Title: The Only Differences Between a Government Agent and a Mercenary are Press Coverage and Pay

Cian McNamara was burning bridges. They weren’t, however, his bridges. They were real, physical bridges, and he was setting bombs off behind him as he fled so that they would have exploded with a deafening boom were there any sound in space.

He was fleeing from the government of a country not his own. In hover cars, the paralegals raced after him, their footmen having been stopped by their inability to jump hundred foot gaps. The white clad men shot substances at him that had only ever been tested in labs, on poor, unsuspecting animals, and mostly on Earth as opposed to in space. For myself, I would have preferred things the way they were a few centuries back when the paralegals still fought with words and spent most of their days as paper pushers. Nowadays, they were quite a bit scarier.

I was on foot, and only managed to keep up with him by using the back up bridges, three hundred dizzying feet above the former bridges across nothingness. All I could think was that for a top undercover agent, Cian McNamara was a damn fool.

I didn’t work for the government of the country Cian was running from. I worked for whoever paid the most, and at the moment it was the country trying to save the skin of a certain idiot. We’d met before, and my opinion of his brain was vastly lowered by how he had been found out. It was just proof that men’s brains were always below their belt, but we won’t get into that. On the flip side, I had to give him points for guts.

I turned my attention to the rope I had to use to get down those same aforementioned three hundred feet to avoid having my own guts spilled out over the gray squares used to make streets. With luck, I’d hit what could be considered the ground just as Cian was running past the spot I planned on landing at.

Swinging on the rope offered me an amazing view of the city. The entire thing was a mass of gray roads made with Synthetic Pavement, which was basically goo that wouldn’t give. The roads were only there to provide space for the metal recharging strips required for hover cars. The buildings were twisted into odd shapes, a tribute to the architectural competition of last century that was a one time event because of the way it turned out and the fact that it took fifty years to complete. Everything was in grays and browns, so that it all looked faded and washed out despite being almost new and well kept.

Because of the dome surrounding the place, there was, in fact, sound here, and the buzz of daily life could be heard even though I was still hundreds of feet in the air. Looking at the area as I slid down the rope brought my mind back to Cian even thought I was trying to concentrate on my decent. He had gone directly back into the city. Depending on how it turned out, that either made him a suicidal imbecile or a genius.

My timing was, as always, impeccable, although I wished for once that I had been a few milliseconds off. I landed directly on top of Cian McNamara.

“Well Miss. Raynes I’m afraid I’m a little bit busy for fun and games right now,” he wheezed out, trying to get his breath back.

“Its still just Blair and if you don’t get off your ass and run we’re both going to be dead.”

“You’re the one who put me there,” he pointed out, but raced after me anyway. “Want to tell me what you are doing crashing in on my mission.”

“Well McNamara, despite your being a damn fool, for some reason your government likes you and wants to keep you alive as long as possible.”

“No, I meant you. You don’t even like me.”

“Garbage hatch.” I jumped down the hole into the stinking mess below the floating city and didn’t bother answering his question. Silently, I dragged him through the underground tunnels formerly used by city service people and now the place for trash to be stored, followed by the sound of the paralegals gaining on us.

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