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“I count four on the ground. Infra’s picking up two in the building behind.”
“Snipers, probably...just caution, or expecting trouble?”
“Let’s not take our chances, in any case.” Benikiba ducked back into cover, passing the binoculars to Ran. “I’ll take point. Alert me if there’s any change in the situation, or if they notice me before I want them to.”
“That’s all?” The Space Sheriff’s partner took the offered equipment, shuffling aside as Benikiba prepared to move.
“If I am noticed ahead of time, I’ll need covering fire,” came the reassurance.
“Right!”
Nodding and passing off watch duty, Benikiba headed to the fire escape at the side of the building concealing them and dropped into the alley below. Silently she approached the entrance into the main street, deserted at this time of night but for the suspects.
The buyers were a gang she’d run into a few times, the Scars. They had chapters throughout the system and liked to think of themselves as an ‘alternative military’; thus they spent a lot of time filling the pockets of weapons dealers like these.
The dealers were a whole other story, or rather a lack of one. Head to toe in black, no records on any of them, offering weapons she’d never seen before. This could mean a smaller, local group—or something much more troubling.
The two groups were pretty focused on each other, giving her good opportunity to slip around the edge of the square towards the building behind. It didn’t look like either intended to double-cross the other, but everyone present was intensely aware of the possibility, weapons left hanging to be grabbed at a moment’s notice.
She’d had a talent for moving silently since childhood, and had only grown more adept with police training; infiltrating the overlooking apartment and getting the drop on the snipers inside was simplicity itself. Soon the perfect moment to move in presented itself.
“Yeah, nice and easy,” said the lead Scar, as the cloaked dealer presented the first weapons case. “Just put it on the floor, real slow-like.”
“Good idea!” Twenty heads flicked up in unison as a uniformed officer dropped from above, landing between the two groups with badge held aloft. “Galactic Union Police! Why don’t you put it all down while you’re at it?”
“The hell you say?” The gang’s leader snarled, his subordinates already training guns on her.
“You should think carefully before firing,” Benikiba said, slowly turning from barrel to barrel. “If things get violent, I’ll have to respond in kind. Do you want that?”
A moment later she was bent over fully backwards to avoid the hail of gunfire that answered her, drawing and firing her service pistol in the same motion. As they fell with wounded limbs and melted weapons she straightened up and turned to the dealers now rushing her from behind, taking quick shots at the closest of them—but quick as lightning, the shrouded figures leapt and twisted around the laser-bolts. The nearest closed the distance and struck her in the abdomen with a rock-hard palm.
She was airborne for a moment, almost making a painful crash into a row of barrels on the street-corner but managing to reorient herself in midair and come to a halt on her feet. “Guess you’re...nothing like those guys. Electroplate! ”
A Space Sheriff combat suit is stored in the wearer’s spaceship, and upon the voice-command, is able to deploy in a mere 0.05 seconds: A stream of charged particles is beamed down to the officer’s body, bypassing all obstacles to armour their owner. This process completed, the officer of intergalactic peace stood now in gleaming blue and silver, easily catching the next leaping attacker and tossing them aside before striking a drawn-up pose.
“Space Sheriff Benikiba!”
Targeting systems in her helmet locked on to the agile figures now rushing in from all sides, guiding her to precise strikes that drove each of them to the ground in turn. Once damaged they melted into wisps of dark smoke, flowing back to the group’s leader and vanishing under its cloak.
“Just you, is it?”
“One was all we needed send,” it rasped, the machine-assisted voice indicating a throat injury.
“Too much to hope you’re going to stop resisting arrest?”
“You will pay in blood if you try to capture me.”
“Try it!” She charged in, whipping out the sword stored in her forearm-panel and lunging—but the dealer seemed to float back out of her reach, hanging in the air as if weightless. She faintly caught it croaking out a whisper in a language she couldn’t understand, then with startling speed a wave of violent energy arced down at her from its robe-shrouded hands. She just got her parry up in time, staggering back under the immense force now bearing down on her. If this goes on…
“ Laser Blade! ” Thinking quickly she activated the sword’s energy-sheath function, pushing forward and slicing blast in two, explosions flanking her as the deflected halves hit the pavement.
She turned her attention back to her attacker—gone. Saw your chance and took it, huh…
“Hey! Don’t move!” This new threat came from one of the Scars she’d taken down earlier, now standing shakily with some kind of switch in hand. “I’ll blow this whole place!”
She gave him a derisive wave with the Laser Blade. “This was a routine deal. You don’t have this ‘whole place’ rigged with explosives. Stop bluffing and come quietly.”
“Talking about this , dumbass!” He gave the switch an emphatic wave. “Zero-energy bomb! I press this…”
“Don’t!” Helmet sensors confirmed his claim—the highly-compressed explosive had enough charge to level the entire city-block.
“I won’t, I won’t...if you let us all walk outta here.” He gave a sigh, blinking past the blood dripping past his eye. “Is what I wanna say, but...you got us good. Half the boys won’t be walking for a week, and I’m not making it far alone.”
“Put it down .” She took a slow step forward, grip on her Laser Blade white-knuckled beneath her gauntlets. Thought gave way to pure instinct. Nothing else would be fast enough.
“We got a rule...death before capture.” His thumb came down.
“ Justice Dynamic! ”
“...and that concludes my report, ma’am.”
“Well.” Commissioner Inya sat back, sliding the holoscreen between her face and Benikiba’s out of the way. “I’m not sure whether to commend you or chew you out.”
“Ma’am?”
“You prevented mass casualties, certainly, but...attacks like that are meant for monsters conventional weapons are useless against, you understand.” She finally made eye contact. “What I’m saying is, you’re lucky it was just his hand.”
Benikiba attempted to stand further to attention. “I did what I had to for the safety of the publi—”
“I know! But...listen. The people’s faith in us has to be absolute. We can’t have our officers going around blowing people away and just tell the public to take our word for it it that they had just cause. Understand?”
“Of course!” This came with a little more venom than she’d intended to let slip. Don’t you trust me? Has my judgement ever been wrong?
She was still fuming as she left the office but made herself put on a smile when she rounded the corner to see Ran waiting eagerly.
“Hey! I wanted to thank you,” Benikiba said.
“But...I didn’t do anything.”
“And that was a conscious decision, wasn’t it?” The Space Sheriff beamed. “In that situation, a poorly-timed interruption could have been disastrous. I’m just glad you didn’t get trigger-happy.”
“Oh! Thank you…” Ran hovered on the next sentence, her shoulders sagging almost imperceptibly. “I...want to do more…”
“You will. The more field experience you get, the more you’ll be able to handle.” Benikiba gave a hair-ruffle. “You’ll get there, man.”
“Feeling more girl today, ma’am.”
“Then you’ll get there, girl. Dismissed.” She breezed on down the corridor. At the very least, I have to show you more trust than I’m being given. There’s a promising career ahead of you.
Moving into the busier central section of the station, she reached the locker she’d been assigned for her two-week deployment here. Tomorrow they’d be rotated out to the next planet in the system. Less dangerous there, but plenty of minor unsolved cases. She’d be able to give Ran something of her own to chew on.
She paused halfway through retrieving her things, something looking off about what she could see of the back wall. She dragged her bag out of the way, revealing a note pinned in place with a razor-thin dagger.
HUB EXTERIOR 01:00 ALONE OR NO SHOW
Well, it was certainly a trap. But if she didn’t spring it, she’d have no leads, nothing.
It’d be fine. This was taking the initiative. Despite what some people thought, she was perfectly capable of resolving situations like this on her own.
At 1 in the morning, local time, Benikiba stepped out the airlock of the dead-silent station, combat suit’s boots keeping her magnetically-secured to the exterior. She wasn’t picking up any life-signs but nevertheless began making her way to the top of the hub; it formed the bulk of the orbital police station, with twelve spokes connecting it to an outer ring mostly serving as a dock and hangar.
As she crested the top, the vessel’s bulk stopped obscuring the sun and she was bathed in its harsh light, unfiltered by any atmosphere, the suit’s optic display scrambling to compensate and prevent momentary blindness.
Still no life-signs, but someone was there. Wearing no space-suit that she could see, the same cloaked figure that had got away down on the planet’s surface.
“What the hell are you doing here?” she snapped.
Somehow, it picked up her helmet’s broadcast of her words, and replied on the same channel. “I come and go as I please.” It raised both arms in an unfamiliar salute. “By the grace of the Prophet Fumein.”
She quickened her pace, drawing her sword. “The ‘how’ I can put together when I bring you in. I mean why .”
“Genmakuu seeks new blood.” It threw off its shroud, revealing a charred husk of a body that might once have been humanoid, kept alive by a framework of life-supporting mechanical exoskeleton. “You have great potential, Space Sheriff, and there is conflict in you.”
“You think I’m about to go renegade after one frustration?”
“I will show you the truth, and you will understand what justice is.”
She rushed in swinging, but the living corpse was jarringly nimble, its twitches and jerks pulling it deftly out of the way of every stroke of her blade. She drew back, taking a defensive stance and disabling her helmet’s overlays to give her eyes the clearest path to her foe, drawing on her species’ unique threat-scanning ability.
The result did little to make sense of the situation, though. “That’s…! Your combat-level is nowhere near mine! Why can’t I hit you?”
“To have such a power, and never refine it…of course you cannot truly see me.” The thing’s head fell to one side. “How much more it could be with our help—as could every skill you possess!”
She drew and fired her pistol in a blink, aiming for its feet to force it to retreat. “I’m not joining your cult! Can I be any clearer?”
“A more practical demonstration is required.” Its arm raised in a slow arc, snapping its skeletal fingers silently in the airless void. A moment later, a distant explosion bloomed on the planet’s surface with the awful slowness of enormity.
“What are you doing —” Benikiba attacked again, but still to no avail.
“You will soon see that they think only of themselves. A heart like yours, that burns for justice for the lives you just saw snuffed out, does not belong with them.” It raised a hand to its face, whispering something and seeming to fold in on itself, vanishing from sight leaving naught but a wisp of dark smoke.
She was left faced with nothing but the ponderously-turning station, the cold silence of space, and the smoke plume far below.
“You’re covering it up? ” Benikiba’s hands rattled the desk as they came down on either side.
“Remember what I told you! We have to preserve our image in the public consciousness.” The commissioner sat back, pushing her chair away from the confrontation. “Imagine the panic that would set in if it got out we slipped up like this. An industrial accident is a much more palatable idea.”
“The planet was attacked!”
“Will knowing that gain the populace anything?”
Benikiba raised her head towards her boss. “Is this…really what you meant?”
“What?”
“To be honest…” She drew back, hugging her arms around herself. “I was bitter after our last talk. The reaction I came away with was immature. If I’d had time to think about it, I’d have admitted you were right.”
“Well I’m glad—”
“But this is different!” she snapped. “Don’t think I’m going to come around after this. I see where your priorities are. I’m...going to take some leave.”
“I haven’t dismissed you.”
Benikiba turned and strode for the door. “No, I feel pretty dismissed.”
She already had the beginnings of a plan, but she didn’t know what made her prep her ship to take her down to the blast zone. Maybe an extension of her scanning ability, some instinct beyond consciousness that told her to start there. Just as she was firing up the boarding tube, though, the lights in the hallway flickered on.
“Where are you headed?” Ran’s voice. “Are there orders? I didn’t hear any—”
“No orders. I...might not be back for a while.”
“What?” The junior officer approached, stopping at a sharp glare. “I should...go with you.”
“Listen,” Benikiba said, keying open the door, “I’m going deep cover. This has to be off the books or the targets won’t buy it. I need you here.”
“Doing nothing again?” Ran burst out.
“No! Listen.” Benikiba locked the fierce gaze on her. “You need to sort this place out. You’ve got a whole career ahead of you. Use it to make a better force.”
“Are they...not good?”
“Some people are more concerned with half-hearted preening than enforcing justice. Watch yourself.”
“How long will you be undercover for? This can’t be it—”
“We’ll meet again.” With nothing more than that, Benikiba was gone, her ship immediately detaching from the station. She could move so unnervingly fast when she needed to.
What was that? Ran took uncertain steps back into the station, resting a hand on her head and nearly tripping on the doorframe—right into a massive, stoic security guard.
“The commissioner wants to see you,” he rumbled.
Commissioner Inya’s hands were steepled, her eyes narrowed, her brows furrowed. She was doing all she could to project an air of suspicion and the only reason Ran could think of for that was that she knew Benikiba had gone solo, but for some reason needed Ran’s confession to make an official response. Maybe she’d obtained the information in a way she couldn’t admit to?
“Where is your partner?” she asked, for the third time. For the third time, Ran said nothing. “Come on now. We have reason to suspect she’s acting against the force’s interests. It’s your duty to help.”
“I don’t know anything,” Ran mumbled.
“Clearly you don’t understand anything. Your position, least of all.” Inya leaned across the desk, baring her teeth a little. “How persuasive am I going to have to be, officer ?”
Now Ran had more of a reaction, pursing her lips and turning her head away. The guard who’d brought her here was standing impassively at the door, and she caught his grin at the verbal sparring. “Careful how much you threaten. I’m recording this conversation.”
Inya sat back, seeming oddly relaxed all of a sudden, one hand dropping below the desk. “Why would you tell me about a wire? That kind of paranoia can get you a reputation.”
“I don’t know who to trust right now. Safety concerns me a lot more.”
“Shame.” A laser pulse bored its way out of the desk and lanced across the room, piercing right through the guard’s stomach and dropping him instantly. Inya stood, raising the pistol out of the desk’s cover and training it on Ran’s forehead. “You’re about to have neither. Now, if you want to survive the next five seconds, talk. Does anyone else know?”
Ran fought to keep her breathing normal, eyes flicking around the room, brain moving at a hundred miles an hour. Situations like this, usually she was the backup. What to do?
What would she do?
“Speak!” Inya barked.
“N-No! No-one else knows. She didn’t even want to tell me, I just caught her leaving…”
“Good. Once I take that wire off your body and destroy it, it’ll be simple to frame you both as defectors and paint myself as the heroic survivor of an assassination attempt. Then I can get back to pushing this precinct in the right direction.” Her smile deepened. “In the name of the Prophet Fumein.” She tightened her aim—
“You talk too much!” Ran kicked both feet into the desk, toppling her chair backwards and causing Inya’s shot to hit the wall. Ran rolled back and to her feet, trying to draw her own sidearm in the same motion but ending up slightly too slow and almost panicking as Inya came barrelling over the desk at her. Ran jumped as she went low, sailing through the air over her treacherous commander and landing— just keeping her balance—atop the desk.
Inya spun and re-aimed, but in her hurry her shot only grazed Ran’s shin. The junior officer gave a pained hiss, sweeping her other leg around and hooking a hefty metal lamp with her foot, hurling it across the room and into Inya’s elbow, her pistol clattering the the floor accompanied by a sharp yell.
Even a laser’s glancing hit carried immense heat, and Ran fell to one knee on her perch as she finally managed to get her own gun out, holding it on the commissioner before she could reorient herself. “Don’t try it.”
“You...damn…”
Ran managed a smile. “You must’ve been pretty confident about killing me, laying out your whole plan like that. Internal Affairs is gonna be very interested in that recording.”
“You’re going to arrest me?”
Ran gave a confused look, pointed her free hand to the badge gleaming on her chest, and shrugged.
Inya spat. “I come from Genmakuu...a place of true warriors. To be denied the finishing blow is among the greatest of insults.”
“Well, that’s you,” Ran said. “I’m much more interested in learning more about this Genmakuu, Fumein business than making more corpses. Besides, somebody taught me that there are times to shoot, and times not to. And I trust her.”
Stay safe...Emi.
Benikiba scowled across the burning wreckage, stood at the edge of the destruction. She knew the wraith was there. It had been tailing her since she landed.
“Ah…” came the hollow voice. “It appears your natural abilities are on the edge of being attuned to the psychic beacon I sent. Have you reconsidered?”
“Take me to your leader,” she said flatly.
“You will think you go to apprehend him. But all who hear him talk are convinced of the justice of our cause.” It moved out of the shadows, letting the dancing flames illuminate its ghastly form. A clawed finger extended towards the sphere of destruction. “Scan the area. Filter for biological matter.”
Well...she had to know. “Electroplate,” she whispered, the metal combat suit enveloping her body. Engaging the helmet scanner, she scanned as requested and: Nothing. With that scale of explosion there should definitely have been biological remains scattered all around. But there was none.
“There was no need for a true sacrifice at this juncture,” it said. “The occupants were moved.”
They can do something like this? What is this organisation? “I...will talk to your leader.” Just to gain intel on them, of course, said the neatly-drilled voice in her mind. A little less loud than usual, perhaps.
“Very well.” It bowed its head, then turned and headed for an alley in the shadow of two huge office buildings. “Follow me, to Fumein—”
“ Justice Dynamic!”
“What—” It turned just in time to block the arc of surging force with both hands, slamming back against the wall. “Y-You…!” It began to push, slowly levering the attack away with the same mysterious power as before.
“ —Dynamic! Dynamic! Dynamic!” Draining the suit’s energy reserves in a matter of seconds, Benikiba’s sword sent another three laser-arcs right into the centrepoint of the first, overwhelming the Genmakuu agent’s guard and smashing it back through the corner of the building and into a sprawled heap in the alley beyond.
“I had to fix something, before we set off.” Armour evaporating again, Benikiba strolled over towards her downed adversary. “You were still thinking of yourself as my better,” she said with an involuntary smile, resisting the urge to throw a kick in while it was down. “Sheer martial prowess is all well and good, but most battles are won before they’re fought. Now , let’s go see your prophet.”
And no matter what is whispered in my ear, I will remain steadfast. Steadfast, but not blind; I will ever be devoted to justice.
Wherever it truly lies.