by Sam Sea
“I let you think about it, but before I leave here, I need you to pick one of those three options… And you understand, the only reason you are having this options is because I need a favor, right?”
At another time, there would have been no options. The option would only be to tell him who wanted the commissioner dead. But he needed to solve the murder, and needed Gaf’s help, and was not ready to get himself into other mess over the commissioner. Let someone else handle it.
Gaf constant, examining stare at Val made it obvious to him that the ECI was not kidding, and he nodded his head in approval.
“What can I do for you?” he asked.
“There was a hit on the Chief Commissioner’s brother, and I need to know right now who did it.”
“It was not us.”
“I was not saying it was… The hit was… rather unusual. It seems almost impossible to be executed. One shot, from high up, high velocity, small bullet, and who ever shot him was not bigger than a duck.”
“A droid?” Gaf asked instinctively.
“Highly possible… Highly probable…” Val considered it, and knew that Gaf was right. It must have been a droid.
“I had a few droid specialists, but only one of them is still in business… Except, he is not in the Capital presently.”
“Where is he?”
Gaf waited, thinking if he needed to answer the question, but Val’s eyes were not leaving his.
“He has been in Vezna for the past three months. I am sure of that.”
Gaf finally exhaled a deep breath.
Vezna, I hear a lot of that word recently.
“Look, Val, something this big, should have passed over the table here… I would have known about it. That is why you are here. You know I would have known about it.” Gaf breathed deeply again trying Val to understand. “But I don’t.”
The silence was not peaceful but fearful. “I can tell you: ‘go to this clan’ or ‘go to that clan’… But I am being honest here… There are only two other ones working this kind of deals here, and none of them have a personal that could do something like that. You won’t find your answers there more than you could find them here.”
“Where do you think I would find my answers then?”
“I do not know…. Really, Val…”
“If you had to guess…”
“Military, the government… maybe the man steered something up he shouldn’t have…” The answer came fast, and Val was not sure how much of it was a routine ‘blame the other guy’ strategy. He didn’t want to think it was anything other than that.
“Droids… Not many of them around anymore, huh?”
“Easily detectable… Punishable to 40 years to Pluk just for operating one? Are you kidding me?”
Gaf’s eyes suddenly hit the floor.
“What is it?” Val asked as the silence was a second too long. “Spill it out.”
"It's funny that you say that… Droids… Made me thing about something… About a month ago, I had an offer, of a new player. The offer said that he can fly anywhere on the planet, even to the Emperor's estate, and shoot anybody he wants to, anywhere...anybody. Of course, I found that rather ridiculous. Didn’t thought that might be a droid-using player, just a lunatic ready to commit suicide, so…I ignored him. But now that I think, might have been… someone using that kind of technology."
"So who was this lunatic?"
"I never met him. I do not know since I never took him seriously... But I can give you the communication bit. I saved it along everything else I always save… I even have the first time I met you saved…”
“Don’t remind me.”
Gaf almost smiled. “I am sure with your resources you can find out where it came from and who this player is. Maybe that can help."
Val nodded his head. “Okay.” He said as he got up. “Forward it to my communicator… But, I need you to send it to me right away…”
“Val…” Gaf called him as the ECI was already heading toward the door “I already had… And I… I choose the option three…”
“I thought you would.” Before he opened the door, he noticed two new files in his communicator. The one seemed to be encrypted communication file, the brain food for the likes of Timor. The other one was a picture of a woman with a long red hair. Val’s body jolted as he realized it was Mikka.
Chapter 18 – The Answers
When Val got out of the clan’s den, he found Li’a chatting with the bold guy. It was a small, friendly smile on her face and a glitter in her eyes that surprised him.
But as she noticed him, she pulled back and without saying another word to the guard went inside the vehicle.
“A friend of yours?” Val asked as he lifted the vehicle up and turned it for 360 degrees around.
“Yes… Sal, we actually went to the academy together. Well, for the first year. He dropped out.”
“Probably better money doing what he does now…”
“Yes, I think his family was in financial problems. I think that’s what got him out of the academy. But that was a long time ago…”
Val thought about it for a second. “What, could not have been more than ten years ago?”
“Well, for you, that is probably the time you drink your cup of coffee, but, for me, actually seven years is still… seven years.”
Val thought better to keep quiet, and as he noticed communications from Timor, he put the sedan on its autopilot.
“Timor, are you there?”
Timor answered Val’s call, but nobody seemed there.
“Timor…”
“I’m here,” he finally answered with food still in his mouth. “You don’t let a person even eat.”
“I am sending you a file that I would like you to see what it is all about. Can you look into it right away… You can eat later.”
“You know, before I got to know you so good, I thought the reason you worked alone is because you didn’t want to work with anyone, after I mean your partner died and everything. But now I think it is the other way around, I think you work alone because nobody likes working with you.”
Li’a chuckled next to Val.
“You guys are not going to start making fun of me, okay?”
“Sure, Chief. Whatever you say-” Timor answered.
“Whatever you say, Chief…” Li’a agreed as well without taking a smirk from her face.
“What is his name… Your assistant?” Li’a interrupted Val who didn’t take eyes from the files on his communicator.
“Timor… Look here,” he changed the subject taking one of the files out and placing it in the air between them. “This is a chart of dean’s communications. Timor organized them according to their social significance. The red line here, that’s the communications with the family… See how it declined during the last five years. The yellow one, are communications to his social circuits, including his love affairs. See, they kept pretty steady for the last two hundred years, and then two years ago, they just nosedived… Even his work related communications, represented with this yellow line, has been declining…” Val pressed on the yellow line and opened up the grouping of dean’s work related communications.
“It seems only communications with outside system seem to increased during last two years.” Li’a was saying and then as she opened up those groupings, they noticed the sudden spike in communications to Vezna system.
“That’s where he did his last big project, no?” Li’a asked with a frown forming on her head.
“Yes, the answer, the golden answer, might lay there.” Val said. “Can you pull out all of them and create a list of people he was communicating the most…”
“You know, you may be making a mistake here…” Li’a said after working a file for a few minutes.
“How so?”
“You are very concentrated on thinking that the reason he was murdered was related to something that happen recently. Why?”
Val thought about it, and decided not to answer.
<
br /> “Say it… Do not want to interrupt…” He encouraged her to talk
“I mean, how sure are you that the reason he was killed does not lay in something that happen before then… ? Maybe even tens or hundreds of years ago. It could have been a revenge for something his family did, or he did…”
“Revenge is a good motif.”
“And his family is very prominent… Can’t be that they have not made any enemies during their history…”
“You may be right… The revenge, served cold… But how do we go examining that possibility? It would be almost impossible without the clues pointing us in the right direction. Let’s better hope that it has something to do with what happened on Vezna, something related to that… Otherwise, who knows if we will ever clear this case.
"There is something I need to clear with dean's assistant, so can you get him to the station, please. Faster the better. Get air patrols to help you, okay?"
"Sure, can do... What do you want us to do with all the rest of the people waiting here? there are still about twenty of them who think that you may like to talk to them."
"Can you handle the interviews with them, and see what they have to say? I will be there in about twenty minutes and then I can help you with the rest."
"That sounds good."
“Let’s stop by and grab a few sandwiches… I didn’t even have breakfast. And I mean, if Timor can eat, so can you…” They were just passing next to Makis’ Place which advertised the Capital’s best rib-eye sandwiches on a gigantic board which stretched high above their heads.
“You don’t see this in the new part of the Capital.” He told Li’a looking at the live image of juicy sandwich the size of Val’s head.
“Regulations, I guess…”
“Costs too much.”
“If they only tasted as good as they seem-”
“Makis? Trust me, they taste even better.” Val answered as he took the autopilot off and swiftly raised the sedan three floors up.
Who knows next time I will have a chance to eat this, Val thought while docking at the fly-through, and ordering two of their de-lux barbecued sandwiches.
The sandwich, although not as big as the image outside, was big enough for Val to need both hands to hold it. The red barbecue sauce sipped from one side, and Val debated whether he should lick it or not.
“You ever had this?” Val asked her as she was quite uncertain how to proceed at biting into her own sandwich monster.
Li’a just shook her head.
“We’ll be in the office in twenty minutes… I guess that leaves us plenty of time to finish eating them.” Val was talking with a first full bite filling his mouth.
“I would never guess you would ever eat here…”
“What are you talking about? This restaurant has been around for over hundred years, the same recipe as I can tell…” The sauce ran now down Val’s chin… “Slow-cooked over the charcoal with this amazing sweet sauce… You know, I brought your dad here on a few occasions…” Val said as he saw Li’a looking at him with less than approval.
“Yes, I can see my dad loving this.” She said before her second bite.
Val suddenly felt a wave of optimism rise inside of him. He didn’t know why, but somehow he felt peace washing over him. He didn’t know how, but he felt he was getting closer to the answers and that soon he will be able to connect all the dots together, and find on time who killed the commissioner’s brother. He felt like everything is going to be just fine and that nothing could go wrong. It was one of the rare times he was very much wrong.
***
Mikka woke up late that day feeling nauseated, unsettled, irritated. It was not just the hangover from drinking too much beer last night. It was not even the idea that she woke up in a dark place, deep underground, or that there was an assassination attempt on her the last night. She felt like things were getting out of control, her control, and that the reins on her life were not hers to pull on anymore.
She walked out of the bedroom to find Silent and Irkoniss cooking the lunch together. The smell of flowering herbs pleasantly fragranced the air.
Irkoniss greeted her with a welcoming smile, but Silent didn’t return her look. She didn’t even look at her, but kept her eyes fixated on a stove and her wooden cooking spoon as she just whispered her “Good morning.”
Even though Mikka returned home very late last night to find Silent quietly sleeping, she perfectly knew that the little girl knew something awful happened last night.
“We may have a problem… well, actually, I may have a problem,” she said as she took her communicator.
Seconds later, she had the scared face of Kikari grinning at her in her communicator.
She went straight to the point. “You wouldn’t have put a contract on my head now, did you?”
The man seemed genuinely surprised. “How could you say that? You are my top earner? I would have never-”
“Then find who did it… Okay?”
“Sure, sure…I’ll look into that. I heard you wasted them all. Would it be not smarter to have at least saved one of them so you could get yourself some answers?”
“No… that’s why I have you…”
“Fine, I’ll look into it. By the way, how are you coming on the job you took?”
“It will be done soon, soon enough.”
The man seemed overly uneasy suddenly, and moved from one leg to another, his eyes twitching a few times. “There is something I need to tell you though….” He finally said.
“What is it?”
“You said earlier how you were looking for a space transport vessel?”
“Yes?”
“We found one for you…”
“Where?”
“It was a smuggling vessel that was impounded by the ECI a few years back, and it was, as I understand, recently taken out of their impound storage and delivered to a private estate…”
“Whose estate?”
“We couldn’t get to that info… Must be someone really high up, a politician or some business mogul. Must be someone really important to be able to afford such a ship, and keep it all private.”
“And to have an estate…? I want the location where that ship is right now.”
“Sure…I’ll send it to you right away, and…I’ll see around if anybody knows about putting a contract on you, okay?”
“Yeah, why don’t you do that? Otherwise I may start to get ideas that you are starting to not like me anymore…”
“No, no…never think that, Mikka, you know me, you know-“ Mikka just cut him off and grabbed a glass of fruit juice that Silent just brought it to her. “I wish I could tell you I didn’t kill anyone last night,” she said to the little girl.
“Well, better them then you…” The way she said it, Mikka felt the sense of responsibility overcome her, realizing that silent was so depended on her. It all suddenly made sense.
If I die, who would take care of her? No wonder she doesn’t want me to take any chances… She thought as the sense of regret made her promise herself never to go to any bar drinking again.
She took a long sip of the juice before she looked up at them again and said “So, are you guys ready to travel to someplace nice, away from this hole?”
Remembering her feelings on the rooftop, and then all the blood that flew down the bar floor, body parts that covered tables, she felt an overpowering urge to disappear, to find a quiet place to calm herself down, to sort out the mess in her head. “We really need to get out of this planet.”
***
Val locked himself in one of the offices on the fifty-fifth floor of the police department building when the communication he tried to establish with Vezna Planet finally materialized.
“Hi, this is ECI Valticus Dan calling from the Capital. I am trying to reach Dean Clingman from Vezna Central University…?”
“This is he.” The man, surprisingly young in his late twenties, answered with half a frown on his forehead.
V
al nodded his head. “I was trying to reach you for the past two days. I guess you know by now that one of your colleges has been murdered.”
“Yes, bad news travel fast. We heard that Teri DiAmon was killed... Unbelievable, we are all still in shock-”
“Well, I am calling you because I was curious about certain things concerning him. Maybe you can help me clear them…”
“Sure… I do not think how I can help, but certainly-” the man was certainly getting edgy, his voice starting to shiver.
“I understand that Teri was traveling to Vezna to conduct some major excavations concerning pre-Sith artifacts. There seemed to be more than one sight which he was working on. And, he invested a lot of time, and a lot of university resources in this project, and it lasted for the last few years. Yet, what I cannot understand is why the little documentation about his research is so spare? I mean, everything that he did over there could be piled up in a document not bigger than five hundred words? That cannot be right. Do you know why that is the case?
“No, I can’t say I do.”
“I mean, his previous projects are all systematically cataloged, meticulously organized to a perfection. A whole bunch of books can be written about his research subjects based purely on his notes. But here, concerning Vezna, there seems to be nothing. Why?”
“I…I do not know why that is the case.”
The man was lying. It was clear to Val. And hiding information.
“I certainly hope you will not force me to travel to Vezna and conduct my investigation there…” Val turned the seriousness of his voice to a higher level. “Come on Dean, you must know something.”
“Are you sure you found his actual research papers? Maybe…”
