All of them, all of the zhee, as if in unison, closed a massive noose about Soob City’s neck, centered on the fleeing Jack Bowie.
Infidel-Target Number One.
But the violence was not restricted to non-zhee only. Teams of zhee-priest security sprang into action against rival religious sects who’d been considered heretics. False prophets. Counter-apologists advocating a kinder, gentler position among the various galactic tribes. Simmering minor quarrels over everything from noise in the adjoining apartments to some long-forgotten tribal grievance done in the past were suddenly hauled out into the light with the ever-sharpened kankari knives, blasters, bricks, and the occasional transport vehicle acting as adjudicators. Anything they could get their hooves on to harm, molest, and maim would do. Most of this, and it wasn’t as widespread as what was being done against the rest of the inhabitants of Soob City, remained confined to the perpetual no-go zone that was ZQ.
A zhee ghetto no one lightly entered. Or at least no one with half a brain.
So, none of it would ever be recorded. Not the internecine, or the general, violence, would ever be accounted for. Just as it always had been, wherever the uninvited zhee managed to immigrate.
But the violence gripping Soob City right now on this hot morning was immediate and dangerous. Corporate and private contractor security forces went into lockdown to protect their high value charges as private police grouped at the local station houses and awaited orders from the governing Soob Tribe.
It was going to be a very long day for those lucky enough to survive the mayhem. No one had expected this. And, no one had planned for it.
Almost no one.
The transport and delivery sleds came rolling off The Naruto, a large ore hauler that had arrived in-system and planetside a day earlier. The transport and delivery sleds were nondescript, though startlingly brand-new. Leaving the docking facility east of the Soob City Green Zone and moving directly toward the koob district that lay alongside ZQ, shipping personnel remarked that the freight haulers were so new one could smell the shipping laminate burning off the repulsors, a sure indicator of first usage.
The windows aboard the heavy sleds were tinted but one security gate guard watching over the access point to the docking facility did interact with the convoy leader and got the distinct impression the man was a military private contractor type.
It seemed strange to the guard that these were coming off an ore hauler supposedly inbound from one of the outer edge worlds. Registered to Black Leaf Freight Systems.
Something’s up, thought the gate guard as he watched the convoy hover off into the urban sprawl, heading for the primary Kublaren-district neighborhood within the Green Zone.
Something’s up indeed. But he didn’t call it in. Because things had gone crazy in the Soob, and one more call wouldn’t mean anything. Local enforcement was beyond max.
The guard felt relief that he never did become a cop.
21
“Next part’s difficult,” said Elektra over the comm device in Jack Bowie’s ear. “I need you to move up Sentinela Street and stay visible. You’re here to draw attention, Jack.”
Bowie was moving swiftly along the back alley that led away from the massive Prominence shopping sprawl. He could see the indicated street ahead.
“Turn north at the alley and stay on the street, Jack. Copy?”
He hadn’t answered her last comm. And he wasn’t in the mood to answer this one either. But, some questions needed to be answered.
“Won’t that make it easier for them to kill me? Being in the open and all.”
After all, every donk in the city, thought Jack Bowie, and likely a few opportunists are out to kill me because you guys tattled.
But he didn’t say that part. That’d be whining.
Overhead an unmarked dropship shot across the skyline between buildings. Bowie waited in the shadows of the alley and made ready to either execute the next phase of the route to the koob embassy the way they wanted him to go, or take matters into his own hands and find a new safer route.
Who wasn’t to say they weren’t just leading him into a trap where he’d get killed and some kind of planted evidence would point everyone toward whatever objective Team Nilo wanted accomplished?
Look, we found these incriminating idents on the dead guy.
That’s all they really needed him for.
How much can you trust Team Nilo? Jack Bowie wondered not for the first time in the last ten minutes.
“Trust me, Jack,” said the woman in his ear. “We’ve got you covered from now on out. All the way to objective. Airborne fire support on station and ready to engage. Just passed overhead. They even try to take a shot and we’ll shoot them down. We’ve got this situation under control.”
Bowie shoved the holdout into its holster under his jacket. He’d try to blend in and move up the street without attracting too much attention until…
… until…
… until he did. Then, well, it would just have to be game on. No two ways about it.
He walked swiftly toward the exit from the cool, dark alley.
“Why the street?” he asked Elektra over the comm. Muttering to himself for all outward appearances.
“Part of the plan, Bowie. Trust—”
“I don’t know if you’re new to this whole espionage game…” began Bowie low and angrily into his comm. “But trust isn’t one of the prerequisites for intel work. Evidence. Start sharing the plan or I’ll find my own way to the embassy and deal with the fallout when I get there.”
Silence. He was almost to the exit from the alley.
“We need to kill some more zhee, Bowie. Best way is to get them to chase you right into the ambush teams we have set up along the route. Roger?”
“Why?”
“Because that’s the plan. And we get paid to follow the plan. And so do
