The body in the corner of the dark alley in the Kvarok-nor district was broken, its limbs twisted unnaturally, as if it had been hurled against the rough stone wall by a force far greater than a human could withstand. The little Kelar lay in a heap next to a reeking garbage can. When Johnson and his team had arrived, a small baor-mak, its fur matted and dull, had been licking the man’s drying blood from the ground. It was fortunate, Johnson mused, that the Kelar and Jerr biospheres were biochemically neutral to one another - while the baor-mak would gain no nourishment from the blood it consumed, it would, at least, suffer no harm from it either. It would have been far worse if the man had been a Terran. While Jerr biochemistry was neutral to Terrans, the reverse wasn’t true. Certain enzymes unique in Terran bodies acted as toxins to Jerrassians. These enzymes wouldn’t kill them, but they would certainly make them queasy, or worse. There had been more than one instance of this causing diplomatic issues in Jerr-Terran relations, Johnson thought with a wry smile.

He didn’t feel much sympathy for the Kelar. The man had had no legitimate business in these shadowy parts of the city, with its debris-strewn streets, and if he had died breaking the law, Johnson wouldn’t shed a tear. Not because he was Kelar, but because of the implication of him being here, in a place frequented by a suspected JLF member. The man likely had had a nefarious purpose coming here, and Johnson held no sympathy for criminals, or worse.

They had come here to look for clues. The street, with its cracked pavement and walls tagged with graffiti, was a known hangout for Kham Men. Although Johnson didn’t think the man would risk being here now, not with the Sunguard combing the area, there still might be leads to find.

“Find out how he got here,” Johnson ordered firmly. They had already identified him as Larb-eff-tour-mat, a sixty-seven-year-old male from Kearotang. Records showed he had once been caught in possession of a firearm. But that was back on Kelar. What had he been doing here on Jerr?

The lieutenant talked with the Sunguard computers for a couple of minutes before reporting back to him, concern etched on his face.

“It seems he must have snuck in under the grid,” he said, his tone carrying an apologetic note. “I’m sorry, sir. Large parts of the city are still not monitored.”

Johnson sighed. Twenty years had now passed since Integration. Back then, large swaths of the city hadn’t even possessed electricity. These days, every Jerr carried a gridphone in their pocket, and none wanted to return to the old days of switchboard operators manually moving cables to connect their calls. In the span of two decades, Jerr had transitioned from the Jet Age to the Hyperspace Age. And yet, here in this part of the city where it mattered most, there was no surveillance grid to be found, no intelligent computers monitoring the murkier deeds of its citizens, and no one to inform him about what the blue-skinned reptile had been doing here.

But Johnson was willing to bet his life - or at least a bottle of fine brandy - that the delinquent had been up to no good.

He looked around, taking in the dimly lit surroundings. Across the street, upbeat music flowed from a late-night drinking establishment, its neon sign flickering intermittently. After carefully crossing the dark street, he opened the door to the small building, which creaked in protest. The building had windows facing the alley - perhaps someone inside had seen something. Johnson didn’t even bother to consider that those who might have witnessed the altercation could choose not to talk to the Sunguard about it. They would, sooner or later.

Inside, the room was thick with the smell of smoke, alcohol, and the lingering scent of sweat from patrons who had been there too long. The music, which had been loud out on the street, was deafening now. He caught the eye of the owner, a silver-streaked Jerrassian tending the bar, and made a slashing motion with his hand to signal him to lower the music. The old man immediately complied and cut the volume. Upsetting the Sunguard was never a good idea - especially considering the muffled sounds he now heard emanating from the back room. Johnson was certain the owner would be more than willing to cooperate with the investigation; after all, keeping the Sunguard on his side was in his best interest. He wasn’t here for the backroom shenanigans, but he made a mental note to mention the bar to the local regular agent when he returned to the barracks.

His hope sank when he looked around and saw the room he was standing in. It wasn’t brightly lit, but it was bright enough to pose a problem, and outside, the alley on the other side of the street lay shrouded in darkness. The light from one of the moons barely reached the farthest end of the alley, but from inside this room, the contrast with the indoor lighting still made it impossible to discern anything clearly. It made sense; Kham Men would not have chosen this place for his rendezvous if he could have easily been spotted. The clientele in this establishment, he thought, were not the type to pay much attention to events around them. Johnson didn’t even bother to ask anyone for information.

He did, however, notice an adjacent room. It was an arcade area, with three electronic gaming cabinets - one of them facing the street, its display playing a demo of some sort of fighting game. To make the screens appear brighter than they actually were, there were no lights in this room. The absence of lights meant no reflections in the windows, further obscuring the view of the street outside. Each arcade machine was equipped with security cameras discreetly integrated into them. If they were lucky, the camera in the machine facing the street had recorded the events in the alley earlier that night.

Johnson motioned to his tech specialist. The lieutenant, a small Kelar woman with a long ponytail of glossy black hair sticking out from under her helmet, immediately started to dismantle the gaming cabinet, her precise motions showcasing her expertise. It was a native Jerrassian product, manufactured by an electronics company he recognized from the southern, previously capitalist, continent. It wasn’t modern by any standard; however, it at least utilized transistor based microchips rather than the antiquated vacuum tubes that the Jerrassians had used prior to first contact. It was clearly inspired by Federation technology, albeit not quite there yet.

Once she had carefully freed the motherboard from its housing, she positioned her handheld camera to show it to the intelligent computer back at base. Within seconds, an answer came back.

“I’d like you to place electrodes at the soldering points marked as C14, E2, H8, H9 and J21,” it instructed.

She brought out her compact hacking kit and opened it to reveal an array of tools. From it, she retrieved five electrodes of suitable size - small pincers with nonconducting handles that were wirelessly connected to the hacking kit, which in turn was directly connected to the intelligent computer.

Once placed in the indicated spots on the motherboard, the computer initiated its analysis, monitoring the currents that flowed through those soldering points.

“Move E2 to E4, and add a sixth electrode to J17,” it continued. The tech specialist obeyed without hesitation, her small, nimble fingers quickly positioning the electrodes in the right position.

The arcade machine rebooted.

As the boot process neared completion, the computer interjected, “I have successfully reverse-engineered enough of the protocol to trigger a readout of the solid-state memory within the device. The current transfer speeds are hovering in the vicinity of one gigabit per second. This will take a while. Please stand by.”

Johnson sat down on a worn, wooden chair in the dimly lit corner of the room to wait for the process to complete. It was frustrating to know that the computer back at base could process data at petabit-per-second speeds, yet it was hampered by the design of the Jerrassian electronics it was attempting to read. He briefly considered heading to the bar for a beer while he waited but ultimately decided against it. It was now early in the morning - far too early for a drink. Besides, he doubted the bar even stocked any beers he would like.

Half an hour later, the tech specialist roused him from his sleep.

“We have video,” she said. “I’m afraid it’s not good, though. The unit only had an HD camera, and given the distance to the far end of the alley and the necessity of recording through the glass panel of the window, the resolution simply wasn’t sufficient.”

“Did we get anything?” he replied.

“The altercation is there. We can confirm Larb-eff-tour-mat handled a large case of some sort to Kham Men. He then says something, and the Kelar becomes visibly upset and tries to grab the case back from the Jerrassian. At that point, Kham seems to snap, lifting Larb-eff-tour-mat and throwing him straight across the alley. He then proceeds to retrieve the case again and exits the alley, heading north. But we don’t have enough resolution for lip reading, so we don’t know what was said.”

That was disappointing, Johnson thought. But it was a start. Now they knew Kham Men had been here, and they knew the direction he took when he left.

Still, that was not much to go on. North - that just meant he could have intended to go anywhere on the vast expanse of the entire continent. It meant nothing in itself. But wherever he was eventually headed, he couldn’t have walked there. And that presented an opening for Johnson.

He brought the squad with him out onto the street. It was now early morning. The orange disc of Tau Ceti was starting to appear above the horizon in the east, casting a warm glow across the landscape. Drilling, whistling songs sung by the nocturnal birds were beginning to be replaced by the sharp shrieks of the next shift, eagerly welcoming the warmth of the morning as they prepared to take flight in search of breakfast.

To the north, the concrete façade of a large apartment complex loomed. Beyond it lay the highway to the Northern Plains, cutting through the landscape in a straight path. It seemed obvious that this must have been Khar Men’s final destination before he left the city. But again, that didn't tell Johnson much. Thousands of cars traveled along that highway every hour, speeding across the continent in all directions. There was no way to know which one was Khar Men’s.

After walking along the road for ten minutes, they received a lucky break. At the end of the apartment complex, there was a parking lot. This early in the morning, it was mostly empty, save for a few scattered vehicles. The parking lot had charging stations, and the charging stations were equipped with cameras. The tech specialist got to work again.

This time, the process went much smoother. The electronics inside this particular model of charging stations were already known to the Sunguard. The computer provided instructions to her, and she set to work on the charger’s electronics box. With the arcade machine, they hadn’t known what time Khar Men was present, so they had to scan through the entire video record from the night. Of course, they didn’t exactly know when, or even if, he had been to this parking lot either, but they could make an educated guess. And within minutes, they had found him.

The camera in the charging station showed him entering an inconspicuous gray car - obviously not his own - and driving away at 01:23:47 this morning. Its limited field of view only covered that particular parking spot, so they couldn’t see him merging onto the road. However, with some light application of his deductive skills, Johnson soon identified the unique identifier of Khar Men’s car.

It all boiled down to the fact that the highway was electrified. While the charging stations were adequate for keeping a car topped up for shorter drives within the city, they weren’t very practical for longer journeys. Ideally, one wouldn’t want to have to stop a car and recharge every fourth hour during a cross-country drive. For that very reason, many of the roads constructed by the Terran Federation on Jerr were electrified, continuously charging any vehicle driving upon them by means of induction.

Only you didn’t want to electrify an entire road, just in case a car happened to drive on it. Instead, each individual vehicle was tracked as it moved,  so only the specific stretch of roadway directly beneath the car had to be electrified. Of course, this had the added benefit of making it simple to invoice the owner of the vehicle for the charging cost as well.

The entrance to the highway was roughly a two-minute drive from the parking lot. At 01:25:32, a car had entered the highway from this side of the road. At that time of night, traffic on the side road had been light, with no other cars making the transition within three minutes of that event. While the proof wasn’t conclusive in a mathematical sense, it was close enough to draw a reasonable conclusion. That car must have been Khar Men’s. Obtaining the unique identifier for it was now just a matter of querying the grid - as was tracking it as it sped along the highway.

The hunt was on.