Drifter

Eli stepped into the room and took a look around. The walls were covered with shelves and where there were no shelves, there were paintings.

The shelves were controlled chaos. Trophies stood beside knick knacks. Skulls which were etched, or lacquered, or bejeweled. A small wooden animal. A helmet with a broken visor. An assortment of ornate daggers.

The paintings varied. A tall, pale woman in a dark, stone walled room. A lovely landscape on a verdant world. A simple still life.

A male humanoid in a set of dark brown robes sat behind a massive, cluttered desk. The hood was up, black and grey hoses hung out of it, stretching down to a metal box on his chest and around to his back. The being’s face was not visible, the hoses simply disappeared into darkness. No skin was visible; he wore a pair of black gloves. This was a fixer known as Chiron.

“I’m glad that you came,” he said, his voice otherworldly, his language like something out of the fever dreams of fairies, “I’m always looking for new talent, new and better resources, and you have come highly recommended.”

“It’s no problem.”

“I see that you’ve had a lot of success as a bounty hunter.”

Dead Sad’Daki faces flashed across his mind. Blood, eyes locked open in horror, mouths twisted in agony. He was as much an assassin as a bounty hunter. And yet, this hadn’t always been true.

Then his father’s words struck him as hard as any physical blow, “Your wife is six months pregnant, and you get yourself dishonorably discharged from the army!”

But it had all turned out okay. Uncle Hector had come to the rescue.

“But I don’t know anything about this job!” Eli had protested.

“You can learn. You hunted people in the army, right? It’s easy.”

Chiron brought him out of his reverie, “Your target is a male from an unknown species. His name is also unknown.”

“What did he do?”

“To put it bluntly, he’s a serial killer. The maniac has racked up sixteen victims that we know of. He frequently changes location, so there are likely many more. Several law enforcement organizations and the loved ones of his victims have pooled their money together. A hundred thousand Pygram Work Credits. dead or alive. It was hinted to me that dead is the preferred outcome.”

“No objections from me. Physical description?”

“Humanoid. That’s it, I’m afraid. No one’s managed to get a good look at him. You’ll see why when you take a look at his record.”

“What’s his last known location?”

“A woman was murdered in Asimon city, on Rudat. Local police launched what looks like an honest and competent investigation, and yet, they found nothing. Modius Operandi matches your target.”

“Sounds like I’m chasing a rumor. What kind of a threat do you think he could be?”

“A considerable one. He managed to flatline a tactical police team on one of Yarvon VII’s artificial moons. The report on the incident is classified but rumors suggest that he has some sort of power, the nature of which is unknown.”

“Power? Like the Sad’Daki?”

“As I said, it is unknown. Quirks of evolution, strange technologies, and evil magick has given many beings a variety of dangerous abilities. I suggest that you proceed with caution.”

Eli stood up and started making his way toward the door, “Always do.”

***

The man cried out as he was dragged along the ground by his bound wrists. Eli and his captive entered the police station. The sobs and frantic pleading caused the officers to look up from their computers.

“Eallin Gawolf,” Eli proclaimed, “Got two hundred on his head.”

A man who wore the rank of captain frowned, did his people’s equivalent of shaking his head, and disappeared into a back office. A woman stepped forward, not even trying to hide her amusement as she got the suspect onto his feet and escorted him to the station’s detainment area. Another cop opened up a safe and counted out the reward money.

Eli took the money, “Thanks. I’m interested in another suspect, was wonderin’ if I could get some information about him.”

“Who is it?”

“The suspect in the Nanni Stheel murder.”

The officer didn’t respond immediately. He froze up for a moment, became agitated, “You’re going after him?”

“Why not? Someone’s got to stop him. And besides, they’re paying me well to do it.”

“Fuck it,” another officer declared, getting up from her desk, “Let’s give him a copy of the casefile. It’s out of our hands now anyway.”

***

Eli sat in Cavalier’s cockpit. He had the casefile displayed on the largest monitor.

She was a young and beautiful humanoid, just like all of the others. Her purple skin had been sliced and pierced many times. The investigators had dutifully cataloged every injury.

A sharpened metal spike had been slowly driven into her shoulder, right up under a certain bone, an attack designed to be excruciatingly painful. Blades of various lengths and designs had been used to cut and stab every part of her body.

Her mouth had been sewn shut. Investigators believed that this was the first thing that the perpetrator did to her, as none of the people in the other apartments reported hearing any screams. And yet the strings or wires were absent. They had been unable to find any fibers or any other trace of what had been used to savagely silence her.

None of the implements used were found. No traces of blood were discovered, other than those caused by arterial spray. It was as if the suspect had immediately cleaned his weapons or perhaps put them in cases.

Other than those of the victim, no shoeprints had been found. No hairs. No skin flakes. No scales. No saliva. No slime. Nothing that couldn’t be matched to the victim or one of her acquaintances.

Several witnesses reported seeing a strange red light coming out of her window. At the time, they wrote it off as a party.

All of this tracked with the reports on the other victims that he had been able to obtain. A long procession of dead women and shattered lives. These horrors had been his focus during the journey to Rudat.

No one had ever figured out how the bastard managed to enter and exit the location of the murder, which tended to be the victim’s place of residence. No murder weapons were ever recovered. And always that strange red light. It had been seen at every killing.

Eli focused on the Stheel report again. No witnesses to the crime itself. The residents of neighboring apartments were interviewed, claimed that there wasn’t anything out of the ordinary.

Her friends said that she had been worried about a stalker. They couldn’t remember how long ago it had started, maybe a week, maybe a month.

A man that wore a ragged cloak had harassed her outside a bar. A search of local homeless camps and other areas where vagrants frequented had turned up nothing of use. The name Zartog was thrown around by a few, but he had recently skipped town.

A starship crewman named Petty Officer Belize had been seen talking to her at a club when he was on leave. Investigators tried to match the route of his vessel against the previous murders. This information was denied to them, cited as a matter of security by the military he was a member of.

A well-dressed man that went by the name Kolache had flirted with her in a nightclub, given one of them bad vibes. A brief check failed to identify him.

An ex-boyfriend, Winjaa, was checked and cleared. He was proven to be on one of the planet’s moons at the time. Their breakup had been especially nasty.

A man named Arden had been caught in the act of killing a young woman. He escaped from a supermax on Kin’pon. A BOLO had been put out for him and he’d been spotted in the city two weeks before the murder. But nothing concrete linked him to the crime.

Nothing solid. It was time to do his own investigating. Eli would pay a visit to the crime scene.