When Bowie opened one eye, he saw nothing but the flickering overhead light of the curving tunnel. The whine of repulsors and engines could be heard from inside their various berths. Hopefully this covered the sound of blaster fire and the crash along the ramp from anyone who might get interested.
He pulled himself out of the backseat, hand instinctively searching for the briefcase. It was there. Right next to him. He holstered his blaster. Retrieved the other out of the backseat and stood over the wreck, letting his heart settle back to normal.
Waria was dead, that was for sure. The snake man’s eyes had rolled to white, and his gruesomely shot through body looked even more grotesque lying in the passenger seat covered in shattered glass. The swolly was either dead, or it looked that way. He’d been cut to shreds and was bleeding from dozens of different places.
Shoot him, some procedural part of Bowie’s mind reminded him. But Bowie didn’t and instead stumbled off up the ramp. Time was wasting, and that dropship was the only way into the party.
And he had to be at the party.
09
Hijacking. There are a lot of ways to do it. That’s for sure. It’s been going on for as long as mankind has been flying starships. It didn’t matter that this was a dropship, designed for use between larger starships and ground operations. Not just reserved for combat. They were the local freight haulers and taxi services on most planets that used dropships.
Which was exactly what this one was doing. It was departing to pick up some girls who’d be attending the party for purposes bacchanal. That was how the rich and powerful were in the Republic. They were the first ones to advocate equal treatment for all, and respect for sexuality and gender, a thing most alien cultures were still in the dark ages on compared to the rest of humanity. But behind closed doors, or closed compounds as it were, they were the first to treat the fairer sex like commercial items. They didn’t want to take the time to get what they wanted. They’d rather just pay for it.
Bowie had forced an access door three levels above eight. The access door followed a small narrow hallway out into the central lift well that led to the rooftop hangar. A maintenance bot looked up quizzically from a spot weld it was performing on some internal piping and told him he wasn’t authorized to be in that section.
“I’m leaving,” he told the insectile bot as it hunched over its work.
“You’re going the wrong way,” it noted as Bowie reached the central well. The bat-winged dropship had just maneuvered out of her berth and was adding lift to the repulsors as it climbed up the docking well. Its bulk filled the circumference and the pilot gave it a slow rotation, probably intent on picking up a course heading as soon as they were clear of the garage.
“This is my ride,” said Bowie over his shoulder and stepped out into the void to meet the climbing ship.
There was a sickening moment of falling at something that was rising to meet you, which made it seem like he was falling faster than he really was. But he landed with both feet cushioning, collapsed and rolled across the wide chroma-steel surface of the bat wing.
His grip on the briefcase was the one constant in a suddenly shifting galaxy where if he rolled too far, he was likely to go off the trailing edge of the wing and down about eleven levels to pancake at ground level.
He’d learned a long time ago to let go of fear. The worst thing that could happen, he told himself, was that he’d be dead. And then all his problems would be someone else’s. That lesson had come to him during demolition school back when he’d been a young LTJG.
He came to a stop just before the flaps along the surface of the dropship’s wing. Which was good. Connecting with the flaps would have more than alerted the pilot that something was wrong with his ship. As it was, the pilot, at best, heard a thump. A big one, and felt a tug on the portside stabilizer.
Of course, he’d tell the crew chief to pop the hatch and make sure someone hadn’t dropped some equipment from a high level on them. The danger being that even a dropped dynaspanner could jam the flaps during flight. Which could end things quickly once they tried to make a turn at altitude under thrust.
Bowie was up and striding toward the center of the ship as it climbed up through the well, engines howling and repulsors throbbing. The dorsal hatch would be right along the top of the fuselage. And sure enough someone, most likely the crew chief, was popping it for visual inspection on whatever the pilot had heard or felt. It shot open pneumatically and a man popped his head up with a flash. A second later he got the toe of Bowie’s dress shoe right in his nose. Which sprayed blood as the man dropped down into the hatch.
He was lights out when Bowie sealed the hatch and climbed down. The crewman was wearing some type of corporate logo–marked overalls that were way too small for Bowie’s frame. He could hear the pilot over the internal comm asking what was going on back there.
Bowie yanked open the cargo door and was confronted by the rising tiers of dropship berths. Some empty, others occupied by any one of a bizarre collection of different ships all serving some arcane industrial purpose.
He was about to shove the unconscious crew chief out over the roof once they cleared it, hopefully not killing the guy, when the pilot came aft and poked his head through the hatch from the flight deck. It was a large, shaven head. The head belonging to a man of above average build, height, and rage.
He took one burning look at the unconscious chief lying on the deck, and the stranger with the briefcase, and literally pushed himself through the hatch like some alien lifeform birthing from an amniotic sack.
“Oh hey!” said Bowie as though he had some logical explanation for the tableau ready at hand, and then walloped the surging pilot with the side of the sturdy case in one fluid motion as he reached for his blaster beneath his jacket coat. The briefcase loaded with illegal drugs caught the pilot right in the side of his lantern-jawed face and glanced off his almost Cro-Magnon brow. This did nothing to stop the giant’s rush and a moment later, as Bowie brought the blaster up to fire, the pilot easily batted it away where it discharged into the deck with a whiny shriek of blaster fire. The giant’s other fist smashed right into Bowie’s chin.
It was a solid connect. The giant pilot knew it. And Bowie did too. He sat down hard on the aft bench as the dropship cleared the rooftop hangar access. There must be a co-pilot or bot flying, he thought distantly as the pilot closed in for another blow.
Engines howled, and he shook his head, the giant hovering, waiting to deliver another rapid-fire blow to knock him out. He had all the cards. And position.
Except for the hovering part.
Jack Bowie drove his leg upward right into the man’s crotch. Eyes bulged and the pilot’s face went red.
The dropship heeled over and both men went sliding toward the open cargo door. Bowie’s blaster careened over the edge, tumbling in free fall, out of the game entirely. The crew chief landed along the edge of the roof. Barely. A moment later the ship was out over the distant streets below and climbing for cruise altitude. The giant, on the other hand, caught himself on the top edge of the cargo door with his unbroken hand and hung on as the rest of his body followed his feet out into thin air.
Bowie had only one hand too. The briefcase occupied the other.
The free hand caught the giant’s flight suit and held on as his feet left the cargo door and the city streets suddenly appeared below. Both men were now hanging out the cargo door as the dropship executed a hard turn to pick up a new course heading. At their feet the dropship’s starboard engine intake sucked air and howled as though it were threatening to ingest them. And then a moment later the craft stabilized back to the horizontal flight path and both men were suddenly thrown back into the cargo deck. Tumbling across it a moment later.
Bowie held onto the case.
The giant gave him a savage elbow in the ribs and scrambled fast, for a big man. Bowie stayed low and swept his
body in a semi-circular motion, knocking the man’s feet out from under him and causing the giant to fall back to the deck once more.
What happened over the next thirty seconds was nothing more than a series of blows traded as fast as possible between two desperate opponents. The blows came so fast, neither man even had the time to register the pain and damage inflicted. Each had only one hand with which to strike the other. But elbows, feet, and even heads contributed to the sudden melee.
It was the giant who got his feet under him once more and began to stomp Bowie in the ribs as he lay on the deck of the dropship. As the third stomp was coming down, and this time aimed straight at his head, Bowie let go of the case and pulled his holdout from his back.
The giant missed as Bowie rolled, watching the briefcase slide toward the open cargo door and the swiftly passing streets below. He fired, hitting the giant center mass. The man let go of his hold on the ceiling of the cargo deck to clutch at the searing hot wound in his chest. A wound that was most likely fatal already. A shot to the pump and pipes. He was dead, he just didn’t know it yet.
Once more the dropship heeled over sharply. And suddenly. There was definitely a bot flying. Only they made such turns that lacked any kind of finesse or desire for passenger comfort. Now the cargo door looked down into the city streets once more. The giant tumbled out the open door and into the ether. And so did the briefcase.
It was just sliding out when Bowie lunged, one hand flailing for a loose cargo strap when he caught the briefcase’s handle. There was an uncertain moment as the cargo strap continued to play out, indicating that it might possibly be connected to nothing at all… and then it yanked taut, confirming otherwise.
Bowie leaned out the door, case in hand. One hand holding the connected strap. Carefully, he drew himself back around and crawled through the flight deck hatch.
It smelled of burnt ozone and electronics. The insectile chatter of flight control data droned monotonously. A flight bot swiveled its head and took in Bowie as he appeared through the crawl space.
“Where is Captain Jonso?”
Bowie raised his blaster and shot the bot in the processing housing. It slumped over as he slid behind the captain’s controls, stowed the briefcase, and took the stick.
All the nav data was set up in the HUD. Rendezvous with the Silver Koan in Sundance, location markers set up, and the direct to Cliffside with approach clearances already in place.
As he neared the big freighter that had set down on the salty plains that formed the Sundance district, Jack Bowie found a ball cap with the dropship company’s logo. Secure Transit. No doubt they handled all the dark traffic for the pimps that kept the nonstop parties going in the Cliffside district.
He donned the cap and put on his sunglasses.
The HUD inside the sunglasses interfaced with the dropship and informed him that damage to the power plant coordinator had been sustained. Most likely when he’d discharged the blaster on the cargo deck. A blaster that was now somewhere in the streets of Soob City.
He was down to one blaster and three knives. One of which was really just a corkscrew.
Ground personnel hustled out from beneath the freighter’s bulk, waving landing lights and indicating where he was supposed to set down. He got the dropship down, compensating for the innate crabbing effect that was now causing one engine to overproduce and make the ship want to fly sideways. Wafts of black smoke drifted out from under the ship’s belly once the gears were down and locked.
Bowie exited to meet the ground crew.
“Your ship’s smoking!” said one of the techs. Underneath the distant freighter, the girls were coming down the ramp to board the dropship. A stunning collection of alien and human beauties, each wearing haute couture and carrying overnight bags, made their way daintily down the freighter’s belly ramp.
“Oh,” said Bowie to the concerned tech. “She always does that. Mag converter drips oil and it burns off. Nothing to worry about.”
The man scratched his head.
“Never heard of no mag converter doin’ that.”
Bowie shrugged as if to say, Well, it does.
The briefcase was still securely stowed on the flight deck of the dropship.
“Well, let’s get ’em aboard,” prompted Bowie to move things along before someone stalled the whole show over a maintenance issue. “Hammerhand says they’re already late and he won’t pay the tip if it goes beyond an hour.”
Bowie had no idea if there was anyone named Hammerhand involved. But most likely the wrench monkey he was talking to probably never left the engineering deck on the freighter, and he wouldn’t know either.
The man turned and waved gustily at the beauties.
The engine wash blew the thin silk coverings they all wore tight across their bodies, leaving little to the imagination. Bowie held out his hand and helped them aboard one by one, exchanging flirtatious pleasantries and innuendos as he showed them how to strap in.
“You’re a big one!” gushed a doe-eyed, orange-skinned Tennarian. “Will you be at the party?”
“He’s help, Honey!” stated a statuesque brunette who made the word voluptuous seem like an understatement. She had mean eyes.
“Oh, that’s too bad,” said Honey. “You seem nice.”
Bowie gave her a wink and climbed aboard.
“Be a good girl and you might just see me around later for a drink!”
She smiled back at him. Genuinely. Nice. Like she wasn’t a high-class hooker headed toward a bacchanal for the uber rich.
They lifted off, trailing black smoke, and made for Cliffside. It was a ten-minute flight and they passed over large sections of the city and picked up a heading along the coast. Urban sprawl gave way to parklands and a forest of the scrubby little feather trees that were native to this part of Kublar. An air traffic control bot came over the comm and asked for clearance for the dropship to breach Cliffside airspace.
Without knowing it would work, Bowie flashed the ident preloaded into the transponder, hoping the pilot, who was now also lying in the streets of Soob City, probably not too far from his Python, had the forethought to enter it before taking off.
“Confirmed,” said the business-like bot on the other side of the comm. “Clearance to Fairweather Estate authorized. Do not deviate or you will be shot down.”
In the back, the girls erupted into bawdy laughter at something.
“Roger that,” said Bowie and flew the heading into the belly of the beast. Fairweather Estate was the sanctum sanctorum of Sustus Caul. Former member of the House of Reason and prime facilitator of the Republic expats who’d made Kublar their new home after recent events.
Since it worked so well on Utopion.
10
The dropship’s stick had been shaking by the time Bowie finally got the bird down on the estate landing pad. It had started vibrating badly and then in the end, working the rudders and repulsor stabilizers and practically flying sideways like he was coming in under some hurricane force headwind instead of the mildly pleasant coastal Kublaren day that it was, he landed the ship on the estate’s landing pad.
Jack Bowie grabbed the briefcase full of illegal drugs, ditched the ball cap and escorted the girls, helping them down from the dropship’s cargo door. They scattered like a flock of geese seeking breadcrumbs.
Again, another ground tech seemed concerned about the smoke which was now bellowing out of the bottom of the ship. The beauties coughed delicately and made their way onto the grounds of the estate.
“You know your ship is…?”
“Not my ship,” said Bowie. “Bot pilot. Think it’s malfunctioning. I’m with the ladies.”
And with that Bowie straightened his jacket and stepped off the pad to meet the protocol bot.
“Allow me to introduce myself… I’m,” announced the mincing automaton, “G464. Party activiti
es facilitator… um… though I was initially programmed as a diplomatic attaché to the crown prince of the Jongolese Worlds. But that is a long and rather boring story that ends tragically… perhaps…”
“We have to get these girls into the party,” interrupted Bowie, noting the heavy security between the landing pad and the rest of the estate which seemed to be comprised of elaborate gardens, and then a small red brick fortress of ornate design. Tyrolean columns and wide porticos.
“Oh yes. Indeed we do… uh… who are you? My master had ordered only pleasure girls. We were not expecting anything… uh… male.”
“I came along with them. I was informed that some… party supplies would be acquired on-site, and it so happens I have some for purchase. If you’ll direct me to the right procurement specialist.”
“Party supplies?” erupted the bot. “My… we are fully stocked as of the last review completed at zero four this morning local. I reviewed the data myself personally. Especially our most critical items. Sixteen cases of Fraught Crystal Gin for this afternoon’s mud wrestling match between the girls. Master Caul insists his guests have the finest so that we may conduct ourselves with class and dignity during the… ahem… festivities.”
Galaxy's Edge: Takeover: Season Two: Book One Page 6