by P. J. Lowry
It took Sergeant Star less than twenty minutes to get to the market flying above and between the skyscrapers of the capital city. She parked at a spot near the market that was reserved for only for public officials. Usually on days when the weather was nice, Amanda would roam the market without her helmet to interact and be friendly with the citizens. With functional blasters being smuggled into the city, she preferred to stick to code and keep it on. As she strolled through the market, she could tell that keeping it on was making some of the patrons and especially the vendors a little nervous. To make everyone feel better, she strolled over to a coffee hut and ordered a double java with a cheese bun on the side. She hadn’t eaten since the blaster fight and needed to keep her energy up. Amanda ended up giving half of the bun away to one of the beggars in the grounds when she was full but slowly sipped the coffee as she browsed around, trying to look like a patrol officer who was looking for a deal during her lunch break rather than someone who was looking for a suspect. Eventually she strolled out to a specific vendor, one that specialized in electronics. As she slowly approached the vendor, he seemed relaxed as she still sipped the coffee on her approach.
“Good afternoon, Sergeant Star.” The vendor called out.
“Hey Joel,” Star replied as she tried do her best to look like she was just doing a normal walk by on patrol.
“Is there anything I can offer you to upgrade that amazing speeder you have?” the vendor asked, trying to be polite, “I can give you a reasonable discount for your fine service.”
“Very tempting Joel,” Star said as she looked up from the merchandise to look the vendor in the eyes, “But if you’re going to attempt to sell me illegal parts to enhance my speeder’s abilities, I prefer you do it when I’m not on duty.”
“I don’t think I’ve ever seen you off duty.” Joel noted.
“Well, the next time I’m off duty.” Amanda said as she finished her coffee. “I’ll make an effort to drop by but that’s not why I’m here.”
“What’s going on Star?” Joel then asked as he realized she all business.
“I need to know what the word is going around the market about the blaster fight earlier today.” Amanda asked.
“I’ve heard rumours of a blaster fight, nothing more.” Joel replied, “Personally I don’t believe it myself. No one’s broken through the grid in almost a century.”
“Believe it.” Amanda said as she stepped closer. “I was the one they were firing at this morning.”
“Not good for their health.” Joel noted.
“I agree,” Amanda said with a smile, “I need to know where someone like that would get the parts around here to beat the grid defence and we need to do it before there is another incident.”
“I will ask around.” Joel replied, “If someone is hawking illegal blasters, I’ll see if any my people are hearing about it.”
“Thank you, Joel.” Amanda said as she tossed her expired coffee cup into the bin with precise aim. “Give me the usual signal if you hear anything.”
Joel had been her informant for well over three years, every since she caught him upgrading speeders for people who wanted to outrun the patrol during high speed chases. He had come through for her many times and she hoped he’d come through this time. This was the one time she really needed him to come through and find a lead for her. She didn’t exactly trust the one Anders gave her and since she already had a C.I. at the market, she would get him to look into it for her instead. If there was any validity to what Anders gave her, Joel would have no problem sniffing it out for her and verifying if it was legit. The patrol didn’t approve of making deals with criminals, but Amanda knew this was the best way to go. She had a few informants that she paid out of her own pocket to not only keep the flow of good Intel coming her way but to also keep an eye on these goons and keep them out of trouble as well. If she ever got caught using these people against regulations, Anders would not hesitate to decommission her service on the patrol. She didn’t care and the Intel she bought from them led to numerous arrests. It was working so she wasn’t in the mood to let something like a minor infraction get between her and the real criminals.
Amanda could tell that her presence, along with her brooding presence looking at everyone through the visor of the helmet was making people nervous so she decided to leave. She was about half way to the market when something happened. A man came up behind her and before she had a chance to respond, she felt the barrel of a blaster press up against her lower spine. This guy had to be good to be able to sneak up on Amanda without her noticing until it was too late. Sergeant Star stopped walking and paused, waiting to see what her attacker would do next.
“I don’t have to remind you how functional these things are.” The man whispered from behind, “I fired a few test shots at you this morning.”
“What do you want?” Amanda asked.
“We’re going for a little walk.” The man answered as he nudged her with the barrel of the blaster. “Make a move, not only will I destroy your spinal cord with a point blank shot, I’ll kill whoever around here witnesses me do it. Are we clear on that?”
“Perfectly,” Amanda said as she moved forward. She was tempted to try to disarm the man but she didn’t want to risk it, especially with the blaster pressed so close to her. She decided to wait for a better opportunity, one where there wasn’t as much potential for collateral damage. She walked slowly and away from the market and past her speeder as he led her towards a building and then into the alley next to it.
“You and I are going to have a little chat.” The thug informed her.
“What about?” Amanda asked, “We can talk about baseball. How about those mashers?”
“Shut the hell up!” He said as he pushed her into one of the building walls in the alley, “You know exactly what I want.”
“If it’s a deal you want, I’m willing to talk terms.” Amanda suggested. She doubted that was the reason but it was worth a shot.
“I’m not here to cut a deal.” He screamed at her. “I have just one question: where did you take my blaster? Where the hell is it?”
Amanda didn’t need a doctorate in criminal science to know what was going on. This thug had lost a very, very valuable piece of hardware and wanted to get it back before his boss found out he had lost it. Chances are if he returned back from whence he came short a blaster, he’s be shot where he stood. This meant those blasters were in short supply and that even one missing wouldn’t go unnoticed by the man or lady in charge. If word got back to them that one of their men was arrested and a blaster was in the possession of the Patrol, heads would most certainly roll. That made this man desperate enough to hold up the officer he shot at to get answers. It also meant he was nervous and anything was bound to set him off.
Amanda was walking with the man behind him as he led her to the back area of the market. When she waited for the perfect moment, something that was bound to distract what was an already nervous man. That break came when someone in the market dropped a few plates and the sound of them smashing on the ground caused Star’s captor to turn in that sound’s direction. When he did, Star made her move as she spun around and dropped to one knee as she die, which moved her head out of the line of fire. As she dropped to one knee she three a hard right fist into his rib cage of the man, knocking the wind out of him. Star then grabbed the wrist of the hand that held the blaster, and began to stand up. As she did, Star spun around again so that her back was leaning up against her attacker’s torso. She than flung the man over her shoulder while grabbing the blaster at the same time and taking possession of it. When the man landed back first onto the hard ground, his wind was knocked out of him again.
“Thanks for the second blaster,” Star said as she inspected it to discover that it very similar to the one she had taken earlier that day. She rolled the man onto his back and cuffed his hands behind his back, “Now you’re coming back to headquarters with me.”
“I’m not going to tell you anything
!” he called out.
“We’ll see about that.” Star said as she dragged the man back to his feet.
Sergeant Star walked the prisoner back out into the market and towards her speeder which she had already activated remotely to warm up while waiting for her arrival. She wouldn’t get halfway to the speeder before all hell broke loose in the middle of a large crowd. The first shot rang out and echoed throughout the crowded market. Before Star could react, the chest of the man she was escorting had exploded as the shot hit him right in the chest. The shot had killed her prisoner instantly as he fell backwards and on top of Sergeant Star. This action was the only thing that saved her life as the person standing above the market on a higher floor fired several more shots, trying to kill Star. The prisoner’s body prevented those shots from hitting her, shielding her from fire. This is when things got a little crazy. Star wanted to fire back but there were a lot of people running in all directions and she couldn’t risk hitting a civilian. The crowd was dispersing as quickly as possible with some people diving behind counters and taking shelter in the stores while many others just ran for the nearest exit while screaming in panic. Once the crowd had thinned down, Star timed the shots that were still being fired at her and then acted. She used the blaster she had taken from the prisoner, which seemed a lot more powerful than her own and started to fire shots at the floor she assumed the shots had come from. The shots from her blaster also rang out as the wall where the shots were coming from exploded from the shot’s impacts, sending bricks and other pieces of the frame crashing to the ground below. Rather than assume she hit her target, Star moved her arm back underneath the prisoner, which was a wise decision as the next shot almost took her arm off. A few more shots hit the body which sent more blood splattering everywhere. This exchange of blaster fire went on for a few minutes until sirens could be heard coming as several patrol speeders arrived on the scene.
The man who was firing from above knew better than to hang around and stopped firing, making a very tactical retreat. He was about to be outmanned and certainly out gunned so it was in that man’s best interests to retreat while he or she still could.
When the officers from the Patrol started to stream into the market place, Star tossed the body off herself and to the side before getting back to her feet. One of the officers from the patrol walked up to her to inspect her since she had a lot of blood on her.
“Are you all right?” he called out.
“I’m fine,” Star said as she looked at the mess on her uniform, “The shooter likely went in that direction.”
“We got people on it,” The man replied but he stopped for a moment as a message was being related to his helmet, “The commander on site wishes to speak with you.”
“All right,” Star said as she started to walk away from the officer in the direction of the other patrolmen that had arrived. As she approached what she thought was the commander, she was surprised to see the woman who tried to take the blaster from her earlier standing there with the site commander.
“Sergeant Star,” the woman said as she looked over at her, “Why am I not surprised to see you here?”
“What do you want?” Star asked, not in the mood to fool around.
“I need you to grant us access to the lab,” She replied, “It’s imperative that you give us access to that blaster.”
“Why can’t see just share?” Amanda suggested, “You let the lab keep working on their blaster and you can have this one that I took from a perp less than ten minutes ago.”
The woman looked at the blaster, “How do I know you’re not lying?”
Sergeant Star pointed the blaster at ground and fired it. The shot rang out and cause all the officers of the patrol who were there to flinch and turn around to see what had happened. Amanda took two steps closer and handed the blaster to the woman who graciously accepted it.
“I’m not trying to fight you,” Amanda told her, “I’m just trying to do my best to make sure these things are taken off the streets before good officers get themselves killed.”
“Thank you, Sergeant Star.” The woman said as she held the blaster with care. “If we find anything out, I will not hesitate to share the results with Commander Anders and remind him how we got this blaster.”
Star didn’t care about credit and walked away, heading back to her speeder. She needed to get back to base and get into a new uniform, preferably one that didn’t have any blood on it. Then she had some further evidence she wanted to go over. Evidence she didn’t trust the woman enough to share with her. Not yet at least.
It took Sergeant Star less than twenty minutes to fly back to headquarters. With her suspect’s blood all over her, it was against regulations for her to resume patrol until she cleaned up. Since her day was almost done, she didn’t think Anders would gripe about her calling it a day a little bit early. He’s probably preferred it rather than risk her finding more trouble than she already has. Once back at the station, she immediately went to the lockers and removed the filthy uniform as soon as she possibly could. Once it was removed could Amanda tell how much blood was really on, and she was just thankful it wasn’t hers. She had been in an intense firefight, and was able to walk away without so much as a single shot taken. It was an event she didn’t want to repeat, and she thought about it the entire time she was in the shower cleaning up. Once she was cleaned up and back in a fresh uniform, Star walked very quickly to the lab which was surprisingly open for anyone to walk in. If the tech room was no longer in lockdown, it could only mean one thing: they solve the problem. She had a big smile on her face as she walked in.
“Give me the good news,” she quickly asked, “I could really use some.”
“We found out that the blaster was using an algorithm that allowed it to go unrecognized by our sensors.” the tech answered, we’ve made a configuration recommendation to the top brass and if implemented, it should disable all guns like it.”
“So no more shoot outs?” Star asked, smiling at the thought.
“For now,” the tech answered, “That is until they can make a new code that can bypass us. We’re going to have to do further studies of our own system to make sure there are no other holes in our code that can be exploited. This could take some time so I’d recommend being careful out there.”
“Duly noted,” Star said, giving the tech a half assed salute, “Seriously, thanks for taking care of that. I have a feeling someone was planning to use this for something bigger.”
“That is pure speculation, Sergeant.” a voice called out.
Commander Anders had entered the tech lab, and all eyes were on him as he strolled over to where Amanda and the head tech were speaking. He didn’t seem impressed, but to be honest there wasn’t many times either of them could remember when he had any other look on his face.
“I’m sorry, Sir.” Star replied, “Just a gut feeling. The guy who attacked me this afternoon seemed desperate to get it back.”
“Why is that?” the commander asked.
“He was afraid,” Amanda replied.
“Of what?” the tech then inquired.
“Of his boss,” Star answered, “If he didn’t die at the shootout, I am sure his boss would have after losing this gun, especially now that none of them will work after we reversed engineered it.”
“Good work, Sergeant Star.” the commander said, “We will be implementing the changes recommended by the tech lab as soon as possible. The blasters should be ineffective very soon. We have you to thank for that.”
“Just doing my job, Sir.” She modestly told him.
“Keep it up,” Anders said, “But I’d recommend not bumping heads with upper management again anytime soon. It’s unhealthy for both of our careers and I would hate to lose a good member of my patrol.”
“Affirmative, Sir.” Star said, giving a more serious salute to her boss. It was obvious to her that he took some heat on her behalf.
“You’ve earned the rest of the day off,” Anders said as he was
well aware of the time. “Have a good weekend.”
Star and the rest of the techs watched in stunned silence as the Commander left the lab. It’s the first time any of them had heard the Commander speak to anyone with such respect, let alone let any member of the patrol check out before their shift was early.
“First time for everything,” The tech said with a smile.
“Hopefully not the last,” Amanda said, as she also left the lab she quickly texted something to Captain Rogers, hoping he was still on world.
