After checking Dal’s staff, I headed back to the bridge. My brother’s eyes snapped open as I entered and he looked at me. I could sense he was disappointed about something.
“I couldn’t find a single trace of the creature.” He ducked his head looking slightly ashamed. “I thought I was stronger than this.”
Leaning forward, I tapped him under the chin forcing him to look up. “I felt the energy disappear as well, brother. As if it had never existed in the first place. This is not your fault, there is some kind of trickery at work here.”
“Should we head back home?” Dal said sounding unsure.
“Not until we get a look at the station. We need to find out what happened to Erendall. As much as I loathed the man and his father, he deserves whatever closure we can bring him. Who knows, we might even get lucky and find out some information on the missing nosferatu.”
Dal snorted. “As long as you don’t spend the entire trip in the whorehouse.”
“Don’t hate me because I have needs. Not all of us can get them satisfied back home.”
Dal frowned and studied me for a moment. “So you know about Darious?”
“Well I didn’t know his name, but I knew you had taken a lover.” I smiled at him. “There’s no shame in finding love, brother, no matter who it is. If this Darious makes you happy, you have my support and my blessings.”
He looked down, and when he looked up there were tears in his eyes. “I never thought you would understand. I had hoped, but I was too scared to tell you.”
“Nothing will ever come between us, Dal, I love you.”
He laughed, and the tears stopped. It must have been a great relief for him to know he didn’t have to hide anymore. If anyone gave him any shit over his choice in lovers they would have to answer to me. So what if he loved a man? He was my brother, and I’d kill anyone that threatened him in an instant.
“What do you think Dad will say?” Dal asked the smile leaving his eyes.
“I’d be shocked if he didn’t already know. The man has spies everywhere. If he hasn’t brought it up to you, he most likely doesn’t care, or doesn’t see it as a threat to your ascension.”
“I figured as much. I’m going to hit the lav and then grab something to eat. You want me to bring you something.”
“From the lav or the kitchen?”
He hit me on the shoulder. “One Everything Bar coming up. You’ll have to decide from the taste which room I brought it from.”
“Fucking gross, Dal.” His laughter followed him out of the bridge. It was nice to have my brother back. The secrets between us had caused a gulf that I wasn’t sure could be repaired. Instead. it had only taken an instant. Just like that, we were back in the swing of things. If this vampire ever had the guts to raise its head again, it was in for a nasty surprise.
The sights and sounds of Serenity Station washed over me pulling me in deeper with the call of their siren’s song. The only thing keeping me on track was the pull of my brother’s hand on my robe when my attention was diverted, and my feet started to follow my heart. Ok maybe it wasn’t exactly my heart they were following, but I didn’t always have to be honest with myself, did I?
Dal kept me on track as we walked through the station following the small signs that led us towards what passed for law enforcement on the station. From the look of things, Serenity’s enforcement officers were better trained than most. This being exclusively a tourist destination probably had something to do with it. The last thing you wanted was a video getting out of your officers beating up a tourist. It was bad for business.
The officers we passed seemed to be in a jovial mood, many of them talking and joking with the guests. That being said, these men had an edge to them that spoke of recent trouble on the station. I couldn’t imagine that it was normal for this many officers to be present on the streets. The last thing you wanted on a station with lax rules towards drugs and alcohol was a strong police presence. Even though the use of those substances was legal here, people still felt awkward about recreational participation in front of a uniformed officer.
Dal pulled me to a stop, jerking me out of my thoughts. We had made it to the station. It was slightly off the main path, and the building had been disguised to hide its appearance from those walking by. I had a feeling most of the crimes here would be small time fistfights, and more than a few sleeping it off in the drunk tank for passing out in a public place. If our brother had fallen here, I wondered how much of an investigation would have actually been conducted. The one thing that was worse for business than police brutality was murder.
We walked into the station like we owned the place. There was no reason for us not to give off an air of superiority. We were part of a sacred order that protected the galaxy. It would be an honor for these men to help us. Even here, far away from our own station, the white robes of our order should have carried great meaning to these men. Both of us were wearing our sternest expressions.
One of the officers behind the desk looked up. “Oh shit.”
Oh shit indeed.
The officer left his chair, and I could hear him calling for his captain as he went. Dal and I stayed rooted to the spot where he had first seen us. Neither of us even blinked as the young officer ran back with his superior in tow. The man’s eyes settled on us, took in our posture, and a frown formed at the corners of his mouth. He obviously knew something and wasn’t excited to see us.
“You boys don’t waste any time, do you?” He paused when we didn’t answer and then turned and waved for us to follow. “Might as well come back to my office. I’m sure you have plenty of questions.”
Dal just looked at me and raised one eyebrow. I knew exactly what he was thinking. How did this man know why we were here? Erendall’s ship was still docked here, but the payment to keep it there would have been paid automatically. So if the ship wasn’t the cause for his concern then it had to be the man himself. Dal shrugged and moved forward to follow the captain back to his office.
When we were in his office and seated, the man seemed a little more at ease. The familiar surroundings must have made him feel more in control of the situation. He met both of our gazes without flinching.
“Gentlemen, my name is Magistrate Rodolfo. I’m sorry to report I have some bad news for you. We’ve found one of yours dead in an alley outside of the main part of the station. So far, we haven’t been able to determine why he was there, but our coroner confirmed the cause of death as a single gunshot wound to the head.
“Well, a gunshot to the head would do the trick.” It came out sounding more snarky than I had intended. In front of this man, we should have been showing unity with our fallen brother, not mocking how he died.
Dal snorted at my comment. I knew what he was thinking as well. What kind of idiot would go into a fight and not keep his shields up. Not to mention the fact, he could have deflected the bolts with his staff. If Erendall had gone into battle with one of the nosferatu like that, it was no wonder he was dead. What could he have possibly been thinking?
Dal took on a more serious persona. “We will of course need to collect the body and any of his personal effects.”
“The body I can help you with, as to his personal effects…well, by the time we found him there weren’t any.”
It was my turn to jump into the conversation. “Would it be too much to ask to get a copy of the report and any surveillance you have of the area?”
Now the magistrate looked angry. “Are you implying that we didn’t conduct a proper investigation?”
I waved away his anger. “Of course not. It’s just part of our job to be thorough. If we don’t dot the i’s and cross the t’s for the council, they will send someone else to ask questions in a more formal capacity.”
“Listen, we don’t need any more trouble, I’ve got a big enough mess on my hands as it is. Are you gentlemen staying somewhere? I can have an officer drop off the documents later.”
“Can you just upload them to our net
work here?” I passed him the address. “It’s a secure connection. And if it wouldn’t be too much trouble, maybe you could spare one of your junior officers to take us where it happened.”
“Now that I can do.” He looked relieved that we were leaving. “Dan, get in here.” A young man walked in. He couldn’t have been much older than eighteen. “Can you take these men to the crime scene for me?” He sent the location to the officer and then turned back towards us.
Dan interrupted right before he could finish giving his orders. “Yes sir, it’s an honor, sir.”
He motioned for him to be quiet. “I’m sure that it is.” He turned back towards us. “If that is all gentlemen, I do have other work to attend to.”
“Thank you for your time, magistrate.”
He just ignored us and turned back towards the corner of his room and started scrolling through data on his holofeed. I guess that was it. We would check out the scene, and then I’d pilot Erendall’s ship and his body back to Sanctuary. Once we had a better sense of where the vampire was, we could venture out again.
“So this is where it happened?” I asked Dan, the young officer the magistrate had sent with us.
“It is, sir. We don’t normally try to preserve the scene after we take our pictures. It makes the locals jumpy,” he shrugged.
Having someone shot in the head next to where you lived tended to have that kind of effect on people. Dal was moving around the scene, and I just hunkered down and looked at the dried blood for a moment before turning to watch Dal pace around. He continued to pace for a few more minutes and then turned and fixed his gaze on mine.
“You feel its residual power. Don’t you, brother?”
“I do. The only question is why would one of them resort to using a blaster? It’s not their way. They prefer to do things up close and personal.”
“Or so the stories tell us, D’avin. No one has seen one in a hundred years. Maybe it’s adapted to stay alive.”
“Or maybe it had help.”
“That is also possible.”
The young officer was following our conversation with a bewildered look on his face. I felt sorry for him. It must be hard to live only knowing half of the world, and yet part of me longed for that simplicity. To just go to work, and come home must have been a blessing. Sometimes the weight of having to protect the universe from an unseen threat was a heavy burden. I smiled up at the younger man and rose to my feet.
“Dan, the magistrate mentioned that you had some other trouble on the station before you discovered the incident. Can you tell me about it?”
“Not without risking my job. I hope you understand.”
“I do understand,” I whispered it as I pulled a coin out of my pocket. The coin was a special trinket of our order and was coated with a substance that reflected light in a certain way. I twirled the coin across my knuckles, waiting until his eyes were following the slow movement as it crisscrossed them back and forth. I let my power seep out. At first, it just tickled around the edges of his senses, but moments later I was in. “Dan, I need you to tell me what else happened on the station leading up to our brother’s death.”
His eyes continued to lose focus, but the words came out. He spoke softly almost as if he was in a dream. “There was an incident with an information broker that worked on the station. He was murdered. It was the damndest thing.”
“Was he bitten?”
“No, nothing like that.” He shook his head.
Damn, he was going deeper than I wanted him to. I didn’t have long before the spell would be broken. “Tell me what you found so odd about it.”
“As far as we know, all the men sent to attack him were killed. So someone else had to have been there, but we found no trace of them. It would have taken a miracle for anyone to escape a well-armed hit squad like that.”
I stopped spinning the coin and waited for his eyes to gain a little of their focus back. “Dan, I just wanted to tell you how much we appreciate you bringing us out here.”
“It’s not a problem, sir. It’s nice to get out of the office now and again.” He looked chagrined for a moment. “I just wish it was under better circumstances.”
Dal had kind of listened to our conversation, but he had also been going over the video feeds the magistrate had sent us. I could tell by the look on his face, he had found something. He scrolled through the feeds again and again. Finally, he stopped on an image. He projected the image of a man in his late thirties, possibly early forties, with a dark duster on. He had a rifle slung over his back and a look on his face that said don’t fuck with me.
Dal spun the image around so the deputy could see it. “Do you know who this man is?”
Dan looked at the image, and I could see the recognition register on his face. “That’s Captain Drake of the Star Talon. Do you think he had something to do with this?”
“We won’t know until we talk to him. Is he still docked on the station?” I could hear the excitement of the hunt creeping into Dal’s voice.
“They departed a few days ago.” The officer pulled out a datapad and started going over a few images. “According to this, it was right after the incident on the station. I remember it now. The magistrate was pissed that he received clearance to depart before we had a chance to investigate.”
“Anything else you can tell us?” I asked before Dal could.
“Well, it looks like they filed a request to dock with us again. They should be here in a few days.”
“I assume your magistrate is going to question them upon their return,” Dal said.
“You’re probably right.”
“We will need to be there when you question them,” Dal said. He didn’t phrase it as a question.
“Only the magistrate can grant that kind of request,” Dan said without hesitation.
“Then we had better hurry back to speak with him. I have a feeling he will be amenable to our request,” Dal said casting a glance towards me.
I knew that he would be, all it would take is a little finesse, and if that didn’t work, a large enough payment should be sufficient for us to tag along on his investigation. Everything was starting to fall into place for us. We might just track down our vampire yet.
CHAPTER 18
CAPTAIN DRAKE
Just before we entered Mars' space, we received a transmission with docking codes from our employer. The control station accepted the codes but diverted us away from the three main space stations to a secondary private docking slip just outside of the city. Funny how our employer hadn’t mentioned that or the fact I wouldn’t have to provide my own clearance codes to planetary control. The fact they knew exactly how close to Mars we were also had me questioning how they were tracking our progress. We had swept the supplies they had provided to us for bugs and hadn’t found a thing. If they had tracked us to Serenity that could explain what happened with Max. What would they do if they saw Samantha on the video feeds there? My plan could be ruined before it even had a chance to take wings and fly.
What would happen if they saw Samantha out of the box wasn’t a question I really wanted the answer to. That was a price that I wasn’t ready for my crew to have to pay. If it came down to it, I’d gladly hand myself over to see the rest of my crew set free. They were only following orders after all. I didn’t see Dr. Marcom giving us that chance. If Samantha wasn’t delivered, there would be hell to pay.
Ice transmitted our codes to planetary control, and we were cleared to land. They sent us coordinates to a private dock as we broke atmosphere to the red planet. Funny how it still had that nickname when the planet looked a lot more like Earth than the red orb history books had shown.
Scientists had found a way to heat and release the ice held below ground on Mars. Once the core temperature of the planet had risen enough, and the ice began to melt, a more Earth-like atmosphere started to form. It took a hundred years to stabilize, and another hundred before people could breathe safely outside. Still, there were barren deserts tha
t were a reminder of what Mars used to be, but hey, they had those on old Earth as well. The Mars terraforming experiment was a far cry from the terraforming options of today. If you had enough money and a smaller sized planet, you could have people breathing air on it in a decade.
That didn’t mean the life of a terraformer was easy. There were risks. You could sign on with the wrong company. They could be chintzy with the oxygen scrubbers for the first few years, leaving you mostly dead before the planet stabilized. Or even worse, another corporation might try and take over the facility and claim it as their own. Just ask my parents, they had seen it all.
Thinking about them wasn’t what I needed to be doing right now. We had a job to do and I was on the clock. Still I couldn’t help but thinking what a perfect fit for each other they were. They loved their work, and they excelled at it. As much as it put them in danger, I’d never be able to sway them from it, so why bother? It wasn’t as if I lived a low-risk lifestyle.
We broke through the atmosphere, and I smiled out at the city that lay sprawled before us. Huge towers surrounded the domes that had made up parts of the original settlement. They could have torn those down, but instead the kept them in place as a tribute to the men and woman that had changed our futures forever. Most of them had been converted into parks, but a few had residences inside of them. Having walked through the domes once before, I could say from experience that the men and women that had settled this land had been braver than I had ever been. All that separated them from death had been the dome, any breach could have become catastrophic and wiped them all out.
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