What have they brought? asks the old voice that never takes it easy on Tyrus Rechs. The voice that always challenges him and his actions. Keeping him honest to the legend he’s become. He’s so old who knows where it came from? Live long enough and you forget all the stops along the way.
Me, he answers.
They’ve brought me down on them.
The little girl Soshie in the video makes that same tired old speech of misinformed power-grabbers who think they’re making the galaxy a better place by destroying another life. It’s the same one they always make. The one about how all the crimes committed against her and hers have been acts of war. About how what’s about to happen is what will happen to anyone who opposes them. Differences of opinion and challenging points of view are invalid.
She makes that speech.
And then she produces the blade. Hefts it up into frame. One of the long Sinasian katanas they all think are so cool and some keep on their backs like they’re ready to cross blades to make the galaxy a better place at any moment. Usually two of them, crossed like they’re some reckless ronin who serves no master. Not knowing or not caring that the Sinasians who make the real deal are barred from even exporting them off-planet. That whatever they have was made in some corporate factory, a hollow mimicry of the craftsmanship a real Sinasian blade is supposed to represent.
She holds the blade up for all the Soshies to see, whether in the room or watching the holo. Never realizing they’re just tools in the greater game of order against entropy. Law versus chaos. Good versus evil.
Things they laugh about as being outdated.
And then she swings the blade down on the legionnaire’s head. Missing the neck. Sinking the blade into the back of his skull on the overreaching downswing.
She seems stunned for a second at the sudden horror show she has just caused. She tries to pull it out and it’s clear how little, for all her acting, she actually knows about wielding a blade. Another red and black, one whom Rechs instantly recognizes as ex-military of some sort because he’s got the same compact yet powerful build as Rechs. Same economical movements. Same power. But the eyes are different. The eyes are… cruel. He takes charge and pulls the blade out of the leej’s skull for her.
His contempt for her isn’t masked.
The legionnaire is bucking. Or maybe his body is twitching. You can’t see his face or eyes. And maybe that’s a mercy.
Rechs will one day be thankful for that when he tells himself to let this one go. On some night over some tropic ocean when it’s just him and the stars, drifting in a boat far from land. Far from the galaxy. He will be grateful for not having been able to see the kid’s eyes.
The ex-military shoves the blade back into the girl’s hands.
And this time she gets it right and severs the spinal cord and most of the neck. Either way it’s done. His life is over. The legionnaire is gone.
Rechs has unknowingly placed one armored gauntlet against the old concrete of the building he shadows under. Absently he’s torn out a chunk of the masonry.
There’s still one leej, he tells himself.
I can still save the other one.
“His name was Matt Beers,” says Gabriella over the comm. Her voice is dead. “Sergeant. Second enlistment. That’s what the networks are all reporting. Confirmed by Legion facial recognition.”
She hears nothing on the other end of the hypercomm that connects her to Tyrus Rechs. Nothing other than the ghostly howl that lies beneath the sound. Like the howl of some lost soul forever wandering hyperspace. Stranded in a place of no comfort. And no mercy.
34
Giles Longfree walked into the Repub marine headquarters for forces on the ground and asked to see the general in charge of “this whole operation you got goin’ on here.”
The duty lieutenant didn’t roll his eyes like the sergeant and PFC assigned to the fortified position behind the desk. The LT was all business. He had a degree in economics and when this was all over, after paying off his loans, he was going to hit the core worlds and make a million in high finance. Best to keep it professional. Even here.
“The general is currently busy with operations,” soothed the LT. “Perhaps I can help you, sir?”
A new directive had come down that morning to be more polite and officious to civilians behind the lines. Maybe that would somehow carry weight with the ones inside the city the marines were now threatening to retake in light of the beheading stream playing on endless repeat.
The NCO standing next to the LT clamped an unlit cigar between his lips and tried to restrain himself from ripping Longfree’s head off and spitting down his throat. Politeness his butt. Payback was at hand. And he intended to be the hand. Not here with the green LT watching the front gate. That was babysitting.
“Pretty sure the general in charge will want to hear what I have to say,” continued Longfree.
The marine LT could feel the sergeant next to him literally swell two sizes bigger as his rage-fueled blood vessels and muscles expanded for beatdown. His platoon sergeant was a hardcore gym monster who had no qualms about using all the aftermarket supplements he could do to get as big as possible. Except none of the supplements, protein powders, and injections compared in performance with what the scumbag dock rat in front of him was affecting his NCO with right now. This needed to be diffused, because there was no way he was going to lock his platoon sergeant’s boots and tell him to about-face on out of the greeting bunker.
Hell, thought the new LT. The platoon sergeant could’ve locked his boots and told him to do just that, and he probably would’ve done it. He had no illusions about who had
