The others could have covered. Could have run. Could have backed off and set up a crossfire he wouldn’t have been able to get through, especially if there were more of their associates at his back.
They only stood there and fired with all kinds of goofy aiming positions. Holding the blaster sideways. Some sort of half-crouch hip shot like Jaq Janes: Smuggler Along the Edge of the Galaxy did in the entertainment stream of the moment they probably all watched.
One poor donk even used a two-handed grip because he’d over-charged his blaster by having the charge pack inhibitors removed.
Always a recipe for disaster.
No one hit anything.
Especially the human they were aiming for. Who, on the other hand, merely advanced and fired at them as he closed. Hitting their line and knocking them down as the incoming reached stormfront levels. Dragging the bright line of blaster fire the Jackknife spat out across them all until they were dead on the floor of the observation deck.
Most had simply fallen, some vital organ now holed, singed and fried inside their hairy donk-body hulks. Gold teeth and chains melted and strewn out across the edge of the bridge. One had fallen over backward through the smashed observation glass, and lay dying and cut to shreds.
Another was leaning against the bridge’s edge as Bowie approached. He was trying to fumble in a new charge pack when Jack gave him a short burst of fire and ended a miserable life.
Play to win, thought Jack Bowie. Always play to win, kids.
Boom Boom Killah didn’t like how this was all going in the least. Snarling with rage as he followed a trail of bloodshed and mayhem along the bridges through the observation towers, he wanted revenge and he wanted it now.
“Ain’ suppa happen dis way, Braddas!” he practically shrieked, his large black donkey eyes rolling and wild with murder. When he reached another group of his own jacks coming along the bridge leading to the next tower, it was apparent they’d lost their prey between them.
“We da huntahs! Not dis gauzy!” brayed Boom Boom.
Gauzy was donk street slang for humans. Mainly human women. But in this case the term would do in its most contemptuously denigratory usage. The zhee hated human women because of all their freedoms within the Republic. The zhee mares wouldn’t know freedom if it came up and bit them. They knew their place as nothing but mere possessions to be used. For pleasure and profit.
“Downah he going!” shouted one of the crew, indicating their target was headed down one of the towers back to the ground.
Boom Boom Killah jerked his comm open and screamed a series of orders and vulgarities at the donks left with the vehicles back in the square to get their big butts in gear and cut off the “gauzy on ground level.”
Then he turned to his crew and slapped in a new charge pack for his gold-plated blaster.
“Let’s pop dis sket-horn mare-lovah!”
They piled into the lifts and headed for the ground floor.
The Jackknife didn’t have much left in it. Maybe a quarter of its total charge available. And it was pretty clear as Bowie exited the lifts that his pursuers had figured his play, a simple doubling-back, and were coming straight down along the lift tubes after him. Above, every other lift was screaming down through the central glass atrium that served as the main lift tube for this tower.
Bowie moved quickly and efficiently for the building’s exit. It would be a foot chase through the streets now. That was his only option unless something else presented itself in the next thirty seconds. He could run, and fast, but for how long?
He began to run once he hit the doors, intent on finding an alley, using up the last of the Jackknife on an ambush that might slow them down. And then a flat-out sprint for the embassy, hoping to stay just that much ahead. He still had the holdout; he could keep them back with that.
But only for so long.
Except now there were a bunch of tricked-out sleds screaming straight at him from across the high-tech corporate office space parking lot. Like some weird armored cavalry regiment thundering straight at him on some forgotten high steppe on a lost world no one much cared about.
That’s what death looks like, mentioned some background app in Bowie’s mind. He ignored it and quickly figured how to meet this new oncoming threat.
Switching to Plan B, thought Bowie to himself, and opened up on the lead vehicle, a shiny red ride with flames painted along the side.
Bowie kept the first burst low and smashed shots into the forward repulsor housing. The vehicle’s nose went sharply forward and down into the brand-new landscaping of the soon-to-be occupied business park, spilling the unsecured donk driver out onto the hot pavement where he broke his neck, as the tumbling vehicle rolled on top of him.
The drivers behind swerved to avoid this first casualty and came straight for Bowie, intent on running him down.
That is until he drew a bright line of fire with everything the Jackknife had left across their oncoming stormfront.
Some drivers died, others swerved and smashed into one another, not bothering to clear their evasive maneuvers. A couple tore off in opposite directions, barely escaping the tornado of destruction the parking lot had become.
Bowie ran for the nearest vehicle that still, possibly, looked serviceable, jerking the strap for the weapon over his head and tossing the dead weapon as he ran.
He’d dry-fired at the last, the charge packs completely spent.
Behind him, Boom Boom Killah and the other donks made the lobby of the office tower and ran for the front steps to the office park, watching in dismay as their smashed and shot-ridden rides either burned, some now engulfed in flames, or continued heedless across the office park with dead “braddas” at
