An Unglok Murder Read online

  ***

  Dixie needed to know what Tigi was and how it was made. Unfortunately, she didn't know many Ungloks she trusted. It wasn't that she mistrusted them, it was just that she didn't talk to them much. She'd waited most of the afternoon and early evening for the sheriff's deputy, Mast Jotham, without result. The Unglok seemed discrete and spoke Galactic Common well enough to be understood.

  The only other Unglok she had spoken with on a regular basis was the manager of the greenhouse district where she kept her secret project. It would be a painfully slow and probably pointless conversation. If she was lucky, she might find someone who knew what she needed. Pierre would be the best person to ask about liquor, human or otherwise, but he was still taking bedrest. Guilt flickered through her. She hadn’t gone to check on him since he fell ill.

  The night seemed unusually dark and the wind was brisk. Goosebumps prickled her skin. She looked around nervously. Moments earlier, she had heard footsteps, but they were gone now. "Hello?"

  She waited, watched, and listened. "I know you're there," she said, brushing her hair further back from her eyes.

  Somewhere in the shadows, a man whistled. It wasn't the type of catcall she was used to. This sounded like something meant to scare children rather than flatter a woman. Barely a second later, there was another whistle from the opposite side of the street. She glared into the shadows of the alley but could not see anything.

  "I…have a blaster. In my purse," she said. The lie felt weak.

  Four men stepped into view, their hats pulled down low enough to hide their eyes. She dry-washed her hands and trembled at their obvious strength. These guys didn't look like miners, who worked hard but were underfed. She'd seen professional shock troops before and thought she was looking at four of them now.

  The first one grabbed her and threw her to the ground, twisting her arm painfully on the way down.

  "I'd stop that, if I were you," yelled the voice of Shaunte Plastes.

  Dixie had never been so relieved to see the woman. She pushed off the ground with one hand, pulling her feet towards her so that she could stand up properly. One of the men shoved his boot against her chest to thrust her down onto her back.

  ***

  "Do you know who I am!" Shaunte yelled.

  "We know who you are," the leader said. He stared at her with his intense hazel eyes. Then he did something that surprised Shaunte. Slowly, as though savoring the moment, he started to laugh. He hooked his thumbs into his belt so that his arms pushed back his knee-length coat to reveal two drop holsters with blasters, one on each leg. "Are you going to try to pay us off?"

  "Why is that so funny?" Shaunte said. She was starting to regret following Dixie. They had never been friends. She didn't want anything bad to happen to her, but was she willing to die for the Madam of the Mother Lode?

  "Maybe I should rephrase myself. I know who you are. And I also know what you have been doing," the man said.

  "I seriously doubt that," Shaunte said.

  He laughed, glanced at his friends who had surrounded Dixie but were no longer striking her, and faced Shaunte once more. He shrugged slightly. "I think my accountant is better than yours. You've done some interesting things for SagCon on Darklanding. Not that I imagine they know your methods. Or approve of them. My question, Shaunte Plastes, is how long can you subsidize this operation from the allowance your daddy gives you?"

  "You son of a bitch!" Shaunte yelled. "You don't know anything about SagCon and-or what we can do."

  "Let's just get this over with," one of the other men said.

  The leader held up his hand to silence the man, but did not look at him. He only had eyes for Shaunte. "The Sagittarian Conglomerate has all rights to Darklanding. But there's another economy that doesn't require contracts or the approval of governments."

  Shaunte struggled for words and stared at him without moving. "You work for the Shadow Economy!"

  She turned and ran. It was hard to say which of the men caught her, but he tackled her, rolled her onto her back, and straddled her. He slapped her face and tore at her clothes. Frantically, with the desperation of a woman who had vastly miscalculated her chances against these men, she dug into the side of her knee-high boots looking for the Peacemaker Mini her father had given her when she was assigned to Darklanding. The five-charge weapon should be more than enough to stop these men.

  Dazed, unable to find the small weapon and pull it free, she stared at her assailants striding away from her. Time had passed. All she remembered was getting punched and slapped and being grateful they hadn’t done worse. Worse! It could have been so much worse. She tugged her clothing back into place, checked for the fourth time that she hadn’t been violated, and walked to her apartment to take a shower.

  CHAPTER SEVEN: Scars and Tattoos

  Thaddeus spat a glob of blood into the sink and then washed his face. The bathroom in his tiny apartment was already a mess, so he worked his wet hands through his hair and shook it out without feeling guilty. He would love to spend the money and take a shower, and maybe shave his head. Getting jumped and rolled like he was some rookie cop was bad enough. The only thing worse was how much everything cost in Darklanding.

  He peeled down the top of his jumpsuit, stripped off his torn shirt, and walked toward the tiny shower.

  “Come on, Fry-man. An extra shower ration is only a week’s pay. Live a little,” he said. Maybe just a cold shower, he thought. A bed in the room above him slammed against the floor over and over. Gina was having a busy night.

  He sat on the foot locker at the end of his bed and massaged his forehead. He had been in plenty of fights since arriving in Darklanding. This was something different. He couldn’t stop thinking of them as the Four Horsemen. They had been soldiers, maybe still were soldiers, and they had been sending him a message. Maybe he should have asked them what they were trying to prove.

  At the time, he'd been more worried about losing his teeth. He worked his tongue around the inside of his mouth to make sure none of them were missing. A few were loose, but he thought they'd hold.

  The next time he saw these assholes, there was going to be a reckoning. Especially the leader. Thad didn’t like that guy’s attitude.

  The door alert on his room chimed and a digital voice announced the arrival of Deputy Mast Jotham.

  "Hold on," he yelled at the door. He rubbed half a bar of deodorant into his armpits, changed into a new jumpsuit, and pulled on his boots. When he opened the door, Mast looked like he'd been dragged behind a bus. One hand on the door, Thad gazed at his deputy. He kept emotion from his expression, knowing that it would seem like disapproval. "Four guys? Hard bastards who might have been soldiers?"

  Mast held his gaze rather than nod as a human might have. He seemed both embarrassed and eager to make amends for his apparent failure. "Very muchly. I do not like them.”

  Thaddeus laughed harshly, relief and frustration mixing into a new emotion he hadn't experienced before. This was just one more event he had shared with his deputy, sort of. He stepped back from the door and opened it wider. "Come on in. The washroom’s a mess. You might as well clean up in there."

  The Unglok went straight to the sink and turned on the water. Each of his movements was careful and meticulous. Thaddeus watched him and believed his friend was trying not to spill a single drop of water onto the already messy sink and countertop.

  "We can write up official reports later. Let's get to the important stuff right now. Could you identify these four men if you saw them again?" Thaddeus asked.

  "Yes," Mast said.

  "Good. When you're finished, I want to go back and look at the bodies the previous sheriff left me in cold storage," Thaddeus said. “These attacks tell me we’re involved in something more serious than one random murder.”

  Mast dried himself with the towel and stepped back into the main room. "I think that would be a good idea. None of my attackers mentioned White Skull or the train heist. If they had been part of that Y
anYan’s crew, they would've said something. They would have muchly wanted to rub it in my faces.”

  "Face, not faces," Thaddeus said, as he thought about Mast’s words.

  ***

  Thaddeus unlocked the door to the cellar and dialed the meager lighting up as high as it would go. Mast followed him into the narrow room and kept his head down to avoid bumping the low ceiling. "I hope they're still here. That would be just our luck.”

  "And our luck would be muchly bad." Mast’s breath fogged the air as he spoke. He tucked his hands under his armpits to warm them.

  Thad smiled at his deputy and his way with words.

  "Let's see what our friends have to tell us." Thaddeus rolled one of the pallets into the center of the long room and stared at it. The plastic bag was nearly translucent. He could tell it was an Unglok by the length and the basic structure of the arms and legs. Carefully, he unzipped the bag and peeled it away to reveal the body. The smell was dank, slightly rotten, and old.

  The first clue was obvious, but he needed confirmation. Pulling out his tablet, he flipped through the cluster of pictures he had taken at the recent crime scene. The tattoo between the victim’s thumb and forefinger was small but obviously matched the one on this corpse’s left cheek.

  "I have never seen an Unglok put such markings on the face," Mast said. "This man must've kept to the shadows.”

  Thaddeus looked at his partner. "Are you talking literally? Do you have some secret society of assassins on Ungwilook?”

  Mast considered the questions for several moments. "I do not know this word ‘literally.’ Is it a good word? Should I be using it more often?”

  "No!" Thaddeus said immediately. "It's possibly the most annoying word in my language."

  “I must also double-check the meaning of annoying.” Mast paused. “This man must have kept to the shadows of society. Painted Ungloks cannot work without covering themselves in robes and wraps.”

  “I have seen the robed and masked people in their own food market. Thought they were lepers or something,” Thad said.

  “What is a leper?”

  “Someone who has leprosy. It’s extremely rare. Books on ancient human civilization describe leper colonies where they were forced to live until it was learned they weren’t contagious,” Thad said as he pondered the Unglok corpse.

  “My people thought humans were afflicted with a terrible disease when we first encountered them. Why so short? And, ah, so thick? Muchly strange humans are. And grotesque.”

  Thad looked up at Mast, held his gaze, and finally rolled his eyes like Maximus might have done, except without farting and rolling in the dirt. He bent down to examine the Unglok’s fingers. “This dirt is almost blue.”

  Mast bent over. “Muchly dark blue. He has been on a vision quest recently. I wonder if he has seen the ship.”

  “What ship?” Thad winked as he complied with his deputy’s request to never mention the ship at the bottom of the vision quest shaft.

  Mast stood up quickly and backed away from the body. He rubbed his hands together and started to pace toward the exit. “Ship? Who said anything about a ship? This man could not see such a thing. He is very dead.”

  “Don’t hold back on me, Mast. We need a clue. Give me something.”

  Mast doubled over in a coughing fit, rising with difficultly after several minutes. “No one gets murdered for doing a vision quest. I will speak with Lingviat and ask about this man. There is nothing more we can do with this clue that is not a clue.”

  “I could go to wherever this ship is and look for evidence. This guy is probably a smuggler. The ship could be important.”

  “It is not that kind of ship.”

  “So there is a ship.”

  “The ship is a hallucination people sometimes see on a vision quest.”

  “Who is Lingviat?” Thad asked.

  “A priest. He would be angry if I brought you to the vision quest chamber.”

  “Chamber?”

  “More of a tunnel to a vertical shaft. Not my favorite place. Can we please look for other clues? This can’t be the only one.”

  They examined the other bodies in awkward silence. All of them had matching tattoos. None were marked on the face.

  “I think this one with the face tattoo is different. He was either muchly angry at the world or had been sent on a suicide mission.”

  “All right. Let’s write this up. It’s time to start keeping official reports. If my predecessor had done his job, ours would be a lot easier.”

  ***

  Thaddeus had been to Shaunte’s office many times, usually to have an argument. She had nearly thrown him off the planet the last time they spoke. From the cold expression on her face and her unflinching gaze, he didn't think much had changed since then. He stared at her and waited for her answer.

  “Yes, I knew about the bodies in the morgue,” she said.

  “It isn’t actually a morgue.” Thaddeus leaned back in his chair and crossed one foot over his knee. He still held his hat because he wasn’t sure how long he wanted to stay. Shaunte was very much in her Company Man role, which meant her answers would be lies if she answered at all.

  She exhaled in frustration that Thaddeus didn’t think he had caused. “I gave Pierre a tax break for classifying his lowest cellar as a morgue. Cheaper than building a new facility.”

  Half true, half lies, Thad thought. Why won’t she look me in the eye? “What are the bodies doing there? Who killed them?”

  Shaunte opened her mouth to answer.

  Thaddeus interrupted her. “Hearing the truth for once wouldn’t hurt my feelings.”

  “They were ShadEcon enforcers. One of them came to my office making threats and I sent him away. He sent two others back an hour later. Your predecessor, Sheriff David Rings, was sitting right where you are now waiting for them. Those two are the only deaths I know anything about before you showed up,” she said.

  "There are seven bodies, counting the one from the Unglok slum,” Thaddeus said.

  "It isn't a slum.”

  "Extremely poor neighborhood exploited by SagCon.”

  Shaunte glared at him.

  "I'll start easy. Because if you have been ordering murders after I arrived here, we have a problem. Did you put a hit on the first six Ungloks in Pierre’s basement?”

  Shaunte clenched her teeth and breathed through her nose as she stared daggers at him. "I didn't order any hits. David was here for my protection. The ShadEcon thugs came in with weapons drawn. He cut them down and started an investigation. If the man was a murderer, he would have just disposed of the bodies.”

  "He cut them down with his blaster," Thaddeus said dryly, never looking away.

  “Did I stutter?” Shaunte asked.

  Thaddeus shook his head. "So your hired gun just happened to be sitting here with his blaster out and ambushed them the moment they stepped through the doorway.”

  "I'm done talking to you, Sheriff Fry. And before you forget the second part of your question, I haven't had anybody killed since you got here." She walked back to her seat behind her desk, still talking as she moved. "If I was going to order anybody taken out, I’m pretty sure I know who it would be right now, just based on the pure annoyance value of said individual.”

  “That implies you ordered murders before I arrived.”

  “So annoying. Why do I even need a sheriff?”

  “To prevent murders and other forms of disorder that would ruin SagCon’s business ventures here. You understand that’s an impossible job if you are causing the death and disorder, right?”

  “I am a business woman running a massive operation. I don’t have time to become a crime lord, and I resent your accusations to that effect.”

  “Behold, the harder the questions get, the more the Company Man sounds like a lawyer.”

  “I am a lawyer, Sheriff. Don’t forget it.”

  Thad saw the bruise she had concealed with makeup around her left eye.

  “Som
eone punched you!” Thad stood and paced angrily. “When were you going to tell me you were assaulted?”

  “I’m not pro-Thaddeus Fry right now. You find fault with everything I do and actually believe I would order assassinations of natives. What the hell is wrong with you!” She stood up and clenched her fists. “Get out of my office! If I need you to protect me, I will call you. Your predecessor did a hell of a lot better job.”

  Thad was so mad he couldn’t speak. Not at Shaunte, he didn’t think, but at someone. “The same people who attacked you…”

  “Out!” she screamed with tears in her eyes, where before there had been only coldness and a hard resolve few soldiers could have matched.

  ***

  Thaddeus left Shaunte’s office and went to his exercise yard to think. He sat on the edge of one of the giant tractor tires and stared at the side of the Mother Lode. He didn't need to walk around to the back to know what the door to the cellar looked like. It was small and recessed, almost like it had been designed to conceal secrets.

  The Four Horsemen had systematically attacked the Sheriff, Deputy, and the Company Man of Darklanding. His gut told him he was missing something, otherwise this felt like corporate terrorism. He worried about Dixie and Pierre for reasons he couldn’t articulate. They were not part of the Darklanding government and should be safe, but it bothered him they hadn’t been seen for a while. Pierre was sick, supposedly. Dixie was just AWOL. Probably off with Maximus somewhere.

  He wasn’t sure why the dog’s absence bothered him so much. Did dog-things go on spirit quests too? He needed to lay down the law with the mutt.

  And with the Company Man.

  She was in rare form. No help coming from that quarter.

  He didn't know what he expected of a SagCon executive like Shaunte Plastes. Her Father, Tiberius Plastes, was a legendary corporate raider. If he had been running Darklanding instead of his daughter, there would have been a bloodbath to put any and all black-market representatives in their places. Thad remembered hearing rumors that the crime boss of ShadEcon had been one of Tiberius's classmates in law school.