Jaquan showed the feed again. It highlighted Chief Horruk himself, the individual in the metal mask, and two more, dressed like local boys. They were up ahead, on an intercept course.

“Get us a good option,” Gaylen said.

“On it.”

A few seconds passed. He stayed alert for a possible third group, and did his best to stay away from good ambush spots, but the crowd and the street layout were both working against him. He opted for speed over all else, and the already tense locals were visibly annoyed by his group.

“Got one for you,” Jaquan said. “Take the second turn on the left. Under a big, red sign.”

“I see it.”

Horruk’s interception was drawing ever nearer, coming in from up ahead, and the trio behind were probably at least keeping pace. Gaylen did his best to balance his survival instincts against enough restraint to not throat-punch some poor rando for offering a pamphlet.

They went around one of those skinny towers, and beneath the red sign, advertising cans or something or other. A long row of signs followed, both physical and holographic, forming almost a roof. Once it came to an end, Gaylen understood Jaquan’s choice.

Two police vehicles hovered in the air, well above the street. They varied by planet, of course, but looking them up when making planetfall was just good policy. Several cables hung from each one, down to street level, into an area cordoned off by swirling holographic police lights. The local crowd had compressed around the cordon, watching the show, whatever it was.

This definitely wasn’t the place to start trouble in, at the moment.

“Not a bad choice,” Gaylen said.

Still, all this was no reason to relax one’s guard. He kept on scanning, kept up an invisible boundary that no one entered without being noted, and arrived into the heart of what was either a big street or a small square.

The crowd still blocked most of the view, but Gaylen caught glimpses of armoured cops, outside of a three-storey entertainment business of some sort, with a heavily decorated and eye-catching front.

“Excuse me, what is going on?” he asked a random woman, as his group worked their way around it all. It didn’t matter much to him, unless there was a risk of a shooting or something. Then it mattered a lot.

“Oh, there’s a big search for some informant,” the stranger replied.

“I thought getting informants was a subtle matter,” Herdis commented.

“Apparently he got snatched off the streets. Vanished, by the people he was supposed to bring down. Now the cops are raiding known underworld dens, hoping to salvage the mess.”

The woman chuckled cynically.

“Sorry. Supposed underworld dens.”

Gaylen wondered if he’d dodged a bolt through sheer lucky timing, with his visit to that bar. Well, luck saved people all the time.

“Mhm,” Gaylen said, trying to feign interest. “And is this show going to last much longer?”

“Oh, I have no idea. They only just started, really, but they’re being very brusque about this.

Gaylen remembered Erdon’s words about some new High Justice running a campaign against the gangs. Having a vital informant not only discovered and killed, but having that fact known to the public, wasn’t the sort of thing a career was built on. So this was all one extra thing to keep the cops on maximum belligerence right now.

He’d just absorbed that fact when he looked back and saw Horruk, by the entrance to the square/street. The pirate saw him right back, and the perpetually mean face got even meaner.

“Our friends are here,” he said, looking away.

“We should break line of sight,” Herdis said. She had her self defence stunner, half-hidden in her hand.

“Yeah.”

“There’s a train stop to the east,” Jaquan said. “And there’s even a train passing by in a few minutes.”

“Perfect,” Gaylen said. “That’s our out.”

The ideal solution would be to escape notice first, to prevent, or at least delay, further surveillance. Gaylen took a quick look over the available factors. Behind them he saw Horruk and his fellows coming, the chief himself visibly infuriated at having to move relatively slowly and carefully through a throng of people that paid him no heed. The cops were a few metres away, below the cables descending from the cars, grilling some people they’d brought out of that building.

Don’t start a fight right here, you stupid bastard, he thought at the pirate.

“This way,” he said out loud, and led them down a flight of stairs that went beneath the street, and to the entrance of a restaurant. It was as plain as one could expect from this neighbourhood, but had a fairly large floor, and on the other side of it one could see a set of stairs leading back up. But as they passed by a hall leading to the bathrooms, Gaylen decided on a gamble.

“No one’s watching at the moment,” he said to Kiris. “Hurry.”

She took her tools out, and pitted them against the door marked Staff Only. The security measures were as plain as the food on offer, and opening the lock took her only second. Everyone went through, and Gaylen closed the door.

This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

“Whu?” Bers said.

“They’ll assume we took the other stairs,” Herdis said.

“Yeah,” Gaylen said. “Hopefully.”

And hopefully this had bought them an extra minute or two, at least. They passed by a locker room, a storage room, and a small office, with an open door and a woman at a desk.

She said something Gaylen didn’t understand, and he threw back a few of Bers’s native words, randomly jumbled together. It wasn’t a good cover, but the exit was only a few steps away. The lock was slightly better, and Kiris brought out her breaker. Gaylen stood so as to obscure what the Chanei was doing. The office woman spoke again, in a more insistent voice, and he thought he heard her get up.

“Inspection!” Gaylen said, in a fake accent.

Before he had to think of anything better, the door clicked, and they were out on the street. Herdis closed it behind them, and they went down a narrow side street. If it all was to come to a fight, then this was a good place for it. Superior numbers would mean less, and there was a chance the law wouldn’t notice at all.

But escape was the ideal. Escape, and hope that Jaquan’s special repairs would work out.

They hurried along in a single file, close to the walls so that eaves and roof edges would provide a bit of cover from aerial observation.

“Is that train still good?” Gaylen asked.

“It is. Three minutes away.”

“You heard him!” Gaylen told the others.

He sped up a bit, and the others did as well. He knew Bers was a bit slowed down by a lot of old injuries, and Kiris, despite her long legs, just wasn’t as fond of the Addax’s treadmill as Gaylen himself. Still, they had both managed through crises before, and this was one.

Two minutes, and the side street turned around one of those residential towers, and widened as it connected with other side streets, like a river collecting tributaries. There were even people now, who didn’t much appreciate a group of running strangers. Gaylen didn’t mind jostling, now that it wasn’t going to actually make things harder for him, and certainly not when it was this important.

He did not quite have it in him to ram a startled old woman out of the way, and did an awkward, ungainly slowdown to get around her. From the sound of it, the others did as well.

“Cutting it close,” Jaquan said. “One minute.”

“Almost there!”

“HEY!”

Horruk had spotted them. Gaylen glanced to the side, across some sort of open port beneath several storeys of depressing apartments. The pirate had at least six people with him, and with no cops in sight many of them were openly carrying. Gaylen saw knives, long, slim sticks that could be anything, and the one in the metal mask almost certainly had some sort of gun. And that was all Gaylen saw before the group vanished from sight.

“HA!” Bers shouted, in between pants.

“We need you, Bers!” Gaylen reminded him.

“Nrr!”

The group followed them through the port, rather than continue on to intercept. It was a minor blessing, and in times like these Gaylen was happy to have those.

“Here!” he said, after they finished the current row of houses. They went across an unused lot, and across a slightly wider street. At the end of it Gaylen could see a suspended rail, but not the platform. They needed a shortcut for that one.

Gaylen had no idea what it was; art installation, holy temple, weird bank, or some truly unique cultural feature. He did know that the walls were heavily decorated, there was a station that monitored the entrance, and another one like it could be seen on the other side.

He charged past a booth, occupied by a woman who shouted at him, past someone in a uniform with a baton in his belt, and into a large space with at least two more like him.

They put their palms out and their other hand on their weapon. Gaylen didn’t understand the words, but some things were simply universal. None were directly in his path yet, so he was spared from having to punch someone for doing an honest job. He just led his group straight across the floor, past the guards, and past another booth, where they were yelled at by a man.

The train was coming in. The rail hummed, and the car announced itself with a blare and a modest light show that reached around a street corner. Gaylen looked back. The guards had now had time to intercept, but not enough to process what they were dealing with. Horruk punched exactly as hard as Gaylen would have expected, and with that the pirates were also back out on the street.

Self-defence stunner, by design, had a very short effective range. The pirates weren’t quite within it, but Herdis still turned and pulled the trigger. There was an electric crackle, and a flash of light, and Horruk, in the lead, flinched and threw his arms up. It was only a moment’s delay, but those could make a huge difference.

“HAH!” Bers shouted. “STUPID!”

They made it around the corner, and to an unassuming neighbourhood platform. There was a self-service station, and a crowd of maybe ten people. The train was just pulling in when Gaylen’s group arrived, and several of them looked up. Herdis hid her stunner in her armpit, and Gaylen brought out a credit stick.

He let himself more-or-less slam into one of the payment stations, accepting the pain in the name of maximum speed. He waved the stick over the scanner, pressed ‘4’, then elbowed his way in through the door. People had angry words for him, but he ignored them.

Kiris, Herdis and Bers came in after him, and so did the group that had been waiting on the platform. Gaylen held his hand out, and Kiris put her weighted cane in it. He hefted it like the weapon it actually was, while she stuck her hand into the depths of her baggy layers of clothing and gripped her own stunner.

Bers clenched his fists, and Herdis was still hiding her dominant hand under her other arm. The pirates were coming, and the commuters could tell that something was up. It only lasted seconds, as Horruk led his pack of scum across the platform and an automated voice announced something.

But the doors did hiss closed, and the chief banged a fist against the reinforced glass in a rage.

Gaylen didn’t taunt him. He’d never seen the point in those kinds of displays; things could always go wrong later on, and then you just looked all the sillier on your way to the great darkness. But he did stare back, unflinchingly, into the man’s hateful face.

To his surprise, the rage shifted. But the grin wasn’t a big change.

“You’re not leaving!” Horruk said loudly, to be heard through the glass. “You’re not leaving this planet until we’ve settled!”

He slapped the glass, as the train started moving. The pirate watched them take off, still grinning evilly.

And then they were off along the rail.

The other passengers were watching them, but some things were indeed universal, and in big cities folks preferred to mind their own business. Gaylen just avoided eye contact and strolled further into the car, then over into the next one. And with that, no one cared.

There were plenty of available seats, and he was glad to let his ass drop down. The others joined him in the same row. Kiris detached a small water bottle from her belt and had a sip, then passed it around.

“Well, we made some progress, right?” Herdis asked.

“We did, I think,” Gaylen said.

“It seems they have a plan too, though,” Kiris said. “What he just said back there… it didn’t strike me as empty boasting.”

“No,” Gaylen said. “It did not.”