Predator: Cityhunter

Chapter 1

Dipping her hip, Tamara let her body glide and spin to the music as she stared blankly out the five inch reinforced Diamond plated-plexi-glass window at the airspeeders slowing down as they passed her glowing red box. Permanently cast in a hazy brown smog and perpetual darkness, Nova Hermes was surprisingly going through a record heatwave. Despite the sunlight only reaching the very tip of the top level of the city, every level all the way down to "purgatory," what citizens of Nova Hermes called the planet's ground level, could feel the pulsing heat from the boiling heatwave.

It was driving the city mad.

Wiping a sheen of sweat off her neck, Tamara closed her eyes to the sight of an airspeeder practically pulling to a stop in front of her window. Not for the first time tonight, she cursed at the damn heat. If it wasn't so hot she would turn up the red lights that framed her window until she could barely see out making her job just a bit more bearable and a little less degrading. But she didn't. Instead she turned and leaned on the wall and slowly swayed her ass from left to right knowing how the submissive pose elongated her back and pleased the customers, all the while covertly breathing a sigh of relief at the tiny personal aircon she had stashed in the corner.

Turning around she groaned at the sight of the airspeeder still floating at her window, banking even closer now. She kept her face impassive and her eyes dead as the man activated his window and leered at her making gestures for her to turn and show more. Her top was already off couldn't this piece of shit be satisfied with that alone? The thought of her boss seeing the camera feed however filled her stomach with bile. She was one of the lowest paid women on staff at the Red Lamp Tower. Essentially she was one of the few non sex working girls working as a real life human billboard, to which her fat slimy boss reminded her each and every day she could be replaced with a real billboard or a synthetic who would be programmed to fuck. Meaning if she wanted to keep her low paying degrading shit show of a job then it was either panties off or get laid off.

Meeting the man's eyes for only the briefest second as an attempt of acknowledgment and seduction, Tamara focused her gaze at the colossal black and glass building across from her, past the steady stream of flying vehicles, as she pulled down her flimsy black underwear.

A warning siren sounded mutely through the thick glass barrier as the creep's car drifted dangerously close to her window. Fast jerky movements from the man in the vehicle told her without needing to look the loser was masturbating to the sight of her as she danced naked. Neon text scrolled across her window in front of the man urging him to go down a level so he could sample some real human flesh for a bargain price. But she didn't look to see if he took the bait or not, she just focused her gaze on the dark geometrical corners and lines of the building across from her. Some of the lights had winked out earlier when she started her shift, and she wondered what those people did. What kind of people worked there? Why of all places in their galaxy were they on Nova Hermes? Or were they still even here?

For the past few days now, crime on Nova Hermes had skyrocketed. News anchors attributed it to the heat wave, but more and more reports were coming out that struck fear into everyone--that there was some secret war going on that was starting to bleed up and over to the higher levels of the city. The first incidents were of explosions and mass killings of rival criminal factions. At first no one paid it any attention and some like herself took pleasure in it. Good, she had thought let them get whatever they deserve, it was assholes like that who made it a miracle she didn't die on her way home each night. But things escalated, instead of faction wars in the pergatory levels the news was reporting that there was a war against the criminal factions. In two days nearly all the roughest most renown criminal factions on Nova Hermes were decimated. Tamara had heard girls in the dressing room trying to console another girl, a coworker of theirs, who was found catatonic near her boyfriend's strung-up, mutilated body. All the girl could manage to say when authorities asked what she saw was the word "ghost." By now, nearly all of the planet's wealthy inhabitants, who lived on the upper levels, had fled to the nearby space station Delta Ring 5, while other citizens were forced to sell their belongings and scrounge up enough of their savings to get passage to a smaller planet much further out, NGC4478. Those that were left in the city were either the ones causing the chaos or people to poor to leave.

Unfortunately, the rampant and unusual escalation of crime alerted the attention to the one group that every citizen either poor or rich feared above all--the Red Blade. Nova Hermes's ungoverned millitia. A group of psychopaths, murders, bounty hunters, and sadistic ex millitary from all around the known galaxy working under one man, Sargent Commander Asop Rackus. As an ex-colonial marine Commander, Asop ran Nova Hermes like a tyrannical despot who had all the power and none of the weight of accountability. If Tamara had to choose between running into a random enforcer of a local grimy crime faction or a member of the Red Blade, there would be no hesitation as she ran away from the black and red soldier.

Though, her blank eyes never betrayed her feelings, she felt immense relief as the man finally finished and drifted his car down presumably to take up the advertised offer for one of the other ladies. Glancing at her personal comm unit she almost smiled at the time read out. Three minutes and the red light framing her box would automatically shut off and she could collect her meager credits and start her perilous journey back home. Leaning against the windowed wall, Tamara pressed her face to the glass, noticing even despite its thickness the glass was hot from outside. Looking up, she strained to see past the towering buildings to the smog filled sky above. Fuck, she hated this place.

She had moved here after being kicked out of her alcoholic mom's house on Marka, another dingy little planet in the same galaxy. When she bought passage to Nova Hermes, Tamara had envisioned her life going differently. She imagined a small but stable career as a programmer, freedom, and more importantly friends. Silently, she stared at her clothes folded on her bag in the corner of the booth, none of those things happened. Here she was two years later standing naked in a hot lit up box as men jerked their dicks inches away. The only programming she had done for money was making an app for a fellow dancer that would break into his personal comm and show her all of his text from other women. And as for friends--well she realized very quickly out in the "new world" she didn't have what it took to be one of those people she saw on social feeds surrounded by friends.

A beeping sound went off and the lights to her booth blessedly powered down. Sighing, Tamara bent down and scooped up her folded underwear and stood. Her booth was dark now, nearly pitch black, allowing her to see out and no one to see in. Glancing back at the building across the way she paused.

At the edge of the building light rippled and warbled at the edge. Good God, was it that hot out? Passing her gaze down the edge to the other side she didn't see the same heat wave anywhere else. Still holding her underwear in hand, Tamara stepped closer to the window again and refocused on the shimmering heat spot. Elongated instead of wide, the invisible rippling spot seemed to trail upward forever, making it a strain on her eyes to see where it ended and began. But there was definitely something there.