“You can count on it!” Dah echoed.
Chapter Twelve
Dah ran up the ramp into the main hold. “Amber, are we all green?”
“Yes, sir,” she responded to his voice. “All pre-flight checks have been run and the engines are hot.”
“Excellent!” Dah shouted, sitting down in the pilot’s seat and bringing up the controls. “Let’s get out of here!”
He watched the Splitter burst out of the force field heading for space. He wasn’t far behind. Within the hour, he was picking up his wife and dropping down into Seryys’ atmosphere. Flying over Seryys was a surreal experience for Bri as she hadn’t seen the city since it had been evacuated. It was night over the city and she could see hundreds if not thousands of fires still burning in the streets, in the buildings, seemingly everywhere.
They passed through a thick cloud of smoke that was originating from the Red Light District. When they emerged from the cloud, Bri looked down and saw one of the giant Reapers. She gasped at the sight of it.
“Is that?”
“Yep,” he said grimly. “That’s a particularly big one.”
“Are there any ones bigger than that?”
“I saw one that had Puar wrapped up in its hand not too long ago,” he answered.
“By the Founders!” she whispered. “Are you sure we’ll be safe at your brother’s?”
“Yeah, he’s stepped up security and doubled measures since the last—er, never mind.”
“What do you mean ‘never mind?’ Did something happen?”
“No.” he lied, then lowered his eyes. “Yes. A Reaper got past his security and attacked him. Cut him up pretty good, too.”
“That’s terrible! Is he okay?”
“Yeah, he’s fine. It’s just—well… we’re not identical anymore.”
After a short ride at top speed, he was entering the area above Tander’s estate. He was given clearance to land as he made his way further into the complex, he saw some new things. Things like laser canon turrets mounted around the perimeter at twenty-foot intervals, the height of the walls around the complex had been increased by ten, maybe fifteen feet, the number of guards was increased tenfold and there was electrified razor wire topping the walls all around.
“I guess it only takes once,” Dah said, half-jokingly, half seriously.
“I guess…” she said distantly. “It looks like a military compound.”
“I think it’s safe to say we’re in a safe place,” Dah remarked as the landed. His brother was standing outside waiting for them, wearing one of his fine suits and gently whirling wine around in a glass. Even as they walked down the ramp, they could spot the artificial eye and the deep scars. Something about the scars immediately struck Dah as odd, but he couldn’t quite put his finger on it. He pushed it back in his mind and focused on enjoying his twin brother’s company.
Tander escorted his brother and sister-in-law to the study where a roaring fire warmed the immediate area and cast dancing shadows against the far wall. Tander sat and motioned for his guests to sit on love seat across from his throne-like chair. Pictures of Dahs long dead adorned the walls in the lavishly decorated room.
“You’ve done something different with your study,” Tandy remarked.
“Yeah, remodeled the whole thing with the money I got from Seryys Combat for the stealth technology. I wanted to go with an old-world style study. I think it’s cozy, what do you think?”
“I like it,” Bri said. “It’s classy.”
The conversation was lost to Tandy as he examined the scars on his brother’s face. The detective in him took over. He could scarcely register that a conversation was going on. The scars ran vertically down his face, through his eye and through his upper and lower lips. That was indicative a downward rake, but there were four individual scars. That would make sense since a Reaper has four fingers, but… one of those fingers was a thumb. It seemed unlikely, unless the Reaper was close enough to palm Tander’s face, that it would have left a thumbnail scar as well. But if that were the case, the scars would be much, much deeper and these were mostly surface scars. If he had to guess what kind of claw marks those were, he would’ve said they came from a Vyysarri... which made no sense!
“What do you think, Tandy?”
“Huh?” Tandy shook his head and left his reverie. “I’m sorry. What were you talking about?”
“Oops, caught someone daydreaming!” Tander laughed. “Bri and I were talking about Seryys City and how bad it’s gotten.”
“Oh! Yeah, it’s a total loss. It’ll be years before we can repopulate it. With the Reapers and Roamers overrunning the city, it’ll take a full-on military operation to clear the city out. It will not be a clean op.”
“That’s unfortunate,” Tander said, grimacing. He most certainly didn’t want to ruin the greatest, most populated city in all of Seryys Space, but with the war winding down, he needed to boost his sales and what good was a Ti’tan’lium dealer if ships weren’t blowing up? “The property damage alone is enough to make me weep.”
“Leave it to you to worry about property and land costs in a time like this,” Tandy said dryly.
“Old habits…” Tander offered with a shrug.
“So, I understand you had some excitement recently,” Bri changed the subject.
Tander scoffed. “You could say that.”
“How did a Reaper get into your compound?” Tandy pressed without trying to be suspicious. “This place is a bunker!”
“That’s a good question,” Tander responded. “I still don’t really know, but as you can see, I’ve stepped it up a few notches since then—not to mention firing the whole security staff and rehiring new a one.”
“I thought I didn’t recognize the people standing guard and the canon emplacements were kind of hard to miss,” Tandy remarked. “How’d it go down?”
“I was on the north corridor, you know, the one closest to the perimeter wall?”
“Yeah, I know the hall.”
“Good, I was strolling down the corridor where it becomes open to the outside before entering the west wing library. I heard this awful scraping sound that I couldn’t quite place. That’s when I heard the screeching sound it made. I was able to pinpoint it almost immediately. Imagine my shock when I found the thing standing on top of the wall right by me! I instantly ducked down behind the short wall of the corridor and fumbled for my radio. My hands were shaking so bad that I dropped the radio and the sound drew the monster’s attention.
“When I could hear the thing breathing just on the other side of the wall, I panicked and ran as fast as my legs could carry me! It was only a hundred feet to the library entrance and I thought I could make it. About twenty feet short of the doors, I was knocked off my feet and through the doors. I scrambled to my feet and moved to push the doors closed, but before I could get both shut, a long, clawed hand reached in and did this,” he pointed to the long scars.
“I jerked away and the thing blasted through the doors. I had to think fast, there were two swords above the fireplace mantle and I bolted for them all the while throwing whatever I could get my hands on at the beast. We made it to the mantle at the same time and I grabbed for the sword. Now, you know that I was sword play champion in school, so I whipped the blade around and removed its hand from its arm. It reeled back and let out another ear-piercing screech. That’s when my security showed up and started shooting the thing. While it was distracted, I came up behind it and ran the thing through with the sword. It struggled for quite a while, but eventually it lost enough blood that if fell over dead.
“The library’s been sealed up since.”
“You killed a Reaper single-handedly?” Bri gasped.
“Well, not completely on my own, but I did deliver the final blow.”
“That’s incredible!”
“Whatever!” Tandy scoffed with jealousy. “I’ve killed multiple Reapers on my own!”
“Yeah,” Bri responded unimpressed, “but y
ou have military training. Tander here is a billionaire, a playboy.”
“What can I say?” Tander chuckled awkwardly. “I am not a man with whom to be trifled. Let that be a lesson to you.”
The smile that was on Tandy’s face vanished immediately. He’d heard that phrase before, same intonation and everything, only the voice had been distorted, and obviously so. He remembered it like it was yesterday!
“It was a Senator’s aide de camp, a low level Senator from an outlying colony in the Barmar Sector. We never used names, but he’s onto you and your operation.” He remembered saying to Warthol after he shot both Brix and Kay. At the time he didn’t really think about it, but now it did seem somewhat strange that Warthol never shot him. Maybe Warthol knew that hurting his friends would be a better way of getting information. He was grasping at straws, trying to find any evidence real or imagined to take him away from the dark path he was following.
“There, Captain. See? They can be reasonable,” Warthol had said. “Guard, take their gear and store it. Then take them to a holding cell.” He had pointed at another. “You take Sibrex back to his room and hook him back up.”
“What about my wounded?” Tandy had demanded. He had been scared for his friends, but also very angry at the fact that the jerk off chose to hurt his friends instead of him! “Are you gonna patch them up?”
“No,” the masked man had said plainly. “They may die. Then again, they may not. If they do, their deaths are on your hands, Captain Dah.” Though the voice was off, the intonation was very close to that of his brother’s. He knew it well, especially because he and his brother had the same voice. “I am not a man with whom to be trifled. Let this be a lesson to you.”
“You bastard!” He had growled, lunging at the man. The next thing he remembered was a searing pain in the back of his head and then waking up on the floor of the brig.
“Tandy?” Tander called out. “Are you okay? You look like you’ve seen a ghost!”
“Y-yeah,” Tandy said, shaking his head, then lied, saying, “I’m fine, just had a thought about something Khai has asked me to do.”
“Oh yeah?” Tander asked. “Like what?”
“Oh… just—official business stuff I can’t talk about,” Tandy covered. “That’s all.”
“Hmm,” Tander hummed, not convinced. Tandy knew his brother well enough to know that his cranks were turning. Tandy faked a smile.
“So, did you keep the Reaper as a trophy? Is it stuffed somewhere in a corridor poised to scare the crap out of me when I wander the halls?”
Tander laughed a full-bellied laugh. “No! But I should have! That would have been priceless! I had it shipped out into the middle of the desert. Damn thing bled out all over the interior of my shuttle!”
“That sucks,” Tandy said. “I know how you like things to be clean.”
After dinner and drinks, Tandy and Bri retired to one of the many guest rooms. He couldn’t sleep; too many variables were running through his head. Every now and then, he would quiet his mind for a few seconds just to listen his beautiful wife breathe. He loved her so. He was afraid of doing anything about his hunch for he was sure that if he was caught snooping around, and Tander really was Warthol, Bri would be at the top of that leverage list.
It was two in the morning when he decided it was time to do something about this, if nothing else than to clear his brother’s name. While Bri slumbered, Tandy slipped out of bed and got dressed. Fortunately, his duffle bag still had the stuff from his fun-filled trip to Jewel of Oasis. His first stop would be the library, then Tander’s shuttle. If both places checked out, he’d hack Tander’s computer and see what he’d been up to. The corridor was dark, as well as the rest of the estate. Only the light of twin moons illuminated his way. As he made it to the end of the corridor, he pulled out his specs and set them to night vision. Suddenly, the whole room ahead of him was cast in black, white, and shades of gray, however, crystal clear.
He navigated his way through the labyrinth of corridors, staterooms, living rooms and finally made it to the library. The whole area was cordoned off with yellow caution tape. Tandy ducked under the tape and quietly entered the library. A quick assessment showed definite signs of a struggle. Chairs, lamps, bookcases and tables were lying about in a haphazard fashion. Closer examination of the wall along which the fireplace sat had numerous bullet holes and pockmarks. One of the two swords above the mantle was missing. There was evidence of blood spurt over the carpet and walls where Tandy claimed to have cut the monster’s hand off.
Six feet to his left, toward the doors that led to the north corridor was a large stain on the carpet. The color and consistency was conducive to that of a Reaper lying there and bleeding out. There were drag marks indicating that the Reaper was removed, but that didn’t mean much more than his people picked the Reaper up and transported it to the shuttle. The only part of Tander’s story that didn’t make any sense was the part of him sneaking up on the thing and stabbing it in the back while his forces were firing at it from the opposite side. Surely Tander would have been hit, right? He might have gotten lucky and been missed but there were a lot rounds in the wall behind him. Maybe if the security team was spraying wildly… maybe.
The sword was lying on a table next to the blood stain and it was still covered in purple blood. Something else that struck him as odd was that fact that all this was still here. Tander was not the type of person to let uncleanliness last for such a long time. It was almost as if he was keeping it this way to prove that that’s how it went down. Upon closer inspection of the sword, he spotted chucks of what he could only guess was coagulated blood on the sword. If it were a Seryysan or any other mammal, he would have thought that the victim was already dead when the sword was used, but he had no idea about the Reapers. Maybe it coagulated moments after touching air; he just couldn’t make a fair assessment without knowing the properties of Reaper blood.
The doors from the north corridor were in bad shape, indicative of a forceful entry. The door frame on the west side was splintered and destroyed utterly. The door lay on the floor several feet from the entrance with part of the doorframe still attached to it. Large claw marks gouged the wood of the door in sets of three. That didn’t bode well for Tander’s facial scars.
Once he was convinced that he’d seen everything he needed to see in the library, he moved to the hangar. Though on the opposite side of the estate, he made it quickly and quietly without drawing the attention of any guards. The other thing he noticed was how quiet it was, the canons were silent. Not a single Reaper came in the whole time he skirted the wall. That was purely circumstantial evidence, though; hardly worthy of condemning his brother. Doubt and conflicting emotions vied for dominance in his head and heart. He so desperately wanted his brother to be innocent of his suspicions, but there was a lot of evidence pointing right at him.
The hangar was open. Tandy waltzed right in and found the only shuttle large enough to transport a Reaper. Again, he was surprised that the thing was still a mess; so unlike his brother, Mister Clean-freak. With the aid of his specs, he was able to get an age on the blood. That was a very interesting bit of information. According to the specs’ analysis, the blood had two dates stamped to it, as if the Reaper had been into the shuttle twice. One dried pool of blood was two days older than the other. Also, the drag marks where the beast was brought in and taken out also had corresponding date stamps as if the thing was dragged in, then out, then in again, then out again. That was peculiar, but still not condemning. It was possible that they loaded it into the shuttle and took it out because they needed the shuttle, then loaded it back in and took it away a few days later.
As much as he hated to admit it, he’d have to hack his brother’s database and start digging through things like financials and messages. The first place to start would be his brother’s office, so he stuck to the shadows, avoiding security patrols and scaled the wall to the window outside Tander’s office. Using a police-issue lock cracker, he ov
errode the alarm and the locking mechanism on window. He slid it open and slipped inside, closing both the window and the curtains behind him.
His desk was neat and organized. A bin where to-do items were piled neatly within sat on the desk next to one of four computer monitors, while sensitive stuff was filed away in the locked cabinet along the far wall. He attached a small device to the side of Tander’s computer and turned both the device and the computer on. While the computer booted up, the device rewrote the security protocols allowing Tandy to act as the administrator. The next two hours were spent going through every message, every transaction and to his overwhelming frustration—and relief, he had found nothing incriminating hidden away.
He erased his tracks and powered down the computer. He sat in his brother’s chair for moment wondering what his next move was when his attention was drawn to a display case with multiple antique guns. He smiled and walked over to them to examine them closely. One gun in particular he recognized and his heart broke. It was hard to forget a gun that was pointed at his face only a few weeks ago. He noticed a small etching on it, a bird of prey found on only one planet in the Seryys System, Seryys IV. That bird of prey was a Warthol! When he removed the gun, he heard a faint click and a soft rumble. A bookcase on the left side of the gun case slid aside to reveal a small room. At the center of the small room was an all-glass display case with an outfit inside under a single light. Tandy recognized it immediately as Warthol’s getup from their encounter. Tandy’s eyes began to water up; his brother—his flesh and blood—was a war criminal responsible for the deaths of thousands of Seryysans and the destruction millions of credits in military assets.
He left the room of broken hearts and placed the gun back in its spot. The bookcase slid back into place. To his horror, another gun of interesting design caught his eye. He supposed it wasn’t the gun but the etching on it –a lizard with gnarly fangs- that caught his eye. He was almost too scared to pick it up, but sick fascination compelled him! He removed the gun from its spot and the same click and rumble sounded from a bookcase on the other side of the gun case. This room was identical to the last except that the outfit in the glass case was an old Vyysarri warrior outfit complete with a very, very convincing, aged Vyysarri prosthetic mask with four puncture wounds in the forehead.
The Seryys Chronicles: Steel Alliance Page 17
