Galaxy's Edge_Tin Man Read online

  Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Day One

  Day Two

  Day Three

  Day Four

  Years Later

  More Galaxy's Edge

  Join the Legion

  Legionnaire

  TIN MAN

  By Jason Anspach

  & Nick Cole

  Copyright © 2017

  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: Fabian Saravia

  Cover Design: Beaulistic Book Services

  For more information:

  Website: GalacticOutlaws.com

  Facebook: facebook.com/atgalaxysedge

  Newsletter: InTheLegion.com

  “The Order of the Centurion is the highest award that can be bestowed upon an individual serving in, or with, the Legion. When such an individual displays exceptional valor in action against an enemy force, and uncommon loyalty and devotion to the Legion and its legionnaires, refusing to abandon post, mission, or brothers, even unto death, the Legion dutifully recognizes such courage with this award.”

  98.4% of all citations are awarded posthumously.

  Day One

  The Battle of the Aachon Valley took place in the northern highlands on Psydon, out along the spiral arm of the Milky Way in the long years after the end of the Savage Wars. The galactic-wide conflict was finally, definitively, over, but before the irradiated superstructures of ruined Savage cruisers could even stop glowing, the galaxy erupted into hundreds of brushfire conflicts. Long-held grudges, and grievances that had been left simmering in favor of the more imminent problem of the Savage Wars, at once determined that the time to settle up was now.

  The Third Legion Expeditionary Force under the command of General Maar had been dispatched to quell the revolt on Psydon. Its legionnaires quickly found themselves in well over their bucketed heads. The entire planet had fallen under the gaze of a hypnotic rebel demagogue who argued that all taxation was theft, especially the high rate demanded by the Galactic Republic. “An outrageous level of robbery that could only be achieved by a government,” he was often heard to say.

  The message proved to be popular.

  ***

  Reese made it back to his pre-fab cans at firebase Mojo sometime before midnight. As the ground crew taxied his bird into the maintenance hangar, he could still hear the Psydon Doro rebels shelling the hell out of the jungle, and underneath that were the sounds of heavy automatic blaster fire in sudden streaming bursts.

  The Doro were coming out into the night to take the fight to the legionnaires. Reese would sleep, safe and secure, but the leejes out there wouldn’t be so lucky. A few of them might be dead by dawn, their bodies waiting for him to come get them at first light.

  You don’t make night runs for the dead.

  Reese went to the supply module and pulled out some rags, a bucket, and cleaning solution. He returned to his ship, Angel 26, back in the maintenance hangar. Already the techs were patching the blaster holes and cannibalizing the hangar queens for more parts. All had to be ready again by dawn.

  “You’d better work on fixing the thrust ailerons and yaw stabilizers first,” Reese called out to the techs. “They went bad halfway through the day.”

  When the maintenance chief saw Captain Reese with a bucket in one hand and rags and solution in the other, he efficiently stepped in the way to cut Reese off before he could climb into the cockpit.

  “No sir,” he said. “That’s our job. We’ll take care of it.”

  Reese stopped, staring hard at the man.

  “No, it was my job,” he said. “I was supposed to take care of him. I’ll clean up his blood and…”

  Brains.

  There had been brains all over that side of the cockpit glass. Reese hadn’t been able to take his eyes off it.

  “… and everything else, too,” he finished.

  The chief nodded once, but didn’t let the captain pass. “I know that, sir. We’ll… take care of him, sir. It’s our job. It’s what we do. Let us do our jobs, sir.”

  And so Reese surrendered. Too tired to fight. The truth was, he’d never been a fighter. And how one ended up in the Republic Marines by not being a fighter was a mystery he never could quite figure out.

  It had never really been up to him anyway. Personnel knew best. And they’d made him a medical SLIC pilot. Just like that. As though personnel had some kind of infinite wisdom that guided it through a galaxy that made less and less sense every day.

  Back at his prefab, he sat down on his cot and pulled out the Faldaren scotch that he and Doger—whose brains decorated his SLIC’s window—always kept for post mission “debriefs.” Something between just the two of them. He splashed some into each of their canteen cups, picked up his own cup, and drank. Then he poured some more.

  Reese sniffed and assessed the room. They’d already come and taken Doger’s belongings away. There was just an empty cot, a tiny bare desk, the cup, and his friend’s half of the scotch.

  Reese pulled out his datapad and brought up some music.

  Classical. Ancient music. From back when man had been something different. Back before the galaxy opened up. That was what he would listen to. Doger had hated it. Everyone had hated it. But ever since Reese took an archaic classical music appreciation class back in college, he’d been hooked. He scrolled through his list, looking at all the ancient songs. To so many in the galaxy, these symphonies and sonatas were now meaningless. But once, long ago, they had meant something.

  He landed on a song that seemed right. Not a favorite, but the right choice, its words and melancholy promising to express what he felt. Or didn’t feel. He was empty. He was alone.

  He clicked play. And there in the tent, in the dark, as the buzz ships went out on their night missions to kill as many of the enemy as they could, while dug-in legionnaires hunkered beneath typhoons of distant artillery reaching out to land atop them on their hill forts, as someone somewhere transported what had been his co-pilot onto a ship heading back to the core, an ancient musical group known as America began to sing about a “Horse with No Name.” He listened to all the old and lost songs from another time and place—not the one where he found himself.

  Day Two

  Captain Reese awoke before dawn. Already the first SLICS were up, on recon flights capable of swift strikes before the Doro disappeared back into their jungle hideouts. These SLICs would be the first to see what the battlefield looked like. Next would be the gunships, going out to kill in adult-sized doses. And then the medical SLICS to get any dead or walking wounded.

  Reese drank his breakfast. More of the scotch. He wasn’t hungry. He suited up, cleaned up as best he could, and made his way to flight ops.

  “I’d tell you that you don’t have to go up,” said the commanding officer when he saw Reese. “But we need everyone out there today.”

  The CO, a man with thinning hair, turned to the smartmap. He waved his hand across a tributary at the northeastern end of the basin, expanding it to terrain-level detail.

  “Some scouts got into a big firefight about three this morning. They were trying to find a way up into the jungle hills to get at the arty. Got hit by a battalio
n of Doro regulars. Bad fight. We sent a Pathfinder upriver to secure a landing zone. Dense canopy up in there. Pathfinder nailed down this river,” the map pulsed as he spoke the words, “as your LZ. It’s shallow, and you can set down or hover long enough for them to get the wounded aboard. Need you to be in the air in the next five, Reese.”

  Reese turned, grabbed his flight helmet, and headed for the SLICs out on the flight line. He felt the CO watch him go. Both men knew Reese shouldn’t fly. But everything was precarious right now, and a bad night led to a bad morning.

  ***

  Angel 26 looked like not-new. Where she’d been shot up, there were now gray patches of hull plaster. At least the co-pilot’s side glass in the canopy had been replaced. Doger’s brains were gone.

  Reese climbed the short stairs to the landing pad and met Sergeant MacWray, his SLIC gunner. Reese chose to ignore the look on the man’s face. He grabbed the datapad and pretended to look at it instead.

  He was still slightly drunk. And so he felt himself not caring much. People like Doger were getting wasted in this fight, and he didn’t care.

  Might as well get killed too, he heard himself think.

  “Uh… sir,” began MacWray, “they still haven’t assigned us a door gunner, but we got a new… ahem… co-pilot.”

  Reese looked up above the lenses of his aviator shades. He’d worn them to cover his bloodshot eyes. Too bad he’d forgotten to shave—that would have helped with the sobriety act.

  Across the pad lumbered an ancient war bot. One of the heavies from back in the day.

  “You’re kidding.”

  MacWray shook his head, indicating that he was not kidding the officer in any way, shape, or form.

  “What the hell is that?” muttered Reese.

  “That, college kid, is a bona fide HK model 58,” said MacWray. “Heavy infantry specialty, I believe, sir. And, as I understand it from the ground crew, since there are no more pilots available for reassignment to our bird, they’ve swapped out Lieutenant Doger…” MacWray paused.

  They’d all been pretty close.

  MacWray started over. “They swapped out the co-pilot’s seat and installed a docking interface for the bot.”

  The war bot was easily seven feet tall. But despite its imposing size, it looked to Reese like little more than a giant robot child. They hadn’t even put a coat of jungle tiger stripe across its chassis to protect it from visual targeting. Which probably didn’t matter much, if its purpose was as a co-pilot. But you never knew. And it might have inspired a bit more confidence.

  Its almost dopey “face” watched the ground crew complete the final pre-flight.

  Reese shook his head. “Well, why not? It might as well be this way.” He handed the datapad to the crew chief and headed toward the bird.

  “Don’t worry, sir,” shouted MacWray after him. “They told me they don’t go haywire and kill everyone anymore.”

  Another SLIC departed off of a nearby pad. It moved nose down, the wicked thing loaded with replacement leejes, who were hanging off the doors and auto-turrets. The pilot gave a brief “Tally Ho” salute, and warm blast-wash swept the pad.

  Reese tried to walk past the ancient war machine like it wasn’t there. He hoped it wouldn’t speak to him. If its voice was anything like the ones he’d seen in the movies, it would be like working with a nightmare. Their audio programming was designed to inspire fear and dread in enemy combatants. They were designed to be the embodiment of the proverbial Death Machine humanity had always worried they’d one day make real so they could kill themselves more efficiently.

  Instead the voice that spoke to him was pleasant, even hopeful. The deferential voice of the servitor bot.

  “Good morning, Captain. My name is H292. I was told to report…”

  Reese continued past the thing, mumbling and shaking his head.

  As he climbed into the cockpit, the bot said, “I hope I have what it takes to be of service today, Captain.”

  Reese moved from the SLIC’s cargo deck to the flight deck, shaking his head as though some note of finality had rung.

  “Oz never gave the Tin Man anything that he didn’t already have,” he said.

  The bot straightened. Its emotive software clearly indicated that it had not expected that particular reply.

  Reese saw this and understood.

  “Climb aboard, Tin Man. And try not to get us killed.”

  Pop culture had convinced many, not without evidence, that the ancient war bots from the middle era of the Savage Wars were not only dangerous to the enemy, but equally dangerous to those who worked with them. There had been some faulty programming issues that caused friendly casualties on occasion. The slicers had some fancy technical name for it, but the legionnaires at the time called it “berzerking.” Put a war bot in dire enough circumstances, and everything became a target. A side effect of early AI development. The official position of the government, and the defense contractors, was that the problem had been solved long ago and that there had been no verifiable incidents since.

  But movies like War Bot Massacre, which every kid with inattentive parents had seen, put other ideas into the heads of the population at large.

  The war bot climbed up on the fuselage like some herculean mechanical gorilla and folded itself into the co-pilot’s section of the cockpit. Reese was already in there, plugging in and checking systems.

  “I assure you sir, you will not die as a result of my actions. This does not mean you won’t die because of—”

  “Yeah, sure,” mumbled Reese. He set the repulsors to standby and ran the yoke through its actions, checking thrust ailerons and yaw compensators. “Trust me, I get it.”

  “Sergeant MacWray is aboard,” the bot reported. “We are ready for departure.”

  A few minutes later it was gear up, and the bot had the necessary clearances.

  “Shall I fly, Captain?” asked the bot.

  Reese shot the thing a withering glare.

  Then a thought occurred to Reese, and just for the giggles his dark sense of humor required, he asked the bot, “Have you ever flown a SLIC, uh…?” He’d forgotten the bot’s designation already.

  “H292,” the war bot replied genially. “No, Captain. I’ve only had the proper aviation install for three hours and thirty-six minutes. But the software has made me fully proficient, and I’m keen to try.”

  “Maybe another time, Tin Man.”

  Reese guided the bird away from the pad, and soon they were over the outer defenses and crossing above the carbon-black terrain the Legion had scorched around their larger base perimeter in order to create a wide and vast kill zone.

  That was always a good way to find where the Legion lived. Just look for the scorched earth.

  Reese took up a course heading into the northeast of the basin and got a higher altitude clearance from air traffic.

  Down below, heading west, a flight of heavily armed gun SLICs were racing toward Hilltop Defiance. As Reese followed a highlighted course to the LZ in the HUD, he tuned in and listened to the comm traffic. A Legion commander of the defenses at Defiance was calmly telling the gunships to hurry and hit the targets he’d set up.

  Reese knew Hilltop Defiance well. The target points the commander was identifying were inside the wire. The Legion was getting hit again in the day after a night of fighting, and it wasn’t even 0600 local. The commander’s ability to remain calm under those conditions spoke volumes about why the Legion was the best fighting force in the galaxy.

  And perhaps relied on too heavily, Reese thought. Why some Republic admiral didn’t just shuttle the guys up and then utterly defoliate the jungle with the Doro in it, was a mystery to Reese.

  Off to the west, along the main river course that ran through the basin, a big firefight was going down between some amphibious armor and the Doro. But speed and jungle haze conspired to keep Reese from seeing any more of the battle. So instead he watched the green mountains along the north end of the basin. Ensconced t
here was a powerful Doro artillery brigade. They weren’t firing now, but they’d be firing soon enough. Another target that should be treated to orbital bombardment… but wasn’t.

  This is a bad war, Reese thought. Not for the first time.

  He keyed the comm and switched over to the Pathfinder running the LZ they were headed into. “Creeper, this is Angel 26. We are inbound on your position in five. Heads up.”

  Reese waited. There was no reply.

  “Maybe they are dead already, Captain,” intoned the war bot from the co-pilot’s seat.

  “Say again, Creeper, this is Angel—”

  “We read you, Two-Six. We got Dobies all over us. We’re hunkered… but when you come into the LZ it’s gonna get real kinetic real fast.”

  House of Reason won’t like that use of slang when they review the comm logs, thought Reese. But the Legion generally ignored the bureaucratic silliness of the government. They had their own comm system that the House of Reason, Senate, and even the other branches of the Republic military industrial complex couldn’t access. The marines, on the other hand, because they were a branch of Repub Navy, had to watch their Ps and Qs in order to avoid mandatory sensitivity training blocks.

  “What are Dobies?” asked the war bot. “I’m currently running through my database and I can find no such mission-specific reference to assets or unit tags.”

  “That’s what we call the enemy,” Reese answered. “The Doro look like a certain breed of dog.”

  “Ah… yes!” said the bot. “Now that makes perfect sense.” Looking satisfied, it returned its vision forward.

  Reese shook his head and keyed his comm. “Creeper, we’ll come in fast and get ’em aboard as quickly as possible. Then we’re out. How many wounded? Any expectants?”