At that moment, everyone but the dancers got up, even the bar tender grabbed a double barreled laser cannon.
Maxie and Alfonso didn't make it to the car in time, so they stole a nearby cargo speeder full of liquor and dashed off towards Maxie's car.
Zerris found some duct tape and tied up the clones hands and put her seat belt on. Zerris pulled out the grenade launcher just in case something started chasing them.
His hunch was right. Out of nowhere a dozen and a half space ships are seen over head and quickly fly by their car.
He gets a ship in the gun's sight and proceeds to fire...
The projectile detonated well out of range of any of the ships. Still, this did seem to scare some of them off.
"They know that if they try to beam us up or whatever, we'll just blow up their ship from the inside," Zerris thought aloud, his teeth chattering with adrenaline.
"And probably blow ourselves up too!" Cayde said way louder than she meant to. Cayde's clone in the back had gone suspiciously silent. That is, more silent than usual...
"My first time seeing my sister in YEARS, and she steals my car!" Maxie shouted, trying desperately to get the speeder to go faster.
Alfonso looked out the window. "We seem to just be circling the base. Are you sure you want to be chasing those loonies down? Maybe we should go the other way. Like, away from here."
"I am NOT letting that car get beamed up by some inebriated Martians! Do you have any idea how much it cost!?"
Back at the nightclub, the white-clad clone of Cayde's father was surrounded by armed soldiers. Their apparent commanding officer stepped forward. "I'll get straight to the point. Who are you, and why did you put that bounty on those people?"
The clone just smiled. "I am but an intermediary. The hand that moves a pawn in the service of a superior chess piece. I receive orders and then I deliver them. So, please, don't shoot the messenger."
"We won't shoot you," the CO grunted, "but I'll have you know that we will be shooting down the vessels pursuing those humanoids, should they fail to surrender."
The clone laughed. "You don't have it in you! They're just desperate people who'll take any chance to make a quick buck. Enough bucks to live in safety and security as they finally hop off this desolate blue rock."
"That may be so," replied the old soldier, "but I have my orders, too."
Zerris couldn't take his eyes off of the ships overhead. It's as if their pursuers had started chasing them without thinking through how they were going to catch them. Suddenly, one of the ships exploded in a blaze of orange. "OH-!! DID YOU SEE THAT!?"
Cayde did, in fact, see that, but didn't have time to respond before another two ships were destroyed. "They- they're being attacked by the nightcl- uh,
base!" she quickly exclaimed. Suddenly, the car began to levitate. "It's a tractor beam or something! Zerris, the grenade launcher!"
"About that..." Zerris was looking back behind them, at the grenade launcher that he dropped on the side of then road, which was getting further and further away. When Cayde realized that she was no longer in control of the car, she finally let go of the steering wheel and turned around to her clone. Cayde gazed in horror at the clone's hands, free at last from the duct tape and extended upwards slightly. It appeared that
she was the one raising the car into the air, towards the ships that were being picked off one by one...