The sound of an engine revving cut through their conversation, and suddenly a blinding light shone from the alleyway. A moment later the ganger exploded from the side street astride a solo-cycle. The two-wheeled single rider vehicle was equipped with all-terrain tires, and it kicked up mud in torrents as the ganger roared down the side street and turned sharply in the direction of the decommissioned starport. Trask and Lovat looked after him and saw the body of a young man in the street, his throat blown out by what was likely a thud round at point-blank range.
“Raptor Two, inbound!” came Aeomi’s voice suddenly, and as the two men turned they saw the young woman soaring through the street, her body several meters above the ground.
Shock and awe, indeed, though Trask as he sucked in his breath. Enforcers or salvage marines certainly weren’t going to pull this kind of stunt.
Aeomi had discarded her poncho and had secured her rappel harness to the articulated cage beneath Raptor Two’s belly. She was controlling the drone from her wrist pad in the same way Trask had, only the boss agent had never thought to employ the drone in such a way. Trask was a planner, a patient man who did things by the book.
Aeomi zipped past the two men, her pistol in one hand laid over her forearm so that she could not only control the drone but shoot when the time came. This was not by the book, though as she streaked through the rain after the solo-cycle, the boss agent had to admit this op hadn’t really gone by the book anyway.
Trask blinked away his shock and started sprinting down the street, as Lovat paused and watched Aeomi chase Uri towards the starport.
“Now that is a bond recovery agent,” he whistled, the admiration in his eyes glinting brightly. He rushed to join Trask as the older agent followed on foot. If they pushed their bodies to the limit they might be exhausted when they arrived, but at least Aeomi wouldn’t be on her own against Uri for long. Lovat had known bad men in his days as a warden, and though these were supposed to be just factory workers and union malcontents, it appeared that the Chiodo brothers had embraced the ganger life rather profoundly.
The rain stung Aeomi’s eyes as she sped through the downpour in pursuit of the solo-cycle, and she was suddenly rather thankful for the awkward folding visors that came standard as part of the agent kit. They also glowed orange, which made her something of a target, but she could see on the faces of the people she passed that witnessing a bond recovery agent screaming through the storm, fangs out, attached to a drone, was making quite the impression. Aeomi was grimly amused at the likelihood of a sharp decrease in attempted skips from this miserable planet after tonight’s display of corporate reach and power.
In her experience, despite being only a year in, there were mostly two kinds of skippers. The average Grotto citizen who failed to stay current on their debts and were easily picked up and processed into work camps or penal colonies. They were either rehabilitated or spent their lives repaying those debts with hard labor or military service.
In the core worlds, skippers were usually people who were a little savvier than most, with some resources and at least a modicum of skill just to get past the enforcer screen. They could be dangerous in their own way, but cunning was their primary tool in evading the recovery agents.
Those that came from broken and discarded places like Drill Post 47 were the other sort of skipper, and they were usually a bit more dangerous. Places like this were rough already, and most people out here were living day to day, staying one payment ahead of incarceration. Those that couldn’t, who red lined their bond, usually just disappeared into the thriving black market world instead of making the attempt to skip the world.
Enforcers in places like this could be bribed to look the other way more affordably than rehabilitating their debts, so Aeomi had no doubts that upwards of ten percent of the population were red lined and doing their best to hide it. The problem really came when people from places like this did skip. They were usually the hardest of the bunch, most of them criminals of one sort or another, and it took a deadly blend of desperation and skill for someone to skip from here. They were less likely to attempt a cunning evasion like skippers from the core worlds, much more likely for such folk to shoot their way to freedom. When a bond recovery agent got retired, it was usually on the hunt for someone from a place like Drill Post 47.
Drill Post 47 was no different from any other Grotto community gone bust. If seeing the spectacle of bond recovery agents dropping the cage on these brothers prevented even one skipper from making the jump, that seemed to Aeomi like a win. People who dove into the black market world, at least, were still participating in the Grotto economy, even if in a radically illegal way. They might not be paying on their bond, but they were still consuming and still producing, and the Bottom Line was fed its due.
That was the former enforcer in her talking. Aeomi smiled as she flexed her fingers on the handle of her force pistol. Pragmatism was one of the chief virtues of being a citizen of Grotto, even more so as one of the authority figures responsible for maintaining society.
Aeomi’s emotions flared as she streaked over the muddy road, freshly ground up by the passage of the solo-cycle. If the people of Himar could find a way to achieve some modicum of identity and prosperity within the Grotto system, then so could the workers on Trigag. When people lashed out at the system, by avoiding work assignment, stealing from others, harming citizens, or dishonoring their debts, they were making a mockery of the Grotto people who stayed loyal and just did their jobs. These Chiodo brothers had stained it with their unionism, not to mention taken the lives of several loyal citizens. Once an enforcer always an enforcer her drill instructor had said, and Aeomi sucked in a lungful of caustic air to clear her head, capturing Uri’s stale scent and focusing her mind. She was closing in on Uri and it was time to consider the task at hand.
“Range achieved,” reported Aeomi over the recovery channel as she lined up her pistol and let out her breath slowly, doing her best to compensate for the movement of the raptor and the downpour. “Engaging.”
Aeomi squeezed the trigger of her force pistol and sent an energy discharge roaring towards her target, the charge burrowing a hole through the rain as it went. She cursed when the charge splattered into the mud right next to the solo-cycle, doing little more than covering Uri in a fresh coat of filth.
The unionist-turned-ganger glanced behind him, and for an instant, their eyes locked. Aeomi could see his pupils widen at the sight of the agent bearing down on him with a raptor drone. She was happy that at she was just as much of an unexpectedly difficult opponent as Uri had turned out to be. She fired again, hoping to catch him off guard, but the ganger was swift to react and jerked his cycle to the right just in time to narrowly avoid another charge.
The agent continued to fire, though keeping a steady aim was proving extremely difficult as she was also having to pilot the drone in response to the solo-cycle. Uri pushed max throttle and the solo-cycle careened down the muddy road, the abandoned starport now looming closer. Aeomi fired once more, managing only to cover Uri and his cycle in mud yet again. The two of them rushed through the night. Aeomi was able to make out a number of barrel fires and lanterns illuminating the inside of the starport. No sooner had she done so than a shot rang out, the report booming over the storm.
Raptor Two shuddered from the impact and immediately lost altitude. Aeomi’s next shot went wide, missing Uri completely and slamming into the metal of the nearest support pylon of the starport. The agent’s feet were dragged painfully through the mud before she was able to gather them under her and kick off, hoping the boost would help the drone recover. She frantically hit the controls and veered the drone away from the broad face of the starport, hoping that she’d guessed correctly that the sniper was somewhere on that side, as it had a better vantage over the muddy no man’s land that separated the city sprawl from the starport.