“Master… uh… Captain Rechs,” began G232 over the comm link. “We have arrived as per your orders! It does not currently seem as though things are… uh… going according to plan.”
The trepidations of the old admin and diplomatic bot that had become a member of Rechs’s crew were evident in the transmission.
“Everything’s on track, Three-Two. Lower the aft cargo door and stand by with the magnetic grappling array.”
“Truly I shall, sir. But it seems there’s a… well, I’ll be blunt about it. It seems there’s a tyrannasquid currently attacking that ship. This is most unforeseen, Captain Rechs. Tyrannasquid are to be avoided at all times and handled with no small amount of caution, according to the Galactic Travel Standards and Safety Guidelines for the last year I was given an opportunity to download and review them all. While I know rule changes certainly go into effect over time, one can’t possibly envision a time when the rules covering tyrannasquid might ever be… dialed back, as it were, master. I mean… Captain Rechs. Certainly—”
“Just stand by on the cargo deck, Three-Two!”
Rechs leapt from the sled the moment it hit the third deck of the pleasure-maran. As Rechs rolled, the sled continued its slide across the larger ship’s width, careening into three hired blasters, crushing one and carrying the other two off over the side and out of the fight.
Rechs came up with the blaster he’d acquired from the sled’s pilot and began to shoot down Gat’s hired killers. Powerful shots from the medium blaster sent two tangos onto their backs. Return fire was wild, but one bolt found Rechs in the shoulder pauldron and glanced off, ricocheting into Suracaõ’s burning late afternoon. It wasn’t a bell-ringer, but it’d leave a bruise. Rechs had had lots of those. He’d suffered plenty of scars, wounds, broken bones, and a whole host of other combat injuries. Stuff healed. Pain was a constant at his age despite the voodoo that had been done to him long ago.
He shot the guy who shot him. In fact, he shot him a whole bunch, putting at least five rounds center mass on the rag-dolling alien. It was another Gomarii, and after taking all five hits it seemed he decided to just sit on a nearby deck chair, his head slumped onto his chest. A final posture of refusal to fall to the deck of the doomed and burning ship. A last act of defiance against the murder machine that was Tyrus Rechs.
Some part of Rechs’s mind noted all that as the last of Gat’s guards hustled the crime boss for the aft quarterdeck. Apparently, the crime lord was thinking—incorrectly—that the arriving Obsidian Crow was his rescue ship.
Rechs tagged one guard, causing the rest to move even faster.
Finally, something is going according to plan, thought Rechs.
He checked the blaster and found he was down to half a charge pack. It was enough to finish this. Or at least it needed to be.
As he crossed through the debris-littered deck, the tyrannasquid gave an epic bellow and tore off hull plating from the port side to reach more food. One of the repulsors gave up the ghost, whined on overload, and exploded beneath the ship. The rest of the lift array fought valiantly to maintain loft and altitude, but it was a losing battle, and Gat Hathor’s pleasure-maran began to sink ever so surely toward the floating battlefield that was the surface of the lagoon.
Gat Hathor ran for the aft quarterdeck’s landing pad. It was accessible via a ramp that led down off the third deck. For a moment Rechs lost sight of the team extracting their boss. A heavily armored Tennarian male stopped to toss a few shots at Rechs to slow his pursuit, then ducked and fled as Rechs returned fire with two quick blaster bolts.
The bounty hunter didn’t slow. He reached the top of the ramp and found he had a good picture of the five-man team leading the hulking crocosaur. The prince of the Hegemmy Cartel, draped in gold chain mail and hauling his massive energy mace, was moving onto the quarterdeck, heading for the landing Crow.
None of the guards waited in ambush. They were all moving, determined to be rescued themselves as much as to rescue their employer.
Rechs took the opportunity to shoot two of them in the back. Two others dove and sent a furious storm of blaster fire straight back at him.
The fifth of Gat’s escorts, and probably his best guard, was an old war bot. It swiveled one-eighty on its hip actuators and fired at Rechs from both hand blasters.
There wasn’t time for cover. The timing of the Crow’s landing meant the capture needed to happen now.
Incoming fire smashed into the ramp around Rechs as he advanced, firing back at the deadly blaster-slinging war bot, aware he had little charge left and that these war bots almost never went dry.
Priority target now, Rechs heard his mind tell his shooter’s muscles and instincts as he landed three solid shots on the war machine’s armored battle-damaged upper torso. A second later its rust-colored shoulder actuator exploded. That had been lucky; it was most likely due to the advanced age of the machine. But it was still in the game. Like some living dead monstrosity, the giant killing machine eschewed suppressive blaster fire and strode toward Rechs with its one remaining blaster, apparently intent on powering up all its reserve energy for a single pulsed shot.
That might well be enough to put a great big smoking hole in Rechs’s armor. And Rechs.
“Three-Two!” he roared over the comm. “Activate mag grapple! Now!”
This was improv. Tactical workarounds on the fly. He’d had that in mind for another aspect of the capture. But the chance of him hitting the war bot’s remaining wrist blaster before it built charge and loosed its powerful
