Page 31 of Alien in the Depths
He took back his wish for the poddy to slow down. He knew all too well that stopping in a place like this almost guaranteed a pod-jacking, especially when the streetlights were out like they were now.
He thought back with shame to the time he’d spent there. It wasn’t as if he’d stolen any pods himself, but he was only one step away from that being his life. And what he’d done for Slik in the end wasn’t any better. It was arguably worse.
Outside, the streets had become illuminated again, the power shuddering back to life, and soon the ghettos were behind them. Zaraq only hoped he could leave them behind for good.
His thoughts were broken by the pod coming to a violent halt.
“That’ll be eighteen Rikuuns, pal!” the poddy shouted without bothering to turn around or even look in the mirror. Ordinarily, this would have annoyed Zaraq, but considering he was trying to stay incognito, he let it slide.
He tapped his wrist comm to the meter, waiting for the ping that confirmed the payment. The moment he heard it, he was out of the pod, not even turning to watch it leave.
Instead, his eyes were on Vexis’s house. The place was set back from the street, and Zaraq knew from his own days in Rikuus’s criminal underworld that this was intentional. The streetlights didn’t reach that far back, which meant anyone coming or going by night was shrouded by the building’s shadows.
Usually, this was to obscure shady deals, protect the identities of sex workers, or hide mob connections. But tonight, it worked in Zaraq’s favor.
Sticking close to the fence and using a large salika tree to obscure him, Zaraq crept toward the house. It appeared still, and when he saw and heard nothing for several minutes, he hurried forward to the front door.
As he approached the security panel, he reached into his pack and pulled out the reader Sofia had used to hack the door the day before. With one press of a button, he saw the huge obsidian doors slide open, and Zaraq slipped inside before anyone on the street could notice.
Inside, he pulled off his helmet, relishing his first breath of fresh air since leaving the hotel. The house smelled all too familiar, like shaka smoke and alcohol—the same way the casino and almost every gangster’s home smelled. Still, it was better than being trapped behind the glass of the helmet, and he could see better, too. Setting the apparatus down on the foyer table, he let his eyes adjust to the dim light.
The house was enormous, but Sofia had already given him a good idea of where to look for the proof he needed. He crept through the silent foyer, making his way to the living room.
“There you are,” he muttered as he caught sight of the gun cabinet.
It was just where Sofia had described, and as he approached, he caught sight of the large silver digital lock that held the thing shut. On a whim, he tugged at the handle, just in case, but it didn’t budge.
“Guess we’ll have to do this the old-fashioned way,” he said, putting down his pack and pulling out a series of wires connected to a small black box.
During his time at the casino, he’d broken into his fair share of debtor’s houses, waiting for them in the dark with a baseball bat or sometimes a garrote. He could still feel the struggle of the men he’d choked just enough to scare them, still hear the crunch of kneecaps breaking and the cries of his victims as they begged for mercy.
The thought made him shudder, and he tried his best to push those dark memories aside. He reminded himself that finding justice for Ryka’s murder was his job now. It wasn’t enough to make up for all the harm he’d done, but it was a start.
At the very least, his former career meant he knew a thing or two about picking locks. The box in his hand was a lexor, and he popped the lid to the digital lock before connecting the lexor’s wires to the glowing control panel inside.
Within seconds, the lexor showed dozens of lines of code. Complicated but child’s play compared to some of the home systems and safes he’d hacked. It didn’t take more than a minute for the lock to chime its opening bell and slide open.
“Whoa,” Zaraq muttered as he pulled open the cabinet doors. Blue light spilled out, momentarily blinding him, but when his eyes adjusted again, he knew he’d hit the jackpot. The gun cabinet was stocked with dozens of weapons—solaris guns, zapfa rays, semi-automatic blasters, and gamma knives along with an assortment of smaller weapons intended to intimidate. He knew these weapons all too well from his own time at Constellation Casino.
But the one weapon he was looking for wasn’t there.
He knew from the warrant out for his arrest that the cops were also looking for a sigma blaster connected to Ryka’s murder—a thin, straight tube about the size of a man’s hand. It didn’t look like much, but it harnessed ions in the atmosphere to shoot a small but highly concentrated energy blast. It would kill avictim in perfect silence and never needed to be reloaded. Sigma blasters were highly illegal and hard to obtain, even on Rikuus, which meant the chances of finding one were slim. That is, unless he was in the house of Ryka’s killer.
He scanned the cabinet again, but nothing in there matched what he was looking for. He was about to turn away and search the rest of the house when something caught his eye.
There, in the bottom corner of the cabinet’s floor, a small patch of the plush blue lining was worn away. It seemed like a strange spot for that amount of wear, and absentmindedly, Zaraq brushed his fingers across it.
A sudden voice emitted from the cabinet, startling Zaraq.
“Open,” it said, as the floor to the cabinet slid back and a small cache was raised.
Inside, Zaraq found a small white box that almost glowed under the blue lights, and when he opened it, his heart skipped a beat. There, half-hidden under some papers, was a sigma blaster. For a second, all Zaraq could do was stare. His heart pounded and relief flooded him as he realized his nightmare might finally come to an end.
With his pulse still pounding in his ears, Zaraq pulled an airlock bag from his pack and carefully bagged the weapon, making sure not to touch it. As he did this, the papers that had been lying on top of the blaster spilled onto the floor. Zaraq shoved the sigmablaster into his bag and was about to put the remaining items back when he saw something that momentarily froze him.
Among the papers were several fake galaxy IDs, each under a different name. What they had in common was that they each featured a picture of someone he knew from the slums, someone he had practically grown up with.
Vexis was a common enough Rikuan name that he hadn’t even considered Slikrim’s new right-hand man might be known to him, but as he looked at the sneering face on the cards, Zaraq felt his face grow hot.