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

by Jason Anspach

  The throng of koobs let out a unified wave of croaks and shouts at the sudden brutality. The fight was less than five seconds in and already a bloody fatality. And all the while, the bots I’d activated dance about the makeshift arena, red lights blinking to indicate they are recording.

  “Damn,” Abers says. “Pikkek is legit.”

  The two combatants circle each other, Pikkek feinting an attack while the zhee bodyguard brays. The zhee glances at the great priest, who bellows something in his language—maybe encouragements. Maybe prayers. I dunno. But he’s animated, stamping his feet and twisting his shoulders against the restraining hands of his Kublaren guards.

  Pikkek whips out an equatorial backhand, sending the blade of his tomahawk toward the belly of the zhee, who leaps back and deflects the blow with his kankari. But the heavier koob weapon batters the knife from the zhee’s hand, sending it spinning downward until the blade bites into the dirt, the jeweled handle waggling in the air.

  The zhee freezes and then adjusts its posture, seeking to finish the fight with tooth and claw. Pikkek straightens, relaxed, and gestures for the zhee to retrieve his weapon. A show of fair play.

  With some hesitancy, the zhee stoops to retrieve his knife. Pikkek buries his tomahawk in the donk’s exposed neck a second later, sending great spurts of blood out onto the ground and inciting the gallery of Pekk warriors to bellow in rapturous support.

  “Damn,” Lana says, this time her tone conveying the surprise at this tactic.

  Koobs are tricky.

  Pikkek flings his tomahawk in the air, a spray of zhee blood flicking droplets as it spins. The big koob catches it by the handle and motions for the donk high priest to be released. The big zhee stands trembling, his guards dead and feeding Kublar with their blood.

  Binders removed, the zhee stands in place, sending a gaze of pure hatred across to the koob warrior staring him down. But he doesn’t move. Doesn’t stamp his hooves as he did when the fight was two-to-one and his divinely protected guards stood ready to put down the croaking infidel before him.

  “He’s a coward,” Nilo says, watching the spectacle along with me. “They all are once they reach that point. Success makes you afraid of what you might lose. Makes you soft. This zhee may have been a warrior once. Now he’s hoping everything he peddled about his four gods and his own ascendancy on Kublar is true. It’s all he has left.”

  The koob guards have to shove the high priest’s kankari into his hands because the scumsack refused to pick it up from the ground or take it when they offered nicely. He stands trembling, braying in a mock outrage that’s all light and no heat. The guards shove him toward Pikkek.

  The donk takes a step and it’s clear he doesn’t want to. Then, he seems to surrender to his fate and charges Pikkek, kankari knife swinging wildly, giving a thousand cuts to the air.

  But death did not come with them.

  Pikkek ducks low and dodges away to his right. As he does, he swings out his tomahawk, almost as much holding the blade for the zhee priest to run into as swinging it. The donk’s hoof comes right off, causing a painful bray to bellow out of the zhee’s now-foaming mouth.

  The cheers of the gathered koobs soon overwhelm the zhee’s cries of pain.

  Now the bots are buzzing in close, capturing multiple angles of what happens next. The priest tries to push himself up onto one foot, pointing the kankari at Pikkek to stave him off. Pikkek swings his hatchet and sends the clawed hoof to the dirt, still holding the knife.

  The only word I can use to describe what comes next is butchery. Pikkek goes to work chopping the donk up, using his tomahawk like a meat cleaver. The red lights capture every spray of blood and the cheer of the Pekk warriors with each stroke.

  I don’t know when the zhee dies or what kills him. He’s maimed, disemboweled, flayed… but by the time Pikkek starts to remove the donk’s head from his body following four meaty thwacks, the zhee has definitely been dead for a while.

  I expect Lana to whisper another “damn,” but she’s silent. We all are. So is Nilo on the comm, though I doubt he’s surprised by what happened. He knows the koobs about as well as anyone and I know the koobs well enough to be aware that this level of brutality is par for course. Unlike the zhee, they never sought to spread their culture across the stars. But they were damn sure just as violent as the zhee in their isolationism.

  After displaying the head, Pikkek swells his airsac to mammoth proportions, stretching the purple membrane so much that I think it might burst. He tosses the donk head into the dirt and then squats down, pulling the mouth apart so violently that I think I can hear the jaw cracking.

  Another koob walks into the circle and pulls up its robe. It squats over the donk’s open mouth.

  “That’s a Kublaren female. She’s laying a clutch of eggs in the priest’s mouth. It’s a Kublaren ritual indicating a desire for total war and complete domination of an enemy. ‘The young shall spring forth from your dead.’”

  Easy makes like he’s going to throw up, but he’s just playing for the moment. Lightening the mood in a situation none of us would have predicted and probably a few of us are wondering exactly how to process.

  “Tell me we don’t have to watch Pikkek fertilize those eggs next,” I say into the comm.

  “Not if you don’t want to,” Nilo says. “But the rest of the zhee on Kublar, you can bet they’ll all see it.”

  I decide to perform a weapons check. Had my fill of the show. Most of the team does the same. Except Lash. He keeps watching. Doesn’t flinch.

  I look up at the whirring sound of several sets of miniature repulsors and see the bots screaming away from the scene in all different directions. This must be what Nilo meant about the zhee on Kublar seeing what happened. The bots are going to be relaying it all.

  Pikkek is hop-walking to the truck, zhee blood still adorning his face, arms, and robes like combat ribbons. “Big die,” he says. “Big-ah, KTF.”

  “What’s next, Mr. Nilo?” I ask, but Brisco is the one who responds.

  “Get your team moving toward the Soob. We’re telling the zhee that if they don’t like what just happened, that’s where the fight will be.”

  “Roger that,” I say and check my charge packs before addressing my team. “Looks like the next fight that comes is gonna include all of us. Be ready. The donks aren’t gonna be in a friendly mood after this. I think Big Nee just kicked off something that’s only going to end in genocide.”

  42

  Morning

  Museum of Kublaren History

  Green Zone, Subiyook City

  Hopper walked the security perimeter he’d set up around the Museum of Kublaren History. Like most everything in the Soob, it was a newer construction. One of the first pieces of Republic-funded improvements that came once the Pashta’k tribe was recognized as the big winner following the koobs’ civil war. Hopper hadn’t visited it though he liked museums, but one of his guys had. It was all very rah-rah Republic and rah-rah Pashta’k tribe.

  How much of it accurately depicted the history of Kublar was anyone’s guess. Hopper had seen some of the Republic-funded galleries and museums on his home world and while they weren’t filled with outright lies, the propaganda was easy to spot and the exhibits were extremely selective. The museum curators were displaying what they and presumably the House of Reason wanted seen.

  The museum Hopper had been ordered to keep a tight perimeter around, and not let anyone inside under any circumstances, didn’t make mention of the Battle of Kublar. At least that’s what the guy had told Hopper.

  The guy.

  Hopper remembered when he knew the name of just about every man he fought alongside of in his SOAR Company. But Team Nilo was different. They were probably a regiment in numbers, but the handlers like Surber kept the various squads separate. The two platoons’ worth of men was the largest force Hopper had been at
tached to since arriving on Kublar. He recognized some of the men, had actually spoken to fewer, but mostly didn’t know who they were.

  But they were all on Team Nilo and that was all Command seemed to care about. If you didn’t like it, too bad. You weren’t being paid to like it. You were being paid to do your job.

  Hopper had concerns over how feasible doing his job here in the Soob would be. He looked up to the roof. The museum was a single-story with high ceilings, low and squat for the Soob but extending deep underground with exhibits that literally spanned the entirety of the city. The planners had done this so museum guests would be “just beneath” the sites of famous events in the history of Kublar. Before Article Nineteen, some builder with a set-for-life House of Reason contract was going to extend the subterranean museum across the entire planet. And make himself get in good with the ruling tribe while at it. Opportunity begetting more opportunity. Visitors of the museum’s sublevel exhibits would avoid the harsh above-ground climates in luxurious tube-cars that would crisscross the planet. Big things had been planned for Kublar.

  “Hey!” Hopper called out, using his hands as a megaphone. “What’s the status on those guns?”

  A merc wearing nothing but a flak vest and a pair of cargo shorts peered over the side to look down at Hopper. “All set, Hop. It sucks up here. Hot as balls.”

  Hopper nodded and moved on to check the emplacement set up outside the museum’s main doors. Comments like that just needed to be heard.

  The merc grinned down at Hopper, and then his face lit up like he just remembered something. “Hey! Did Van Dop tell you about the weird, I dunno, dust up here?”

  “Negative.”

  “Shaped like a bat. We scattered it a bit setting up, but you can still make out most of it.”

  Hopper shrugged. “Koob art.”

  Another merc popped his head up from the repeating blaster nest. “Wasn’t the koobs s’posed to be watching this place?”

  Hopper nodded again. “I guess even koobs balk at pulling security when there’s fighting. Probably pulled out to help keep the donks trapped in ZQ.”

  It seemed odd from the start that the Kublarens, so fanatical in their fight yesterday to keep the museum from being looted and defaced by the zhee, would abandon it now. Elektra, in the brief talks Hopper had with her, conveyed that Team Nilo was surprised by this, too. And apparently, Big Nee himself gave the order for Hopper’s element to break away from the main force and set up security. Someone else would probably be tasked with hunting down the missing army of koobs—and their Black Leaf acquired weapons. But that would be their job while this was his—and his men’s job. And he trusted his team to get the job done.

  As best Hopper could tell, everyone working as a hired gun for Team Nilo was former military. Marines or Legion. Even the army. And all of them had combat experience. Part of being a soldier was complaining about the suck. These guys would do their jobs. They just needed to vent frustrations a bit. And it was hot. Hopper could feel his sweat-drenched shirt rubbing beneath his body armor and against skin like high-grit sandpaper.

  Emplacements were set. Men were resting in what cover—and shade—they could grab. The convoy of vehicles they had ridden in on were tactically spaced so the column could react in case of attack, but wouldn’t be rendered useless by a surprise artillery barrage or strafing run. Not that Team Nilo’s intel thought such things were at any of the planet’s players’ disposal.

  The plan to flip the Pashta’k koobs to Nilo’s Kublaren alliance had worked. The zhee were licking their wounds, afraid to leave the ZQ after the absolute beating they took. If there was to be trouble, it would likely come from the remnant House of Reason forces stationed inside the Green Zone’s inner ring. The true believers of a lost cause whose job was to protect a Republic government that found itself on the losing side of Article Nineteen. Or at least the soldiers who hadn’t managed to find a way to go AWOL from appointed officers who were still clinging to the hope that somehow the nightmare they were living in would come to a close.

  But Orrin Kaar and the rest of the House of Reason… they weren’t coming back. Neither was Goth Sullus.

  The galaxy was up for grabs. And while Hopper was here because the pay was better than what he’d get anywhere else beyond going into the bounty hunter trade, it didn’t hurt that he believed the message Big Nee was selling.

  Things had gotten too corrupt. Planets had been exploited. People were stuck in a system that didn’t care about them and was more concerned about telling them how to live and what to think than it was letting them live their lives.

  Nilo was seeking an end to such things. Hopper was good with that.

  And he was even better with the shot caller assigned to the Soob. Elektra. Compared to Brisco it was like being cured from blindness. Word was that what Brisco lacked in communication he made up for by being lights-out with drone strike capabilities. But having worked with both, Hopper much preferred Elektra.

  “Museum is secure,” Hopper reported in. “Remaining outside per orders. Any word on activity in this direction?”

  “Stand by, Hopper.”

  Hopper inclined his head. Unless it was his imagination, she sounded tense. Yeah. The stress was evident in her voice.

  To pass the time, Hopper inspected the gun emplacements on each of the armored sleds he’d been provided. He wanted to be sure each sled had a gunner ready to go. And they did. But the poor bastards manning the mounted heavy blasters looked so hot and miserable that they had to be praying to Oba that nightfall would come early.

  Elektra came back on the line. “We’re moving assets to your position. Stand by.”

  “Wait. ‘Moving assets’? We’re blind over here?”

  “We’ve been losing drone contact over the ZQ. The zhee there are shooting down anything that flies overhead and they have more drone killers than we have drones. Pulling some from the docks to your location. ETA… fourteen minutes.”

  “If it arrives,” Hopper muttered to himself.

  “Understand your frustration. We don’t like it either. Advise you place sentries at north and south points along 3rd, set up overwatch from the Kanto building four blocks west if possible.”

  Hopper didn’t like what he was hearing. He had enough men to maybe—maybe—hold off a small, probing attack. Enough to protect the museum from vandals or looters, which is what he figured Big Nee was after. But the way Elektra was talking… he’d heard that concern before from the other side of a comm.

  “Copy that,” Hopper said. “Are you seeing any activity from the R-A base?”

  There was a long pause that told Hopper everything he needed to know.

  “We are. They’re mobilizing; likely target is the docks.”

  “Oba,” Hopper said, trying not to feel agitated.

  They’d pushed into the Soob undermanned, leaving all of their Kublaren allies inland as well as a large element of Team Nilo mercs. And while they’d achieved their objectives, Hopper didn’t like the way the wind was blowing. They’d secured a foothold, but that was tenuous at best until reinforcements could fortify their positions.

  And who knew how long that would be?

  “Trust us on this, Hopper. We have contingencies. We’re seeking to mobilize our new Kublaren allies in the city. If your team runs into trouble, it’ll be from the ZQ. Keep a watch there and you should be fine.”

  “Roger. Tell me what that bot sees once you have it overhead.”

  “We will.”

  “Hopper out.”

  Sket. Hopper moved to a group of mercs around the corner of the museum, backs against the building, boots baking in the sunlight while the rest of their bodies hid in as much shadow as possible. There were six men here armed with N-4 rifles.

  “I need three teams of two.” He pointed at the men, dividing them up. “You two, head for the Kanto building. Fou
r blocks west. Get visuals on our AO and then report in.”

  The two men rousted themselves from the shade and hurried back out into the Kublar heat and sun.

  “I want sentries ten blocks ahead on 3rd Street. Two men northward, two men south. Copy?”

  “Somethin’ going down, Hopper?”

  “Could be. Big Nee wants us ready in case the zhee decide to pick another fight.”

  “Thought the koobs took care of that?”

  “Rule of thumb,” Hopper said, slinging his carbine over his shoulder. “If you didn’t do it yourself, assume it wasn’t done right.”

  The merc laughed. “Roger that.”

  Hopper trailed the two teams as they left the side of the museum and moved in opposite directions down 3rd street, jawing at their companions as they jogged past them.

  It was midday and no one was out. Largely due to the full-scale riot that had greeted the Soob. A breakfast of destruction and mayhem. But also because this was the time of day when the blazing Kublaren sun was at its most vicious. When it felt as though the sea beyond the coastline would boil, a humidity so sticky and extreme, you could practically see the steam vapor undulating before your eyes. Like a sugar lobster dangling over the pot, waiting to be dropped into the bubbly, roiling water.

  Hopper watched the two-man team jog northward along the sidewalks until they disappeared behind a sheen of waving air that seemed to blur everything. There was nothing to be made out through the curtain of heated air except the occasional glint of the sun from a sled’s windshield or the wavy backdrop of buildings and streets, which seemed to blend together to form a continual gray and tan painted canvas that only suggested shapes. It hid the scouts almost entirely.