Rene spun smoothly, the heat of the plasma bolt close enough to his arm to singe his hairs. It burst on the facade of sculpted concrete half a block ahead of them spraying passers buy with shards of sharp hot stone. People screamed and ran for cover, most of them probably didn’t even realise what was happening, merely following the crowd, though in this case the impulse probably was a good one. Rene reached into his jacket, a heavy spacers garment meant to be proof against the mishaps of shipboard life, and pulled his own pistol free. Like their assailant, he opened fire without taking the extra few seconds to aim, more intent on preventing a second shot than putting down the attacker. The electromotive pistol cracked sharply and the mercenary dodge backwards as one of the shrubby plants in a planter beside her burst into splinters. Rene corrected his aim even as he used his body weight to force Solae and the newcomer into an alley and out of the immediate line of fire. His opponent fired a second time but she was clearly rattled by the failure of her ambush and it flew high splashing harmlessly off the distant dome. Rene settled his sight picture, finger taking up the slack, but before he could fire the mercenary sensed her danger and dived behind the cover of a large industrial trash container. Tracking automatically Rene fired into the obstruction, spraying a shower of sparks in all directions.

“Rene!” Solae called and the soldier yielded to a tug on his arm that drew him into the alley and out of sight. A flash of frustration shadowed his mind for a moment, Marine training was always to attack and not to leave an enemy alive while they could still do you harm, but his rational mind quickly overtook the conditioning. The shooter wasn’t a problem, unless she was crazy enough to run a block and turn into an alley where, for all she knew, Rene was lying in wait. That was unlikely as no one who lived to the apparent age of their attacker was stupid enough to pursue a dangerous opponet blindly. Plus there was the newcomer to consider.

The man was cloaked and difficult to make out, as Rene and Solae followed him quickly down the alleyway. Rene briefly considered that this might be some sort of ruse, designed to lure Solae into a trap by threatening her with false danger, but if that were the case the mercenary gunwoman had come way too close to killing Solae outright. Like the rest of Zatis the alley was dingy but not the trash piled midden Rene had expected. There must be some sort of sanitation service, even if that was as simple as bulldozing refuse into central locations for incineration

“I have a car!” the stranger was calling glancing back over his shoulder at them. Rene followed behind Solae, keeping his gaze over his shoulder in case he had been wrong, until they emerged from the alley. They stepped through a shimmering curtain of light which Rene belatedly realised was a holographic advertisements, and onto a broad boulevard. The street here was still filled with people though there were nervous glances in the general direction of the gunfire of moments ago. Zatis clearly wasn't a world where shootings were an unusual event. Air cushion vehicles moved up and down the street. Though most of the conveyances appeared to be commercial rather than personal, there were a number of air cars and sedans both in the street and parked along the sidewalk.

The stranger removed something from his pocket and the doors of a large aircar folded upwards like gull wings. It was an older model, though it must have been expensive when it was new, and appeared to be of a Cappelan design. The interior bespoke wealth, with fine paneling of some kind of dark polished wood as well as a high grade synthetic leather. The stranger climbed into the drivers seat as Solae jumped into the passenger seat, nursing the near miss from the plasma bolt. Rene half stepped half dived into the rear compartment, keeping his pistol muzzle trained on the advertisement hologram, which distance had resolved into a shimmering naked woman beckoning with a crooked finger. The text beneath read: Paradox - Where Nothing is as it Seems. The fans of the aircar hummed to life and it lifted in a spray of dust and grit, angling along the street in the direction they had originally been going, optimum for putting distance between them and their attackers. The driver, whoever he was, kept them close to the ground for a hundred meters or so, a professional move that kept the vulnerable fan nacelles safe from gunfire, before lifting them to a safer altitude.