Chapter 1: Chapter 6: Scene of the Crime

“Watch out!” Dash said and cringed as Tinker—Wesley cradled in its arms—bumped the young man’s head against the door frame.

“It’s not my fault. The feedback delay is inconsistent,” Gaius said. He waved his gloved hands and queued up commands. “It’ll be a miracle if the bot recovers from this.” 

“Tinker will be fine. These older models don’t have the fancy new tech that’s easy to break,” Dash said. A subtle vibration shook the floor. He looked upward. Dust fell from the ceiling as one of the station’s trams passed through the tunnel a level above them. Bored through the rock like an insect hive, the tunnels connected the dockyards, living quarters, and mining operations. If Gaius could get the bot out of the room, they might be able to catch the next one back to their bay before Kashara’s friends showed up.

“Try it again, dummy,” Gaius said to Tinker.

“Attempting maneuver,” Tinker said. Its shoulder lights flashed yellow, as an obnoxious beeping noise signaled its reverse motion. The bot rotated a few degrees, then stepped through the doorway. Wesley’s head and feet cleared the opening by mere centimeters.

“There we go. Just like my landing at Ren’dah. Remember that? Slipped right between those stuck bay doors,” Gaius said with a self-satisfied smirk as he shadowed the bot out of the suite.

“I do, unfortunately,” Dash said under his breath. He remembered how he’d gripped his seat and clenched his teeth in stifled panic as the overloaded engines fired above redline. The ship dove into the bay and settled heavily upon the deck. The dockworkers had observed the spectacle from their hiding spots along the bay’s perimeter, ashen-faced. “I thought you turned off those backup warnings.”

“I did. Root mode must’ve reset some of the config settings.”

Dash took point for their walk down the hallway. His eyes shifted between the numerous suite doors of the gently curved hallway. Their footsteps were light and muffled, save for the abnormally heavy plodding of the mechanic bot. He doubted anyone had wandered into the plaza below and heard the violent scuffle, but still wished the bot wasn’t so loud.

They reached the landing without issue, and he summoned the elevator. Once they made it to the ship, they’d be off the station as soon as they were cleared to launch. That was assuming no one found the two bodies in the suite first.

The elevator opened to an empty lobby. As they stepped into the deserted plaza, Dash observed the locked gate of the tunnel to the executive lounge. He wondered what sort of extravagant decor and amenities would’ve awaited the wealthy and their guests had the station not gone under. Probably more than most of the workers would accumulate in their lifetimes.

The tram platform was empty when they arrived. After a few tense minutes, one of the trams arrived. Dash stepped aboard first, feeling the eyes of the few riders upon him. They quickly lost interest and went back to their conversations or PDs. The tram passed through several platforms without incident. Nondescript rock tunnels were the only sights between the transfer stations. At their stop, Dash waited for a pair of inebriated Ghuptos to exit first. They stumbled forward on their stubby legs before Dash stepped onto the platform. The heavy footsteps of Tinker plodded after him.

The dockyard tram platform was the nicest of them all, sporting a ceiling of curved vid displays. They displayed a planetary night sky—a pair of distant half-moons and twinkling stars—to align with the local station daylight cycle. The Ghupto pair stood gawking at the sight. Dash slipped around them, wondering if they were so altered they believed it was real. The platform was deserted otherwise, same as the surrounding corridors.

Dash led them out of the platform and entered the dockyard commons. A few dozen sentients were visible up and down the wide corridor—lined with businesses and lodging. A cleaning bot crew scrubbed spilled bodily fluids off the deck outside the Ace of Terminus pub, where the ops crew had stormed off to earlier in the night. Nearby, a teenaged Human wearing a headset —and clearly up past her bedtime—clutched virtual flight controls in the midst of what appeared to a lively session of Galaxy Battles. Further down the commons, an older man clutching a half-empty bottle had an animated discussion with himself, whipping his clenched fist about as if giving an impassioned speech. Other civilians lumbered about, clearly altered. The sight was an emblematic snapshot of the current state of the galaxy—a plague of existential despair brought on by economic malaise. And if Dash didn’t get the crew out of there, it could very well be their fate too—if they weren’t thrown out an airlock first.

He skimmed the perimeter and paused at a roped off area of the commons. Inside were candles, mementos, and flowering plants. An Auturia memorial.

Then he spotted the shiny coating of the Auturia campaign medal.

He stopped, his body tensing. Buried memories clawed to the surface of his psyche. Flashes of death and despair flooded his mind. The fiery bits of the colony ship cutting across the sky. The roar of heavy weapons targeting the outpost, of rockets exploding, drones and bots tearing into flesh. Lifesigns dropped off the command hub in clusters as squads were cut down. He huddled, helpless, waiting to die—

Somehow, through some miracle of fate or divine intervention, he made it off of that beautiful, fertile deathtrap when hundreds of thousands of others didn’t. The Commonwealth used the “Incident” as leverage for the Reconciliation. After several years of preparations, official colonization by the HuCo began, a methodical effort to best sustain the local ecosystem while allowing colonists to thrive. All those people, walking atop dirt, grass, and rock forever stained with the blood of the fallen.

Dash could never bring himself to go back. As time went on, some unsettling urge had grown within him—an itch that flared up like a bad case of Auturian foot rot. He couldn’t explain it—maybe it was an attempt to find closure—but he never caved. Then someone or something split the planet in half like a Terminus mining bot cracking a rock.

All the fighting, all the dying, all for naught.

A commotion drew his attention. The older man gave up his one-sided conversation with himself in favor of a one-sided argument with the cleaning bot crew. Reminded of his precarious situation, Dash left the memorial and entered the tunnel to bay thirteen.

The thought of escape, and the lure of collapsing in his bunk propelled him forward despite his aching body. The tunnel curved sharply, the wavelike patterns in the rock formations from the drill rigs more pronounced. At the end, he stepped into bay thirteen and saw his home awaiting him. 

The Stardancer occupied the center of the three available berths in the bay. At over a hundred meters in length, the blocky rectangular hull stretched the boundaries for lightweight freighter shiplock standards. It stood three decks tall—flight operations on deck A, living on deck B, engineering and cargo holds on deck C. From the fat engines at the rear, the ship tapered to the primary cargo bay. At the very front, the hull parted in the middle—like some monstrous sea creature opening its mouth—to reveal a cavernous cargo hold. Inside, the ops crew stood with Terminus dockworkers and bots by the pallet of minerals specified in the contract. The ridiculous sight of six sentients and two bots quarreling over how to tie down a single pallet would’ve made Dash chuckle had the stakes not been life or death.

His eyes shifted to the large viewports around the lock. He breathed a sigh of relief when he saw the drone tug had detached from the hull, exposing the dull paint job. Somehow, the ship was dirtier than the station. The hull’s many repairs and repaintings made the Stardancer look like a combat bot returning from a tour of duty.

Once the loading team departed, the plan was to slip out of there. Gaius could have the ship flight ready in a matter of minutes. The shiplock was no obstacle. The docking mechanism didn’t physically lock ships in place; rather, it was simply a standardized connection point. A particle field would automatically seal any breach in the event a ship debarked unexpectedly. The challenge was flying through the docking channel before Terminus could close the giant blast doors.

Dash waited inside the mouth of the tunnel until Gaius and the bot caught up. “You make straight for the ship,” Dash said. “I’ll deal with the dockmaster.”

Gaius nodded to Wesley’s limp form in Tinker’s arms. “What’s our excuse for him?”

Dash removed the filtration mask and stuffed it into a waste container nearby. “Too much to drink at the pub, of course.”

“Jo, that tickles!” Wesley said, slitted eyes peeking at the lights overhead.

“Better get him aboard before he says something incriminating,” Dash said, and strode out of the tunnel, eyes covertly scanning the bay. He made it almost halfway before a pair of security officers approached him from behind. One of them barked, “Captain Anderton, we’ve been waiting for you. Come with us.”

---

In the abandoned executive tower of Terminus, the door to the abandoned suite opened. 

The three recovery agents burst inside, smooth yet lightning fast. They cleared the room with honed precision, sweeping their compact weapons from the room’s corners to its center. The green dots of their holosights settled on the first body, then the second.

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They holstered their weapons in underarm slings and retracted their breaching masks into jackets. Having hidden their state-of-the-art gear, they again resembled typical freighter crewmembers.

“What a Lorddamn mess,” Parr said.

“Pretty violent for a freighter crew,” Bloek said.

Cutter stood in the middle, silent and unmoving. His eyes traced over the room, then returned to the bodies. He noted the precise shot to the Manore’s temple. The woman’s face was frozen in disbelief, a gash in her neck. Near her head, a smashed headset sat on the floor. Blood slicked its cracked visor. Whoever was in that suite took out the muscle first then killed the contact in a vicious manner.

The pub had yielded actionable intel, as Cutter had predicted. The bartender caught sight of Bloek’s blade and readily spilled the details on his scheme with the guild.

Yet despite that, the agents still arrived too late.

Cutter crouched next to the woman. Kashara, according to the bartender. Her robust features left no doubt of her miner background. He touched the congealing blood, rubbing it between his fingertips. “They haven’t been dead long.”

“Given the timeline, the crew probably hasn't departed yet,” Bloek said.

“What’re we waiting for? Let’s hit the dock,” Parr said.

“Not before we sweep the room. We won’t get another chance once we leave,” Cutter said.

“What’s your vote, Bloek?”

“This isn’t a vote. It’s my call,” Cutter said. Parr’s beady eyes bore into him while Bloek avoided eye contact with either one. “We don’t know what the new crew looks like, or what ship is theirs. If they’re not gone already, they’ll be launching any minute after what happened here. The target knows someone is after him. He won’t be wandering around the dock until they leave. There’s a better chance we find a lead here than searching the docks.” He stepped around the bodies and cleaned his hand in the kitchenette. “You know the drill.”

Bloek unfurled a hand-sized portable scanner and began to sweep the room. Cutter watched Parr’s dulled reflection in kitchenette chiller. The stocky man stared a moment longer, then turned away. Muttering under his breath, he searched the bodies. 

Cutter took a slow lap, his steps light and eyes moving, as if recreating the violent encounter. The desk had shifted judging by the subtle streak marks in the dust on the floor. The violence had started there, a negotiation gone bad. As the larger threat, the Manore would’ve been neutralized first. But what of the headset? It was a new model. Could robbery have been a factor?

“I’m tired of playing detective,” Parr said, and ended his search. “Running into dead-ends. Chasing ghosts.”

“I’m not tired of the pay,” Bloek said. “I still say we should hold out for more once we finally get the kid.”

“The client isn’t the type of person you try to extort,” Cutter said. He stopped near the expansive window at the back of the suite and took in the view of the plaza below. Smudges marked the glass. Someone had pressed against it, retreating from a threat. 

“Scan’s done,” Bloek said, and put away his scanner. “We’ve got a nodestick and a couple of datapads. One of them looks like hackware to me, so a bot must’ve been in the room too.” 

“And that helps us how?” Parr said.

Cutter circled back toward the bodies. He noticed small packing strips and a fingertip-sized cylinder on the floor by the entertainment alcove, and bent down to examine them. “The target was here,” he said, tossing the cylinder to Bloek.

“This an injector cartridge?” Bloek asked.

Cutter nodded. “Somebody used a medkit.”

“So? They needed one after this bloodbath,” Parr said.

Cutter held out the spent cartridge. “Look again and tell me what you see.”

Parr took the cartridge from Bloek. An annoyed frown appeared on his face. “It’s an empty cartridge.”

“Read the fine print. Manufactured on Tavel. That’s in the Human Coalition Core, where the target was educated. The kid was in the room. That means he’ll be on one of the docked ships.”

“Then can we leave this dump and snoop around the docks now?” Parr said.

“Yes,” Cutter said, and stepped toward the door. He stopped as he passed the woman, eyes drawn to the smashed headset. He lifted it off the ground, careful to avoid touching the blood, and examined the shattered display.

“It still works,” Cutter said, and looked to Bloek. “Maybe it’ll have something useful.”

“I’ll see what I can get out of it when we get back to the ship,” said Bloek.

Cutter unfolded a small satchel and stuffed the headset inside. “Let’s move.”

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