Danielle Stanon, Master Technical Specialist for the Interplanetary Civilian Defense Agency’s #67th ranked team, vaulted over a crate of fruit and landed on the other side with a stumble. She caught her balance and darted off.
Glancing over her shoulder, she caught sight of three Alren Space Gang members crash into the crate. They roared at the delay, flipped the crate, and stomped on all the fruit as they took off to chase Danielle. The fruit merchant cursed at them, shaking his fists.
“What is with this stupid box?” Danielle glanced at the wooden box she carried. Its surface had been covered with broken tiles, but they had been laid in no particular order—some upside down, some right side up—and grout had stained some of them. “It looks like a child made this thing.” She shoved the box into the bag hung over her shoulder and sprinted down the street as fast as her legs could carry her.
The bells on her traditional Restan dress jingled and jangled as she ran, adding to the cacophony of merchants haggling, animals calling from cages or from the stakes where they had been tied, vendors barking, and most unsettling, the shouting of the men chasing after her. The sun beat down on the animals and vendors causing them to sweat and release a particularly pungent aroma. That, coupled with the smell of ripe fruit, cooking meats, and smoking fire pits, produced a scent which Danielle couldn’t decide whether she liked or hated.
She snorted through her nose to rid herself of the odor. Her dark, curly hair streamed out behind her as she raced down the marketplace, sidestepping customers who examined carts of merchandise displayed on carts and stalls set up on both sides of the street. The merchants standing behind those carts were concentrating too hard on selling their wares to worry about this dark-skinned girl being chased by the Alren Gang . . . or maybe they were too smart to get involved.
“This is bad. This is really bad! I swear I am going to lose it if Alex brings this back to the track training he made me do.” Danielle shoved a young man balancing ten crates of green fruit in his hands. The crates crashed to the ground, and the fruit cracked and splatted on the dirt ground, sending a sweet, honey-like fragrance into the air.
“Sorry!” Danielle called over her shoulder. She winced at the bewildered look the young man gave her, but she did smile when the Alrens stumbled and slipped on the fruit rinds scattered all over the dirt street. It gave her enough time to duck into an alley.
The backstreet emptied into another road. No use going down there. Her pursuers would catch up to her in no time if she went out into an open area again. In fact, they would have caught up to her already if she hadn’t used tricks to keep them at bay. But now she panted hard, and her chest burned. She had to hide and catch her breath.
An empty warehouse stood to her right. The door had been boarded up, but there was a little gap between the planks and the door jamb.
“I hope I can fit in there.” Danielle dropped to her knees and squeezed through the opening.
“She ran down there!” came a fierce, harsh voice.
Danielle ducked to the floor. Dust flew up into her face, and she had to hold her breath to keep from sneezing. Scrambling to the wall, she pressed herself against underneath a half-boarded window. The other half of the window’s glass had shattered.
Two of the Alrens flew past the warehouse without a look, but the third slowed to a halt outside the window. He peeked in and tilted his head up and down, left and right, now stooping, now standing on tip-toes in an attempt to see all over the interior.
Danielle held her breath. She couldn’t move. Even the tiniest gesture would make the bells on the ends of her ankle-length skirt or the ones on the ends of her hip scarf jingle. She clenched her teeth and cursed this stupid outfit with the puffy, long sleeves and lace trim, the maroon skirt, and the red and gold head scarf tied over her hair. This morning when she had put it on, the outfit seemed like the perfect way to blend into the Restan marketplace . . . and it was. Every woman and girl in the market had on a similar dress and every man, a puffy-sleeved equivalent. But now, in the silence of the abandoned warehouse, the outfit made her stand out . . . or it would if she didn’t remain absolutely still.
The Alren member took one last look, grunted, and then darted on. “She’s not in the warehouse! Hurry! Keep searching. She couldn’t have gotten far!” His words blended into the marketplace noise as he ran.
Danielle released her held breath. Her clothes jingled as she did.
“Never again!” She ripped off the hip scarf and threw it on the floor. “It’s too bad, too. This outfit was so expensive! And pretty.” She pressed the button to the communicator hidden in her ear. “Alex! Alex, you jerk! Come in!”
“Alex disconnected his link to us,” came Emily’s voice. “He said he didn’t want to be distracted unless it was an emergency.” As the team’s pilot, Emily hardly left the team’s space cruiser during a mission. Rather, she stayed aboard, guarding both the ship and their escape route if things went south.
Danielle clenched her teeth. She would have been on the ship—and safe—if Alex hadn’t asked her to do him this favor.
“This is an emergency!” Danielle slammed her fist on the floor. “I’m being chased by members of the Alren Gang. You know, Space Pirates! The kind that kill you on sight!” She clapped her hands over her mouth. Too loud, Danielle. Someone could have heard.
“Alrens? Why are they chasing you?”
“How am I supposed to know? All I did was pick up the box Alex asked me to get.” Danielle rose to her knees to peek out of the window. No one was out there to hear her outburst.
“I’ll call him.”
“Need me to walk you through it?” Danielle slid to the floor.
“I’ve got it. Your communication’s expert is on the case.”
“Come off it, Emily. There is no such position, and you know it.”
“If I’m not the communication’s expert, then how could I connect you to Alex like this?”
“Because it’s a part of our equipment’s functionality,” Danielle said as she heard a click opening the line to Alex.
“Danielle? What are you doing on the frequency?” Alex’s voice rose over background noise of people shouting, boots stomping, and the heavy breathing of a runner. “Emily, I thought I told you to keep it clear!”
“Danielle’s being chased by Alren Gang Members,” Emily said.
“Space pirates? Why would they be after Dani—what the—!” There was a crash, a struggle, and then the sound of Alex running again.
“I don’t know,” Danielle said once the noise died down. “All I did was get this stupid box from the merchant you told me about. When I did, they started chasing me down the street. They shot at me, Alex. Shot at me! I might be full of plasma holes right now if I hadn’t disabled their weapons.”
“You hear that?” came a voice from outside the warehouse.
“Oh, no!” Danielle peeked out the window again. One of the Gang Members stared right back at her. “They found me!” She darted to the door on the other side of the warehouse. It was boarded up, but the window had been broken. She jumped through, landed on the street, and raced down it.
“There she is! Get her!”
“Alex! Do something!” Danielle shouted as five more Alren Members joined the chase.
“Okay . . . okay . . . um, Emily, map of the terrain,” said Alex.
“Got it,” Emily said.
Danielle blinked to prevent the hidden projector in her earpiece from overlaying a map over her vision. She had enough to worry about without that obscuring half her sight.
“The tracker shows you’re in the marketplace, Danielle,” Alex said.
“I could have told you that.”
“Head out the east entrance. Keep running, and I’ll pick you up.”
“Got it.” Danielle vaulted over a stall to her left. “Sorry about this, ma’am,” she said to the merchant before ducking behind her. Danielle darted behind the line of stalls along the street until she found an eastbound path. The gang members didn’t try to squeeze behind the stalls, but followed her in the street, shoving people aside and destroying crates or anything else that stood in their way.
Danielle clenched her teeth as she caught sight of the wreckage out of the corner of her eye. “Stupid Alrens. No wonder nobody likes them.”
She darted down the street and out of the east gate, a large wooden structure making an arch over one of the four the main roads into the city. The stone paved street led out of the marketplace and crisscrossed across an open meadow with smaller roads branching off of it. All the vehicles, carts, and any other transportation the customers and merchants had used to travel here had been parked around the city walls—though there weren’t many motorized vehicles. Resta wasn’t a technologically advanced planet. In fact, many people still used animal drawn carts. Danielle stared past several animals tied to stakes, though there were a few cars interspersed here and there.
Danielle veered off the road as a vehicle came by. “Alex, there’s nothing out here! It’s an open meadow!”
“Keep running in a straight line,” Alex said in her ear. “I’ll come get you,” he paused and continued, “Think of it as an extension of your two-mile run!”
Danielle clenched her teeth to keep from screaming. She could practically see his smug smile.
“Emily,” Alex said, “head to the rendezvous point.”
“On my way,” Emily said.
The road curved left. Danielle abandoned the road and ran across the grass, glancing behind her as she went. The Alrens weren’t chasing her anymore, but she wasn’t about to slow down. Who knows when they’d—
The high-pitched whine of a jet engine pierced her thoughts. Five Alren Gang members sped after her on Skid Bikes—maneuverable vehicles that hovered over the ground and could ascend up to 12 feet in the air.
“You have got to be kidding me.” Danielle slowed her pace. No use trying to outrun them now.
Two of the men pulled up to her left. The other two and a woman came to her right.
One of the men cackled at her, keeping in pace with her slow jog. “Hey, there, sweetheart. You’re a pretty thing. You shouldn’t be out here by yourself.”
“You’re looking a little tired.” The woman jerked her head to the seat. “Why don’t you let me give you a ride?”
“I don’t ride with strangers.” Danielle thrust her nose in the air as she ran.
“At least, let me take that big, heavy bag for you. It must be weighing you down.” One of them reached his hand out to grab it.
“Bag? You mean this one?” Danielle threw the bag straight up in the air and stopped in her tracks. The Alrens, eyes on the bag, blasted past her. They swung their rides around and roared straight for her.
Danielle whipped out her DataHub—a flat device with a screen—from its holder strapped to her belt. Most DataHubs were silver and boring, but she had hers custom made with silver stars and white puffy clouds on a purple background. Pulling up a program of her own coding, she pointed it at the skid bikes and pressed a button. The bikes’ engines whined and warbled, and the bikes wobbled and toppled, throwing the pirates off into the grass at crippling speeds. Danielle scooped her bag up from where it fell, raced to one of the pirates, and kicked him in the face. She snatched his bike and rode off on it.
She stuck her tongue out at them. “That’s why you don’t mess with a Master Tech Specialist. Thanks for the ride!”
“Whoa! Dani, what’s going on?” Alex said in her ear. “According to the tracker, you’re booking!”
“I borrowed a ride.” Danielle revved the engine. “Where are you?”
“I’m . . . five minutes away from you at the rate you’re going now. I—”
A shadow fell over Danielle. She looked up. A ship . . . one flying the red and black flag of the Alren Gang . . . flew between her and the sun.
Danielle’s heart sank. “Really? What is with this box?”
“Danielle, I’m seeing something huge following you on my satellite,” Emily said. “Alex, do you see it?”
“I see it. What is that?”
“It’s one of the Alren’s local cruisers.” Danielle opened the throttle on the bike. “I won’t be able to outrun them in this open meadow.”
“Okay . . . change of plans,” Alex said. “Go north. Now!”
Danielle jerked the bike to the left. She gunned it down the open plain. The cruiser changed direction and loomed over her. A pink flash lit up the air. The road beside her exploded in fire and heat.
“They’re shooting at me again!” Danielle shouted.
“Stay the course!” Alex said.
Danielle opened the throttle as far as it would go—zig-zagging to avoid the laser shots. A ravine appeared over the horizon.
“Alex!” Danielle slowed the bike down the least bit. “There’s a big cliff in my way!”
“I know! Keep going. I’ll catch you!”
“What?”
“Just do it!” Alex shouted in her ear. “Make sure you jump clear of the bike!”
Danielle glanced at the ship behind her and then at the ravine. “Alex is crazy, and so am I!” She rode off the edge. At her jump’s highest point, she stood on the seat and leapt clear of it, sailing through the air with lasers whizzing by her. Below her ran a river churning over spikey rocks. She hissed in a breath. If she hit the water, she wouldn’t survive.
Worse, Alex was nowhere to be seen.
© 2024 M.R. Anglin. All rights reserved.
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