The room was dark as the area attendant opened it. Why the automatic lights didn’t come on caused no questions in the mind of the attendant. Just last week, he had attended to a species that didn’t have eyes as such, but were still sensitive to certain wavelengths of electromagnetic radiation because of their skin senses. So, he had disabled all the automatic lights in that area for their visit and just assumed he had missed resetting this room.
“Attendant override, lights on,” he verbalized to the control circuits.
“Jehoshophat!” he exclaimed (an odd expletive for a Thosti, but he was quite fond of Earther culture). For the sight that confronted him was, to say the least, unexpected.
The Sykoft that was supposed to have left for his extended personal leave was still there. Or, more precisely, his bodily remains were still there. Whatever soul the Sykofts believed in was quite evidently gone from this body.
The body was attached about ten feet up the wall of the common room, its leathery wings stretched out to their full expanse, almost eight feet across. A long pike pierced the body in its upper thorax, apparently holding most of the weight. The body had been slit open from just below the throat to just above the pelvic girdle it was still wearing, internal organs cascading down from the body to the floor. A puddle of semi congealed goo spread out from the wall on the floor.
“Alarm! Notify Security violent intruder in Sector 22gf-39, Area W5, Common Housings, Room 329,” the Thosti attendant instructed the control circuits according to protocol. He didn’t think any intruder was still there, based on the congealed blood on the floor, but he had to follow procedure on the Planet of Eternal Peace, otherwise known as Forsetti.
“I’m not gonna clean this up,” he added to himself.
In just moments, a Security droid made an appearance. “Area secure. No hostiles detected,” it droned. Its sensors probed the body, hovering above the mess on the floor. “Remain here, touch nothing,” it informed the attendant, “You will be interviewed by an attending investigator shortly.”
“Yeah, I figured as much,” answered the attendant, and sat down in the corridor to wait.
M’Artel was annoyed. Robert was late again and they were going to miss the show.
For a planet steeped in as much political, scientific, and religious administration as Forsetti is, it has a surprisingly active and varied nightlife. If you can actually call it nightlife, that is. The entire planet is one giant structure. Being geologically dead, it was long ago virtually hollowed out as more and more beings flocked to it in the ancient past.
In fact, even structure isn’t quite the best way to describe it, for it is a machine as well. It is completely self-sustaining and even self-propelled, traveling every thousand years or so to a new solar system, sometimes spending decades in interstellar space.
The show was a cross culture concert and recital, promising two of M’Artel’s favorite things, sexy females (of several different races) and loud music. It was sure to be fun and he didn’t want to miss any of it.
Robert burst into the room and shouts, “Come on! We don’t want to be late!”
“ROWRR!!” answers M’Artel. More or less anyways, to Human ears. It was actually a rather nasty Xavvian swear word. The literal meaning is quite, let’s say, disconcerting to any non-hunting species.
Squeezing into the nearest transport tube after him, M’Artel asks Robert, “Why don’t you ever wear your comm. link?”
“It chafes, okay!?” retorted Robert, mocking M’Artel with his hands held up as though they were cat’s paws and batting at the air in front of his face. “Actually, I just can’t get used to this place, and all the accoutrements therein.”
The last part, said in the voice of their Religions History professor, cracked them both up, as it was his pet phrase in class. They had barely composed themselves by the time the tube opened up at their destination.
Looking up, Robert was surprised to see a night sky, complete with two moons, one very irregular in shape. “Hologram,” explained a rather lovely Xavvian female who appeared at his side, “It’s the forest planet of Pral, colonized as a penal planet by the Sycroft Consortium. It’s part of the show. Come on!” she urged him.
Looking back at M’Artel, Robert saw him grinning at how Gr’Vinnia was so plainly coming on to Robert. They winked at each other and Robert left with the beautiful female to find a ‘good place’ to watch the show. She had been obviously interested in the handsome young Human from the first week in class, and he didn’t seem to mind at all. Besides being absolutely gorgeous, she was easily one of the smartest people either one of them had ever met, and that was saying something.
Being currently unattached and not the least bit bothered by it, M’Artel wandered off, looking for new faces.
By the time the Security investigator actually made it down to Room 329, the attendant was quite irritated. Not only was it very disturbing to come across such a grisly scene, but also he had mountains of work to do. Besides which, Renallians are notoriously impatient.
The investigator was a Tharn of indeterminate sex named Hows. Gender was almost always indeterminate when dealing with Tharn, as they had, at last known count, about six hundred different genders. Some people on Forsetti believe even the Tharn get confused by this.
For all practical purposes, though, Hows came across as mostly male. He even resembled Humans, though a little shorter than average. The gender issue was very confusing and off putting to most species, which is why Tharns make such good investigators when they choose a career in Law.
Here on Forsetti, though, it hardly seemed to make any real difference, as most things were done with crystal readings or technology that mimicked crystal readings.
“You can go,” Hows said to the attendant, “I know where to find you.”
As the attendant walked of, muttering under his breath, Hows began setting up ‘his’ equipment. The droids were useful, but the Office of Investigative Specialties for Off Worlders (as his office was officially known) had some very efficient, even amazing, tools at their disposal. Being part of a culture that went back into the mists of ancient times had its advantages, one of them being that virtually everything that could possibly happen, has already happened to someone else and been explicitly covered in thousands of case studies.
One of his first machine readings showed thee to have been recent crystal activity in the area. Adjusting the settings and taking several different readings, he narrowed it down in time to within the last three days. Further reading narrowed the type of crystal to Xavvian.
“Great,” he sighed to no one in particular, “I get to interview 70,000 giant cats.”
Only then did he study the actual victim and the body’s odd placement.