“What’s his condition?” the armored man asked her. But the medical scan within Rechs’s armor was already telling him what the situation was. Critical. Combat support hospital recommended within the next two hours.
She rattled off a litany of the legionnaire’s injuries and what she’d done to treat them as best she could. She made no excuses. Just gave a frank assessment of what had been done under the circumstances while she watched the now-silent and body-littered hall beyond the room.
“I think they’re getting ready to push again,” she said from the doorway.
“Three minutes left to exit the building,” said Rechs. “Bomb.”
Amanda let out an involuntary sigh. Everything it had taken to reach this point and now… this. The galaxy wasn’t just a bad place. It was perverse.
“There’re at least ten of those MCR Soshies down the hall between us and the main elevator,” she said.
“Here’s what we’re going to do,” said Rechs, ignoring her comment about the Soshies being MCR because that was the first he’d heard of it and he didn’t have the bandwidth to factor it into the equation. There wasn’t time. He hefted Lopez in one swift yet economical motion, putting the legionnaire’s head over his shoulder and down onto his back. Fireman’s carry. “You’re going to stay low and close to me, Marine. Use the blaster to sweep.”
Rechs grabbed a dead pro off the floor by the tactical vest and held the dead man so his back faced forward like a riot shield.
“You’re gonna carry two men?” the marine asked incredulously.
Rechs said nothing. Didn’t have to. He was carrying two men, his armor making it look easy.
“Stay low and behind the dead guy,” he told her. “Use him as a shield to get close. Sergeant Lopez still has most of his armor on. You’re more vulnerable than he is. So stick close to me.”
She nodded, and they moved toward the doorway, falling into step as a team.
The incoming fire was instantaneous as they stepped into the hall. Rechs held the body of the large dead man out in front of him, and blaster bolts thumped into it as they advanced down the corridor. Behind Rechs, crouching low, Sergeant Almond poured return fire at the defenders. Barely aiming, squeezing until the frenetic little Jackknife had dumped its full charge. Slick as synth oil she had another charge pack in and opened up again.
The dead man’s body began to come apart from the hits it was taking. Rechs’s armor took a few glancing shots, the bolts streaking off into the walls and ceiling.
Another charge pack spent, Amanda swapped in a new one and targeted the nearest defenders. She spat burst fire at the figures hugging wall at the end of the hall or firing from empty rooms and alcoves. The weapon Tyrus Rechs had given her ripped their bodies to shreds with needle sprays of bolt streams.
As the body of the dead man nearly disintegrated under overwhelming incoming fire at almost point-blank range, Rechs tossed the man’s shredded remains at one of the pros, who recoiled in horror. The bounty hunter pulled his hand cannon lightning-fast.
The narrow hall shook with the thunderous rapid booms of Rechs’s weapon on auto-fire. He shot down two men ahead of them, pivoted fast into a room another pro had escaped into, and shot that one several times.
Amanda covered the way toward the elevator and kept their attackers back and pinned behind cover. One stuck his head out, and she made sure it was the last thing that guy ever did.
They made the elevator, firing at those still covering nearby, and entered, blaster fire smashing into the doors as they closed.
The elevator was headed down to street level.
Rechs pulled the panel apart and fused several wires together. He’d made sure no one would stop it or recall it.
“Now comes the hard part,” the bounty hunter said.
61
Loth was out on the street, interfacing with the recently arrived extraction convoy commander, when the shooting in the lobby started. The only warning the hardened mercenary received was the barest of one-line reports that indicated “someone’s coming down” over the comm. That there had been a major firefight up on nine was evident according to the comm traffic. That had been nearly two minutes ago, and the channel silence since then had been overwhelming.
Loth knew he needed to clear his men out of the building, but he found himself waiting until he could get a handle on what had happened. They remained staged in the lobby, nervously checking chronos to make sure their boss hadn’t lost it and was expecting them to all go down together with the exploding building.
The first thing Loth’s pros in the lobby saw was the elevator opening and Tyrus Rechs stepping out, scatterblaster pointing at the nearest group of hired guns.
“Wait—” someone tried before the roar from the powerful weapon went off at near point-blank range. Rechs tore three black-and-red pros to shreds with one blast. He pivoted, racked another charge pack into the scatterblaster’s chamber, and fired again. The successive deafening blasts erupted out onto the streets as Rechs made short work of those stationed inside the lobby.
At this point, Loth was between a hull and a defense shield. There was no easy decision. He’d lost control of the prisoners, who somehow had survived against overwhelming odds. He had to admit that to himself.
He had three choices.
Continue the attempt to recapture the legionnaire and lose more of his people. Maybe even his own life in the process.
Kill them with the overwhelming firepower he had access to on the street via the mounted weapons.
Or…
Just forget the whole mess. Call the freighter in for a dust-off in some quiet section of this ruined
