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

by Jason Anspach

  Bowie turned, scanned the ruin for his holdout, and still couldn’t find it.

  Gunfire, a type brand-new to the galaxy, erupted from several points across Soob City, spreading away in every direction. Black smoke filled the skies. Distant Kublaren war chants sounded like some sporting event. Fans cheering for their side. The braying of the donks could barely be heard as it was all drowned out in small batches of brutal automatic gunfire ringing out and bouncing around across the streets.

  Bowie walked to the embassy down the block.

  Today’s objective.

  He’d hurt something inside. Not broken, but not working. With a block to go, he stumbled toward the embassy like some drunk trying to lurch home.

  That’s all he needed to do now. Get there. Get home.

  30

  He made the embassy just as a dozen armored sleds in neutral gray and sporting several private military contractors each made the street.

  A woman, tall, redheaded and model pretty, kitted in tac gear and talking into a vest comm, came to meet him as the convoy came to a halt and established a perimeter. She had unearthly blue eyes and pretty red freckles.

  “I’m so sorry about this, Jack. It wasn’t supposed to go down quite like this.” Then seeing the cuts to his face, a few other injuries Bowie hadn’t noticed, and his hobbling gait, she called for a medic from the convoy and led him to the curb to sit down.

  “I’m Elektra. And I’m real glad you made it, Jack.”

  Bowie nodded as she moved him onto the curb and helped him down. All around, the contractors were securing the front of the embassy.

  Someone handed Bowie a canteen. He drank greedily. Sweat broke out across his neck and back. A cold sweat. The adrenaline was fading from his body now and he’d pay the price of its usage.

  He stared at his hand. It was shaking.

  Let it, he told himself.

  He tumbled out a cigarette.

  She sat down beside him.

  “I gotta get things under control, Jack. But… direct from Nilo himself: Job well done. We are already ahead of our plus one timeframe. Medic’s gonna clean you up now and then we’ll talk later. Okay, Jack?”

  He nodded absently at her, drew on the cigarette, and lowered his head, letting the smoke spill out all over the dirty and bloodstained street he was sitting on.

  The gunfire was distant and far away.

  Only now thinking about how close he’d come to death today.

  Being out there beyond the wire of the perimeter, it did that to you.

  Guards took their positions out front as though actors in some play.

  So this is what it was all about, Jack Bowie thought to himself. Not really sure what it was all about. But knowing that what he was watching… was somehow it. Somehow the start of something that might be a big deal further down the line. Might even change the shape of the galaxy. Who knew? What he was seeing was something. He knew that much.

  Somehow, Nilo, had just declared himself a political entity within the shape of that galaxy.

  They patched Jack Bowie up and drove him back to the Grand Intergalactic.

  Amazing, thought Bowie as he stepped from the nondescript armored sled. They’d cleaned up the bodies out front and the shattered glass that had marred the place that morning when the zhee began firing. Chasing him like a rabbit and shooting down everyone along the way.

  Now the zhee were quelled.

  Those that had survived the massacre by the Kublarens were holed up in the ZQ begging the local government, which was disavowing the uprising of its citizens and promising that the Legion would soon retaliate, to keep them safe from the xenophobic Kublarens who had so wantonly and viciously attacked them.

  Fun and games for the zhee were almost over on Kublar.

  Or so Elektra had informed him during the debrief.

  Now, from the back of the sled, she said nothing, just watching him limp away from the vehicle. Watching him with those otherworldly blue eyes.

  The doormen greeted him by name as he passed through the ornamented grand front of the hotel.

  “Congratulations, Mr. Bowie.”

  But they didn’t say what they were congratulating him for. And he didn’t much care.

  He just wanted…

  What?

  He wondered if she’d still be in his suite. Honey. The Tennar. If she’d taken what she could find and just gone. Which would maybe be for the best.

  She was only an escort after all. A survivor in a galaxy that didn’t play fair. No different than with him, or anyone else.

  Several floors up, Jack Bowie opened the door to his suite and she came running. Squealing in that beautiful way women do when they are genuinely excited. Wearing the flimsiest of sheer white silk robes.

  Yeah, it was every man’s erotic dream. But there was still something innocent about her and the way she was excited to see him. Something not ruined by the galaxy.

  Maybe it was a lie, he thought.

  But sometimes, just for a while, maybe it isn’t.

  “You’re hurt!” she cooed, seeing his bruises and bandages. Honestly. Like she really cared about him. She led him to the couch, nursing him.

  Sometimes it would be nice if lies we wanted to believe were really the truth.

  “Today was just…” she began, her speech rushing and excited. Her soft sexy voice worried and sighing all at once.

  He sat down and everything still hurt. But a little bit less.

  “Today was just crazy, Jack! Wasn’t it?”

  She sat down and something out of whack in his spine screamed. He grunted.

  They’d given him pills.

  He didn’t take them.

  “I was watching the reports and then the entertainment streams went offline. I tried to see what was going on but… it was crazy out there. Everybody was crazy. Right? I was worried something had happened to you and now I know I was right to be worried. Something did happen! Look… you’re injured. What happened, Jack?”

  He leaned back onto the heavenly cushions.

  “Any of that champagne still left?” he asked.

  She squealed with delight and surprise. She washed all over him and drowned out the galaxy.

  “Would that help you, Jack?” she asked earnestly. “Because that would help me. I was so worried about you. I was afraid, Jack. Really afraid.”

  He could tell she really was. Really had been.

  “Yeah. I could use some too. If it’s still cold. Let’s have some.”

  “Good,” she said. “Because the hotel sent up their best… or that’s what the nice young boy who brought it told me. I think I made him nervous. He said it was the hotel’s best. Selected by the som-, the somey-something.”

  “Sommelier. I bet you made him nervous. Were you wearing that?”

  She seemed startled and looked at her sheer silk robe as if seeing it for the first time. It left little to the imagination. She was truly beautiful.

  “How did you know?” she asked.

  “Just a guess.”

  “Well, I had just gotten back from getting a massage in the hotel spa and my tentacles done. You said I should do that so I did. I hope it was okay? Was it okay? It was very expensive. Do you like them? They’re so pretty!”

  “It’s okay. And I do.”

  She squealed because she had pleased him. That seemed to make her happy. Like… like it was some mission she’d given herself for her role in the galaxy’s games. Just make people happy.

  There’s enough unhappiness out there, thought Jack. Why not.

  He felt warm and alive. Relaxed and languid.

  He leaned back.

  She was intoxicating.

  “Champagne?” he mentioned once more as she stared at him with her large doe-eyes.

  “Oh, sorry!” And
then she was off, knowing that he couldn’t resist watching her voluptuous charms bounce and sway and curve as she got the champagne and glasses.

  “Yeah,” mumbled Jack Bowie. But he didn’t know what he was agreeing to. Just something his mind was thinking without him. Something about being here. And not dead. And the price you have to pay to keep it that way.

  “Yeah,” he said one more time.

  And then she was back with a cold flute glass for him, and he had to help with the opening of the very expensive Silithian Grand Cru. But in the end… they got it open. The champagne tasted cold and dry and just a little sweet. She laughed at the bubbles and that was a kind of music to him.

  It hit the spot perfectly.

  She curled up into him and he didn’t mind the pain it caused to make that happen.

  “I was worried about you, Jack. Honestly. I really was worried. I know we just met. But… there’s something special between us. I can feel it. Can you feel it too, Jack?”

  “Yeah,” he murmured, drifting now. “I can...”

  “Good,” she whispered softly and then listened to him snore.

  Later, when Jack was in bed, she crawled from the sheets between them, not bothering to drape herself in that sheer white silk. She crossed the quiet suite without a sound and retrieved her comm. She’d hidden it. Then she checked to make sure the injector-knife she’d hidden was in its place too.

  It was.

  She touched the comm and acknowledged her check in. Then tapped out a message… Proceeding with Phase Two.

  BOWIE

  THE SOOB

  31

  Republic Capitol Building

  Green Zone, Subiyook City

  Colonel Ron Deage couldn’t quite believe what happened to his beloved Republic. He was regimental commander for the Republic Army’s 305th Light Infantry, part of the 50th Infantry Division—“Edge Walkers.” Colonel Deage had two rifle companies on Kublar: Good and Heater. Indigo Company had been on Kublar, but was assigned to the 7th Fleet for the defense of Kublar. The brass at division felt the company would be better used in the defense of Utopion than overseeing the Kublar project.

  The colonel still didn’t know exactly what happened to the men and women of Indigo. Other than that they were dead. He’d heard the rumors that the admiral running the 7th had turned traitor. Joined with those Legion crazies in an attempt to overthrow the Republic. And he knew that the entirety of the 7th was destroyed over Utopion by Goth Sullus and his Black Fleet. Indigo likely went up in a ball of flames.

  Never even got to fire their weapons to protect the Republic. Or maybe they did. Maybe they gave the Navy traitors in the 7th hell before being locked down in some destroyer.

  It was a story the colonel would never hear. But he knew the men who ran Indigo Company—good soldiers—and couldn’t see them standing idly by just because some navy puke decided to cast her lot with whoever had the wind at their backs at the time of crisis. And so Colonel Deage allowed himself the fantasy of a final, heroic rebellion before it all came to an end above Utopion.

  Because it may as well be true. And because no one would ever really know either way.

  But now the Republic was on life support. Deage knew that. Moreover, he knew that saying the Republic was on life support was a way for him to comfort himself. It wasn’t on life support. It was stone-dead and lying half buried in the grave. Article Nineteen was something the Republic Army had been training for—in strict secrecy—for years. There was still an R-A special forces unit attached to the 305th for that reason—though most of them had gone AWOL and caught transports off Kublar in the aftermath of what happened to the House of Reason and Goth Sullus.

  Desertion had become a significant problem. Once the soldiers got it in their heads that there was no longer a Republic to fight for, his officers had a hell of a time keeping them inside the Green Zone. It seemed like every week somebody slipped off and begged, borrowed, or stole their way onto a transport. Colonel Deage had signed orders to execute anyone caught in an attempt to desert.

  He’d only done that once though, to the first soldier they caught. A private that cried so much before the firing squad that she damn near soaked through the blindfold she’d been given. But it only served to slow deserters. To make them more cautious about who they were willing to trust and talk to. Deage quietly ordered that anyone else caught be incarcerated. Vanished without a trace.

  The soldiers left assumed the execution was just done out of sight. And that was fine, because what Colonel Deage needed right now were bodies. Because Kublar, specifically the Soob, was on the verge of toppling. A paramilitary force had entered the city right under their noses and supplied weapons to disgruntled natives to use against the zhee—about the only ally Colonel Deage could count on to help him achieve his mission of protecting the local Republic government.

  The zhee, despite all their roughshod violence across the city, discreetly avoided attacking any Republic assets. All that had been worked out. The Republic would not interfere with the zhee if they left the inner circle of the Green Zone—where all Repub assets were held and protected—free from harm. But the zhee had been soundly defeated by the marginal hangers-on of the propped up Pashta’k tribe. The lowest caste of the Republic’s chosen winner of the Kublaren Civil War, cast aside by the Pashta’k chieftain and his tribal select.

  And that compounded a problem that the planetary governor and her cabinet expected Colonel Deage to solve. As he walked through the cool, air-conditioned marble halls of the domed Republic capitol building, Deage weighed his options.

  All those soldiers killed in orbit over Utopion. Damn, what I wouldn’t give for a full three companies.

  “Sir?”

  Colonel Deage halted at the sound of Major Dorenz’s voice. He wheeled around and saw the major standing at a pair of heavy wooden doors that went from floor to ceiling. They were carved from the ironwood trees native to Kublar and inlaid with silvene that seemed to flash and surge with the light as though it were delivering nutrients to the wood itself on a cellular level.

  “We’re here, sir.”

  Deage nodded and walked to the door. “Lost in my thoughts, Hal.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Major Dorenz swung the door open and Deage walked in on the seated assembly. Governor Pressfield was seeking to referee an argument between the Pashta’k chieftain, Looma, and a zhee the colonel had never seen before. The rest of the ruling council was split into small bunches of Republic bureaucracy, paper tigers who had no bite left now that the House of Reason was unable to back up their legislative decisions with its military.

  The room quieted, except for the zhee and Kublaren. They shouted at one another, each using his own native tongue and with no translator bot in sight. Talking past each other and not seeming to care. Deage would have laughed if it weren’t all so serious.

  “Colonel Deage,” Governor Pressfield said, commanding a quiet, even over the bickering aliens with her digitally amplified voice. It rang off the polished stone through micro-speakers throughout the chamber. “Did you receive word of the Legion’s intentions?”

  “I did, ma’am,” Deage said, his own voice now amplified, a tiny mic’d bot floating near his mouth like a curious gnat. “The Legion has declined the invitation to get involved in Kublar and is advising that the former Republic government—their words—negotiate with the Kublaren forces being aided by Black Leaf.”

  A council member was quick to give an opinion on the colonel’s report. “That’s not fair! This is a Republic world.”

  “All due respect,” Colonel Deage said, “but it’s not. Not to the Legion. The Republic government of Kublar did not acknowledge or support Article Nineteen—”

  “Because the House of Reason declared it illegal!” interrupted another irate council member, though the edge of fear betrayed her intentions.

  “Be
that as it may, the Legion acting in agreement with the planets who did throw in to see Article Nineteen come to completion no longer recognize this council as a valid Republic government and won’t be sending aid. We’re on our own here. This is being viewed as a matter of Kublaren planetary sovereignty.”

  “Damn,” muttered Governor Pressfield. She rubbed the great crescent that was the council table, a half-circle that faced the gallery Colonel Deage stood in, where all the planetary council and its allies sat with her at the head. “I had hoped that, given his history on Kublar, the Legion Commander would have been eager to return violence to the planet.”

  Chieftain Looma licked his eye at this.

  “Yes, ma’am,” Deage said, not really having an opinion on the matter. Let the spooks and armchair psychologists do the psychoanalysis.

  The way he figured it, even if the Legion was itching for a fight on Kublar, this situation had to be brought under control in the next twenty-four hours or the damage would be irrevocably done before they even arrived. That wasn’t psychology, that was tactics and a realistic view of the battle. If the Republic elements in the Soob couldn’t figure out a way to put a stop to what the inland koobs were attempting with the help of Black Leaf mercenaries today, then it wouldn’t matter if the whole damn Republic showed up to provide relief. Those in the Green Zone would already be dead.

  Governor Pressfield pushed up from her seat at the head of the council. “Our only remaining course of action then is to fend off this insurrection.” She looked around the room. “I think we all know that nothing pleasant awaits any of us should the inland Kublarens achieve victory.”

  Eyes everywhere looked down.

  “I’m assuming emergency powers as afforded to me under Republic law and restricting this council meeting to those essential to war.”