It was like being overwatched by an angel of death.
Except Bowie had been in these situations before. Out beyond the wire. Past the perimeter and inside a place the enemy, whoever they were this week, called home. Air cover was nice, but a full-scale infantry team with armor support made one feel a lot safer. Without any of those things, one started to feel one’s mortality.
“That’s why you get the big bucks,” Jack Bowie told himself as he jogged up the street he was navigating. He’d ditched his coat. It was too hot and also if the donks were running low-grade search identification software, even that simple change of wardrobe just might throw them for a loop.
Anything more sophisticated than low-level would bypass clothing markers and identify facial features at upwards of four hundred points. Almost impossible to defeat.
If the donks got their acts together in the next few minutes, they’d find him. That was the safest way for him to plan this.
Bowie continued to move.
What good that would do them, he didn’t know. Right now, he was passing a lot of empty streets and more than a few dead donks who’d been more than willing to meet him. Done to death from above.
The dropship was ahead of his position and engaging targets at a large intersection he’d have to cross. Bowie had made the left turn two blocks back and now he was continuing straight out of the Green Zone.
And he wasn’t thrilled about that either.
Elektra was telling him to move forward when she suddenly stopped mid-sentence. She dropped from the comm and there was nothing but a dull, ominous hum. Ahead, a block up, a ground-to-air missile streaked up from the streets, away from behind some buildings, and barely missed the dropship sniper team.
Bowie stopped and watched as the dropship jinked hard to its left to miss another missile suddenly coming up now. Engines howled, repulsors groaned as the hovering ship danced like a moth. Again, another narrow miss.
Flares and chaff pods erupted away from the turning dropship, nose down now and heading away from the intersection as fast as it could. Seconds later it was out of the area, un-hit and unharmed.
And of course, leaving Jack Bowie without his personal Angel of Death.
“Uh… problem?” asked Bowie over the suddenly quiet comm. He’d heard her at points interacting with other teams and received snippets of their comm traffic. Now, she’d isolated him from the general. And that did not bode well.
He was surprised when she came back quickly.
“Yeah,” said Elektra flatly. “We had no idea they had anti-air cap.”
Pause. He heard her say something while covering her comm.
Then…
“Hold one, Bowie.”
Things were heading away from the plan. That was fairly obvious.
“Watch your six for the present,” she said simply after a moment. He wasn’t even sure if the message was meant for him.
But the meaning was clear. He was completely beyond the Green Zone with no back up and wanted by every zhee killer on the planet. And a few others besides. He was on his own for the immediate and indeterminate future.
Bowie swore and holstered the Python in his shoulder harness.
A moment later he tapped the deployment tab on the Jackknife Supreme, currently in camo-carry mode, and watched as the thing neatly unpacked itself into a high-powered heavy blaster. A chain of charge packs effortlessly fell away from the feed-injector.
A grim smile blossomed across his determined face.
Yeah, he’d worked stealth and reach-out-and-kill… but excessive firepower had always been a guilty pleasure he’d found attractive. And he’d never minded carrying the team pig during his time attached to the Marines.
If he was going to be on his own for a few, then the Jackknife Supreme was a handy little thing to have in a pinch.
“Bowie.”
It was Elektra again. A little less calm, cool, and collected than prior transmission comms, but still pro. “Change of plans. We have ground teams moving into position. Problem is, for the next six blocks you’re on your own. I need you to reach Park and Sixth in ten minutes. Then we’ll have you back in pocket.”
Bowie had always hated that phrase. The only people who ever used it were people who had no idea what it was like to be out of pocket.
No idea what fear, adrenaline, and tension did to you in those unsupervised and very exposed moments when you were out of pocket, as they liked to say. It wasn’t the same as a termination or a hit. You were running the game then.
Take your shot and blow.
Out of pocket meant… on your own deep inside enemy territory without support, back up, QRF, or overwatch. You were in their game. Their world. Not yours. Now you had to balance reactive and proactive stances as the mission developed.
You’d left the known world.
And operationally speaking, that was not a great place to be.
Elektra was describing a route through a construction project that was going to be the future of the underground transportation system coming to Soob City in the next few years.
“Negative on route,” grunted Bowie, his voice dry and ragged over the comm. It was hot and he was dehydrated. “Follow me via tracking.”
Bowie doglegged a hard right, crossing the street and heading for an office complex east of the shootout at the intersection ahead. A series of office towers, all connected via skybridge, the cookie-cutter type that went up in six months on any newly industrialized world, sprawled away in the direction Bowie wanted for now. It wasn’t a direct route to Sixth and Park, but it would put him in a position to get there safely.
If the zhee sensed he was heading for the embassy, then no doubt they were filling the direct route with their version of a kill team.
He was running fast now because it was important to get off the street as quickly as possible. He vaulted a low concrete wall, sprinted across a mostly empty parking lot, and made the high security entrance to the nearest circular tower in the office park.
It was clear the building hadn’t been occupied yet by any galactic corporate entity, but it looked more than ready for move in.
Bowie opened up with a burst of fire from the Jackknife and felt the thing barely even jerk from blaster recoil as it dumped at least twenty shots in half a second across the entrance door made of heavy secure-glass. Rated to stand up to riot, but not high-powered heavy blaster fire.
Go figure.
The glass wall shattered and Bowie stepped inside the climate-controlled building, getting hit by a refreshing blast of nice cold air. The construction workers probably kept it on for themselves. Bowie didn’t mind their indiscretion.
He crossed the lobby and hit the call button for the elevator. One of the sixteen in the bank of lifts opened and Bowie stepped inside, scanning the panel for the floor he could access the skybridge on.
A moment later the lift was headed up at an almost unsafe rate of acceleration. Someone still needed to adjust its controls before building occupation.
24
Boom Boom Killah and the Feral Jacks had just had their first major street engagement against the nebulous new security company that had been showing up on the fringes of Kublar. And won.
Some of the donks had been calling them the Shadows. A security presence that had begun to assert itself in recent weeks across Soob City. Carving out districts and neighborhoods, or even just blocks, for itself. Now, they’d had their first fight against what the zhee had assumed was another gang, cartel, or some heavily funded paramilitary org. They’d encountered such before.
There were even reports of paramilitary guerrillas operating against the koob tribes out in the sticks near the zhee holy sanctuaries that had been established out there to project influence and run smuggling operations.
Boom Boom Killah and his crew had reached the intersection where the fire
fight with the dropship would take place with just minutes to spare. He was following reports over zhee social media channels that indicated the target was headed this way. And at the same time, he noted the unmarked dropship shooting down into the streets.
“Ha…” he brayed, still enthroned on the back seat of his sled and tapping his datapad while the rest of the crew flooded into the streets and businesses, suddenly commandeering them as fighting positions to intercept the infidel.
“Ha! Shadowies be all tricky-like, muley braddas!” crowed the basso-voiced donk crew leader.
Then he nodded solemnly at Little Six, his right-hand donk, and gave the orders he wanted obeyed immediately.
“Get da flyswattah outta dey trunk, you dumb muley bast.”
Little Six had responded rapidly, and with the smooth professionalism of any trained soldier. He popped the trunk on Boom Boom Killah’s ride and had the Repub Marine man-portable Longbow Air Defense System in hand within its clamshell. Several thousand had gone missing in the last days of the Republic, and word was that an entire supply unit had sold off tons of military-grade hardware, including one HK-PP, to finance their retirement in lieu of casting their fate to the Republic paymasters. Best to control what you could while the evolving galactic economy assumed its new form.
And so they took off for the edge of the galaxy to live like kings.
Meanwhile, a few of those LADS ground-to-air intercept systems found their way into donk paws on Kublar. Because Boom Boom Killah “ran dey show,” as they liked to say on the streets of Soob City, he’d acquired one.
Unlike the aero-precision launchers, there was no locking mechanism. Point and shoot only. But Longbows were capable of firing four missiles at an airborne vehicle in rapid succession. The LADS had been used as the dropship snipers began to engage the donks on the ground in the intersection Bowie was heading straight toward. It was Boom Boom and his lieutenant who’d ducked back inside a koob kebab store and set up the system using the no-brainer instructions to attach the munitions canister interface to the main firing rail. A moment later the firing interface was flipped out and the toggle for Active Scan engaged.
That easy.
You could take out a commercial freighter with one of these, some liked to say. All you had to do was aim and shoot.
But the dropship pilot had flown a lot of legionnaires into hot LZs across the galaxy. Any other civilian, or even a mere transport pilot who’d never flown combat missions, wouldn’t have been minding the missile sensors too much. Might have even adjusted the ship’s display settings to move that system to passive and Imminent-Only detection.
Imminent-Only detection would have given nothing more than a pulsing shriek that an inbound missile had just been launched. With the dropship operating no more than five stories up, and the kinetic mag-rail launched missile using chemical boost to accelerate quickly to penetration speed, live and in the air, reaction time to evade the incoming missile would have been nonexistent.
But the pilot of the dropship had been watching the Ground-to-Air scan. He was ready on evasive, chaff, and flares the moment the missile went live and the intercept alarm began to shriek frantic mayhem.
Boom Boom Killah swore a blue streak when he missed the first one and almost threw the launcher through the plate glass window of the kebab shop they were using for cover.
“Got another one, Big Brudda!” cried Little Six, and grabbed at the expensive launcher to prevent Boom Boom from sating his rage at the miss and destroying the firing system.
Most of the donks thought you only got one shot because the hero of the streams often used the missile-type launcher for the big finale to end the big bad in his death ship, or what have you. Then in slow mo, as the struck-bad-guy-vehicle exploded into special effects flames—after watching the missile streak through the air in slow mo, of course—the hero tossed the launcher away and walked into frame.
Also in slow-mo of course.
That was how Boom Boom Killah had imagined firing the LADs would be. Da Flyswattah.
Instead he fired and missed.
Little Six apprised him that he had more shots and Boom Boom, upon realizing this sudden boon, ran forward with the launcher out into the street and tried to reacquire the dropship once more.
The bird dropped her nose, spooled up her engines and made to streak away.
Boom Boom decided to go for the shot because it was so close. Too close to miss!
The next missile spat away from the firing rail as more smoke, flares, and chaff from the departing dropship rained down on the intersection.
One of the snipers blew a giant hole in Little Six’s chest and the donk lieutenant was down and dying on the hot street behind his leader.
Boom Boom brayed madly, gnashing his giant gold-capped buckteeth and heaved the ground-to-air missile system straight through the plate glass window above where his next-in-charge lay dying.
The howl of the dropship’s engines faded across the rooftops and the zhee all around brayed in triumph at driving the enemy from the field.
Boom Boom stared around in wonder. Yes, he’d missed, but to his braddas he’d driven off the shadowy dropship that had been killing them.
In their first firefight against this new player in the Kublar scene, they’d won.
Yeah, killing the dropship would have been excellent good. Maybe another day.
Boom Boom Killah’s men swarmed him, cheering and shooting their blasters into the sky. Whooping and braying out their lusty zhee battle calls from ages older than spaceflight.
In the press and throng of excitement one of the little mules ran up to the crew leader. Just a young donk who’d been running with the crew as of late. They were thinking about using him for a hit because he was under the legal age of incarceration. So, if he got popped by the locals, he’d just get reeducation and not hard time off-world in the mines.
“Ah gotta heem!” brayed the youngling up at Boom Boom. He had an entertainment device, the kind young donks played games on to learn their maths. Except this ’un had been configured to pilot a drone system the little muley had set up.
Yeah, now that Boom Boom thought about it, the kid had always been the kind to be playing with “them high as all canna do tekka gadgeta,” as the Feral Jacks liked to say of the expensive voodoo the galaxy called technology.
They’d called the kid “Whisser” because of that. Meaning he was a Vizier. A joke regarding the priests and their cast of scientists and advisers called the Viziers.
The kid held up the device and showed a feed from the drone it was running. Sure enough it had captured the infidel-target; his image was all over social media and the news now, running toward a building. The well-muscled human barely hesitated as he unloaded a full series of blasts against some safety glass and shattered the barrier to enter a nearby building. Then he threaded the damaged portal and disappeared inside the building.
“Where be this, little muley?” asked Boom Boom Killah nicely.
The kid pointed toward the office park off to the east. Six shiny new silver towers connected by a high skybridge. Neat and new.
It was clear to the donk leader exactly what the target was attempting to do.
It was prey. And it was attempting to hide from him by going to ground. Or move away from his, Boom Boom Killah’s, hunting ground. The Unclean would use the skybridge to move over the streets and probably get close to the koob embassy where he’d ask for asylum to avoid the crimes he’d committed against the zhee.
Boom Boom brayed a call to arms and made his divisions among the forces left to him after the battle at the intersection. Groups would take each of the six towers and try to cut the target off ahead, and behind.
A moment later the donk youths, heavily armed and slinging medium blasters and even explosives, ran for the corporate office park mere streets away.
Bowie saw the
m coming. He was just entering onto the skybridge five stories up when he saw the young well-armed donks streaming in groups across the parking lot below the corporate office park. Each group heading for a separate tower.
25
The unmarked convoy headed into the narrow streets of the koob district. Businesses were shuttered and many of the koobs had taken to the rooftops with their old tribal slug throwers, slings, and ceremonial lances.
Clusters of the frog-eyed creatures stared in gaping wonder, their air sacs inflating and deflating aggressively, as the convoy entered the streets and began a long, slow parade through the neighborhood.
The koobs had managed to hold the inner blocks from the suddenly riotous behavior of the rampaging zhee, but several outer district warehouses were already fully engulfed in flames with the foreigners looting in an almost unconcerned manner. Dead koobs and zhee still lay in the streets, stripped and looted, already bloating in the sun.
If it was going to be a fight between the two alien species, then it was very clear who was going to win. The zhee were alpha predators compared to the docile Kublaren of Soob City. Made soft by graft and luxury. Feeding from the hand of the Republic. Even on home ground, the koobs could see it.
Only the hardened tribes of inland Kublar could keep the zhee in check. And that wasn’t going to happen. The Kublakaren of the Soob hated the inland tribes and the inland tribes returned the feeling by orders of magnitude.
All of this was observed from behind the tinted windows of the lead utility sled in the convoy. Air-conditioning washed ever the team leader. A steely man who was clearly ex-military of some sort. Non-ballistic impact helmet. Dark glasses. LCE barely fitting over a muscle-swollen tight tee and arms bulging.
“Pull over here,” the man said softly to the driver. Another ex-military type, though a little wirier. The driver cleared the street in both side views and with the external cams, pulled alongside the curb.
Dead koobs lay in the street ahead and nearby.
Galaxy's Edge: Takeover: Season Two: Book One Page 18