He floundered, waving his hands around wildly like he suddenly didn’t recognize where he was for a moment. Like talking about the past had made it real. Like a time machine had suddenly snatched him up and left him in the mythical world of Better Days.
“Like they do the stream stars nowadays. It was like that back then, but about things that really mattered. Kids were all good-looking. Going places. The future was really ours. Not this one, but a way better one. But…”
There was a long pause.
“Then the contracts dried up because the House of Reason decided they wanted the smaller ships we didn’t build. Someone in the House had a brother on another planet, we all said back then. Those other worlds got the ship contracts for inferior vessels that never would have held their own in a Savage fight. Lost my job in the target acquisition mainframe installs section over at Zephyr Works. The ship we was working on, the Delphinus, she’s still out there half put together. X-class. And believe me, she was going to be a beaut.”
Now that Rechs had the old bartender talking, it didn’t seem he would ever shut up.
“Seventy-five heavy blasters. Fast. Real fast. Crew of ten thousand. Had a planet killer fore… and if you can believe this, it had one aft, too. I was really proud of that girl. She woulda’ been a fighter.”
Rechs drank a bit and nodded. Agreeing. Casper had been the spearhead on the Constellation program. His “death” had been the death of the project. One Constellation X-class would have prevented the Sack of Takyo. And saved seventy million lives.
“Just like it always was,” mumbled the oldster to himself. “I’m the last in this David Sanford franchise, and I do things the way we were supposed to do ’em according to corporate guidelines. ’Cept there ain’t no corporation anymore. But I keep doin’ ’em just the way you’re supposed to. Boil ’em first, the hot dogs. Then you grill ’em. That’s the secret. Brush ’em with a little Sanford’s Secret Recipe Sauce and grill for another thirty seconds. Then some spicy mustard. I like onions, but they don’t agree with me none too good these days. But… that’s the way we had ’em back when the galaxy was a better place instead of a bunch of whiny kids constantly demanding everything be set to easy for them.”
“That what happened here?” asked Rechs.
“Sure did,” erupted the bartender. “They were giving away everything as the whole city went right down the tubes. Long story short, there’s nothing left to give, and they’re demanding more be given away. They never let a crisis go to waste. That’s what all that’s about out there. Why the marines are here. It’s all a photo op to grab more power.”
14
Rechs took the big lift “up dock,” as the locals liked to say, and arrived at the surface on the outskirts of Detron City.
The first thing the bounty hunter noticed was the smoke in the air. The skies smelled like all the battles he’d ever fought in. There was always smoke. Because there was always fire, eventually. After the killing had begun and things had gotten out of hand in ways neither side had ever expected.
The people of Detron might not have thought this was a war. Some might have even wanted to believe that. But from the smell of the smoke in the air and the look of things on the ground, it was clear this was a war whether anyone wanted it or not. And the battle was being fought on Detron over ideas that others wanted to spread to the corners of the galaxy like a wildfire gone completely out of control.
This section of the Docks, effectively the outer ring of the city, was firmly under control of the navy and the Repub marines on the ground. Small Green Zones, reminiscent of any war zone’s firebase design, had been set up all around the edge of the massif, and Rechs had been funneled right into one. The chance of getting through the marine-held lines and into the city itself, especially in his armor, instantly recognizable as the infamous Tyrus Rechs, was slim to nil. He could have hot-shotted in the Crow to a spot above where he needed to be, then taken a low-alto drop from the bay with jump jets to give him a safe landing. But he needed to know more about the military situation inside the city. Only then could he make his move. Once they were aware of his presence on the ground, the window to successfully execute the rescue would begin to close. He had to know as much as possible before that happened.
He walked the streets of the Central Command Green Zone, overwatched by armored sleds and squads of marines peering out from behind their meticulously dress-right-dressed sandbag forts. Inner perimeters not accessible to civilians contained landing pads where outdated SLICs full of marines seemed to depart every fifteen minutes for destinations inside the city. The dropships were overloaded with young marines hanging off the skids. All of them had the dead-eyed look of stone-cold killers just looking for an excuse to light up the protesters with some return fire. The protestors would be sadly mistaken if they thought they somehow owned the right to violence in this moment of disobedience. Fires spread. Consequences resulted. The marines were ready to do their best impression of “going Legion.” Rechs could tell that as he watched them go.
He’d seen the look more
