War for Orion: Ghosts from the Past (4 page)

"Okay," Giustino said, still typing
information into the giant computer. "It's searching for anyone
your Dad may have worked with in GSOU."

"What exactly is this place?" Anlon
asked.

"It doesn't exist first off, remember that.
You're only here because these are special circumstances," Giustino
said, glaring at Anlon. "And this is where we can search for anyone
in the Galaxy and pinpoint their exact location. All these
computers you see, log information gathered from all of the
planets. When we search on this one, the information we are looking
for is gathered from all the smaller computers throughout the room
and displayed for us here in one spot," He typed in more
information. "Very few officers know about this database because
only individuals with high clearance can access it. There are other
computers upstairs that are similar, but they won't reveal certain
things, like how your Dad works for the GSOU. Some information is
best left unknown, and when in the wrong hands, disastrous thing
can happen."

"Look," Kanti pointed to the screen. "There's
one person Armino worked with, and they live right here on
Gaea!"

Giustino grinned. "Finally, we may have found
a break on this case. He won't be able to tell us everything, but
he may know who these races are and where they have gone. That's
all we need right now because I'm confident we won't find the races
we're looking for down here."

Anlon looked up at the screen and remembered
his name: Moran Borislav. He made mental note of where he lived
before Giustino cut off the image. He was aware that Giustino and
Kanti would make their way out there as soon as they could, but he
would get there first, before either one of them could question
Moran.

"That's everything we need for now," Giustino
said, turning around towards the elevator.

Anlon and Kanti followed him on and they
ascended back up to the main floor of the police station. On the
way up Anlon caught a glimpse of the humanoid staring at him again
through the glass with a smile on his human-like face.

"That's all we're going to need from you
today Anlon. I'll have Kanti take you back to your house."

Kanti looked over at Anlon. "Let's get you
back home."

She led him back down the narrow hall that
they had come through when they first entered the station and
walked out into the garage.

"How am I going to go back home, if you know,
there's still..." Anlon started.

"The robots will have cleaned everything up
by now. You won't even know that anything happened there," She
looked apologizingly at him. "I mean, you will know, but you won't
see anything left that will remind you of what happened there is
what I meant to say."

Kanti walked up to her car and unlocked it
for both of them to get into. Anlon got in and sat down in the
passenger seat next to Kanti.

"Thank you for everything," He forced a
smile. "I really appreciate it Kanti."

They made their way back to Anlon's house
with some small talk to get their minds off of the gruesome
execution of his family. Anlon learned a little bit more about
Kanti and she learned some more about him. Anlon couldn't help but
to start to like Kanti a little bit because of their somewhat
similar situation. He didn't have many friends because he was more
of a loner, but Kanti didn't have many either because she had lived
her whole life on Demeter isolated from humans.

As they pulled up, Anlon immediately saw that
there was no sign that anything had happened at his house the
previous night. All of the police officers were gone and all that
was left in his driveway was his mom's black pickup truck. His
house looked exactly the same as it had the day before, as if it
was just another ordinary day.

Anlon got out of the car and Kanti followed
him up the driveway and into his house. He walked into the room
that everything had happened in and immediately saw that Kanti had
been right. There was absolutely no sign at all of anything that
had happened the night before.

"These robots are good."

"They are," Kanti smiled. "Is there anything
else you need?"

He shook his head. "No. I think I should be
okay."

"If you do, don't hesitate to call," She
handed him her number. "If you need anyone, I'm here for you.
Neither of us has a family now, so I think it's best we become
friends. It'll help make things easier for both of us."

"I will let you know if there's anything I
need," he blushed. "I'll see you around."

He watched as she left and knew he had at
least one friend on Hassental, but he had important work to start
doing. He needed to find out exactly what type of assignments his
father had while in GSOU. He would talk to Moran and go through his
dad's things to try to find some answers. He knew that once he had
all of that, he would need to find a way into that database room to
make sure the killers were on Plouton before flying there. Finding
out more about his father was his priority at the moment since he
was positive they were on Plouton.

Giustino called one of the forensics men to
his office to debrief him on everything that they had recovered
from the execution scene at the Valens' house. After talking with
him and going over everything that forensics had found, he
concluded that Anlon had been exactly right about everything.
Everything he said checked out with what the forensics team had
found.

Giustino told the man to leave the room and
fired up his computer to put the information forensics recovered in
his computer. He typed in notes from the questioning and uploaded
the video into the folder
Valens Murder File
and shut down
his computer.

Camillus heard a new file downloading to one
of the computers that stored sensitive information from within the
station on it. The humanoid walked over to the computer and opened
the file to view it.

"Valens Murder File,"
Camillus
muttered under his breath.

"Interesting," The humanoid kept reading. "He
lied about not knowing anything more about the races. That won't
help him find his family's murderers."

Camillus opened a port on the back of his
head and inserted a cable in it to download the
Valens Murder
File
.

Anlon went upstairs to his dad's office and
rummaged through some of his personal papers. There were a lot of
hidden papers that had to do with the Queen and the GSOU throughout
his whole office that were mixed in with all of his other work.
Anlon was surprised that he had never paid any more attention to
them before. Everything Armino had done had been laying right in
front of him, but he had never doubted a word of what his father
had said.

It looked like his father had been one of the
best GSOU members to ever take the job and the Queen put he and his
selected men on the toughest missions. He found several news
article clippings talking about a special unit for the Queen that
stopped multiple terror plots and attempted assassinations on the
Queen, her Council, planetary leaders, and other high ranking
officials throughout Orion. He remembered reading some of these
online and seeing them on the news channels, but he never thought
that his dad had been a part of such an elite squadron that kept
the Galaxy safe.

After some more digging through his father's
desk, he found complete reports of missions and started reading all
of them, fascinated at the part of his father's life that he never
knew about. He couldn't help but feel proud of Armino for all of
the things he did to stop these galactic criminals. The last thing
he found was located in the front drawer in a hidden compartment.
It had to do with the Queen and a special mission she sent his
father specifically to carry out. The article talked about the
sudden death of the Queen's baby during birth, but attached to that
article was an official report signed by the Queen that stated that
Armino had actually taken the baby to another planet to be safe
from any threats.

The Queen's report didn't say where the baby
was taken, but he guessed it was a safety measure, or she possibly
didn't know where Armino had taken her baby, in order to keep the
heir safe in case the Queen was assassinated. He found more
articles about them and saw they had been friends all the way back
to before high school, which explained why the Queen seemed to
trust him so much with her life and the life of her newborn
child.

Anlon put the papers away and went to his
room to get some sleep. He would go to Moran Borislav's house in
the morning to learn more about his father and what missions he
went on for the Queen in deeper detail than any article could
reveal. The police station trip, all these articles, and reports
helped him learn a lot about his dad, but he still needed to learn
more about the killers and how they found out who he was. He had a
feeling that Moran would be able to answer all of these
questions.

An alarm went off alerting Donnchadh that
Erebos was quickly approaching. He couldn't imagine piloting any
other ship, especially one without the Sonodrive which took much of
the work and effort out of piloting. Before Sonodrive had been
developed, ships had to be manually piloted and it could take
weeks, even months, to travel as far as they had just traveled in a
matter of hours.

One of the perks of being a part of the
Deimos Brotherhood was that he got the best equipment that hit the
market. Kirill had made connections early in his career and
continued to keep in touch after going into hiding. Those
connections provided money for the Brotherhood, and when money
couldn't be provided, the best equipment available on the market.
Many politicians throughout Orion had the minds of assassins, they
just lacked the will and skills to carry out the jobs, and that's
where the Deimos Brotherhood came in. Donnchadh didn't care why
these politicians wanted people taken out, all he cared about was
getting paid and moving up the ranks of the Brotherhood.

Donnchadh slowly rolled out of his bed,
stretched his arms above his head, and walked down to the cockpit
to land
Cerberus
on Erebos. On the way he hit Ulisse in the
chest, who was still sound asleep on one of the chairs in the main
cabin, immediately waking him from his slumber.

"Have you got everything ready?" Donnchadh
sat in the pilot seat.

Sanguinarius nodded. "Ready to start landing
when you're ready."

"Let's do it," Donnchadh said, pushing red
levers.

Though they could safely land at any
spaceport on Erebos or any of Plouton's moons without worrying
about the spaceport security reporting them, Donnchadh preferred to
land on the private port of Deimos Brotherhood's headquarters.
Criminal activity on Plouton and its moon's was very high and much
black-marketing - ranging from illegal weapons to murder for hires
- was conducted regularly. The Council on Hera had given up many
decades ago trying to turn Plouton around and eventually just
turned their heads the other way to all of the things happening in
this part of Orion.