“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 them 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
