Rechs boosted his armor’s cybernetic assist and kicked in the reinforced steel door that guarded the bunker. The broad daylight came in with him, and the midnight beyond the portal ahead seemed to shrink from Rechs. Targeting threw imaging filters for every light-source grade within his field of vision. What needed to be amplified was amplified. What was hidden was plain.
Rechs saw a lot of surprised kids sitting completely motionless inside some kind of common room. And one babysitter pro with a medium blaster. The guy immediately moved into shooting stance, thinking he had a good sight picture on Rechs’s silhouette filling the kicked-in door and framed by the tired orange afternoon daylight of Detron.
Like it was his lucky day.
Jittery, he fired his blaster twice and hit the doorframe. Of course he’d gone from complete inaction—babysitting a bunch of tools whom he had to watch posture with lotus pipes in their mouths while chanting various lyrics from their resistance mixes—to suddenly finding himself with a first move in a firefight. That he got two shots off so quickly was to his credit. That he’d aimed badly reflected on poor training and low-grade mission discipline.
He paid the price in the next second.
Rechs blew off the shooter’s head, allowing the HUD to clearly paint the target as the bounty hunter ducked to both pass through the doorway and shrink his profile.
The massive barrel of the hand cannon still smoking, Rechs moved further into Basement Six and scanned for new threats. A big kid came at him with a lead pipe, probably thinking of himself as a threat. But before he could even strike, Rechs smashed him in his bulbous nose with the solid butt of the hand cannon.
The kid went down on his knees, screaming in nasal tones. Unaware that the only reason Rechs hadn’t killed him was because he was lucky enough to be an amateur.
Another kid playing at being a tough guy came at the bounty hunter in a rush, thinking the little pig-sticker he’d brought to the riot would do the trick. That he’d somehow have better success. The kid was small and mean-faced. Beady eyes that moved quickly. Chances were he’d pulled this move before. Chances were he’d come from the tough neighborhoods of some not-too-good world and got caught up at the university in the resistance. The knife skills he’d learned on the streets probably came in handy every so often among the sheltered kids whose parents had taken out loans from the banks to pay for all that the Republic still wouldn’t. Mainly just room and board.
That’s what he was probably thinking as he tried to dance in and make a quick gut cut near Rechs’s belt: that he knew how to bring down this intruder. Find a place where the synthprene was exposed. If he was lucky, the kid would end this right here.
But he wasn’t lucky. The wicked little curved knife merely drew a fine scratch along Rechs’s armored chest plate. The armor had a lot of scratches and damage, so the mark would fit right in.
Rechs smashed the stun baton down on the kid’s shoulder and watched the little punk light up as twenty thousand volts surged through his body. He did a spasmodic jig for half a second and then collapsed from neural overload.
The charge was spent and the weapon wouldn’t reload until Rechs swapped out a battery pack or dragged it along a surface that could draw enough static electricity to convert to a full charge. But it still worked in analog as a club. Everything did. That was as old as mankind.
Two more kids rushed the bounty hunter, who wasn’t caught off guard, but was surprised at their tenacity. Hanging out with pros and taking on the helpless had clearly emboldened them. But these two didn’t even get their feet under them as they pushed off the dirty couch they’d been sitting on with a couple of girls clad in designer T-shirts that just barely fit the Soshie color scheme.
Rechs smacked one on the jaw with a quick swipe of the baton and was rewarded with the solid crunch of bone. The snap was so loud both girls shrieked.
But Rechs wasn’t done. The backhand of the stroke that took down the first attacker hit the side of the second’s face and probably fractured the skull.
“You broke his jaw!” said one of the stoned Soshies on the floor who’d wisely chosen not to get involved in all this “hassle.” But that didn’t stop him from attempting to shame Rechs for doing what he’d done.
“He’ll live,” muttered Rechs, the armor modulating his voice to nightmare. “Get out. Now! All of you!”
They hesitated for a second, then began to scramble to their feet.
And then Rechs saw the body.
The body of the leej named Beers.
He was a kid himself. Just barely older than these, still south of his third decade. The kid’s corpse lay on the floor. Discarded. His neck stretched. His head badly hacked off.
His propaganda value spent.
And if these kids were willing to sit through and around something like that… what made them deserve his mercy?
Rechs would kill them all in that instant.
“Get out of here!” he shouted to get them clear of his murderous self.
Sensing the peril they were in, they fled through the door into the streets of Detron.
Rechs strode past the body, knowing a Legion or marine recovery team would soon be on hand to take it on that long journey back home.
But Tyrus Rechs had other business to see to first.
From further within the warren of Basement Six, shadows shifted position. The B-team was down. And now something akin to a Soshie QRF was mobilizing to meet its contingency. But while they likely expected a marine fire team or Legion kill
