JUSTICE, TRIUMPHANT!?
First there was Lark, happily plundering his way across the galaxy. There was no particular rhyme or reason to his "borrowing," unless it was simply that he enjoyed the act of stealing literally anything which caught his eye. Which was the first thing that Galactic Security agent Travis Key had decided about his elusive adversary, as he'd hung by his free hand from the top of a 400 meter tower, a priceless jade statue perched jauntily in the crook of his other arm.
Key's life had been fairly uneventful up until then. With six years of dedication and training to his credit, the canine had found his niche in GalSec's Investigations section. He'd distinguished himself in a number of investigations -- all interesting but hardly challenging -- and had settled down to wait to see what his career might bring him next.
The last thing he'd expected was being given the unenviable task of pursuing and apprehending the lunatic hare.
Still, there is was. Eight months to the day after he had been pushed out the door with the pointed hint that he might as well stay away until the job was accomplished, there he was dangling over a sprawling alien city.
The chase, Key had reflected as he'd dragged his bruised form to the precarious safety of a fifteen inch ledge, had been anything but routine. Lark had proven to be immune to those little, fondly cherished things that made a criminologist's job easy. Berift of any recognizable logic or (as Key was beginning to strongly suspect) sanity, Lark had led a merry chase. Dank sewers, dense and steamy jungle or sprawling desert, the thief was equally at home.
Worse still, to the detective's way of thinking, Lark was continually, maddeningly cheerful about the whole pursuit. He was forever lagging back to wave encouragingly at his battered pursuer. Even more infuriatingly, he had occasionally slipped into the canine's hotel rooms at night to leave happy little notes on Key's pillow.
Hardened criminals just didn't do that sort of thing...
However, all things have a grim and predetermined end. Following a kilometers-long chase through the sewers on planet Xen, Key had at last cornered and apprehended the erratic hare. Lark had taken his capture with wide, teary eyes and a quaivering lower lip. Which did nothing to improve the general air of suspicion with which Key regarded his unexpected success. It had all seemed a bit TOO easy.
The trip back to GalSec headquarters was the stuff nightmares are spun of. For one thing, Lark refused to take his apprehension all that seriously. He was relentlessly cheerful, helpful, and highly vocal. That latter quality -- particularly his hours of fabricating the headlines that would trumpet his capture to a no doubt vastly relieved universe had quickly gotten on the stoic canine's nerves. Lark's discovery of the detective's first name (he had quietly picked the lawman's pocket as he was being loaded into Key's saucer), and his evident approval of it, proved another burr under Key's proverbial saddle.
When the saucer proved to be unexpectedly low on fuel, Key had made his first mistake. As Lark was tightly handcuffed to a stancheon, the canine had assumed it would be harmless enough to touch down on a nearby planet for four or five minutes. He'd guided the small craft to a landing on the edge of a large spaceport and, disabling the ship's drive "just in case," he had gone to top off the tank with atomic fuel.
In 9 out of 10 situations, this would have been a harmless enough decision, but Lark was playing with a sizeable ace up his sleeve. Unbeknownst to the scowling canine, Lark was telepathic. Even as Key was setting the disable code on the saucer's engines, the industrious hare was reading his mind. Setting to work with his lock pick, all the thief needed now was a careless moment on the lawman's part.
It had seemingly arrived as Key was replacing the fueling nozzle in its holder. A cry for help had sounded from somewhere around the corner of the warehouse besides with their ship crouched. Key took off at full tilt, giving Lark just the opportunity he'd been hoping for.
Lark had started to make good his escape, not quite believing his good fortune, when he had intercepted the thoughts of several unseen parties inside the warehouse.
As it happened, there had been a raiding party working inside the isolated structure, searching for a hidden treasure. Lark had picked up the term "DeFalco Codex" and had realized that their unexpected arrival had placed the canine in danger. Against his better instincts, he told himself, the hare took off to the rescue.
He had arrived just in time to see Key shot twice in the chest, at close range.
Twenty minutes later, an amazed Lark had watched the bound canine stagger back to consciousness. Not beyond having a trick or two of his own, Key had long ago adopted the habit of wearing a thin bulletproof vest under his shirt. Now their only problem lay in geting out of the warehouse before the searchers realized that they were loose.
Of course, nothing ever goes smoothly when you need it to. Hawke, the leader of the search party, was overseeing the covert operation from a window midway up the spaceport's control tower. Having seen the duo enter the trap, he'd been waiting with a high powered rifle, in case one or both of them had staged an escape. He had snapped off a couple of shots, both driving the duo back into the building and alerting the thugs of their near-escape.
A small battle had ensued, highlighted with a grenade attack which had literally blown the lawman and his prisoner through the far wall of the warehouse.
Hawke, hearing approaching sirens, had taken his leave. On the field below, Key was unconscious. Finding his ID, Key had passed himself off as Key to the arriving security patrol, and had enlisted their help in getting his "wounded partner" to their spaceship.
With Key securely handcuffed to an overhead, the hare had headed for some neutral point at which he could propose a partnership. If he could convince the anything but sold-on-the-idea Key on the idea, Lark had reasoned that he might yet escape a deserved prison sentence.
Key was on no mood to play. After letting the delighted hare prattle on for a while, he'd quietly picked the lock of the 'cufffs and had trussed the stunned Lark to the overhead while he had reset the saucer's course back for home.
In the meantime, Lark had displayed an intriguing geegaw that he'd scooped up off the ground at the spaceport. Key had unexpectedly discovered that the disc was some sort of energy damper, though it was like nothing currently available on the market.
Lark again freed himself, the instant the overhead lights were momentarily extinguished, and an uneasy truce ensued, while Key had temporarily disposed of the disc by dropping it in the saucer's tiny refrigerator.
Lark had returned the subject to the concept of the unwilling canine putting in a good word for him and standing his parole. He tried pointing out (not without some justification) that Key needed someone to prevent him getting himself blown away by his occasional bursts of recklessness. When that didn't work, he pointed out how dull Key's life would be, once he'd delivered his prisoner to a cold, unrelenting justice. And, he hd added breezily, the canine already owed him his life...
Key had been less than sold on the idea. However, he did have a suspicion (duly noted by the mind reading thief) that maybe he DID owe the other something. He wasn't willing to make promises, though. Lark, of course, deftly ignored this reluctance...
Arriving at the GalSec headquarters dome, they found the interior gutted by some sort of powerful explosion. At this point, Hawke caught up to them. The fox had launched a rocket, intening to collapse the weakened dome wall onto the pair. The plan had failed, and Hawke had arrived at street level in time to see the saucer depart
Back at Key's apartment, the detective had placed a few calls, trying to pick up leads as to what had happened. He had decided that their next move was to head for a nearby world where there was another major GalSec office.
At that moment, there was a knock at the door...
Their visitor was a female rabbit armed with a very large gun loaded with explosive bullets. She'd followed them from their last planetary stopover, where she'd seen Lark scoop up the mysterious codex. Taking the device off the table where Lark had tossed it upon arriving at the apartment, she had made her escape.
Key, however, had had as much mystery as he could stand. Grabbing a startled Lark by the wrist, he had dragged the sputtering hare in pursuit.
They had arrived at the lift just as the girl was departing. Key had pried open the doors and they had barged into the car. Moments later, an unseen enemy had thrown a switch -- causing the lift to plummet towards the ground floor, some 60 floors below.
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