Spawn of Ganymede Read online

  Dekker’s Dozen:

  Spawn of Ganymede

  Dekker’s Dozen:

  Weeds of Eden

  by

  Christopher D Schmitz

  Published by TreeShaker Books

  © 2018 by Christopher D. Schmitz

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publishers, except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages in a review to be printed in a newspaper, magazine, or journal.

  The final approval for this literary material is granted by the author.

  PUBLISHED BY TREESHAKER BOOKS

  please visit:

  http://www.authorchristopherdschmitz.com

  Dekker’s Dozen #000.66

  Spawn of Ganymede

  0065 P.I.S.W.…

  1

  The ground bucked and heaved momentarily, making Kheefal hold his breath. He traded nervous looks with the other humans clustered nearby under the dome that maintained the environment on the Io moon. All eyes turned to the dome and searched for sings of integrity failure. After a few terse seconds the quake subsided and it seemed the community was in the clear. Warning sirens still blared, but the tension bled away like vapor in a leaky airlock.

  Kheefal quickened his pace, hoping the secondary tremors would deflect enough attention to cover his tracks. Corporate espionage and thievery carried significant risks, and he’d learned the value of the precious moments following any solid diversion.

  Inside the government center, he pulled out tools to jimmy the lock but found the handle and jam were already busted. Cautiously, Kheefal pushed the door ajar and stepped inside.

  Blood drenched everything in the businessman’s office.

  Frantically, Kheefal rummaged through the contents of Jai Janus’s office. Trade secrets and confidential documents lay strewn about. Kheefal ignored them… ignored the mangled body laid out across the floor in twisted repose.

  Kheefal, an Investigator in his own right, shuddered to think what could have ripped the throat from such a well-known figure. The glorified mercenary was no stranger to violence, but it seemed a terrible way to go.

  A warning siren in the distance alerted him that he only had seconds left to make a safe exit before the local constables arrived.

  Scowling, Kheefal knew the thing he’d been hired to retrieve had already been stolen; his mission was a nonstarter. He kicked over a file cabinet in disgust and then pulled a tiny collection of hair samples from his pouch and sprinkled them around the room as he made an exit, masking his presence with tiny filaments from an entirely different species. The Arduel race was known for shedding hair when stressed, making them a perfect scapegoat.

  Kheefal didn’t expect that the security officers stationed on Io were thorough enough to find anything linking him to Janus’s murder, but Jai’s brother Miko was Chief Magnate of the entire Mother Earth Aggregate. Surely, the MEA would send a qualified team to investigate and Kheefal didn’t take chances. He hadn’t gotten this far ahead in life by acting reckless.

  He slipped from the murder scene and turned right. Down a short hall he found a security kiosk that had been left unmanned. Where did all the local troops go, he wondered? He hadn’t seen a single one since shortly after arriving in the loading dock with his forged paperwork.

  Kheefal shrugged and swiped the hard copy of the surveillance data from Janus’s office. He tapped in a few commands and confirmed the warning message. Seconds later, the drives erased themselves, scrubbing all evidence of his presence. He could watch the remaining recorded video once he was safely away and on his ship. Surely the drives would tell him who murdered Jai Janus and stole the mining executive’s paperweight.

  Slipping the data drive into a pocket, Kheefal snuck away. He crossed the threshold and into the streets of Outpost 7. People meandered about their business and picked up after the quake. A strange concoction of upper class, blue collars, and slum dwellers mingled on the streets. It looked like every other backwater planet he’d been to.

  Kheefal snorted and pressed a finger to his nose, shooting a grey lump of slime from his sinus that had formed from the fine dust of the mining town. He kept his eyes ahead and descended a stairwell that lead to the commercial and industrial tunnels.

  After a quick scan of his falsified credentials, he accessed the industrial tubes and hurried towards the loading dock where he’d left his ship. Hairs on the back of his neck and arms bristled as he stalked closer. Something wasn’t right; maybe the sounds were wrong or maybe his old grandma was right about latent precog abilities, but his gut discerned a problem.

  Kheefal pulled his concealed blaster from where he’d wrapped it against his chest. He crept along the curving walls of the subterranean tunnel and tightened his knuckles on the grip.

  A pool of blood widened around the security officer’s limp forearm. He couldn’t see much else.

  Kheefal led with his firearm and hurled himself around the edge of the security checkpoint. Light flashed behind his eyes and a bone cracking roundhouse leveled him, sending his gun skittering lost into the distance and bowling him over.

  Looking up from the concrete, punch-drunk, Kheefal tried to get his bearings. A lone assassin took on half a dozen strong dockworkers dressed in Halabella browns. He whirled and struck like a ballet dancer performing choreographed moves.

  Wearing all black, the skinny humanoid only paused momentarily when the radio lying next to the dead security officer at Kheefal’s right squawked a report. MEA constables had taken the galaxy’s most wanted criminal, Prognon Austicon, into custody.

  The toughs managed to land a few blows during the report, and then the creature in the black, faceless mask counter attacked.

  Several more workers poured from the loading zone and rushed the invader. He’s only one man—surely they can take him?

  Suddenly, a small crew of stumpy Shivans plowed through the rows of crates and stacked cargo with blasters blazing. Tattoos and badly stitched insignias indicated allegiances to various pirate guilds.

  The invaders cut down the dock workers, most of whom had no weapons. Taking one look at the assassin, their body language clearly communicated a camaraderie. Sneering, the lead Shivan with a high widows peak ordered his men into the waiting freight hauler and took off before their comrade could get aboard. “One less share for the Lockbox!” he growled as the loading ramp closed.

  Kheefal sprang to his feet to attack alongside the remaining three workers.

  The thing sidestepped him, grabbed the nearest worker, and broke his neck. Howling, the other two turned to flee. It jabbed one with a nerve strike, crumpling him limp and then snatched the disabled man’s pocket knife.

  With scary precision, he flung the knife and buried it in the base of the fleeing man’s head where vertebrae met skull. Then, he nonchalantly collapsed the windpipe of the crippled knife-owner as Kheefal finally righted himself and spat blood from his split lip.

  Kheefal assumed a defensive stance. Adrenaline coursed through his veins. He didn’t know if he could beat this thing… whatever it was… but he felt quite sure it was not going to let him leave without a fight.

  The masked creature engaged him, throwing punches that seemed to arrive split seconds before Kheefal could get his guard up. Punches and kicks seemed to come in the exact angle and styles that he was unprepared for. None were incredibly fast—but each found their mark and connected with kinetic precision.

  It’s like this thing knows what I’m doing before I do!

  His enemy seemed to chortle with glee at the very thought. Sending him sprawling backwards with a flurry of punches and a warning kick that cut
through the air, the creature stood a few paces away as if Kheefal’s presence did little to threaten him.

  The Investigator suddenly winced as if the light hurt his brain and he stutter-stepped groggily. A momentary fit smashed his grey matter, and he half-closed his eyes against the sudden photosensitivity. A full-blown migraine seemed to seize him at the most inopportune time.

  As suddenly as it seemed to have come on, it passed and Kheefal relaxed. The black intruder turned and fled, running towards Kheefal’s ship.

  “Hey,” he grunted. His enemy didn’t respond. “Hey!”

  The humanoid sprinted towards his prize.

  “Hey! That’s my ship!” Kheefal bellowed, starting after him. Before he could close the gap, the thing punched in an access code and darted up the landing ramp.

  Dumbfounded at how the enemy knew his access code, Kheefal stood in the center of the loading bay, surrounded by bodies, and watched the other creature steal his ship. He dug a hand into his pocket as his Class A craft left without him and wrapped his fingers around the data drive he’d swiped from the murder scene.

  At least I’ve still got this, he comforted himself.

  2

  “I’m tellin ya, I’m gettin too old for this nonsense,” Sam, who everybody called Mustache, said. His legs poked out from beneath the Rickshaw Crusader. Grease and smears of carbon scoring painted his jumpsuit. He spat a bunch of crumbling dust and metal shavings from his lips as detritus rained down from above and lodged in his bristled cookie duster. “Gaah,” he complained as he shook out his famous whiskers.

  Guy, Rock, and Matty nearly dropped the piece of armor plating as Mustache tried to clear his face. Their older peer shot his hands back up and stabilized the plate as Matty turned tools and tightened the plating back against the bulkhead.

  “Nonsense,” Rock mumbled back. “You been here since the beginning. You can’t be thinking retirement. That’s like splitting up the family.”

  A few moments passed in silence as the others nodded.

  Guy broke the quiet. “If we’re a family, can I be the Daddy?” he laughed.

  The rest broke into chuckles.

  “More like the redheaded step-child,” Mustache quipped.

  “Hey. Don’t you know that Redheads are almost extinct,” Guy defended. “Of course you know. You were still around when recessive genes were invented, Grandpa.”

  “Don’t you make me get my belt,” Mustache laughed.

  “It’s a weird family,” Guy laughed as they all pushed out from underneath the heavily modified B Class space transport.

  “Yeah… well…” Mustache glanced sidelong at the Crusader. The blast marks and beaten plating made it look more like it should be scrapped than flown. “If we don’t get that ship fixed soon we’ll all be retiring. Quickly and violently.”

  Dekker walked over to his crew. “What are we talking about?”

  “Nothing, Daddy,” Guy joked.

  Dekker raised an eyebrow, shook his head and asked the same question of the more mature members of his team.

  “I don’t think it’s going to hold together much longer without some repairs,” Matty said.

  Dekker looked to Mustache. Sam had been with him a long time and brought experience to the table that couldn’t be taught in a class.

  “She needs an overhaul,” Mustache nodded.

  Dekker sighed. “I was afraid of that. It’s not in the budget…”

  “Well, it better get there,” Mustache said as he raked out his salt and pepper dirt squirrel. “It ain’t gonna last much longer the way she sits.”

  Dekker exhaled through his nose and bobbed his head. “I’ll make an appointment at Darkside Station.”

  3

  Quade plunged through the thick foliage and spat the bitter taste of leaves and bark from his mouth as branches whipped him in the face. Fear and endorphins let him shrug off the pain as he plowed through both trees and nettles.

  His heart pounded in his ears—nearly louder than the growls of the creature behind him. It snarled as it crashed through the bracken thicket.

  Quade pushed himself further into the night.

  Why? Why did I ever sign up to move to this god-forsaken planet? He berated himself silently, questioning his wasted life which was filled with cursed decisions, even his momentary self-reflection: distracted, Quade’s foot caught a root, and he tumbled to ground.

  The moist dirt felt slick and smelled like moldering peat. He scrambled through a copse of fungal plants and slimy undergrowth that had taken over swaths of land in recent months. He lifted his head from the gnarled plumage where he’d landed face-first; even in the dark he could see a spore cloud hanging thick in the surrounding air.

  His gut sank. Whatever this plant was, it had been making the people in his community sick. Quade knew he’d was infected once before and somehow survived, but his hope for some kind of immunity wasn’t important at the moment. Another predatory roar rumbled behind him and Quade hoped that he’d survive the spores again—he’d already proved himself symptom free for over two weeks since his last brush with the toxic flora.

  Quade scrambled to his feet and his eyes caught sight of a light up ahead. Some kind of beacon shone vertically from the ground. He sprinted towards it, hoping that it promised some kind of protection.

  As he grew nearer, the light took shape. It wasn’t a beacon, but an opening in the ground, some kind of hidden hatch. Quade had heard rumors that many buried tunnels existed from the first failed attempt to colonize the planet Galilee many years ago. He dashed towards it, barely able to breathe in the thick, dank air.

  The beast that hunted him suddenly crashed into the trail right behind him. Quade yelped a string of profanities and doubled down, coaxing every bit of speed from his legs that he could muster.

  A man’s figure took shape in the light ahead. “Quickly! This way,” he shouted. “Do not let the grrz get you!”

  With the creature right on his heels, Quade leapt for the hole just as his savior slammed the hatch shut behind him.

  Quade laid for several minutes sucking in great, ragged gasps of air. Finally, he looked up at the man. “Th-thank you,” he said.

  The man wore a lab coat and a sparse five o'clock shadow. “Well, that might be a bit premature,” he said with a thin-lipped smile.

  Quade cocked his head and his rescuer pulled an electroshock taser from his waistband.

  With a cold expression, the stranger blasted Quade with enough electricity to knock him unconscious.

  4

  Kheefal sat in the back of his dingy storage locker and rummaged through the package he’d received. He unwrapped a shiny, fabricated medallion. Normally, he conducted most of his business face to face or through TransNet communications. Still, he needed a place to conduct business operations and normally needed storage for items such as his ship.

  With a scowl, Kheefal glared at the empty bay next door where he normally berthed his Class A spacecraft. He’d been without transportation now for several months, but he finally had a stroke of good luck. An old contact of his with a background in information trades had been able to secure the decryption codes for the security feeds he’d swiped a few months ago when he’d visited Io.

  After placing the engineered token, a tiny metal decrypting disk, into the key slot of his data pad, Kheefal hit the play button and the feed unlocked. He impatiently scrolled ahead towards the end and watched himself searching for his target.

  Kheefal backed the video stream up. The black, masked figure who’d murdered a score of men and women at the Io hangar trashed the room. Janus and Strengen lay dead on the floor with pools of blood growing around them.

  The investigator stretched his neck and cracked his joints while he stared at the mysterious enemy. Kheefal had never lost a fight in his life. He didn’t count this one as a loss since the fight never ended, but whatever this creature was, Kheefal felt certain that it would have killed him if not for its hasty retreat.

 
He bit his lip and rewound the data further yet. In a comically morbid scene, Jace Strengen and Jai Janus leapt back to their feet, sucking blood back into their wounds, and returned to their seats as the masked assassin walked backwards out of the room and closed the door.

  Minutes passed as Janus and Strengen discussed things that had seemed so important at the time... before they knew that these would be their final words. Kheefal jumped backwards some more.

  There had been another figure in the room. A Krenzin sat at the desk with them and the item, a glassine cylinder containing an exotic seed remained on Janus’s desk as a paperweight.

  Kheefal let the video play as his mind began to wander momentarily. He paused it and did a double take. The seed was gone.

  He rewound the feed again, anxiously until the seed reappeared. The Krenzin, he mentally spat and advanced the video file.

  The Krenzin leaned to his side, and the seed sat on the desk. He shifted with the camera to his back and it disappeared.

  Kheefal backed it up frame by frame until he came to the right spot. Forwards: it disappeared. Backwards: it remained.

  He advanced until he had a good shot of the felinoid creature’s face and activated recognition software. It scanned his target’s features and then kicked out a report.

  “Zarbeth?” he read the ident file aloud. “Gotcha.”

  5

  Doc Johnson, the madcap scrapper who owned and operated Darkside Station on Earth’s Moon, offered Dekker an old glass jar filled with clear fluid.

  Dekker put up his hands. “No, thank you. I’m not that stupid.”

  “I am,” Guy piped up. He intercepted the drink and took a reluctant gulp, nearly going cross-eyed from its effects. He gasped and wheezed in its aftermath and drew a chorus of laughter from the Investigators and other scrappers in Doc’s employ.