Requiem for Medusa (Galaxy's Edge) (Tyrus Rechs: Contracts & Terminations Book 1) Read online

  Contents

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  Epilogue

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  Other Galaxy’s Edge Books

  About the Authors

  Honor Roll

  REQUIEM FOR MEDUSA

  BY NICK COLE

  & JASON ANSPACH

  Galaxy’s Edge: REQUIEM FOR MEDUSA

  By Nick Cole & Jason Anspach

  Copyright © 2018

  by Galaxy’s Edge, LLC

  All rights reserved.

  This is a work of fiction. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.

  No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise without the prior written permission of the publisher and copyright owner.

  All rights reserved. Version 1.0

  Edited by David Gatewood

  Published by Galaxy’s Edge, LLC

  Cover Art: Trent Kaniuga

  Cover Design: Beaulistic Book Services

  Interior Design: Kevin G. Summers

  For more information:

  Website: GalacticOutlaws.com

  Facebook: facebook.com/atgalaxysedge

  Newsletter: InTheLegion.com

  “Losing the general was the worst mistake the Republic ever made. Can you imagine him out on the edge? A grizzled vet with more lives than a cat, who’s taken more souls than the Reaper himself.”

  —things old legionnaires say at reunions, when they drink for the fallen and wonder whatever happened to General Rex

  01

  Sky City

  Aetheria IX

  Fifteen Years Before the Battle of Kublar

  The old freighter came into view beyond the hangar portal of the upper disc of Sky City. Out there beyond the shields, swirling pink and azure clouds bespoke the violence of the storms that chronically plagued the planet’s upper atmosphere. There was other traffic besides the old freighter, but the hit men who’d been sent to intercept this particular ship—a beat-up old bird that looked like it had traveled from one end of the edge to the other and seen plenty of smuggling runs and close calls—didn’t much notice the traffic. They had a paid contact in Approach Control who’d tagged the ship the moment it entered atmo. And they were ready for it.

  “It’s him,” noted the leader of Team One over the comm channel. “He’s been cleared for Dock Thirty-Five-Oh-One. Team One, stand by to engage as soon as he kills the engines. Boss says the big boys are paying a fifty percent bonus off the top if we take him out now. So… let’s take him out now.”

  Team One’s leader switched comm channels. “Team Two… he’s here. Remember, you’re on backup. Watch customs and don’t get in our way.”

  “We can be patient,” hissed back the leader of Team Two. “We’ll get him when out on the main concourse if he gets by you. Pay is the same no matter who drops him.”

  “If he gets by us. And he ain’t.”

  The word was passed through the teams. It was almost showtime.

  Had they been ex-military, adept at what they were about to do, there would have been comm confirms and then silence. Instead, some kind of alien slang-babble erupted like electronic chitter over the ether. They were excited for the money, and more excited for the kill. You wouldn’t make the mistake of calling them professionals.

  But none of that mattered to the cartel.

  It didn’t matter that none had served in the Legion or learned to kill professionally in some other military organization. They were still dangerous. Each and every one of the hired blasters was a stone-cold killer. That was the ticket that had drawn them from the minor leagues of the galactic backwaters and given them a chance to earn some real credits in the bigs. This was a tryout—a tryout for a major crime syndicate.

  And now here they were, beyond the quiet and ever-gloomy docks out along the station’s main disc, assigned to take out a target before it could reach the main hab sections of Sky City.

  Team One had been scattered across the docking decks, knowing that Approach Control would send the incoming freighter right to them. The cartel had sprung for that trick.

  The hit was a go.

  In the outer corridors, beyond the bays of the main access passage, shadowy blues mixed with the occasional yellow-flashing hazard strobe as each hitter ran across the docks to arrive at Bay 3501 before the target. Even with all that paid intel, the ragtag collection of humans—along with a few aliens who thought they were trick with a blaster rig—barely reached the target’s docking bay in time to meet the landing freighter.

  Using a smart lens, Team One Leader watched a miniature feed from the dock’s inner holocams. He saw the ancient freighter flare its venting repulsors and deploy her three main gears to touch down on the deck. In the background, the force field barrier that shielded the docking portal from the upper atmosphere of Aetheria IX shimmered slightly as the storm surging around Sky City continued its dramatic approach. Brief surges of lightning illuminated distant purple fronts from within, turning the storms into the ghosts of lost titans from some mythic age.

  “Righto,” said the team leader. He was a tall and wiry Tamo who’d once been hung from a light pole out along the edge of the galaxy because the local populace had tired of his shenanigans. His gang had been able to cut him down and revive him, but the rope burns—not to mention the broken neck—had never quite healed right. He had always been a leader, and generally kept a positive outlook on life. But he was a nasty piece of work when he drank, and even nastier in a blaster fight. “Engines are shutting down. Go on three. Put him down fast, boys.”

  All around him thugs and killers, ruiners of lives from all points along the galactic edge, checked their blasters one last time. One of them, a Lahurasian snake-man, hissed a sideways comment about not needing so many others to do such a simple job. “I can do thissss job myssssself. I more than match for ssssome lone bounty hunter sssscumbag.”

  Cartel blasters, like most criminals, hated bounty hunters and the Bronze Guild that represented them, for the simple fact that it was often the bounty hunters who meted out the justice demanded by the citizens. Because on the edge of the Galactic Republic, actual government, or even basic law enforcement, wasn’t a given. So the Bronze Guild brought justice—all the justice those in places like the Reach were ever likely to get. Justice that the galaxy’s dregs who called themselves hired blasters were often on the receiving end of.

  Blast doors separated
the killers from the docking bay where the old freighter had landed. They weren’t very sturdy. Probably not vacuum-resistant. The assassins could hear the engines of the ship cycle down from a high-pitched whine to a slow blare, and then to nothing but the tick and rattle of cooling metal, leaving the bay in a dread silence of anticipation.

  “Ready,” the team leader began, feeling the nerves in his stomach. “On three…”

  “What’s the name of the freighter?” someone asked.

  The team leader glared at the man. “The Obsidian Crow. On three…”

  “That’s a stupid name. What’s a crow?”

  The team leader continued on. “Two… one… Go!”

  The blast doors slid open. The killers formed into a rough wedge and entered the wide, shadowy bay, their blasters out. Before them sat an irregular-slab-shaped freighter with a central cockpit cupola. Her leading edges were blunt like a clenched fist defying their intrusion into its presence. An ancient rust-red paint stripe, chipped and scarred by old battles and a lack of care, ran along her sides, contrasting with her sometimes shiny but mostly dull black metallic hull. She rested on three solid-looking gears. No boarding ramp had been yet lowered.

  The risk now was of the target realizing the danger and flying away.

  But Team One was full of blasters. And just as the team leader was on the verge of ordering everyone to shoot until the ship was disabled, the old freighter vented billowing hot white gas in every direction, filling the bay in a dense and humid fog.

  The team leader switched over to infrared visual, but the hot steam had spiked the temperatures in the bay, making everything glow white.

  A moment later the team leader’s head exploded.

  A pulsed blaster shot had come from a high-powered Venn Automatic Close-Support Sniper Rifle. Its internal suppressor, matched with its octagonal silencer system and charging baffles, muted most of the shot. The only sound that could have been heard—if anything could be heard above the venting hiss of the engines—would have been something akin to the flash and bang of ancient camera equipment.

  The gas had come in so close and hot that the deck was no longer visible. One of the killers stumbled over his team leader’s headless corpse and began shouting that they were under attack already.

  By that time the unseen sniper had taken out three others with quick and accurate fire. By the time the last of the venting gases had been cycled by the bay’s air filtration system not a minute later, all of Team One lay dead on the deck of the docking bay.

  None of them had fired a shot.

  02

  The criminal known as Algus Cain knew that time was running out. Or rather, that it was running out for his client. He had just finished watching the feed from the docking bay where the bounty hunter who was on the client’s trail had set down only a minute earlier.

  He played the video again.

  He watched as the freighter’s engines cycled down. He watched as his best team walked in, his crazy-eyed killers. The ones he had been sure the cartel would thank him for bringing to their attention. At a minimum he should have gotten a wild shootout from them.

  But then some kind of smoke or fog came off the freighter’s engines, obscuring everything. A small strobe effect pulsed from within the fog at precisely timed intervals.

  Probably some warning system doing its thing, Cain had thought on his first viewing.

  But when the smoke cleared, he’d realized that his guess was wrong. The bounty hunter had used a Greiss silencer on a high-powered blaster rifle. Greiss-made silencers were noted for the telltale strobe effect they made when they covered the sound of a shot. Cain swore at himself for not having figured that out right away.

  When their target, the bounty hunter, dropped effortlessly from the portside rear gear well, Cain spoke.

  “Play that back. Thirty seconds.”

  The recorded feed skipped back. Cain had missed it the first time, but now he saw how it had all been done. The bounty hunter was firing from inside the gear well, his head hanging down, the blaster steadied on the belly of the freighter. Maybe he used a magnetic rail? Or maybe he was strong as a gronk. He’d killed everybody while hanging upside down.

  Cain snarled. “Wago-stealin’ freak.” He whispered the words bitterly, but not without just a little bit of respect. That was pure Legion Dark Ops voodoo.

  On the footage, after the bounty hunter dropped down to the deck, he moved forward with a clear sense of economy and purpose. He popped a small panel along the belly of the freighter, stored the state-of-the-art sniper rifle, and took out a small sub-compact auto-blaster, like the kind Dark Ops used for tactical weapons assaults. It was a wicked matte black blaster, the kind that was illegal for anyone but the legionnaires. You couldn’t even own a knock-off. Mandatory “re-education” was the sentence for possessing one.

  Blaster in hand, the armored bounty hunter closed the belly hatch and strode purposefully toward the blast doors to exit the hangar. This was Cain’s first clear view of the man. He froze the image in close-up.

  “Son of a…”

  If it had been any other bounty hunter, the cartel that effectively ran Sky City, along with so many other places out this way, would have had no problem putting him down. But this bounty hunter…

  Now Cain understood.

  With apparent ease, this hunter had eaten up the trail his high-value client had left behind. Nothing thrown at the man had waylaid him in the least. And the cartel had thrown out a lot. They’d tried to cross him up, ambush him, even buy him off. The scumbag hadn’t slowed. Not in the blind alleys and traps the cartel had left behind on Suramar, or Asari Station, or even the flesh pits of Sensia. Hitters at each location, teams of killers pulled from the fringes of the galaxy’s edge, had all been brought in to take out the mysterious hunter on the client’s back trail. And they’d all failed.

  The situation for the cartel had gone from developing, to urgent, to on fire in the space of three weeks. Every back-trail trap and ambush had gone silent. Meaning it was the trappers who had not survived the trap. The ambushers were ambushed. The hunters had become the prey. And then the rumors started. Except they were more like ghost stories, told by merciless killers and psychotic crooks. He’s gonna get you.

  And that’s when they finally brought in Algus Cain.

  Cain finished off the last of the suite’s high-priced Dori gin. He held the cut-crystal glass before his face, torn between smashing it against a wall in frustration and setting it neatly on the table.

  He chose the latter. “Always be professional,” he muttered in a gravelly whiskey baritone. Then he adjusted his jacket and smiled at himself in the suite’s mirror. He was good-looking in a mad dog killer sort of way. Or so he thought.

  And mostly, it was just a thought. “Mad dog killer” was a phrase he used to convince himself he was something more than he actually was. More than what he’d been: the fastest blaster out along the Dantares Run a few years back. Which meant he was little more than a hired gun shooting down bad gambling debts and rival gang members. A simple thug and murderer who dreamed of a bigger slice of the galaxy just for himself.

  And then came those first cartel jobs. And life toward the core. And the emergence of a legitimate businessman. Of sorts. Yes, he still killed. He did all the other things thugs do. But now he did it in the world of intergalactic finance. There was profit-sharing, performance incentives, a chance to make a difference in the retirement accounts that had been set up on off-planet banks.

  At least for himself.

  He had three million in credits hidden on Pthalo. The place where—according to rumor—delegates from the House of Reason kept their secret earnings from all the off-book schemes that weren’t necessarily government business.

  Cain buckled the lower strap of his gun belt around his thigh, pulled the Intec Katana-model blaster from its holster, and ch
ecked the charge pack. Satisfied, he re-holstered the wicked-yet-workmanlike sidearm and stared, almost listlessly, out at the swirling gas clouds of Aetheria’s upper atmosphere.

  It was time to do what he’d always done best in his life. Be faster with a blaster than the other guy.

  Sky City was clearly visible, even in the storm. Three massive discs, stacked one atop the other, floating through the upper atmosphere of Aetheria IX. Each disc was the size of a planetary super metropolis. Taken together, the three discs, each stacked just off the one below, looked like a trio of steps meant for a giant. And across each disc were hundreds of levels of lights, twinkling to life in the early evening. There was no question about it: Sky City was beautiful.

  Algus Cain saw none of it. All he could see was the image in his mind’s eye: the frozen image of the bounty hunter in close-up. Coming for the high-value target. And therefore coming for him, Algus Cain, who was being paid incredibly good credits to stand in the way.

  “Team Two is down,” said a small voice in Algus’s ear. It was the bot monitoring traffic between the teams.

  “D4,” Cain said to the bot, “re-direct Teams Three, Four and Five to secure the route to the hangar.” There was a natural coldness to his voice that made him sound casually calm. Or so he’d been told. “We’re getting out of here. Now. Destroy our electronic trail and take care of yourself.”

  There was a pause. Then the bot came back over the comm, its tone tentative and unsure. But it was, as always, a servant ready to serve, despite the sociopath it happened to be indentured to.

  “Are you calling a burn notice, sir?”

  “Yeah,” replied Cain without pity—or anything else that registered as human.

  The bot would fire-bomb their warehouse office and destroy itself according to the job’s parameters as set forth by management in the cartel. That it was the end of runtime for the bot didn’t bother a killer like Cain in the least. Bots didn’t even register as a part of his hierarchy of victims. Not even worthy of the term “collateral damage.” That term was reserved for living beings. For star cruisers full of passengers. Who would give a damn about a bot? Cain least of all.