Authors: Max Feinstein
Now, at this very moment, it was no longer a door, but a barrier between the two different worlds he was living in. His heart jumped and fear overtook the veteran pilot’s mind as those worlds collided when the door’s internal face grew transparent to reveal a woman in a
Naval dress uniform standing on the other side. He could even see the amused smirk on her face as she waited for a response.
“
Commander Tiari Okawa at the door for Mister Telwin,” announced the apartment’s HAS in a gentle feminine voice.
Like most other habitat assistance systems, the Telwin family HAS monitored everything within the household from climate control to food within the refrigeration unit and even the mood of each family resident. In addition to monitoring everything within the apartment, the system also assisted with most aspects of daily living, such as food preparation, maidbot control, and even answering the door. Unlike those other similar systems, however, the Telwin HAS was linked to the entire Telcore military network. This allowed it to scan and identify almost any person that approached the residence
through the use of biometric scans and even DNA profiles and voice prints. The last only took place if the doorbell was rung and query answered.
Even as Styker watched the door,
Commander Okawa’s military profile and ID picture appeared beside her head on the inside facing portion of the door, almost at the same time that HAS announced her presence. He took a second to gather himself after the small shock of seeing Tiari and slowly pushed away from Miranda. Turning his graze towards Chloe, still in his arms, and Nathan still standing there to his left, Styker could feel the mood sink again.
He
gently handed Chloe over to her mother and moved to stand in front of Nathan. It was amazing how much the boy had grown over the past year. He was also almost as tall as his father and yet he was still only in the beginning of his spurt. Styker let out a smile as he thought about the kind of man his son was becoming and ran his hand through the boy’s shaggy hair.
“Let the
Commander in, HAS,” Styker heard his wife say as she turned away and started to walk towards the front door. “We can’t be rude now, can we?”
Miranda’s voice changed to a somewhat cooler tone with that last sentence. She had met Tiari only once before at a naval dinner party held for all officers and let her dislike of
the commander be known from that moment one. It was probably something in her woman’s intuition, Styker told himself as he tried to keep his heart from jumping out of his chest at the thought of those two women meeting each other again.
Instead he focused on his son and rested one hand on Nathan’s shoulder as the boy looked up at him
, “I know you’re worried Nathan, but I’ll be back soon. We’ll take that vacation to the Kalawik Mountains just like we planned.”
The boy nodded, but said nothing
, “you be good and listen to mom, alright? Even though you’re the man of the house now, she’s still the boss like always, right?”
Styker laughed and watched a smile finally grace Nathan’s lips as the young one relaxed a little bit. Wrapping his arm around the boy’s shoulders, Styker smiled as he led him towards the entrance hallway where the others were waiting for them. He could hear the conversation between his wife and Tiari getting clearer with each step. Tiari was praising Chloe about how big she was getting
since the last time she had seen pictures of her. Pictures that Styker had shown her while they both were away on deployment.
He heard his daughter laugh in reply to something and knew that she was having fun meeting one of her father’s friends, which bothered him for reasons he couldn’t understand. Finally he rounded the corner and saw her standing there. His heart skipped a beat, as if he was seeing this woman for the first time, and he tried to control himself. Even after seeing her for years, Styker was still enthralled by her beauty and presence. She had the same soft oriental features as her ancestors, with a smooth roundish face and prominent cheekbones. These features were showcased even more now that her shoulder length black hair was pulled tightly back into a short ponytail. It still amazed him that such a beautiful
and innocent appearance contrasted the passion, desire, and fire that was her spirit.
“He
y there hotshot, ready to go?” Tiari called out to him with quick mischievous smirk meant just for him, which Styker hoped was witnessed just by him.
“Yeah, just have to get my bag
,” he replied and turned towards a sound coming from behind him.
The sound was the steps of their
servbot walking towards them. It stepped forward and extended a soft metallic hand with a duffle bag hanging from it.
“Your bag, sir
,” the humanoid robot said as it came to a stop. “I do hope you keep safe and come back soon.”
“Thank you Eddie, I will,
” Styker replied to the EDI-9 servbot with a nod and smile as he reached over to take the bag from Eddie’s hand.
With bag in hand Styker looked upon his family. For some reason the leaving part felt different this time. He felt as if he had to memorize all of their faces because he would never see them again. The thought scared him to his core, but he pushed it out of his mind as quickly as it had emerged. It was probably just the stress and guilt he was going through at the moment
that was messing with his feelings, Styker explained to himself.
He gave his family another big smile and brought them in for a big family hug. He kissed the top of Nathan’s head, knowing the boy would be embarrassed by the affection in the presence of a stranger. After Nathan he kissed his daughter’s cheeks and told her that he loved her one last time before his departure. Finally he looked into his wife’s eyes and leaned in to kiss the side of her lips softly.
“I’ll see you all very soon,” Styker stated as he gripped his bag a little tighter and followed Tiari out the door, feeling the eyes of his family members watching him leave.
Tiari and him walked the short distance to the gravlift in silence and Styker heard the soft
hiss
sound as the door to his apartment slid closed behind them. His heart beat faster as Tiari called up the lift and they waited for the doors to open. He could feel her moving closer and closer with every passing second, knowing that she was toying with him, just like she had been from the moment she had shown up at his door moments ago.
Styker almost jumped as he felt her petite hand slide up his back seductively. She knew that he wanted her and inside he didn’t deny that, but he was only steps away from his home and family. That might not have meant anything to her, but him it was a line he dared not cross. Her fingers suddenly changed direction
on him and descended towards his lower half. Only the sound of the lift saved him at the moment as the doors quickly slid open in front of them. Thankfully, however, no one was inside to witness them and Styker made his way into the enclosed space, with Tiari’s hand pushing him towards the rear wall of the lift.
He turned around quickly and watched Tiari give him another of her special grins as she looked back into his eyes. She slowly reached behind her and hit the control pad to start their ascent to the rooftop
aerocar parking structure.
“You should have warned me that you were going to…”
he never got the chance to finish his thought as the lift doors sealed on them and Tiari jumped into his arms with what sounded like an animal growl escaping her lips. With that, for reasons he couldn’t explain, all of Styker’s worries and guilt disappeared.
X
ander Wietzhausen made a gesture to rub his eyes before gently resting his elbows on the Selna-wood office table in front of him. Leaning in just a little closer to the image floating above his desk, he studied it again for a second before waving his right hand in front of him just once and causing the image to vanish instantly, only to be replaced with another. This one, unlike the other, was actually a freeze-frame from a compilation of various security camera feeds. Xander researched out towards the image and touched the holographic projection dead center with his fingers.
With the input received the video file began to play in front of him.
It started off with a shot looking down on a busy well-lit street. By the location tag in the left hand corner, Xander knew it was taken in Giesteseite, one of the more prominent districts of Inselstadt, located on an island adjacent to the main one. Dozens of aerocars, aeromobiles, or simply aeros, as they were starting to be called now, passed by overhead or descended into the city canyon to park, before Xander saw the victim almost stumble out of a bar. From the moment he exited the bar the man was surrounded in a green hue by the computer. The man took a quick look in both sidewalk directions before turning into the walking crowd. He proceeded to walk at the same pace as everyone else, but Xander noticed something different about him. All the small mannerisms the man was exhibiting seemed to be suspicious in nature, at least to Xander’s highly trained mind.
It only took a few moments for the man to walk beyond the vision of the wide angle camera and so the image almost seamlessly switched another camera further up the screen
. At this angle there were even more people present on the street, enjoying the wonderful island weather, making Xander glad that the system had tagged the victim in green, making him easier to follow in the expanding crowd. In a crowd of people all moving in the same direction it was easy to pick out certain anomalies. Anomalies such as individuals moving in the opposite direction and breaking up the nature flow. Out of all of these people, two were the most curious. They were both actually pushing people out of the way as they positioned themselves, while constantly looking in each other’s direction. Not only that, but both were the only ones wearing caps and sunvisors at 2200 hours.
Having already seen the video in its entirety, Xander could now see how both made a perfect beeline for the man covered in green. Within seconds all three of them converged and the victim stumbled as he was bumped by both of the others, just like some of the other people that had been pushed aside ahead of him. Unlike those previous ones, however, the green hued man took two steps forward before collapsing
face down in the middle of the sidewalk. If the speakers had been turned on the sound of people screaming for help would have been heard throughout the office and Xander watched as a group of bystanders formed a circle around the fallen man, trying to render him assistance.
Xander had already
read the police forensics reports and therefore knew that none of those helpful strangers could have done a thing for that victim. Elfonso Capratti had been dead the second he hit the sidewalk with massive neural tissue and myocardium degeneration that had rapidly progressed to multi-organ failure. Even with all this damage, the report had stated that Elfonso could have been saved if his brain had remained intact. Alas luck was not with the victim this time; whatever had caused the tissue death had completely ravaged the man’s brain, shattering all hope of him surviving the incident.
Intuition and previous job experience made Xander guess that a black market, short half-life
nanotoxin was probably the culprit in this crime. These customized synthetic toxins were becoming more popular and easily obtainable with the unlawful elements of society. Unlike most other methods of murder, these toxins were almost impossible to detect and trace to a source of origin because of the speed and way they broke down within the intended target. Internal damage was permanent within minutes of inoculation and after that the toxin was design to spontaneously degenerate into natural organic trace elements. As such, the laboratory scanners running the investigative toxicology screens had no way of differentiating the toxin byproducts with a victim’s regular chemical makeup.
In an unlucky twist of fate, though, Elfonso’s murder had turned into an opportunity for Xander. Elfonso had been a security officer at Express TransCo
and with his demise a job opening had appeared for Xander. With his meticulously constructed resume and various recommendations, he had no trouble landing the job at one of the largest transportations companies within the Federation. It also helped that unlike Elfonso, Xander’s skillsets included not only security operations, but also investigative work. Technically speaking none of that was far from the truth, however.
Outward appearance wise, Xander Wietzhausen seemed to be
just an average man in all respects. He was of an average height, just shy of two meters, with an average build, short light brown hair, and most importantly an unremarkable face. In actuality he seemed to be an assembly of facial features akin to a majority of the population, making him almost instantly forgettable. Reality couldn’t have been farther from the truth in Xander’s case, however, as he was as far away from average as possible. Every one of his traits had been engineered or cultivated since his youth for a specific purpose. That purpose being to infiltrate any known group or organization and become the best undercover operative money could create.
These creators and financiers were the SIS. The Secret Investigate Service was an agency that operated out of the typical constraining laws and regulations of the Federal government. Like certain clandestine agencies of centuries past they did everything in their power to protect the United Planets Federation and their citizens, even if some of those methods were not entirely legal or government sanctioned. It was run
by men and women that cared about the Federation down to their cores and were all volunteers to the cause. These patriots put their lives on the line for the freedom and safety of each and every citizen within the UPF. Also, operating outside of the government’s realm allowed the Premier and all other state officials to disavow any knowledge of the SIS’s operations, be it successes or failures.
Another perk of working mostly in the covert was the la
ck of government oversight, at least for the time being, allowing the Service to take on any mission they deemed important. This was the real reason why Xander was working at Express TransCo. The company was having increasing trouble with pirate raids against their convoys and this worried the SIS tremendously as Express TransCo was a primary transport contractor for the UPF military forces. This role meant that certain convoys carried sensitive or even classified weapons and components. Not only that, but the interception and theft of general military weapons systems were a major threat to Federation security. There were already increasing reports of UPF army battle rifles getting into the hands of terrorist organizations, as well as regular street gangs. Of course the military denied these reports, insisting that all of their weapons and equipment was accounted for.
All the same, the government had sent different investigatory agencies to dig through Express TransCo and fully look into the matter of security leaks within the company. After months of intensive investigations these agencies resolved that the company was not at fault and that the pirates must be getting their information through over methods. This result was accepted by the majority of elected officials and military heads, but not in the least by the SIS. The Secret Investigate Service wholeheartedly believed that Express TransCo had been infiltrated and was unknowingly contributing to these destructive acts of theft. They also believed that the only way to smoke out the culprit was to send someone into the belly of the beast on an undercover operation. Xand
er had been selected for this specific operation because of his training, instinct, and his ability to think outside the box in order to accomplish his mission.
It was this ability to take in information and analyze it in a difference manner that pushed him to volunteer for the Elfonso case. To Xand
er it was a little strange that just a day after a dramatic pirate raid against another military convoy, one of Express TransCo’s top security officers is targeted for an assassination. Once he got the job Xander had requested to look over Elfonso’s murder in his spare time, when he wasn’t investigating the convoy attack. To the company it just seemed that Xander was overly eager to prove himself and so they allowed him to conduct the side investigation while at the same time the case was getting cold on the local police side.
Through his persistent digging and a nagging intuition Xand
er had discovered that Elfonso’s case was the key to everything going on inside Express TransCo. After long days and tiresome nights of finding nothing substantial, the SIS agent had the idea of checking previous pirate convoy attacks against other unsolved murders in the surrounding area. To his pleasant surprise a correlation between military convoy attacks and the death of a security team member came to fruition. Almost like clockwork there was a suspicious murder or disappearance of a TransCo security officer exactly one day after the destruction of a military convoy. It was not simply after any of these convoy attacks, however, these deaths only occurred after pirate raids against convoys making deliveries to military locations in the outer colonies or sectors, such as the Fringe Sector.
This discovery still didn’t tell Xander or the SIS about who was in charge of this operation or what their overall objective was, but was a good start. If he could figure out more details about Elfonso’s
, Xander surmised, it might in turn lead him to those responsible for his death. Through them he could gather more information and hopefully come closer to bringing those responsible to justice.
It was to this end that Xand
er was carefully examining the footage of Elfonso’s death. Inside he knew that there was something important that he could gleam from the compiled video. Like other great investigators before him, he followed his gut whenever possible and it had not yet steered him wrong.
“What
, you haven’t solved that one already, Grissom?” laughed out one of his current coworkers as she walked by behind him and addressed him by his cover last name.
“Give me another day
,” Xander replied only half-jokingly without looking back at her.
With renewed vigor he went back to the image before him, that now showed a paramedical team descending into the frame from above. Knowing that there was nothing of importance
here Xander made his hand into a claw configuration with the fingers spread out and turned it slowly counterclockwise, watching as the video start to quickly rewind back. He stopped it just as the two assassins appeared at the edge of the image and raised his other hand towards the projection in front of him. Together he spread both hands and witnessed the image enlarge above his desk until the entire surface was covered. Everything expanded before him in all three dimensions, allowing him to monitor everything more closely.
Pushing his chair back just a little, Xander studied the large projection over his desk for a moment. He knew that he would need to look at it from different angles so he slowly started to rotate the entire image with his hand
. Most of the street was covered by government multiple security cameras, as were almost all over streets. The portions missed were reinforced with feeds from other cameras lining the sidewalk, such as those from various stores and banks. The quality of footage from these cams was not of the highest sort, but it was more than enough to identify anyone caught on them beyond any doubt.
As he continued to rotate the image almost 180 degrees, something strange started to happen. Whenever a camera would come close to looking
straight on in the direction of the two individuals approaching Elfonso, it would flare into static or white. This only happened, however, when either of the two lifted their heads to look up, supposedly at their target. At this find Xander couldn’t help by shake his head and smile a little in admiration. This piece of intel was invaluable to him. Even though he still didn’t have the identity of either assassin, he had found out something very important about them. Whoever these two were, they were professionals and substantially equipped. Blinders, as everyone called the camera disruption technology, were expensive and very hard to procure. The sale of this technology was strictly monitored and regulated, so Xander made a mental note to contact SIS and see if they couldn’t locate a black market dealer for the tech, as there wouldn’t be very many people selling it and even fewer purchasing.
Xander was about to
finish the playback review when his trained eyes spotted something that he had missed before on the smaller image. It was a hand gesture made by Elfonso just before the two assassins nudged up against him on the sidewalk. Previously it had looked like he was simply clutching at his chest as the toxin entered his system and caused a cardiac arrest, but that had been an error in assumption. Why would Elfonso react to the effects of a toxin before it had even entered his system, Xander questioned himself as he watched. The obvious answer was that he wouldn’t have and so the gesture must have meant something entirely different.