StarCraft II: Devil's Due Read online

  And in front of the car, his eyes wide, his arms spread out as if he could actually protect the thing with his skinny body, stood not a Confederate guard but a mousy man in a uniform that marked him as a government employee.

  Tychus blinked, his weapon trained on the man as Raynor’s was, but didn’t fire. “Son,” he said, transferring the rifle to one hand and reaching into his pocket, “would you mind telling me just what the hell you think you’re doing standing there?”

  The man was trembling so hard, Raynor marveled that he could even stand erect. “Sir,” he said, his voice shaking, “I am a duly retained employee of the CBPMVI and I very, very much regret to inform you that I cannot permit you to take the contents of this safe.”

  Tychus paused, an unlit stogie halfway to his mouth. “That’s a mouthful of letters. Son? You don’t want to be fooling around with old Tychus Findlay.”

  The man went milk-pale. “Oh, dear,” he managed. Clearly he knew the name. His watery blue eyes darted over to Raynor, then back to Tychus. He swallowed hard as Tychus put the stogie between his lips, lit it, and took a few puffs.

  “Mr. Findlay, Mr. Raynor, sir—if this were my stack of Confederate credits, I can’t tell you how honored I would feel if you were the ones to steal it from me. But this doesn’t belong to me. It belongs to the government of the Confederacy of Man, and I am charged as an employee of the Confederate Bureau of Protection of Monies and Valuable Items with making sure it arrives safely at its destination.”

  Tychus stared, puffing. Raynor shifted, following Tychus’s lead and also lowering his weapon. For a long moment, the only sound was the rumble of the train and Tychus’s sucking on the stogie. Finally, Tychus laughed, a deep chuckle that started in his chest and finally exploded in a loud guffaw.

  “Son, you got balls, I’ll give you that. I ain’t never seen anyone stand up to me like that, let alone someone so puny who don’t even have a weapon. What’s your name?”

  “G-George Woodley,” the man stammered, starting to look cautiously optimistic that he might actually survive the encounter.

  “You married, George Woodley of the Confederate Bureau of Protection of Monies and Valuable Items? Got kids?”

  “Y-yes, sir, to both. I got me a wonderful wife and two beautiful children.”

  “Well, George Woodley,” Tychus said, “you just put me in a good mood. And I tend not to kill people who do that. So if you’ll just step aside, we’ll blow this safe, and the Confederate Bureau of Protection of Monies and Valuable Items won’t have to send a sad letter to your wife and kids.”

  The man’s thin, ferrety face fell. “Oh, dear,” he said again. “I’m so sorry, but I just can’t do that.”

  While Raynor admired the man for taking his job so seriously, this had gone far enough. He lifted his pistol. “Mr. Woodley, we’ve gone to an awful lot of trouble today to get these credits. I’m pretty sure that the CBP … whatever the hell the rest of the letters are, doesn’t pay you enough to stand there and get shot defending credits that belong to rich people.”

  “Well, sir, that might be true, but you probably ought to know that Marshal Wilkes Butler has been notified of the attack on this train and should be here shortly to attempt to take the both of you into custody.”

  Tychus let out another guffaw. “We ain’t scared of ol’ Butler,” he said. “You’re gonna have to come up with a better boogieman than him if you want to frighten us away.”

  Butler had been like a dog nipping at their heels for the last couple of years. Once or twice, Raynor had to admit, the marshal had almost gotten them. But with every “encounter,” he and Tychus had been given the opportunity to study the man and observe his methods. While Wilkes Butler was no one’s fool, he hadn’t managed to nab them, and that last bit was all that Jim and Tychus cared about. As Tychus had once put it while smoking a cigar and fondling a buxom beauty perched on his lap, “Only thing that matters is where you end up. ‘Almost,’ ‘coulda been’s,’ ‘shoulda had’s,’ they don’t mean jack shit.”

  Raynor put on a worried expression for Woodley’s benefit. “I don’t know, Tychus,” he said. “If Marshal Butler and his men are on their way, maybe we should just leave while the gettin’s good.”

  Tychus turned, brows drawing together in a scowl that had frightened braver men than Woodley, who emitted a whimper and then clapped his hands over his mouth.

  “You’re talking like a yellow coward there, Jimmy,” Tychus said. “But you got one thing right. We should leave—but we’re taking that money with us. Just gotta get this little rodent out of our way, and then we can go.”

  He lifted his rifle and pointed it at Woodley. Raynor felt a twinge of pity for the brave but ultimately foolish government man as he closed his eyes and awaited the attack.

  It came.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Jim launched himself at Woodley and brought the pearl-handled butt of the Colt down on the man’s temple. He crumpled quietly to the floor. He would have one hell of a headache when he awoke, but he’d be alive to tell the tale.

  “Funny little man,” Tychus said, then turned his attention to the safe. “Grab something to truss him up with, and I’ll blow this thing.”

  Raynor went back to the previous car to find some rope. The jukebox was there in all its cathedral-like glory, and again he paused, enraptured. He gently unbound the ropes from the piano they had hidden behind. Tychus entered at that moment, George Woodley slung over his shoulder like a sack of potatoes. Findlay stepped over the fallen guards, then dumped his burden unceremoniously and ducked, with Jim, behind another pile of what were probably priceless antiques.

  Another boom echoed as the safe blew. Jim turned Woodley over onto his front and began to tie his wrists and ankles. As Tychus rose to get their newly liberated credits, Raynor said, “I want to take the jukebox.”

  Tychus turned on him, frowning. “That thing? It must weigh a metric ton. You out of your fekking mind?”

  Jim shook his head, inspected the knots, patted poor George gently, and rose. “Nope. I want it. It’s beautiful, it’s rare, and I just know that one day we’re gonna be glad we have her.”

  “‘Her’? Damn, boy, you need a good poke if you’re calling pieces of furniture ‘her.’”

  “That might also be true, but it doesn’t change the fact that I want it.”

  “We got Butler barreling down here to throw our asses into jail. Or have you already forgotten what Woodcock told us?”

  “Woodley.”

  “Whatever the hell his name was.”

  Tychus was probably right. And yet, Raynor glanced again at the jukebox, that exquisite house of so much old music that probably hadn’t been heard in centuries. He just couldn’t leave her behind.

  “We can handle Butler. How many times have you told me that?”

  “Damn it,” Tychus snapped. “Just once I wish you’d throw my words back at me when I agree with them. All right, we’ll take your damned Lady Jukebox. But if it’s a choice between it and me, I’m dropping it. Understood?”

  “Deal,” Jim said. He was surprised that Tychus had agreed at all, even with conditions. They moved back into the car, and the lovely sight of the safe with its door hanging from the single remaining hinge cheered him further. Each of them set to work stuffing credits into the collapsible packs they had brought with them. Not that long ago Tychus would have insisted on taking the extra time to divvy up the money equally. During one of their first jobs together, Jim was pretty sure that Tychus had taken a bit off the top. Another time, Tychus had all but accused Jim of the same thing. Now they just shoved the creds in until their packs were bulging. Over the years, the trust they had built up in each other had survived a lot of testing, regardless of what might or might not have happened in the earlier days, and things like this were nothing new. They didn’t even know how much they were “liberating”; they knew only that it was quite a lot, and would buy alcohol and the prettiest girls at Wicked Wayne’s for a good long time
.

  “Okay,” Jim said as he closed his pack securely and fastened it around his waist. “Let’s get the jukebox.”

  Tychus shook his head but followed. “So, how do you propose we get that thing outta here?” he asked as they stood again before the ancient machine.

  Tychus was strong. Very, very strong. But even he wasn’t as strong as a man in a combat suit. And, of course, they had come without their suits this time, on the theory that agility was more important in this particular heist than brute strength.

  “There’s got to be a way to move this thing,” Jim said aloud, working the problem through as he spoke. “Some kind of dolly.”

  “Figure it out and hurry the hell up. I ain’t getting any younger, and Butler ain’t getting farther away.” He stood back, folding his arms and watching Raynor poke around until Jim found what he was looking for. A hoverdolly, switched off and tucked back in a corner behind a ceramic elephant that somehow had managed to avoid all the gunfire. He eased it out and activated it. It hummed to life, lifting itself about a third of a meter off the ground. Raynor poked a button, and the dolly rose another third of a meter. He grinned in triumph.

  It was going to be tricky, but it could work. “Okay. We get the thing on the dolly and lift it up onto the roof. From there we slide it onto the back of my vulture, and off we go.”

  “Mmm-hmm,” Tychus said. “There are people I wouldn’t do this for.”

  “People,” Raynor said earnestly, “aren’t jukeboxes.”

  “Got that right. Come on, crazy man. Let’s get that thing on your vulture before Wilkes Butler surprises us and dies laughing.”

  “It’s not gonna stay level,” Tychus said about seven minutes later.

  “Yeah, it will,” Raynor said with more confidence than he actually felt. They had attached the hoverdolly to his vulture. While at ordinary speeds the hoverdolly might work as intended, Jim was having his own doubts about whether or not it would tip over at the speeds they would have to reach to escape from—

  “Everyone’s at the party. It’s Butler,” Tychus said.

  Raynor craned his neck to see where his friend was looking and groaned inwardly. There were several small puffs of dust in the distance blurring into one large cloud, and the merciless sun glinted on metal.

  “Damn it,” Raynor said, and made a decision. With pursuit this close, there was no way he could go slowly enough to prevent the hoverdolly from jackknifing and destroying the beautiful jukebox. “Let’s get it on my vulture.”

  “No. Leave the damn thing, Jim.”

  “Come on, we can slide it right off and tie it down.”

  Tychus sighed and expressed his displeasure by blowing a puff of cigar smoke in Jim’s face. Nonetheless, he went to the dolly, steadied himself, and heaved.

  Not for the first time, Jim was impressed by the sheer physical power of the man. The jukebox weighed three hundred pounds if it weighed an ounce. And while Tychus did break a sweat and the veins stood out on his neck as he lifted and pushed the huge piece of furniture, he nonetheless managed to move it slowly and steadily onto the back of Raynor’s vulture. Jim would sit directly in front of it. Jim tried to help, but he did little more than guide the jukebox and quickly strap it down. Together, they heaved the now-useless dolly off the side.

  Tychus stepped back. “First round of drinks at Wayne’s is on you, buddy. Now let’s haul ass.”

  With that, he mounted his own vulture. Raynor glanced back at the jukebox, marveled at his own stubborn foolishness, and followed.

  The chase was old hat. But they had never let Butler and his posse get this close to them before, and Raynor had never had a three-hundred-plus-pound jukebox on his hoverbike before, and he was alarmed at how much it slowed him. Too, the credits strapped to his back made balance even more precarious. Findlay was already a rapidly disappearing speck in the distance. His voice crackled in Jim’s ear over the comm.

  “I said haul ass, not drag it.”

  “I am,” Raynor replied.

  Tychus said something that would blister paint off the wall, and Jim saw his friend curve to the right and come back. “I’m going to draw them off and give you a chance to get some distance, Grandma. What the hell are you going to do with that thing?”

  “The cave,” Jim said, referencing the place where they had first caught sight of the maglev. “It goes pretty deep, and it’s in the middle of fekking nowhere.”

  “I’ll meet you there. If that thing falls on you, though, I ain’t coming back for you.”

  “Oh yes, you will,” Raynor said. “I still got a shitload of Confederate credits on me.”

  Tychus chuckled and gave Jim a one-fingered salute as he roared past him and in the direction of Butler’s posse. Raynor returned the salute and headed off as fast as his overburdened vulture would take him.

  Tychus was not an incautious man. Even when he seemed reckless to others, he knew exactly what he was doing. But he also enjoyed having a little fun with fate from time to time, and now seemed to be a pretty good opportunity.

  He grinned, imagining the confusion that was going through Butler’s mind as he headed back in their direction, then veered sharply to the left. And he laughed out loud as they all came to a screeching halt and scrambled to change direction in order to follow him. He heard shots, but they went wide; no one was going to be able to aim for at least a few seconds, and by that point he’d be leading them on a merry chase.

  For all his joking with Jim about Wilkes Butler, Findlay knew the man was never to be taken lightly. Once you started underestimating the enemy, that was when he pulled something that got you killed. One hoverbike had already recovered and was barreling down at him. That was, Tychus suspected, the good marshal himself.

  Tychus and Raynor had scouted out this locale for several kilometers around. While he did not quite know it like the back of his hand, Tychus suspected he was more familiar with it than Butler, and headed southwest to where he knew a nice little obstacle course would present itself.

  Here in the New Sydney badlands, ravines, canyons, and the tower-like formations colorfully known as “hoodoos” were everywhere. The route Tychus took now was an alternate one he and Jim had scouted out and dismissed once they found the cave and the coolness it provided. It was twisted, convoluted, and dangerous—and therefore exactly what Tychus was looking for.

  “Any sign of pursuit?” Tychus asked Jim.

  “Nope,” came Raynor’s voice. “Looks like you got them all following you.”

  Tychus slowed down slightly, just enough to tease his pursuers with the hope that they might actually catch him, and then took them to an open area where dozens of long, jagged hoodoos erupted from the earth. He drove straight toward one, veering at the last second. Butler’s men were good: they missed the stone pillar.

  This time.

  They weren’t so lucky the third time Tychus made a seemingly suicidal run at one, veering at the last minute. Two of Butler’s men were following too closely and collided spectacularly as they awkwardly attempted to avoid the rock. One of the bikes slid into the eons-old rock formation. A huge chunk toppled free and a third hoverbike narrowly avoided it, only to lose control and go spinning into the dirt.

  Four more were still coming. Tychus lost one of them zipping in and out among the columns, and another when he led them straight for a dramatic drop-off, swerving at the last minute. He took the curve too fast, however, and found himself staring at a sheer rock wall. Swearing, Tychus leaped off the vulture scant seconds before it slammed into the stone. He hit the sunbaked earth hard enough to have the wind knocked out of him, but not hard enough to injure himself or—perhaps more importantly—dislodge the credit-laden pack strapped onto his back, and came up with his AGR-14 in his hands.

  Gunfire spattered erratically around him. Findlay dove for the cover offered by a huge boulder and fired the rifle, taking down one of the two remaining vultures. The man leaped out of harm’s way but did not land as well as Tychus did,
and as the final vulture came to a stop and there was a sudden silence in the hot air, Tychus heard the wounded man swearing.

  “I wouldn’t do that if I were you,” Tychus warned as the man seated on the remaining intact vulture pointed a pistol at him.

  “Tychus Findlay,” said Marshal Wilkes Butler. He didn’t lower the weapon. Tychus didn’t lower his. They stared at each other.

  This was not the first time the two men had found themselves in this position. Wilkes Butler was in his early forties, of middling height and build. He was almost entirely ordinary looking except for a thick head of glossy black hair, a magnificent mustache that almost completely hid his mouth, and absolutely piercing blue eyes. Now he wore a helmet with a visor that hid both black hair and blue eyes, and the gun didn’t waver.

  “Wilkes Butler,” Tychus rumbled in return.

  “Where’s your buddy?”

  “Nowhere you need to worry about,” Tychus replied. “I don’t know about you, but I’m finding it mighty hot out here. I could use a shower and a woman or two and a cold beer or three. Maybe you can go rustle up some iced tea or something.”

  “You’ve stayed a step ahead of the law for too long,” Butler said. “If you’re so hot, I know a nice shady prison cell for you.”

  Tychus sighed, brought the rifle over toward the still-swearing but living man, and planted a single spike between his legs a scant two inches from his crotch. The man squealed and scooted backward, an action that simply produced more pain.

  “I missed,” Tychus said. “I won’t miss again. You shoot me, my finger convulses—your man is dead. Or else without some equipment I think he’ll miss right badly.”

  Tychus saw the muscles in Butler’s jaw clench and could almost hear the man’s teeth grinding together. After a moment, he lowered the gun. Tychus made a beckoning gesture, and the marshal tossed the gun—carefully—in Tychus’s direction.

  “I always said you was smarter than you looked,” Tychus said. “Off the bike, and slowly. Mine seems to have met with a mishap.”