Madame Guillotine Read online

  The Legion sergeant in command of Switchblade, Sean “Shaker” Lopez, had decided to get involved after listening to the shotcaller and the point in charge of weapons release argue about what should be done next now that a bird had been shot down in the streets.

  “Negative, Sergeant Lopez… you do not have permission to effect a rescue at this time,” said the point over L-comm as the shuttle lifted off from the rooftop. “We are working on less politically volatile solutions at the moment.”

  Cave, the team’s number two, gave Shaker a tilt of his bucket. They were all getting the “stand down” orders over their L-comm from the point.

  Shaker took one hand off his N-4, tapped his bucket near the ear, and indicated bad comm. Then made a knife-edge gesture to continue.

  The shuttle blew dust and grit off the roof and pulled itself up into the smoky sky over Detron, correcting course toward the crash site.

  * * *

  “They’re dragging the pilot out of the wreck.”

  She said it matter-of-factly. Plainspoken despite the implications. Reaper Actual’s transmission was the opposite of almost all the traffic over the comm. It was calm and sure where everything else was confused and chaotic. Outlaw Nine, the marine gunship shot down by the rocket, seemed to be the sole topic of discussion. The shotcaller gave orders to various marine elements located in the area of operation. And those multiple elements were all talking over one another trying to get the job done.

  “I see smoke but no fire,” interrupted someone over comm who’d failed to identify themselves. They sounded breathless and hurried. Like they were running. Blaster fire could be heard in the background of their transmission.

  “Dammit…” swore the Legion point. “Who’s firing? Is that us or the civilians? They’re not supposed to be armed.”

  Reaper Actual watched from her airborne vantage point as the pilot was dragged into the sea of black-and-red masked figures swarming the wreckage of the old SLIC gunship. It had gone down in an intersection after smashing into the second story of what looked like a bank. Debris and bodies—a mix of marines and Soshies caught in the wrong place at the wrong time—were scattered away from the craft, which was lying on its side.

  “Drone recon shows military and civilian casualties,” said someone from Intel.

  “For Oba’s sake!” shouted the Legion point. “Of course we have casualties! A damned bird just went down in the middle of an exercise in civil demonstration. Our biggest problem will be if any of the protestors were killed on the ground. If that happens…”

  “Pilot’s dead.” She said the words into the ether of the comm during a pause in the point’s rant. All discourse stopped for a few seconds. Then she added: “Not from the crash. Someone shot him.”

  She’d watched it all through her scope.

  Most of the frenzied protestors had looked to be there for the experience. Some had been trying to tear away souvenirs from the twisted and broken craft. Others showed compassion and shouted for aid and help. Not only for their own, but also for some of the marines. They squared off briefly, warring among themselves, some of the masked Soshies pushing others. Protectors trying to stave off wolves who wanted nothing more than to kick a marine while down.

  The pilot had survived the crash, and Reaper Actual had looked on as a pair of Soshies helped him from the SLIC’s broken canopy, his arms around their shoulders. It was an endearing scene that hinted that maybe the Republic wasn’t as fractured as the media might lead you to believe.

  And then a pro walked up, produced a small Python blaster—a holdout version perfect for concealing on an ankle—and blew the pilot’s brains out.

  The sudden blaster fire had sent several rioters fleeing. Those who stayed behind seemed to mix well with the pros. There for blood. A few ran up and kicked the pilot’s corpse, but they were awkward, unpracticed kicks. As though they understood the concept of physical activity but lacked the ability to execute.

  “I still have a sight picture on the shooter,” she continued.

  “Do not engage!” shouted the point. “Repeat, do not return fire. All elements, hold your fire.”

  Reaper Actual watched as the co-pilot, the weapons system operator for the gunship SLIC, was hauled from the aft cargo deck. She was unconscious, and one arm was badly mangled. Reaper Actual scanned the waiting, throbbing crowd surrounding the wreck. The merciful ones, the sane ones… they were gone now. Gone, or waiting far in the back. Away from their peers whose feet had run swiftly toward blood and violence.

  Away from the shooter.

  As he pressed forward toward the unconscious weapons system operator—probably some second lieutenant from the aviation branch serving to get money for college—Reaper Actual made up her mind, right then and there, that she’d pull the trigger on the N-18 if the pro made a move to repeat his murder of the pilot. Maybe she could save the shavetail’s life. Maybe.

  “What’s your sitrep?” asked Oh-Two from the flight deck. “I’m getting the order to return to base. Services no longer needed, Amanda.”

  “I’m watchin’ him,” she grunted.

  “The guy?”

  “The guy who shot the pilot, yeah. He’s waiting for something. Not close enough to shoot her yet, but he’s watching her.”

  Oh-Two knew what would happen next. And he didn’t like it. He wasn’t a hero. Just a guy who’d once been a boy who stood at the edge of a star port gripping a mesh wire fence just to get close to the ships out there on the pads. All he’d ever wanted to do was fly. No, he wasn’t a hero, but he knew the difference between right and wrong. So he held station and ignored the order to return to base.

  Reaper Actual followed the shooter’s eyes to the approaching unit. That was the only word she could think of to describe the group that was moving in through the crowd, pushing through everyone. Violently. Moving fast and hard to reach the weapons officer being dragged down off the wreck of Outlaw Nine.

  “Got something…” she said.

  “What is it?” asked Oh-Two. His voice was nervous and harsh. A little desperate to not have to do the right heroic thing for too much longer. He was thirsty and barking at her because this was about to get bad and he knew it. He took his hand off the lift collective and quickly wiped the sweat there onto his flight suit.

  “Group of pros. Moving in quickly. Organized and looking to extract.”

  “How do you know they’re pros?”

  She didn’t reply for a long second as she watched them through her scope. They moved together, watching all the angles. They had weapons held low—maybe subcompact blasters, but the crowd was getting in the way and preventing her scope from tagging them for identification. The men moved like they had military training. Hence the notion of them being a unit.

  “They’re operators. Mercs or something. Maybe MCR? Sense of urgency and on a mission. Not losing their sket like all the kids around them. They’re up to something, and they mean to get it done.”

  She continued to watch the men through the N-18’s scope.

  “Uh… Command, this is Reaper Oh-Two,” said the pilot over the comm. “Actual says she’s got something funny going down at the crash site, over.”

  The shotcaller came back instantly. “Define funny, Oh-Two.”

  “Says she thinks there are some bad actors mixed in with the crowd and trying to extract one of the crew. Is the Legion in the mix?”

  “Bad actors” was marine code for professional paramilitary types acting on behalf of the rioters or an unidentified foreign source.

  There was a long pause.

  “Legion QRF is inbound to the crash site. You should have traffic at your two o’clock. The shuttle is at altitude two thousand feet heading two seven zero.”

  Oh-Two tracked the inbound shuttle just entering the airspace.

  “Negative. These are on the ground. Say again. Tryin
g to extract one of the crewmembers, over.”

  “Then negative. Not our boys.” replied the shotcaller.

  Oh-Two swore.

  “I heard,” said Reaper Actual from the cargo deck. Eye still staring into the scope. Not a muscle moving. Like some statue that couldn’t be moved even if the SLIC that carried her crashed. “They got her. Definitely some kind of extraction team. They’re taking her through the crowd and keeping ’em off her.”

  But just as she said that one of the black-and-red-clad rioters, wearing a Gentleman Johnny mask, reached out and struck the unconscious weapons officer. One of the men in the unit pushed the rioter back into the seething crowd, and they struggled on with her.

  “Tagging her,” said Reaper Actual. “They’re making for an alley. Come about on a heading of two four zero and follow. Eyes on target.”

  Oh-Two watched the scope’s feed on a small monitor located above the flight controls. From the navigation HUD, he knew exactly where they were taking her. Out of the intersection and down an alley that led away from the bulk of the rioters. Maybe they were working for the Legion or some other government agency not declaring itself on scene. Who knew?

  Oh-Two highlighted the inbound shuttle dropship and opened a comm channel.

  “Ghost One, this is Reaper Oh-Two, we have an intel update for your passengers.”

  The pilot aboard was smart and didn’t waste time. With two long clicks and a beep he linked the incoming traffic back to the operators loaded inside the assault shuttle.

  “Reaper Oh-Two, go for Switchblade.”

  “Switchblade, this is Reaper team on site. We have one of the crew being extracted away from the crash site. Unless these guys are yours, she’s in the hands of some unfriendlies, over.”

  * * *

  Shaker studied the image being fed to him by the SLIC on station above even the highest rooftops over the crash site. Sure enough, someone had snagged one of the crew. Probably taking a hostage for propaganda.

  That was not going to happen.

  “We’re going in,” said Shaker over L-comm. “They got one of the crew. Scrub securing the crash site. We’ll go after the missing crewmember before they can disappear her into their network. Probably the best chance we got is right now.”

  “Captain Betae says we’re a no go.” It was Lightspeed. Call-signed such because he spoke with a slow drawl. “But I’m just notin’ that so we can all ignore it right, Sar’nt?”

  “Affirmative, Lightspeed. Betae is a weasel. Weasels are not to be listened to when the twarg dung hits the jump inducer. Copy?”

  “Copy,” drawled Lightspeed.

  “Blasters up?” asked Cave.

  “Negative. Non-lethal unless they start shooting.”

  “Can’t put down for you leejes,” said the shuttle pilot. “No clean space.”

  “Then you know what that means, Ghost?”

  “Ropes it is. Stand by to deploy.”

  Fast-rappel synthetic cables—speed ropes—popped and deployed from small boxes over each operator mount.

  “Clip in,” Shaker ordered.

  A second later he got what he needed to go.

  “In,” called Cave.

  “In,” said Beers, the newest team member, for whom no one had yet come up with a call sign. His last name being what it was, he likely wouldn’t get one. Lightspeed had commented once that Beers “just sounded like a call sign all the same, Sar’nt.”

  And finally an “I’m in,” from Lightspeed.

  “Drop on five…”

  They were now over the same alley the masked men were carrying the flight officer down. It wasn’t as crowded as the riot-swollen intersection where some of the protestors were starting to batter the corpses of the flight crew that had been killed in the crash and tossed from the wreckage while others posed for grisly holophotos. But it was crowded enough.

  “What about them that’s on the ground below?” asked Lightspeed.

  “In for a big surprise,” answered Shaker as he began to count. His breathing was rapid and controlled. He knew this day was turning into a major situation.

  The ramifications of letting an officer be taken hostage were beyond him, but most likely it would rank up there with Real Bad Juju. Legion and Repub brass would be all over this situation within hours. The best win that could be had out of this day in which almost an entire flight crew had been killed was to make sure the one still surviving didn’t end up as a prop on the media streams running endless Soshie propaganda in the ratings-grab known as What will happen next.

  They might court-martial him for disobeying the point. But he doubted that would happen. Not after the pilot had been killed. He was within his mandate to do everything he could to prevent more deaths. That’s why the Legion had stationed a QRF and some assets in this mess. To prevent it from getting messier.

  “Five…”

  On zero they dropped right into a hot mess getting messier by the second.

  As the legionnaires jumped out, the cables fell, slapping the pavement of the shady alley like sudden whip cracks from a tyrannasquid’s tentacles. The protestors instinctively moved away, swearing and screaming as the legionnaires dropped down from above them like charcoal-dusted angels of death.

  But amazingly, the Soshies didn’t stay scared long. Within seconds one came in and struck Cave across the bucket with a glass bottle. Obviously the kid—another Gentleman Johnny– a masked student who fancied himself a holonet tough guy because he had a hundred thousand of his friends on his side—didn’t understand how Legion armor worked. Or rather, how most things didn’t work on Legion armor. Like bottles. Or rocks. Or a steel pipe.

  The bottle shattered harmlessly. Cave shattered the kid’s mask and teeth in return with the butt of his rifle. One powerfully concise movement.

  “Excessive force” is what the holos would have called it, had it been recorded. But Cave had served with the Seventh on Danaar. And that level of violence against the Grum had been the only kind of force that worked on those howling beasts. Shaker would have to cite that in the after-action if asked to explain why a protestor was suing the Legion for facial reconstruction surgery.

  He filed that under the least of his current problems.

  Two kids came at him swinging metal batons. Against marines in riot gear, that might’ve been enough. Perhaps it already had been, and a past success had led them to the false conclusion that they could handle legionnaires in the same manner. Shaker quickly disabused them of this notion. While maintaining a sight picture with his N-4 on a growing mob at the entrance to the alley, he delivered a series of offhand blows, the last of which was a solid throat punch that made the kid no doubt wonder if he was ever going to breathe again as he fell to his knees in the dirty alley, begging for air.

  The kid’s buddy left him there, disappearing back into the crowd.

  Both Lightspeed and Beers had dealt with their own rioters. Idealistic youths resisting the powers that be by attacking legionnaires on a rescue mission. Make sense of that. Now those youths were either unconscious or crawling back to their brethren while puking their guts out along the pavement.

  “Let’s roll, Switchblade,” ordered Shaker to the rest of the QRF. “Form up… wedge. I’ll take point. Need to move at the double to catch up.”

  He switched over comm to the Reaper team on overwatch somewhere above, hidden behind a nearby building. The comm went live a moment before he transmitted, and he could hear their engines and repulsors. The shuttle that had dropped his team was long gone and wouldn’t be back until they needed extraction.

  “Switchblade to Reaper… which way did they go?”

  03

  The first intimation that things were going from seriously south of bad to completely messed up was when Lightspeed’s vitals grayed out in Shaker’s HUD.

  “Lightspeed… comm check?
”

  Maybe it was just a malfunction.

  That’s what Shaker was desperately wishing at that moment. Because it would be some good news in what was turning out to be all bad news in the making. And as team leader, he couldn’t help but feel it was his fault. That was leadership. Real leadership.

  They’d gone down the alley, tracking on the last known location of the team that had snatched the weapons officer out of the downed bird. The Reaper team above had the best intel coverage, but they’d lost the tangos in the warren of routes the alley had turned into, only picking up small glimpses of what they thought was the team from an altitude of at least eight hundred feet as the SLIC pilot tried not to hit any of the buildings. Or take ground fire.

  The last thing any of them needed right now was another downed bird.

  Blaster fights were definitely breaking out around the crash site. Either because the shotcaller had gotten his way and sent the marines back in to take the scene, or because the agitators had decided to start shooting to create more chaos among the rioters.

  Or maybe it was just a convenient time for accounts to be settled up among the various street gangs.

  Shaker didn’t have to deal with any of that at the moment. As they made their way deeper into the shadowy alley and started taking tangents to pursue their quarry, Shaker had two immediate, gnawing problems. First, the flight officer. He needed to get her back in friendly hands before a bad day turned into a major stellar incident. Second, the crowd of rioters who’d followed them into the warren. They were keeping back, but it was clear they were waiting for the right moment to try something. They’d already lobbed a few gas bombs, obviously unaware that Legion armor and filtration systems handled such weapons effortlessly. Still, it indicated intent. And the intent to harm was clearly evident.