3,043 words.

Secure Transmission

Sender: Comm Relay 5345-1399

Receiver: Thunder Nebula United Systems Intelligence Agency Comm Relay

Reroute To: Agent Gothellion Kjrenick

Here is the “report” you requested from me.

I believe I mentioned it when I recorded this, but in case I did not, we are even.

I owe you no more favors.

Secure Transmission Ended.

One, (1) file included in transmission.

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Transmission Received

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Beginning File Playback:

A hardlight projection blinks to life in the middle of Agent Kjrenick’s dark office. The projection is a male humanoid extraterrestrial, not from any of the human empires, but a species familiar to Kjrenick. His eyes are slightly larger than a human’s, nose slightly smaller. His pupils darker, skull sleeker, hair straighter. A Zrentar, one of the most manipulative FTL capable races humanity has come across. Near-human with an unnerving appearance, they claim to be genetically perfect and no one has been able to disprove them.

He smiles a smile too wide for a human with too many teeth and a shiver goes up Kjrenick’s back. He knows this one, but that doesn’t make the smile any less unsettling. After a few seconds of the projection just standing there, smiling and staring, it begins to talk in a smooth voice that sounds artificially perfect by human standards and Kjrenick prepares himself to listen to too much talking and not enough information.

“Hello Gothe. It has been a while. I almost think it might not have been long enough, but that is a topic for another time. Against my urgings, you have asked for a breakdown, an understanding of the incident that resulted in the death of your informant. I will start by saying you’re an idiot. Now that I’ve gotten that out of the way, I suppose I will tell you what you have requested.

“Firstly, exposition. You must understand some things to fully make sense of the situation. Things you should keep to yourself. In fact, you should keep this whole damn thing to yourself. Bury it so deep even I couldn’t find it. My hope is that the why on that will make sense soon, so I digress.

“On to the report.

“My Captain has always had a mysterious air about her. Something in the way she moved, the way she carried herself, there was a grace hidden underneath the rugged drunkardness that spacefaring gives a sailor.

“At first glance, she isn’t much to look at. Five foot nine with shoulder length black hair pulled back into a bun, dressed in the usual blue, Bortta leather coat and black skintight pants stereotypically attributed to independent captains. It is only when you look closer that you would begin to notice some abnormalities.

“Now, before I go into the things that make her strange, I need to make sure you are aware that independent captains are unique among Starsailors. You aren’t the dumbest agent I’ve met, Gothe, but you certainly didn’t know the ways of the cosmos when I knew you. So give me a minute to explain why she is an oddity. It is important to the report, I promise. You should know better than most the importance of understanding a suspect.

“Traveling the stars with nothing but your own wit and mettle to keep you and your crew alive is not something just anyone can undertake. So sure, they come in all shapes and sizes with any number of weird body mods. But the mods usually make sense. Logical, typical sense I mean. Something that would be out of place on a planet like Columbus but make sense in a place like Memphia. My Captain is a bit different.

“However, before I talk about what makes her body weird, I think I will start with her coat. The coat is oversized. Hard to notice at first as she wears it loose. Combined with her tendency to “forget” a shirt underneath, this causes most Starsailors to not even pay attention to the coat itself. But if one does, the size is not the only thing that stands out. The fabric is thicker than standard. I don’t fully know how, but it is armored in some way. Another abnormality is a pair of plasma burns on the back. Burns that should have gone straight through, regardless of armor. Lastly, finally, there’re two admiral insignias on the inside of the jacket’s front. The one on her left is of an USSN Admiral, the one on her right is that of a Burning Suns Empire Admiral. These are the hardest to notice, and also the weirdest. I have no explanation for them.

“On a related note, I will say that the coat’s size has led the few who noticed to believe she was not the original Captain Jayde McKinley; however, these rumors, as best I can tell, are incorrect.

“Moving on though. Her tattoos. Now, before you say that ‘all Starsailors have tattoos’, yes, I know. Hers are different, hear me out. The sides of her face have a pattern akin to that of a nebula’s swirl. And, underneath her oversized coat and skintight pants, she is entirely covered in similar patterns. They flow across her pale body, like small rivers, carving their way across her skin, remembering a memory forgotten. It’s a pattern not shown in any database or artist portfolio. I even swear that it changes; I don’t think I’ve ever seen the same pattern twice. I’m not entirely sure they are tattoos in the conventional sense, but I wouldn’t know what to call them otherwise.

“Now, I can hear you thinking that if that was it, she wouldn’t be the largest abnormality. A lot of Starsailors modify their gear and tattoos have been used by sailors since the days of sailing on the oceans of Earth. Very, very few would ever notice them change. But it isn’t all. Stay with me Gothe, there is more.

“Oftentimes she wears a set of thermal vision glasses, but if you can spot her without them, you would see her eyes are solid black. Her eyes appear to be entirely pupil and as far as I’ve seen, there is no visible distinction between the iris, pupil, and whites. They aren’t cybernetic either, I checked with our ship’s doc. As her first officer, I’ve had a few beings ask me if she was fully human, and she is, biologically at least. That doesn’t change her eyes though. I can’t explain them. Even the Eurosian Alliances don’t have optical body mods like those.

“And then, gloves. Gloves aren’t the weirdest sight among Starsailors, but they aren’t common. They tend to get in the way of a spacesuit. My Captain wears a pair of course. I wouldn’t bring them up otherwise. Hers though, have six digits. Most people would logically think at least one is a cybernetic enhancement; a relatively common thing in space, fingers are fragile. However, I can confirm hers aren’t. She has an extra finger on each hand. Makes it wild watching her use a terminal on the ship, or doing some other activities…

“Get that image out of your mind, Gothe. It’s not inaccurate, but I want you to be better than that.

“So, my Captain is a six fingered woman with unnatural eyes, unnatural tattoos, clothes that don’t make sense, and an accent that doesn’t match known accents. Oh, I might have forgotten to mention that. Her accent and speech cadence is wild, I can’t describe it. She doesn’t sound like any other human I’ve ever met. All this combines to make my Captain a very confusing character, and that’s not even talking about anything under her skin.

“Her muscles are different than any other human I’ve felt. They’re wound tighter than a Heggoll’s and seem just as strong. Despite this, she’s got a figure better than many Zrentar women, and you know how desirable they look. She’s small, genuinely. Not much to look at. But fast, strong, lethal.

“But, I’m sure you’re dying for me to move on, and against my better judgement, I did end up owing you that one favor…

“The bar where the incident took place was called The Lonely Asteroid. It is an old establishment, carved into the heart of an asteroid that had been launched from its orbit at some point or another. A couple old engines and a rickety FTL drive installation later, and the place essentially turned into a mobile bar, hotel, brothel, and supply depot.

“On occasion, and depending on where the owner took the place, my Captain would stop there for either a short period of shore leaves or a quick stop for resupply. This time we were stopping there for a couple days of shore leave for the crew before a particularly lengthy voyage headed two sectors over.

“Well, when we arrived, I think there were three other long-range haulers and a squadron of Eurosian patrol fighters already in dock. In other words, it was about as full as it could be with us included. In an environment such as this, where people are looking to release pent up stress, there is always a high possibility that a brawl can break out. Despite this, neither my captain nor I were worried about it, the staff of the ol’ Asteroid are notoriously good at keeping, or enforcing, their peace.

“The crew was given the go ahead to disperse and told the time to return, which pretty much left the resupply to just the two of us. That basically meant that by the time we went to quench our thirst for substance in the bar, there weren’t any of our crew around. They were either asleep in their bunks or found someone to keep them warm.

“Now, occasionally, and usually due to her choice of attire, she gets hit on by beings thinking she would be easy to bed. For the record, she isn’t. Trust me, I know exactly how much effort it takes. Anyways, what I thought to be another such group approached her this “night”. I excused myself to the facilities and they made their move; I saw them come up to her as I left the room. I was only gone for a couple minutes and I was just getting back when I saw the incident start.

“What triggered it, I don’t fully know. I’ve never known my Captain to be a violent woman, and she still refuses to tell me. Regardless, I walked back into the room to watch blood fly.

“There were two feline Eurosians and they were the first to fall. She slashed their throats with a weapon I never saw. Now, I want to remind you of something, Gothe. I am a Zrentar. I have Zrentar eyes. I know you’re a bit slow, so I’ll spell it out for you; I see things faster and clearer than you humans do. Your cybernetics barely reach our averages. So, when I say I couldn’t see something, it’s because this all happened so fast, I could barely track what happened. You want to know why the security cameras had problems rendering her on recordings? The old Asteroid’s cams couldn’t keep up with her.

“So, she killed two of them before they moved. Three of the other four went for guns, or knives, or something. The fourth lunged at her. Or maybe he just fell forward violently. Honestly not sure. Right about then, I started to draw my own weapon, and the staff began to react the way you know they did.

“Next, she grabbed one around the throat, snapped his neck, and the last two died when I blinked. I swear to you I didn’t see how it happened. Just like that, it was over. Two killed in a blink, two killed without time for them to panic, two killed before they could react.

“And I didn’t even see my Captain use a weapon.

“From there, I’m sure you’ve seen the recordings. How else would you have known to ask me? You saw the guards move in on her as she idly sat back down at the bar. You saw me cover her, ready to fight if she did. You saw the staff poke at the bodies. You saw them ask her to surrender her weapons. You saw her say no, and you saw the staff eventually leave us be, unsure what to do.

“Unfortunately, I must say we are now restricted from the Asteroid. My Captain never told them what started the fight, so they had to stick to their policy and bar us from re-entry. I cannot blame them. I am simply pleased they decided against a fight. But, you want an explanation. That was the deal.”

The Zrentar pauses here, rubbing his hands together and eyes darting around. If Agent Kjrenick didn’t know better, he’d say the Zrentar was scared. But no, Kjrenick’s almost certain the Zrentar has never been scared a day in his life. He’s figuring out how he wants to say this, trying to find a way out of it. Eventually, he seems to realize he doesn’t have one and continues.

“Afterwards, when we were in the middle of some… well, I’ll call it extracurricular activities, I asked her where she learned how to fight the way she did. I knew that any other time, I wouldn’t get an answer. She played her cards very close to her chest when it came to her past. But good times make for loose lips, and she let something slip that I don’t think she realized I would recognize the significance of; she was trained on Europa.

“Now, that may not seem like anything to you other than confusing, and I doubt you’ll even find Europa in your databases. It’s a small ice moon back in the Sol system. A little ball of ice never terraformed in a system known to be relatively secretive. Well, under the Europan ice lies a nameless facility where the humans who run it train the deadliest of assassins for a reason I do not know. I know of their existence and that alone is more than most beings alive.

“What I do know is that the assassins that come out of that facility call themselves Dancers, Europa’s Dancers if they’re being specific. These Dancers are the best assassins that you as a race have ever created. Supposedly heartless, able to kill without remorse or hesitation. As fast as genetic manipulation can make them. They move faster, think faster, hear faster, even see faster. In essence, they are the perfect humans, made to kill. And I’m in love with one, life is a cruel mistress.

“Now you may be asking, how I know any of this. Well, to tell you the truth, I shouldn’t. I’m a no-name sailor on a third-rate hauler out on the fringe of colonized space. You know damn well there’s nothing important on any file of mine. My face wouldn’t be recognized by anyone on any world, except by maybe you, and you’ve looked right through me before. I am no one as far as anything or anyone can tell. I have no sources, no dark, hidden past someone could dig up. No money to my name that isn’t on this ship. But, then again, I’m the first officer for a Terranian Alliance Assassin; one of the Dancers of Europa herself, so maybe, as you should damn well know by now Gothe, appearances can be changed by perception.”

The Zrentar pauses his talking and pinches the bridge of his thin nose.

“Alright Gothe, look. I’ve got to tell you this because if I don’t… If you don’t bury this, she will come for you. This isn’t a threat, it’s a promise. The secret must be kept. If anyone else learns of this, or sees this transmission, there will be blood. You were a good friend, once. I pray you remember that.

“As for our deal, your favor, this is it. You called it in. I hope we never cross paths again. For if we do, it will be on the warpath of a pissed off Europan Dancer.

“And I honestly don’t want you dead, despite what I said when last we spoke.

“Have a good life. Bury this.”

With that, the projection blinks off, and Agent Kjrenick is once more left alone in the darkness of his office. Finally, the bastard got to the point. Kjrenick wipes his eyes; he was beginning to believe the Zrentar wasn’t going to actually give him anything. Just drone on and on about what this Captain McKinley looked like and not address what was actually asked for.

Even so, Kjrenick is left with more questions raised than answered. The one thing he now knows for certain is that the Zrentar’s warning was genuine. He knew the extraterrestrial well enough to tell that.

Leaning back in his chair he intertwines his fingers behind his head. His informant, the one who was killed by this “dancer,” was his key to taking down a smuggling ring that’s been giving him hell. Without the informant, well, he doesn’t have much more than another unfortunate failure to pin onto his disappointing career.

But, if he could uncover a Terranian assassin ring, he’d finally be able to step outside his father’s shadow. He’d finally be more than a failed prodigy. Even more than a masterful agent, he’d be a legend. One of the agency’s best.

Kjrenick smacks his desk with a frown. He needs a drink before he makes a poor choice. Standing up, he pockets the softlight projector and limps to the door to his office. Looking back at where the Zrentar was standing, he mumbles into the empty air.

“Well, you sly bastard, I’ll bury this. Your dancer will be safe. But that don’t mean I ain’t gonna go on a little hunt.”

As he closes his office door behind himself, Kjrenick starts to pull up starship itineraries. With any luck, he might be able to find his way aboard a diplomatic ship headed toward Terranian space.

A little voice at the back of his mind asks if he needs good or bad luck for that to happen. He doesn’t have an answer for himself.

Thank you for reading my short story!

I wrote this one to practice writing how different, or even alien, mindsets would converse.

The overall idea shifted and adapted into something more, and I ended with this.

Hope you enjoyed it!

– D. L.