Most had simply fallen, some vital organ now holed, singed and fried inside their hairy donk-body hulks. Gold teeth and chains melted and strewn out across the edge of the bridge. One had fallen over backward through the smashed observation glass, and lay dying and cut to shreds.
Another was leaning against the bridge’s edge as Bowie approached. He was trying to fumble in a new charge pack when Jack gave him a short burst of fire and ended a miserable life.
Play to win, thought Jack Bowie. Always play to win, kids.
Boom Boom Killah didn’t like how this was all going in the least. Snarling with rage as he followed a trail of bloodshed and mayhem along the bridges through the observation towers, he wanted revenge and he wanted it now.
“Ain’ suppa happen dis way, Braddas!” he practically shrieked, his large black donkey eyes rolling and wild with murder. When he reached another group of his own jacks coming along the bridge leading to the next tower, it was apparent they’d lost their prey between them.
“We da huntahs! Not dis gauzy!” brayed Boom Boom.
Gauzy was donk street slang for humans. Mainly human women. But in this case the term would do in its most contemptuously denigratory usage. The zhee hated human women because of all their freedoms within the Republic. The zhee mares wouldn’t know freedom if it came up and bit them. They knew their place as nothing but mere possessions to be used. For pleasure and profit.
“Downah he going!” shouted one of the crew, indicating their target was headed down one of the towers back to the ground.
Boom Boom Killah jerked his comm open and screamed a series of orders and vulgarities at the donks left with the vehicles back in the square to get their big butts in gear and cut off the “gauzy on ground level.”
Then he turned to his crew and slapped in a new charge pack for his gold-plated blaster.
“Let’s pop dis sket-horn mare-lovah!”
They piled into the lifts and headed for the ground floor.
The Jackknife didn’t have much left in it. Maybe a quarter of its total charge available. And it was pretty clear as Bowie exited the lifts that his pursuers had figured his play, a simple doubling-back, and were coming straight down along the lift tubes after him. Above, every other lift was screaming down through the central glass atrium that served as the main lift tube for this tower.
Bowie moved quickly and efficiently for the building’s exit. It would be a foot chase through the streets now. That was his only option unless something else presented itself in the next thirty seconds. He could run, and fast, but for how long?
He began to run once he hit the doors, intent on finding an alley, using up the last of the Jackknife on an ambush that might slow them down. And then a flat-out sprint for the embassy, hoping to stay just that much ahead. He still had the holdout; he could keep them back with that.
But only for so long.
Except now there were a bunch of tricked-out sleds screaming straight at him from across the high-tech corporate office space parking lot. Like some weird armored cavalry regiment thundering straight at him on some forgotten high steppe on a lost world no one much cared about.
That’s what death looks like, mentioned some background app in Bowie’s mind. He ignored it and quickly figured how to meet this new oncoming threat.
Switching to Plan B, thought Bowie to himself, and opened up on the lead vehicle, a shiny red ride with flames painted along the side.
Bowie kept the first burst low and smashed shots into the forward repulsor housing. The vehicle’s nose went sharply forward and down into the brand-new landscaping of the soon-to-be occupied business park, spilling the unsecured donk driver out onto the hot pavement where he broke his neck, as the tumbling vehicle rolled on top of him.
The drivers behind swerved to avoid this first casualty and came straight for Bowie, intent on running him down.
That is until he drew a bright line of fire with everything the Jackknife had left across their oncoming stormfront.
Some drivers died, others swerved and smashed into one another, not bothering to clear their evasive maneuvers. A couple tore off in opposite directions, barely escaping the tornado of destruction the parking lot had become.
Bowie ran for the nearest vehicle that still, possibly, looked serviceable, jerking the strap for the weapon over his head and tossing the dead weapon as he ran.
He’d dry-fired at the last, the charge packs completely spent.
Behind him, Boom Boom Killah and the other donks made the lobby of the office tower and ran for the front steps to the office park, watching in dismay as their smashed and shot-ridden rides either burned, some now engulfed in flames, or continued heedless across the office park with dead “braddas” at the controls.
“Get immmmmmm!” screamed Boom Boom and strode out into the ruin and carnage, unloading his crass gold-plated blaster in a fusillade of shots that didn’t go astray too wildly, on the ride Bowie was hijacking.
Shots ripped into the sled’s hull, tearing off ornaments and burning holes through the doors and into the lush interior someone had paid a lot of money for. It was a convertible and one blast managed to barely miss Bowie’s head as he yanked the dead and very bloody donk driver from the seat out onto the hot duracrete pavement. The shot hit the forward window and shattered safety glass in a million different directions.
As Bowie slid behind the wheel, he felt blood run down the side of his face from where exploding hot fragments had cut him.
But either it didn’t hurt, or he didn’t have time for it to do so. Instead he gunned the accelerator and tore away from the parking lot, sure they’d follow in the next few seconds.
28
The Feral Jacks got two sleds working fast. Boom Boom Killah heaved himself behind the wheel of a cobalt blue late model sled with two massive chromed turbo-inducers on the hood, threw the illegal power feed switch, and screamed after Bowie in hot pursuit. Two of his braddas barely made it in before he tore off. The dead donk who’d once piloted the sled had been merely shoved into the passenger seat, the lower half of his muzzle blown off in Bowie’s fusillade of the last of the Jackknife’s fire. Now the dead passenger seemed to be either screaming in horror, or having a fantastic laugh at the whole thing, as the super-charged sled violated every traffic law to catch the fleeing Bowie, who was just making his turn onto Royal Kublar Way and heading for the embassy on State.
The second vehicle was loaded with twice as many braddas and it was doing its level best just to catch up with Boom Boom Killah’s suicidal rush to intercept.
“Head up Sola Street,” screamed the donk crew leader over their open smart comm. “Cut da gauzy off at Stad and Trom!”
The second vehicle peeled away from the route of pursuit and a moment later the donks in the back fired wildly at Bowie as both vehicles suddenly closed.
Bowie yanked the tricked-out sled hard to the left and barely made the turn at the next intersection. Two donks in the street were busy mauling a man they’d dragged out into the middle and Bowie went up onto the curb just to avoid the fight, and to spare the beaten man a quick death.
“Maybe give him a chance,” Bowie thought, or muttered to himself above the scream of the wind and the terrible thrill of the straining engine.
He had a long straightaway ahead and a moment later noticed incoming blaster fire streaking out and ahead of his own vehicle. He pulled the holdout, steering with one hand and leaning over the rear seat, drew a bead on the pursuit led by Boom Boom’s sled, and fired off a rapid series of shots for as long as he could maintain a good sight picture.
Which wasn’t long, due to having to drive and all.
Explosions erupted along the side of the chasing sled but no real damage. The wild donks hanging on in the back seat whooped and hollered at Bowie like this was some kind of rodeo and he some kind of running scared calf to be brought to heel and hog-ti
ed.
Boom Boom Killah rammed his speeding sled into the back of Bowie’s, forcing the vehicle into an odd angle and threatening to smash it into one of the nearby buildings racing past at dangerously close distances.
Bowie gritted his teeth to protect his tongue and flung the sled back into his pursuit a moment later. Both vehicles collided and Bowie pivoted fast with the holdout and fired faster. One donk took it right in the chest and fell off the back of the speeding sled.
The other hee-hawed violently and leapt into the back seat of Bowie’s sled, flinging away his ridiculous blaster and pulling a kankari he kept around his neck.
No time! roared across Bowie’s mind as he engaged full reverse on the engine and cut the repulsors for emergency braking.
The vehicle came to a sudden and immediate halt on the curb.
The braying donk coming at him with the bright shining, wickedly curved knife went through the jagged remains of the windshield, and Boom Boom Killah’s sled suddenly sped away.
The donk slid through the jagged window, cut to shreds, and planted his kankari in the hood, barely hanging over the front.
Bowie engaged motive systems and repulsors once more and gunned it forward, aiming the vehicle at the hunter that had been hunting it just seconds before.
Yeah, there was anger in the donk hanging from the hood’s eyes. But fear too as the engine spooled up to max power.
Ahead, Boom Boom Killah had thrown his cobalt blue sled into a powerslide, brought in the reversers, and stabilized braking.
He went to fire the oversized medium blaster, gold-plated and shining, competing for attention with his two massive gold-capped buckteeth, and felt nothing happen as he squeezed the trigger several times.
The blaster was dry.
He had one move before Bowie rammed into the sled with his own stolen vehicle. Move or die. The donk slammed his hoof on the accelerator and barely avoided being creamed by the coolly homicidal human bearing down on him in one of his crew’s own sleds.
Free and roaring down the street, Bowie pointed his Python straight at the donk holding on from the hood, and the thug was smart enough to go ahead and chance the street. He simply let go of the knife, rolled, and fell away from the speeding sled.
Just a few streets to go, thought Jack Bowie, and he’d reach his objective. Then… who knew what.
29
The zhee contingent, at the behest of Soob City’s self-appointed Grand Wutti, Araki Kal Hallah, who’d taken it upon themselves to earn more mares in the promised Nirvana of the Four Bloody Gods, were quite surprised as they smashed antique pottery, destroyed headdresses, and obliterated ancient Kublaren art pieces.
The Museum of Kublaren History was mere moments from being set ablaze when a combined force of human contractors and Kublaren city-dwellers stormed the chaos at the museum and began shooting down the zhee.
The mullah’s operatives quickly called for backup and a major firefight erupted outside along the frontage of the new museum. The Kublarens and contractors were holding the roof of the exhibition hall and the front doors.
The zhee had time to send in a mass wave of their own, backed by snipers and improvised bomb throwers from the nearby alleys.
Thirty seconds into the attack, the Kublarens, firing their nifty new Black Leaf Arms automatic weapons, cut the wave of homicidal zhee, easily outnumbering the defenders, to shreds.
The overwhelming firepower was catastrophically violent.
For all intents and purposes the valuable antiquities, the Kublaren cultural heritage, and the building were held back from zealous destruction. A small fire was extinguished and the zhee were defeated.
A number of similar incidents were either wrapping up, kicking off, or would occur in the next few hours as the now well-armed Kublaren militia, backed by private military contractors from a nebulous corporate entity, engaged in street to street fighting to drive the zhee from the city.
Even ZQ was not safe.
By the end of the day it would cease to exist. Soob City was now firmly in the hands of the Kublarens and their mysterious new allies.
Bowie drove straight through a street battle where both sides hurled everything they had at one another. Donks threw chunks of duracrete and improvised flaming objects at what, to Bowie speeding past in the stolen sled, looked like Kublarens with state-of-the-art automatic weapons.
Not mere blasters. But also not the usual slug throwers they carried. Something else.
The roar of chemical based firearms erupted like sudden strings of titanic firecrackers. Ghostly rounds ripped through the air as Bowie mashed the accelerator just to get through the violent firefight. They snapped and also seemed to make a zipping noise. Donks surging into the street were riddled with sudden explosions as blood spray and brain splatter painted the sides of the dirty walls they fought with their backs to.
A second later Bowie was turning onto the last street and heading for the Kublaren embassy ahead. He gunned the accelerator and raced into an intersection, hearing the whine of Boom Boom Killah’s turbo-inducers too late at the last second.
Both vehicles collided, and the force of the cobalt sled drove Bowie’s ride straight into a looted pharmacy.
Bowie curled up, catching the incoming speeder out of the corner of his eye, and rolled with the impact. For a moment there was nothing but the violence of crunching plastic, screaming metal, shattering glass, and a series of vicious impacts as both vehicles crashed into the storefront.
But by then Bowie was out.
Maybe thirty seconds passed. Debris was still falling inside the store. Ceiling tiles randomly raining down in the darkness and dust. The whine of the sled’s engines spooling as the systems malfunctioned and went offline.
Bowie climbed out of the twisted sled, dimly noting that he’d almost been brained by a collapsed beam within the store.
Everything hurt. He’d been violently thrown about in the impact, and it was a wonder his neck wasn’t broken or his spine fractured.
His brain bell was good and rung too. And he was pretty sure he was seeing double. He’d also lost the holdout in the wreck. But his vision was all messed up and he couldn’t see straight to find it.
He stumbled into the daylight and tried to orient himself on a street that rocked back and forth like he was standing on a dinghy at sea.
A moment later he heard the powerful war-bray of Boom Boom Killah and felt the donk land a solid kick right into his lower back.
Bowie went down hard. Right to his hands and knees. His mind trying to make sense of what was happening, and what was about to happen, to him.
Team Nilo…
Honey…
Employment…
All that went away as his training surfaced and told him what he had to do right now to go on living. That other stuff wasn’t important. Not right now. He’d been trained by the best hand-to-hand experts the Repub Marines had to offer.
He was in a fight now. His mind cleared away the damage of crash and impact and signaled that message loud and clear. Attention on deck! You are getting your butt kicked. That was the only thing that mattered. He was in a fight whether he liked it or not. And the only way anyone won a fight was to want it worse than the other guy.
He saw the shadow of the donk come in close now, iron-shod hooves sparking strikes on the hot street. Saw the outline of the shadow raise one leg like it was going to kick him again.
“Take this, Sket—” Boom Boom howled.
Then Bowie grabbed the incoming donk kick and twisted what he had ahold of violently, knowing there was nothing else in the universe but this thing he had to do. His desire to force the leg he had, and mainly the knee, in a direction it did not want to go. He felt the break a second before he heard it.
Then the young violent donk screamed, backing away from Bowie, limping and stumbling, two playing cards
in his hands. Swinging both in violent swipes made all the more deadly by the enraged pain.
The air whistled as the cards cut through the space between them.
Bowie surged off the ground, because momentum was the next thing that needed to be taken away from his enemy, and slammed into the wind-milling donk. There was no hesitation in the one-two combinations that went straight for the donk’s muscled solar plexus in the desperate seconds that followed.
Bowie threw punches wildly and with everything he had, just to cause as much damage as he could as fast as he could.
One leg to stand on, deprived of air, the donk with the gold-plated teeth and the cards—and they were clearly weapons, probably coated with some kind of fast acting neurotoxin—would be useless now.
Bowie didn’t stop even though he had the advantage. He didn’t stop because his opponent wasn’t down.
Five jackhammer punches, fired from the hip and shoulder like air-to-ground rockets, busted donk ribs and drove the wind from his zhee opponent.
Then Bowie grabbed the donk’s head and rammed his knee into it in one fluid motion with zero pause after the fury of punches he’d thrown.
Fifteen seconds start to finish.
The donk sat down on the street, landing on his oversized posterior, staring up in disbelief at the pitiful human he’d chased that day.
The gauzy.
The prey.
Unable to comprehend that a fight could happen so fast.
Boom Boom Killah was wrong. It hadn’t been a fight at all. It had been a savage beating.
Then he died. The blow to the cranium between the zhee’s eyes had done the trick. Donks were particularly vulnerable there.
In Marine Special Warfare, that was called the “Attention Getter” when dealing with the zhee. They were done after a shot between the eyes. Ninety percent of the time they just sat down and it took about two hours for their minds to reboot. Ten percent of the time the nasal cavity was driven straight into the frontal lobe. An underdeveloped part of zhee anatomy, but a necessary one all the same.
Galaxy's Edge: Takeover: Season Two: Book One Page 20