by Sam Sea
Val instantly realized how hungry he was, and the idea of a decently prepared meal had instantly hijacked his mind and made him stop to think about anything else. But he knew that if he stays, the meal would be followed with more drinks, and that would be followed with who knows what else. She was a distraction, an extremely good sort of a distraction. He could clearly see it. She would not be able to offer any insight into who killed her brother but would wrap his attention, and soon it would be a morning, and he would not be any closer to solving his case.
"Certainly. Your company is always a blessing to a tired soul like mine." He could not believe he was actually saying it. But then as he looked at her, and saw her sorrow seemed just a bit less, her loneliness chased away just for a while, he wondered if that was not for the best.
Late that night, as he hugged her to sleep, he whispered into her ear “Look, I have to go… I have but a day to find who killed your brother...”
She turned around and paused her eyes inside his, fully awake and present. “Go… I know you need to go… But thank you. Thank you for not leaving me alone tonight.”
“In a world where we can have everything, isn’t it strange how we miss and long for something that costs nothing?”
She smiled back at him, pressing her fingers at his hand, just wanting to feel his skin for one last time. “When it is all over, you know… I can be here. I can be here waiting for you.”
He kissed her again, softly, and she surrounded to him, not like a woman who appeared to him just a few hours ago, like someone who would collect him as a trophy, but as a woman who needed him, who chose to share her life with him, who searched to find a peace in his arms, comfort in his words and a meaning of living on his lips.
***
When he finally came home late that night, his housekeeper greeted him all excited at the gate of the main house.
“What are you doing still up, Mr. Vartax? It is almost going to be morning soon. You didn’t spend all night waiting for me now, did you?” Somehow Val knew that answer before he even finished asking it.
“Well, Sir, I wanted to tell you that containers you were waiting for have finally arrived. I made them both be placed in the hanger.”
“You mean both containers came, one from Zalirus and one from ESTU?”
“Yes, they are both there.” Mr. Vartax answered happily like those were some sort of gifts he himself received.
“You could have just left a message…No need for you to stay up this late. ” Mr. Vartax was an immigrant from FSKjion. Even though he came over 40 years ago, Mr. Vartax kept to the same old code meaning that the needs of his master came well before his own.
Val thought that he should feel tired, yet he felt strangely alert.
He walked to the back of his estate and his hanger. Two thirty foot long containers were placed inside. He broke their electronic seal with his finger and opened them both up.
The first container, the one that came from the Manufacturing Moon of the ESTU was packed with electronic gadgets of all types. He was mostly interested in the one that looked like a gigantic cockpit of a fighter simulator. There was also a space scanner, powerful enough to be able to track signatures and identify brain waves across waste distances. It could locate and identify life in open space better than anything else Val was aware off. He needed that to find Senator Sulivaro. But that equipment would consume a lot of juice and extra sets of batteries had to be brought on board.
The other container was Mikka’s old apartment and everything that was inside. The futon on which he and Timor used to sleep was still laying there like he remembered it.
Val had previously ordered it completely sealed, and asked to be delivered to him. He thought that maybe he might need to use it as evidence.
But in reality, there was one thing he really wanted from her possessions. It was the recuperation pod, the seven feet long, dark tube hidden in the long wooden commode in the center of her container apartment. It saved his life on at least one occasion. They stopped making these models more than five hundred years ago, so to find one fully functional was better than winning a lottery. He was not going to have it collect dust in some police storage space when it could be used to save lives.
He called Mr. Vartax over, and then together with him walked to the back of the hanger. He entered the seven-digit code on his communicator and the white back wall instantly disappeared.
The space ship suddenly came to light. Being powered up, now its surface was glowing, coming to life, its metallic surface soft and warm to his touch.
“Mr. Val, are you sure this is going to fly?”
“Well, I will connect all the simulations to run today… The results are hopefully all going to be positive. We will know later today. But the ship actually has a very powerful anti-mater engine inside. I think it will fly, and fast… They do not make this kind of ships anymore…”
“No time for that… The window for the flight opens tomorrow after 5 pm today and stays open only for another twenty-four hours. If I want to make a good time, I have to be in the air by then.”
“But, I tell you what you can do…” He pressed few bottoms on his communicator, and the middle of the fuselage clicked, and the middle hatch opened up with the hall’s wall coming down as a ramp. “I want you to use a forklift and load those containers inside the ship. Both of them. Just place them inside next to each other, okay?”
“Sure I can do that.”
“Also, take a forklift and go to the house… There are about five containers with other supplies I left there. It should all go in. Okay?”
“No problem.”
“You can do it later today, no need to do anything right now. We first need to see results of the testing. Then, and this is the most important, when you finish that, I want you to go and visit your family. You work too hard and no need for you to be maintaining this home now. It will be vacant for at least few months, if not more. I am going to lock it all up and secure it. So, take a long vacation. I am forwarding your salary for the rest of the next six months. If anything happens to me, and you do not hear from me within six months, my attorney has instructions of what to do with my estate. I want you to be present when the will is read. Okay?”
The man shook his head.
“What could happen Mr. Val?”
Val smiled. “You know me long enough by now to realize…” He chose not to finish that sentence, and to cast bad thoughts out of his head.
He looked toward the east. Soon the light will come from there.
Maybe I will just meditate for an hour in the garden, shut my eyes for another and then go back to the police station. I will get a plenty of sleep on the ship. He thought, strongly resolved not to let doubt sip in and assured himself that he will find who killed Mimona’s brother by then.
Chapter 14 – One Beer Too Many
It didn’t take long for Mikka to find a suitable bar to herself. It was a place in the Old City she visited only once before. High on the hundred and fiftieth floor of an old building that should have been leveled down decades ago, its neon lights advertised home-brewed ale and the best fish-and-chips platter on the planet. It was a place she could easily land her jetter on, and even easy to take off if needs arise.
The place was not as big as she remembered it. Covered in dark wood, it had booths for four lining the walls. In the center was a round bar where a single person was serving a few customers, most of which seemed to already have one drink more than they should have.
Mikka wasted no time eating although she ordered three sandwiches to take with her. She was thirsty and wanted no fish taste to mess with her thirst.
By the fifth pint, Mikka was feeling no regrets. Everything seemed just fine… Even the music which seemed just a bit too electronic when she first walked in, seemed to have smoothed its tunes to her liking.
Suddenly she was glad she didn’t make a kill. She thought how she will not have to look Silent in the eyes and think of what to say. Now, it
will be easy. She could not understand that little girl sometimes. At first, she seemed ready to learn how to become ruthless, but at other times, she was just not ready to learn anything at all that would make her become insensitive and tough enough to take lives.
Maybe it is better that way, maybe she is still too young. Why would she need to learn all of that anyway? I learned and not that it made me very happy anyway? I learned it, I became a weapon, a tool for someone else … But what about me…. What is that I get out of it?
She didn’t know when she was going to stop. Maybe after one more glass, or another.
She activated her communicator and called in… Thinking about Irkoniss.. The young man, she knew, was emotionally connected with her. But she could not guess why. She was okay looking, but nothing that would make a man fall in love with them on the first look. She was way too mean to him, and gave him hard time over the smallest of details. How could he be interested in her? Or was it all just an act?
“Hi there!” she said happily in the communicator as Irkoniss’s face popped up answering her call.
“Where are you?” he asked.
“I am fine… Is everything okay in the hole?”
“Yes, we are fine here… Listen, I wanted to talk to you about something. I’ve talked to the man who can find us a ship to get off this planet. But if we are to get it, we have to act fast.“
“That sounds good…” Mikka answer surprised Irkoniss. “I would not mind going away from here for a while.
“You mean…”
“Yeah, why not? I’ll help you.”
“I thought you wanted to stay here and finish the job, and then find the man, the ECI, who robbed you…” Irkoniss wasn’t sure what to believe.
“Yeah, sure I want that, but all of that can wait… You know I was thinking, maybe I need to step back. Maybe a year or two away from here would do me good. That sounds like a good idea for me actually.”
“Are you drunk?”
“Yes, I think I am, but I think I am sincere in what I say… you know what I mean?”
“Where are you at?”
“I’m here at… Look don’t worry, I’ll be home soon. I don’t want you to think of leaving Silent alone. I’ll be home soon.”
Mikka waved to the waiter to fill her another glass.
Maybe I’ll have one more glass and then head home. She felt her step not being too steady anymore. That ale sure is strong.
She noticed two men smiling at her. One behind her, had a crooked mustache, the other, two tables down seemed a bit too old. They all looked like they were ready to come and talk to her, and try their luck out. In this part of the city, it was to be expected. But, she wished they didn’t.
So she smiled at the girl about a year younger than her which stood on the other side of the rounded bar, and she returned her smile. Behind her, there was a man, wrapped in a gray poncho and the hat that belonged to another era. It covered his entire face, but eyes, hidden, seem to stare at her. She was sure she had not noticed him before.
The man seemed completely out of place, and it took Mikka a second to pull her eyes away as she decided not to pay him any attention. She turned around from the bar, and gave the guy with the mustache one very inviting smile. Lazily, he got up and started to approach her letting Mikka notice two women standing in the doorway behind him. They both wore sleeveless, body pressed shirts that revealed very masculine arms. Their faces were thin and tanned with cat-like eyes. Both wore a long, silky dresses that swept the floor
She knew they were assassins, and that underneath those dresses was more than just legs. The way one of them always stared at her, she was afraid to know who their target was.
“Well, first time for everything…” She said almost in audible to herself as she extended her hand to the man that was coming to greet her. His face exploded in a smile.
If I am the target…. She looked around. Nobody else seemed eyeing nobody else. She let the man take her hand, and started to talk. She smiled stupidly and giggled, but through one part of her eye, she kept two women in her sight.
The drink was there and she swung it too violently, like you would expect a drunk to do, and spilled some of the beer on her and the man who obviously didn’t mind it at all.
She is so drunk. This is going to be so easy. He might have been thinking as he laughed with a complete approval. She laughed back as she put her hand in her jacket.
Still laughing all drunk, she glanced again all around the bar, thinking how in a second, it will all change and how it will never be the same.
She stopped her hand coming out as she realized that the poncho man was not there anymore. She put her free hand on the mustache man who continued to talk words she played no attention to… T
he man was not anywhere to be seen, not to her right, left…
Where the hell did he go? She didn’t want to find that out when the bullets start to fly.
Maybe he went out? But I had an eye on the door. Maybe to the toilet? No, don’t doubt yourself… He saw you, he noticed how you stared at him for a second too long. He knows you made him… He knows your game. End it, end it now!
Then she saw him, emerge from behind a huge guy who was ordering a drink. She could not see his eyes, but his moves made it clear that he made her.
She slit the gun out of her jacket and shot from her hip. Two women bit the bullets, and their heads exploded across the doorway.
For an instant, time seemed to have stopped as everyone turned to stare.
Before they could even exhale their breathes, Mikka had already shoved the mustache man to the side, and used his as a shield as she turned around to smoke the man in the hat. But he was already pointing a long barrel of a plasma rifle at her.
Not even five of the man were enough to shield her from those blasts, and she threw herself to the floor to see the plasma burn him down to dust, together with everyone who set at the table behind. She crept toward the door, and took out one of the small lipstick-sized grenades she had in her belt.
She throw it across the bar at the same second that a huge hole appeared inside the bar, right next to her, with some of the wooden splinters digging like needles inside her hands.
The man had no chance to refill his plasma rifle for the third time. As Mikka jumped up, it appeared the bomb blew him across the bar, toward the far right side.
There, Mikka’s bullets lifted his body again off the floor throwing him, all torn up, through the thin restroom wall.
Mikka looked around. Everyone not screaming was looking to hit the floor or find a cover.
Her take-home brown bag with three sandwiches was still untouched by her seat.
As she walked to pick it up, she started to take splinters out of her hand.
This should not have happened, she thought. I guess I had one beer to many.
Chapter 15 – Morning in the Office
Before going to the office, Val went back to the hanger that morning. The engine seemed to be warming up, and the preliminary results were coming in at level that beat his own optimistic projections.
All of that made him feel very positive and he walked out of the ship feeling almost happy.
The bullet came from somewhere outside, through the hanger gate he left half-open.
Happily playing with his new toy, Val felt its disturbing vibration almost too late, letting it almost come right in front of his chest. He instantly swan his upper body backward faster than the eye could see, leaving only the fabric of his clothes and the skin on his forehead in the path of a deadly projectile. It exploded somewhere behind him, shredding a huge hole in the far wall of the hanger.
He never looked back, but instantly threw himself to the ground and his pistol was already firing in his hand as he rolled toward the right wall.
He fired another salvo of three bullets but at what, he was not sure off.
“Hanger, lights out!” he remembered to outburst a command into the communicator that lay thrown on the floor,<
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But as the light started to dim inside the hanger, he never had to worry about another bullet being fired at him, the sudden eerie and soundless tension broken by an explosive blast outside, followed by a shriek of a dying man.
He ran toward it, cautiously, with the creaks of broken branches and a dying man still mixed together.
“I think I’ve got him…” Mr. Vartax yelled from somewhere outside.
Smart guy, Val admired his help not for the first time.
The man lay with his head down, his body up, neck and limbs twisted unnaturally as if the skeleton belonged to a manikin.
Who was the man sent to kill him, now meeting the curse of karma by the hand of his housekeeper? Was he an assassin that was to stop him from solving his case, or the one sent to revenge what he did yesterday or settle some other score that had already been forgotten by himself?
With the tip of his boot, he opened the helmet of the assassin and saw a dead, young face, unknown to him. He was surprised to feel glad that it was not Mikka’s. Regardless of anything that had happened between them, he would not have liked that she ends up like that.
“Is he dead?” His butler asked even though he could be nothing but so.
“Yes…”
“The alarm was triggered as he flew through our air fence, and I ran out with the gun…” Mr. Vartax was trying to explain. “I really tried to just knock him out… that’s why I used a blaster, I knew you would want to talk to him… but…”
“It’s not your fault. You did the best you could, maybe even saved my life…” Val said as he looked at the assassin’s rifle. His next projectile set to be fired at him was a rocket with enough power to blow up the whole hanger with the ship and him inside.
“You did good, as always, Mr. Vartax. The blast blew him off his jetter and the fall through the branches did the rest.”
“What do you want to do, Master Val?”
“Get his DNA and see if anything pops up. Also, call the local police, and first let them look into this… I have no time to waste on it, not now. If they find nothing, then we can take it from there…”