“I do,” said Tyrus as he opened the Crow’s outer airlock. The boarding ramp was still lowered. The vast hangar beyond was dark and silent. He put his bucket on and checked the seals. The HUD came online.
“Excellent,” said G232. “I have repeatedly tried to tell him that all his ideas are pure folly, but he refuses to heed the voice of sanity and rational thought. He’s intent on turning everything into a shooting gallery. Honestly, master… flying around the city shooting everything up like we’re casino robbers in some big-budget action heist entertainment. Although I suppose what we did at Cassio Royale came rather close to exactly that. Either way, the idea is ridiculous!”
Rechs started down the ramp.
“Three-Two,” said Rechs, turning back, “I agree it’s a ridiculous plan. But it’s not completely off the table. We’ll do whatever it takes to get them back.”
He was halfway across the hangar and heading for the blast door by the time the stunned admin bot murmured a low, “Oh my.”
19
Down at the lowest levels of the Docks Rechs stepped out of a lift and was greeted by shadows, with the only pools of illumination lying farther off within the dark of the level. The AI running the elevator had warned Rechs, as it made its long slow trundling passage down the shaft, that this level was not secure and that planetary police services, medical and emergency also, would not be available. Rechs was not quite at the bottom of the Docks, but the only levels below this were reserved for waste-management vehicles coming in to service the undercity.
He switched over to IR and scanned the silent darkness. There were a lot of people down here. Many gathered in primitive circles around some seedy holographic light show, passing cheap lotus back and forth as they stared like zombies into the shifting technicolor lights that barely flickered in the gloom. These were not the smugglers he was looking for.
He approached a young kid, whose face twisted into a sudden sneer when Rechs disturbed him from whatever image he was absorbed by on his datapad. The old screen was cracked and broken. The kid was covered in piercings. His clothes dirty.
“Looking for Giles.”
The kid’s face immediately told Rechs that Giles was indeed somewhere close by. His eyes darted back and forth. Fear and apprehension. Then the sudden realization there might be credits to be had. Junkie thinking. Followed by a look that thought better about getting involved. Survivor thinking.
“Don’t know who you’re talking about,” the youth muttered.
Rechs moved on, deeper into the darkness. Abandoned kiosks and empty storefronts played their parts in the general-abandonment scenery of the place. Within seconds the kid he’d talked to had hustled off, talking into his datapad. No doubt alerting Giles, or someone who knew Giles. Hoping for credits, or a hit, or to pay back what was owed by working the safer side of the equation.
Rechs didn’t mind paying for information. But he never liked to support a habit. A bad one especially. He was against slavery. That’s why he always set bots free when he acquired them. And this kid was exactly that: a slave to the lotus.
Two shadows came for Rechs out of the darkness. A human, big and hulking, carrying some kind of cane that wasn’t just for show or assistance with walking. The other a smaller, lithe Doro dog man.
The dog man did the talking in typical Doro snarl. Legionnaires had called them dobies in the long conflict they’d fought on Psydon—because most of them looked like the old Earth breed of Doberman. But humanoid. Deadly hunters. Fierce fighters.
“You lost?” the Doro snarled.
Rechs came to a halt. He had the stock of the scattergun cradled in one glove, the other wrapped around the pistol grip. He’d racked the first charge pack in the lift down.
“Looking for Giles,” he said simply.
Neither of the thugs reacted. Chances were, they’d been sent out to vet him. Was he a bounty hunter here to collect or terminate? Giles would want to know. Better yet, was he looking for passage into the city through the marine- and rioter-held lines?
And could he be jumped easily. All that ran through the air like a thing that could be felt. He didn’t need to read their soulless eyes. The way they carried themselves screamed it.
“Business with Giles?” asked the Doro. The big hulk remained silent.
“Passage,” muttered Rechs through the ghostly gravel of his bucket’s external speaker.
Now the two thugs exchanged a look as the Doro’s hand moved to his blaster rig. It was so dark the dog man thought he’d done it on the sly, not counting on Rechs’s bucket having a full suite of imaging capabilities through all the light spectrums. Which was stupid; most armor had some form of imaging.
Strike one, thought Rechs.
“That’ll cost you,” said the Doro abruptly. “To get to Giles. Consider it a tax.”
Strike two. Rechs didn’t like taxes. Especially made-up ones.
“Or we can just…”
The Doro was pulling and Rechs simply shifted the scattergun so it landed on the Doro’s dark and tan chest, a necklace of human and alien teeth swinging in the half-light, and pulled the trigger.
At close range a powerful scattergun can tear a body to shreds. At extremely close range its several bolts of blaster fire just blow one giant hole through a person. This is what happened to the Doro. The sound of the blast filled the dark arcades of the level, resounding and echoing through all the empty stores, crash pads, and chill rooms the junkies had fixed up for themselves to wait for their inevitable overdose.
The echo continued bouncing off distant chambers, forever lost in the dark down there, long after the body of the Doro dog man hit the dirty tile.
Rechs racked another charge pack, lightning quick, and pointed the scatterblaster at the head of the big hulk. The guy hadn’t even moved.
“Don’t!”
