Here's the first submission for this round. Enjoy.

Hijacked

by Hazen Wardle

The girl was an assassin.
I can clearly see that now, looking back. You know what they say about hind-sight.
I'll tell you about it but I need to give you some background.

It is a time of both prosperity and misfortune. Multiple forms of energy have been tapped into in the
past decade and a half, each generational change scaling with such speed as to make Moore's Law
seem child's play. Energy generators and power plants that once took up many acres could now fit in
the average home. Internal combustion engines, now nearly obsolete, could run for days on anything,
exhausting very few harmful gasses.
I'm the head of a huge conglomerate of start-up energy firms, literally hundreds of small-time energy
producers banded together to take on the big-guy. It was a long road to the top but once we got our act
together we were larger than big guys, overnight.

They needed a brilliant mind.
They got me.
I'm better than brilliant.
Which is why I should have seen it coming.

The shindig had been planned for months, many of us meeting in the skybooth at the world multi-ball
championship game. I arrived in my custom air-ship; a dirigible, yes, but the fastest form of air travel
available, and the safest for me. A dirigible, you say? Yes. But not one of those clumsy, slow moving
behemoths of the early 20th century filled with deadly hydrogen gas.
This sucker is small, sleek, and fast, nearly zero drag, and coupled with the variable-antigrav generator
this baby can move. There are much smaller units available, but they have limited range and with the
open cockpit and jet engine right below the seat, I'd rather not. I do have a classic Harley, and when I
want to risk my life I take to the streets and the open road on that thing.

So anyway, I'm in my usual booth-another mistake on my part. I'm watching the game from the top of
the stadium. Really, I don't know why I bother going at all. I have a much better view of things on the
massive wall screen. Really I could just watch from home without all the hubbub. Perhaps it’s the
whole ‘being a businessman’ thing. Gotta make a good showing, I guess.
So anyway, I'm watching the players throw the balls around and trying score, hoping my team wins
(yes, my team. I own one of the three down on the field). Halftime rolls around and the festivities flow
out onto the play field.
Next thing I know the klaxons are blaring, people are running and panicking and explosions are
rocking the joint.

Suddenly she bursts in through the back door and hauls me out, just as if she had been my bodyguard
for years. "Quickly sir, right this way."
Blindly I followed; perhaps it was the explosions that blinded me, I don't know, but I followed her
anyway.
She was slim and dressed all in black, her outfit obviously leathlar--leather kevlar. Her many visible
weapons and lack of full body coverage screamed arrogance in her style, not worried about taking a
bullet or an mFrag. Her features were slightly Oriental--Chinese, Korean, Vietnamese? I couldn't tell,
maybe even one of the Japanese Yakuza splinter factions.

The window blows inward and instantly we are covered in a shower of tempered glass shards.

Leathlar has nothing on this stuff. Micro-fibre threads of neocabrisnite is inter-woven into the very

fabric of my suit. It moves and breaths like a dream, you don't even know it's there, no one does--you
can't see it if used correctly. I should have been more cautious and worn face and hand protection as
well, but then again, hind-sight. As I said, the stuff is nearly invisible, but feels funny on your face. I
guess that is why I don't like it; I don't like things on my face.
With the storm of glass coming my way I dive through the door and come through nearly unscathed,
but I won't realize until later my face was grazed.
The girl hurriedly helps me to my feet and prods me forward. 'Run! I'm right behind you!' she yells,
taking aim at some unknown enemy charging in through window.
The emergency exit normally at the far end of the hallway is missing; only a huge gaping hole remains.
It was my only hope of escape from whatever this was. I come to a dead stop at the hole in the wall and
survey the damage. The exit stairs lay in a twisted pile of wreckage hundreds of feet below. I'm stuck,
and glance back over my shoulder just in time to see the girl coming right at me. I catch a flying kick to
the chest and I am flung backwards through the hole, falling down and down and...

...And that's all I remember when I woke up.
She's standing over me; one of those huge guns pointed right at my unprotected head. As I glance
around quickly--a concession she willing gives me--I realize I am in some sort of craft, an airship not
unlike my own. In fact, the more I think about it, I realize it is mine. She must have hijacked it from my
crew and enabled the cloaking device.

'Yes, it's the Pony Express,' she sneered as she repeated the name of my airship, answering my unasked
question. 'Now, there are two ways off of this ship. I've been sent to kill you, but if you cooperate with
me perhaps that eventuality can be avoided...'