Welcome to the IDPD (Chapter 6)

Today was the first time in two years that a stolen hovercar had led the local Galactic Federation Police Force on a chase that required reinforcements. In most cases, things were resolved after the initial threat of force. Sometimes, drunk or drugged drivers needed a push in the right direction. Only a few times did they last longer than five minutes in or out of traffic.

Most speed violators were illegal racers or people whose hovercars or lives had gone out of control. Sometimes, couriers for the Vyrath Syndicate had to transport items or messages across the planet, but they always let the police know ahead of time so that there was no need for a chase. This time, the syndicate had been silent, and this particular hovercar was causing trouble for the interceptors.

For that reason, Frank had been called in once more despite his early retirement.

The hardboiled man named Frank Devos was the interceptor ace of the Goria GP. He brought down over a thousand speedsters across the planet in his twenty years of service. Piloting an Interceptor FTX6800 that he had modified heavily in his spare time, he used ingenuity and skills to overcome even the best off-world racers and criminals. He was called "Falcon" by his colleagues in the patrol department, and the higher-ups overlooked his illegal car tuning in light of his achievements.

However, four years ago, he had met his match for the first time. A stolen factory-standard hovercar outmaneuvered him in a chase across half of Goria and disappeared into the night. Fifty-five more times, Frank encountered that same pilot during both the day and night, flying different vehicles each time. And always, they escaped seemingly effortlessly.

Two years into his one-sided rivalry with that pilot, Frank came face to face with her for the first time. The latter was driving a black sedan with an upside-down trailer hook, which she had used it to rip apart over a dozen pursuit vehicles before Frank finally arrived. In the end, she utilized it to bring down a whole skyscraper to cover her escape. That episode earned her the nickname "Black Hornet" among the Goria PD.

Afterward, she disappeared without a trace, and with them, Frank's chance to get his revenge. He later learned through painstaking detective work that the Black Hornet had been a member of the syndicate. She had flown jobs so off the books that the Vyrath Syndicate would sooner lose their pilot than let the police know.

As Frank weaved through traffic on his way toward the ongoing pursuit, his heart was beating faster with every crossed intersection. Everything he had heard over the radio told him that the syndicate's shadow pilot had returned. The target was a rickety Retro Skyline, which outmaneuvered an entire pursuit battalion as it made its way across the planet.

Shifting into a higher gear, Frank Devos almost reached supersonic speeds to catch up with his nemesis, the Black Hornet.

"How are you even doing this?!" Cillian held onto his seat and ducked his neck while screaming.

"What do you mean?" Mari asked, spun the steering wheel, and applied the clutch with expert movements. The hovercar performed a roll in midair that took them over the roof of a flying bus and on top of a police interceptor. Of course, with that many pursuers, that blind spot was immediately discovered.

However, just as the patrol car attempted to ram them from below, Mari flipped the Retro Skyline on its side. With this, she dodged the maneuver by a hair's breadth before suddenly taking a right turn. The cars in traffic blared their horns and dodged her just in time as she sped past their noses into an opening between two skyscrapers. Two police interceptors weren't so lucky and crashed right into those hovercars due to their sudden maneuvers.

"And then there were only four." Mari glanced into the rearview and side mirrors while remarking with a lick of her lips.

"This car barely goes half the maximum speed of those Interceptors. How are you outrunning them?" Explaining his earlier question, Cillian asked with a stressed expression on his face.

"It's all in the clutch." With this nonsensical statement, Mari spun the steering wheel a split second before they exited the alley. The hovercar's tail almost scraped the wall on the exit, then whipped around ninety degrees. With this, they were back on their way forward.

Suddenly, the brutal roar of an archaic V8 combustion engine, accompanied by the overbearing hum of an overclocked FTX6800's antigrav engine, rapidly approached from behind. The former was for intimidation, as not even ground vehicles used combustion engines anymore. But it had a violent, almost primal sound, like that of a predator on the chase.

Then the maker of this sound combination came into view. It was a modified Interceptor FTX6800 with an elongated chassis that ran a silent police light. The way it approached only drove home that this one was on a different level than all the previous pursuit vehicles.

"That sounds like boss music, Mari Nova." Cillian made an unexpected joke at this, causing the girl in the driver's seat to grin.

"We'll make a cool dude out of you yet." She muttered, more to herself than to the yellow-skinned moralist. It appeared that she was already beginning to rub off on him, as he no longer complained about her countless traffic violations and endangerment of bystanders. All that mattered was getting out of this alive.

Frank Devos saw the blue Retro Skyline's movements and knew that he had found his nemesis again. Nobody else could have led the police interceptors on such a wild chase across Goria while piloting a mere converted ground vehicle.

Out of the sixteen pursuers, only four regular patrol cars were left. All others had crashed in traffic or were stuck in a narrow alleyway. Of course, the Goria Police Department had plenty more to spare, but knowing the Black Hornet, none would be able to touch them.

He was the only one who could ever hope to match her in driving skills, and even then, he had been outplayed every single time so far. But he hadn't neglected training in simulators and on the tracks for a single day since his retirement. He continued to tune his car to sharpen his claws for this day. Today, the falcon would catch the hornet.

With a roar, the modified interceptor jolted forward and went straight for the blue sedan. Mari turned the steering wheel and applied the emergency airbrakes. Due to the hovercar's sideways alignment, only one side caught the wind. It then caused the vehicle to spin back in the other direction, leading to the far superior police car barely missing its tail.

"As expected of my nemesis!" Frank claimed with a grin on his lips. Duty and the force no longer mattered to him at this point; he only cared about besting this godlike driver.

Mari slipped the Retro Skyline into traffic, earning her angry blaring horns and silent visual complaints from the drivers behind their windows. But her eyes shifted from the rearview mirror to the front, then the side mirror, and out the other side. She was taking in every little movement around her to gauge what action to take next.

Suddenly, the modified interceptor appeared from behind another car with its primal roar like a pouncing beast. Mari pulled the steering wheel back, then rolled the hovercar on its side just in time to avoid getting hit in her rear. The antigrav engine on the backseat rapidly stalled, causing the entire vehicle to shake. It couldn't take much more of this abuse.

"Just a little more." Patting the dashboard, Mari whispered as if talking to a horse.

"How far have we come already?" Cillian glanced behind himself, then out the side windows. The distant red giant around which Goria orbited was high in the sky, which could only mean that they already left the polar circle behind them. It was hard to tell because this was a small city-planet on which a weather system artificially regulated temperatures and climate. "And how far do we have to go?"

Mari didn't answer and shut off the antigrav engine with the emergency kill switch. This resulted in the car dropping, which caused Cillian to bang his head against the ceiling. Above them, the Falcon passed by with its distinctive engine sound. If she hadn't used this last-ditch maneuver, the massive interceptor's reinforced frame would have crashed right through their flimsy rear.

Hovercars without their antigrav engines dropped like rocks. Without the need for aerodynamics or lightweight construction, the moment they lost power, their forward momentum disappeared in the blink of an eye. Thus, Mari and Cillian's car fell out of the sky and toward the city below nose-first.

"Uh oh." Mari muttered while pressing the engine button repeatedly.

"Nonononono, you don't get to say 'uh oh' in this situation!" Cillian screamed, staring at the rapidly approaching ground with a terrified look on his face.

But then, the antigrav engine came back to life with a rattling noise of protest, and both Mari and Cillian were slammed into their seatbelts from the inertia. The dog-eared girl pushed the pedal to the metal, causing the blue sedan to jolt forward like a startled horse, still toward the ground.

"Pull- you know what, I don't need to say it. You got this." Cillian gave up on playing the straight man and grabbed onto his seat. After everything that happened in the past few hours, he had to trust that Mari had a plan. And if she didn't, he would find out soon enough.

In the next moment, the roar of the fake V8 approached from above. True to his name, the Falcon came swooping down on his prey. There were no civilian vehicles in the vicinity, so it could unleash its weapons with impunity. However, be it from a sense of honor toward his nemesis or a secret wish to see her again, Frank didn't shoot. He would take the Black Hornet alive or not at all.

Applying the air brakes, Frank lined up his interceptor with the top of the blue Retro Skyline and crashed onto it. It would appear that its antigrav engine wasn't running at full capacity yet after having been shut off so abruptly. This was the closest he had ever gotten to his target, and he wouldn't let this opportunity go to waste.

Frank pressed the button for emergency landing gear deployment, which caused the three suspension legs on the bottom to fold out. The one in front was hammered into the Retro Skyline's front window, while one of the two in the back hooked onto the rear spoiler by pure chance. Although it was structurally weak, it would be enough for him to keep the blue hovercar in place.

"I got you now!" Frank expressed his triumph and thrust the steering wheel forward. With its much more powerful engine and larger frame, the modified interceptor effortlessly pushed the Black Hornet down toward the ground.

With one look at the landing gear hooked onto the roof and the one on the rear spoiler, Mari could tell that the only way to break away would be by cutting off either one of the two. However, they had neither the tools nor the time to do so, as the road below was rapidly approaching.

"You did well." Patting the dashboard, Mari undid her seatbelt and raised her leg over it to kick the broken front window panel out. Then she got off her seat and pulled herself over the steering wheel.

"What are you doing?" Cillian still held onto his seat and watched his comrade with a blank expression. Although they were approaching the ground, they were still high enough in the sky to break some limbs on impact.

"Getting us a new ride." Mari replied with a grin and climbed on top of the hood.

"You're crazy, you know that?" Cillian took off his seatbelt and followed her example all the same.

"Isn't everybody at least a little crazy?" With a shrug, Mari grabbed onto the rim of the police car and effortlessly pulled herself up. Her slender frame belied her physical strength, and Cillian caught himself staring. He watched her run fifty laps around the IDPD training complex without taking a single break for her punishment. That feminine body was hiding incredible power.

Mari appeared in the window right next to Frank, causing the officer to flinch in surprise. He had seen her face before once, but in the two years since he last saw her, she had grown floppy dog ears. When he realized what she was about to do, he blinked his eyes in utter bafflement. In all his years as an interceptor, not once had a person attempted to board a police car. And she was doing it in midair.

For a moment, he didn't know how to react, but then he saw Mari pull back her fist to smash his window. The Falcon instantly grabbed his gun from its holster and pointed it at her.

"Stop!" He yelled, remembering that she wouldn't be able to hear him through the reinforced glass. Then he realized that the window was tinted, and she couldn't see him from the outside. In the next moment, Mari's fist connected with the glass, cracking it ever so slightly.

Frank's eyes almost popped out of their sockets. All police vehicles had glass panes that could withstand impacts from car crashes and firearms. She must have immense physical strength and adamantine bones to cause any damage, let alone not break her hand.

Once more, Mari punched the window. This time, it shattered within the laminate, and the panel bent inward. Frank pulled it aside and pointed his gun at the dog-eared girl, who froze at its sight.

"Don't move!" He had never been in this position before. This was a complete reversal of an arrest situation, with the officer sitting in the driver's seat and the criminal at the window. However, he wouldn't have been called the Falcon if he couldn't adapt quickly to any situation. "You're under arrest, Black Hornet!"

Vega was startled awake by a rumbling sound. Across from him, the old lady named Maureen continued to snore away peacefully. The gray-skinned boy looked out the window, but it was the usual sight of the city rushing by. What had been the cause of that noise? This vehicle was called a train, but it didn't run on physical tracks, so it couldn't have been a bump.

Gingerly, Vega walked over to the cabin door. Pressing his temple against it, he tried to peek out onto the corridor, but it was impossible from his angle after all. Thus, he decided to push the button for opening the glass door, which slid aside almost soundlessly. Sticking his head out carefully, he looked both ways but couldn't see anything.

It was most likely somebody in the neighboring cabin, either dropping a heavy bag or tripping and falling. Ever since coming to this planet, Vega had been on edge. After all, the crime rate on Goria was among the highest in any world within the scope of the IDPD, and wearing a GP uniform without carrying a gun invited disaster here.

He went back to his seat and plopped down on it with a sigh. Then he looked at Maureen, who was sleeping peacefully despite being a permanent resident of such a dangerous planet. With a wry smile, Vega closed his eyes and tried to rest once more.

In doing so, he missed Mari and Cillian flying by a short distance away, chased by dozens of police interceptors.