If she was alive.
Bowie grunted and got up off the floor of the loading dock.
A bot trundled over and informed Bowie that this was a restricted area and asked if he could please return to the main shopping areas for his safety and shopping pleasure.
“Sure thing,” muttered Bowie and stumbled out into the daylight at the back of the loading dock, entering a back-alley side street that served the stores.
20
It had been less than fifteen minutes since the zhee issued the Bind-Torture-Kill decree for Jack Bowie, and already murders in Soob City had gone up three hundred percent. Most of those homicides weren’t reported. Dead bodies lay in the street and a frozen emergency services system had yet to respond beyond the most protected areas of the Green Zone.
Across town, near the Kublaren tribal embassy, three diplomats enjoying a kaff in the new corporate store that had just opened two weeks before, were suddenly murdered by a zhee hit squad who’d been waiting for two weeks to pull the reprisal killings for some vague declared injustice last month.
With the Bind-Torture-Kill in effect, anything and everything was on the table for the unstable and chaotic zhee. The more mayhem tied up local security forces, the more likely it was that their Infidel-Target would be caught, hurt, and murdered.
Mass bedlam and wanton violence was always a win for the zhee. Pandemonium was their preferred pallet.
So, while three Kublaren elders were being blasted down on the sidewalk, a jewelry store back in the shopping district suddenly got hit by a zhee crew working for Boom Boom Killah. They’d been tasked with robbing the store sometime later in the week. The plan had been to hit the store and then disappear back into ZQ with loads of bling and loot.
Now everything was out of control so the crew decided to go for it. They took along a small yet powerful self-replicating chemical incendiary bomb. One they’d planned to use to cover their backtrail by leaving an apartment tower in flames, thus diverting any attention focused on their capture into rescue efforts as various world diplomatic residences within the upper floors were incinerated.
Entering the store, the three zhee criminals who’d actually do the heist started slitting throats just to get the fun stuff out of the way right off the top. The guard first. Then the two jewelers. That was in the first thirty seconds right as Jack Bowie was pushing himself up from the ruin of the shipping floor and the bot was heading over to advise him of the warehouse safety protocols currently in effect.
One minute to bag up everything in all the display cases, one zhee smashing glass while the two others greedily grabbed everything they could get their paws on, and thirty seconds after that they were at the front door, flinging behind the crude incendiary device as a parting gift. The heist team reached the door of the getaway sled, themselves awash in the heavy bloom of the chemical propellant they’d used for the bomb when it ignited inside the store, producing a sudden terrible blossom of wild flame, destroying everything it touched.
The fleeing robbers would have been cooked too had they not shut the panel on the getaway sled as the driver mashed the accelerator and took off down the street amid a roar of engine and blast of street grit.
The firebomb worked fast, spreading in a self-replicating gel nutrient that would multiply and ignite for the next two minutes. By then the first of the upper floors of the apartment tower above would be aflame, as were all the escape and emergency exits.
That would make things more difficult for city services, the zhee had reasoned. And thus easier for them. What did it matter? Those being burned alive were Unclean anyway. That particular tradition stayed with the youths.
This and many other murders of opportunity occurred all across the Security Zone where the zhee had been trusted to be on their best behavior so that a new future, involving them, could be forged together.
Or so the government types had been vowing as the zhee slowly took over Soob City and, increasingly, the inland territories of the planet.
With the Bind-Torture-Kill in effect, the zhee awakened enthusiastically to their most basic of primal calls, something older than any of the galactic civilizations if all the old House of Reason’s propaganda was to be believed. Zhee mares wildly stabbed shopkeepers and alien coworkers. Even neighbors who’d unwisely chosen to live anywhere close to the murderous donks found themselves fighting for their lives. Desperately. With no police forces anywhere near to assist.
Bind-Torture-Kills had been covered up and apologized for by the Republic and the House of Reason in the past. It was considered a cultural trait by scholars and multi-cult apologists… and really, who was anyone to tell the zhee to conform to the galaxy’s human-centric sentiments about civilization?
Zhee males were reporting in to their tribe leaders while moving through the streets, exacting as much petty revenge as they could while stealing and smashing everything in sight. The zhee were a physically larger and far more aggressive species than most. Within minutes it was chaos and mayhem everywhere across the heat-swollen streets of Soob City.
All of them, all of the zhee, as if in unison, closed a massive noose about Soob City’s neck, centered on the fleeing Jack Bowie.
Infidel-Target Number One.
But the violence was not restricted to non-zhee only. Teams of zhee-priest security sprang into action against rival religious sects who’d been considered heretics. False prophets. Counter-apologists advocating a kinder, gentler position among the various galactic tribes. Simmering minor quarrels over everything from noise in the adjoining apartments to some long-forgotten tribal grievance done in the past were suddenly hauled out into the light with the ever-sharpened kankari knives, blasters, bricks, and the occasional transport vehicle acting as adjudicators. Anything they could get their hooves on to harm, molest, and maim would do. Most of this, and it wasn’t as widespread as what was being done against the rest of the inhabitants of Soob City, remained confined to the perpetual no-go zone that was ZQ.
A zhee ghetto no one lightly entered. Or at least no one with half a brain.
So, none of it would ever be recorded. Not the internecine, or the general, violence, would ever be accounted for. Just as it always had been, wherever the uninvited zhee managed to immigrate.
But the violence gripping Soob City right now on this hot morning was immediate and dangerous. Corporate and private contractor security forces went into lockdown to protect their high value charges as private police grouped at the local station houses and awaited orders from the governing Soob Tribe.
It was going to be a very long day for those lucky enough to survive the mayhem. No one had expected this. And, no one had planned for it.
Almost no one.
The transport and delivery sleds came rolling off The Naruto, a large ore hauler that had arrived in-system and planetside a day earlier. The transport and delivery sleds were nondescript, though startlingly brand-new. Leaving the docking facility east of the Soob City Green Zone and moving directly toward the koob district that lay alongside ZQ, shipping personnel remarked that the freight haulers were so new one could smell the shipping laminate burning off the repulsors, a sure indicator of first usage.
The windows aboard the heavy sleds were tinted but one security gate guard watching over the access point to the docking facility did interact with the convoy leader and got the distinct impression the man was a military private contractor type.
It seemed strange to the guard that these were coming off an ore hauler supposedly inbound from one of the outer edge worlds. Registered to Black Leaf Freight Systems.
Something’s up, thought the gate guard as he watched the convoy hover off into the urban sprawl, heading for the primary Kublaren-district neighborhood within the Green Zone.
Something’s up indeed. But he didn’t call it in. Because things had gone crazy in the Soob, and one more call wouldn’t mean anything. Local enforc
ement was beyond max.
The guard felt relief that he never did become a cop.
21
“Next part’s difficult,” said Elektra over the comm device in Jack Bowie’s ear. “I need you to move up Sentinela Street and stay visible. You’re here to draw attention, Jack.”
Bowie was moving swiftly along the back alley that led away from the massive Prominence shopping sprawl. He could see the indicated street ahead.
“Turn north at the alley and stay on the street, Jack. Copy?”
He hadn’t answered her last comm. And he wasn’t in the mood to answer this one either. But, some questions needed to be answered.
“Won’t that make it easier for them to kill me? Being in the open and all.”
After all, every donk in the city, thought Jack Bowie, and likely a few opportunists are out to kill me because you guys tattled.
But he didn’t say that part. That’d be whining.
Overhead an unmarked dropship shot across the skyline between buildings. Bowie waited in the shadows of the alley and made ready to either execute the next phase of the route to the koob embassy the way they wanted him to go, or take matters into his own hands and find a new safer route.
Who wasn’t to say they weren’t just leading him into a trap where he’d get killed and some kind of planted evidence would point everyone toward whatever objective Team Nilo wanted accomplished?
Look, we found these incriminating idents on the dead guy.
That’s all they really needed him for.
How much can you trust Team Nilo? Jack Bowie wondered not for the first time in the last ten minutes.
“Trust me, Jack,” said the woman in his ear. “We’ve got you covered from now on out. All the way to objective. Airborne fire support on station and ready to engage. Just passed overhead. They even try to take a shot and we’ll shoot them down. We’ve got this situation under control.”
Bowie shoved the holdout into its holster under his jacket. He’d try to blend in and move up the street without attracting too much attention until…
… until…
… until he did. Then, well, it would just have to be game on. No two ways about it.
He walked swiftly toward the exit from the cool, dark alley.
“Why the street?” he asked Elektra over the comm. Muttering to himself for all outward appearances.
“Part of the plan, Bowie. Trust—”
“I don’t know if you’re new to this whole espionage game…” began Bowie low and angrily into his comm. “But trust isn’t one of the prerequisites for intel work. Evidence. Start sharing the plan or I’ll find my own way to the embassy and deal with the fallout when I get there.”
Silence. He was almost to the exit from the alley.
“We need to kill some more zhee, Bowie. Best way is to get them to chase you right into the ambush teams we have set up along the route. Roger?”
“Why?”
“Because that’s the plan. And we get paid to follow the plan. And so do you. You don’t want to get paid, fine. You’re on your own. Good luck with everyone trying to kill you and all. Team Nilo will get this done another way. But do it our way and you’ll make it out of this.”
It wasn’t much of a choice.
“Moving,” muttered Bowie. “Keep ’em off me.”
“We will, Jack.”
Bowie made it about ten meters up the street before the shooting started. The shooting at him, to be specific.
Zhee clustered in the street. Beating some people, shooting others, rifling through the bodies of those alive and lying terrified and prone. Other aliens, and several humans, were either running or simply cowering in disbelief at the zhee who were behaving exactly like zhee.
Most of these types were the people who’d never actually encountered any zhee, and relied on information from the old propaganda mills of the House of Reason–supported media groups who campaigned ceaselessly on behalf of the “much maligned” zhee. The standard line had always gone something to the effect that the galaxy had a long way to go to overcome the inherent speciesism in galactic human-centric culture.
Or, the truth wasn’t the truth. It’s what we say it is.
Bowie swore under his breath and pulled out his holdout blaster once more as he started up the street. He didn’t even bother to try to disappear in order to get up Sentinela unnoticed.
He shot the first zhee he came to. A big one hunched over the body of a man in a suit who’d had his face bashed in by a discarded lead pipe nearby.
The pipe was covered in blood.
Bowie casually shot the zhee in the back and moved on, knowing the other zhee would figure out what was going on in the next few seconds anyway.
The only bonus out of this, thought Jack Bowie as the zhee moved in on him, is that those they were menacing are free to flee, or drag their wounded away somewhere to hide.
Consider it a small service to the galaxy, he thought as he selected his targets and decided who needed to die next.
Bowie fired at two zhee on the street, the only ones carrying blasters, weapons that had just been used to commit murder. Then he began to move at a jog up the street. If the other zhee, most of them armed with improvised hand weapons, were deterred by the sudden death of three of their own in the last thirty seconds, it didn’t show. They shadowed him, looking for any opportunity to close rapidly and do him harm. Shoot enough of them and he’d run out of charge and have to swap packs. That would be the moment to rush, Bowie could almost feel them telegraphing to one another.
Some ran at him from odd angles, weaving through abandoned private sleds on the street, stranded and blocked from going forward by the improvised barriers the donks had thrown up to stall traffic for better looting. Others came straight at him once they’d made the sidewalk he was on. The whole moment had an almost determined, quiet madness. An is this really about to happen inherent disbelief within its quiet vastness.
In very short order Jack Bowie was going to have to fight about fifteen or so of the hairy brutes at very close range.
He was beginning to not like the number of verys that were accompanying every motivation.
Then they began to die.
“Jack,” said Elektra over the comm, “hold your position and don’t move a sec.”
“Can…” he was just about to ask if he could shoot back when the incoming zhee began to take fire from above. One donk got hit at a dead run, a high-powered blaster shot practically drilling straight through his hairy husky body from above. Another had its head explode in bone and brain matter from a blaster headshot. Two more died in a sudden fusillade of more blaster fire coming from across the street. A closed business that had been occupied by another ambush team.
Bowie could see the dropship hovering over a nearby rooftop, two snipers firing from the cargo deck. Both private-contractor types.
“Start moving again, Jack,” said Elektra over the comm once more. Her voice calm and businesslike. All the zhee weren’t dead, but the ones who’d tried to run were shot down as expertly as the ones who tried to close on Bowie.
“Two more blocks to go,” updated the shot caller. “Then turn left.”
22
Boom Boom Killah and his convoy of tricked-out sleds moved into the Green Zone, blasting thump-and-blur, the music all the disaffected youth of the zhee were listening to that long hot summer on Kublar, and many other worlds.
They blew past the first Zone Security checkpoint, a soft entrance that merely scanned idents via transponder to enter the less-restricted areas of the secure zone. There was no way they were getting into the actual Green Zone where reports were coming in across all the channels, social and comm, ones the zhee monitored, that the target of the Bind-Torture-Kill was currently in the high-end Prominence shopping district.
Or at least the Feral Jacks weren’t g
etting in the Green Zone without a firefight. The security watching the inner checkpoints was military-grade. And they were armed for bear. Enough donks and the zhee might bust through and run amok, a dream many of the priests had promised would happen one day, but no plans had been made for that day to be today. And so it wasn’t happening.
But… things could always change.
They were only told it would be soon, and sooner than they expected. And that the mares promised for eternal nirvana would be the muskiest of all.
Now they were getting reports that the infidel-target was moving out of the secure Green Zone.
Boom Boom Killah called a halt while the speakers brayed about mares and drugs and power. The young thug crew leader checked his device and brought the map feature up. Reports from neighborhood tribe spotters, usually umwas, or old mares past breeding value, had the target moving up along Sentinela.
Nice street, thought Boom Boom. If the target continued, he’d intersect Briad Way which would take him straight out of the zone.
It was pretty clear where the guy was going.
He was headed for the koobs.
Boom Boom identified an intersection where they’d be safe to intercept the target and dropped a pin to everyone in the crew.
“Move, braddas! Move yo hairy butts now-like-hussah!”
The gaudy sleds turned and picked up a new course track along a side street that would take them to the intercept in less than two minutes.
23
The dropship hovered over the rooftops behind Bowie, occasionally skirting ahead. He could hear the ring of blaster fire coming from the ground in the surrounding streets. The snipers on board the dropship were firing suppressed.
Galaxy's Edge: Takeover: Season Two: Book One Page 17
