And then Loth could get off this wreck of a world. And more importantly, get paid.
“Sir!” There was blaster fire in the background of the incoming comm transmission. “Got a problem. Men down. Need—”
The message halted as more blaster fire zinged in the background. “Need backup on nine. She got loose!”
Loth swore and ground his teeth.
The HK-PP was now just a few blocks away, and the bomb was due to bring down the building in a few minutes.
“It’s just her?” Loth asked, thinking the trouble had to be more than some hullbuster he’d tortured into a whimpering sack of misery.
Blaster fire filled the comm.
“Got her pinned at the end of the north hall on nine! Need backup! I repeat…”
“I heard you!” shouted Loth. “Do you have the legionnaire or—”
“Negative. She’s got him!”
Loth swore again on the street outside the tower.
“Everyone!” Loth shouted as he ran back in to the rest of his team waiting in the lobby. “Move to nine and retake the prisoners. Go fast, because this building is coming down in five.”
The look he gave his shooters indicated there was only one option. Obey. But everyone also noticed he wasn’t coming along. Perks of leadership.
Pros in red and black, outfitted to blend in with the Soshies on the street, but carrying state-of-the-art automatic blasters and explosive devices, swarmed into the stairwells and elevators to get up to nine. In almost the same moment the prisoners from the lower floors, dressed in that same Soshie gear but without the weapons, came running down the stairs toward them.
Seeing obstructions that were also potential loose ends, the pros unleashed volleys of blaster fire. “Make way!” they shouted, leaving several of the kids to die in the stairwells while others ducked in terror against the walls, leapt over the rails, or simply tumbled down to the bottom. Those who slipped past poured out into the streets. Shrieking and crying.
“Kids got loose somehow!” one of the operators shouted into the comm, stating the obvious.
“Ignore them!” Loth ordered. “Get to nine without delay!”
He moved to tell the mobile heavy blaster teams what was happening. The convoy was just coming down the street.
The HK-PP exploded and went down into some buildings farther along the avenue.
“Nothing’s ever easy,” swore Loth. “Nothing.”
57
Rechs had been about ready to throw himself out the fifth-floor window and burn the last of his jump juice to intercept the extraction team on the street when the Soshie comm channel went wild with chatter.
He immediately changed his plans.
From what he could tell, the marine sniper had managed to overwhelm her captors and move the legionnaire out of custody.
Thatta girl, thought Rechs. She’d given him the opportunity to make this happen here and now. That was all he needed.
“Lyra… stand by to put down on my ping.”
Rechs dropped a ping in the plaza directly outside the building.
“I’m afraid, Captain Rechs,” interrupted G232, “that our little friend has possibly been destroyed, sir. The behemoth you had it commandeer erupted with him inside. Might I suggest we offer a moment’s silence for a fellow bot? Dangerous though it was.”
“Damn,” muttered Rechs. He’d been counting on the HK-PP to provide cover fire so he could get the legionnaire and marine aboard the Crow. It was already going to be a hot LZ. Now it was going to be downright on fire.
“It grieves me to tell you this tragic news, master,” continued G232. “But, alas, it is for the best. Though the bot and you share many of the same affinities for wanton violence, our little group will be the better off, mathematically speaking, now that there are less dangerous entities aboard… wouldn’t you say, Mast… ah, Captain Rechs?”
When Rechs didn’t respond to the inane chatter, a somewhat cowed G232 said, “Just trying to find the bright spot in all this grief, sir.”
Rechs ran for a window that loomed from floor to ceiling at the end of the dim hall he’d found himself in. He figured he might as well do it anyway. Only instead of going down, he’d burn the last of his jump juice to reach the marine and the legionnaire a few levels above.
Level nine.
58
“Target terminated, Captain,” said Captain Kirk Walters, aka Hunter Oh-Two, over the comm. “Return to base, or do we have a line on the HVTs?”
The marines were classifying the captured sniper and legionnaire as high-value targets.
The SLIC was hovering above the streets and rooftops, above the smashed building and fallen HK-PP. Clouds of gray dust and debris filled the late-afternoon air.
Hess leaned out from the aft cargo deck and studied the cityscape. “That thing was headed somewhere,” he muttered. “Where?”
They’d run a bio-scan sensor sweep across the ruined HK-PP once her ECM generators went down in the fall. No signs of life. No signs of biologics. Rechs hadn’t been aboard, or if he had, he was now dead. But Hess was somehow sure this was part of Rechs’s plan. That the bounty hunter was behind it all. He could practically smell him.
Up the street he spotted people fleeing from one of the tallest buildings in this section of the city. A few armed Soshies were out front. Hess’s bucket tagged and assessed weapon threats. The Nether Ops agent studied the scene as the howling dropship’s repulsors throbbed to hold altitude above the final resting place of the HK-PP.
“He’s here,” muttered Hess.
Got to be.
Then, to the pilot: “Take us in close to that building up the street. Something’s going—”
At that moment Tyrus Rechs himself, looking like some darting hornet at this distance, came crashing out of a fifth-story window in the very building Hess had been watching. Those fleeing below covered their heads and necks as a shower of glass rained down on them from above. A moment later the bounty hunter’s jump jets ignited and the armored figure roared up along the building’s face.
“That’s Rechs!” screamed Hess. “That’s Tyrus Rechs! Get me to him!”
59
Marine Sergeant Amanda Almond
