Renegades: Origins

by Kal Spriggs

  The two meter tall alien turned his jackal head towards Mike, “Do not provoke me.”

  “Okay, guys, how about we just move on,” Ariadne said, her voice cheerful. “We need each other, which is important to remember. Also important to remember is how great a team we make!”

  Simon saw Eric roll his eyes and heard him mutter, “That has to be the stupidest way to change the subject I’ve ever heard.” His words made Simon clench his fists. What was the other man’s issue with Ariadne? Yeah, she’s a bit more… upbeat than most bosses, he admitted, but her heart is in the right place and she’s capable enough.

  “As I was saying,” Mike interrupted. “We’ve got just a short distance to go and then we’ll be back in civilization. Even if we don’t find anyone there, we can take some time to do repairs and such. You’ve elected me as Captain, but I still would like to discuss my plans a bit. Now we have two options, either we head towards our galactic north-”

  A shrill scream cut him off. Everyone’s attention went to Elena, the bounty hunter stood near Mike’s shoulder. Simon had mostly ignored her for the past weeks. She seemed capable enough, but he felt more than a trace of unease at dealing with someone of her profession. Besides, the way she fawned on Mike made Simon rather annoyed. The other man either enjoyed it or tolerated it, so Simon just ignored it. She normally wore her red hair tied back and a smug expression on her face.

  Right now her expression was one of fear. She had her hand extended to the forward view-port of the bridge. “I just saw Ghost!”

  As one, their attention went to the transparent view port. It seemed to show little besides the gray emptiness of shadow space. “You saw a ghost or you saw Ghost?” Mike demanded. The short man’s tone was sharp and his dark eyes suddenly looked intense.

  “I saw the damned Wrethe’s armored suit and then Ghost’s muzzle through the visor,” Elena snapped. Her accent had grown noticeably thicker, a sure sign of stress, Simon noted.

  “Look, the whole incident with Ghost was stressful, you might have been mistaken…” Ariadne began. Her tone sounded more hopeful than confident, Simon noted.

  “No,” Anubus growled. “We never found Ghost’s body… and I have caught scents of the other Wrethe aboard the ship.” He swung his jackal head around, “It seems likely that one of you has betrayed us and nursed our enemy back to health.”

  “Uh… I blasted Ghost’s skull all over the deck,” Eric said. “So I think you might just be smelling residue from that.” He had a confident smirk on his face and his tone suggested they were worried over nothing.

  “These are fresh scents,” Anubus growled, “Pheromones, not blood or tissue. Ghost must still live.” His statement met with silence on the bridge.

  “Right,” Mike said. “Pixel, lock down the ship. We’ll search the entire vessel, level by level. We lock down the airlocks first and if Ghost is outside, we’ll find some way to kill it out there.”

  Pixel went to the engineering console and started his work without a word. “Eric, I want you and Rastar to organize the search teams. Crowe— ” Mike broke off. “Wait, where the hell is Crowe?”

  Simon glanced around, now that he thought of it, he hadn’t seen the other man at all. And he’s a sneaky sort too, if Ghost does have some kind of helper in our crew, then I couldn’t think of a more likely traitor, Simon thought darkly, Illario doesn’t have the brains for it. “Kind of suspicious that he’s not here, isn’t it?” Simon asked. The others looked at him, “Look, he’s already proven to have… questionable ethics. Plus he’s got a number of illicit skills. He’s a hacker, he’s a liar, and we’ve already seen evidence that he knows how to use that knife of his.” During the break out from the station, Crowe had killed at least two Chxor.

  “Well, Elena, you and he got friendly not too long ago,” Eric said in a snide tone of voice. “Maybe you could shed some light on that.”

  “Yes…” Elena spoke. She either didn’t catch or chose to ignore his insinuation. “I remember, he disappeared right after the fight with Ghost. But why would he work with the Wrethe?”

  “Clearly some plot to get my gold,” Anubus growled. “You already caught him once when he stole two of the bars. This must be some plot on his part to take what remains.”

  Despite himself, Simon found he agreed with the Wrethe. They had drawn close enough to human space that the riches might have tempted the other man to betray them. Simon felt certain that the way Rastar had flipped out on the man over the earlier theft would not have improved his opinion of the crew. Not that I can blame Rastar, he acknowledged, I’d probably have lost my temper if I found him trying to place the bars in my gear as well. Still, he wouldn’t have beaten the other man. Turned him over to Mike for punishment, yes, but the beating Rastar had administered hadn’t been right under their charter. That sat wrong with Simon, they had rules for a reason.

  “Okay, first order of business,” Mike said. “Lock down the ship. Since Crowe is involved, lock down all the terminals too, until we know more.” He looked over at Rastar and Eric. “You two do manual locks on the airlocks. Mandy and Miranda, you’ll secure the bridge with Ariadne and Pixel. Simon, Anubus, Elena, Run, Illario, and I will start the search, Rastar and Eric join us after you’ve secured the airlocks. Run, be sure you bring your medical equipment.”

  Simon nodded. The search party and security elements all contained technical and combat elements, which he approved of. Granted, Simon hoped that he wouldn’t need Run’s medical attention. The Chxor’s cache of power tools, straps, and staple guns made him more than a little uneasy.

  “No,” Anubus growled. “If Ghost is on the hull, it is after my Prowler. We need to go out there and kill it before it steals my ship.”

  Simon had forgotten that the Wrethe had clamped the small vessel on the hull of the Gebnar.

  “Yeah… with how poorly you docked it, no one is getting it off the hull any time soon,” Pixel said. The engineer didn’t look up from where he worked on the console. “You managed to lock onto an unarmored section of hull over our port sensors. At least one of your clamps punched through the hull. You couldn’t get off with your maneuver thrusters, and you can’t safely engage the main drive this close to the ship. The Red Hunter is stuck.”

  Anubus’s lips drew back over his teeth in a snarl, “Why didn’t you tell me this earlier?”

  Pixel looked up after he hit a last button, “Something of an insurance policy, in case you betrayed us. Besides, we can’t do anything about it without a lot of work. And we have bigger priorities just now.” His comment met with total silence. Simon quietly upped his estimation of the engineer. Apparently he’s not as unaware of some things as I thought, Simon realized. A moment later, Pixel gave a smile, then opened up the ship’s intercom, “Attention all passengers of the Gebnar. We have a possible security situation, the Captain will brief you.”

  “Okay,” Mike said with a nod. “All personnel, move to your quarters and take up defensive positions. We may have an uninvited guest. Crowe, if you’re near an intercom switch, please contact us immediately.” They waited a long moment in silence. Mike clenched his jaw, and Simon saw the muscles stand out on the short Asian’s jaw. Mike switched off the intercom and when he spoke, Simon could hear the anger in his voice, “Now that that is settled, get moving people. Whatever Ghost and Crowe are up to, we need to find out and put a stop to it.” Even as he spoke, Rastar opened the storage closet and swept his guns across the entrance. The big alien gave Eric a nod and the two entered the lift. From their drills, Simon knew that the two would secure the rear airlock first, then the port and starboard ones located further forward.

  Simon followed the others as they started down the stairs to the next level down from the bridge. The first compartment was one of the sets of crew quarters they shared. Mike activated the automated door while Elena and Simon took up ready positions with pistols. Despite his dislike of the bounty hunter, Simon admired her professionalism. She stood in a balanced position,
pistol drawn, finger out of the trigger well, but ready to fire at any threat. Not so much with Mike, who held a Chxor submachine gun casually in one hand, finger on the trigger. We really need to do more of those training classes, Simon thought.

  The hatch swept open. The oversized crew quarters sat empty, other than some litter and trash from where some of Simon’s less tidy companions had eaten their lunch. Once again, the scale of the ship gave Simon a weird feeling of juxtaposition. Even Anubus looked dwarfed by the oversized room as he swept into it. The Ghornath-sized nests that lined the walls were not designed for humans or even the larger Wrethe. The Gebnar was a captured Ghornath ship, after all. The large furniture and lockers, like most of the rest of the ship, were designed for the three meter tall, eight-limbed aliens. Only Rastar felt truly at home with the ship.

  The Wrethe paused and sniffed the air. “I don’t smell Wrethe… but I smell blood. A lot of it.”

  “Shit,” Mike said. He glanced in the room, “Where? I don’t see any.”

  Anubus slowly spun in a circle. Finally he turned and walked back through the hatch. He paused outside the door for the other set of quarters across the corridor. “Here.”

  Simon trained his pistol on the hatch. The archaic 1911 forty-five felt cool in his hands as he took up a two handed stance. It was pure muscle memory as he readied himself to fire. The world seemed to slow down as Mike moved up next to him and leveled his submachine gun at the hatch. Illario moved to one side of the hatch, a drawn knife in his hand. Mike nodded at Run to trigger the switch to the side of the automatic door

  The hatch swept open without a sound.

  The quarters looked much like the ones they had just searched. They held the same oversized nests and the same clutter of human trash… with one addition.

  Crowe lay sprawled across the floor, head thrown back and eyes wide in a crimson pool of blood. Three parallel gashes ran across his torso from his right hip to his left shoulder. Bits of bone shone white against all the blood while his intestines glistened where they had bulged up out of the wound. Scrawled across the bulkhead behind the body in Crowe’s blood was the words: Ghost Lives.

  “Well, I guess that rules out Crowe as a suspect,” Simon said.

  * * *

  Rastar and Eric joined them a few minutes later. Simon had entered the room and studied the crime scene for a moment. “A lot of blood spatter. Someone was seriously angry at him.”

  “Someone… really?” Eric asked. “Look at those claw marks. Milla here saw Ghost already and now there’s Wrethe claw marks on him. Plus I can read the writing on the wall. I think we know who did this.”

  “Not necessarily,” Simon said. He ignored Eric’s unintentional pun, even as he made note to use it later. “We know what it looks like… but appearances can be deceiving.” He frowned, “Look, didn’t you say you killed Ghost?”

  Eric nodded.

  “Well then, a more likely culprit right off hand, rather than a magically regenerating Wrethe is the one who already hated Crowe for stealing from him,” Simon said. “One who already mentioned that he prefers to kill from stealth.”

  “He does have a point,” Anubus growled. “It would be clever of me to somehow frame Ghost for killing him. But I did not. And there is no scent of Wrethe in the compartment. Ghost was not here.”

  Eric shifted his stance and his rifle lay pointed in the general direction of Anubus, “You would say something like that, if you’d killed him, wouldn’t you? And it’s not like we can smell pheromones.”

  “He didn’t do it,” Simon said. He knelt closer and wished he had a rubber glove. He really didn’t want any diseases the deceased hacker might have had. He pointed at the wound, “Look at the wound, it’s too deep to be his claws. For that matter, I’m pretty sure if he cut that deep he’d have blood all over himself… and I’d imagine it takes him some time to get blood out of his fur.”

  “That much arterial spray would take me at least an hour to lick off of me,” Anubus nodded. “And I’m sure any lesser beings such as yourself would run screaming at the sight of a real hunter fresh from a kill such as this.” The Wrethe ran his tongue over his teeth and lips in a fashion that suggested how tasty he considered that idea.

  Mike turned to Run, “Can you take a look at him, find out what killed him and get us some clues?”

  “Normally I perform vivisection on live subjects,” Run said. “However, I think a dissection of the corpse and the wounds will provide useful knowledge on internal human workings.” He frowned, “It is too bad the corpse is past revival, this would provide greater research potential.”

  “Uh, yuck,” Eric said. He glanced at Mike, “Look, Crowe was a jerk, but are we sure we want to let the little Chxor bastard cut his corpse up?”

  Mike shrugged, “We need information. It’s not like he’ll care.” He pointed at the corpse. “Alright, Run, I’ll have Ariadne send someone to help you move the body.”

  “I should search the area first, and we need pictures of the crime scene for any later investigation,” Simon said. “Which there will be once we get to human space.”

  “Well, as long as it’s not your average Colonial Republic hellhole,” Eric said.

  “Good thinking, Simon,” Mike said. He apparently ignored Eric’s comment on the Colonial Republic. Then again, the smaller man had seemed rather ambivalent about the Colonial Republic before. And he seems to be in favor of privateering, I wonder if he’s done a bit of it before… or worse, Simon thought. “Best to be as above-board as possible.” The smaller man frowned down at the corpse for a long moment. “The rest of you, we need to search the rest of the ship.” He backed out and Simon saw him pause, “Illario and Elena, let’s go.”

  The ganger started. He had a look of shock on his face, “Sorry, yes Captain, I’m ready.”

  “I will stay,” Elena said. Her eastern European accented English was even thicker. From her pale face, Simon guessed the blood bothered her more than she liked. “I have some experience in criminal behavior and I’ve searched crime scenes before.” She held up a hand, and Simon saw she had a small recorder in it, “Also, I found this in crew quarters, it will work to record the scene.”

  Mike seemed torn. “That’s half the search party.” Still he gave a sharp nod and spoke, “Very well, Simon, you and Elena work this. Let me know if you find anything.”

  Simon nodded, “Okay, I could use the help.” He hadn’t worked a lot of murder scenes before, mostly he worked protection or corruption investigations. He didn’t trust himself to not miss the essential clue, not if an extra set of eyes might help.

  He squatted just outside the sticky pool and looked at the body. “Something hit him, knocked him back, I think.” He looked over at the splatter of blood on the wall. “Look, it looks like it sprayed up, a bit. Whoever killed him knocked him down first, so he couldn’t fight back.”

  “Not easy with how big he was,” Elena said as she began to record the crime scene. “Almost two meters tall and strong. Someone big, da?” She pointed at the splayed hands, “He must have fought back.”

  Simon frowned, “Maybe. Or maybe someone tranquilized him somehow.”

  “Drugs?” Elena dropped her voice. She lowered the recorder and glanced over her shoulder at where Run had begun to take samples from the blood pool. “You think the Chxor was involved?”

  Simon shrugged, “I’m not discounting it. I want to get a handle on what happened, and the worst thing to do in any investigation is to decide how it happened early on. Got to stay open for the possibilities.”

  “You have worked this kind of thing before, da?” Elena asked. She looked uncommonly serious. “I have not much experience in this kind of thing, murder. Larceny and that kind of thing, I’ve investigated some between bounties, even some cheating cases when work was slow.”

  “Most murder cases are open and shut,” Simon said. “You find the murderer near the victim, usually in shock. Most people can’t handle the emotional toll of a murder.
The ones that can, they’re harder to find.” Sociopaths or just people who could kill. Simon had kept up on his professional reading. Modern society ran around ten percent of people who could kill without some kind of emotional repercussions. Some of the frontier worlds ran higher, but not much. “Since we found him like this and in what looks like a frame of either Anubus or Ghost, well, I’m leaning towards someone like that.”

  “Do you think there is danger to crew?” Elena asked.

  “Yes,” Simon said. “Anyone who resolves their problems with murder is a threat to the crew. He, she, or it is also a threat to us from the perspective of the law. We’re already on shaky ground showing up in a former Ghornath pirate vessel, having stolen it from the Chxor and escaped from a Chxor prison. If we show up and some of our crew has murdered each other, well, I wouldn’t be surprised if they threw the lot of us in jail again.”

  Elena cocked her head. “This makes sense.” She stepped away from the body. “Perhaps we should think about… contingencies?”

  Simon glanced back at Run, but he saw the little alien had withdrawn to the hallway with his samples. “Contingencies?”

  “If it is some of our companions, perhaps even a conspiracy, you and I might become liabilities, da?” Elena said, her voice pitched low. “You, a policeman and me a bounty-hunter, they would know that we would enforce the law.”

  Simon felt a lump of ice materialize in his stomach. That is a particularly nasty thought, he realized, and one altogether too likely for me to discount. Even so, he shook his head, “No, I think it’s too soon to get worked up over that.” He took a deep breath, “But I’ll keep your offer in mind.”

  She gave him a single nod. Then her eyes widened. “Look, there, isn’t that Crowe’s computer?”

  Simon turned. He hadn’t noticed the small device in his initial search, which surprised him. The round, black metal cylinder held the scavenged components which Pixel had put together into a computer for Crowe. It had obviously rolled away from Crowe’s body and somehow lodged under one of the sleeping nests. “Good eyes,” Simon said as he knelt down and retrieved it. “It doesn’t look damaged, either. Maybe we can get something off of it.”