Authors: Joseph Lallo
Using reflexes honed during four years of changing class in a high school with three times as many students as it was built for, Lex slid between the confused patrons without losing a step. He managed to put a fair amount of space between himself and the pursuers before another handful of badges appeared at the opposite end of the hall. Their guns weren’t out. No officer with more than a day of training would ever be stupid enough to draw a weapon in a crowded train station. The ensuing panic and stampede would kill more people than the bullets ever could. Instead, they rested their hands conspicuously on their pistols, edging sideways with their eyes locked on him. There was no chance he could slip by them, and the way back was even better protected.
Lex scanned his surroundings. Along the wall to his left was a section of floor roped off for maintenance. The tiles looked like there was some sort of water damage, and caution tape formed a protective perimeter around it, strung between narrow stands with heavy, stable bases. Beside the cordoned area was a service door. He dove for it. A rattle of the handle revealed that it was, predictably, locked. He grabbed the nearest of the tape stands, pulling down the entire row as a result. The sudden clatter of metal sent a startled shockwave through the crowd, clearing the area around him and tripping up the approaching authorities. After carefully logging that lucky little discovery for future use, he made use of the extra elbow room to swing the hefty base of the stand at the knob, breaking it off wrenching the door open. He disappeared inside.
The maintenance stairs were completely empty, at least for the moment. Lex took full advantage, sprinting up them three at a time. It didn’t take long for his lungs to start burning and his legs to gently remind him that, if vigorous activity had been in the plan, half a week in a cockpit and a belly-load of mystery meat weren’t the best preparation. Stopping wasn’t an option, though. The translation in his pocket rattled off floor numbers and lockdown orders as quickly as he could reach new landings. Over his heaving breath he heard a key code being punched into the door ahead. As it opened, he drove his heel into it, slamming it shut again and hurling his would be captor backwards.
In the back of his mind, somewhere buried in the panic, a voice of reason pointed out that there generally weren’t many exits on the upper floors of a train station, but he shoved it aside. Judging from the pounding of feet on the stairs below, up was the only option. There was still hope, wasn’t there? There could be a window open, or a fire exit, couldn’t there? There damn well better be, because he sure as hell wasn’t going go to jail because of a stupid crab candy bar. Finally, he was out of steps, facing a final door that was miraculously free from the sounds of commotion on the other side. He gave it a solid whack with the tape stand he hadn’t had the good sense to drop ten floors ago. The flimsy, low bid security door swung open. He’d made it through and wedged it shut with the battered remnants of the stand before his brain registered what he’d managed to step in to... or rather, out of.
The door had led to a metal catwalk that ran a short distance along the outer wall. His mad rush had managed to bring him all the way to the top of the fifteen story station. Whoever had designed the building must have valued form over function, because evidently a petty little thing like a safety railing would have ruined the aesthetic. Instead there was a narrow rung ladder leading a few dozen feet to the roof, and a steep drop to the sidewalk below, the station being one of the few buildings in the area without skywalks wrapped around it. The multilevel traffic jam hovered, jostled, and shuddered forward at a snail’s pace just below him. Behind, the door was beginning to rattle with the blows of police eager to apprehend.
“
Okay, Lex. Let’s think this through,” he reasoned with himself, “You had a good run. The cops won this one, that’s all. How bad could jail be, right? Three hots and a cot. They couldn’t hold me for more than a few years, but at least I’d be alive... Except... Sarah Jones. She was the only other person who handled this case, and now she’s dead. They killed her, and a whole shuttle of other people just for mailing it... I’m as good as dead if they catch me.”
The door released a cheap “ping” noise, sending a bolt twirling into passing traffic and warning that he didn’t have much more time to weigh his options. He shuffled up to the edge and watched the bolt bounce and ricochet its way through the afternoon rush, causing expensive nicks and scratches to a dozen cars before he lost sight of it. A plan came to mind, though calling it a plan was perhaps a bit charitable. It was only marginally less suicidal than turning himself in to VectorCorp, but he wasn’t exactly spoiled for options.
Taking a few steps back, Lex made sure that the duffel was as secure as he could make it. A checklist formed in his head and he began to mark things off. Laces: tied. Belt: Buckled. Pockets: Zipped Shut. Fingers: Crossed. He took a deep breath, ran for three long strides, and hurled himself off of the edge just as the police managed to break the door open.
Some things are difficult to fully appreciate until you’ve put them into the proper context. Twenty feet, for instance, doesn’t sound like much of a drop. And ten feet seems like a fairly short distance to jump. When the twenty foot drop is the top two stories of a fifteen story building, though, and the ten foot jump is to the roof of a temporarily stationary hovercar, the distance can suddenly seem very significant indeed. It didn’t take a fancy safety system to make time slow to a crawl this time. His brain did it all on its own, evidently deciding that if this was the last thing it was going to experience, it might as well be thorough.
Approximately three lifetimes later, he came slamming down on the roof of a delivery truck. It took three painful bounces and a few feet of sliding before his brain was willing to take enough attention away from the very important task of screaming profanities to actually try to hang on. By then he’d run out of truck. Traffic had looked like a solid wall of bumper to bumper gridlock from above, but somehow he managed to fall through two more levels of it before landing on a mid size commuter car with a roof rack. One hand wrapped in a death grip around the rack while the other did a cursory check to see if any bones were protruding from his nice new outfit.
When he was sure that all body parts were present, accounted for, and reasonably intact, it was time to figure out what was the next step in his master plan. Thus far it had been surprisingly educational. For one, he’d learned that things didn’t work out in real life they way they did in the movies. Rather than the car he landed on continuing along and carrying him to freedom, this particular motorist stopped suddenly. Most of the people behind him stopped suddenly too, and those that didn’t do so immediately did so shortly afterward when they collided with their more attentive brethren. Thus, his clever escape plan now consisted of trying to get air back into his lungs as he watched the traffic ahead pull away.
Another lesson he was learning was that, when it comes to cursing someone out, you can’t go wrong with Chinese. The owner of the car he’d landed on was delivering a scathing tirade that was only slightly softened by the fact that Lex couldn’t understand a word of it. There was a sound that he did understand, however. Sirens. He glanced up to see flashing lights weaving their way in from above.
“
Sorry!” he blurted, before leaping from this roof to the next.
After a few sloppy landings, Lex started to get a feel for the footing you could expect from car hoods, windshields, and roofs as he made his way across the crowded roadway. The slowly flowing column of cars became a cacophony of exotic profanities, blaring horns, and wailing sirens. Rubberneckers gawking at the lunatic jumping from roof to roof soon became the next stepping stone. He swung from bumpers, vaulted over luggage, and cracked sunroofs in his mad attempt to get close enough to something stationary to escape. Fortunately for him, the chaos he was stirring up made it damn near impossible for the police to get close to him.
Finally a sporty coupe that had tried and failed to avoid him drifted off road and scraped against a third floor skywalk across the street from the station, which he eagerly scrambled onto. Planting his feet on something not actively trying to get out from underneath him for the first time in too long, he took off at a sprint toward what he hoped was the shipyard with his loaner. A crowded city, particularly one that had just recently had a commotion the likes of which he’d just caused, is a terrible place to have to chase down a suspect. Even sticking out as he was, any time he caught a glimpse of a cop, all he had to do was duck down an alley or two and they were long gone. Through some miracle of bureaucratic oversight, the police hadn’t sent anyone ahead to the local shipyards to keep an eye out for him. Maybe the local cops didn’t think he was worth it. Regardless, he threw a fistful of chips at the clerk, jumped into the cockpit of his ship, and skipped every start up procedure he could forgo without causing the engines to explode.
“
Warning. Warning. Optimal flow rate not achieved. Engine efficiency below fifteen percent,” informed the ship.
“
I know, I know,” Lex muttered.
The well maintained ship lurched up and out of the docking bay amid various complaints and groans. Cold-starting a ship like that was a bad idea for several reasons, but tops among them was the dismal power output of an engine that wasn’t up to speed. Until the DAR warmed up, it was like trying to fly a refrigerator. But it was only a matter of time before they realized it might be a good idea to lockdown the shipyards, and a flying fridge still had a better chance than a grounded ship.
He was just shuddering up above the city when his luck ran thin. A pair of police cruisers rose up from between the skyscrapers and hailed him. The cruisers were little more than slightly oversized hovercars with heftier engines and a blue and white paint job. The two of them combined were almost as big as the DAR by itself, but that didn’t mean that they couldn’t cause trouble for him. When you’re working against gravity, even minor collisions can cause serious issues, so a pair of little ships teaming up against a big one could easily disable or ground it if they hit the right spots. They transmitted a prerecorded, all purpose “Stop, you are under arrest” message that cycled through about fifteen different languages, giving instructions on how best to avoid getting into any further trouble. Lex had heard it so many times over the course of his rather rebellious life that he’d nearly memorized it. Evidently, if he were to allow the law enforcement professional or professionals in pursuit to escort him to the nearest retention center or processing facility he would be treated fairly and his cooperation would be taken into consideration. As tempting as the offer was, he was inclined to try his luck.
Again, he ran through his options. He was in a temporarily crippled ship in a transit hub on a foreign planet, with two low-atmosphere ships, presumably unarmed, looking to bring him in. Compared to recent history, this was going to be a breeze. All he had to do was stay mobile until his borrowed ship caught its breath. Ideally he should do some fancy footwork through the train yard below, but since that was effectively an act of terrorism, he decided against it. Likewise, doing a reckless, high speed pursuit through one of the cities was out. Doing that in a limo was one thing, where the worst he could do is total a few cars. The DAR could probably take down a building, if he didn’t handle it right. This was going to have to be a straight up dogfight, minus the guns... he hoped.
Once it became clear that asking nicely wasn’t working, the police started to run through the standard operating procedure. Having a rigid set of well practiced procedures was great for cops because it meant that they were able to coordinate well and really hone their craft. It also made them predictable. They jockeyed into their positions, setting up what in two dimensions would have been a PIT maneuver. The addition of the Z axis made things more complicated, but an enterprising offensive driver had figured something out. It involved nudging a ship or hovercar into an awkward orientation, thus forcing the pursue-ee to either waste time correcting or go plowing into the ground.
The rearmost ship edged up to Lex’s still puttering ship and made ready give him a shove. Just as he juiced the throttle, Lex pivoted the DAR on its side. The cop missed and ended up rocketing forward, nearly ramming his partner. While they were trying to work out what happened. He took a ninety degree turn and pushed the wheezing engine for all it was worth. They eventually took a wide turn and approached on either side of him to try to line him up for another try, but as soon as they matched speed he cut the throttle and fired the retro rockets, bringing him to a nearly complete stop. When the police tried to loop around, he simply flared up again, whizzing between them and choosing a random direction.
The “chase” continued in this fashion for a few more maneuvers before the cops realized that they were outclassed and took a moment to call for reinforcements. They were quick to respond, and there were a lot of them. Aside from a few dozen more cruisers, there were two big, sturdy, space-capable Interceptors, essentially younger siblings of the late Betsy. The good news was that they hadn’t had the irresponsibly large engines grafted onto them like Betsy had. The bad news was that this chase wasn’t going to stop at the edge of the atmosphere anymore.
“
This... isn’t going as well as I’d hoped...”
The console of the ship bleeped and its voice announced, “Optimal flow rate achieved. Engine status: Optimal.”
“
That’s more like it!” Lex roared triumphantly, setting a course and putting the pedal to the metal.
The better part of the Lon Djinn police force followed suit, but with the DAR engines back online, it was only the pair of Interceptors that managed to keep pace, and only just. The rush of wind outside started to die away as the atmosphere started to thin out, allowing Lex to pour on a bit more speed without his ship spontaneously combusting. For a moment, it looked like he was actually going to get away without any more shenanigans, but his ship’s sensors had two things to say about it. First, there was another pair of ships ahead, part of an orbital patrol. Second, all four ships were far enough away from populated areas to activate short range weaponry. Without thinking, Lex aimed for the nearest orbital checkpoint. They couldn’t shoot at him if he was close enough to civilians. Yes, technically he was using a human shield, but when you are running for your life, that sort of thing suddenly seems a lot less contemptible.