A man in a slim, white, armored spacesuit stood at the center of the bridge on the Earth Orbital Transfer Station Alpha One. In front of him were the station's main security control terminals, and at his feet lay a bloodied body. Everyone else in the room was slouched over their control consoles, lying in a pool of their own blood. The stench of death began to permeate the room as a lifeless body slid away from the console it was hunched over and fell out of its chair, landing face-first on the floor near the entryway to the bridge. The massacre happened so quickly that everyone was executed before they could even turn their heads or leave their seats. Radio chatter bellowed out from several terminals as docking control operators communicated back and forth with the pilots of different spacecraft as they arrived at and departed from the station.
The assailant removed his helmet and placed it on the console in front of him, next to a black and gold inlaid suppressed 1911 pistol with an extended magazine. After removing a vintage flip-top style lighter from one of the space suit's magnetic sealing pockets, he flipped it open and sparked up a cigarette before adjusting some of the controls on the terminal. Various computers and equipment hummed and beeped in harmony, accompanied by the sound of blood as it began to drain and pool onto the floor from the corpses that still sat at their workstations. Moments passed as the un-ashed end of the man's cigarette fell onto the terminal's keyboard while he continuously hammered away at its keys.
A screen illuminated on his wrist communicator and silently vibrated. He sighed and resumed typing with one hand. With his other hand, he held up his wrist communicator to his face and spoke in a low monotone voice, “Yeah, they have all been disposed of.” With the hand he had been typing with, he quickly reached into another pocket of his spacesuit and pulled out a small USB-like device, which he inserted into a port on the terminal. He continued, "Everything is in order. I am disengaging the auto-defense security protocols and uploading a virus to stall the pilots, just as planned," the man said confidently. The small, multicolored LED lights on the device flickered and then began to flash green in unison. "Roger that," he replied to the person on the other end of the radio transmission before the wrist communicator went dark ending the transmission.
While he was finishing typing lines of code, he felt something brushing against his spacesuit's leg. To his surprise, when he glanced down, one of the men he thought he had killed was tugging at his legs and mumbling as he spat up blood. His voice was weak and distorted by the blood gurgling in his throat, but he managed to gasp out between breaths, "You won't get away with this. The Galactic Police will find and apprehend you. You can't just--" At that moment, the man in the space suit blasted a hole dead center into the other man's forehead.
Before the bullet casing from his gun hit the floor, he asked the now-deceased man, "How the hell are you still talking when you're supposed to be dead?" He kicked the body away from him as he ejected the magazine from his pistol and replaced it with a fresh one. After carefully placing his helmet back on, he removed the device that he had inserted into the terminal and placed it back in the pocket from which it came. The radio chatter of docking operators requesting assistance from the main bridge echoed in the background as the man walked back towards the entryway. As he stepped over a corpse, he planted a small device on a nearby monitor. Then, he exited through the bridge's two heavy blast doors as they opened. The device started beeping softly, and a small screen began flashing the numbers of a countdown. While the blast doors of the bridge remained open, the man retraced his steps through several corridors as he made his way back to the station's entrance, through which he had originally entered.
As he walked past a door, it suddenly opened, and a woman emerged from inside. Without hesitation, he shot her point-blank in the chest, blasting a gaping hole through her body. A bloody mist painted the wall behind her as her body was thrown back into the room she was attempting to exit. Someone in the room started screaming, and the door shut automatically. However, the man continued to casually walk down the corridor as if nothing had happened. The device he had planted on a monitor in the bridge detonated, causing explosions to erupt in the corridors behind him. He quickly passed through a doorway and flipped the emergency airlock switch. The door slammed shut with a sudden force, and in a matter of seconds, everything on the other side was reduced to debris and sucked out into the vacuum of space.
Hundreds of meters away, in one of the station's docking ports, two men stood on top of the hull of a transport shuttle that was currently docked. They were equipped with large plasma cutters, typically used for mining raw ores from asteroids. Inside, there were several diplomats and high-ranking government officials from Earth and the Galactic Government Station. They had all finished boarding the ship and were patiently waiting for it to undock. Some of the passengers were officials who wore unpleasant expressions on their faces, while others were drunkenly celebrating recent political victories in the galactic senate.
Small motors on the plasma cutters began to fire up after the two men saw the explosion in the distance. In the desolate silence of space, the two men started cutting into the hull of the transport shuttle. Initially, the passengers on board were unaware of the ongoing renovations taking place on the ship. However, they suddenly became aware when parts of the ceiling started to heat up and become molten due to the plasma cutters puncturing through. Within a few seconds, a small portion of the ceiling had melted enough to create a breach in the hull, allowing passengers to be sucked out into space.
As passengers were being sucked out into the vacuum of space, the two men who had previously wielded plasma cutters were now armed with small pistols. They were shooting specific government and military officials whose bodies were also being pulled out into the void. A few horrifying moments passed before the internal structure of the shuttle's hull began to excrete a magnetic carbon nanofilament that slowly sealed the breach. With the hole now sealed, the two men released the magnetic locks on their spacesuit boots and pushed off from the shuttle, floating towards a nearby ship docked in the bay above them. Air hissed out of a hatch on the ship as a door slid open, and the two men floated inside. As soon as the door slid shut, the ship's engines surged with a red-hot intensity as it undocked and blasted off into space.926Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡlmaiIzpxgr
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“What the hell's with this guy?!” a man cried out as he stopped to catch his breath. After gasping for air for a brief moment, he abruptly continued running down the back alleyway he was in, causing his sunglasses to fall off his face. As he ran, he glanced back over his shoulder and saw another man with messy silverish-white hair, wearing a white undershirt, black dress pants, and black dress shoes, dashing from around the corner of another alleyway and continuing to chase after him. The man who was fleeing turned his head to look ahead of him and continued running while shouting. "Hey, if you're a cop you should identify yourself because I'm prepared to blast your ass!”
The man, with his messy hair and well-dressed attire, remained silent and continued to pursue his target. While chasing the fleeing man, he drew a sword fashioned in the style of a 17th century European claymore from a sheath on his back and began to increase his running speed.
"You can't be serious," gasped the man being pursued. He turned around completely, holding a pistol in his hand, and furiously squeezed the trigger as fast and as many times as he could. The man with messy hair quickly dove behind a dumpster in the back alley as bullets narrowly missed his body and ricocheted off other trashcans and dumpsters. When the firing stopped, he bolted out from behind the dumpster and charged towards the man holding the gun. The man with the gun struggled to load a new magazine as he turned and bolted away from his assailant. "This guy is insane! He's over here with a sword while I have a gun, and he's still trying to stop me," the gunman exclaimed. He reached into one of his pockets and pulled out a radio, and started shouting into it, “WHAT THE HELL IS THE HOLD UP? I NEED AN EXTRACTION AND LIKE RIGHT NOW!”
The radio buzzed and a voice cried out, "Sorry chief, we're in a pickle up here ourselves. As soon as we got in orbit some asshole from the Galactic Police appeared and we are currently attempting to evade them.”
"You can't be serious?!” the gunman suddenly cried out again, but with even more displeasure this time. "Do you think these guys are collaborating and aware of the situation?" he asked, shouting into the radio. The radio crackled with static as he shouted, "The guy chasing me has a fucking sword! So, if you could hurry up and come get me, I would appreciate it!" he exclaimed. He then turned the corner and began to climb a fence that was now blocking his path. He was a tall man with a stocky build, so climbing the fence was a bit of a challenge for him. Once he reached the top, he allowed himself to plummet to the ground without any concern for his own safety. He limped up and continued to run.
The man with messy hair turned the corner and cleared the fence with one swift jump. The gunman finally loaded the magazine into his gun, turned around, and opened fire again without looking, so he could continue running. The man with messy hair bolted behind a metal trashcan and a dumpster. Once he was out of the line of fire, he fell straight onto his back and drop-kicked the trashcan in the direction of the gunman. The can smashed into the gunman's back, causing his gun to fly out of his hands. The gun slid under another nearby dumpster, but the swordsman quickly got up and resumed his pursuit. The gunless assailant cried out in pain when the trashcan struck him, causing him to stumble forward into an awkward run as he continued to flee. As he fled, he began knocking over every trashcan in his path and hurling random objects to the ground behind him in the alleyway.
The radio crackled back on as the voice from earlier bellowed out, "Hey chief, we can't lose this guy unless we engage him! What should we do?"
The chief screamed back at them through the radio, “I DON'T CARE WHAT YOU KNUCKLEHEADS HAVE TO DO! JUST GET RID OF HIM! I'M ABOUT TO BE SLICED TO PIECES HERE!”
The man turned around and threw the radio at the swordsman who was chasing him. In a swift motion, he slashed his sword, slicing the incoming radio into two halves. The man who was fleeing exited the alleyway and climbed a short ladder nearby onto the back of a warehouse loading dock. He continued running down the loading dock, passing identical loading bay doors, all of which happened to be closed. His lungs were burning with pain, and he felt as though he might faint. This man wasn't really in shape and hadn't had a good sprint like this in years. He also wasn't dressed appropriately for a mid-morning run, as he was wearing blue jeans and a winter jacket with a letterman style.
He stopped running and pulled out a large combat knife from a sheath in his boot. He spun around to face the swordsman with messy hair. With his arm holding the knife in front of him, he shouted, "I can fight with a blade too, ya crazy bastard!" However, when he turned around, he realized that the man who was chasing him had disappeared. He could still hear footsteps echoing off the buildings next door and down the street, but there was no human in sight. His heart was pounding in his chest as he spun around to look in all directions. "This guy was just on my ass," he thought aloud to himself.
A shadow loomed above him as the swordsman with messy hair came crashing down from the awning above that extended over the loading bay area. He drop-kicked the gunman through a window on the loading bay dock, causing him to crash through the glass and tumble to the floor inside the warehouse. The gunman tried to scramble to his feet, but he was covered in cuts from the broken glass and no longer had the energy to stand. A group of warehouse workers quickly moved aside to clear the way as he came crashing through, ensuring that they wouldn't get hurt by the sudden chaos. The gunman was on his back, struggling to crawl backwards and begging, "Please... please don't cut me up!" He shakily held the knife out in front of him as the swordsman with messy hair climbed in through the broken window and jumped down from the small ledge to the floor. He sheathed his sword on his back, reached into his pocket, pulled out a pair of handcuffs, and threw them on the floor next to the gunman.
"Thanks for the workout," said the man with silverish white hair. "If you don't want to get cut up, then you can go ahead and put on those handcuffs." The gunman threw his knife aside and hastily secured the cuffs on himself. The white-haired swordsman said, "Alright, I'm Special Agent Dante Feliciae. I am a detective with the Planetary Police, and I am placing you under arrest." He smiled as he retrieved a small radio from his pocket and spoke into it, "Luka, I have him. I'll send you my location so you can come get us," he said, pocketing the radio. After using his cellphone to share his location, he lit a cigarette that he had taken from a crumbled-up Marlboro pack that resided in his shirt pocket.
"Aw, shit. So, you're a cop," the gunman sighed. "I was hoping you were one of those crooked bounty hunters I could convince to let me go by shoving a gun in yer face or includin ya in the payoff," the gunman said. He then spat at Dante's feet and muttered, "Government swine."
Dante looked at the spit at his feet and said with a smokey laugh, "You know you have the right to remain silent, right?" Do you understand that anything you say can and will be used against you in a planetary court of law? "And if you keep saying stupid shit like that, you're only giving yourself more charges they can use against you in court."
The gunman laughed and then snarled, "Like any of that is going to happen. The same people who sign your paychecks are the same ones who will bail me out if my boys don't break me out first."
"Don't count on it," Dante replied as he helped the man to his feet and walked him towards the nearest bay door. He then flashed his badge to the nearest warehouse worker and signaled for them to open the bay door for him. Frantically, the worker opened the bay door as Dante and the gunman made their way through it and stepped back out onto the loading docks. In a moment of embarrassment, Dante said to the worker, “Yeah, somebody will be here shortly to clean up the mess free of charge."
As the bay door slowly closed, the female worker on the other side began speaking loudly and rapidly in a language foreign to Dante. He could instantly sense her displeasure at the sudden interruption they had caused to the warehouse staff, despite having no clue about what she was actually saying. After a few moments of what seemed like incoherent screaming, she suddenly slammed the bay door shut, and a storm shutter came crashing down, blocking off access to the broken window.
Dante told the man to sit on the ground while he continued smoking his cigarette. "You should probably just let me go," said the gunman. “This goes way over your head boy.”
After exhaling a puff of smoke, Dante asked, "If I were to let you go, what would I tell my boss?"
"If you don't let me go, what the fuck am I supposed to tell mine?" the gunman asked angrily.
In one swift motion, Dante crouched down as if to hug his knees and locked eyes with the man. His cigarette still hung from his lips as he smugly said, “Well Lieutenant General Evans, why don't you practice what you're going to tell them with me first?"
The man looked at Dante with a concerned expression, as if he thought he was going to be sliced up, before asking, "How on earth do you know who I am? You're just a police dog there's no way you know who I used to be. That was over twenty years ago, and you're still a runt so there's no way."
A ship, resembling a small jet with flashing emergency police lights, was slowly descending from above towards the loading docks of the warehouse. The ship was slowly descending horizontally as its wings began to fold upward while landing gear emerged from the craft. The jet-like boosters on the back of the craft whined down, while the thrusters underneath pulsated on and off as it gently landed on the ground near the loading docks. Gusts of wind created by the craft kicked up debris and trash, but the gunman never looked away from Dante. He was still shocked by the fact Dante knew who he was.
The ship's engines finally shut off completely as a part of the cockpit swooshed open, and a man dressed in a black suit and pants hopped out. He had short brown hair and a fit physique. He spoke with a thick Russian accent as he addressed Dante, 'Hey, you didn't say we needed an EMT. This guy is injured and he's going to bleed all over the place, Dante!"
"I thought you could patch him up yourself, Luka, being a former field medic and all," Dante said, scratching the back of his head laughing nervously. "We shouldn't need to call an EMT."
Luka laughed loudly as he headed back to the cockpit and returned with a large medical bag. He began to dress the man's wounds and eventually led him to the back of the ship, where he placed him in a compartment designated for detainees. When he returned to the front of the ship, he saw Dante bagging items he had collected as evidence during the pursuit. There was a bag filled with what looked like bullet casings and another one containing a wallet.
"Wow, did you actually pick all of that up while chasing that guy?" Luka asked, surprised.
"Yeah," Dante said as he reached behind his back and carefully pulled out a pistol that was tucked into his waistband. "He also dropped this," he said as he unloaded the gun and placed it, along with two of its magazines, into a bag. "And he had this," Dante said as he pulled a large hunting knife from his boot. He then proceeded to fashion a makeshift sheath from a scrap of leather he had found earlier in the trash.
"That's pretty impressive. To pick all of that up while chasing a man," Luka told Dante.
After flashing a quick smile, Dante said, "Well, there are still two halves of a radio that I need to retrieve." He promptly stowed the bags of evidence in a compartment inside the ship's cockpit. After leaning into the cockpit, he pushed away from the ship and started jogging down the alleyway to search for the radio he had cut in half. The radio had been cleanly cut into two pieces and lay side by side near a nearby trashcan where it had been sliced in half. Very carefully, he picked up both halves of the radio using plastic evidence bags and neatly folded them over, concealing each radio half in its own bag. The stub of his cigarette was still between his lips as the last bit of ash fell from it and drifted away in the wind. Very quickly, Dante returned to the ship where Luka was waiting. After both detectives climbed into the cockpit, the ship's engines came to life, humming and whining as the vessel ascended into the sky above the nearby buildings. Suddenly, with a loud roar, it rocketed forward and away with great speed.
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Ten thousand kilometers above their heads, in the outer orbit of the Earth, hung the Everlot. It was one of the larger residential space stations, which housed approximately fifty million people. A significant part of the structure was a rotating torus-style station that utilized centrifugal force to generate artificial gravity. This was powered by a particle accelerator located at its core. The habitable section of the station consisted mainly of large residential districts designed in a suburban style. However, they were heavily covered with a dense forest landscape that played a crucial role in providing and recycling a significant portion of the breathable atmosphere. Scattered throughout the residential districts were numerous sub-districts that contained large urban areas with multiple buildings, industrial campuses, and military bases that resembled those on Earth. The other section of the station was a long and cylindrical spaceport that extended out from the center like an axle connected to a wheel.
Not far from the Everlot, a small cargo freighter spiraled out of control. A tall and lanky man sat in the pilot seat and shouted into his radio, “CHIEF! CHIEF! ANSWER ME DAMNIT!” All the alarms on the ship were screaming out of control as the ship's engine core became unstable. “Shit!” screamed the pilot as he threw the radio. The radio bounced off the wall next to him and floated wildly in the zero gravity. "Everybody, hold on! We're going to crash into the side of the Everlot. Once we make the crash landing, assuming you survive, make your way to the nearest airlock, and pull the emergency lever. That should delay this asshole from chasing us until we can find a place to hide."
All the men aboard the space freighter chanted in unison, "Yes Sir!"
The pilot turned back to his controls and scoffed. "That stupid asshole took out our engines like we were nothin but a bunch of piss ants," he muttered, while bracing himself for impact as the ship drew closer to the massive residential space station. The ship crashed into a small section on the side of the space station's spaceport, puncturing itself about halfway into one of the closed port doors of a docking bay. Inside the bay, alarms blared, and emergency shutters attempted to close, but they were obstructed by the wrecked ship.
A smaller fighter jet-like ship landed on the side of the station where the freighter had crashed. The landing gear on the smaller ship hummed as it became magnetized to the side of the station. The ship's cockpit whooshed open, and a man in a sleek blue spacesuit jetted out. He floated towards a section of the hole that the bigger ship had made, reaching for a grappling gun that was attached to his suit's belt. He squeezed the trigger, and a magnetized bolt shot out of the gun and into the open space between the space station and the ship. Once inside, the grappling gun disengaged the grappling magnet and retracted back into itself, while the man continued to float towards the crashed ship.
He quickly fired the grappling magnet towards the front of the crashed freighter to check if anyone was still trapped inside. Part of the ship's bridge appeared to have a square hole cut out from the inside, and inside it was two deceased men strapped in their seats. A spaceport door slammed shut behind him, and he could hear things being sucked out of the docking port through the breach.
Meanwhile, the station automated defense system was attempting to pressurize the damaged area. In the same moment that he disengaged the grappling magnet, he used his other hand to grab another grappling gun and fired it at the door that had just shut. The door suddenly opened as he arrived in front of it, and various items from the corridor on the other side were being sucked out into the docking port. A large iron crate filled with random ship parts came hurtling out of the doorway as the man retracted a grappling cable and fired another one down the corridor. Parts from the crate came within inches of his head as he was pulled inside, and the door came crashing shut behind him. Emergency alarms were sounding, and lights were flashing in the corridor as he noticed three men at the end of it struggling to open a door while floating around in zero gravity, in a state of panic. The grappling magnet disengaged and retracted into the gun as the boots on the man's spacesuit became magnetized to the floor, allowing him to run upright.
The pilot of the crashed freighter turned his head to look down at the man in the blue spacesuit and shouted, "There's that chump right there! Hurry, get inside and activate the emergency airlock to stop that bitch!” They scrambled through the doorway, and as the door opened, one of them activated the emergency airlock lever. The emergency shutter started to close rapidly, but the man chasing them didn't hesitate to stick his hand in the doorway, preventing the shutter from closing completely. A few human fingers were floating in front of the men, twirling about within the severed spacesuit glove's fingerlets.
"Did he just put his hand in the door?" one of the men asked, disgustedly.
The door alarm sounded, and an electronic voice repeated the phrase, “EMERGENCY AIR LOCK JAM. PLEASE REMOVE ANY FORIGN OBJECTS AND RE-INITIATE THE AIRLOCK.”
The shutter slowly started to open, and the man who had stuck his hand through, was standing on the other side with blood dripping from his smashed hand. His space suit excreted a nano carbon filament near his hand that slowly sealed up the exposed part of his suit. He was now missing part of his hand, including three fingers. A .45 caliber pistol was outstretched in his other hand, pointed at the three men. He spoke while breathing heavily, "Galactic police. Don't fucking move!”
One of the men quickly grabbed the pilot of the crashed freighter and used him as a human shield while pulling out a small machine gun that was strapped behind his back, then opened fire. "I'm not going back to the mines, nor am I dying here!" The man in the blue spacesuit took cover in the corridor outside the airlock, returning fire as bullets sprayed into the doorway. Blood misted into large, floating droplets as bullets tore through the pilot's body, turning him into a lifeless corpse. His face was no longer visible through his spacesuit's helmet, as the inside of its visor had been misted with his blood.
During the exchange of gunfire, one of the men reached for the control panel of the emergency air lock as a small spherical object floated in. A small concussive force erupted from it as it discharged a series of EMP disruptions. Within a small radius of the airlock, the two men's suits were temporarily immobilized for a brief moment while the galactic officer quickly shot the gunman twice in the chest, neutralizing him.
The second man quickly reached for the gun that was now floating in front of him, but he stopped when he heard a voice demand, "Don't!" The galactic officer was standing in the doorway with his gun drawn on the other man. He continued, "Unless you’d like a free trip to the morgue, I wouldn't recommend reaching for that weapon." The original gunman was slowly floating above them, moaning quietly, and choking on his own blood that had been pooling in his lungs. The officer referred to the gunman and warned, "If you don't surrender and let me call for medical help, he will die."
The other man cried out, “Fuck you! We're dead men anyway, and soon you will be too.” He reached for the gun in front of him, but two perfectly aimed shots penetrated his torso, preventing him from ever reaching it.
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