Every ounce of surprise helped. Especially when the odds were laughably against you.
The problem was… the armor’s powerful shield didn’t always work when called upon.
Lately it had been hit or miss. Success somewhere around the seventieth percentile. Which was actually quite an improvement. For a time, it had gone dark altogether, and for years he’d simply stopped factoring it into his plans. But that was the nature of the iconic armor he’d come away from the Quantum Library with so long ago. It was a thing of wonder, but it was enigmatic. And, occasionally… glitchy.
Especially the shield.
And so usually Rechs only made use of it when he had no other choice. It wasn’t something to rely on. Skill, ability, planning—he could rely on those. Everything else was susceptible to failure.
Don’t rely on anything or anyone that can let you down. Of all the lessons Rechs had learned along the way, that was one of the first. One of the oldest. And like most lessons, it had come to him the hard way. Long ago, back on Earth, when he was a twelve-year-old kid trying to kill a cougar with a jammed hunting rifle he’d found in the ruins of a city.
The lesson had never left him.
Those scars had never faded.
So, the armor was just a benefit. That was how Tyrus Rechs had approached it in his time in the galactic lens. It didn’t make him who he was. He’d fought almost as many battles without it as he had with it.
But now… in this instance… he had to rely on it. The shield was critical to the plan. Because while it might not have been the only way, it was the way he needed.
And sometimes… that actually is the only way. The hard way. Whether you like it or not.
A powerful contraction from the churning monster forced Tyrus Rechs into the tyrannasquid’s massive stomach. In the darkness, with low-light imaging picking up the suns’ powerful light coming through the hide of the beast, he could make out a constantly shifting cavern of surging yellow gastric juices and ravaged remains of recent victims. Half a head and most of a shredded torso sloshed by.
As he landed a finger on the controls, the stomach heaved and covered him in a surge of caustic juices. He was sucked up onto the side of the stomach in a powerful slosh. Apparently, the giant predator squid was darting after another victim in the waters around the lagoon.
Tyrus found the control he needed, and activated the armor’s powerful defensive shield.
Function Not Active flashed across his HUD.
Damn.
Because there was no plan B. Not beyond using up what was left of his jump jets in a desperate attempt to fly out the way he’d come in.
He’d needed to be totally defenseless to get this close to the notorious crime lord. That was the only way. Gat’s fortress would have required a full-out assault by a force of legionnaires, and even then the casualty rate would have been astronomical. Not to mention the Legion wasn’t going to work for a bounty hunter they were lawfully required to kill or apprehend on sight.
And Rechs had been part of enough of those types of assaults in his long life; he didn’t care to be a part of any more. They were a shame even when they had to happen. A tragedy whenever things could have been done another way.
It was something like that that had cost him his career as a general. Not because he lost. But because he refused to be the House of Reason’s executioner for a nineteen-year-old girl who had just happened to be related to that week’s “traitor.” It wasn’t a big Legion assault, just another covert operation… but it was a prime example of people who should have known better refusing to do things another, better way.
Forty years later, Mother Ree was safe in her sanctuary on—
Okay, Rechs thought to himself as he tumbled down the side of the compressing stomach wall of the monster, gastric juices washing across his armor. Now’s not the time to let your life flash before your eyes.
Integrity alarms were already going off across the HUD’s ghostly displays.
This is the end of you, Tyrus, some evil voice tried to tell him as the shield refused to activate and he tumbled out of control through the shadowy darkness.
Fine, he thought. Then the galaxy ain’t my problem anymore.
He’d kept the ener-chains on until this point, because it meant manipulating his wrist commands would be easier—no having to force one arm over while tumbling wildly inside the beast. But the time to deal with those shackles had arrived. Using his powered armor, he snapped both sets in an instant. He was free.
Free to swim around in powerful acid quickly working to break down anything within its embrace.
He had no weapon. Nothing to bust his way out with. He’d been captured with weapons, of course, and of course they’d been promptly removed, trophies for the goons who’d brought in Tyrus Rechs. Not his best guns. Just something good enough for him to look serious about things.
What now?
Use the armor’s jump thruster to turn himself into a missile and shoot out the side of the membranous squid’s skin?
That would more than likely cost all his jump juice and leave him swimming around in a lagoon without weapons and surrounded by a ton of killers. But now that he was in the creature’s stomach, it seemed far more propitious than trying to fly back up the throat and past the thing’s teeth.
He was just about to power up for the jump when he decided to try the powerful shield once more. One last time.
And this time it worked.
A blue-hued glow erupted to life all about him. Instantly the defensive bubble was pressing against the confines of the digestive cavern, pushing the squid’s stomach uncomfortably outward. Rechs quickly expanded the shield, weakening it, but causing it to grow like a tumor inside the
