by Vi Voxley
Brocke’s father had been very clear about Condor. They didn’t want to give his words credit nor make him a martyr by executing him. So they buried him in Gomor, waiting for the priest to be forgotten, but he still carried a lot of weight around the realm.
“Careful,” Brocke warned the priest impassively as he continued on his path on the floor, seeing Condor’s hateful gray eyes burn with loathing. “I intend to only tilt your platform. Push me, and I might give you the chance to see how long you can hold on to it when it hangs from one corner alone.”
“You wouldn’t,” Condor spat. “You can’t. If your chieftain father wanted me dead, I would already be with the gods.”
Brocke kept walking, making Condor turn on his platform to keep him in sight.
When he didn’t respond to the goading, Condor snarled and sat back into his usual position, eyes throwing daggers at Brocke.
“Remember, boy,” he said darkly, looking at Hanji, pretending to not even notice that the guardian was still there. “We are here for good, and the half-breed doesn’t answer to anyone. Since he came to Gomor, no one has escaped –”
“And no one ever will,” Brocke said, disappearing into the darkness again.
“– or left here alive in any other way,” Condor finished grimly.
Brocke left them there in the pensive, crushing silence.
* * *
There were two guardians in Gomor.
No more was needed. As Hanji would come to learn, the true warden in the prison was fear. As years passed, the residents of Gomor were startled by the sound of their own voices. The older ones, like Scally, were so afraid of the white line it was more real to them than a cell door would have been for others.
Sometimes, Brocke thought that if he drew a white line around them, they would back away from it until they had no more room to stand.
It was fear that kept Gomor in order, but there was one problem with that. Condor didn’t fear him. In fact, he didn’t fear anyone. That was the issue with fanatics. Being kept from their adoring audience and forced to inactivity was worse than death; however, it didn’t cause fear exactly but something much darker. There were times when the guardian watched Condor stand and look down below where the pit seemed to welcome him.
Brocke would have stopped him, of course, but the jump never came. Condor loved himself too much to take his own life.
Brocke handed the watch over to Illor. He watched his partner go before retiring to his humble quarters on an upper level. He hadn’t missed the strange light in Illor’s eyes he’d first noticed a couple of weeks ago.
If he interpreted it correctly, Gomor would see a night it would never forget.
Instead of sleeping, Brocke made sure he was ready, but it was a needless concern. He was always ready, his twin swords strapped to his back and the rifle rested against the wall in anticipation.
His speeder bike was waiting in the bay near the surface. Everything was prepared.
He had already alerted his father, making sure the replacements for him and Illor were ready to take over at a moment’s notice. If anything, the chieftain’s disapproval would have dissuaded him from setting it all in motion, but Nadar Brenger agreed with him.
The guardian in black watched the monitors showing all three levels of Gomor. He saw Illor do his best to appear casual, but there was nothing calm about the other warrior.
When Illor finally threw Condor a rope across the length that separated Condor’s cell from the platform, the guardian had to conjure every ounce of control he had to resist running.
Instead, he watched as the first escape from Gomor took place. It was truly a night to remember in the prison. Hanji’s disobedience had been unprecedented, but Condor’s escape was the second unthinkable thing that was about to happen right before his very eyes.
Only when he was certain he could no longer catch Condor, Brocke jumped to action. He grabbed the rifle and headed to meet his treacherous partner.
Someone else would need to teach Hanji manners. That was a pity, but Condor needed to be stopped. The law of the chieftain was clear. Condor hadn’t done anything to warrant death; more importantly, he hadn’t done anything to deserve the Corgans’ disgust. The realm needed a lot more of the latter in order to take a stand against Condor and his toxic teachings.
Brocke waited in the shadows, listening to Illor’s footsteps. The other warrior had his blades drawn, waiting for him to charge at any second.
The rifle would have been quicker, but the treachery required a more personal touch.
Illor was an accomplished warrior, even if he was also stupid enough to agree with Condor. Yet, he never stood a chance as Brocke rounded the corner, needing no more than one blade to sidestep his partner faster than the man could see.
There was a look of naked surprise on Illor’s face as Brocke jammed his sword through his jaw. Brocke’s powerful muscles bulged as he forced his hand straight, lifting Illor off the ground, all six feet of him. The traitor’s blades clattered to the floor as Brocke carried him back to the central chasm.
The prisoners observed mutely as he threw Illor over the edge and watched him splatter to the white floor below.
That would keep Gomor at peace even without lock and key until the replacements arrived. Fear reigned supreme as he cast one last look around the prison. No eyes answered his gaze.
He took his speeder from the bay and rushed into the night after his prey. Both he and the bike roared, letting Condor know they were coming. After all, he needed to catch him before he could do too much damage, more than he already had.
In the end, Condor had only needed a chance to run. And Brocke had needed an excuse to take him down once and for all.
Chapter Two
Cora
For such a young woman, she was spending an awful lot of time with dead bodies.
Lieutenant Cora Frey thought of her mother’s keen observation every time she went to a new crime scene. It was both ridiculous and highly accurate.
As she stood on the roof of Eborat’s tallest building, observing a decomposing corpse, something occurred to Cora.
Perhaps dear old mom was on to something.
That half-ironic thought was immediately followed by a tinge of guilt as Cora had to take a long moment before she remembered when she’d last visited Terra.
I should write or something, tell her I’m doing great. Career-wise, if nothing else. It’s hard to meet guys when most of them are dead by the time I get there.
“Lieutenant,” Ashby welcomed her, approaching as a vision through the fog that covered the rooftop like a blanket. “I would say good night, but evidently not. At least for this guy.”
“Doctor,” Cora said, never taking her eyes off the corpse in front of her. “Let me guess. Another half-breed.”
“How did you know?” Ashby asked, quirking a brow.
Unlike Cora, who was a Terran born-and-raised, Ashby was a Corgan, and only the Galactic Union called her a doctor. Her own people named her a priestess, which was what she was, even if the galaxy as a whole had a hard time wrapping their head around the concept.
The Corgans had joined the Union about three decades ago, a whole age in the fast-developing collective society. Yet they still creeped the others out every once in a while when new information about their controversial genetic modifications came to light. Cora accepted that easily. She didn’t think anything could be forgotten as long as it existed in living memory, and there were plenty who remembered the time before the Union. The Corgans had a long lifespan, very much courtesy of the priests.
As an answer, Cora pointed at the furthest corner of the roof. She knew what Ashby would see. A name, hastily drawn on the ground in the victim’s blood.
Condor.
Cora had been trying to wrap her head around the name for weeks now, but it had given her nothing but a headache.
At first, considering the victims were half-breeds with both Terran and Corgan parentage, she had considered t
he possibility the word was a code of some sort. A secret message between killers as the victims piled up. A signature even. After all, it was a Terran word.
Then, as she kept finding more and more of them, Cora had started getting the feeling it was a mantra. A prayer rather than a claim.
That night, feeling a soft rain start to fall on the dead and the alive alike, Cora was certain it was a name. She waited, the downpour smoothing out her naturally curly dark red hair that barely reached her ears. Her deep hazel eyes scanned the surroundings for any signs of danger, prepared to chase down any curious observer, but at such altitude, there were none.
Just to be certain, she shook herself a little to ensure she was ready to move at a second’s notice. As soon as she’d heard about the name, Cora had switched the formal dress she wore to work for the Union Militant’s street gear.
The Militant was the official police force of the Union, deployed to outer worlds to help the locals adjust to the Union’s judicial system until they were able to handle themselves. It was a boring operation most of the time, but they had good fashion sense at least.
Her dark blue uniform was skintight over her curvy, healthy body, and it was nice and warm. The combat boots also made it far easier to chase someone down than the pumps she wore with her office attire.
Ashby came back, as furious as Cora had ever seen her. It had taken Cora a while to get used to Corgan medicine, but she had made peace with it quicker than the rest of the Union, knowing she couldn’t work with people when she was clearly uncomfortable with the things they did. The first time she’d seen a person with two hearts had been a bit of a shocker, though.
The priestess looked like a doctor to her, for all intents and purposes, so that was what she called Ashby. She came to stand next to Cora, fuming.
“I thought he was gone,” she said, gritting her teeth. “It’s been how long since the last one?”
“Three weeks,” Cora replied, still regarding the corpse. “And I tell you, it’s not Condor who’s doing this.”
“Yes, you’ve told me,” Ashby sighed. “I still think he exists.”
“Sure,” Cora allowed, crouching down, although the smell was rancid enough to almost make her vomit. “But these murders are not by a single person. You were the one who told me that. They don’t match.”
Ashby murmured something of an agreement, an unenthusiastic one at that. Cora knew the whole series of killings bothered her, so she kept her mouth shut. Apparently Corgans were very touchy about someone going around offing half-breeds on the unity world, the holy world.
All the more so because the group of people presumed responsible were quickly proven to be Corgans and not just that – Corgan priests.
It wasn't just the killings either. More and more half-breeds were going missing and Cora knew as well as anyone that it was only a matter of time before she – or one of her colleagues – would be standing over their bodies as well.
“Can you tell me something I don’t already know?” Cora asked, standing and moving out of the way so Ashby could take a proper look.
The priestess nodded silently. She knelt down beside the body of the young man, clearly just a teenager. No half-breed could be older than the thirty years the Corgans had spent with the Union, and the current victim was far younger.
As Ashby worked, Cora looked around. She couldn’t put her finger on it, but there was something about the whole situation that she didn’t like. The rooftop was quiet, but that was to be expected. There were no buildings reaching the roof, no viewpoint where someone could have been watching her from, but the fog bothered Cora. It was moving in from Gaiya’s miraculous ocean, and it obscured her vision.
She felt blind, and that was not a feeling she enjoyed.
“It’s not fresh,” Ashby said, and there was a dark note in her voice.
“No kidding,” Cora said, smirking grimly. “We’re almost at fighter altitude, but it still stinks like nothing else.”
“That is how dead people smell,” Ashby said, throwing her a long look.
“Don’t give me that,” Cora replied, walking around the body to see better. “I’ve been doing this for long years, back on Terra and here on Gaiya. I’ve seen my fair share.”
Ashby gave her a mocking little smile.
“Then perhaps you might see that what I meant was he wasn’t killed here. He’s been dead for a while, yes, but he wasn’t here when he died.”
Okay, that’s new.
So far, all the killings had been done hurriedly and occasionally so sloppily that a few bodies were still warm when Cora arrived. This made the rooftop man the first who had been brought there on purpose.
“Any ideas why?” she asked.
“No clue,” Ashby said. “There is no practical use to this, except perhaps to hide the body.”
“This is the exact opposite of what’s been done,” Cora said seriously. “The Union’s ambassador was very distraught when she discovered a corpse on her landing platform. How is the roof of the embassy an inconspicuous place?”
“It’s tall,” Ashby offered.
“It’s also very well guarded and very often visited. Which honestly begs the question how was it brought here without anyone noticing in the first place. But fine. It’s my job to figure that out. Tell me about the body. How did you know he wasn’t killed here?”
“He drowned.”
“Yeah, that would do it,” Cora agreed, wondering if that had been Ashby’s misguided attempt at making a joke. “Is the rest the same as the others?”
“Yes,” Ashby said, and her voice was immediately dark again. “Cut open by a priest, no doubt about it. Additional organs removed. Tattoos flayed off. Terranized.”
It was Cora’s term that Ashby used, but they both considered it accurate. The killers, for whatever fucked up purpose they had, always tried to make the body look like that of a Terran.
It meant undoing the Corgan custom that bothered the Galactic Union the most: the tradition of bettering themselves through additional organs, especially common and practically mandatory for their warriors.
The priests conducted those procedures, boosting the bodies with whatever they thought it would need. The stitches were later covered with dark ink, marking the places where they’d been altered.
All of those tattoos and betterments were taken by the killers, leaving their victims – for lack of a better word – Terranized.
“Do you have any ideas?” Ashby asked, standing. “It’s been quiet for a while now. The people have started to feel safe, and this will undo all of it.”
Cora considered her answer, looking at the body that had been brought up there for a reason. She had no doubt about that. It was a message, a signal.
But what message?
“I think something’s about to happen,” she said, thoughtful. “Maybe Condor is finally making an appearance. I don’t know yet, but I’ll find out what’s going on.”
A part of her, a really guilty part, was glad. The trail had gone cold weeks ago, but Cora wasn’t ready to let those butchers escape without punishment. She wanted to find them and bring them to justice. Now they had given her a chance.
“Come,” she told Ashby. “The rain’s coming down pretty hard, and I don’t think there’s more to see here. We should come back at first light to see if we missed –”
Her eyes met the gaze of a man, standing on the edge of the roof, looking as shocked as she did. At least for a moment.
They both reached for their guns at the same time. Cora was faster, firing her blaster at the stranger. He only had time to fire back or run and, seeing Cora already coming for her, he chose the latter.
“Stay back,” she called to Ashby. “Go inside!”
The man jumped over the edge of the roof. Cora’s mind was quickly going through the images of the embassy. Since the guy hadn’t looked suicidal to her, there had to be something below there, but what?
The walkway. Oh for fucks sake…
On the uppermost level, the Union embassy had a walkway extending about six feet into the open air from the round building, meant for the ambassador and her guests. It was rumored to have the best view in the city, but right at that moment Cora cared very little about sights.
Throwing herself over the edge after the man, all she asked for from any god who was watching was a safe landing. The walkway wasn’t very wide, and it was raining heavily, making it slippery.
Luck must have been on her side because she landed well, getting a good running start and chasing after the guy who was now her prime suspect.
Returning to the crime scene. This doesn’t happen often on Gaiya.
The reason for that was very simple, really. Usually the crime scenes were packed with Corgan warriors and no crook wanted to face them. Very few honest and law-abiding people wanted to meet them either.
Cora saw an open door up ahead. Her mind was frantically going through the floor plans of the embassy.
One door only. No, two doors. One to Ambassador Swann’s office, one to the corridors. He wouldn’t go to the office.
The rest followed logically. Cora was running as fast as she could, and she was catching up, but the round building didn’t offer a good enough angle to shoot. As the man rushed into the embassy, pulling the door closed after him, Cora knew where he was going. It all started to make sense now.
She reached the door, ripping it open, thankful he didn’t have time to lock it. From there, she took the stairs back to the roof without even thinking.
It should have occurred to her sooner. The Union embassy wasn’t a place where some stranger could just waltz in. In addition to their own security, Zoey Swann was the wife of one of the Corgan clan lords famed for their insane protectiveness. At any time, the building was certain to be protected by a whole elite warrior unit at minimum.
Knowing simple facts like that solved her case quite fast.
The man had arrived with a ship of some kind. He hadn’t gotten to the roof unseen; he had already been there. Whether under a very good cloaking device or hidden in the fog, Cora wasn’t sure. All she knew was…