Below the office park towers, the donks had entered the buildings, all of them almost at once. If he could jump, weighed Bowie half seriously, he could get down onto the streets and disappear.
But he had no jump pack or chute. So that was mere wishful thinking and therefore of no value in real-world ops-land.
Jack Bowie was running out of options fast.
A quick glance behind him at the tower he’d just come through was his best shot. Even though a larger contingent of those street donks had entered there, odds-wise, he’d ultimately have to do one firefight either way just to see the other side of this and get back on course for the embassy.
He didn’t like to fight when he didn’t need to. But sometimes… there was no other way.
A refinery out near the star port suddenly exploded violently in the distance. An ancient rusting power array that converted energy into reusable packs suddenly gave off a catastrophic BOOOOM, the sound catching up with the fireworks seconds later.
How, Jack Bowie wondered, could any of this be Team Nilo’s play?
“You’re the bait, Jack.”
That’s what Reiser had said. Leaving the Jackknife Supreme dangling by its carrying strap around his chest, Jack reached into his pocket and took out a cigarette case. He thumbed the dispenser and shook one into his mouth, then blew through it as it chemically lit.
He thought things through a moment.
This was going to be a fight. No two ways about it. Go forward… fight. But still more armed jackals at his heels. Go back. Big fight. And still more to go through.
He inhaled deeply and blew more smoke out.
It barely drifted away. Even up here, five stories above street level, there was no breeze. It was a long, hot day getting longer and hotter by the second.
Nilo had wanted it this way. They’d wanted everything to catch fire and get out of hand all across Soob City. Maybe even all of Kublar. And the donks, because they were donks, had been all too willing to get in on the crazy and throw gasoline on the fire.
They just needed… the fire.
And that had been the assassination at the party. And the online outing by Team Nilo to the news streams. The donks in their usual way had decided to make the most of a crisis and start hurting, harming, stealing, looting, and stabbing everyone they could possibly get to in the name of some deranged salute to their bloody gods.
Team Nilo had wanted him to run, knowing the donks would chase. The donks would… would what?
He took the last drag on the cigarette. They all had to be up in the towers ahead, and behind him now. Someone would check the skybridge for sure to see if he’d gone that way. And then he’d be trapped between a whole bunch of them coming at him from all directions.
The donks getting out of hand were the big excuse Team Nilo needed to take control of the Soob. However they were doing that, whatever alliances they were making, they were using him to make the point.
Team Nilo was here to do something. But what?
Bowie didn’t need to run anymore. Because there was no way that was an option until he broke out of their cordon.
He was walking forward now. Fast, flicking the butt off the side of the skybridge. He saw the young donk who reached the observation deck in the tower ahead. Saw him see Bowie and grab for his smart-comm to alert the rest.
Bowie opened up with the Jackknife, smashing glass and cutting the young donk down onto the shining floor amid melted and broken glass. The body rag-dolled all over the inside of the observation deck, finally coming to rest against the pristine white wall that marked the central lift tube inside the tower. A wall now painted in brain matter and bloody red spray.
He kicked the jack’s blaster away and moved across the observation deck to the next bridge, pulling the fire alarm as he went.
Time for a fight.
27
The doors to the back of lifts opened and three young donks dressed like street hoodlums emerged just as Bowie pivoted through the revolving glass door on the other side of the observation glass. He didn’t hesitate to unload on them.
Two were hit while scrambling to get away. He cut them down quick, while one fast mover ran around the side of the curving central core, catching one in the ribs as he flung himself to get out of the way of the blur of blaster fire. Bowie, satisfied that one was dead, or dying and bleeding out, and that no one else was coming up in the bank of elevators, moved out across the bridge to the next tower.
They were definitely onto him now. They knew he was using the skybridge. They’d cut off their search of the lower levels and try to intercept him up here.
The next group came up ahead in the next tower as he moved quickly across the bridge, well before he reached the observation deck of that next tower. Six of ’em. Six young donks, snarling and braying, thumping their chests and waving all manner of over-powered, over-priced, tricked-out blasters that probably hadn’t ever had a good carbon cleaning. The kind designed to menace and look mean for up close and personal blasts exchanged a few meters away in an alley. Or a wild drive-by spray and pray to hit some rival and maybe a few innocents who should’ve known better.
All of them inaccurate at fifty meters or more.
On the other hand the weapon Bowie carried was perfect for that engagement range. And what it lacked in targeting could be found through adjusted drag-fire as Bowie opened up from the halfway point across the bridge. The first shots smashed
