The Space Needle (League of Cosmic Justice Book 2)

by Sam Sea

  “Yes, yes of course…I, I had no idea…”

  “Did you ever seen Mr. Teri DiAmon fight with others, go into verbal arguments?”

  “Sometimes…He was very strongly opinioned about certain issues. But it was mostly innocent arguments about historical significant of certain events…Nothing really important. It was mostly just a mind juggling he did with fellow professors, nothing more…”

  “Who do you think was his biggest opponent?”

  “I do not think he had a real opponent…We do not even know who is going to succeed him…Maybe ”

  “Who do you think will succeed him?” Li’a suddenly jumped in.

  “I have no idea…”

  “Have you thought about it…?” Val added.

  The man for a second didn’t have anything to say.

  “Have you thought about who is going to succeed him?” Li’a repeated a whole question.

  “Yes, of course I did…It might be Dr. Semmens. He was his closest college, the most senior lecturer, only natural it would be him. But then, he is here…You can talk to him yourself about that.”

  “Okay…How about his private life, what do you know about that?” Val changed the subject.

  “He kept it private, especially recently…I knew splitting up with Madam Vilksy was very traumatic for him. But that was almost two years ago…”

  “Was he dating anyone since then?”

  “Yes, I think he might had, but that he kept private…I would not know with whom.”

  “Was he respected by his students…Any problems there?”

  “Mostly…there was an incident though, about a month ago…Students were not happy how they were graded, and there was a problem…one of them even stood up to the dean and there was even a shouting match at one point.

  “Can you go over the files with the police assistant outside and pinpoint that student, please.”

  “Sure, I would be happy to help in any way.”

  “If you had to guess, who do you think did it?”

  “I do not know…It might have been his ex-fiancé, might be one of his donors who might not have been happy with his work…I have no idea. Sorry I cannot help more.“

  “Donors… We have no information on this?”

  “Yes…it must be there among his files…We often would do a project or two for private parties interested in finding something for them, a research in their family history or such…It was good money.”

  “Well I do not see any here…we have to find those.” Val said and instinctively looked at Li’a who nodded her head.

  “And the mystery unravels slowly…files missing…We have to find those.” Val said as Wida Mantoz left them alone.

  “So what do we know so far?” Val asked.

  “First of all, we know it was a professional hit. So it was contracted, planned out…there must be a reason…We find the motive, we find the killer.

  “Yes…I see it the same way. The problem is that those that did it, obviously went to great lengths to never reveal themselves…you know?”

  “We’ll get them…” Li’a sound certain.

  “I would like to speak with Madam Vilksy next.”

  “We were actually unable to get her to come here.” Li’a felt suddenly uncomfortable, stepping from one leg to another.

  “Is that Madam Vilksy of the Carting family?”

  “Yes…We insisted, but she declined…said something about, if any ECI need to talk to her, he knows where to find her. I can show you the file if you want to…”

  Val smiled and waved the idea away. “Yeah, super rich often have those ideas…I guess I am going to talk to her…where exactly?”

  “She works in the Vazz Avenue 101…She is an architect there. She should be in her office now.”

  “Oh, that is very close by where Mr. Teri DiAmon ‘s sister lives. I think she is…yes, Vazz Avenue 251. I guess I can go there later and visit them both. May get something to eat on the way there. Care to come?”

  “Sure…”

  “Well, but first, let’s see who we are going to talk to next..that Dr. Semmens sounds interesting.”

  Chapter 8 - Selling Humans

  Irkoniss laid submerged in a hot bathtub, relaxing and trying not to think. He finished the bottle of wine but that did little to help him. He knew he should feel good, being saved from Pluk, living in civilization again. So he did not understand why was he thinking so much about the past, about the time when he was still just a boy trying to become a man.

  He remembered about that day how he woke up after losing consciousness, opening his eyes for the first time to see two ugliest men he ever saw standing over him, their long, dark beards almost touching him. They were sky-people, he knew. And the feeling he felt back then still steered equally inside of him…. He wanted their heads, wanted them more than he wanted anything else in his life.

  “This kid, do you think he is from one of the villages on the coast? Do you think he is just lost?”

  “I do not know…Why doesn’t he talk?”

  Irkoniss did not want to say anything. Let them do the thinking, confuse them and then finish them off.

  The other man hit his leg hard with the stick.

  “Hey, can you talk?” He screamed at him. But Irkoniss didn’t say a word, didn’t even utter a sound. “Do you understand the words coming from my mouth?”

  “Maybe, he got lost…he might be just scared….Are you scared?”

  “He doesn’t look scared to me.” The other man said, “The way he is looking at you, he may be more ready to cut your throat than to run away from you…”

  Irkoniss tried to move, but the hands were tied firm behind him, and he could do nothing but stare.

  “You think so? He doesn’t look that dangerous to me?”

  “Look at his eyes, look at those knives…have you ever seen any knives like that, curved like that, and the one with the eagle head? ”

  “No, can’t say I do, so who is he?”

  “I mean, those knives were not created for gutting fish…They were made to kill people, I tell you…Did you feel how sharp they were?”

  “Yeah, so what is he…a wild, child assassin? Don’t be crazy…Who would want to go after us? We do not even have a gram of gold on us.”

  “No, I am not saying that, stupid, but…who is he?”

  “We caught him trying to steal our food. So he is a thief, I guess.”

  “Yeah, but where did he come from?”

  “You heard the stories about some indigenous people living in the great forests of the far north. I think he might be from there… Certainly he did not fly here from the space port.”

  “But he looks just like us?”

  “Of course he does. Why shouldn’t he? Some say that the first humans landed on this planet more than thousand years ago. You looked just like us, you know… And I bet if you compare his DNA to yours, you will find it very much alike.”

  “Shit… Does that mean he have the same rights as us?”

  Irkoniss just kept quiet, looking at them, waiting for his chance…

  “Well, of course he doesn’t. Don’t be stupid…He is illegal. He is not even chipped I bet.”

  “So, what do we do with him?”

  “He is not chipped, so…we can do whatever we like.”

  “Yeah, so what do you want to do with him?”

  Terror raced down Irkoniss’s back as he waited for the answer.

  “You know, there is one good thing that we can do with him. There is a good money in selling unchipped kids, you know... the one young like him, that has no implant, that is undetectable, he can fetch a good price on a black market.

  “Really?”

  “Sure.. Actually, to tell you the truth, once I met a guy in a bar in the space port…After we got wasted , he talked about being a…sort of a tracker who, with few other fellows, ventured up north and used thermal scanners to find natives…They would knocked them out, take them from there. He said, once he picked up a
girl of ten, got fifty thousand credits for her…”

  “That much?”

  Irkoniss thought about his sister who disappeared in the forest when she was only ten. He remembered her mom’s constant grief, his father gone for days looking for her. He was eight at the time, and, after that, life in his family was never the same. Could those men have taken her?

  “….he offered to take me along then, but I declined since I thought I would be making good money here digging for gold…”

  “Yeah, you thought wrong…we’d be lucky if we make that much in a whole year, you know…”

  “I know…”

  “But kidnapping, selling kids…It can’t be legal?”

  “Of course it is not, and, I bet, if they catch you, you will likely spend the rest of your time on Pluk, but..it is good money I bet. Much better than what we can do digging here in the cold water, freezing our asses…Also, a little police that exist on this planet is all stationed around the space port…Nobody ever has to find out.”

  “We really might not make enough even to pay for supplies , the way things are coming along.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Can you get in touch with those trackers, find out what he would be worth, who we can talk to?”

  “I bet I can…”

  “Well, in a way, it is his own fault, trying to steal food from us, a little that we have left…and, who’s to say that selling him to a civilized world might not be the best thing that happens to him? It certainly is better than living in the wild here, right?

  “Yes, in a way you are absolutely right…We are actually doing him a favor.”

  “Sure, sure we are.”

  Irkoniss struggled, he almost had his hand free when they turned their sticks on him, beating him until his body could not take it anymore and he lost his consciousness again.

  A week later, he was smuggled inside a wooden container to a space station and sold to the trader for twenty thousand credits.

  Chapter 9 - The Pawnshop Owner

  While Irkoniss had his bad date with his old memories, Mikka landed her jetter in front of the Wall’s Pawnshop. It was in the middle of Section 10 of Old City, ten floors above the ground, right next to the public transport station. Tall, gray buildings circled the space, blocking out the sun almost completely. She hated it instantly, almost as much as the hole they lived in.

  The yellow train just left the station and hundreds of people were leaving the station, passing her by as she secured her ride and entered the shop.

  It reeked of old bricks, humidity and dust and seafood with unbalanced seasoning. The shop actually stretched on three floors, the staircase circling up with all its walls covered with bookshelves displaying everything ranging from rare books to the jewelry of a questionable purity.

  She went straight to the counter, cornered to her left.

  “I am here to see Mr. Wall…I have something I would like to sell him.” She said as she walked to the counter, and put on the stupidest smile she could come up with. The older man with a greasy hair who stared at her from behind the counter looked lifeless.

  “Well, young woman, Mr. Wall is not available right now…But I can help you. What do you have?”

  “No, I was told to only talk to Mr. Wall, and nobody else.” The counter shield was a two inch thick plastic. It extended ten feet up, almost to the ceiling itself. Nothing she had on, would be able to pierce it.

  “No, Mr. Wall is busy doing some restoration in the back, and he never likes to be disturbed while he does that…But I can help…Let me see what you have…”

  Well, that’s all I needed to hear, Mikka thought as she lost her smile, and turned to leave

  “But I can help,” the man screamed after her.

  As she walked to the door, she turned around, and ran with all her speed toward him.

  The man’s eyes and mouth opened in disbelief as he saw Mikka jump with one leg to the counter, and then threw herself in the air. But instead of spilling over the plastic wall, her boot of her other leg scraped it, just enough to give her another push upward, and with extended hand, she held herself on top the wall for just a split second. Her body swung and then it was already in the foot of space that separated the counter from the second floor passage.

  As she jumped down on the other side of the counter, her sword was above her head, and when she stroke it down, the man’s head and upper part of his body was sliced in half even before her toes touched the floor.

  She didn’t mind how blood sprayed her. She just walked over mutilated corpse and opened the back door to the long, dark corridor carpeted with something that should have been thrown away centuries ago.

  “Mr. Wall?” She called with the sweetest, almost child-like voice she could come up with.

  The next man who ate her sword came out of the room to the right. His back full of muscles and hands bigger than Mikka’s torso could do little to stop the blade going deep between his eyes. As it came out, part of the man’s brain was still living on it before Mikka shook it off to the floor.

  “Mr. Wall?” She called again.

  “I said clearly that I don’t want to be disturbed!!” The man yelled from the room to her right. She opened the door.

  His back was to her, big rubber apron around him, Mr. Wall bend over trying to glow some broken pieces of pottery.

  She didn’t wait for him to turn around, but threw one of her small darts that stuck into his neck. His back suddenly straighten, and he finally tried to look at her. But then his overweight body hit the floor half a second later.

  Mikka stopped and listen for a second, two. Nothing could be heard. She walked over to him and when she saw all the jewelry decorating his fingers thought better than killing him.

  The small sword went back behind her back, and she lifted his unconscious body, and threw it over her slender shoulder.

  From her booth, she dug out a small gun, and went toward the back door. It was not locked, but she didn’t go out as soon as she opened it.

  She waited for a second, just enough for the man guarding it on the other side to pop his head inside the opened door, checking why nobody was coming out. The small gun left a slug three inches behind his forehead, and he was dead before he could understand why blood-covered girl had a gun pointed at him.

  A few by-passers stopped and watched as the scooter she called flew in. She cuffed the body to its first seat then jumping behind it, and took it to the air.

  Mikka knew she was going to be spot right away, so she dived toward the first hole, and took them underground, letting the jetter fly itself back to Irkoniss’s hideout.

  The blood on her face was still fresh when the garage door to her back closed and Irkoniss opened the door.

  “Is Silent sleeping?” she asked.

  “Yes.” .

  “Put him where Silent won’t see him,” she instructed him before going to the bathroom, hoping that the girl will not wake up anytime soon.

  He placed him in the storage room, on a chair with his hands tied behind him, and then wathed as Mikka walked in and dropped a bucket of ice water on him.

  “Hi, threre,” Mikka greeted the shop owner as he came around.

  “Who are you?” the man muttered as his eyes and brains still could not make sense of it all.

  “I am the bitch who killed two of your bodyguards, and sliced your brother…I think that was your brother…in half. I also broke that ugly nose of yours trying to wake you up. So now, you look even uglier than before, something I thought was not even possible ...” Mikka said as she wobbled his broken nose causing him to cry in pain.

  “I am also the one that brought your sorry ass here, tied you to that chair. But most importantly, the ‘who-am-I” question that you should be the most concerned about, is…I am the one that will slice open that stupid head of yours and put my fingers in your brain…you know, here, in this part of your brain, where it hurts to high heavens and back…You may live through it all of course…”

>   “What do you want?” Mr. Wall asked grasping for air.

  “Well, that is a better question to ask…”

  “Whatever you want I will give it to you.”

  “Of course you will…the problem is, I do not know yet what I want…and the way you talk, it sounds like you are …What, angry with me?”

  “No-“ She sliced his cheek with her short sword before he could even exhale the whole word out.

  “Don’t you dare say ‘no’ to me!!”

  “No, please,” he begged, but she sliced open his other cheek. Blood ran down his face, to his mouth, his throat.

  “You stupid? …Don’t you fucken say ‘no’ again!”

  No word left his wide-open mouth.

  “You will tell me what I want to know…”

  He nodded his head.

  “Paintings, two paintings…”

  “I…” his brain started to talk faster than his mouth could, gibbering things out, half of which Mikka could not understand.

  “Where are they?”

  “I gave them to my client already”

  “What client?“

  He waited for a second, a second too long.

  “You have too much blood on your face.” She said calmly looking into his eyes. “I’ll help you out.” She took out a long needle out of her pocket but didn’t bother to put a threat in it. She slit it all the way into his sliced cheek.

  He screamed with all the air he had in him.

  “You are way too loud. And since you are not talking…” Mikka said as she took the needle out “…might as well sew your mouth together.” She said as she calmly started to put a threat through the needles head.

  “You are crazy! Please…. don’t.”

  “You are telling me again what to do…I don’t think I can work like this…Now, I really do not think I can work like this…I mean, could you, in my place work like this, someone always telling you what to do, interrupting you? Could you?”

  The shopkeeper didn’t know what to say, just stared in horror as the needle was now ready with a threat in it.

  “Question, answer… I ask question, you give answer… That’s how I work. Understand?”