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Kazi Depot

Kazi, Osara System, Ballas Branch

The world of Kazi wasn’t much more than a glorified research outpost. It was a small planet, home to about ten-thousand among its three stations. It’s surface was still largely unexplored, made up of equal parts dense extraterrestrial rainforests and ocean, where an astonishing amount of life flourished.

That was enough to fuel generations of research. But the real draw of Kazi was not its animal kingdom, but its flora. Vegetation on Kazi grew back at a rate nearly one-thousand times faster than any found among the one-hundred-and-seven colonized systems in the Ring Network. Since the gate to the Osara System had first opened, it had been something of a destination for young researchers looking to cut their teeth.

Many had theorized that the plantlife might yield some type of Fountain of Youth-type discovery. It hadn’t, of course. But it had delivered advances in sustainable farming that had benefited systems throughout colonized space, a point of pride in the Osara System.

But outside of research, there was no reason to settle there. For those that worked the other jobs that had popped up to support the researchers, Kazi was a dead-end.

Nickolas Johns was the Head of Security on Kazi, which meant that he was responsible for securing Kazi Depot, the planet’s main station, along with the Communications Station and Research Lab, which were each twenty ish miles away, connected by an underground train system that ran between them.

As the Head of Security, his primary jobs were protecting the research and policing the population — in that order. In truth, he didn’t feel like much more than a well-paid babysitter. The Kazi Security Unit was technically Osarian Military, but Kazi was so disconnected from daily life back home on Osra Prime that the Unit itself had devolved into something more casual over the years. There was no oversight, outside of Johns himself. And it was hard to make him give a shit.

Johns was stocky, well-built from a decades-old weightlifting habit, with salt and pepper hair and a persistent five-o’clock-shadow.

While you wouldn’t think a population whose primary purpose was researching extraterrestrial plant life would cause much trouble, Johns kept surprisingly busy. A planet with very little in the way of reliable entertainment meant that people got up to all kinds of things they otherwise wouldn’t if they were occupied.

Today, the unique brand of bullshit consisted of a bar fight that had left one man dead after taking a punch and racking the back of his skull on a metal barstool. Even though there had to have been fifty people in the bar at the time of the incident, miraculously, no one could remember seeing much of anything at all.

The bar was dingy. Its metallic walls were tinged red and somehow smelled of mildew. Or maybe it was the old tapestries that hung on them to cover the stains and age. There were three bars on Kazi, all in offshoots that spiderwebbed off the main Kazi Depot corridor. This one, aptly named The Commotion, was by far the most problematic on the weekends.

The main corridor was the primary thoroughfare in the station. It housed all of the commercial shops, restaurants, and offices within Kazi Depot. Every single place of business was contained in the three-mile-long, half-mile-wide corridor or down one of the connected offshoots. The rest of the station was dedicated to storage areas, research facilities, official offices, and residential quarters.

“And you didn’t see anything?” Johns said as he leaned over the table, trying to muster the intimidation that a lifetime in the Osarian Guard had drilled into him.

“No sir, I did not,” a fat man, wearing a too-tight, ketchup-stained short said.

“Even though you were sitting right there?” he said, pointing at a chair with vigor. Next to the chair was a circular area that had been surrounded by bar stools and enclosed in caution tape. In the middle of the circle was the body, covered in a sheet, with a large, circular pool of blood oozing out from behind the sheet on the weathered metal floor.

“Yes, sir. I was watching the game,” the fart man said. Johns could smell the liquor on his breath.

A sly smile crept across Johns’ face. He made sure not to break eye contact, holding the man’s gaze for several extra seconds until the exchange had become sufficiently awkward.

“So let me get this straight. You’re sitting here. A fight breaks out somewhere behind you, but you don’t turn around to see who it is? The game’s on. You’re just watching the game. Right? The fight starts to get a little more heated….some punches are being thrown. But you’re just watching the game. Then a guy falls and bashes his skull open on a barstool — not ten feet from where you’re sitting — and you still don’t turn around to see what the hell is going on? Don’t lie to me man.” Johns said.

“Like I said, I was watching the game,” the man said. “By the time I turned around to see what the fuss was, he was already laying there in his own blood and everyone is losing their damn minds. Honestly, I didn’t see who threw the punch.”

“But you did know that it was a punch? He didn’t slip and fall?”

“Couldn’t say….I was watching the game.”

Johns blew a puff of air out of his nose and shook his head, turning his back to the man. Generally shit like this didn’t happen on Kazi. There were some drunks. Some barfights. But people didn’t die. Often, anyway.

It was going to be a long day, he could feel it. But that wasn’t necessarily a bad thing. Long days meant that something was happening, which was a good change of pace. This wasn’t the life that he had chosen. The life he had chosen had been taken from him. But he had made it his own. Even on days like today.

Rick Sims, Johns’ partner and Second in Command of Security on Kazi Depot, had just finished interviewing his own potential witness at the back of the bar as Johns strolled over. Rick shot him a glance with a slight shake of the head that signaled that he too was having trouble finding anyone willing to talk about what they had seen.

If this fight had spilled out into the hallway, they wouldn’t have any problem figuring out what happened. Cameras were watching every metal inch of Kazi Depot, except in some private businesses. By law, they were allowed to dictate their own security and surveillance policies. Of course, this being The Commotion, the barman had informed them when they arrived that they didn’t record anything, as Johns was well aware.

“Well, we aren’t going to get anything here,” Officer Rick Sims said. “Anyone who saw anything scattered as soon as he hit the floor.”

“Yeah, I know, I’ll put in the request to pull the video from the hallways. Maybe if we’re lucky we’ll catch the asshole running out of here with blood on his hands. At the very least we can identify some faces that ran out when it happened and talk to them.” Johns said.

“Could have handled that back at Command over a beer.”

“Good point. Why are we even here?”

“Well, I did pull that blonde waitress witness at the bar brawl last month. Supposed to see her this weekend, in fact,” Rick said, slicking his hair back and giving his mustache a part.

They’d find who did it. Eventually. It wasn’t like the culprit could leave. The next supply shipment and ride home, back to Osara Prime, wasn’t due for months.

A group of four in full-body white plastic suits walked in through the far side entrance of the bar, catching the attention of everyone in the room. Each carried boxes and satchels stuffed to the brim with equipment. That meant that Johns could leave the body unattended and take his lunch.

“Finally,” Johns said, walking in their direction. “Took you boys long enough.”

They shook hands and exchanged pleasantries. Because murders weren’t all that common on Kazi, a group of investigative lab technicians doubled as a forensics team. They had to be brought over from the Research Lab on the train.

They watched as the leader of the small team laid down a bag, opened it, and hit a button on his com unit. Immediately, a humming started and his bag seemed to vigrate. Slowly, hundreds of miniature drones in the bag came to life, slowly rising out of the bag before descending upon the body with uncanny synchronization. The drones removed the sheet carefully, folding it onto itself next to the body and began to investigate every crevice, shining lights into orifices and scanning parts of him that the man would have never agreed to in a million years had he been alive. At that moment, Johns realized that he never wanted to die under suspicious circumstances.

“Hungry?” Rick asked as he stared at the strange technological circus in front of them.

“I guess. Where are you thinking?”

Rick looked around the bar before throwing his hands up and giving a shrug. “They have decent mushroom steak sandwiches here.”

Johns rolled his eyes. “Alright,” he said, even though scarfing down a sandwich at a murder scene put him off, but he wanted to be fed and back to Command before shift change.

Kazi’s 28-hour day contained four 7-hour shifts. Research was going on at all times, but the bulk of Kazi’s population was made up of the restaurant workers, data vendors, mechanics, security personnel, doctors, entertainers, and other micro-industries that had popped up around the small colony.

At the lounge seating area, a group of weathered regulars had already assumed their ceremonial positions along the bar, and Rick and Johns cozied up beside them.

One man was clearly drunk, slurring his way angrily through a story.

“You boys been here all night? See the fight?” Johns asked, figuring he might as well give it a try.

“No, ‘fraid we just got here,” an old man with the patchy beard said.

Johns thumbed through the hologram menu that appeared in front of him on the bar countertop.

“You guys on duty?” the long-haired bartender asked as he strolled up to their end of the bar.

“Regrettably,” Rick said. “No booze for us.”

“Alright then. Food?”

“I’ll take the faux-ham and chips, please. Light on the mayo, extra mustard,” Johns said as he disposed of the menu with a flick of the finger. Rick ordered the mushroom beef steak.

Johns and Rick had long agreed that the ham was the closest thing to the texture of meat. Made of pressed slices of salt, filler, and mushroom meat substitute, then artificially flavored to taste like ham — it wasn’t exactly mouthwatering, but there weren’t a lot of options on Kazi. It did the trick.

Johns had been lobbying for years to let them butcher some of the native wildlife, but the researchers had informed him that it was dangerous to ingest meat from new biosystems. Still, he’d often suggest hunting some of the local wildlife so that he could watch the scientists squirm at the thought.

The food came and Johns and Rick made their way through their meals, saying nothing and instead opting to listen to the hilarious conversations the old drunks were having to their left. They argued about nothing in particular, effortlessly shifting from one topic to the next.

Then, just as he was stuffing the last bite of his faux ham sandwich into his mouth — Johns felt something. He wasn’t sure what it was at first. Maybe bass from music. For a brief moment, he considered asking the bartender to turn it down. But no, it wasn’t that. It was different. Deeper. More guttural. And it was growing.

It started as a low, bassy rumble that he felt in his feet. Over a few seconds, the low grumble grew, and Johns could feel it in his legs and arms. It became hard to hear. He jumped in his seat. The shrillness of the sound pierced his chest. Rick turned, almost as if in slow motion, and gave Johns a panicked look.

It was the station alarm.