For a moment he was in the air, the train whooshing by behind him. Then he landed on the rooftop down below, and managed to halfway roll as momentum pitched him to the side.

It was a relief to find that his ankles still worked as he sprang back up. No doubt he was bruised, but that he could ignore. The agents would be calling their buddies this very moment and there was no time to waste.

Jaquan was doing the worst as they broke into a run, as could be expected due to his leg. But the man was tougher than people tended to give him credit for, and he staggered on.

The emergency stairs were exactly where the map had said they would be, on the outside of the eastern wall. It was enclosed in a wire cage meant to discourage burglars, but a single pistol shot opened the top and they leapt on down. It was yet more abuse for the legs, and Jaquan crashed up against the cage. Gaylen pulled him along, helping his friend recover footing, and down they went.

It was less of a run than it was a rapid series of leaps, clearing half a flight at a time. Gaylen counted seconds, estimating how long it would take the car to return. He looked skywards as they reached the second floor, at the sound of an engine, but it was a bright pink little thing that flew over without slowing. He looked again as they reached the ground and saw a mid-sized cargo transport as it went the opposite way.

The pedestrians were fairly spread out and they ran across the street without difficulty. They’d just reached a narrow alley when Gaylen looked up a third time, and there was the familiar car. It turned to follow them as they continued on between two tall apartment buildings, but had to stay well up above.

As planned.

The residents didn’t care much for their haste as they sped past, around, and a couple of times into people leaving their front doors or setting up local mini-markets. But no one stopped them.

The car came down in a sharp dive as they exited out into a main street, throwing subtlety to the wind. Some instinct made Gaylen act, and from underneath the coat he brought out the table tray he’d nicked at the hotel. He held it over his head and heard the thunk of a dart hitting it. The tray wasn’t big enough to cover him completely and he moved it erratically. There was another thunk.

A few people were taking notice of what was happening. This was when the agents would be getting desperate; when the police might be showing up.

But they’d made it. Before them was the back entrance to the apartment building. The one the Addax was docked on top of. The door wouldn’t open, so Gaylen blasted the lock and gave it a kick. Tenant building doors typically weren’t hardened against gunfire, and it yielded. They dove inside.

This was a bit of a deciding moment, and he looked back as they hurried down a plain, unadorned hallway. He’d just reached the bend when he saw the car land right outside.

The agents hadn’t realised there was a dock up on the roof. So there was a chance.

They met no one as they reached the centre of the building. Kiris led the way to the elevator, but it wouldn’t open. They didn’t have access, and there was no time to let her break into the system. So they went for the stairs.

The agents were coming, their sprinting footsteps echoing down the hallway. Gaylen fired a shot past the corner to hopefully give them pause, and was the last one up. The stairwell was like the hallway; bare and boring and carried sound extremely well. Their own footsteps mixed with the pursuit, becoming an incoherent clamour that made it impossible to judge distances.

Fifteen floors, Gaylen thought. Just fifteen floors.

He could tell Jaquan was struggling, and it didn’t get any better as they reached the third floor, then the fourth. A plasma blast shot up from down below, exploding a small chunk of the stairs. Gaylen didn’t know if it was meant for intimidation or someone was just getting trigger happy, but he and Fredrak both fired blind shots back. A delay was almost as valuable as a hit.

Another shot came, and another, as they ran up the fifth flight and then the sixth. An instinct demanded that Gaylen speed up, away from the danger and towards safety. Another instinct refused to overtake Jaquan, with his bad leg and so-so aim.

Even with the clamour he felt that the agents were gaining on them, and Jaquan growled with effort, pain and determination as he did his best to maintain velocity.

Seventh and eighth, and the shots were coming in at a more even angle. Gaylen kept firing back.

Where’s Bers when you need someone to charge into gunfire?

It was on the ninth floor that the elevator opened with a chime. Fredrak whipped around and aimed his gun into it, and Kiris followed suit. Inside was a young man in unremarkable clothes, holding a coat in his arms.

“What, wait, what!?” the man shouted in confused panic as they continued circling around.

“Hands up!” Fredrak ordered. “Show us your hands!”

The agents were coming and the man didn’t immediately comply. Gaylen’s inner survival beast just wanted to shoot him; they might have broken into the system down below. On the other hand, regular people could easily freeze in danger.

“Hands!” Fredrak shouted again as he put his foot on the first step up to ten.

Kiris fired, hitting the young man square in the face. He dropped, and from underneath his coat fell a small grenade.

Gaylen dove to the side just before the concussive went off. A hurricane-like force hit him with a deafening boom, and he flew like a child’s tossed ragdoll.

They are coming, the inner survivor reminded him even as his mind spun and his body wanted to lie still, crushed beneath pain. He crawled over to the elevator, blearily aware of the others trying to get their footing, and reached into the dead man’s clothes. The gun was still in his right hand, and he fired a shot at the lower stairs, hopefully buying a second or two, before his fingers closed around another grenade.

He pressed the button and threw it downstairs. He tried shouting for the others to brace, but wasn’t sure if it registered before the second boom. Most of the blast didn’t make it up their way, but it was still enough to rattled him even more.

Gaylen allowed himself two breaths. Two breaths, and a bit more fumbling beneath the dead man’s coat, before he crawled on over the stairs again.

“Kiris,” he said through the ringing in his ears. “Kiris!” he repeated, and the Chanei woman looked him in the eyes as she shakily got to her feet.

Gaylen glanced down, and saw a staggered-looking man aim a gun up. He ducked back just before the bolt flew. A second later his conscious mind registered that a second group had been further down, coming up.

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“Go ahead, start the ship up,” he said to her, got up and gave her a shove towards the stairs. “We need to take off as soon as possible! Go!”

She didn’t argue or panic or make any dramatic gestures. Kiris just turned, fired a shot down the stairs, then took Jaquan’s arm and helped him follow Fredrak up.

Gaylen did his best to find steady footing, took a deep breath, then poked out to look down the stairwell. The enemy agents were already on their feet, and Gaylen fired a shot from his pistol, then another from the dead man’s gun. It was a lousy way to actually hit something, but good for a frightening rate of fire.

A bolt flew up and past his face, and he ducked back again. He switched angles and poked out for another quick one-two. This time three bolts came back and the limited space around him was getting quite hot and smoky.

Gaylen ran, stumbled into the corner before successfully making it onto the stairs. He hurried on up, stopped at the landing for another one-two, and ran up to the tenth floor. The group was some distance up ahead of him, but peeking up would mean exposing himself to the agents.

From down below came a thunk noise, and Gaylen turned his head in time to see a grenade much like the other two launch up to his level, losing momentum just as it did. By pure reflex sharpened in dark and dangerous places he raised a gun and fired. The bolt hit the little sphere and it exploded with a small fireball rather than a giant blast of pure force.

Then he poked out and fired with the other gun, and now he finally hit something. A careless agent took the bolt in the leg and fell, vanishing from sight. Another one poked just an arm out and fired. Gaylen kept on going.

“Kiris!” he said into his comm as he reached the eleventh floor.

“We’re on the thirteenth!” she said back.

Not enough, Gaylen thought. The enemy agents were still closing the gap. It would take too long to get the Addax into the air. And his own legs were getting damned heavy. Jaquan would be doing even worse.

He ran for the landing between the eleventh and the twelfth, stopped, and stuck the stolen pistol between his teeth for a moment. Then, as the bastards came running up the stairs to the eleventh he reached into a pocket and threw a little nutrition bar at them. They reacted as anyone would have seconds after an exchange of grenades, and immediately dove out of the way.

Gaylen aimed and hit a man right in the head. Another one tried to turn over to shoot back, and Gaylen hit him in the arm. He lined up a third shot, but a bolt from down below caused a flinch and it went wide. The second group was closing in.

He continued running, hugging the wall to minimise exposure.

“Fourteenth!” Kiris said.

A high-powered shot came up through the stairs, blasting apart concrete and almost burning his foot off. Another came, and another, the result of someone’s blind-firing.

Gaylen aimed one pistol downwards and fired back, while firing as he had been with the other. He reached the twelfth, and the thirteenth, and still the shots came. Some missed so narrowly that for a split-second he thought he’d actually been hit. Hugging the wall as he did meant a slower ascent than otherwise, and they gained on him.

“On the roof!” Kiris said.

“Rush it!” Gaylen said. “Hover and keep steady!”

It was on the fourteenth that something finally hit his calf. He didn’t know where it came from. Suddenly there was just a white-hot pain and his left leg crumpled. Gaylen twisted over to his side, bringing both pistols to bear towards the agents. He fired as fast as the weapons allowed for, desperately trying to hold them back and out of view.

Another powerful shot punched through the concrete, missing his hip by inches.

He moved his leg. It hurt, but worked, and so he forced himself up.

“Just drop the ladder!” he said. “Be ready to blast off!”

Up and up he went, amidst smoke and scorching trails of plasma and small explosions. Finally he saw a door, blasted open like the one down on the ground. He ran out beneath the dark, gloomy sky, towards the Addax. The ship was hovering a metre or so above the roof.

“Go!” he shouted into the comm as he heard the agents come up behind him. “Just drop the ladder and go!”

Kiris steered the ship higher up and started lazily drifting away from the docking spot. A ladder dropped down from the open cargo ramp, scraping along the roof for a couple of seconds with a mild display of sparks.

A shot flew past Gaylen and he leapt. It was a brutal landing, but his empty hand made it in between two rungs and his right foot went in between two others. He shifted to a proper grip, then as the Addax swooped over the streets far below he turned and aimed his pistol at the roof. The agents were streaming out of the open door and he shot at the nearest one.

The bolt hit the woman’s torso. She seemed to be wearing armour but dropped to her knees all the same. A bolt flew his own way, passing through the coat, before Gaylen fired back. And then Kiris withdrew the ladder as she let the Addax pick up speed. Gaylen holstered the pistol as one final enemy bolt burst against the hull, and looked up.

Fredrak took his hand and pulled him up.

“He’s in!” the agent shouted at one of the cargo hold’s monitors. The ramp began to fully close and Gaylen ran for the cockpit. Adrenaline was still buzzing through his system, letting him ignore the leg wound and probably several smaller ones. The police would definitely be on their way, and if the agents had ships available those would be coming into play as well.

“I think I did alright,” the Chanei said, hurrying out of the pilot’s seat as he rushed into the cockpit.

“Alright, sure,” he replied and plopped himself down. He was vaguely aware of her taking in his condition before vanishing from his peripheral vision. His focus was on the instruments. They needed to make leap as soon as possible.

“So, as we discussed?” Fredrak said from the doorway.

“As we discussed,” Gaylen said, and wiped sweat from his brow. “Now, one of you go into the medical cabinet for me. My leg is starting to hurt.”

# # #

“Patch them through,” Evesa said.

Her comm operator did, as she arranged herself in a comfortable position in the captain’s seat. On the main screen was one of her ships and she was eager for news. But showing anxiety was a bad career move.

“Evesa!” Hilnar said as his ruddy face appeared on the comm screen.

“Give me some good news,” Evesa told him and rested her hands behind her head.

“I will,” the man told her. “We found them.”

His mouth stretched out into a grin.

“Oh, really?” she said, keeping her reaction internal. “Details, if you’d be so kind.”

“On Wembella,” Hilnar said. “We asked around, and a female Chanei and a female Dwyyk landed there shortly after Uktena.”

Wembella. Such a short distance from the station, but so damn unremarkable that she’d barely considered it. Was it a natural mistake or an amateur one?

She buried any frustration and clicked her tongue.

“Go ooon.”

“There were some others. We didn’t confront them directly, but one description we dug up matched that of the man you met station-side. Actually, we think some of them might have left the planet by the time we arrived, but the Dwyyk was definitely still planetside when we left to get you. Along with a few others.”

Well, this was good and bad. They might already have left to sell off that damned record keeper. This whole hunt had taken way too long.

“And Jonso didn’t come to tell me himself?” Evesa commented.

“No, he sent me,” Hilnar replied obliviously. “He said he’d keep an eye on things and strike if it looked like they were gearing to leave.”

Evesa’s smile stiffened a bit. She had a strong feeling that Jonso would strike regardless. Either to show her up without being obvious about it, or to finally make a proper move of his own and be the one to make the delivery they’d been offered so much money for.

She ironed out the smile, since Hilnar was watching and all.

“Well, time to end this, then,” Evesa said. “We will call in anyone who is within reach, then make a straight line for Wembella. No messing around; this has taken enough time already. And I need you to deliver a message to our friends in the Authority. Tell them things are under control and we’ll have their prize soon.”

“Will do.”

At her hand signal the feed was cut. She let the mask fall; she didn’t bother with it around her own crew, and her face hardened.

I’ve got you now.