Several things happened in the instant following Jack exiting his hovercar, the first of them being that all six of the gun ship’s armaments fired into the courtyard simultaneously. Jack knew that Liberator Mark Twelves could fire twenty thousand rounds a minute; he also knew that the firing of weapons onboard was handled by the often trigger happy munitions officer aboard it, not a Mind. For this Jack was thankful because a Mind would have undoubtedly zeroed in on him with lethal accuracy and he would be dead in seconds. The second thing that happened probably didn’t happen for everyone because Jack initialized a very expensive temporary nervous system implant embedded at the back of his neck; dramatically increasing cognitive ability and adrenaline production for a short time. It knocked him out like working seventy two hours on the treadmill afterwards but it was required here. 

Immediately things changed, Jack’s field of vision narrowed and became more defined. Time slowed down till it seemed like everyone was moving at less than half the normal speed and Jack got a burst of energy which carried him across the threshold of normal endurance and instilled a dose of animal urgency which started paying off straight away. Jack set off at a slow-motion sprint, knees up high and chin lowered. He perceived a horrifying music coming from behind him, but realized it was the pounding drums of six active auto-cannons. The Liberator series was out of date and the ship’s weapons obviously hadn’t been tuned in a while because the spread was all wrong. Bullet tracers rocketed past their intended target at horrendous angles, biting into locals to the left, right and front of him as he powered through. People seemed to dance on the spot, ripped to bloody shreds. He noticed people who had found cover with their mouths forming complete ‘O’ shapes as they screamed to one another. A dismembered arm flew into Jack’s field of vision, he swatted it away from him. 

Locals were still firing back, one such specimen stood boldly in the middle of Jack’s route; firing at the invaders with a rusty bangstick. Seeing the well dressed criminal storming right at him, he turned the archaic shotgun on him. Jack hit the deck with a cat’s agility as the burst of buckshot steamed above his head. Rolling acutely along the floor like a ball, Jack uncurled in front of the man; using all his momentum he smashed his shoulder into the man’s chest, wrestling the weapon away from him with one hand as the local fell. Deftly pumping another shell into the chamber, Jack held it at arm’s length and destroyed the woman who ran at him with knife raised over her head. He dropped the shotgun on her corpse. Out of the corner of his eye, Jack’s brain informed him of the heavily armed BESC personnel that were rappelling from a gantry just to the left. Adjusting his course, Jack turned on one foot at a right angle to them, heading for a tiny stairwell near a cluster of market stalls.

It was here that his supercharged mind comprehended the diabolic nature of the situation. Hundreds of the locals were still firing rabidly at the gunship and at BESC in general, the ground was strewn with dead. Little girls were dragging their mutilated fathers back behind cover, trying to patch them up before taking them to safety. A cluster of Tindrel were arming a pan-pipe like weapon which spurted blobs of energy. A lone Scyvi was tending to seriously wounded, its ceremonial garb covered in blood.Their expressions dragged out at half speed. A BESC team emerged from the stairwell, Jack pivoted again, zigzagging hastily to avoid the storm of energy that came hunting for him from their weapons. A hallway, much closer, revealed itself. A quick look behind confirmed a duo of lithe BESC enforcers were now in hot pursuit; Jack made like the Geococcyx that had become his family’s crest and accelerated rapidly into the ill-lit corridor.