Madame Guillotine

shuttle just entering the airspace.
“Negative. These are on the ground. Say again. Trying 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