“So some stupid legionnaire lost his head? Small price to pay. He joined up. He’s killed more innocents than he could ever atone for. He’s just some stupid kid who never could have made it in the real galaxy. Probably would have failed out of the university I went to. In time he’d have gone back home after the Legion with a drinking problem and a temper. Working some dead-end job and thinking he actually did something. Voting for all the wrong people because of some misguided notion that the Republic is a great place.
“It’s not great. It never was. But it can be,” she sneered.
She shook the ener-chains like they might just fall off, and when they did not, she gave a haughty frustrated exhale of exasperation.
“Get these off of me!” she demanded.
“That’s not why I’m going to hang you,” said Rechs patiently. “Not because you helped murder someone sworn to protect you.”
“I don’t need—” she almost shrieked.
“That’s not why.”
The girl glared at him from her perch on the stone bench, the rope almost seeming like a necklace about her slender throat.
“Then you’re a coward!” Her eyes were pure murder. “Just some assassin who can’t stand that the galaxy is changing. Because your barbaric career—killing for money—that won’t be tolerated in a new order.”
“That’s not why,” said Rechs patiently.
She stared at him for a long moment.
“Then why?” she asked. Because she actually wanted to know. She was incapable of seeing any valid reason, or other point of view, that might possibly be valid as to why she should be… hanged. The man before her, a criminal assassin. He should be hanged. Their places ought to be reversed. The galaxy was playing a cosmic joke on her.
Rechs cleared his throat and took hold of the rope. But gently. Not applying any pressure to Roi’s neck.
“First, make your peace. It’s almost time.”
She said nothing, just stared hate at him.
“Because when I’m finished, I’m going to hang you. Do you understand me, Syl?”
“Ha!” she laughed down at him. “You’re going to hang me for ridding the galaxy of another sanctioned murderer we just happen to call a legionnaire. Covering life’s losers in false glory and giving them armor to make them feel like men. You’re so stupid, whoever you are. That makes you just as bad as what you’re saying I’m guilty of. What are you going to do… hang yourself next?”
“I’m hanging you because I’ve seen it all before,” said Rechs. “More times than you can imagine. It’s always someone like you. Someone with new ideas that are just old ideas ginned up to make the masses think you actually care without ever doing anything that actually shows you care about them.”
“I do care!” spat the disgraced delegate. “Cared enough to actually do the hard, dirty work required to clean the galaxy.”
Rechs clenched his jaw. “Don’t talk to me about cleaning the galaxy. Not without ever going out there into the stellar dark to slay the real monsters that howl beyond the limits of known space. Just waiting to come in and rape, loot, and murder everyone on their way to power. Just like you.
“I’ve seen it more times than you can imagine. And the only distinguishing feature was the body count. It’s as old as Earth. It’s what the Savages were all about. The trouble here is, you think you came up with all these ideas on your own. So I’m gonna save the galaxy two million, twenty million, two billion, and just cut to the chase with you, Syl.”
She was staring at him. Horrified. Because now she seemed to understand that he was serious about all this. Not angry. Not passionate like her. Just tired at having to do some job he’d decided to do. Like a man who goes out every day to sweep up the trash in the gutter. Doing it because it must be done. Because someone has to do it or the galaxy just overflows with trash.
She was angry at him for being tired. She needed him to be as hateful and vitriolic as she was. Needed to feel as though she were being martyred at the hands of an ignorant zealot. She’d felt that way before. But not now. She had almost been excited about being hanged. Executed. It would make her a saint. Cleanse from her the stain that was her disgraceful exit from the House of Reason.
She began to cry.
“Why… you don’t…”
He wanted to tell her he felt sorry for her.
But he didn’t. Not even a little bit.
It always ended in rope. If the dictators didn’t kill themselves the people found them. And then… it always ended in rope.
Tyrus Rechs was never squeamish about killing. He was good at it. And he’d found it was better to get to that part over with sooner rather than later.
She was sobbing when he gave her body a soft and gentle shove off the bench, and then jerked the rope with all his might, the expert knot he’d put in just above the back of her head breaking her neck instantly.
There was no pain.
Just a quick break and it was over.
They’d find her body drifting in the morning breeze as the sun came up. After the cover-up. After the guards were erased and forgotten, their relatives paid off because what really happened doesn’t happen on Pthalo.
Then they’d find her. Speculate it was suicide for a few media cycles and take part in handwringing over their own part in the nonstop gleeful coverage of the fall from power by one they’d propped up in the first place.
But all that was after the bounty hunter returned to the beach, carried the mask and dive flippers out into the waves, put them on in the gentle surf, and kicked out into the warm tropical water.
After he swam away as the sun began to rise.
And after the call.
“Gabi. It’s done.”
The End
Tyrus Rechs will
