AT: The Sky Is Falling

[Chase Merik]

22-11-9 ABY, 1900 Local Time, Mundi District, Coruscant

The sun was just starting to set over the Senate Building as Chase Merik rounded the corner onto Davris Drive. Night on Coruscant wasn't so much absense of sunlight as it was shadows cast by the towering cityscape growing longer and longer. The effect was especially surreal tonight, with the planetary defense shield looming over them.

It was a week since Grand Admiral Thrawn's siege. And people still kept looking up, thinking the sky was going to fall again.

Ten meters ahead and across the causeway, a raven haired human walked quickly, doing a very good job of being alert to her surroundings with looking suspicious. Impressive for a woman who had every available New Republic Intel operative on the planet looking for her.

"3-Bacta-9: Status," his comlink broke in through the constant thrum of background noise. All around him, in the open sky between towers, overhead, and even under the duracrete platform he stood on, repulsorlift engines pushed speeders of all designs in every direction possible. Sentients chittered, squeeked, spoke, and shouted a thousand languages under the lights of flourescent signs and holovid feeds.

Chase glanced up. "Still on her. Could you get your boys to back off a li--"

Startled screams turned all eyes upward as a Kassis Mark 4 slammed across the hood of a late model black skycruiser and tore off between traffic lanes.

"Too late. Frell!" Merik turned his attention back to street level, barely catching the sight of his target slipping through the confused crowd.

Chase scrambled sideways to get a better vantage. If he went straight across without seeing how the woman he was following used her head start, she was home free. "She had her own backup! They tagged your shadow like it was a fraggin' firenok!" Within seconds he had a clear view down the alley, his optics zooming in on the Imperial weaving swiftly through a sea of pedestrians. "I got her! Go after the hot rod! Go! Go!"

The skycruiser halted abrubtly, veered off, and beelined after the Kassi Speeder. Chase muscled through the gawkers as they watched what they thought was a hit and run gone amok. Once clear, he sprinted under the decending hover traffic, badge held high. "Outta the way!! NRSF!"

[Chase Merik]

The Coruscant street filled with the scream of a protesting repulsorlift engine slamming into full reverse against its will. The landspeeder stopped so suddenly at the appearance of a blindly running human woman that it nearly threw its pilot clear out of its seat.

An eerie quiet settled in over the Rodian driver as he realized he was not going to die. The pause proved short lived when another human, a blonde male with cybernetic eyes, launched himself into a slide across his hood.

Chase hit the duracrete running without losing stride, living up to his name as he gained ground on the fleeing Imperial. They were on another level, 3 sectors from the disaster site where this began. The burning in the Corellian's lungs was telling him they had to have passed the 2 kilometer mark in their merry adventure.

He could only hope his perp was feeling at least some of the same strain, but it wasn't showing.

Merik forced his legs to push on as the brunette ducked into another alley. He followed her barely 10 meters behind back onto another street, across the grounds of a spacious residental plaza, then grinned when she disappeared around a corner.

He cleared the alley into a speeder dock, staying on a straight flanking path with his quarry. Realization slowly dawned on the woman, now on a wide open durasteel platform that ended at a guard rail with nothing more than twilight sky beyond.

Chase drew his Blastech XR-9, running parallel with the Imp, who was continued running, still looking for a way out.

"End of the line, sweetie." He had to admit that the raven-haired woman was rather pretty, in a creepy, icy chill kind of way. And she was definitely tenacious, still running, though erratically and a little slower, toward the end of the speeder dock, eyes darting for any hope of escape.

"Starting to get it now? On the ground NOW!"

The Imperial stopped suddenly and snapped a sharp look at him, wind whipping black locks in her face.

"It's about 300 stories to the foundation plate, honey. You've got nowhere else to g--"

Chase's blaster bolt came a second too late after what she was doing registered. Without a word the woman sprinted for the guardrail, leaping into a swan dive into the night. Chase tried to run after her, but only arrived in time to gawk in stunned disbelief.

"What the frell," was all he could say as he watched the woman freefall through crisscrossing layers of speeder traffic.