Robbery – The Troubled Pilot
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The Troubled Pilot
“Stop him! Thief! Stop!”
Lance couldn’t help himself. He had to look. Through the merchants corridor of Variance station he could see a rumbling heading his way. From the crowd, not two sections down spin from where he was, burst a man flailing a low caliber pistol. People stayed out of his way, not wanting to make their few hours stay on the station a living hell of paperwork in the best case. Everyone except two of the station’s uniformed guards who were in hot pursuit yet hampered by the weight of their gear. Lance’s head hit the table. He was just in for an hour, to trade on some information or jobs before moving on and this had to happen. And of course, his mama would never allow him with in a parsec of home should she hear of this and him not helping. And mama heard everything.
“Excuse me,” Lance said to the dealer and pushed the legs of the nearest chair from under it and aimed it towards the center of the concourse. When the thief was near, he pushed the chair into his way. As the thief steered clear, ran into a group of tourists and busied un-entangling himself, Lance pulled out his weapon and spun it up as he turned. Leveling the barrel towards the thief, he twisted it all the way to the left most concentrated setting. And when the thief was free, he fired. A powerful air burst broke the distance in a split second and knocked the guy off his feet and into the bulkhead behind him.
As the guards approached, one turned towards the thief and the other towards Lance, both training their standard issue riot rifles, a different version of Lance’s weapon, on their respective targets.
“It’s an air burst concussion gun,” Lance said as he raised his hands and pointed the pistol ceilingwards. “Non-lethal. Licensed, registered and certified.”
The guard approached him and Lance could faintly see the scanner display on his faceplate. He checked the weapon’s number and compared it to Lance’s biometrics. The guard grunted slight annoyance when he saw that it checked out and went to assist in the collaring of the wayward kleptomaniac. Lance let out a huge sigh of relief for managing to not get harangued by the local authorities. So he holstered his side arm and turned back to the table only to see that the man he wanted some mission options from had departed in quite a hurry.
“Crap!”
Posted in No Category by Eran with comments disabled.