by Aer-ki Jyr
Three students in total were killed, but the death of the police officer is what had made national news. Upon arriving in the United States David had immediately traveled out to the college campus and did some quiet searching around, both in daytime and night. The hubbub of the shooting had already died down and normal routines were returning to form but there were plenty of people still unnerved enough at what had happened to be willing to talk about it at length.
Security footage from the park area where the shooting was supposed to have occurred was unavailable do to a power failure in the cameras…though with some minor hacking Star Force techs were able to confirm that the campus security systems were functioning normally and that the recordings from that time had been erased.
Not only in the park, though. There was a large section of the campus that had been blacked out. That, combined with some idle gossip around the campus, gave David the impression that the shooting was a cover up for something else that had gone down outside of the park. The shooter himself was unimpressive, though his personnel records were also altered to include previous run-ins with the law that Star Force’s files did not show. The man, named Harkin, had visited Luna on several occasions, and as such his personnel file was computer checked by Star Force for any security flags…at which time a copy was made and stored in secure databases that couldn’t be easily hacked.
A quick check between the American and Star Force records popped up the discrepancy, which suggested that the man was a fall guy, either a part of The Silence or someone they had paid off or set up to cover for something else…and David thought he had the location for that something else pinned down to a particular building on campus that held support services, including a bowling alley, cafeteria, fitness center, and several lounges.
Since he’d gotten back to the spaceport he’d had Star Force’s people digging up whatever data they could on the college and its staff, as well as the students. Security had also placed several discrete recording devices on site so they could monitor traffic patterns in and out of the campus and that one building in particular, which David was now reviewing in conjunction with a logistical estimate analytics had put together on his request.
Given that the suspect building was a cafeteria that fed thousands of students on campus continually it was natural to assume regular shipments of food coming in and trash going out, but David had suspected, and analytics had confirmed, that the traffic flow was above and beyond what was necessary, meaning the cargo shipments were either being carried in half empty trucks or there was more moving to and fro than just college foodstuffs.
Also, two of the three students killed were a couple whose friends had said they had a regular eating schedule in the cafeteria before one would attend a night class and the other would head over to a friend’s dorm room. No one knew what the two had been doing in the park where they were alleged to have gotten shot, which made David suspect they had been killed elsewhere and moved to the park to divert attention away from the location of the actual shooting.
If this was all a massive cover up, then the pair had probably stumbled across something they weren’t supposed to see, while the third person may have been involved or just added to the body count while in the park. David didn’t know what to suspect there and he hadn’t been able to dig up any information on that individual’s dining patterns.
Several other people in the cafeteria at the time had recalled seeing the couple eating and then leave prior to the shooting, which jived with the official report of the incident occurring in the park, but David’s gut still said they had seen something they weren’t supposed to have seen and they were shot on sight, with a very quick cover-up put into place, otherwise the plasma pistol would never have seen the light of day. He guessed it was either the only weapon The Silence had on hand at the time, or they used it in public to match the lethal wounds the students had received so no one would think twice on site…then the files were altered later, with key people being hushed up to overlook the difference.
Had there been plasma wounds on the bodies, supposedly fired from a bullet launcher, that could have spread word of mouth before The Silence would be able to hush it up…at least that’s where David’s mind was headed. What had actually happened was still up for speculation at the moment.
The building, though, was the main priority. Receiving schedules appeared to be repetitive, according to the report he was reading, with several occurring during the night. The cargo trucks would arrive, offload in an interior bay, then leave shortly thereafter. Based on wheel depression, for most American vehicles had not transitioned over to anti-grav, expensive as it was, the trucks coming in had been lightly loaded the first few days after Star Force had its surveillance equipment set up, but the past three, it seemed, showed fully loaded vehicles coming and going…while shipping manifests for the college indicated that the trucks were delivery only and should have been departing empty.
“Mistake number one,” David said to The Silence, wherever and whoever they were. “Assuming that no one is curious enough to pay attention to details.”
Getting up from his borrowed desk the Archon shot across the room and out the door…then came back in a moment later with a ‘did I really just forget that’ face and snagged the last two cookies from a small plate on the desk, biting off half of one as he headed back out the door.
Six hours later, after a quiet, stealth mantis drop off in Steamboat Springs, David was walking across Manning Community College campus just as the sun was setting behind the mountains and the street lights were coming on, blanketing the walkways in gentle green and orange to match the school colors. David was dressed in baggy civilian clothes, not even of Star Force issue, and blended in easily with the college students as he made his way across to the cafeteria in question.
He walked through it twice, from different angles, trying to spot anything out of the ordinary that the dead couple could have stumbled their way into but there was nothing on the main floor so he slowly walked up the curving staircase to the second level balcony where there were no vendors, just tables looking out the building’s walls that were mostly made of glass, offering a decent view of the campus grounds, lit up splendidly in artificial light now that night had fallen.
There were only a few occupied tables, all of which were along the edge of the balcony where they could look down on the people below. Opposite the railing there was an array of potted plants and trees bracketing twin doorways leading to restrooms. David walked that way, giving him a purpose for being on the upper level as he visually scanned the area, finding nothing of interest until he was a step away from entering the leftmost door to the men’s restroom.
In between the shrubbery and the back wall was a narrow gap on both sides, but on the one to his left was a fairly well worth path. Playing a hunch he stepped onto it, disappearing from view though there were a few tiny gaps that he could see the tables through. The dirt/wood chip pathway led to the corner of the wall where it revealed a hidden nook in the architecture…along with a very attractive girl typing something into her phone.
She looked up at David, then did a double take, sizing him up from head to toe and back again. “You’re not the one I was waiting for, but you’ll do just fine,” she said with a smile as she pocketed her phone.
“Oh I will?” David said, catching on quickly. “What if I was waiting on someone too?”
“Then we better hurry,” she said, wrapping her arms around his neck and pushing him back against the sidewall before standing up on her toes and kissing him hard.
David returned the gesture, but twisted her around enough that he could get an eye on the oddity in the building’s construction. The walls were unfinished, just bare plastio board, and the backside was open, though to what he couldn’t see because the entire area was in shadow with the only light coming in through the breaks in the trees, making for a convenient, yet secluded makeout niche.
The Archon found himself coming up short on air,
but kept at it until she finally relented, realizing he hadn’t kissed anyone in a very long time. He looked down into her big brown eyes and smiled.
“How was that?”
“A bit sloppy. Seems like you could use some practice, but I’m really digging this hard body of yours. Are you on the football team?” she asked, leaning heavily into him and kissing his chin playfully.
“No, but I train pretty heavy. I’m going to try and test out to become an Archon later this year.”
Dim lighted as it was, he could clearly see her give him a ‘yeah right’ look, though the kiss that followed didn’t hold such sarcasm.
“As hot as you’re making me right now, I hate to break it to you, but you’re no Archon,” she said, followed by another kiss.
“Why not?” he asked, suppressing a laugh as he let himself enjoy the moment.
“You’re too short. I hear they don’t take anyone under 6’ 9’’ and you’re a good foot short of that.”
“I’m still growing,” he countered, then kissed her back, twisting her around again so he could try and get a different angle on the back end of the niche, but other than the faint drop off he couldn’t see anything past it.
A vibration on his hip cut the kiss short and the girl quickly backed away and pulled out her phone, looking very nervous as she read the text.
“Um, shit. My boyfriend’s here. Can you hide…please???”
David glanced around. “Where do you suggest?”
She grabbed his hand and pulled him back to the edge, then used her phone’s screen to provide some light on a narrow walkway along the wall about a foot and a half wide that led to another wall that jutted out left with the walkway following the perimeter to a hidden landing cattycorner from their position.
“Nobody’s back there, I think. Please?”
“I don’t know…you called me a bad kisser,” he teased.
“I said sloppy,” she said, kissing him hard again. “All you need is practice, which I’m more than willing to help you with later…just not now. Please.”
David pulled her back to him and did, he thought, a more credible job in the art of liplocking, then nudged her away. “Go.”
A relieved look crossed her phone-lighted features as she hopped back up to the front of the niche while David walked out of view down and around the L-shaped ledge that he guessed was half of a structural wall. He gingerly stepped off onto a flat top of what was probably a room below, but there was so little light that he had to feel his way around with his feet and hands. He followed the wall a few meters away from the drop off, then his foot caught on something. He reached down and, through tactile inspection, guessed that it was a bra some college chick had lost in the dark…making this the ‘more than make out’ platform.
Eventually he came to the other side of the landing and found another edge, making it clear to David that he was in the ghost of the building. Star Force designs didn’t have ‘ghosts,’ meaning interior space that wasn’t designated for use. Whoever had built this building had done so by drafting rooms as needed and fitting the entire construct into an exterior shell rather than adjusting the rooms to fit the shape of the shell. Normally ghost spaces were sealed off, from both people and air, but apparently the construction crew for this building had missed a wall, and with the leafy interior decorating the oversight hadn’t been noticed.
Meaning that if a couple of college makeout artists had ventured far enough in this building’s ghost zone they might have come across something they weren’t supposed to see.
David worked his way across the edge of the drop off until he found the far wall, which coincidentally was at a slant, meaning he had to stoop down to follow it to the base where there was about half a meter of empty space between the edge of the room he was standing on and the angled roof. He reached a hand over, feeling the drop off, then noticed a hint of light when he stuck his head over. It was barely a crack, but it let out enough of a glow for him to see where the floor was.
Swinging his legs forward first, he slid over the edge and dropped down a remarkably short fall, being able to reach back up and touch his elbow to the ledge. The Archon knelt down next to the crack, smelling chemical sealant. He pressed a hand against the flat surface above the crack and pushed firmly.
The bottom corner peeled forward, letting in more light and breaking off little bits of dried sealant. David froze, waiting for a reaction from the other side, but no sounds or movements resulted so he pressed on, working his way up the panel and finding the hard points. With proper leverage he snapped each one loose, allowing the panel to swing forward enough that he could slip through underneath.
The Archon slithered out into some type of maintenance area underneath a shelf. There were several indicator lights in the room, but otherwise it was dark. Having had his eyes already adjusted to the diminished light it appeared well lit with sufficient floor space for extra-collegiate maneuvers if you were willing to crawl this far in.
David stood up, brushed himself off, then knelt back down to inspect the panel he’d popped loose. As his nose as told him, it had been recently resealed with the adhesive and fastening pins…which he’d managed to pry loose and were now sticking out the back side of the panel and keeping it slightly ajar.
Looking around as best he could in the dim lights that stood out like colored stars, he got the feeling that he’d worked his way into a machinist’s closet that doubled as a computer core for the building. There was one door to the left, which he gently brushed the handle of and by which determined it was locked…then his nose started to pick up another scent, one that was familiar.
He dropped back down to the floor and started feeling his way across the soft carpet, finding yet another reason why the love birds might have found their way in here. As the smell got stronger his hand brushed across a charred section of the floor, barely larger than the face of the watch David wore, but by the feel and smell of it he knew it was a plasma burn, one that’d probably been stamped out as soon as it’d hit.
He put his nose down to it, also noting the smell of cleaning fluid, as if the carpet had recently been shampooed. If the two students had come through the ghost region of the building and into this secluded hideaway, been discovered and shot on sight, then there was probably a measure of blood on the carpet that had to be washed out, no matter how much their wounds would have been cauterized on contact.
David had seen and smelled enough, and with the door locked couldn’t go any further without getting blunt with whatever might be on the other side…and if he was going to do that he’d need his armor if plasma pistols were floating around.
He pried up the panel and slid back through, then pulled it closed as much as possible, with the adhesive sealing catching more than he’d hoped it would. The tiny crack of light was almost invisible, but he figured that was because his eyes had adjusted to the lights in the closet. Hoping the panel would avoid scrutiny before he could get back, David climbed up in the dark to the platform and walked his way across, then came around the ‘L’ cautiously listening for sounds of contact before poking his head around the corner.
The girl was there, leaning against the wall and looking at her phone, and from the light it produced along with the bits coming in through the foliage on the other side he could see she was crying.
“All clear?” he whispered.
She jerked at the sound of his voice, then slumped back against the wall dejectedly as she swiped away the tears. “Yes.”
David walked out and over to her, which was when he noticed the strap on her shoulder was broken.
“You heard?”
“No I didn’t,” he said, frowning. “What did he do?”
“More than I wanted,” she said, sniffling at a tear-induced runny nose. “How could you not hear?”
“I was exploring the architecture. Are you hurt?”
“Well, he was exploring my architecture and wasn’t too gentle about it. Sorry, but I’m not in the mood anym
ore. Maybe another day.”
David caught her head in his right hand and kissed her on the forehead. “Would you like me to walk you back to your dorm?”
“Just walk?” she asked skittishly.
“Just walk,” he promised.
“Yeah, sure…why not,” she said, putting her phone away and grabbing his hand. A step toward the path she stopped and looked up at him. “Wait, what about your girl?”
“Let me worry about that,” David said, nudging her forward. She led him along the short trail between wall and shrubbery and out into the light by the restrooms, then dragged him by the hand across the room, down the stairs, and out into the night air. He matched her pace, which slowed once they were outside, and escorted her back to her dorm…then called for pickup and headed back to the spaceport where he put out a call for two other members of Green Team to join him in Phoenix.
5
May 20, 2405
Solar System
Earth
With the stealthed mantis hovering above the cloud layer over Manning College in the moonlight at 3 am, invisible to both radar and prying eyes below, David watched Nathan-937 and Assad-501 step off the deployed boarding ramp and drop down through the clouds. He waited a moment, seeing their ID tags continuing downward on his HUD, then he walked off the edge and fell through the water vapor, emerging on the much darker underside and tapping the chest controls of his jump pack to slow his descent.
The other two Archons bottomed out below him in tandem then walked apart to give him room to land, coming down gently on the rooftop of the college’s loading dock on the back side of the cafeteria complex. The three of them spread out and knelt down, with Nathan crawling up towards the door side edge where he could keep watch.
Then they waited, silently, for the better part of half an hour before a pair of semi-trailers rolled into the parking lot and the garage door opened, retracting up into the ceiling to allow them inside. Nathan gave a quick hand gesture behind him and the other two Archons moved up with David crawling to the right and positioning himself behind the wireless security camera covering the parking lot.
