Rechs stood. Still shaky from getting shot.
“No time,” he gasped, “for that.”
He began to run. Refusing to use up what was left of his jump juice until there was no other choice. He knew he would need it for what still lay ahead. He would need it for those captured legionnaires.
He stumbled down two levels before the stairs surrounding him peeled off with a titanic groan. The floor below, the vast space that was like cemetery monuments of some giant alien race, was still a good ways down. A fall would crush his legs and break a lot of other bones. Injuries he couldn’t afford, not this early in the hunt for the two leejes.
So, he made a desperate choice and flung himself for the side of the cavern wall, pushing off the collapsing stairwell at the last second, flying out into the dark void, the low-light HUD imaging everything in blue starlight as he fell.
21
She awoke in darkness. Pitch-black darkness. Fear, like a monster, swarmed in and tried to get a hold of her. She tried to remember where she was.
Then it all came back. The failure in the alley to get the legionnaires back to her SLIC. The “student union.” The piss and spit. The hypo and the drugs. And the memory of the nightmares she’d been swimming through.
The beating, too. The beating they’d given her when she’d finally gotten to the legionnaires in the alley. When she’d tried to protect them with her body.
In the drug-induced dream she’d been having she was back with…
“Don’t,” she said simply to the darkness. She couldn’t afford that here.
So, don’t, she told herself. Don’t, Manda Panda.
And even that hurt a little. A lot, if she was really honest with herself. The kind of things you remember when you’re in trouble… those hurt the worst. All the beatings in the world she could take again. Just not the good words spoken to her by the ones who were far away and loved her still. Ones who probably thought she was dead.
The legionnaires!
She felt around in the darkness knowing… just knowing that the piss-ant punks had killed them and left her in a shallow grave. That she had truly failed in every way. And in the one way that had been the most important to her. Protect them. Protect the legionnaires until she could get them back to the Green Zone. She’d failed, hadn’t she?
Failed again, Manda.
“What?” said a tired voice in the darkness. It sounded dry and hoarse and she could hear the speaker lick his lips in the long pause after. “Don’t what, girl?”
Lopez. The sergeant in charge of the Legion QRF team.
Okay, she told herself and got to her hands and knees, feeling around for him.
“Don’t give up,” she said quietly.
The sergeant chuckled and began to cough.
“We’re Legion, girl. We don’t ever give up. We just KTF.”
She found his ruined armor and the bandages she’d put in place over the wounds she could access.
“I know,” she said as she checked his bandages. “I was telling me not to give up.”
And then it was just the two of them in the darkness.
Okay, thought Amanda. I gotcha, Sergeant Lopez. I got you.
22
With one armored glove, Rechs clung to the raw ledge of cut rock he’d grabbed hold of as he escaped the destruction of the stairs, dangling there above the long drop to the foundry floor below. The other glove was holding the scattergun. Too early in the mission to start letting go of weapons. He activated the magnetic carry-hold across his shoulders and stowed the weapon with some difficulty. Now with the augmented strength of both gauntlets, he was able to dig into the rough rock wall and get a secure grip.
He looked for a way to the floor. Up was no good. That only took him back behind the Green Zone and the Docks. Giles would either have more of his thugs waiting for him up there, or the rat was tipping the military for a reward.
He began to climb down the rock. It was slow going, and he could have used the jump jets, but he was still rationing the juice. You never knew when you might need the jets later on. He descended, made a small drop, and landed on the dust-laden foundry floor.
Low-light imaging within the bucket showed him the old casting forms for the hull plating once used to build the mighty warships out there in Detron’s canyons. The graveyard silence made it hard to believe this place had once been close to a state-of-the-art clean room dedicated to stamping out armor plating the size of a city block. Detron’s hull plating had been galaxy-renowned back in the days of the Savages. Rechs had been on Republic ships that had stood up to close-range volley fire from old Savage hulks fielding strange energy weapons the Republic would never have been able to duplicate, and he remembered naval crews reassuring jumpy legionnaires that their ships could stand the pounding and get the Legion in close enough to conduct boarding operations.
But those were stories long forgotten by the galaxy, or so it seemed these days. Names, too. Sometimes Rechs played games with himself. Memory games. Telling himself he was doing it to keep his mind agile, because even now he was beginning to notice some kind of forgetfulness creeping in. But really it was to honor those old leejes who’d just been young kids back then. Kids following him into battle.
There was Bill Allen at Veriteaux.
Randolph Johnson when they hit main engineering on board the Savage hulk Child of Tomorrow.
And…
Kris Chambers at Andalore. They called him Joryl, though.
Timothy Foster, also at Andalore.
So many at the Carso’s Rift. There were eleven of them. Can you name still name them all, Rechs?
He got five.
Richard Long.
William Morris.
Ben Wheeler.
Lawrence Tate.
Trevor Patillo.
Five out of eleven heroes the
