Jack shot his head over to the screen at the bar.
The first thing that registered were the words in the news crawl.
ASSASSIN IDENTIFIED.
And then the picture in the feed. Him, holding the sniper rifle, sighting down into the garden. Clear as day.
“You’re probably thinking we’ve hung you out to dry, Jack. We haven’t. Trust us. This is all part of the plan and you’ve got…” Reiser looked around. “You’ve got friends all around, know what I mean?” he whispered. “But, honestly, the zhee and everyone else are going to try to kill you right now. We need you to make it to the koob embassy in Soob City. That’s all you gotta do. Yeah, they keep an embassy on their own world. It’s for the ruling tribe. Anyway… you gotta make it there as fast as you can. Mostly the zhee gangs and their paramilitaries are going to try to intercept you before you reach it.”
Reiser stood.
The zhee were moving in the lounge. The sound of charge packs being snapped into blasters was clear across the soundscape of the lobby, bar, and breakfast area.
“Here…” said Reiser, tossing a small ear link comm device onto the table. “Take this. Your shot caller will direct your route and you’ve got overwatch the whole way. You’re just the rabbit, Jack. So I suggest you run. Make it to the embassy. You’ll get the rest on the way.”
And then Reiser was moving away like he’d never been there. Distancing himself from Jack.
The identified assassin.
Without hesitation Jack Bowie grabbed the comm link, shoved it into his ear, hefted the briefcase, and ran for his life. The zhee were already firing as he reached the massive marble lobby, striking innocent bystanders who’d been caught in the crossfire.
18
There were three groups that were going to try their best to kill the assassin Jack Bowie that long, hot day on the streets of Soob City.
But all of them worked for the same faction.
The zhee.
Newcomers to the world of Kublar in the aftermath of Goth Sullus’s war against the Republic, the zhee had arrived en masse. Coming with all their intractable and argumentative ways. Not to mention the violence and crime they always seemed to get up to. Authoritarian theocracy at its corrupt best. Proclaiming that unless you were of the faithful you were beneath consideration. Less than. And anything done to you was considered a furtherance of the four gods’ will.
Drugs.
Extortion.
Murder.
And all the other jacked up things perpetrated by any group who considers itself above the standard of galactic civilization in the name of some obscure higher moral authority that’s never held up to the light. It was all legit in the name of a nebulous salvation for the zhee, and let the four gods sort the rest.
Of course, there were the braying patrons who’d been in the Grand that morning having what was being called a trade negotiations breakfast. Really they’d been engaging in off-world sex trafficking which was in high demand, what with Kublar opening up its economic markets to the rest of the galaxy. And the death of the headman last night had created some advantageous opportunities to be seized quickly. Foreign traders brought an intense hunger for foreign flesh. And the zhee mullahs ran the trade, when not braying forth a call to the holy to adhere to their dark sermons nine times a day.
They came in hot across the lobby of the Grand Intergalactic, killing several innocent bystanders in the crossfire that went down almost immediately in the lobby. But their tribe leader, a highly trained zhee operator that was the equivalent of any special forces operator from any of the worlds that maintained proficient militaries, had two factors to consider.
Killing Bowie was the official Grand Wutti Call to Bind, Torture, and Kill. That was paramount in the hierarchy of zhee needs at the moment. Already the call was spamming every comm device across Soob City and even hitting the hypercomms to access all zhee channels. That was the most important thing every member of the faithful who adhered to the teachings of the Bloody Four could accomplish at this moment, and earn a thousand mares for all eternity.
But as a zhee tribe leader who’d been assigned to protect the holy class of priests, the security team leader’s first concern was to get his betters to safety now that there were zhee blood debts in effect. The streets were going to turn red, never mind the crossfire, to get the target. The head priest of the skin trade delegation quickly crossed his paws and snorted a blessing in the holy cant absolving the security team leader of the blood debt to Bind, Torture, Kill.
In the instant that Bowie made the main doors of the Grand, blaster-impact-shattering the beautiful carved and polished wood frames, the tribe leader was efficiently splitting his team to get the priests to the secure armored sled used to move their convoy about the swollen streets of Soob City, and detailing his shooters to immediately run down Bowie and finish him violently.
Meanwhile, near the edge of the zhee quarters—ZQ—killers were sensing their moment and springing into action for the hunt. ZQ was a section of Soob City where the zhee had moved off the beach from where their colony ship had made its last approach to set down, and immigrated en masse whether anyone like it or not, unrestricted and definitely uninvited, onto the world of Kublar.
ZQ was off-limits for anyone who wasn’t zhee and wanted to go on living. Of course the zhee had spent a ton of money, aid and funding from the last of the Repub, to run a tourism campaign across the galaxy highlighting the centuries-old zhee culture that had only recently sprung up.
Several tourists had been killed, and countless more disappeared without a trace, especially comely young thrill seekers backpacking their way across the galaxy and
