One leg to stand on, deprived of air, the donk with the gold-plated teeth and the cards—and they were clearly weapons, probably coated with some kind of fast acting neurotoxin—would be useless now.
Bowie didn’t stop even though he had the advantage. He didn’t stop because his opponent wasn’t down.
Five jackhammer punches, fired from the hip and shoulder like air-to-ground rockets, busted donk ribs and drove the wind from his zhee opponent.
Then Bowie grabbed the donk’s head and rammed his knee into it in one fluid motion with zero pause after the fury of punches he’d thrown.
Fifteen seconds start to finish.
The donk sat down on the street, landing on his oversized posterior, staring up in disbelief at the pitiful human he’d chased that day.
The gauzy.
The prey.
Unable to comprehend that a fight could happen so fast.
Boom Boom Killah was wrong. It hadn’t been a fight at all. It had been a savage beating.
Then he died. The blow to the cranium between the zhee’s eyes had done the trick. Donks were particularly vulnerable there.
In Marine Special Warfare, that was called the “Attention Getter” when dealing with the zhee. They were done after a shot between the eyes. Ninety percent of the time they just sat down and it took about two hours for their minds to reboot. Ten percent of the time the nasal cavity was driven straight into the frontal lobe. An underdeveloped part of zhee anatomy, but a necessary one all the same.
Bowie turned, scanned the ruin for his holdout, and still couldn’t find it.
Gunfire, a type brand-new to the galaxy, erupted from several points across Soob City, spreading away in every direction. Black smoke filled the skies. Distant Kublaren war chants sounded like some sporting event. Fans cheering for their side. The braying of the donks could barely be heard as it was all drowned out in small batches of brutal automatic gunfire ringing out and bouncing around across the streets.
Bowie walked to the embassy down the block.
Today’s objective.
He’d hurt something inside. Not broken, but not working. With a block to go, he stumbled toward the embassy like some drunk trying to lurch home.
That’s all he needed to do now. Get there. Get home.
30
He made the embassy just as a dozen armored sleds in neutral gray and sporting several private military contractors each made the street.
A woman, tall, redheaded and model pretty, kitted in tac gear and talking into a vest comm, came to meet him as the convoy came to a halt and established a perimeter. She had unearthly blue eyes and pretty red freckles.
“I’m so sorry about this, Jack. It wasn’t supposed to go down quite like this.” Then seeing the cuts to his face, a few other injuries Bowie hadn’t noticed, and his hobbling gait, she called for a medic from the convoy and led him to the curb to sit down.
“I’m Elektra. And I’m real glad you made it, Jack.”
Bowie nodded as she moved him onto the curb and helped him down. All around, the contractors were securing the front of the embassy.
Someone handed Bowie a canteen. He drank greedily. Sweat broke out across his neck and back. A cold sweat. The adrenaline was fading from his body now and he’d pay the price of its usage.
He stared at his hand. It was shaking.
Let it, he told himself.
He tumbled out a cigarette.
She sat down beside him.
“I gotta get things under control, Jack. But… direct from Nilo himself: Job well done. We are already ahead of our plus one timeframe. Medic’s gonna clean you up now and then we’ll talk later. Okay, Jack?”
He nodded absently at her, drew on the cigarette, and lowered his head, letting the smoke spill out all over the dirty and bloodstained street he was sitting on.
The gunfire was distant and far away.
Only now thinking about how close he’d come to death today.
Being out there beyond the wire of the perimeter, it did that to you.
Guards took their positions out front as though actors in some play.
So this is what it was all about, Jack Bowie thought to himself. Not really sure what it was all about. But knowing that what he was watching… was somehow it. Somehow the start of something that might be a big deal further down the line. Might even change the shape of the galaxy. Who knew? What he was seeing was something. He knew that much.
Somehow, Nilo, had just declared himself a political entity within the shape of that galaxy.
They patched Jack Bowie up and drove him back to the Grand Intergalactic.
Amazing, thought Bowie as he stepped from the nondescript armored sled. They’d cleaned up the bodies out front and the shattered glass that had marred the place that morning when the zhee began firing. Chasing him like a rabbit and shooting down everyone along the way.
Now the zhee were quelled.
Those that had survived the massacre by the Kublarens were holed up in the ZQ begging the local government, which was disavowing the uprising of its citizens and promising that the Legion would soon retaliate, to keep them safe from the xenophobic Kublarens who had so wantonly and viciously attacked them.
Fun and games for the zhee were almost over on Kublar.
Or so Elektra had informed him during the debrief.
Now, from the back of the sled, she said nothing, just watching him limp away from the vehicle. Watching him with those otherworldly blue eyes.
The doormen greeted him by name as he passed through the ornamented grand front of the hotel.
“Congratulations, Mr. Bowie.”
But they didn’t say what they were congratulating him for. And he didn’t much care.
He just wanted…
What?
He wondered if she’d still be in his suite. Honey. The Tennar. If she’d taken what she could find and just gone. Which would maybe be for the best.
She was only an escort after all. A survivor in a galaxy that didn’t play fair. No different than with him, or anyone else.
Several floors up, Jack Bowie opened the door to his suite and
