Finally...Fiction!
So I have finally written something. Following Sabe's suggestion that I pick up and continue a science-fiction story set in a shared universe that he and I (and others) are trying to flesh out, I went back and wrote a second segment of the story. I'm going to post them here, behind a cut. I would greatly appreciate anyone's feedback on the story. Whatever you have to say, I'm sure it would be useful to hear. If you're not into science-fiction...well, my story isn't very science-fiction quite yet. More of a detective story, if I had to hang a label on it.
Everything is in very rough form, and only the barest editing has been applied. I'm trying not to overwrite as I write, just go with whatever I'm feeling and, as was suggested by a very clever reader, just concentrate on finishing the sentence at hand.
Detective Rook took a hearty bite into his apple and grimaced. He hated the bioengineered apples on Laurel Station. All the nutrients of a real apple and then some but none of the taste, he mused. He sat further back in his chair, an ergonomic number that never seemed to conform to his comically oxen frame, and theatrically sighed for an audience of none. A piece of apple skin had gotten lodged between his two front teeth. He flicked at it with his tongue; when that proved futile he fished in his drawer for his pocketknife, finding it under the synthetic leather of his blaster holster. Rook had found it in an antique store. He had a fondness for these kinds of relics, an eccentricity that his first wife couldn’t understand and his second wife outright despised.
“Chief Raim wishes you in his office,” chimed a pleasantly empty female voice issuing from a speaker embedded in the ceiling.
“Thanks, Delores,” he responded dispassionately. Rook had decided on his first day working for the Laural Station Port Authority that the computerized paging system was named Delores. On more fanciful days he imagined her as a slightly plump but curvaceous middle-aged woman sitting at a wooden desk in a foyer right outside his office, a more-than-capable woman with bright red lips who would leaven the sexual tension with her no-nonsense attitude. They’d flirt while Rook poured his morning coffee, real coffee, not the simulated stuff, and she’d ask all the common sense questions that would lead to him breaking the case wide open and nabbing his man. But today Rook was not in such a mood and instead drew himself listlessly onto his feet.
Rook took the lift to the third floor, where the LSPA big-shots had their offices. Rook had been offered a promotion to the third floor but turned it down. In doing so he also turned down a sizable pay increase, leading more or less directly to the downfall of marriage number two. Looking back Rook had no doubt that it had been one of the best decisions he’d even made. He passed by the myriad offices until he came to the end of the hallway and Raim’s office. The Chief made the decision that his office should be no greater than that of his subordinates, a kind of pretension to modesty and equality that Rook immediately saw through but appreciated nevertheless. He pressed his hand to the scanner and waited under the door slid open with a pneumatic whoosh.
Chief Raim was sitting in his chair, his eyes scanning a datapad in a concerted effort to let Rook know who was waiting upon whom. Though the lithe old Fenrir had been the one to open the door he pretended to not notice Rook’s sizable presence. As a younger man Rook might have been incensed by his superior’s blatant display of rank; at 43 years old, it merely amused him. He waited patiently until the Chief decided to acknowledge him, staring lazily at the myriad pinprick stars through the skylight in the Chief’s office - the one perk the Chief could not resist giving himself for all his egalitarian affectations. Finally Raim cleared his throat, and without taking his eyes off his data pad told Rook to take a seat.
“You wanted to see me, Chief,” Rook asked rhetorically. It was all part of the ritual.
Raim finally tore himself away from his datapad and looked directly into Rook’s eyes. The Chief’s left eye was pale blue, the other was glassy white. Raim had lost it during a confrontation with a superior officer while serving in the Alliance Navy nearly 40 years ago. Before that fight Raim had been a promising young officer with a gift for advance scouting. After it he was blackballed from the Navy with a dishonorable discharge and one less functioning eye. Raim decided to not surgically repair the eye as a reminder and over the years discovered that it was also quite effective at unnerving people as well. Rook had inwardly flinched the first time he met then-Captain Raim but managed not to physically recoil, and it was from that point he became one of the curmudgeonly Fenrir’s favorites.
“Rook,” he began with unnecessary flourish, “You know the reason why you’ve got your own office when most other detectives share?”
“Why’s that, sir?” Rook asked lethargically.
“Because everyone else on the force thinks you’re a complete weirdo, and without manners to boot.”
“Thank you, sir.”
Reim pulled his gums back in his impression of a smile. The half-smirk, half-rictus looked grim even by canine standards. “That’s what I like about you, Rook. But you’re going to have to learn some manners, and quick too.”
For the first time that day Rook’s bubble of placid apathy burst. His mind suddenly came roaring to life like a fire exposed to pure oxygen. “Why’s that,” he asked, the edge in his voice betraying his attempt at nonchalance.
Now Chief Reim’s grotesque mockery of a smile became something more like a leer. “Alliance Security Agency just called, said they’re doing an investigation on a murder happened last night. Guess who’s getting himself a partner?”
****************END INTRO********************
“We’ll be docking at Laurel Station in five minutes, Agent Tokugawa.”
The dark-haired woman gently nodded and returned her gaze toward the site of her latest assignment. Laurel Station, if she were to judge it simply its exterior, would be an outdated space station in need of a complete overhaul if not burial in a scrap heap. The inside wasn’t much better, either. A few hundred years ago the station was cutting-edge, the final waypoint before pioneering scouts headed off into the vast unknown corners of the galaxy. The station was remote enough to have been independent of the Alliance. When the Gyran threat to the galaxy erupted most of the formerly remote stations on the border of Alliance/Gyran space capitulated to one side or the other - but not Laurel Station. Instead it remained independent of both factions, a haven for those fleeing from either side of the conflict. Its inhabitants were refugees, smugglers, pirates and traitors. Though the Alliance (and from intercepted communiqués, the Gyrans as well) had considered taking the station by force, Laurel Station provided a “release value” for troublemakers. It was also a breeding ground for spies - the station’s official neutrality meant that freelance “information brokers” roamed the rusting underbelly of the station, selling all manner of secrets to the highest bidder. Coming closer to the station Agent Aoi Tokugawa thought she imagined a bitter taste in her mouth.
Docking Bay #45 stood empty save for some empty metal crates, a decrepit robotic crane and one oddly-dressed man to serve as a welcoming party. Aoi checked her briefcase and holster one final time as the shuttle landed with a dull metallic thump. The hissing sound of the shuttle’s hydraulic ramp signaled the beginning of her latest assignment. Her professionalism compelled her to walk down the ramp. You’ll be back on Earth in no time, she told herself, desperately hoping that were true. The pilot wished her good luck but she paid him little mind. Each clanking step seemed louder and she struggled to have as neutral an expression as possible. No point in upsetting the natives, she mused, but that forced neutrality evaporate as she got her first good look at her welcome party.
This must be some sort of insult, she thought. The man was dressed as if he were in some holo-cine of Earth’s ancient past - a heavy beige coat the length of his knees, with matching buttons and a belt undone around the middle. He wore a buttoned white dress shirt with some kind of red sash tied around his neck so that it hung most of the way down his torso. In his hand he held the strangest hat Aoi had seen outside of a museum - beige, like his coat, with a crease in the crown. The crease was pinched at its front. The hat was large, but so was its owner, who Aoi could only describe him as a crudely-hewn block of stone. She stared at this bizarre man hoping her trepidation wasn’t overtly showing. When she got within arm’s length of him he suddenly thrust out his meaty hand.
“Agent Tokugawa, I’m Detective Rook. Welcome to Laurel Station.”
After some formalities to prove Tokugawa’s identity, consisting mainly of flashing badges and identification cards, Rook escorted the Alliance agent through Laurel Station’s congested arteries. Tokugawa’s head swam at the cacophonous babble of hundreds of languages echoing through the corridors, a far cry from the pristine silence of the Alliance Security Agency Academy. She immediately wanted to be surrounded again by its sleek opalescent walls and nestled by subtle white noise piped in from hidden speakers. Her head pounded and claustrophobia gnawed at her increasingly frayed nerves. Vendors called out their wares, offering trades in goods or currency for goods of dubious origin. The smell of myriad spices hung heavy in the air, blending in a noxious cloud that made the thought of food unbearable. Amber lights suspended from the ceiling fifty feet above cast nearly as many shadows as it illuminated. Children, their faces unwashed and lean, scurried underfoot, threatening to take Tokugawa’s legs out from under her; Aoi was certain that she would be trampled by the waves of beings in this makeshift bazaar if she lost her footing. It was this moment when Tokugawa realized that she had been sheltered in so many ways, whether it was the wide-open spaces of Nakatonbetsu or the vast campus of the Academy. Only on her school trips to Toyko did the din ever threaten to swallow her whole like the teeming makeshift streets of Laurel Station. Rook soldiered on ahead of her, seemingly inured to the clamor he called home. Remembering a technique that her ranged weapons instructor had taught her to combat the inevitable nerves of a firefight, Aoi took a deep breath and focused her vision entirely on her target - in this case, the immense, slightly-hunched beige of Rook’s coat that weaved in and out of tangled clumps of beings in a spontaneous choreography.
After ten agonizing minutes Rook ducked into a battleship-gray building spanning from ceiling to floor set apart from its rust orange surroundings. Aoi stepped inside and breathed silent thanks the minute the door closed and sealed the tumult behind her. Rook was already at a counter a few feet ahead, speaking in hushed tones. Next to the desk was a reinforced metal door reading “Authorized Personnel Only.” Rook spun to face Tokugawa, a thin electronic card in the palm of his sizeable hand. “You’ll need to put this on,” he grunted. “Visitor’s pass. Just put it in your pocket and the doors will stay open for ya.” Tokugawa took the card and placed it in the breast pocket of her stiff standard-issue ASA uniform as Rook lumbered through the door. Tokugawa followed, happy to follow anywhere quiet.
A chill swallowed Tokugawa as she went through the door, just cold enough for a quick shiver. The low mechanical moan of the ventilation hummed, punctuated by clanking footfalls against the bare metal floor. Dim white haloes of light lined the wide passage. Rook soldiered forward without speaking. Tokugawa, her observational skills drilled to the point of casual habit, noted that his unhurried pace was the assured march of a person comfortably familiar with his current surroundings, which allayed any lingering concerns about their destination. Nevertheless, Tokugawa moved at double-time, nearly a jog, just to keep up with Rook’s long strides. They moved in 4/4 time, a light step on each beat, a heavy thud on the first and fourth. Eventually Rook veered off into a room and Tokugawa followed, their rhythm steady as they entered.
The temperature fell even further in this room. Tokugawa was glad for the head-to-toe covering of her jumpsuit uniform but found herself wishing it had thicker padding. The room itself was empty except for a wall of drawers opposite the door. Tokugawa immediately understood that they were in the morgue. It made sense to her that Rook would bring her here first, considering her assignment to investigate Operative Burnitz’s death, but the lack of form surprised her. She expected that he would have taken her to meet his superior and go through the official police protocols of this jurisdiction, as she had been trained to do when hosting law enforcement officials. Then again, she mused, Laurel Station hardly seemed to be a bastion of etiquette and procedure. There were certain advantages to circumventing bureaucracy, not the least of which would be the opportunity to leave sooner.
Rook cleared his throat, which echoed through the room and into the hallway. “We brought ‘im in yesterday morning. Bogeymen already did a post-mortem on ‘im.”
“Bogeymen?”
“The, uh, pathologists.”
Tokugawa exhaled sharply through her nose, a derisive snort somewhere between condescension and a laugh. “I guess that’s what you call them around here?”
Rook furrowed his brow and cocked an eyebrow at her, fully aware of the tone in her voice. “Actually, that’s what they call themselves.”
“Oh. I see.”
Rook stepped over to a touch screen embedded in the wall. It flickered several times before it stabilized on a menu screen. His thick fingers nimbly jumped across the screen as he brought up the case file #u4542157: Mulholland, Toros. Another touch of the screen caused the wall of drawers to creak to life. A drawer on the left bottom corner of the wall opened with a noisy whoosh. A thick cloud of water vapor escaped from within. The drawer extended about seven feet. On it was a body, its decomposition arrested by the extreme cold. Rook remained at the control panel as Tokugawa stepped toward the slab. “Is that your man?”
Tokugawa looked at the man’s face. The skin had turned white with a purple tinge. His green eyes were open, glassily staring at the ceiling. She took a scanner from her belt and placed it on his cheek. A green light and chirping beep confirmed that this was indeed her man, whether his name was registered as Burnitz or Mulholland or any of the countless other identities he had forged, recycled and discarded through the years. Outside of the ASA’s orders, she wasn’t even sure whether Burnitz was his legitimate name or simply another prefabricated façade. “It’s our man. If we can, can we keep him here until further notice? When I leave, I’ll take him.” Rook nodded with approval and flicked the touch screen again. The drawer began sinking into the wall with the squeal of pneumatic machine parts in desperate need of maintenance. After closing with a resounding clang the room was silent again. Rook strode over to Tokugawa, his hands thrust deep into his coat’s cavernous pockets.
“So,” he said, “ready to meet the chief?”