by Sam Sea
"Well, are you blind as well as stupid? Didn’t I show you my badge already?”
Val took out a second and returned the glowing badge inside his extended hand again. “And you are right, I am that crazy ECI… Yes, the same one, the one that judged your grandfather eighty years ago, or have your family forgot about me? I am the one that actually carried out the sentencing as well."
"You are lying!”
"No, he butchered over 50 young girls before I ended catching up with him. Sick bastard… the things he did to them. If I could had killed him twice, I would had."
"You are lying!?"
"I guess the craziness runs inside the family. I am getting tired now, so you better shut up, or else you really won't make it out of this office.”
"You son-of-a…"
Val’s gun was again in his hand. He pressed the lever and the white foam sprayed her mouth…the foam filled her mouth and instantly paralyzed all the muscles in there so much so that saliva instead of words started to come out of it.
Then he took out his badge yet again.
"I, ECI Val, sentence you to 60 years on Pluk for the trafficking in the stolen goods, for paying another human being to commit a crime of a robbery and for obstructing ECI investigation."
He finally let go a long breath and turn around to see the footsteps he heard belong to Li’a.
Her gun was out, pointing at his feet, crazy determination inside her eyes. But all she said was, "You want us to take her?"
"Sure."
"What about the murder? Are you going to judge her for that too?"
"Possibly, but I need to get more proof. Right now, there is just not enough of it."
Madam Vilksy bubbled something incoherently.
"When her mouth returns to normal, in an hour or too, talk to her, see if she has something to say. She is to remain in your custody. And remember, you have my permission to use all the necessary force if someone comes and tries to set her free… Doesn’t matter who it is. Only the emperor himself can save her now."
Chapter 11 - Mikka’s Job
Mikka felt like she was ready. The little action she did with Wall and his crew at the pawnshop seemed to have certainly warmed her up.
"Silent, I have to go and do something. I want you to stay home and-"
"You mean you are going to go and kill someone," Silent interrupted her, and looked at her straight in the eyes.
"I do not want you to go," she continued.
"I have to. You know, I took the job…. Now I have to do it. You know, I was going to quit, but then..."
"Why don't you? Why don’t you quit?"
"I thought we went over this before…"
“But I have a really bad feeling about this, Mikka.”
“Yeah, well, I don’t. We need the money…”
"But you got all that money from that pawnshop guy."
“Yes, but that money won’t last us forever…”
“Irkoniss said that there are better ways to make money-“
"Yeah, like robbing people?"
"Well, that's still better than killing them."
Mikka smiled. She is so smart, and maybe so right…
"After that there will be another job, and then another...you will never stop," Silent continued
"I swear-"
"Please don't... You know I'm right. Don't swear, don't lie to me...I know you will never stop. I really have a bad feeling about this… "
"I took a contract...If I don't do it, that means I forfeit my own life. That means that the people that gave me the contract will try to kill me. Would you like that to happen?"
"That's stupid and mean. IT means that they are very mean people."
"Yes, yes they are... Besides, what do you want me to do? This is all I know off. I didn't go to school to become a doctor, or an engineer... This is all I know."
And why is this bothering you right now, when we were at Pluk, you saw me kill over fifteen people. It didn’t bother you then.”
"Yes, but they were all bad."
"Maybe this one is bad too."
"I do not know if he is, but I know people that ask you to kill him are bad."
"Okay, if we find out that if he is bad, would you let me kill him then?"
"Sure, I will even help you…just don’t do anything right now."
“So, how do we find out if he is bad?”
“Well, for one, we can find out more about him, like how good is he to people around him, talk to people he works with… We can also find out why they want him dead. That should tell us enough.”
“Would that be hard?”
“Probably. But if that would make you feel better, I’ll think about it.” Mikka smiled again.
“That sounds okay, I guess…”
“You seem very smart for being so small...” Mikka told her as she caressed her hair. Silent seemed to like that. She closed her eyes and drifted away, the fraction of the sleeping pill Mikka gave her doing its job.
‘Maybe she will sleep good tonight, maybe nightmares won't return’, Mikka thoughts came out as a whisper.
“Mikka, how do we find out if he is a bad person?" Irkoniss was at the door patronizing her with a smile.
“I thought you were sleeping.”
“Who is your target anyway?”
“You do not want to know.”
As soon as Mikka felt Silent being well asleep, she got up, and told Irkoniss to watch over her.
“What are you trying to get out of this Irkoniss?” She asked him before leaving.
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, you know who I am… Silent might not be ready to admit it to herself, but you know who I am. I do not completely understand why she is the way she is, but I can relate to her. But, you, I do not understand you at all. You could have left us long time ago. Why not?”
Irkoniss stopped and looked at her.
“Why not?” She repeated the question. “You know we are not…anything….”
“Look…” Irkoniss started to talk slowly, so slowly as he needed to make sense of it all, first to himself. The bottom line was that he didn’t know what was to come next, or exactly why he was doing what he was doing. It just felt right. It just felt good being next to Mikka. “When you saved me from Pluk…”
He stopped for a while, looked away, trying not to meet her piercing eyes. “For a while I thought I was not meant to die there, but when you came, the first time I saw you, I knew I wanted to be with you, next to you, and when you got us off, my first thoughts were how I can repay that debt…”
“You do not need to repay any debt. I’ve told you that millions of times. I do not want people around me…”
“I know, I know that…and frankly, to tell you the truth, I was planning on leaving.”
Hearing that, for him to tell her that. He could have left without saying anything, so why would he need to say it?
“The time I spent on Pluk made me think about things that happen to me a long time ago…”
“When you were kid?”
“Yes.”
“I want to go and try to find my parents, if they are still living. And my sister who was kidnapped…”
“I understand.”
“I doubt they are still alive…But I have to try…”
“I understand. I am glad you are honest with me. I will give you, from the credits we took, whatever you need to do that…You do not need to worry about that…But that may not be enough.”
“I know.. if I had enough money, I can get an equipment to look for them, hire others, ”
“I am glad you told me this….Look, when I finish this job
“You want to keep that away from Silent?”
“No, I do not want to lie to her. She deserves to know. And if she doesn’t like it, if she cannot tolerate who I am, well, it would be easy to find her a new home.”
“We have to be careful with her…she is unchipped, if they find her out, they would take her...”
; “If who finds her out…Who, who are you talking about?” But instead of words, only shadows covered Irkoniss’s face. “Is that what happened to you?”
“Look, I am sorry…but I cannot really care for anyone… in a way that… might bring us together… ” Mikka said after a while. She knew Irkoniss’s look, she knew how he felt toward her. “…maybe I am not made that way, maybe, I cannot trust anyone anymore…I do not know…”
“You are good to Silent…that’s good enough for me, okay?” Irkoniss interrupted her, really not ready to hear anything else. “And don’t feel burdened. I will not ask to be cared for. I think it is stupid to even ask. You care about what you care about , and that should be good enough, okay?”
“Okay…”
“Anyway, do you want me to help you with this job?”
Mikka shook her head. “No…I want you to watch after her, okay? Be here when she wakes up, if I am not…”
Mikka's job didn't come as easy for her as she thought it would. Her mind was very distracted and she found it very hard to concentrate on planning her steps out, and doing what she had to do in order to finish it.
She covered herself and her jetter with a stealth suite, and took it high up in the air. She lacked the software and the necessary access to track down the commissioner. All she had to go on was the information provided by her handler.
He should be still either in the hospital, still recuperating after the assassination that occurred a week ago. Or he should be spending long hours trying to make up what he missed of work inside the ECI building. She didn't dare going close to ECI building.
Even if they could not detect her through regular scans, she knew there were other ways that he presence could be uncovered. So, she decided to first check the hospital.
If she had all her equipment with her, the one that got impounded when she was arrested, she could find the commissioner exact location... But it would take her years and hundreds of thousands of credits to be able to find all the useful hardware. And she could not wait that long.
"Hopefully today I can finish it off," she thought after landing on the roof of the hospital and getting off her flying scooter.
Going through the hospital's front entrance was out of question. She knew they had a good security, and scanning her brain scans would have certainly give her in.
But that certainly left a lot of windows, emergency landing pads, and air filtering vents to go through. But which one was the best way in? Ventilation channels probably had a security, maybe even plasma beams that killed all rodents that may think of moving around the hospital that way. Open windows might prove a bit tricky to get into since they were small and she would have to use her jetter to get to them...she could just let the jetter float in the air while she jumps through. But that didn't seem very appealing.
So, she decided to use the emergency landing ports which, as she could see from the above, were mostly unoccupied. So all she had to do was wait for the ambulance vehicle to fly in, and she would then sneak in together with it.
That should not take that long, she thought thinking that there must be some kind of an emergency in the city of over two hundred million people. This might not have been the biggest hospital in the city, yet still it counted as one of the best ones. So, she wondered nervously why wasn't anyone being flown in.
Realizing how nervous she was, she decided to sit down and compose herself. Ever since she came back to the Capital, she felt like she was not old self.
What's going on with me? she thought as she let the air out of her lungs, then waited for a second before breathing again.
Just calm down, you've done this hundreds of times...this time won't be any different.
She suddenly started to hear ambulances below hovering in and out of the building. She knew the doors were open and all she had to do was go through it. Yet, she seemed unable to get up.
What if they find me? What if I cannot brake into their information system, what if there are guards with brain scanners? What if my scooter doesn't work when I come back?
She let go of another breath, waited and inhaled again. For fifteen minutes, she did nothing but breath, and her mind slowly started to settle down.
Am I scared? Of course I am. But why? What has changed? I know how to do this. Maybe I am just looking for an excuse not to do this...But why, I do not care about some commissioner, even if it is ECI, and who knows maybe the murder of the commissioner would bring in Val out of hiding, make him look for me.
Maybe I should let him know I did this...I would like that. Make him think. But how do I do that? Maybe I better don't do it now, until I find the way.
Her brain played games with her, procrastinating, finding excuses. In the end she knew what was happening, but as the emergency shuttles came in and left, she still stayed sitting down, and thinking.
I never thought his hard about doing any of my jobs before, not even my first one...Why do this now? Has Pluk changed me that much? It can't be it...I wasted Timor when I came back...Stupid bastard...Maybe I feel bad I did that, maybe it is a regret I feel, could it be that? No, I don't even know the commissioner, why would I care if he lives or dies? So just get up, and take yourself down through the emergency entrance. The next one, the next one you hear. You can certainly go then.
“Just get up and do it." She told herself out loud, yet sitting down is what she was still doing.
In the end, she remembered a little bar a few minutes away, and decided to fly there for a drink. I can just have a drink or two, and then think all of this over again.
What she didn’t know is that since Val called in, the whole security was raised up. The very first transporter she heard brought in fifty members of elite EI squad unit. They secured the floor their commissioner was in, putting a protective shield she would have never been able to cross.
If Mikka had tried to enter even the floor commissioner was on, she would have been detected and terminated.
Chapter 12 – The Becoming of Irkoniss
Irk knew exactly what was happening. He suddenly just had too much time on his hands. And that made him think about everything. He was back in the Capital, the place he was very familiar with, but everything seemed strange. A year he spent on Pluk seemed to have changed everything. He found even the smallest of details important, even the faintest of the memory disturbing.
I am becoming way too sensitive, he thought.
Back on Pluk, he hardly had any time to think. Mostly he had to worry about what to eat and about not being eaten.
As he sat quietly in his armchair, safe, fool of good food, he started to reminiscing of the past again.
Silent suddenly woke up, saw him feeling blue and encouraged him to talk.
"Were you always a rough?"
"No, of course I wasn’t…A long time ago, I was even smaller than you are…had a sister which…I loved very much…"
"Do you want to have some more pudding?" He tried to fight back the thoughts which came coming back.
"Sure," Silent accepted it “What happened to your sister?”
“I rather not talk about it… In reality I do not know.”
"So what made you become a rough?" she asked innocently.
"Well, I really didn’t have that much of a choice."
"How come?"
"You see, I was born in a place, away from the law of the empire, in deep forests of SKFJ. We knew nothing of the space, of the stars and what lay in the darkness in between."
"But one day, bad people came and took me away...I, you understand, didn’t have a chip installed inside of me, like every other normally born kid would...like you don’t have it either."
"I understand."
"So they took me, and they sold me..."
"Why would they do that?"
"Because of the money. There is a good money to be made on kids that are not chipped. You can move them around, they cannot be detected. Mikka knows that, that is why she is so protective of you sometimes. She doesn't want
you to suffer just because you do not belong to anyone."
"Like you suffered?"
"Well, in a way?"
"So, what happened to you after they sold you?"
"Okay...okay..." He set down next to Silent. "I’ll tell you. Maybe you should know, maybe it will help you to learn how dangerous the empire and the whole galaxy really is...”
“I know that… I was on Pluk…”
“Yeah, but this is different. This is not just some monsters and criminals… Well anyway, so, the person than bought me, like I was some kind of an exotic animal or a rare bird, his name, his name was... Quil. Master Quil, that is what made us call him.
"How old were you?"
"Thirteen... Two years older than you. And, hum..." Silent realized that it was not a good idea to interrupt him, making a note not to do it again.
"So what happened then?"
"Are you sure you do not want to watch some video streams...most kids love those."
"No, they are all boring to me...I want to know about you, what happened after he bought you?"
"Well, he put me on the ship and took me to this planet called Vaxion. It's the planet which has the thickest of the grasses that can grow up to 9 feet tall. All the animals there are so huge...they breed them that way. You know that's where all the hamburger meats come from...But anyway, it was not a bad place, and actually, I was brought in to this estate where there were about 12 more kids, mostly older than me, one or two younger.
“Mr. Quil's house, that's how we always called it. It was really not a bad place initial, at least...they gave me everything, everything any boy anywhere in the galaxy could wish for. I had all the food I wanted, drinks, toys, everything...”
"Really??" Silent could not help herself.
"Oh yeah.”
“Were they mean to you? Did they beat you up, abuse you?”
“No, not at all...everyone was very nice...maybe even too nice. At least at the very beginning… But I hated them all, at least for a few months back then…"
"Did you have to work a lot?
“Nope, older boys worked, but I didn’t have to.”
“Go to school?”
“Nope...and I could eat whatever I wanted whenever I wanted. drink anything, play games all day long if I wanted to. Except...”