Dark turned to red. Bracing himself, Daniel Wyland rolled over in his double bed, screwing his eyes shut. “Dammit,” he groaned. “Five more minutes!”
The klaxons began, a shrill noise that started within the normal human hearing range and shot up in frequency until it was almost unbearable. It was supposed to wake him up, that much he got, but the combination of him not having been able to sleep in the first place and the sheer volume of the…wait for it…
A woman’s voice, clearly computer-generated and perfectly articulated, boomed over the alarms: “FLEET CONTROL CONFIRMATION. DROPPING OUT OF EXPRESSWAY REALITY. BRACE FOR SPACETIME TURBULENCE.”
And there it was. Wyland threw the covers over himself and curled into a ball. He knew this wasn’t protocol, but if he was completely honest, he didn’t really care. It wasn’t like the Lodge ever had any bad phase dropouts, but hyperspace law under the UHE dictated that this kind of warning be everywhere, at this exact volume, and as far as he was concerned it could piss right off.
Something rattled to his right, and Wyland reached out just in time to top the picture frame on his bedside table from toppling over in the fluctuating artificial gravity. He brought it under the covers and hugged it, waiting for the shaking to stop.
After a while the whole station was still again, and the bouncing into his little duvet fort was back to normal. He threw the cloth off himself, put the photo of himself and his girlfriend back on the table, and sat on the edge of the bed, waiting once more.
The next message came in a burst of static. “Danny,” said a grumbling voice. “Come to command. We need to talk about the case.” It cut out with another sizzling noise.
Wyland stepped into the small bathroom to have a look in the sink mirror, whereupon he noticed that despite having been properly dressed in his ranger’s uniform since before the jump, his hair was somehow still a mess from lying down. He flicked open the bathroom cabinet to the side, and took the comb from its holder, running it under the tap for a second before trying to force the hair on the back side of his head down. Once that was done, he quickly shoved the comb back in its slot, and pressed a button to open the door of his dormitory to the corridor outside.
The hallway was curved around the circular disc shape of the Lodge, and Wyland went down to the left, knowing it would take him towards the main lobby. He passed by multiple other dorm doors, all of which were empty or in the process of being cleaned by their small army of automated janitorial drones; given what some of the hunters who had joined them on the previous campaign had been like, it was more than a welcome break from gunshots, drinking and general loudness that came from outsiders.
He reached the lobby, a large, open area filled with display cases full of animal parts, and looming over it all, the skeleton of a relatively small - at least for its kind - cetacean suspended by wires from the ceiling. As he moved under it, the bones shifted, tilting its eyeless skull to follow him with an empty socket.
He ignored like every time he’d ever gone through there, and climbed the steps to the raised passage that led into the heart of the Lodge. He passed by the decontamination nozzles that were currently turned off, and stood for a moment by the sliding doors with reinforced glass, until the lights at its edges turned green and it hissed open for him.
Barrett stood at the end of the map table in the centre of the circular room, his back to the door, gazing up at a massive array of screens, most of them turned into a different camera in the cells below, many of them containing a magical creature. “That was fast.”
“Couldn’t really sleep. I don’t like hyperspacing in this thing. So new case?”
Barrett turned around, his thick but well-trimmed beard adding years of experience onto his look, even if Wyland knew he was nowhere near that old. “We’re orbiting Talosa. There’s been a murder.”
“By what?” he asked, knowing exactly where it was Barrett was going with that.
“Unknown, but there’s a yokai village in the vicinity.”
Wyland raised his eyebrows. “You don’t seriously think-”
“I don’t know what I think yet. All I know is that the Ministry thinks this is top priority.”
“There hasn’t been a yokai crime in what, like ninety years?”
“Ninety-two.”
“Yeah so…wait how do you know that off the top of your head?”
“Because my first thought, like every reasonable person, was that one of them did it. There are a lot of yokai with ice-based powers.” He tapped on the little keypad that was laid haphazardly on top of the assorted maps.
Behind him, one of the screens switched to a photograph of a frozen corpse, stuck in what Wyland would say was a self-defense pose, lying in the snow. “Shit. Looks too pristine to be natural.”
“Exactly what I was thinking. The Marshal’s waiting at the station for us.”
Wyland picked up one of the region's maps that had been scattered on the table, and peered at it. “Hold on, what’s this?” He tapped at an orange shape. “Some kind of building?”
“Technically that’s privately owned land,” Barrett said. “We have no jurisdiction there. The body was far enough away and yokai don’t live there.”
“...have you been to this part of Talosa since the big op on that other Earth?”
“No. What’s the relevance?”
“Yeah I know this place. How about we don’t barge into a yokai village until we really get what’s going on. Did Keel say who found the body?”
“He was in a hurry.”
“Of course he didn’t,” Wyland said under his breath. He grabbed one of the screens off the wall, using the flexible arm behind it to lower it to his level, and attached a keypad from the map table. Into the planetary Q-net image search, he typed two words:
He expanded the first image from the result and turned the screen at Barrett. “Do you remember Corvus’ daughter from the op? Raya? Or actually from…shit, I don’t like talking about this but the Reynard affair.”
“It’s a pub,” Barrett said, after a glance at the photo of the building that had come up. “Of course it’s a pub. After all that mess she still themed it after a fox.”
“They know us. They can help us,” Wyland said quickly, wanting to change the subject even if he was the one to bring it up.
“You think they found the body?”
“Kofuku’s been talking to Raya ever since the op. They live there, nobody really goes around those parts other than them, and Talosa’s Galactic Marshal is on this immediately? They definitely called him.”
Barrett nodded. “Then you go.”
“You’re not going?”
“The last time I talked to them, we were on the same side. I doubt things will go as smoothly now, considering what the evidence looks like it’s pointing to. They are friendly with the village, no?”
“Amicable. Raya’s not a yokai but apparently there’s a kitsune or something she’s friends with.”
“I’ll make preparations with Jakob. I trust you can handle the Marshal?” He threw a small palm-sized PDA over.
Wyland caught it. “According to Raya, Ellis is…odd. But I’ll manage. Just wish Kofuku was here.”
“Hm.”
“The first time we get a yokai-related case and our onmyoji is on shore leave.” He turned to exit.
“Is she alright?”
Wyland stopped, and sighed. “She can handle herself. I just don’t like the company she has currently.”
Barrett didn’t say anything to that.
Wyland gave him a smile, before heading back out, back past the moving skeleton and out of the lobby. The steps led down to the outermost section of the Lodge’s disc, where the ships were all attached. He walked along the rows of airlocks before spotting an occupied one, and pushed a button on a console by it to swing the heavy door open.
Ducking through the narrow aperture, he clambered along the length of the small landing craft, took his seat and spun it into the locking position that faced the console and the reinforced window that looked out into a brilliant, infinite sea of stars. After plugging in the mini-PDA into the console, he moved his hand over to flick a switch at the corner of the dashboard. “Please don’t forget the clearance this time.”
“Already informed,” Barrett’s voice came over the comms. “Just land outside the zone. There’s a depot near the rail station there.” The PDA chirped, updated with Barrett’s suggestion, the same result popping up on the dashboard.
“Got it.” He flipped multiple switches on the ceiling, listening for the airlock sealing properly behind him, and buckled himself in before pulling the big level in the middle. The shuttle lurched as it detached from the Lodge, his insides immediately dropping as the artificial gravity vanished, and then Wyland was in space, his ship drifting apart from the orbiting Lodge. “Wish me luck.”
Barrett didn’t reply.
“Killjoy,” he muttered, and hit the switch to power up his vectorial thrusters, slowly beginning to turn the ship with a joystick. Slowly, Talosa came into view, a blue-and-green orb not that much unlike Earth, just a little smaller, and much lusher than his Earth ever was. Some taps of the stick in the opposite direction, countering his spin and coming to face the world directly.
He pushed the joystick forwards, and the main thrusters groaned into action.
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