Tapestry of Night Part 2

My sector was named after a monster, the Chimera of ancient Terra, and sometimes I have to agree with the early explorers that decided to name it. Vulkas is the name of the main world where I live, one of the three worlds comprising the system. Vulkas is a primal world, dotted by erupting volcanoes triggered as the face of the world moves toward our main star, Solace. Those eruptions give way to great slag heaps full of valuable materials belched up from the bowels of the world. Hence, the main economy of our world is in refining and selling whatever can be made of those materials.

The other two worlds, Anvil and Maelstrom, were just as inhospitable but for different reasons; Anvil is too hot, the air is the wrong mix for our lungs, and the gravity twice that of Terra; Maelstrom is covered by a rolling ocean with very little land mass to develop on, and the indigenous creatures in that ocean are large, predatory, and tenacious. Numerous expeditions had been sent to both, but based on the conditions found on both planets, further exploration has been halted. By comparison, Vulkas was a 'Goldilocks' world. Yeah, if Goldilocks vomited up hot slag on a regular basis, I could agree with that.

The only city on Vulkas is a giant marketplace, driven by wealth coming in from exporters wanting to make fast and loose deals and get out of town before they get robbed. All of the hotels, entertainment complexes, residences, and utilities support a vast amount of traders, investors, criminals, and entrepreneurs that made their way out here to call this world home. It was my job to stop them from killing each other while making sure Terra gets paid; things needed to stay profitable enough to justify Vulkas 'continued status as a good bet for settlers pushing out to the Frontier worlds. They keep me good and busy...

From my desk in my office on the north side of the city, I looked out the window. My office was part of a larger complex in built into the foot of a mountain that overlooked the city. It was built in wide circles that allowed us to observe most of the city in a one-eighty degree view. The windows were incredibly resistant to small arms fire, and had even taken a rocket without being blown apart. They were tinted from the outside to allow us complete anonymity. The countermeasures against surveillance of the complex were quite sophisticated, devised by Felix to actively seek out any devices involved in observing us clandestinely, and disable them. I just liked the view, really.

My office was quite sparse for the space it occupied, comprising a small practice area for my martial training, a desk big enough to spread out if I was working on something, a small arms locker, a private washroom, and a personal elevator that I could use to get into the action faster. The wake from the roaring grav arrays of a commuter bus going past rattled the windows...I looked up to see that the usual large haulers were in transport lanes above the city, casting huge shadows over the streets below. On our level, it was mostly commuter traffic, personal transports, or patrol vehicles. Ground traffic was specifically reserved for non-motorized and civilian traffic. In truth, we could go anywhere we damned well wanted, but we liked to keep things organized in a city as busy as this. Normal traffic was just beginning to build up as I opened the folder on my desk.

It was all the evidence about Caliban and the horror we found there six months ago that I could scramble together after the UTC cleaned us out. Felix had stashed most of our captured footage and data in his own protected memory. He was the only one who could access it, but I knew he wasn't holding out. As much as I found him hard to work with, I honestly believed that he'd been just as shook up by what we saw, and needed to work all of it out just as much as the rest of us did.

A lot of what I'd gathered were hard-copied still frames of the layout of the camp, the mercenaries we'd fought, and the main building itself with its gruesome storage. Those mercs disappeared into the vast network of military prisons and divisions, probably never to come out again. After two weeks of interrogations they let us go, but they had to. You don't generally detain and murder the son of a high-ranking general. I never dropped his damn name, of course; I never would.

Someone paid those mercs to guard the goods, that was for sure. There were any number of powerful criminals in the sector that could have been responsible for the trafficking ring, but I had nothing to tie any of them to the mercs. One of the men I took down had worked for a man named Meneleus "Boss" Strauss once, although no official records existed stating that -- just my own suspicions that I couldn't prove. Strauss was a crooked exporter and reported big boss from Tertia who dealt in stolen goods that he hired men like my friend down on Caliban to hijack. He kept himself very far from the action, just far enough way that I'd never been able to make a noose for him to hang himself with. He wasn't the only one who could have pulled off such a bold theft, and presumably murder, of so many people, but he was the one man I was keeping a close watch on while we worked in the dark.

As I looked through what I had collected, I had a funny chill start to work its way up my spine, a sense of something larger looming over my shoulder. The feeling intensified as I looked upon the close-ups of the bodies that hung in the warehouse. Their eyes were open, some even still in the grips of the sheer agony of whatever had killed them, their faces distorted in grimaces of pain, or their fingers silently gripping at the last vestige of life. There were men and women, mostly in their mid-twenties to late forties...no children or old people. Based on the ones we'd seen, and the size of the warehouse, there could have been nearly three hundred people in there...the same questions lingered in my mind...who had the resources to capture this many people, why keep them on ice like this, and, most of all, who the hell were these poor souls?

After all this time, we weren't able to identify the faces. The empire was a very big place, but we had databases organized by planet, sector, and system that allowed us to identify people based on DNA analysis, voice scan, facial recognition, and even gene trace that could narrow down a probable family line within a couple generations. More than my stupefaction about the failure about that process, I was also shocked that no one apparently missed these people...not a single report about any of the fifty or so we had a picture of had turned up any queries!

I suspected the UTC first, and the cunning and thorough nature of their Breakers to cull the data and lock us out of any civilian inquiries through their unmitigated access to all our databases without so much as a request for information. There was also the person or organization that made them all disappear in the first place...if they could pull of the same data-sweep as the UTC, then we were dealing with a very well-organized and powerful foe indeed...

"Having trouble sleeping again?"

Through my door walked my dearest friend, Nevei Sheera. Sheera was a native of Mars, and stunningly beautiful. She was typical in appearance of a Martian, with her orangey skin, deep red hair, and golden pupils. She wore ruby studs in her ears, near the tops. Across her forearms, leading down to the backs of her hands, were the tattooed claws of a bird of prey. She had another tattoo across her neck...a prison brand with her prisoner identification bar-coded with all her pertinent details. She usually wore high-collared flight suits or civilian clothing of the same ilk to hide the brand. She had a grey flight jacket on today over a set of blue Marshal fatigues, much the same as what I wore.

We had grown up together on Mars...I was the military brat staying on the barracks with my parents, while she had been the wild child strutting about the streets of Mons Prima having all the fun, an orphan with a quick wit and the grace of a dancer. We had been young together, even when my troubles started when I was sixteen. She stood by me then, trying to help me even though she didn't really seem to know how. No one did, then. We had had our moments, and it was fair enough to say that I loved her. If not for my nature, I would have made my move a long time ago...

"Is it that obvious?" I sighed.

"Your collection of coffee rations, and the bruises under your eyes. You're not taking those injections again, are you?"

I rubbed my eyes, realized what I was doing, and frowned.

"No," I lied, "The side effects and the withdrawal are bad enough for me to stay away..."

Unless you cut in something to take the edge off the lethargy the next day...something that someone like me had easy access to if he leaned on the right people...

"Let me put it to you this way, Gids...if I find out that you are taking them again, and you are lying to me, I will personally beat your ass silly on that practice square. I kid you not!"

She sat down in one of the chairs in front of my desk, crossed her arms, and looked at me with those pretty golden orbs...

"I knew it was a mistake having you quartered here..."

"Is that an admission of guilt?"

"Hell no," I replied, "But you are pissing me off a wee bit too early in the morning."

"Well, where I live isn't really my choice, is it?"

She turned her collar down, revealing her brand. Her brow twisted up a little as she tucked her collar back in place.

"I'm sorry. I know I haven't been very good to be around in our free hours lately," I said.

"I know, Gids."

"It's just that I can't figure the angle on this thing...frozen corpses, mostly in the prime of their lives, but with no trace of who they are or where they came from!"

"I've been thinking about that," she said, leaning forward in her chair, "Is it possible that none of these people were ever gene-typed or registered? The galaxy is a big place...maybe they just slipped through without ever being recorded...indentured slaves or workers born on one of the backwards worlds outside Terran space?"

"You have a point. Someone could go from the cradle to the grave pretty quick in such a place without ever bring 'typed. I did think of that, though."

"So?"

I shuffled a couple of stills out of the pile, and turned them around to face Sheera. She stood, leaning over them. I tapped on both of them, motioning around the faces of the dead.

"Do you see it?"

"See...? See what?"

"Chubby cheeks...obviously well-fed and with some meat on their bones...not the face of an indentured slave on rations. That means that either their owners were very generous, or that they didn't work a hard day in their lives. Their hands say the same tale...smooth, not calloused or worn. This woman even has manicured nails, for fakk's sake."

"Bloating from the freezing?"

I smiled. Smart girl...

"Thought of that too. Si confirmed that whatever process was used to freeze these people, it was quick."

Sheera looked at me, puzzled.

"You took this to Si?"

"Yeah...I needed a surgeon's eye."

Si, or Doctor Si Bergiman if you please, was the head surgeon at the city morgue here on Vulkas. He had been supposedly lured by an exorbitant salary out to the frontier, just like everybody else who was good at their job and ended up out here. He and I had a good working relationship, and I knew his secrets like he knew mine. He was my personal physician, which might seem like a bad bet considering that he worked on the dead more often than not. But he was very good, and I needed someone I could trust rather than a stranger who might not understand...certain things.

I knew what she meant though...I had kept all of this material off the computers and only discussed it openly where I knew it would be safe to do so. I told Si how far off the books this investigation was after Caliban, and let him know the risks. He went forward without any hesitation. He was a brave man, and he didn't suffer fools.

"I know what you mean, Sheera. The doc knows what he's getting into. I doubt just seeing these people would get him killed -- otherwise, the UTC would never have cut us loose, right?"

"I really hate it when you're right so often..."

"Someone needs to be."

We looked at each other across the desk. Another time, another place, I would've kissed her. The only thing that registered in my head is that I needed very much to have my own space back soon. It wasn't right to have her here, to have her so close. Prison bond or not, she deserved a better life than this. I was not good company, strictly speaking.

The echoing beep of the dispatch disc at my hip went off. Sheera broke our gaze first. I dropped my hand to the disc, and lightly tapped it.

"This is Blackhall. Go ahead."

*Marshal. Sergeant Lang here...getting a comm from Rogue Seven. The Station Master out there is asking for assistance.*

"Did he say why?"

*Is this line secure, sir?*

I reached down, and tapped a red stud on the disc. A row of LEDs winked into being along the curve, red in colour, cycling up to the maximum number, and turned green.

"It is now," I said, "Continue."

*The Station Master just reported a convoy of ships coming back from outside the outer planets...but they're in rough shape.*

"Is that all? Tell me exactly what he said, Lang."

...

*He said that they were dead in space, sir. No identification squawk, just a transponder signal repeating over and over...no life-signs detected*

"Okay, sergeant. Let the station know that we're on our way, and tell them not to let anyone near the convoy. Tell them if those ships get hauled off by scrappers before I get there, that I may have to lock down the station. Got that, sergeant?"

*Yes, Marshal. Lang out.*

I tapped the disc, and slipped the rating on the scrambler backed to the open channel. Sheera was already moving to go. I wanted so much just to fakking say something to her to make all of this easier. I had no idea what that was, though, and any time we might've had was over for now.

"Thanks for letting me talk this out, Sheera," I said.

She turned back to me, and smiled.

"No problem. I'm going to grab a skimmer from the launch and boost my way out to Whisper. I'll let the others know on the way. I think Felix is already out there..."

Whisper was one of the most secure places in the entire city apart from here...I knew where he was because I sent him there.

"Yeah, that's right," I said, "See you out there in twenty."

"You got it."

I got up from the desk after Sheera left, and went into the washroom. I unlocked the medicine cabinet, and removed the injector. I thumbed the injector head open, checking the dosage. Five mils should be enough...a moment later, I felt my face lose some of its tension, and I felt some of my energy return after my lonely watch during the night. I put the injector back, and locked up the cabinet. After getting my equipment out of the arms locker, I jumped on the lift and took it down to the launch myself.

By the time I got down there, Sheera had already left. he had left the launch open, its autoguns primed in case someone tried to crash their way in. I had stored six skimmers inside, including a couple bikes and a full-sized transport for big operations in town. I walked past it towards my favorite; it was sleek, navy blue, and had four grav pads which made it very maneuverable. It also sported a built-in deterrent array in the front that I had custom-made myself -- not enough firepower to kill, but enough to make sure that pursuing an attack would be a painful proposition.

I disabled the security codes, keying in the magnetic locks, and slipped into the driver's seat. I primed the engines, releasing the parking clamps on the grav pads. Adjusting the orientation of the pads, I accelerated out of the launch and into the traffic below. The general thrust of traffic urged me along, pushing me up past the general traffic and into the path of the slag haulers...proximity alarms went off, and one hauler blasted its horn at me in one long shout as I fired past him within a foot of his hull.

The horizon alert came on as I left general traffic routes. I had long ago removed the governor that kept a skimmer from going above a certain altitude. It was illegal of course, but nobody was going to argue with me. I came up above the tumult of traffic bleating my codes out to the control towers that monitored activity in the atmosphere. They had long ago got used to my accelerated way of travel. I turned the nose of my skimmer towards the spaceport to the east of the city.

Vulkas had a main commercial district, a wide crescent of plazas and throughways, where most of the trade was done within comfortable, legitimate places, and important people with the money could find housing to conduct their business...this was where our installation was placed, right near all the money; you really couldn't fault the city founders for being practical. The crescent gave way to rough rectangles of manufacturing districts, with some of the more non-toxic processing centres tucked in for good measure.

Then you came to a widening circle encompassing the entire city that was mostly housing for all the workers and their families. It could be a rough place to live if you weren't smart...many of the calls for the local enforcers came from out that way. Then, after a good half a mile or so of trees and marshland, there were the factories and plants that refined the raw materials taken from the volcanic slag. My destination, the spaceport, was past the outer edge of the slums, and at the end of a five-kilometer stretch of road. I keyed in the xyz of the spaceport into the skiff's nav control, and sat back.

I reached down and tapped my disc. The line opened, and I activated my scrambler.

"Felix."

There was a moment of silence as the disc reached out to my Breaker across the distance.

*Perfection can't be rushed, sir.*

"So you say," I replied, "You need to shut down what you're doing for now. There's trouble at Rogue Seven. We're heading out in ten."

*Yes...Sheera just came aboard. She-*

"Felix!"

I tapped my disc a few times to make sure it was functioning...nothing! I reached down and removed the disc from the patch on my side. The scramble lights were all flashing red!

"Oh damn!"

The proximity alarms on the skimmer went off, and I grabbed at the controls. At the same time, two sleek fighters in matte black hull roared by on either side of me! I hammered at the distress beacon on the control panel with one hand, and pointed the nose of my skimmer up and away from the traffic lanes...there was no way these assholes were going to catch any of my people in the crossfire!

"This is Sector Marshal Gideon Blackhall to identified craft! Back the hell off or face the consequences!"

The fighters shot forward, and criss-crossed, bringing them up and right towards me. A target-lock warning lit up on the dash. I was under attack!