On Impulse

I glanced at my cuff. Nineteen hundred hours. It wasn’t like Jarrett to be so late.

A gray-haired security guard looped by the fruit stand again—the third time in ten minutes. He eyed me from across the aisle of packed earth. An excess of gut spilled over his belt to hide his badge, but I knew an off-duty officer when I saw one. His stiff-backed walk was born from years of lugging around a two-and-a-half-kilo blaster strapped to a nine-kilo utility belt.

That prickly feeling flared up at the base of my neck. I tugged my cap lower over my eyes, but realized the action only made me look more suspicious. The fruit merchant noticed, too, and sidled closer to my side of the stand to keep an eye on me.

“You must be exhausted from standing in front of my stand for so long. Can I interest you in a cantaloupe? Or a honeydew?” he asked, and shoved a pale-yellow melon under my nose. “They arrived from Saper this morning. You won’t find fresher in the market.”

I waved off the melon. “No, thank you. My friend will be here soon.”

“Ah,” he said, undeterred, and snagged a pre-portioned container from his right. “How about some hellaberries? A perfect snack while you wait.”

The plump little berries looked good, and it had been a while since I’d had fresh fruit. “How much?” He named a price that made my head spin.

“Maybe some other time.”

“Dates, perhaps?”

My thigh cramped. I shifted my weight. “No, nothing. I’m good.”

“Tourists,” he mumbled, and set the container back down in the shade of his bright-blue canopy. He mopped the sweat from his sun-weathered brow with a cloth tucked into his apron. “Your friend doesn’t appear to be here, and your scowl scares away my customers.” Then he made a shoo-shoo motion with his hand. “Wait somewhere else.”

I stepped to the side.

Shoo-shoo.

I took another step. And another. My hip bumped into the spice table at the next booth. Baskets of rosemary, turmeric, hyssop, and thyme wobbled precariously, earning me a glare from the owner.

Satisfied, the fruit merchant called out to the passing crowd. “Dates! Sweet dates, dried dates, stuffed dates! Get the best date of your life right here. Dates so good they’ll make you lie to your husband!”

Two women laughed and nudged each other in their sides as they crowded me farther out of the way. The one in the green bell-sleeved top selected a container of dried dates. She raised her arm to let the sleeve drop back and waved her cuff over the merchant’s payment hub.

I spotted a sturdy metal crate near the back of the fruit stand and slipped around to stand on it. Jarrett was tall and blond. Thanks to his Ritruvian heritage, he usually stood a head taller than most people. Looking around, though, I didn’t see him anywhere on the block.

The security guard crossed to my side of the aisle. Flat eyes traveled from my hands to my waist, scanning for weapons, then to the set of my shoulders before stopping at my face. Definitely an officer. Probably picked up a side job as security for a little extra money.

I held still. No sudden movements to worry him.

“Move along, ma’am,” he said, jerking his head toward the end of the block while giving me The Look. “There’s no loitering here.”

I ignored the “ma’am” comment. On a bad day, I could still pass for thirty; twenty-seven if I put a little effort into it. Definitely not a ma’am.

The guard hooked his thumbs on his belt and rocked back on his heels like he had nothing better to do than follow me around all day.

I jumped down and wiped my palms against my pants. “No trouble. I’m waiting for someone.”

“Looks to me like you’ve been scoping out this stand for a while now. I don’t see that you’ve made any purchases yet today. You weren’t thinking about stealing any of this fine produce, were you?”

“What? No.” Jerkwad. “I’m just standing here. There’s no crime in that. It’s a public place.”

“All the same, it’d be best for you to be on your way.”

I bit my tongue before retorting with something I’d regret. It didn’t matter what planet you were on; it was always the same. To them, you were either a good guy or an asshole, and this off-duty officer had already decided I was an asshole.

Same to you, buddy.

Lifting my hands in surrender, I stepped out from the shade of the stall’s canopy and squinted into the harsh glare of the late afternoon sun. Cerulean-blue-and-white-striped canopies flapped above me, providing puddles of shifting shade for the merchants hawking their wares beneath them. The scent of warm fruit and spices filled the air.

To my left, a man used a long knife to slice open pomegranates before turning them over to pound out the ruby seeds with a wooden paddle. Beyond him, a sharp-eyed grandmother tracked a brood of youngsters darting among the stalls. To my right, a skinny pickpocket jostled her way through a throng of unsuspecting shoppers, taking full advantage of the security guard’s focus on me. She must have felt my gaze, because she craned her neck around until she made me. Quick as could be, she disappeared down a break between buildings.

If the guard was more interested in harassing innocent pedestrians than protecting shoppers from nimble-fingered thieves, that was his problem. I wasn’t about to rat her out.

Striking off to the right, I waited until I’d walked two blocks before activating the holoscreen on my cuff. I swiped my hand over a patch of specialty material on my jacket below my elbow. It turned translucent, allowing a shimmering holographic screen to project in front of me.

“Felix,” I said, activating the voice control on my cuff, “pull up my last comm from Jarrett Viorel.”

“This is the twenty-fourth time you have opened this comm. Is something faulty with your memory? Should I perform a health diagnostic screen when you get back?”

“Just show me the message.”

It was short and to the point. Meet me in the Brin market at the melon stall. Eighteen hundred hours. Tell no one. Watch your back.

Two months ago, I’d asked Jarrett to dig up information on my former partner. I hadn’t heard from him in weeks, then a week ago he sent me that message on an encrypted line and hadn’t responded to any of my follow-up comms. The markets on Andaress-4 were only open on Saturdays, so he had to have meant today. I’d wrapped up the fraudulent insurance claim that I’d been investigating and hauled ass to get here in time.

Why such a cryptic message? Why hadn’t he wanted to meet at his apartment like we usually did? And why hadn’t he shown?

I readjusted my cross-body bag on my shoulder, grimacing when it pressed the leather of my jacket more firmly against my already sticky skin. If I cut through the market, I could be at his place in ten minutes.

Ducking between two stalls, I ignored the sweet fragrance of ripe honey dates, apricots, and Andaress pomegranates. My stomach rumbled, reminding me I hadn’t eaten since dinner the night before. Maybe after I sorted out whatever had Jarrett so on edge, we could snag dinner at a cafe near his place. I could even pick up a few pieces of less-expensive produce to restock the Soteria’s galley.

It took me ten minutes to traverse the length of the market. Most of the stalls sold rich, fragrant spices transported in from the agricultural city of Saper, but mixed in with those were dozens of Brin salt merchants selling everything from powder-fine grinds to chunks of translucent-white crystals the size of my head. An abundant supply of salt was the main reason the Andar Salt and Spice Company terraformed this planet and the only thing keeping it from falling off the galaxy charts and into oblivion.

Jarrett lived on the west end in a two-story building overlooking the textiles section of the market. A tailor’s shop and a small electronics repair store occupied the ground level while four apartments squeezed into the upper level.

I slipped through the narrow walkway between buildings, my feet sure-footed on the familiar path to the rear stairs. Out of habit, I sidled to the inside edge where the worn treads wouldn’t creak beneath my weight.

A narrow balcony ran the length of the white building. Four faded-blue doors marked the entrance of each apartment. Jarrett rented the largest unit on the far end, which had a kitchenette that jutted out into the balcony. Not that he used it.

As I passed the second door, a small dog rushed to the entrance, yapping loudly. Its nails scrambled against a hard floor. A shadow passed by the opaqued window, but the owner didn’t come out.

When I reached the last door, I held my cuff to the door reader to request entry but found it was already unlocked. Years of training had me drawing my blaster from the lower back holster hidden beneath my jacket. I released the safety before nudging the door open with my foot.

The heat hit me first, with the stench barking right on its heels. Rotted compost, feces, urine, and rancid meat. My stomach soured at the fetid odor, bile rising in the back of my throat. The climate control must have been disabled, because it was a sweltering thirty-six degrees Celsius. I switched to short, shallow breaths through my mouth and did my best to ignore the foul taste of the air.

“Jarrett!” I called out, trying not to gag. “It’s Reliance. Are you in there?”

No answer.

I eased in, back to the wall, and swept my eyes across all four corners of the room. His furniture lay overturned, the cushions split open. Seeing no one, I pivoted around the corner to clear the shoebox-sized kitchenette. There, too, cabinet doors hung open and drawers had been yanked off their tracks and dropped to the floor, their contents scattered everywhere.

Someone had tossed the place.

The bathroom and bedroom were at the front of the building overlooking the street. Working counterclockwise, I moved around an overturned desk, being careful not to tread on the busted console laying smashed on the floor. The smell got worse with every step.

His bathroom was minuscule, a two-meter by two-meter square with barely enough room for a gray-water toilet and sonic shower. It, also, had been tossed. A sheet of clear plastiglass hung over the sink, the mirror function busted from a fist-sized crater in the center.

That left the bedroom.

I paused at the closed door, listening for sounds of movement. When I heard nothing except the thumping of my heart, I pushed the door open, blaster raised.

“Shit!” Protocol forgotten, I holstered my weapon and ran to my friend. He sat slumped in a chair, his face bloated and discolored in death. Black fleshflies swarmed over his eyes, lips, and cheeks, gnawing on the soft tissue areas and hastening decomposition. That they had already matured past the larva stage told me Jarrett had been dead at least four days. Why hadn’t anyone reported his death? His partner? His coworkers? Surely, someone must have missed him.

Blood, darkened from oxygen until almost black, soaked his shirt and pooled where it had dripped from his fingers to the floor. Carefully, I peeled back the matted hair at his temple, revealing a blaster burn. Something high-end, judging by the bright-red spidering of the veins, well-defined edges, and localized charring of his flesh. Specialized tactical teams carried that kind of firepower. Military and mercs, too.

A small radius at the point of entry indicated a close-range shot. The gaping exit hole said it had been cranked all the way to lethal.

Jarrett’s fingers, once graceful as they flowed through his cuff controls, were bent backward at the joints. Burn marks covered his forearms. Another blaster hole mangled his thigh right above the kneecap. He hadn’t only been murdered. He’d been tortured.

My hand cupped the side of his face that still bore some resemblance to the man I knew. “Oh Jarrett, who did this to you?”

I blinked away my tears and stepped back to analyze the room, berating myself for contaminating the scene like a first-year rookie. It may have been over a year since I’d left the Department of Enforcement of Criminal Affairs, but I still remembered how to process a damn crime scene.

“Felix, start visual recording.” I spun in a slow circle, letting the lens capture the entire room from ceiling to floor before taking a closer view of Jarrett—of the body. “End recording.”

Felix was the mobile extension of my ship’s computer. He would upload the information to the main system for further analysis as soon as I got within five kilometers of the Soteria. Later, I could blow it up on the bridge’s viewscreen for analysis, but for now I wanted to take in what the camera couldn’t.

I circled the perimeter of the room, avoiding any visible splotches of blood. The window opaquing had been engaged, blocking the view from street level. Below, the clatter from the market was loud enough that a herd of Brionite hairy coos could have trampled through the apartment without being heard.

Jarrett’s attackers had strapped him to a chair from his kitchen table set. Shrink ties cut into the bloated flesh at his wrists and ankles. They were high-end and not something Jarrett would likely own. They must have brought those with them. That indicated premeditation.

I hesitated, analyzing my gut reaction. Attackers? Plural?

Jarrett was thirty-three—a year older than me—and fit for a techie type. He’d grown up on Ritru-6, a planet with a marginally stronger gravitational pull than the Earth standard. That, along with some genetic tweaking, resulted in most Ritruvians having increased bone density and muscle mass. He also enjoyed the well-developed ego they all seemed to share. And like all DECA agents, he passed strenuous physical exams that included basic self-defense components. Not an easy mark.

I squatted beside the body to scrutinize the dried blood beneath. Besides the puddle below his hand, fat, round drops dotted the space between his feet. Smaller bits of spatter trailed out in short lines. They’d struck him in the nose and mouth for sure, but the blaster burn made a mess of everything else. Then he’d hung his head between his knees.

Standing, I stepped into an obvious void where the blood had landed on the assailant instead of the floor. This was where the shooter had been positioned. I raised my hand, mimicking holding a blaster to Jarrett’s temple.

My eyes traveled over the body to the opposite wall. Level with Jarrett’s head was a fine mist pattern of blood. That would be from the kill shot. Three sides fanned out in a rough circle with the droplets concentrated in the middle and lightening at the edges. The fourth side, though, ended in a harsh line. Another void.

My gut was right. A second person had been standing there when the killer pulled the trigger.

“What were you on to that was worth your life?”

Jarrett was a tech genius. We’d met as rookies twelve years ago on a smuggling case on Brione-5. I’d gone undercover and royally fucked up. He’d done some computer magic to salvage something from the year-long sting and probably my job as well. It turned out the smugglers we were targeting kept astonishingly detailed records.

For that matter, so did Jarrett. If he had discovered something worth being killed over, he would have documented it.

I walked back into the living space. His console lay in pieces. The thin plastiglass screen had been shattered and two side bars cracked open. Someone had extracted the delicate hardware and ground it into the tile. I didn’t know enough about consoles to tell if the data storage had been stolen, but I could tell there would be no recovering any information from that.

All the hiding spots that leaped to mind had been ransacked: chair cushions, cabinet drawers, clothes closet. No, Jarrett was too smart for that. He’d pick somewhere with easy access and so mundane no one would ever look at it twice. He might even keep it on his person. I went back to the bedroom.

“Sorry about this,” I apologized and searched his pockets. Empty.

His cuff lay on the floor across the room—obviously removed to prevent him from summoning help. I picked it up and held it against his wrist to release the DNA lock. I scrolled through the log. Nothing stood out, but I created a link to my cuff and instructed Felix to copy the files.
While that worked, I checked behind Jarrett’s ear and along his hairline for a microdot. Undercover agents sometimes used the sticky discs to pass along small bits of data to their handlers. That reminded me of another case we worked together. Our informant had been a low-level drug mule who smuggled stardust into the prison two doses at a time in the hollowed-out heels of her boots. Jarrett thought it was rather clever.

I slipped off his right shoe and clawed back the inner material. It came up easily, as if someone had loosened it before. There, nestled into a smooth groove inside the heel, was a data dot. Whatever information Jarrett had been willing to die for was likely on that dot.

A forceful knock on the front door interrupted my success. “This is the D-E-C-A. We have a report of suspicious activity at this location. Come out with your hands up.”