Crumbs
Detective Vim Lithesteel
(Art source unknown)
Index: Chapter 1 Chapter 2 Chapter 3 Chapter 4 Chapter 5 Chapter 6 Chapter 7 Chapter 8 Chapter 9 Chapter 11 Chapter 12
Chapter 10
Disassembled innocence
A parkostreet no longer bustling with throngs of relaxing Corpo employees, their friends and family, it was blocked by a heavily armed dropship. Distant sirens whined their obnoxious songs, letting people know that their off day and cozy street food experience was ruined. Everyone who could, already left the dangerous area; a short grav-car chase ended by one sniper shot to its teenage driver’s head.
The food truck sported Spiffy Sammich holo-decals, its sides glistening with multiple promotional ads for various meal sets. Bread, meats, veggies, packaging, everything poured from its back end following the crash landing. Perfection, the entire chase and interception took but a two star-minute time, damage minimized by the dropship’s tractor beam projector.
One of Naym’s urban commandos was resting his hands over a shouldered particle-beam sniper rifle, the second helped a fellow policewoman recover a sample of the teenager’s Taksian DNA. According to Directorate’s law, a single drop of criminal blood offered to a Redeemer or deposited at a TISD re-education facility was equal to said criminal’s formal recovery.
“Pipsqueak?” – repeated Naym, his gloved hand holding the little girl by her neck – “Oh, but that is not your number, little thought criminal.”
Terrified, in between her sobs and sniffles, the little food truck employee stuttered – “N-no... it’s p-pipsqueak... m-my n-name is pips-squeak!”
His Taksian policemen chortled behind him, entertained to no end. Naym almost joined them. There was this hallowed moment of joy a servant militant experienced during the processes of retrieval, normalization, and redemption, which he as a detective oft partook in. In this particular instance, the girl’s refusal to crumble mentally, even after he and his policemen hummed the DCPS hymn somewhat lessened their delight.
“Repeat after me,” – and he whispered in her ear – “I am thought criminal number 00558941.”
“Pips... q-queak!” – instead she screamed with stubborn determination quite uncommon for a scrawny Taksian brat.
Breath hasty, the child’s eyes darted around. Quite aware that she was actually looking for something or rather someone, the Taksian detective allowed her a few moments of hope. He even loosened his grip a wee bit, so that number 00558941 could twist her head around. Runaways on alien planets or space stations often gave away their helpers simply by looking for them. Naym was trained to spot these, and he could do it with frightening speed and efficiency.
Weird that the girl closed and then opened her eyes a number of times. He was not a Redeemer, and not in his job description to care about the recovered criminals’ mental state. Foolishly, she attempted to squeeze away from Naym’s slightly loosened grip, and when this predictably failed, bit his arm. Of course, all attacks against servants of the Taksian state were to be severely punished, yet he stayed his hand. In the interest of acquiring more information and, eventually, the location of a lair full of runaways, he applied more of the tried and true DCPS mental breaking techniques.
“Little thought criminal,” – began Naym and slowly tightened his grip, evoking a pain-filled mumble – “you were, perhaps, hoping that someone would come to your aid? Do not worry, for we’ve already recovered most of your friends.”
“Be a good little number and tell us where we can find the rest.” – A wave of fear shook the child when he forced her to look at the headless teenager – “It is for their own safety.”
She sobbed a barely audible no.
He pinched the left ear nerve easy to reach for all Taksian children since their skull growth was not yet complete, and she let loose a terrible wail.
The girl’s nose bled profusely, yet she mumbled that she did not know anyone.
A pair of patrolling CorpoSec officers walked by, their slothful mugs purposely twisted the other way. They casually walked away, crushing loaves of bread still hot from the oven with their dirty boots, stomping over handmade food bags covered in child drawings.
“The Directorate is family,” – whispered he in her ear, and he twisted her head so she would look at his DCPS badge – “and we mustn’t lie to our mother and father.”
“I had a papa and a mama, but y-you took’em!” – screamed the girl as her wee feet delivered harmless kicks to his legs.
Her final, and quite rigorous attempt to free herself ended when Naym squeezed her neck artery. Dangling and growing ever weaker in his grip, tears ran down her cheeks. It would not take long, he assumed, until the little thought criminal broke. Though every single recovered Taksian escapee was a boon to one’s career, children gained you more promotion points. His personal token list had quite a lot of them and, assuming there were either government unregulated orphanages, runaway hostels or whatnot in one specific area of this city, nabbing these numbers would definitely gain him yet another accolade.
For a moment he imagined how a “Stalwart Servant Militant” or “Obedience To Supreme Authority” badges would look pinned next to his DCPS badge, a serene smile on his face. Then the little thought criminal moved in his arm, and her little feet dangling in the air took his pleasant imaginings away.
He observed a sudden change in her eyes and it was the glint of hope. Quickly, Naym traced her look, only to unleash a gasp laden with annoyance and even a wee bit of stupefaction. Instead of some disguised Taksian runaway, perhaps even an armed group of heretical anti-directorate partisans, there floated a mundane dump barge. Flying on its programmed route, the thing gingerly emptied trash from the Parkostreet’s garbage bins via its low yield tractor beam projectors.
“Trash man... wheeze... gon’na... cough... come... wheeze... for you.” – the girl addressed him, determination burning in her eyes like nothing he’d seen before.
With a nod, Naym ordered a full scan of said barge, yet all it proved this was exactly what he and his team was looking at, just an automatic garbage collector.
“You see, this is what happens when one runs away from their family. Unregulated thoughts run rampant inside your mind and, then? Then delusion and mental illness settles in.” – Disappointment felt heavy in his voice, the Taksian beckoned two of his policewomen – “Fly this little number on our mobile interrogation room. Question her thoroughly, just in case there is salvageable intel in her.”
“How big a dose of compliance serum?” – one of the women inquired about interrogation parameters, while her colleague locked the child’s limbs in grav-shackles.
Naym replied, a level of annoyance felt in his voice, such that the loyal servant militants of his retinue had never heard before – “Adult, dosage level... three.”
The policewoman helped carry the child who dragged her feet on purpose. Brand new shoes, comfy workerall pants with suspenders, and even a clean, intact sleever shirt. Either that little runaway made purses full of coin every day selling street foods or she had loaded friends. They did scan her before loading her on the dropship and, finding some sort of a tracking algo on the child’s worn out PDA, stomped it to bits.
He spent a full minute looking at the whimsically colored otherwise mundane device, counting how many more thought infractions would that little number incur, had she done this in Directorate space. The emoti-stickers alone were worth a five star-year sentence in a labor camp, let alone the holographic squeaktoy.
Naym actually reached down and picked the thing up in his black glove, wiping himself with an insta-clean tissue when he satisfied his curiosity. In the shape of a smiling alien critter, it had wee ears and a cuddly snout, a toy which only stupid little children lacking proper governmental supervision would crave. The more he looked at it, the greater the feeling if impending doom that he felt. It was the large eyes which gave him said sensation and he proceeded to crush the soft, cuddly thing under his boot. It was for sciencecratism, this is how he justified his unregulated thoughts.
Zoenn shouldn’t have visited that forgotten rock, Xilom, he thought to himself, but instead flown straight here!
What promised to be a small detour cost her her life and nearly derailed this investigation. Instead of cleaning that abhorrent TISD trafficker collusion mess, more Taksians slipped through the DCPS net. It did not matter that the grifter duo, this so called president Splunger and his genetically augmented assistant Thotea eventually parted with their lives. Not even their elaborate escape ploy and the detonation of their office building could cover all their tracks...
On the flip side, the result of this failure was him getting a higher rank.
Naym watched as his crime tech scrubbed every inch of the food truck’s cab. His ire was just about to subside when one of the men hollered from inside the vehicle – “Them brats never turned their holo-nav unit, not once!”
“It does not have an inbuilt global tracking algo, like our self-driving cars back home.” – reported the obvious another tech, who popped his head out of the grav-engine compartment – “But even if it did, whoever modded the heck out of this vehicle, they’d be capable enough to remove or bypass it.”
“Gahen Inc. does not mandate vehicle spy chips either,” – wearily remarked the third policewoman as she wiped her greasy hands with a vacfoam rag – “because these fall under ‘unnecessary expenditures’.”
All of this was why the Taksian Directorate, quite prudently, did not allow its citizens to operate, repair, or modify vehicles of any kind. The thought that there existed billions of escapees who practiced heretical property ownership, it made his head swirl. Fixing the visor of his uniform hat, Naym’s otherwise emotionless face displaced intense agitation when the Taksian spat – “One. These slothful, greedy Corpos, need do but one... single... thing.”
The three crime techs, their uniform pants and boots smothered with bits of street food, stood at attention before him. Donning a mask of polite subservience, they looked forwards and waited a good star-minute until their Chief finally uttered his next command – “Leave a tracker pair behind and plant a beacon on the food truck, just in case. Hopefully these crazy good car modders would come and pick their vehicle.”
While numbers one and two did salute and immediately sprang into action, tech three still stood at attention. Naym’s face livened a bit. He gestured for the policewoman to follow him inside the dropship’s cargo bay. In silence, they walked around a gathering of cargo crates, all of which bore Noverna’s logo. This policewoman, she was the one who pushed a stasis pod with that piece of Taz’aran “evidence” inside Gahen Inc. headquarders, his team’s medical specialist and quite knowledgeable with the gene-grafts.
“A novel DNA disassembler. Works nearly three times faster than the old ones,” – explained she when they reached the very back of the bay, where Naym stored Noverna’s prized possession – “and quite necessary for anyone aiming to do advanced genetic augmentation these days. Regulated or otherwise...”
The Chief Detective observed a cocktail of chems and bio solutions helping billions of unseen with the naked eye nanites in their current task. The haggard body of a Taksian boy was being taken apart on a genetic level, transformed into substance with immense value. Just a layer of sediment on the tank’s bottom to anyone with no knowledge of the matter, yet without Core-Gen, the universal DNA bond, no company could graft complicated augmentations onto their customers.
“Wasn’t this machine originally devised by the Vaugn Matriarchy?” – Naym tapped the half-a-meter thick poly-plastic glass tank only to see the boy inside twitch.
His tech shrugged, checking the data panel for irregularities and counting the amassed Core-Gen material, before answering him – “To enable their dealings with the Jaern, yes.”
“That TISD camp director, he made quite a lot of money on the side working with these slave traffickers.” – and the detective removed his uniform cap, wiping some imaginary dirt from its shining visor – “This is over. Technology departments of DCPS and TISD, as our Dignitaries and their sciencecrats shall reap all the benefits.”
“Chief, is that thing...” – the tech gave him that look which all his underlings made when they wanted to ask about something secret, something that he was privy to, but they prolly shouldn’t – “the UT program... I mean... is it true? Imagine how much more could our Dignitaries and sciencecrats do with that disassembler!”
“If the so called Universal Trooper program was real, and I am not going to confirm that, then our government did made a big mistake.” – replied Naym as he turned around on his heels, putting the cap with one swift motion – “I do not need to tell you how this would look in somebody’s work dossier or impact their bureaucratic progression.”
“Suffice to say,” – added the Chief with a smile – “the long dead partisan who colorfully named himself Outlaw Ridar is just that, a mere Taksian criminal. No cybernetic and genetic augmentations, unregulated armaments, and definitely no autonomous warbike.”
“The eleemosynary Directorate... it does not make mistakes, not once... not ever.” – smirked his tech, caressing the precious DNA disassembler one more time before they left the cargo bay.
When the dropship was finally underway, Naym sat in his usual seat, behind the DT technician’s console. His crime scene tech quickly linked him a brand new data-pack, the same she downloaded from the tank downstairs and he raised an eyebrow. Whoever engineered that novel disassembler did perhaps too good of a job, for it was rather efficient. In a day they’d have to feed it another child or risk wasting a week rebooting the system, and wait five more star-days on top of that, just to reprogram the next batch of nanobots. Naym rather have a whole range of test data, paired with enough high quality Core-Gen, ready for the sciencecrats of his research department when he returned back to base.
Having extra promotion points hurt no one.
“Give me interrogation.” – commanded he, and when one of the women who carried that delusional little girl popped on his holo-screen, Naym ordered her – “Far from asking you to work quicker, as soon as everything relevant has been extracted from her mind, send that little number back to my dropship.”
“Acknowledged, Chief.” – the policewoman saluted by tracing the visor of her uniform cap with her left index finger.
“Would you like a preliminary interrogation report?” – asked she, when her boss did not instantly sever the commlink.
Naym tapped his forearm thrice and she read from a holo-file off screen – “First, we learned that her ‘sis’ is a woman calling herself Noila. Citizen identification correlates with the child of another thought criminal family, her given detainment center number is 00669925.”
Being projected from the interrogation chamber, Naym’s trained hearing could pick up one of the little girl’s painful cries – “D-don’t t-take m-my s-sisteeer!”
“The compliance serum dosage you recommended worked wonders, Chief.” – the policewoman continued her report with nary a single emote on her face – “Criminal 00558941 has so far supplied us with multiple addresses of food trucks and the location of a starport storage unit, which, I am told, is part of her group’s offworld food smuggling ring. I allowed myself the prudence and ordered a full strike team there. The rest of our police troop could be split into six person groups and investigate each food truck location. By your command, of course.”
“Of course, but instruct them to be weary of heavily armed Terr’aans.” – warned Naym, noting the policewoman’s display of proper bureaucratic initiative in her report card, before he severed the link with – “Carry on, interrogator.”
Screening the data-pack, his mind once more weighed in all clues on hand. Eyes glancing at the prototype beam pistol resting in his holster and the two urban commandos behind him, Chief Detective Naym reached a conclusion. Whoever that Terr’aan Mr. Flookumsh was so terrified of, he or she probably took his unregulated arms and chased after him. Yet, even if said Human or whatever uplift still lingered here, they had little chance facing two experienced TISD urban commandos. Not to mention the rest of Naym’s own DCPS police troop, trained to absolute perfection members of the Taksian Criminal Retriever unit.
Detective Naym entertained the remote possibility that he could face a Terr’aan on his own, with the calmest of minds. The Directorate’s servant militant training and equipment was far superior to anything some disgustingly barbaric, Fringe space, tight-knit federative coalition of colonies could muster. Terrifying for street gangs, disorganized space pirates, and the self-absorbed, obnoxiously heretical in their demented want to cling to the inefficiency of hereditary nobility Taz’arans, may be, but not for him and his armed to the teeth team.
(╭ರ_•́)
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Naym is nasteh! What a wonderful villain!
Going to be fun watching this baddie
Blow up.