“What is that stink?” Genghis asked, being able to smell the odor much more than Trent.
“I’m not sure.” He looked into the back of the Divco. “But we have broken bottles everywhere, watch your step.” Trent jumped into the back of the truck, the glass crunching under his wingtips. He bent and picked up a broken bottle that had a little white liquid caked to the bottom. “Well! Here’s your stink,” he said. “Whatever it was, it went bad a long time ago.”
Genghis jumped in and surveyed the interior. Not sure if his thick pads on the bottom of his paws would cut easily or not, he cautiously watched his step. The signs of a violent wreck were evident. Broken glass and dried milk were everywhere. On the ceiling, walls and floor. Metal bottle carriers and boxes were strewn everywhere.
Along the right side of the truck, bolted to the wall were three small refrigeration units. Genghis nodded his head toward the units. Trent raised his gun and with his free hand opened the first refrigerator. Three small shelves with more broken bottles and spilled dried milk. He turned his attention to the middle one and opened it. The same. Then he opened the third. And there, they found what they were looking for. The stairway leading to the lower decks of Interstellar Police Prison Transfer vehicle 964.
Chapter Nine
Trent quickly went back to the Thunderbird and retrieved the duffle bag. Returning, he stood outside of the Divco’s opened double doors. He placed the bag in the doorway and started going through it and pulled out the D30 detection unit. It was a small, handheld rectangular device, eight inches long by six wide with a pistol grip. It had a small computer screen on the top. He jumped back into the back of the Divco with his partner. “I’m not smelling anybody down there.” Genghis told him.
“One way to find out.” Trent made an adjustment on the device and pointed it down the stairway and activated it. The detection device made a series of beeps and buzzes, then went silent. Trent read the small computer readout. “No life signs.” He looked at the Doberman. “Nobody's home!” He holstered his gun, and put the D30 back into the duffle bag, and picked it up.
They both proceeded down the stairs to the second deck of 964. Their footsteps echoed throughout the ship. There was the faint hum of the computer systems, but other than that, it was eerily quiet.
The prison transfer ship was similar in design to their cruiser. The first deck was the cockpit, which was replicated to look like the Divco interior. The second deck was where the command center, crew quarters, common room, and arsenal were located.
The common room of the second deck was in disarray. Things were scattered, chairs and tables upturned. Cabinets were open, their contents lying all around. Shelves empty. One thing was for sure, a fight did take place in this room. There were spent shell casings on the floor. Bullet holes the size of quarters, along with laser blast burns, covered the walls. Trent stopped counting the holes at fifty.
They found it difficult to walk through the debris. Genghis put his nose to the ground, then pointed it up and gave a succession of short quick sniffs. “Was this the guards' last stand?”
“Might have been. It makes sense.” They started to investigate the scene. Trent added, “The fight probably started below decks, then the guards were pushed back to this point.”
“Prisoners this far up in a transfer ship,” Genghis remarked, “would have been able to take control of everything.” He looked around, “The outcome would have been the same even if the guards had surrendered. The prisoners would have never let them live.”
“No they wouldn’t have,” Trent agreed. “But, I’m thinking they may have surrendered. Or were wounded to the point of surrendering. There’s blood splatter, but not enough for all the guards to have been killed up here.”
They walked on. To their left was the armory. The security door was open and to no surprise, all the weapons and ammunition were gone. “We’ll have to look through our reports and get the inventory on the armory. I want to know exactly what kind of firepower we’re up against.”
They exited and walked down a small corridor to the galley. Food containers were raided, water receptacles emptied. They looked around and there it was, sitting behind a food container. “Just as we suspected.” Trent said, not surprised.
The portable Replication Computer was the size of a small television set and very lightweight. It was lying on its side with the power still on. Genghis walked over to it, righted the replicator, and shut it off. “Must have been smuggled on board in one of the food containers,” Genghis said.
“Which reinforces the fact,” Trent added, “that this was an inside job.”
“So, now we know positively,” Genghis said, “that what we have are eight very dangerous escapees. All of whom have been replicated into the human form. And all of whom have the necessary documentation and currency to coexist, unnoticed in an alien world.”
Jeff Trent stood there taking in everything his partner had just said. When the mission to apprehend the escapees was planned, the Interstellar Police Force commanders had prepared the two agents for this possibility.
Trent sighed loudly and said, “Swell!”
Back in the common room they started walking toward the back. “Well, look at this,” Genghis said as he used his head to push a chair to the side. There was a small trail of smeared blood now dried to a copper brown, as if someone was dragged to the stairs leading down to the third deck. The detention center, where the holding cells were located.
They cautiously followed the trail of dried blood and descended deeper into the abandoned ship.
Chapter Ten
Prodor Moffit was a brilliant doctor, scientist, and convicted serial killer. And incredibly dangerous. A man who was able to use practically anything as a weapon with deadly efficiency.
It was never determined when exactly Prodor Moffit's psychoses started. But several of the prison psychologists thought, after Moffit's conviction and incarceration, that it must have started when he was around ten. His parents were going through a bitter divorce and when it was eventually finalized, his mother was given full custody of Prodor’s younger brother, who at the time was five. She packed up what she could carry and left, leaving Prodor with his overbearing father. She remarried three years later, and with the change of her last name, her new husband adopted Prodor’s brother. Prodor, who was very close to his little brother, never saw him again.
To avoid his father, Prodor Moffit poured himself into his studies. Always a bright, gifted, and somewhat troubled student, he first studied astrophysics at a very young age. Then, when entering the equivalent of the human race’s high school, he focused on forensic science. There he studied under some of the most influential IPF forensic scientists available. Upon entering college, he once again changed his academics, finally settling on medical science. He was very young when he got his doctorate, five years earlier than his contemporaries.
He received a position at the prestigious Hopper Hospital on Ashlar, a state-of-the-art research hospital. Many of the patients came to the hospital with rare or incurable diseases. Hopper being a research hospital, many of the diseases were cured. It was noted, after Prodor Moffit’s arrest, that many of Prodor's patients during his first year at Hopper still succumbed to their diseases, even after responding positively to their treatments.
By his third year at Hopper, Moffit had befriended several orderlies. He chose them very carefully. Single, no real family, loners, dim-witted and easily manipulated, but very loyal. And of course, the money he offered was a nice incentive. Much more than what they were making at Hopper. He needed their help. He needed patients for his research.
Several patients suffering from dementia during Prodor Moffit’s tenure would wind up missing. The dementia wing, at that time, had a very lax security system. And being that the patients were harmless and not a threat to themselves or others, they were allowed to wander the halls. The disappearances would, of course, be covered up by hospital administration, due to the possible and very
likelihood of lawsuits. They declared that the patients simply walked out of the hospital.
And yes, there were several lawsuits. New security rules were implemented within the dementia wing to appease the litigants.
The authorities spent several days, weeks, sometimes months trying in vain to find the patients who just wandered away, but with the help of certain orderlies these poor souls were never found.
After his arrest and conviction of twenty-five murders, authorities determined that at least twelve of Prodor's victims had been vivisected in a morbid attempt to cure the most incurable diseases. Which, of course, was Prodor Moffit’s justification for the crimes. The psychologists all agreed that most likely Prodor was obsessed with vivisecting his victims, but they disagreed about whether it was to make others feel his childhood pain or something altogether different.
Some psychologists felt that he just enjoyed doing it.
There were more victims, the IPF was sure of that, going back as far as when he was young. IPF researchers found several old police reports from the neighborhood where Moffit lived, reporting of missing pets. Three years after those reports, two children went missing, never to be seen again. The researchers were confident Moffit had something to do with these reports, but had no evidence to confirm these theories.
And these theories included his father, who had been missing for the past sixteen years, and his mother, missing for ten. There had been no evidence of any kind of a struggle at either home. No evidence of blood. No evidence of a crime.
Just missing.
Chapter Eleven
Jeff Trent and Genghis Khan proceeded to the third deck where the detention center was located and where the fight seemed to have been much more intense. And it was. More shell casings and a lot more blood splatter. The guards had known that they had to contain the inmates here. That this was where the fight had to end. If the inmates got through and to the upper decks there would be no way of stopping them from taking the ship.
The front part of the detention center was the outer office. It was a small room with a desk bolted to the floor. Computer consoles and security camera monitors were mounted to the walls, sharing space with built-in recessed filing cabinets. A gun rack for three PK 30A assault rifles and two SK 5 shotguns stood empty. A small couch lay upturned, along with a couple of chairs. One of which was broken, used either as a shield or a weapon. Toward the back of the outer office stretched a long hallway with eight open cell doors, four on each side of the hall, each door the entrance to a five-foot-by-eight-foot holding cell.
Jeff Trent bent over and retrieved a small computer system and placed it back on the desk where it should have been. He then picked up the only surviving chair and sat in front of the computer and switched it on. The screen immediately came to life. He started to access video files of the security cameras.
In the meantime, Genghis Khan proceeded to investigate the rest of the crime scene. With his nose to the ground, he started down the hall, slowly swinging his head back and forth as his olfactory system took in the most minute trace of scents. The hallway was twelve feet wide with two yellow stripes on the floor running the length of the hall. Two feet parallel from the cells. It was affectionately known to the guards as the Kill Zone. When a guard stepped into the Kill Zone, a prisoner could reach out through the bars and touch him. Guards always went down the center of the hall, two at a time and heavily armed.
Jeff Trent was already rapidly going through video files. In fast speed, the inmates were led to their cells by several guards. Shackles were removed, cell doors closed. Hours and days flew by in seconds as the guards went through their normal daily routines. That's when he heard Genghis.
“Over here! I found them.”
Jeff turned and looked toward his partner. The Doberman was standing at the end of the hall, looking into the last cell on the left. Trent stopped what he was doing and slowly got up. With the fear and apprehension of any law enforcement officer about to find the remains of fellow officers, Trent walked over and joined Genghis.
The guards of IPPT 964 were face down with their hands shackled behind their backs. Single bullet holes were clearly visible in the back of their heads.
“They were executed,” Trent said, not surprised.
“The other wounds sustained during the fight were not life threatening when they were brought down here,” Genghis added.
“Except for this one.” Trent knelt down beside one of the guards.
Decomposition was slow within their race and the evidence was apparent. “Look at the ligature marks around his neck.” Trent examined the body. “No bullet wounds or laser burns and no bruises from a fight. He was probably the first, overpowered, strangled, then his security card taken.”
“Maybe he got too close to the cell,” Genghis added. “Was he down here by himself? And if so, why? That’s against procedure.”
Trent stood, looking down at the body. “The inmate kills this guard, unlocks his cell, and commandeers the weapon. Then unlocks the other cells.” He started to look around the cramped holding cell. “If it was during a sleep period, only a couple of the guards would have been . . .” He stopped in mid sentence, getting Genghis’s attention. Genghis looked up and saw that Trent was looking at the cell across the hall. That’s when Genghis saw the other three bodies.
Chapter Twelve
The three inmates were lying on their backs as if they were laid to rest with great sympathy. One had a shotgun blast to the face. The skull had a large hole where the cheekbone should have been. The bottom jaw was also gone. Decomposition within this particular inmate's race was quick. He was just pale colored bones wearing his inmate uniform, which had several bullet holes in it.
“And now,” Trent quietly said, “there are five.”
“At least the guards were able to take some of them out,” Genghis replied.
They examined the other inmates, finding various bullet holes and laser burns, and one broken arm. The three were all of different races, so decomposition varied with each. Trent saw that the identification chips implanted into their wrists were crudely ripped out.
“I’ll go get the scanner,” Genghis said, and left the cell. Moments later he returned with the duffle bag, straps grasped between his jaws. He put the bag down, “Hands. Oh, how I’m going to miss hands!” Using his teeth he unzipped the bag, stuck his head in and came out with the D30 detection unit, the same one Trent had used to scan for life signs when they were topside. Genghis sat on his haunches, balanced himself and activated the unit while holding it with both paws. He started to scan the inmates' biometrics. He took his time scanning each inmate, one at a time.
“Well?” Trent said impatiently. “Is he here? Is he one of them? . . . . Is it Moffit?”
“No!” Genghis looked at Trent. “No, he’s not here. Of all the inmates to survive, he would have found a way.” He motioned with his head to the first inmate. “This one here was inmate Skubic Beck, the serial child killer.” He glanced back at Trent, “Glad he’s dead.” Then, he motioned to the next. “The one missing half his head is inmate Gorram Reaver, the embezzler who murdered his two partners and the five stock holders for the computer empire. And this last one is inmate Astra Whey, the one who killed her entire family for the insurance money. Along with the nosy neighbors.” Genghis stood and put the D30 back in the bag. “Which leaves us with . . . Kasha Paine, Colus Valda, Chrispin Pac, Bollar and then of course . . . ”
Trent worked his hand through his hair. “ . . . Prodor Moffit. The Prodor Moffit, in human form, loose on this unsuspecting world.”
After taking whatever evidence they could find on the inmates and the identification cards from the guards, Genghis went down to the power plant to contain the plasma breach. Trent started to view the security recordings again. He could not find the recordings of the individual cells. The recording equipment had been tampered with. The only view he could find was that of one of the cameras monitoring the hallway of the cells. It was
located high on the wall and to the right. The view was showing the entire hall, but because of the angle, he could only see some of the cell doors on the left and none of the ones on the right.
He started through the recordings again and found that on the third day of the transfer mission, during a sleep period, one of the guards had done something very out of the ordinary. He entered the frame on Trent’s monitor and slowly walked down the hall. He was alone. He was not carrying a food tray or any medical supplies. He didn’t even have his weapon out of his holster.
There was a sound of a tool falling to the ground somewhere below decks. “Son of a bitch!” Genghis's voice echoed back.
Trent looked up from the computer screen and called out, “Do you need a hand?”
“Yes, hands would be nice,” came the response reverberating off the bulkheads.
Trent thought for a second, “No opposable thumbs huh?”
“Oh! You got that right. But, I’m good, don’t mind me. I’m almost finished down here anyway.”
Trent went back to the recording. The guard walked about half way down the hall, stopped, and faced a cell on the right. Trent could not see the cell due to the angle of the camera, but already knew whose cell it was. He turned up the volume. The audio was strained and tiny.
Moffit's voice was tainted with anger. “What are you doing down here? You’re early.”
“I wanted to talk to you about our arrangement,” the visitor said. The computer automatically identified the visitor as a prison guard by the name of Mallton and that he had been with the Interstellar Police Force for fifteen years.
“The arrangement,” Prodor Moffit said calmly and intently, “was 50,000 up front, then the other 50 transferred to your account back home when I’m out.”
“Yeah, about that,” Mallton said, scratching the side of his head. “I’ve been going over my finances, and 50,000 is a large sum of money. I could do a lot with that kind of money.”
The Interstellar Police Force, Book One: The Historic Mission Page 5
