Galaxy's Edge: Takeover: Season Two: Book One

by Jason Anspach

  Along the rooftops clusters of koob warriors, armed with a mish-mash of weapons, seemed cautious and ready to fling a volley of darts at anyone who dared show their head.

  “Here goes nothin’,” said the team leader and picked up a mic from off the dash that connected to external speakers on the outside of the utility transport sled.

  “Let ’em know, Hopper.”

  He cleared his throat.

  Then, “Attention, Kublarens. We are here to assist you in your defense.”

  The team leader made a face at the driver who seemed dispassionately professional behind the shades he wore. He was scanning the street ahead. Every driver in the ten-vehicle convoy, along with their TCs, were doing just the same.

  Just because the reps at Team Nilo said this would work, and were paying to see if it actually would, didn’t necessarily mean it might not go horribly wrong. The koobs were little more than Bronze Age savages who just happened to exist in a time of technological hyperdrive connected wonders.

  Right?

  “We come in peace and we’re here to help,” said Hopper once more into the mic. Beyond the cool interior of the sled, the empty streets shimmered in the late morning heat.

  Already the koob corpses were beginning to bloat.

  “Gonna smell out there,” noted the driver.

  Hopper didn’t acknowledge this and repeated the message once more. Just to make it clear. Then he switched over to the translator function and said it twice, the software making the clicks and sounds of the Kublaren language.

  Then...

  Grim koobs gathered along the rooftops above the street. Staring down in hard anger at the alien convoy.

  “I’m exiting the lead,” said Hopper after tapping the comm on his vest. Now he was talking to the whole team executing this mission in the middle of a Soob City–wide meltdown.

  “Look at that one over there,” pointed out the driver. “I think he’s got an old N-1. I wonder if that thing even works anymore?”

  The team leader gave a hard look that indicated they had more to worry about than the Kublarens’ collection of museum-quality ancient weapons. Then he exited the sled, leaving his own rifle in the cab, with his hands up over his head.

  He felt stupid and deserving of anything that was about to happen to him.

  He walked out into the middle of the street and now he could see that the koobs had taken to nearly every rooftop. Airsacs inhaled and puffed even tighter.

  “They’re pretty worked up,” he muttered under his breath over the group comm.

  “You would be too, Hopper,” said a squad leader at the rear of the convoy. “Donks are in hardcore mode right now with no end in sight. Gonna be a long day and a lot of Kublaren dead on the other side of this. So yeah… they’re ready to start killing too.”

  There was a pause in the dull hum of the comm the team all listened to.

  “Atterly, do me a favor and shut up,” hissed Hopper. He didn’t like being told what he already knew. He didn’t like that Atterly was right on every point. Yeah, the koobs were ready to strike back and it didn’t really matter at this point whether it was a donk, a human, or even some zoid from the Silica. They’d probably do anyone right about now.

  Which is right where they needed to be to accept the offer that was about to come their way.

  Hopper made a large circle with his hand, and then—he had to get this next bit right because the meanings in Kublaren could go about a hundred different ways—he pointed toward his gills.

  Or rather his throat. Where their airsacs would be on him.

  No one moved.

  He performed the hand gesture for negotiations once more.

  Or so he hoped he did.

  Some of the koobs were already rearing back with their slug throwers and for a half second Hopper knew deep down in his heart that this had all gone extremely terribly bad. Again. Just like at the temple.

  And that he was going to pay the price for someone’s ridiculous planning.

  Just like at the temple.

  Nice…

  He was ten meters away from his rifle when a big fat koob of incredible age pushed forward and croak-bellowed from the rooftop he was on.

  The cry echoed off the silent walls and buildings of the koob-held neighborhood. As if almost a counterpoint to this, the sound of distant blaster fire and screaming could suddenly be heard.

  Black smoke curled into the sky.

  The koob bellowed in his croaking, clicking language at everyone along the rooftops, and a throng of koobs stepped forward to lower the tribal elder to the street via knotted rope.

  No easy feat.

  Moments later, though, the immense elder was down and waddling across the dirty street toward the team leader. Croaking and bellowing as he came.

  In his ear the Team Leader got a translation from one of the linguists back at Team Nilo and watching via drone feed.

  “He’s saying he will negotiate. Stand by…”

  The giant walking frog-man waddled up and jabbed his feather-and-tooth adorned staff comically at the team leader.

  “He’s saying you give prize first,” informed the translator back at ops. “That’s their custom for parlay.”

  “Roger,” whispered Hopper in his comm.

  He tried out some of the Kublaren he’d learned—basic stuff, all military commands. Specific for what was coming next.

  “Follow me,” he said in a transliteration of the koob word, hoping the chieftain understood him.

  The big fat koob made a face and then began to laugh. Doubling over and clutching his immense belly.

  “You told him to have the first bite,” said the voice in the team leader’s ear. Even the translator was laughing at him.

  “Place the emphasis on the last click in each word.”

  The team leader repeated the phrase and punched the final clicks on each word.

  Still bellowing with laughter, the giant koob elder followed the team leader back to his transport sled. Then the man opened the rear cargo door.

  Along the rooftops koob warriors were changing position, ready to hurl down ancient slugs, feathered darts, and sharp spears if any monkey-business was tried.

  The chieftain didn’t seem much worried and was still chuckling to himself.

  The team leader was still worried.

  A moment later as the doors swung open on the racks and racks of brand-new, matte-black, state-of-the-art battle rifles, the chieftain suddenly hissed in awe.

  “Tell him,” began the translator in the team leader’s ear. “That these are for him and his people.”

  Then the translator fed him the Kublaren words and the team leader did his best to get them right-ish.

  Finished, the team leader pulled a new rifle off a rack, and without performing a systems check, handed it as fast as he could to the tribal elder.

  They’d all debated that point at length. Best to get the weapon into their leader’s hands quickly. Less margin for error. Less of a chance for the koobs to think he was going to shoot them down.

  Without waiting for a translation, the team leader began to tell the koob chief what it was he’d just been handed. He’d practiced this bit a bunch in the lead-up to what was about to happen next. He used a mix of Standard and Koob.

  “This is a fully functional automatic battle rifle manufactured by Black Leaf Arms. She fires a kinetic assisted six-point-five-millimeter projectile at speeds of up to two thousand five hundred miles per hour. Average magazine holds forty-five rounds and can empty it in three point nine seconds. Semi, burst, and full auto modes available at the shooter’s discretion. You can make big die with this. Big die. We’re here to arm you to fight back against the zhee. And, we’ll fight alongside you. Make big die of the donks. Friends then.”

  The koob’s eyes went wide as he h
eld the brand-new rifle and then turned it over and over once more.

  The team leader produced a magazine of uranium-depleted six point five, and shuddered a little bit without showing, thinking about the side effects and sickness that came with this ammo despite what Team Nilo said it would do to mitigate those effects, and helped the chief insert the mag.

  It was an effortless insertion.

  Magnetic assisted, the munitions carrier practically seated itself in the bottom of the rifle. Everything about the rifle was user-friendly and dumbed down. It worked under the most adverse conditions. And it was powerful. Very powerful.

  The guard and trigger were spec’d for the Kublaren’s slender three fingers. Through pantomime, the team leader showed the village elder how to point, aim, and fire the weapon.

  The old koob seemed suspicious, but followed along anyway. Then the team leader directed him to aim at a sled down the street.

  Clicks and croaks erupted and the chief had his own way all of a sudden. Instead of drawing a bad aim on a sled, he turned and landed the barrel on a dead zhee lying in the street.

  For the brief second the team leader had to see if the target and improvised range was clear, the world along the streets of the koob district grew silent as everyone collectively held their breath.

  Then the old warlord squeezed the trigger and was rewarded with a steady burst of suppressed rounds streaking away from the already smoking barrel like ballistic missiles outbound through the atmosphere.

  The old koob’s aim was bad. But the effect displayed did wonders as koobs along the rooftops began to shout and cheer. Lightning rounds streaking out from the barrel smoked away and tore up the duracrete street like it was just some flimsy tablecloth. Flinging chunks of the heavy-duty building material off into the sky.

  The team leader had loaded this mag with tracer rounds for that effect, specifically.

  But that wasn’t the most stunning aspect of the sudden display of high-tech modern firepower from this state-of-the-art chemical projectile firearm, a thing the galaxy hadn’t seen in mass production in hundreds of years if you didn’t count the Savages.

  The most stunning part was what the rounds did to the inert zhee body lying in the street.

  They tore it to shreds in a second once they found their mark. Suddenly there were explosions from the entry holes, massive projections of bone and congealed blood from the exit holes.

  One round would have been enough to kill anyone. Hits were taking off limbs and destroying whole sections of the targeted corpse. The corpse was torn to shreds in a mere single burst.

  Imagine what they’d do in a firefight, every koob had to be thinking at that moment. Even something behind the most solid of cover had little chance.

  In the silence that followed, the team leader spoke. “Rated to take down even a legionnaire. That fancy armor won’t stand up at all. Courtesy of Mr. Nilo. A recognized inland tribal chief. Friend of Pekk and all the Kublaren tribes. Your friend, too.”

  26

  Bowie knew there was no way he was getting out of the AO without a fight. Too many of the donks were ahead of his course track and able to cut him off. He stopped for a moment, weighing his options. Trying to see if he had any more than the few that seemed apparent.

  Out there across the new boomtown that was the rapidly-expanding Soob City, fires and violence were underway and well out of control. Armored sled convoys escorted emergency services vehicles to various locations, each one more desperate and in dire need of attention than the last. The sound of automatic gunfire, the occasional exchange of other random small arms fire, and the whine and retort of blaster fire near and close, went on in fewer than a dozen places across the cityscape.

  Below the office park towers, the donks had entered the buildings, all of them almost at once. If he could jump, weighed Bowie half seriously, he could get down onto the streets and disappear.

  But he had no jump pack or chute. So that was mere wishful thinking and therefore of no value in real-world ops-land.

  Jack Bowie was running out of options fast.

  A quick glance behind him at the tower he’d just come through was his best shot. Even though a larger contingent of those street donks had entered there, odds-wise, he’d ultimately have to do one firefight either way just to see the other side of this and get back on course for the embassy.

  He didn’t like to fight when he didn’t need to. But sometimes… there was no other way.

  A refinery out near the star port suddenly exploded violently in the distance. An ancient rusting power array that converted energy into reusable packs suddenly gave off a catastrophic BOOOOM, the sound catching up with the fireworks seconds later.

  How, Jack Bowie wondered, could any of this be Team Nilo’s play?

  “You’re the bait, Jack.”

  That’s what Reiser had said. Leaving the Jackknife Supreme dangling by its carrying strap around his chest, Jack reached into his pocket and took out a cigarette case. He thumbed the dispenser and shook one into his mouth, then blew through it as it chemically lit.

  He thought things through a moment.

  This was going to be a fight. No two ways about it. Go forward… fight. But still more armed jackals at his heels. Go back. Big fight. And still more to go through.

  He inhaled deeply and blew more smoke out.

  It barely drifted away. Even up here, five stories above street level, there was no breeze. It was a long, hot day getting longer and hotter by the second.

  Nilo had wanted it this way. They’d wanted everything to catch fire and get out of hand all across Soob City. Maybe even all of Kublar. And the donks, because they were donks, had been all too willing to get in on the crazy and throw gasoline on the fire.

  They just needed… the fire.

  And that had been the assassination at the party. And the online outing by Team Nilo to the news streams. The donks in their usual way had decided to make the most of a crisis and start hurting, harming, stealing, looting, and stabbing everyone they could possibly get to in the name of some deranged salute to their bloody gods.

  Team Nilo had wanted him to run, knowing the donks would chase. The donks would… would what?

  He took the last drag on the cigarette. They all had to be up in the towers ahead, and behind him now. Someone would check the skybridge for sure to see if he’d gone that way. And then he’d be trapped between a whole bunch of them coming at him from all directions.

  The donks getting out of hand were the big excuse Team Nilo needed to take control of the Soob. However they were doing that, whatever alliances they were making, they were using him to make the point.

  Team Nilo was here to do something. But what?

  Bowie didn’t need to run anymore. Because there was no way that was an option until he broke out of their cordon.

  He was walking forward now. Fast, flicking the butt off the side of the skybridge. He saw the young donk who reached the observation deck in the tower ahead. Saw him see Bowie and grab for his smart-comm to alert the rest.

  Bowie opened up with the Jackknife, smashing glass and cutting the young donk down onto the shining floor amid melted and broken glass. The body rag-dolled all over the inside of the observation deck, finally coming to rest against the pristine white wall that marked the central lift tube inside the tower. A wall now painted in brain matter and bloody red spray.

  He kicked the jack’s blaster away and moved across the observation deck to the next bridge, pulling the fire alarm as he went.

  Time for a fight.

  27

  The doors to the back of lifts opened and three young donks dressed like street hoodlums emerged just as Bowie pivoted through the revolving glass door on the other side of the observation glass. He didn’t hesitate to unload on them.

  Two were hit while scrambling to get away. He cut them down quick, while on
e fast mover ran around the side of the curving central core, catching one in the ribs as he flung himself to get out of the way of the blur of blaster fire. Bowie, satisfied that one was dead, or dying and bleeding out, and that no one else was coming up in the bank of elevators, moved out across the bridge to the next tower.

  They were definitely onto him now. They knew he was using the skybridge. They’d cut off their search of the lower levels and try to intercept him up here.

  The next group came up ahead in the next tower as he moved quickly across the bridge, well before he reached the observation deck of that next tower. Six of ’em. Six young donks, snarling and braying, thumping their chests and waving all manner of over-powered, over-priced, tricked-out blasters that probably hadn’t ever had a good carbon cleaning. The kind designed to menace and look mean for up close and personal blasts exchanged a few meters away in an alley. Or a wild drive-by spray and pray to hit some rival and maybe a few innocents who should’ve known better.

  All of them inaccurate at fifty meters or more.

  On the other hand the weapon Bowie carried was perfect for that engagement range. And what it lacked in targeting could be found through adjusted drag-fire as Bowie opened up from the halfway point across the bridge. The first shots smashed into observation deck glass and Bowie lowered the blaster muzzle and shot down the lead donk a second later.

  The others could have covered. Could have run. Could have backed off and set up a crossfire he wouldn’t have been able to get through, especially if there were more of their associates at his back.

  They only stood there and fired with all kinds of goofy aiming positions. Holding the blaster sideways. Some sort of half-crouch hip shot like Jaq Janes: Smuggler Along the Edge of the Galaxy did in the entertainment stream of the moment they probably all watched.

  One poor donk even used a two-handed grip because he’d over-charged his blaster by having the charge pack inhibitors removed.

  Always a recipe for disaster.

  No one hit anything.

  Especially the human they were aiming for. Who, on the other hand, merely advanced and fired at them as he closed. Hitting their line and knocking them down as the incoming reached stormfront levels. Dragging the bright line of blaster fire the Jackknife spat out across them all until they were dead on the floor of the observation deck.