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knee. She didn’t look like a spacer so much as a girl who wanted to be with a spacer. He shook his head. Way to stay low-profile.
    Spacers looked at her and smiled. Some of the down-and-outs looked, too, but knew they didn’t stand a chance with her.
    Chandler watched as she stepped carefully down into the pit. He rose to intercept her. The man in the trench coat rose as well. Only then did Chandler realize what had bothered him about the man. His boots. They were polished to a military shine in contrast with his disheveled appearance.
    Then Chandler noticed that two others like Mr. Shiny Boots, from different parts of the room, began moving in. Something was going down.
    The girl noticed all of them moving toward her. She turned and bolted toward the exit.
    “Stop!” Shiny Boots yelled, pulling his blaster and aiming it at her back.
    Chandler didn’t have room to draw in the closeness of the crowd, so he tackled the man. The blaster discharged and struck the wall above the courier’s head. Chandler wrestled with the man as she continued to run.
    A pair of dirtsiders entered the bar, laughing over some joke. She darted between them toward the door as the other men opened fire. Energy bolts cut down the two laughing men where they stood, sending blood and bones flying amidst the bright flashes and high-pitched belches of the weapons. The stench of smoldering flesh filled the bar.
    Chandler twisted the blaster from Shiny Boots’ hand and hammered his jaw with a solid right cross. The man went limp.
    Chandler rose to sprint for the door, turning to cover his escape with a few rounds of blaster fire. Before he could get off a shot, he was blindsided by a chair. The lights went out in a flash of pain.

    Sai pushed through the doors and cut to the right just as they exploded into splinters. She ran. She felt the transponder still buzzing in her pocket. Since they might be able to track her with it, she pulled it out and dropped it on the pavement.
    She had caught a glimpse of the man who must have been her contact and had seen him fight with one of her attackers. She doubted he had any chance of making it out of the bar.
    Before Sai could reach a turnoff, she heard booted feet clacking on the street behind her. People panicked as the heavily armed team stormed out of the bar.
    Behind her, she heard one of the men shouting into a comlink, “Green Leader to all units! We’re in foot pursuit northbound from Tyree’s.”
    As she ran, pedestrian traffic grew thicker. Sai shouldered her way through the crowd. Energy bolts flashed and people cried out, tumbling to the ground to avoid death. Her pursuers fired recklessly.
    Sai gained some ground, thankful that the team didn’t seem to have anyone ahead of her. The men had to stumble over the prone bystanders. Even so, she barely made the corner as the energy bolts slammed into the stone wall behind her.
    A taxi hovered near the curb. The old cabby stared at the approaching chaos, cigar dropping from his lips.
    “What in the name of—”
    Sai raced to the taxi, pulled open a door and jumped inside. “Let’s get the hell out of here!”
    “What?”
    She whipped her whisperblade from her jacket and flipped on the power. She held the deadly glow of its blade centimeters from the cabby’s right eye. “Go! Dammit, go!”
    The cabby hit the engine and pulled up and away from the curb.
    “Can’t you go any faster?”
    “I’m going as fast as I—”
    An energy bolt slammed into the back of the cab, cut through the back seat next to Sai and burst through the front seat.
    The cabby fell face-first into the dash, blood seeping from the corner of his mouth.
    “Damn!”
    Sai rolled over the seat, kicked open the door, and pushed out the cabby’s corpse. It fell onto the road ten meters below. She took hold of the control lever and slammed it into high gear, turning onto the next street so fast that the anti-crash system took over and shot out an extra booster to send the cab up