The Star Pirate's Folly

Chapter 14: Surface

It was so easy to dodge these softie dirtwalkers.
 
Jensen Lee cruised the emergency tunnels beneath Capitol City in a stolen maintenance car. The city was on a manhunt for him, but he would hardly consider it that. Their security systems were laughably outdated, easily penetrated. He was a ghost to them now. Despite all their posturing and wealth, the Core was apparently well behind the curve in cyber warfare.
 
He'd linked up to the tunnels' security cameras and waited until he saw one of the levitating maintenance cars stop nearby. The two workers in the car were prepping the shelters for evacuation. Ambushing them was easy.

"How you doing, Blondie?" Lee said to the passenger in the back seat.

A middle-aged female maintenance worker was lying on her side, bound and gagged with her own clothing. She squeezed her eyes shut, and a fresh stream of tears ran into shoulder-length yellow hair. 

Her partner put up a fight. Jensen put him down. 

Lee grinned and let out a sadistic guttural laugh. Good thing they weren't both men. He was all worked up from that fine little blonde at the hotel. Nothing like the scent of a young woman. He glanced at his half-dressed hostage. She was older, and no fox like the other one, but she'd do just fine. The hair was a bonus. 

Once they got to the shelter he'd blow the tunnel behind him and wait for pickup. Could be hours, maybe even a couple days. He smiled, and his tongue traced a wet line along his upper lip, catching on his chipped front tooth. It had been a long time since he had a woman to himself. 

#

Hargrove watched from behind the sliding glass front doors of the hotel as another row of public transport hoverbuses descended to the street. This was a baffling departure from the day he'd planned for.

The buses had been coming and going in waves since noon. Loudspeakers instructed citizens on the street to stand back before the craft touched down. A crowd gathered around the boxy cobalt vehicles as they settled. 

"Please form an orderly line to prepare for boarding. All transports are bound for bombardment shelters. Please form an orderly line to prepare for boarding."

The speakers continued to loop as the crowd rearranged itself around the buses, forming winding lines all the way back to the sidewalk. The bus doors opened for the first passengers, and snakes of organized citizens began to shuffle inside. 

Buttercup never came back.

Hargrove had called her a dozen times at least since he heard about Orpheus. The city was in a full-blown panic. First there were reports of the comet's erratic trajectory, and speculation that it could impact the planet. Then came the images of warships hiding in the coma of Orpheus—the "ghost fleet," as it was quickly dubbed by the news media. Pirates.

The pieces added up in the news reports. There was a spate of attempted vehicle thefts from asteroid towing shipyards across the outer rim. Most were recovered after apprehending the thieves, but one industrial grade dual-generator tugboat was never found. 

Experts debated the feasibility of a single craft handling a comet the size of Orpheus, but many contended that its gravity generators could easily be modified to produce sufficient pull for a short time, even by a half-decent mechanic. In any case, as the day wore on the answers were revealed.

Their leader called himself Starhawk.

He claimed to bear no ill will to the people of the Core, and that his only intent was to retrieve the man responsible for bombing the hotel, Jensen Lee, in exchange for leaving their cities alone.  But Lee was still on the run from Capitol City police based on what Hargrove heard.