Suddenly the braying stopped and a dead silence descended across the Grand Intergalactic.
Jack Bowie had a very bad feeling about this.
“Here’s the op and you have to start moving in the next thirty seconds, Jack. Seriously, I’m on your side. We’re both on the same side. Okay, so right now you are going live on all the streams.”
Jack shot his head over to the screen at the bar.
The first thing that registered were the words in the news crawl.
ASSASSIN IDENTIFIED.
And then the picture in the feed. Him, holding the sniper rifle, sighting down into the garden. Clear as day.
“You’re probably thinking we’ve hung you out to dry, Jack. We haven’t. Trust us. This is all part of the plan and you’ve got…” Reiser looked around. “You’ve got friends all around, know what I mean?” he whispered. “But, honestly, the zhee and everyone else are going to try to kill you right now. We need you to make it to the koob embassy in Soob City. That’s all you gotta do. Yeah, they keep an embassy on their own world. It’s for the ruling tribe. Anyway… you gotta make it there as fast as you can. Mostly the zhee gangs and their paramilitaries are going to try to intercept you before you reach it.”
Reiser stood.
The zhee were moving in the lounge. The sound of charge packs being snapped into blasters was clear across the soundscape of the lobby, bar, and breakfast area.
“Here…” said Reiser, tossing a small ear link comm device onto the table. “Take this. Your shot caller will direct your route and you’ve got overwatch the whole way. You’re just the rabbit, Jack. So I suggest you run. Make it to the embassy. You’ll get the rest on the way.”
And then Reiser was moving away like he’d never been there. Distancing himself from Jack.
The identified assassin.
Without hesitation Jack Bowie grabbed the comm link, shoved it into his ear, hefted the briefcase, and ran for his life. The zhee were already firing as he reached the massive marble lobby, striking innocent bystanders who’d been caught in the crossfire.
18
There were three groups that were going to try their best to kill the assassin Jack Bowie that long, hot day on the streets of Soob City.
But all of them worked for the same faction.
The zhee.
Newcomers to the world of Kublar in the aftermath of Goth Sullus’s war against the Republic, the zhee had arrived en masse. Coming with all their intractable and argumentative ways. Not to mention the violence and crime they always seemed to get up to. Authoritarian theocracy at its corrupt best. Proclaiming that unless you were of the faithful you were beneath consideration. Less than. And anything done to you was considered a furtherance of the four gods’ will.
Drugs.
Extortion.
Murder.
And all the other jacked up things perpetrated by any group who considers itself above the standard of galactic civilization in the name of some obscure higher moral authority that’s never held up to the light. It was all legit in the name of a nebulous salvation for the zhee, and let the four gods sort the rest.
Of course, there were the braying patrons who’d been in the Grand that morning having what was being called a trade negotiations breakfast. Really they’d been engaging in off-world sex trafficking which was in high demand, what with Kublar opening up its economic markets to the rest of the galaxy. And the death of the headman last night had created some advantageous opportunities to be seized quickly. Foreign traders brought an intense hunger for foreign flesh. And the zhee mullahs ran the trade, when not braying forth a call to the holy to adhere to their dark sermons nine times a day.
They came in hot across the lobby of the Grand Intergalactic, killing several innocent bystanders in the crossfire that went down almost immediately in the lobby. But their tribe leader, a highly trained zhee operator that was the equivalent of any special forces operator from any of the worlds that maintained proficient militaries, had two factors to consider.
Killing Bowie was the official Grand Wutti Call to Bind, Torture, and Kill. That was paramount in the hierarchy of zhee needs at the moment. Already the call was spamming every comm device across Soob City and even hitting the hypercomms to access all zhee channels. That was the most important thing every member of the faithful who adhered to the teachings of the Bloody Four could accomplish at this moment, and earn a thousand mares for all eternity.
But as a zhee tribe leader who’d been assigned to protect the holy class of priests, the security team leader’s first concern was to get his betters to safety now that there were zhee blood debts in effect. The streets were going to turn red, never mind the crossfire, to get the target. The head priest of the skin trade delegation quickly crossed his paws and snorted a blessing in the holy cant absolving the security team leader of the blood debt to Bind, Torture, Kill.
In the instant that Bowie made the main doors of the Grand, blaster-impact-shattering the beautiful carved and polished wood frames, the tribe leader was efficiently splitting his team to get the priests to the secure armored sled used to move their convoy about the swollen streets of Soob City, and detailing his shooters to immediately run down Bowie and finish him violently.
Meanwhile, near the edge of the zhee quarters—ZQ—killers were sensing their moment and springing into action for the hunt. ZQ was a section of Soob City where the zhee had moved off the beach from where their colony ship had made its last approach to set down, and immigrated en masse whether anyone like it or not, unrestricted and definitely uninvited, onto the world of Kublar.
ZQ was off-limits for anyone who wasn’t zhee and wanted to go on living. Of course the zhee had spent a ton of money, aid and funding from the last of the Repub, to run a tourism campaign across the galaxy highlighting the centuries-old zhee culture that had only recently sprung up.
Several tourists had been killed, and countless more disappeared without a trace, especially comely young thrill seekers backpacking their way across the galaxy and trying to hit all the latest hip “in spots” to extreme adventure for social media posts and “savage amounts of gushes.” They’d come for the smoke fountains and wallow lounges, and were never seen again. Disappearing forever into the zhee skin trade that crossed the galaxy and about which no one could do anything.
Even the Feral Jacks, the zhee street gang that ran the H8 trade for all of ZQ, got the alert that it was hunting season.
Social media channels that catered to the zhee’s message boards and hoof scratch language immediately switched over from their litany of threats and repeated holy writs from the Prophecies of Mhugga the Blind, to location pings of Bowie’s last sighting.
Boom Boom Killah had once, not too long ago, a proper zhee name. Something with three identifiers and chosen according to traditions that wanted a martyr’s name, a prophet’s formal name, and a tribal bray in every moniker. That kind of thing. But when the old zhee colony ship had flown her last approach into the beach at the then newly developing Diplomatic Zone that was Soob City, the zhee males of family headship age had had to scramble to make a living and get established. Providing first, places for the zhee priests to live and lead worship, and then jamming three tribes to an apartment floor in the worst districts just to get their broodmares off the streets and out of the tents they’d been living in on the beach under the shadow of the skeleton of the old cargo hauler that had been their colony ship off Ankalor.
A one jump scow that shouldn’t have even made the trip. But they did, and as was oft repeated across the galaxy ad nauseam, fortune favored the zhee despite the zhee’s best efforts to annihilate themselves.
Boom Boom Killah ran a crew of street enforcers on Division and Excelsior just inside ZQ. He was busy with a mare when the alert came across his smart device and because business was business, he pushed himself up from the panting jilly and threw himself into his stree
t rags. A combat harness blinged out with human teeth, glittering gold jewelry, and playing cards that had been covered in hyperplastic, the edges shaved to a razor’s sharpness. This was the ultimate rejection of the formal ways of their zhee elders. Razor-sharp playing cards to replace the traditional kankari knife every zhee was supposed to carry.
Hitting the already blazing street, the donkey street tribe chief shrugged on his harness and beat his young, muscular, furry chest with one cloven-clawed fist, signaling to the crew already gathering near their souped up sleds that they were mounting up to “do some circus.”
“We gotta KTF a brudda rightquick, my donkety-donks!” he brayed aloud.
The disaffected youth of the zhee had embraced the derisory slang that even the Repub military had tried to outlaw as politically incorrect. Wearing the slur now and referring to each other with a sense of pride in the insult, they loved calling themselves “donks.” Speaking in Standard was yet another affront to the traditions of the parents that brought them to Kublar.
Gaggling and cackling loudly, snorting and braying, the dangerous young zhee sporting blasters that had been skinned in all kinds of traditional curses, or in the case of Boom Boom Killah… plated in gold to match his two large gold front teeth, each encrusted with a diamond, piled into the tricked-out low riding sleds and roared off on an intercept course for the fleeing Jack Bowie.
19
“Hi, Jack,” said a strong yet feminine voice in his ear. Warm and confident. The comm he’d just placed in his ear was receiving, after a short chitter of quantum encryption burbles. “Call me Elektra, Jack. I’ll be your shot caller for this operation. Keep moving on your current track and enter the Prominence Shopping Arcade one hundred meters ahead on your right. We have a team standing by to intercept your immediate pursuit.”
Jack Bowie was busy ducking from luxury black sled to luxury black sled in the valet circle in front of the Grand. He had yet to return fire on the five black suited zhee deploying subcompact auto blasters and firing wildly at everyone and anyone to clear a path to their target. With little mercy they shot down customers and staff alike. But Jack saw an opportunity and rectified that with the holdout he had in the hand. He popped up over the gleaming hood of the freshly polished limo sled and shot one of the donk security thugs a car length away. Twice. Two quick blaster shots.
Hot bolts burned into the suit and fur covered body beneath as the zhee went down snarling in death. A fusillade of blaster fire raked the limo just as Jack ducked and scrambled for the next limo, not stopping there but moving behind a massive ten-foot-tall terra-cotta urn holding a carnival spray of lush topiary.
More blaster fire chased Jack and now nothing but open ground, in the form of a high-end shopping district’s high street, lay between him and where the shot caller, Elektra, was telling him to head.
“Good to meet you,” gasped Jack as he ran for all he was worth, briefcase flying in one hand, holdout blaster pulling him forward with the other.
“Solid move, Jack,” said Elektra over the comm. “Put some distance between you and the zhee security team. They’re using Baarac subcompacts… good for violent room clearings, bad for anything beyond fifteen meters.”
They must be watching me via drone, thought Jack while wild blaster fire shrieked after him. Zhee hooves struck the pavement as they thundered down the street. Braying calls to one another as they hustled to catch the infidel, sensing the kill at hand.
Jack made the door of the Prominence Shopping Arcade and shoved himself inside. Both door security men had watched the disturbance at the Grand Hotel down the street, saw the dead bodies in the turnabout, and then the running firefight heading their way. They did little to stop Jack and instead just stood there, disbelief written in their wide eyes and hanging jaws, that this was actually happening here so deep inside the Security Zone.
“Run!” Jack barked at them and entered the shopplex, suddenly overwhelmed by the heady floral scent of an extremely expensive luxury perfume counter. The place was a palace to commercialism and high-end goods. Three stories, sculpted like some grand duke’s bedroom from the lost ages of the early galactic civilizations, it rose above into the nether reaches of the shopping complex. Vibrant tapestries and massive sparkling chandeliers ornamented the place and drew attention to the latest must-haves in fashion, timepieces, luggage, and jewels. All done with an artistic commercialism that seemed polished and professional.
Jaw-dropping on any given day.
But Jack was facing three well-dressed young people, definitely luxury store clerks in well-cut business suits that showed their trim and compact physiques. All of them were holding military-grade assault blasters with charge packs laid out on the perfume counters. Incredibly expensive bottles, like the home of some fantastic genie from the movies that got made on Al-Kaz back in the glory days of Monster-Adventure Flicks twenty years gone, had been swept aside, and in some cases lay broken and smashed on the floor. Tens of thousands of credits’ worth of expensive perfume lay in heady puddles beneath the shining leather shoes of the three holding blasters at near point-blank range on Jack who’d skidded to a halt.
“This is the intercept team, Jack,” noted Elektra in his ear. “Keep moving to the back of the arcade. Enter the service corridors and watch out. We have reports some of the zhee shopping here are armed and looking for you already.”
The intercept team for the arcade was comprised of two pretty women, business professionals who easily could have been fitness models, and a handsome male who looked like the epitome of an entertainment’s star spy.
And nothing like a real spy at all.
The man nodded at Jack as both girls flashed dazzling smiles that said they were enthusiastic about their work.
Jack managed his trademark bashful leer at both and ran on. He was moving through high-end crystal stemware when the three opened up on the four pursuing zhee who flung themselves through the doors of the arcade, thinking they were hot on the heels of a fleeing target with no protection.
Brutal high-powered automatic blaster fire set up to crossfire from three counters facing the front doors made short work of what remained of the zhee mullah’s security detail that had been tasked with pursuit.
A moment later Elektra updated Jack over the comm as he followed a sign that led to the maintenance areas of the stores.
“Pursuit eliminated. Move to the street out the back, Jack. And watch yourself.”
People all across the store were screaming and security alarms were blaring as the sound of blaster fire at the front entrance faded away. Jack made it to the back service area’s access hall, pulled the door open, and pointed the blaster down its gray, lifeless length. Shadowy and barely illuminated by wan overhead lighting, this place was the opposite of the glamorous front of the house.
Halfway down the length of the hall Jack saw a dead worker, and he wondered if Team Nilo’s people had iced someone just so the facade of the perfume counter sales-security intercept team could be maintained. Approaching, he saw the slashed-open neck, blood pooling. Everything screamed zhee kankari knife. But it was the bloody hoofprints that confirmed the story of what had happened here. Hoofprints stamped in the blood and leading down the hall just the way Jack was heading.
No doubt the zhee were picking up a few opportunities for some bloodletting amid the mayhem. They always made the most of the galaxy’s problems. That was the zhee way.
So they’re here and looking for me, thought Jack as he ran. He moved down the hall quickly, thumbed the overpower on the Python to dump half the charge pack into the next shot. He wanted to make sure he put down whoever he meant to hit so he could keep moving quickly.
The fresh, bloody hoofprints faded as he entered the shipping and receiving warehouse at the end of the hall. Columns and pyramids of container goods rose up into the darkness of the place. Jack entered the main access to the loading docks, bypassing bo
ts who seemed little concerned with the sudden crisis and wild murder taking place in all quarters of the store, and the city for that matter.
A moment later a forklift sled with two zhee mares, black robes flying, came at him out of a dark side corridor. There was no way he was getting out of the way. The thing was wide and moving fast straight at him. He threw himself to the side, hoping they wouldn’t just cut repulsors and take an easy shot at him as it came to an immediate, grinding stop.
They didn’t. They could barely operate it. A moment later they failed to hit the brakes and smashed into a fat column of boxes awaiting the next step in the merchandising process. This didn’t deter the murder-eyed mare at the controls who merely smashed one hoof against the left turn pedal and pivoted the wide loader on a dime. Both of their black robes flew like wicked shadows.
Jack fired on the fly and hit the lift sled.
Nothing. They were coming back.
Jack scrambled to his feet and ducked down the main access hall heading toward the loading docks. Behind him the two mares on the lift hit the side wall, knocked over what must’ve been hundreds of thousands of credits in crystal merchandise, something the stores carried specifically to cater to the newly rich zhee households, and careened out onto the main access in pursuit of Bowie.
The other mare, hanging onto the lift from a place no one was ever meant to hang on from, chattered wildly into her datapad. Bowie didn’t have to speak zhee to know she was telling someone—everyone—they’d found the infidel.
Ahead, Bowie could see the light of day coming from the loading dock, but the straining electric engine of the lift sled was closing on him fast. At the last second he threw himself off the dock, hugged the briefcase to his chest and went sliding into some recently arrived containers. He curled and took the landing on his left shoulder. It didn’t dislocate anything, but it did jar something deep within his spine.
No time for that, he thought as suddenly the loading dock was filled with the clamor of a sudden catastrophic crash. The lift sled had gone off the dock at full speed into the back of a small transport sled waiting to be unloaded. The mare hanging on had been crushed. The driver couldn’t be seen now that lift sled and transport had become one. Whatever had happened to her, it was clear she wasn’t going anywhere in the lift anytime soon.
Galaxy's Edge: Takeover: Season Two: Book One Page 16
