8

“Make contact with Jelly and get an update,” I ordered. “If I was running Brigg’s operation, I’d have a team with eyes on the ship. The easiest place to take somebody down is when they’re trying to board. Getting them once they’re inside is exponentially more difficult. Finding a target in a city the size of Layton 5 is nearly impossible without a network of informants.”

“I am conversing with her now,” X-37 said. “Where are you going?”

I didn’t answer. X would figure it out soon. A man was haggling with the captain of a nearby ship. This time, I was positive of the man’s identity. The sound of his voice carried and his mannerisms were unique.

“That is Byron Thane,” I said. Excitement, guilt, and host of emotions coursed through me at the sight of him. He had been well known among Reapers. Stronger, faster, and braver than anyone I’d met before or since, Byron Thane had been a force of nature.

“It is impossible for me to argue,” X-37 said. “I am forwarding the images to Jelly for high resolution storage. You are too far from this stranger to make contact before he boards. Now would be a good time to return to our own ship.”

I sprinted toward the ship, determined to grab hold of this imposter, demand his identity, and beat the truth out of him or kill him—whichever came first.

He looked at me from the gangway, eyes bright and full of attitude.

I couldn’t believe how young he looked, how fit. Nothing I’d done had kept me in that kind of physical condition—and I put in plenty of time at the gym.

Stunned, I wasn’t sure what to do. My mind fumbled for explanations and could only come up with partial information from Doctor Hastings on Dreadmax. This had to be something from the Lex-tech research.

They’d healed him and turned him into a super soldier who would make Callus look like a spineless wimp.

“Get back to the Jellybird!” X-37 shouted in my head.

I stopped. X-37 was right. That didn’t keep me from wondering what the hell was going on. I’d seen the man die. We’d been running parallel missions and I hadn't had time to stop and help him even if I could have.

“Where’s that ship headed?” I asked as I rushed back to the Jellybird.

“We can’t access that information from the spaceport,” X-37 answered.

“Something’s weird about the interference,” Jelly said. “I’m being blocked by a high-level operator.”

“Of course you are,” I said. “Maybe you can’t tell me this, Jelly, but I bet X recognizes the technique.”

“I do. It’s something a Reaper would do. Very basic, entry level stuff, but definitely a Reaper hack,” X-37 confirmed.

* * *

I went straight to the bridge and took a seat in the captain’s chair, but wasn’t thinking about piloting, I was replaying memories in my head. No one, not even X-37, knew what I had seen that day.

The mission that killed Byron Thane had occurred during a time when our unit commanders thought pitting us against each other was an effective tactic. Essentially, everything was done in parallel, ensuring that at least one of us would succeed. Our mission planners acted like it was a competition and even gave out stupid prizes when we came back.

Best kill.

Best HALO jump.

Closest call.

Everything was a game to those assholes. Because they never deployed with us, or near us, or on the same planet as the mission. I'm pretty sure there was an officer's betting pool.

It’d been a multiple assassination that went off without a hitch. We had taken down seven targets at five locations, then vanished before their security teams could respond. The problem came when we tried to exfiltrate from the planet.

I’d been on one rooftop, guiding a stealth shuttle into our landing zone with an infrared pointer. The simple technique worked well when the enemy forces were expecting something more complex.

Thane had been two buildings over doing the same thing.

We both realized we’d been made at the same time. He engaged the sniper, a losing proposition because the enemy marksman had been in position for hours with plenty of time to get the range and atmosphere readings.

Thane was good at long-range shooting, probably better than I was, but there was no way he could do that on the fly. The moment he started returning fire, the sniper put all his attention on him.

The weapon the enemy marksman was using was almost a cannon, firing rounds that could travel for several kilometers without any drop or variation unless the shot was fired in the middle of a hurricane.

I could’ve put some suppressive fire on the sniper’s general position, drew away some of his wrath, but my shuttle was almost there. I looked at Thane through my scope just as a round the size of my fist hit him in the chest.

Chunks of his armor had flown out his back. He had fallen immediately to the ground and the shuttle that had been almost there to pick him up turned away. Later, the pilot swore under oath that Byron Thane was dead.

“You seem distracted,” X-37 said.

“I was thinking about the day Byron Thane died,” I said.

“You’ve stated more than once that he could not have survived his injuries,” X-37 said.

“But what if he did? What if he managed to come back from the dead and take the bounty on Greendale that is so lucrative?” I asked.

“It’s unlikely, to say the least,” X-37 said. “Do you believe in magic? Because any technology that could accomplish such a feat would look and feel like magic to us.”

“You know the Greendale bounty has to be Elise,” I said.

“That would be a logical conclusion.” X-37 didn’t really sound like he gave a damn—because he was a soulless machine that didn’t understand.

“Jelly, get us away from this star port and find a slip tunnel to Greendale,” I ordered.

“I will have to damage the docking clamps to break free. There will be fines and we’ll be banned from returning, assuming the Union doesn’t impound me and put you back on death row,” Jelly said.

“Then you better not let us get caught,” I said.

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