Page 119 of Stars At Dusk

‘Stay,kara,’ he commanded his woman in a whisper. Reacting to his changed stance, Harlow obeyed, retreating to the back of the lift. She watched aghast as Kage activated his metanoids and disappeared through the force field.

He stepped forward carefully. He noted the door to the living area was slightly ajar and that a strange silence hung in the air.

Kage stepped deeper into the apartment and saw the mess. Harlow’s belongings lay scattered across the floor, and furniture was turned over and broken. Clearly, someone had been here, and they’d ransacked the living room.

Kage felt a surge of anger. He activated his neural node.

Mirage?

Silence.

There was no way the Sable AI had been deactivated. A flood of safeguards and security cascades would alert the Riders if that were the case.

The only other thing he could think of was that somehow a powerful signal jammer was close, somewhere in place near or inside the suite.

He moved carefully through the space, alert to any skulkers or bolos responsible for downing comms.

He quickly searched the rest of the apartment, starting with the bedrooms. The master, where Harlow had been sleeping, was empty. So was the adjacent guest suite. So he headed to the next bedroom she’d used as a home office.

That’s when he saw a dark figure rush out of it.

The lurker, a man clothed in full body armour and an obscuring mask, barrelled forward. Kage wanted to tackle him, but that would give away his position. Then the intruder ran towards the entrance, where the lifts stood. Kage watched, horrified, as the man pulled his laser rifle and aimed at the open lifts. He let loose a barrage of automatic laser fire at Kage’s woman.

The Edenite swiftly calculated the odds. He knew the force field would not be able to withstand the high-energy laser fire for too long. So he raised his weapon and shot, aiming to knock the weapon out of the gunman’s hands. The bullet sheared the intruder’s gun barrel but not enough to deflect it.

The man twisted in the Rider’s general direction and, not seeing anyone, kept firing in an arc. He missed Kage, but only just.

‘Damn this,’ the Edenite swore to himself, knowing that without a meta suit, he’d be injured catastrophically. So he fired, once, twice.

His weapon jerked in his stealth-ed arms. The man staggered and fell to his knees.

Blood poured out of his side. Kage’s bullets were armour-piercing, and whatever skanky suit the intruder wore was no match against a Sable tech weapon.

The lurker looked around, panicking.

He raised his weapon again, and Kage was about to finish him for daring to fire on an unarmed woman. However, the intruder used his gun’s barrel as a prop to rise to his feet.

Kage stepped forward, ready to shut down the man’s lights with a stun round when he heard the sound of a roaring engine. It grew louder until, with a deafening shriek, a compact flyer smashed into the living area from the terrace.

Shards of glass, bricks and construction blocks flew everywhere, and Kage instinctively ducked. He looked up through a cloud of dust just as the injured man swung into the roaring machine. It circled once, twice, unleashing heat and insane smoke, before finding its trajectory again.

Then it screeched out of the terrace, taking with it the masked man.

Kage roared with frustration, dodging the debris littering the space and dashing out onto the terrace after the fleeing craft. He was too late and saw it race over buildings in the distance. But not before he saw something hooked onto its tail that explained the downed comms.

The flyer looked to have an inbuilt signal jammer console connected to its engine for power. In addition, a large antenna was attached, powerful enough to scramble any incoming transmissions and communications within a set radius.

As soon as the flyer disappeared, the return to comms was immediate. Kage’s node buzzed, first with static, then with Xion and Mirage’s urgent calls.

Kage ignored them for a moment, racing back to the lift.

His eyes met Harlow’s. She was in one corner of the compartment, low in a crouch.

‘Kara,’ he growled, deactivating the shields and his meta stealth mode.

She saw him re-materialise and stood, dashing to him. He wrapped his gun-free arm around her. The other he kept on the ready.

‘You OK?’ she whispered, running her hands all over him. ‘It went down so fast.’

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