she ran off, I’d have to make some hard choices.

  22

  “This way. Elise first, then me, and then the doctor. Don’t get too far ahead.” I ran beside Hastings, frequently looking behind us for pursuit. There were a lot of danger areas to watch, including smaller towers, converted point-defense turrets, and a series of metal domes that I didn’t recognize.

  The doctor couldn’t keep up. I estimated he’d lost fifteen or twenty pounds in captivity, but it was obvious he’d never been a runner. His life had been pampered and completely devoid of physical challenges. Elise pushed the pace but never abandoned us completely. I thought I was going to have to rein her in, but she stopped to check on us from time to time.

  Her instincts saved us from two groups of the RSG. I watched her stop and hold up a hand for us to hide—like something she’d seen in an action vid. Moments later, a group from the RSG mob swaggered by with guns rested on their shoulders or holstered dangerously in their waistbands. The men were shirtless and covered with tattoos despite the shifting atmosphere.

  On one section of the top deck it was humid and hot, and the next dry and cold. Steam vented from the failing ventilation system, shooting toward the sky where there must’ve been a gap in the environment shield. In one direction, it was snowing, and another, raining. The shifting light and shadows caused by the orbital pattern gave the landscape a surreal quality.

  It was fascinating and horrifying to watch gaps appear in the artificial atmosphere and reseal themselves, sometimes in the space of a few heartbeats, but other times lasting nearly a minute. Tremors continued to shake Dreadmax but not as frequently as I had feared earlier. The station was like a living creature—or maybe a dying leviathan.

  If there was one big quake, we were all royally screwed. We were hours past the mission clock I was given and even farther beyond Hastings’ estimation of how long the place could stay in one piece.

  I heard something that didn’t make sense at first: loud music. It wasn’t the same as the techno hip-hop and thrash metal montage I’d heard at the RSG stronghold. This sounded like someone was playing horns and drums, maybe even some sort of whistling flute section.

  Elise held up a hand for us to stop, then walked backward several steps to where we were crouched down behind a power converter box.

  “We can’t go this way,” she complained, shaking her head. “A bunch of gangsters are camped out around the fire barrel, drinking and popping needles.”

  “Stay here.”

  I went to look for myself, hoping it was only a small group that we could either sneak past or I could eliminate.

  The maintenance alley opened into a wide surface area like the aperture of a camera. I hadn’t seen anything like this during my flyover of the main ring and wondered how far we’d come during our desperate flight from the spec ops teams, gangs, and half-mad below-deck dwellers.

  The effect of the opening was a clearing where a large number of people could gather. It was slightly concave as well, giving it a natural amphitheater feel. A stream of RSG tough guys arrived even as I watched.

  Around the perimeter of this clearing were simple dwellings, gun turrets, and maintenance pods that had been converted into apartments. The locals kept their distance from the growing number of gang members—resentful expression controlled to avoid a violent confrontation. Beyond the impromptu gang party was the strange festival music making me suspect the people there had made other plans for their final days than hosting a bunch of tattooed murderers.

  Doctor Hastings and Elise were waiting silently when I returned.

  “What are we going to do?” Elise asked, arms crossed and one foot tapping nervously. “We can’t just sit here.”

  “That’s absolutely what we should do. The real Union soldiers will arrive soon. They’ll take us back to the ship before Dreadmax comes apart,” Doctor Hastings said.

  “We’re moving. It’ll be a slow process, because we have to go around this aperture. Once we make it to the next section, we can probably blend with non-gang civilians,” I said.

  Doctor Hastings opened his mouth to protest.

  I pointed my high tech HDK rifle at him, then waggled it in the direction I wanted him to go. “We’re done with this conversation. When I say move, you move.”

  The doctor complied but complained the entire time. “All you were supposed to do was find me. Lieutenant Grady and his people should have dropped in to secure an extraction zone or moved us to the predetermined landing site for the shuttle. But instead, he abandoned the plan for an old buddy. Very unprofessional.”

  “Grady’s dead. Let’s not talk about why. Unless you want to give me a full disclosure about your mission here and what you expect will happen to me when it’s done,” I said.

  Doctor Hastings backed out of the conversation quickly. His pace improved.

  Gangs continued to mass in the large open area. I couldn’t hear or see the progress of the spec ops teams but had a good idea of what was happening. They had tried chasing us with overwhelming speed and firepower. Now they were going to do things by the numbers, secure bridges and walkway crossings and search on a grid pattern that I wouldn’t be able to escape without a ship or a miracle.

  Our arrival among the civilians went almost unnoticed. The few who saw us welcomed us with fuel cans full of alcohol. Some of them smoked what I thought was fungus wrapped in paper, and others had actual tobacco, probably stolen at a high price from the agricultural level below decks or smuggled into the prison station.

  The strange music grew louder, distorted by the artificial atmosphere of this place. I was impressed at how many people were coming out onto the streets. It was night again but wouldn’t be for long. The way Dreadmax orbited its host planet and turned on its own axis created a nearly random night and day schedule, or that was how it seemed.

  I’
d had a lot of things going on other than setting my watch or watching the sun come up.

  “Welcome, strangers!” said a man with a crazy half beard and wild eyes. “Do you love a parade?”

  “Sure.” I glanced at Elise. “Keep hold of your dad and don’t wander off.”

  “Relax, my man!” the half-bearded stranger said, giving me a hug. I grabbed his left hand to make sure he didn’t pick my pocket. His right hand wasn’t a danger because it was holding a large metal container of what might’ve been pure alcohol.

  “Hey, dude, not so rough.” He lifted the can toward me, offering a drink. Then he pulled away and threw his free arm around a woman about his own age. It was unclear whether they knew each other before this chance encounter.

  He continued to talk. I tried to listen to what he said, but there were a lot of people now and everyone was moving. It wasn’t a parade exactly, but a large shuffling progression across the top deck with music, drink, and smoking.

  I pushed the pace, moving through the crowd, hoping the camouflage would hold until we could get a good distance away from our pursuers. The way was blocked for a time when we reached the center of the end-of-the-world celebration. They had one motor vehicle, a huge flatbed truck with dancing girls and a band.

  “Are they all playing the same song?” Elise asked.

  “No idea,” I said.

  “They are in fact playing a highly bastardized version of jazz music with classical overtones,” X-37 said.

  “Good to know,” I said. “You have anything else useful to share?”

  “I detected gun fire. Didn’t you hear it?” X-37 asked.

  I jumped onto the step rail of the truck and looked for trouble. Callus had caught up with his scout team, apparently. He had also decided that body slamming one of the festival goers was the best way to communicate.

  “Hey, asshole, what the hell are you doing?” someone yelled.

  A single gunshot followed.

  Another squad of Union commandos dragged one of the more sober participants away from the others and forced him to sit next to a wall, where they interrogated him.