Good. This was good. It wasn’t perfect, but it was enough of a plan that Colonel Deage felt he had something to at least try.
“With your permission, Governor, I’d like to begin preparations to push the Black Leaf mercenaries out of the city. We’ll cut them off from the docks and deny them the opportunity to escape. I have a special forces team on standby to destroy the ship that inserted them.”
“Proceed, Colonel.”
“Thank you, Governor.” Colonel Deage held up a finger. “There is one other possibility that needs to be considered. Should the inland Kublarens delay their march and allow the zhee to reach the city without a decisive fight, the population here will be unsustainable. That may allow the enemy to starve us out through a siege—a tactic that has withstood the test of time. I’m not confident that the alliance of zhee, Pashta’k, and Republic species on planet will be able to coexist without violence in such an event.”
Governor Pressfield smiled. “A valid observation. However, I have information that will allow—no, force—Black Leaf into attacking the city. We need only be prepared for that attack.”
Colonel Deage waited for the governor to elaborate, but soon saw that she was keeping this intelligence close for the time being. Which, sadly, was something he’d gotten used to. He would never go so far as to say the Legion was correct, and that violating the oath to protect the House of Reason, Senate, and Republic was the right course of action. Oath-breakers belonged in the deepest pits of hell.
But sometimes… damned if he didn’t get where they were coming from.
“Governor, unless you have further need of me…”
“You’re dismissed, Colonel.”
32
Bowie
The Soob
“Things are going to hell in a handbasket as Soob City turns from economic boomtown to war zone under siege, Jack.” Reiser was talking. Stating the obvious. “The local koobs, aaaaand their brand-new contractor friends, have things under control. Just barely. Air quotes around that part, my friend. Control at this point… is merely an illusion. And honestly it could go either way real quick-like if you read me. This thing ain’t settled yet.”
This last-minute meeting called Bowie out of rest and rehabilitation in his near-rooftop suite back at the Grand Intergalactic. He’d left obscene comfort and sophisticated pleasure to get to this meeting in a warehouse not six blocks away. But of course, the whole of the Soob was now little more than a live fire war zone, or a police state under martial law from various competing factions. Bodies in the street, alien and human, were a now common sight. A terse communique coming over his smart comm, informing Bowie that an unmarked armored sled would be picking him up in five in front of the Grand Intergalactic, had been the only advance notice he’d received for this meeting.
During those twenty-four hours in which the koobs, and their new Black Leaf mercenary friends, pushed the vicious zhee back into their quarters, Bowie and the Tennar, Honey, had merely holed up inside the palatial suite above it all, drank expensive champagne, slept, eaten the occasional cold lobster—hers raw, his sautéed in truffle butter—and conducted other more amorous exercises while the violence and mayhem went on across the war-torn cityscape.
Outside, it was dangerous now. In fact very dangerous.
Spies and hitmen were no longer needed in the block to block, house to house, and, at times, brutal room to room fighting underway with heavy weapons and all kinds of military goodies to dislodge the zhee from their warrens and fortified nests. Heavy weaponry and heavy kit were the order of the day. Stealth, subterfuge, and assassinations were for less chaotic times. Not now… Now it was war, and it wouldn’t end until there was a clear winner.
And that meant everyone on the losing side was either dead or in one of the ad hoc internment camps going up. This was no place for a spy.
Or, at least that’s what Bowie told himself as he lay there popping pain meds and trying to get ready for whatever Team Nilo threw at him next. Maybe something off-world and away from the mess Kublar was quickly turning into in order to become something else. Something new.
Something better?
Team Nilo, Nilo, or whatever this was, smelled like a group of dreamers with big plans and lots of credits to compete with the planetary trade cartels or… even the latest iteration of galactic government. Or what used to be the government.
Who knew?
That’s why the strange comm message telling him to be at the warehouse didn’t seem as strange as it might have been amid all the chaos and street to street murder. But it was still off. Jack Bowie had been explicitly told by Elektra that he’d be out of action for the next three days to a week. The message to the contrary came as a bit of a shock. But not completely surprising.
Everyone, as far as Jack knew, including Elektra the Shot Caller, was ex-military. People used to the schedule and orders changing moment to moment. Chaos and miscommunication went hand in hand in every military branch Bowie had ever heard of.
Bowie merely shrugged at the change of mission, read the message once more, and went to find a clean shirt and pants to make the meeting in. He didn’t have many left in his leather travel bag. But the hotel concierge had taken care of what he did have, so he at least had something to slip into.
Athleisure wear in the middle of a war zone screamed private contractor. But he didn’t have many choices. He should’ve asked for some Team Nilo fatigues. He could at least have looked nondescript in those.
He strapped on the holdout and the two knives and a few other tricks and made for the suite’s door, telling the sexy little Tennar he’d be back shortly. Unsure if he would.
“Be careful,” she
