“Gimme something that’ll get his attention and I’ll see what I can do,” interjected the savvy LT.
The LT knew that one smart answer from this Longfree, one denial, one game, and the platoon sergeant was going to assault the man right here on the spot in the greeting bunker. And that would mean… in the Repub marines… paperwork. Lots of it.
“Tyrus Rechs,” said the slimy unshaven dock rat in a dirty suit standing in front of them, wiping a sweaty hand across his dirty scoundrel’s vest.
And suddenly all the tension in the greeting bunker went and took itself off on vacation. Because the name Tyrus Rechs meant what it meant.
“He’s here?” asked the LT incredulously. “On the ground? On Detron?”
* * *
It was ironic. In fact, it was very ironic that at just the very moment Giles Longfree was alerting General Sheehan’s chain of command that the most wanted criminal in the galaxy was here on Detron and active inside their AO, that trouble came in bunches.
Rechs had found that to be true. Operations never got easier; they had a tendency to grow hydra tentacles and multiply off in unintended directions drawing more and more stuff, people, enemies, connections, hazardous materials, explosives, random armed psychotics, and the occasional sociopath, into the vortex of an operation.
Rechs knew that because he’d learned it because he’d lived it. Every plan went sideways sooner rather than later. Don’t get upset. Just adapt and overcome. And always stay on mission.
Except Rechs didn’t realize at that moment that variable number two had just hit the deck on Detron. Arriving via jump shuttle from the mid-core world that had been its origin point, a brand-new variable had set down inside the Docks. Arriving in-system and transferring off the destroyer Castle from the hangar deck to a drop transport inbound with fresh replacements for the marines. Everyone on board was big, bad, and scared. Some dealt with it by talking about how much they were looking forward to the situation going hot.
Then, they promised each other, it was full auto rock-n-roll, brothers and sisters. Game on!
The Legion officer among them just rolled his one good eye, a patch covering the other, and made sure none of them touched the tactical package he’d brought with him. The Legion-stamped anthracite gray clamshell case lay on the deck. Everyone saw it. And no one messed with it.
The drop transport came in over the cliffs of the Docks and fell thirty stories down into the red-and-ochre dust-covered floor of the world’s broken canyons and dry volcanic plains. Vast crevasses, like lightning strikes forever frozen in stone, shot off in every direction. The old shipyards that lay within them were like uncovered graves, and some of the more knowledgeable marines tried to identify the remains of the old warships by the skeletons that remained.
Repulsors flared, and the drop transport landed inside the marine Green Zone atop a tall modular LZ overwatched by three prefab gun towers. Brief glimpses of the city showed those disembarking a view of the tall wagon-wheel towers climbing up into the red-ash-flavored sky. Smoke drifted, or just clung, to the upper reaches of the towers. And through this miasma SLICs laden with marines swarmed the city. Even over the howl of the drop transport’s engines—the pilot was keeping the idle high for a fast dustoff to clear the pad for the next load incoming, or maybe simply because she didn’t want to stick around too long—they could hear the drums and roar of the crowd that thronged the front of the Docks and infected every city street for as far as the eye could see. It felt like a frozen tidal wave of seething anger that would break at any moment and wash over them all.
Smoke flares arched over the crowd’s vast length, as did giant inflatable beach balls. A thousand chants came up at the scared disembarking marines and the NCOs who’d been assigned to “greet” them on the pad. The sergeants quickly took charge and gave the new replacements something to be afraid of other than the mob, their voices barking like they’d just swallowed some caustic cleaning chemical. Immediately humiliating anyone who managed to stumble, or stare too long, at what the marines were facing on the Docks.
Amid the barking, the Legion officer with the one eye activated the micro-repulsor lifts on the clamshell and made sure the case’s settings indicated it would follow him wherever he went. The package levitated off the deck, and the officer, in Legion duty uniform, stepped off the drop transport and onto the modular landing pad, beholding the spectacle and pomp of the useless twits who thought they could affect the balance of power within the House and Senate.
They had no idea.
No idea they were nothing more than pawns in a game that had been going on for centuries. But in a way, even though they didn’t know it, they were on the same side he was. And he found that mildly amusing.
Captain Hess pulled his black Legion beret from off his shoulder clasp and affixed it atop his skull, taking a moment to make sure it was just right.
Dress. Right. Dress.
Sure, he’d been thrown out of Nether Ops only recently. Except they hadn’t called it “thrown.” But technically he was still assigned to them while all the internal reviews went down on the misconduct and incompetence charges he was currently facing regarding his prosecution of the hunt for Tyrus Rechs.
It was ridiculous. It was as though he were the criminal and not Tyrus Rechs.
Hess laughed to himself as he watched some of the protestors try to breach the wire farther down the Docks. Rolling old flaming cylinders probably filled with some low-grade explosives into the wire. Sure, the wire was breached, but the marines in the prefab gun towers working the
