RETURN OF THE SHADOW - Chapter 177

“What did he tell you?” asked Robert a couple of minutes after Balthazar and Lucius went ahead.

“It was nothing. He just asked me to look after you and take you back to the shop if you wanted to. He was a bit concerned about you,” said Richard.

“I guess you are a bit disappointed by me,” said Robert. “A surgeon who finds it hard to stand a few dead bodies. Most people would laugh at that.”

“Any who laugh at that would be fools or psychopaths. Don’t consider your cousin as a standard. He had a different life and perspective from a younger age. In fact, he is a bit abnormal for being able to bear it all with such ease. Even military men at such age would find it hard to be unaffected by such sights, especially men of his age,” said Richard.

“Ya. Bel told the same thing, but I still don’t understand why I would be so nauseated by it, when I have seen dead bodies before,” said Robert.

“It is not the dead bodies that affect you as much as the fact that they were killed intentionally. In your work, the dead bodies you see are mostly accidents or natural maladies with rarely such cases. It is probably the number of people that were wantonly killed that your morals find it hard to accept,” guessed Richard. “It is expected. You have lived most of your life as a civilian and even elders of the council would rarely see such situations.”

“Maybe, I have always only thought of saving people and not hurting them as a doctor. This is definitely hard for me to accept. Is my cousin really cool with killing so many innocents?”

“Innocent?!” asked Richard almost laughing.

“Ok! They are maybe not innocent, but they are still humans. I still find it hard to accept it. They could have probably saved them by knocking them out or other options were available right?”

“You are not thinking right. With the pico tech in your bodies most knock out drugs would be easily expelled in a few minutes and would be temporary. Especially for outfits like these where there is a good chance, they wouldn’t use the standard ones provided by the alliance. These guys would probably have a faster recovery. An agent which kills is the best bet that one could have,” said Richard with a smile.

“Ok. So, they technically needed it, but don’t you think that it is morally wrong at the very least?” asked Robert.

“Killing is morally wrong. Very much so, in the case where you don’t have a personal grievance with the murdered. It haunts many a man and people who kill easy tend to disgust and are hated by quite a few because of that. Forget killing other men, quite a few vegetarians and vegans don’t even support killing other animals and beasts and there are definitely a few haters though a very little amount. The numbers are definitely large considering people who kill other people,” said Richard.

“But we still do it. It is necessary for the society. Someone has to curb the anti-social elements. Individual morality kind of takes a back seat sometimes during such times, but it is necessary. You need to understand that. Society takes precedence, else there wouldn’t be bounties on people indicating dead or alive, would they?”

“I guess,” said Robert half-heartedly.

“Kid you are worried unnecessarily. These guys are pirates who kill and plunder on the innocent. They are scourge who attack the ones trying to get to new places and unsecured planet. Killing them could be considered the same as using pesticide in a farm. Though it might sound a bit callous, it is the way these people are. I hope you won’t think much about it,” said Richard.

“Fine. Give me a few more minutes I will be ready to follow Balthazar,” said Robert.

“And how do you propose to do that without being able to reset the security panel,” said Richard.

“Oh! Then, we wait in this place. Might as well remove the helmet and clean up my vomit,” said Robert.

“I wouldn’t recommend it.”

“I have already checked for the air composition at the security station using my suit and had it running since we entered this hall. There are not unknown particles or harmful chemicals that were observed. It is fine,” said Robert.

“Oh. I know that there were no harmful substances. It was pumped out after the attack. They wouldn’t leave it inside as it would be harmful for the ones that get into the place, but that gas isn’t what I am warning you against doctor,” said Richard with a smile, to which Robert just gave a confused look.

“The rotting bodies smell. They have been here for a week. It might be worse than that of a mortuary. Take my word for it. The smell of the vomit is better than what you would find in the room. You can have some fresh air after this,” said Richard shaking his head. “I would suggest you go and take a part time job as a medical investigator at a local police precinct or something. Get a hold of forensics and other sciences. Need to get some detective work or at least learn to identify some things. You need to get expand your horizons.”

“Yeah, got a lot of suggestions these past few hours. I will take them into consideration,” said Robert in a tired tone. He had wanted to be an elder of the family council and was preparing to win the position for quite some time now, but never truly realized that being a successful elder entailed a lot more than he expected. He is slowly realizing that it would take a lot of effort and learning from him to do that.

In the meantime, Balthazar had already reached the pass with last cl.u.s.ter of sensors and traps along with Lucius. He could reset the pressure sensors on the floor, but a moving array of laser beam sensors couldn’t be reset which was the main problem. These could only be reset by a personnel who was inside the main security centre. Sadly, he was also dead.

“One needs to scan the moving beams and decide how to evade and escape them on the spot,” said Balthazar looking at Lucius. “So, how do we suggest we do this. Do I go first, or do you want to me to take the first turn cause I am sure it will be much more hard if the both of us attempt it at the same time.”

“We can both do it at the same time. Don’t worry about me,” said Lucius.

“You might be confident, but I am not. I might accidentally bump into you and that is not something I would want to risk on. You can go on ahead and just don’t reset the security systems,” suggested Balthazar. “It is not a bad idea, right?”

“Fine,” said Lucius as he put out his hand. “I need the card for resetting the pressure sensors. Also, can’t open the door of the security centre without it. ”

“How would I do it after you cross it?” asked Balthazar. “I also need the card for resetting the pressure sensors.”

“I will reset them from inside the security centre for those thirty seconds which the card that you configured works for,” said Lucius. “I can even disable them entirely. It isn’t a problem, but I won’t be disabling the moving array.”

“More than what I would bargain for,” said Balthazar as he handed over the card to Lucius who immediately used it to reset the pressure sensors and started to go through the pass with relative ease. He was like an actual acrobat and used even his knife by driving it into the wall and using it as a support a couple of times. He took less than 10 seconds to cross a path of over 40 metres which was about a third of the time that Balthazar had in his mind. Even at the height of his career as an assassin, he was never that agile and precise.

“You a professional acrobat or something?” asked Balthazar over the comms.

“Your turn,” replied Lucius. “The pressure sensors on the floor and walls are disabled.”

“Wait a minute. Let me observe these things for some time. I am not as talented as you.”

“These things don’t follow a pattern kid, it is all random.”

“I know that. Just let me get a handle of the speed at which they are moving.”

“You didn’t check their specs at the security station.”

“I did. Just need to see it in person. I don’t have any acrobatic training or the like. Can’t really realize the numbers specified there to correlate with my motor skills. Need to actually watch to get a better idea of it,” replied Balthazar.

“You sound like an amateur.”

“Of course, you are the professional not me,” said Balthazar as he kept observing the beams moving around the pass. It wasn’t actually that hard for him. He had gone through such situations before, but he definitely couldn’t perform as well as Lucius. Even if he could, he wouldn’t do so as that would create a lot more doubts in the minds of Lucius and others.

“You do have experience with overriding security systems and have quite a good understanding of them. Hard to learn such skill without professional training and practice,” said Lucius.

“Damn! He asked about it directly,” thought Balthazar as he faltered for a couple of seconds thinking of an appropriate answer.

“I do have experience with that. Just never with acrobatics. I always handled such problems with tech. It is not like I approach a pirate cache or an enemy bunker or stronghold without gathering information or tools. So, this thing would be a nightmare for even the best of the professionals. No professional thief or infiltrator would try to circ.u.mvent security without the tech and information,” replied Balthazar in an angry tone.

“Fine. Take your time,” said Lucius as he pushed off a dead man from a chair in the security centre and began to check the details about the place. He quickly realized the picture among the list of the men that were stationed there.

“Henshin Sakamoto! This idiot works for Jeremy Glades,” thought Lucius as he realized the man who commands the men at the bunker. Jeremy Glades was a underworld dealer of arms and different kind of equipment. Industrial, research, exploratory any kind of equipment could be requested from the guy. He was one of the well-known traffickers who the alliance knew but couldn’t find for a long time. The man was considered a ghost. Henshin was a low-level member of Jeremy’s unit but Lucius knew him as he had once tried to kill the guy 10 years ago.

“This is a good lead against those underworld guys. Let me look more into the inventory and other things at this place. I doubt Evelyn knew about this and thought this to a random cache set up by some new player. She would never let us use one of Glade’s places,” thought Lucius. Currently, he didn’t care much about the trial and wanted to use the trial as an excuse to explore the entire place and get the logs of the inventory and other administrative logs.

Sadly, he didn’t know that Henshin had separated from Jeremy’s organization 2 years ago and that Evelyn already knew of it and she didn’t care much about him. His priorities and jobs changed over the years and he didn’t keep much track of the latest information about various underworld organizations and structures like he used to.

As Lucius was checking these details, Balthazar finally had observed enough and decided to attempt crossing the array sensors. Though it was a moving group of beam sensors which moved randomly, he could guess their trajectories and make proper movements to evade them. With his experience, it wasn’t very hard for him and he managed to get into the security centre without any hitches.

“What are you looking at?” asked Balthazar.

“Just looking at some files,” replied Lucius. There were a number of monitors in the security centre similar to the outer security station and he had them displaying data of the items in the place and the people working there.

“You know who they are?” asked Balthazar.

“Know one of them from a long time. You can take over,” said Lucius leaving the chair. Balthazar quickly disabled all the security features of the place and announced through the mike that they could move freely, so that Robert and Richard could come back.

He proceeded towards the warehouse area and the armory after granting himself access to all the places. He first visited the warehouse and found a lot of food stored in the place. There was also equipment meant for drilling and construction stored there. He didn’t care about any of them.

Their next stop was the armory which they wanted to look at. There were a lot of weapons and even warframes and shuttles placed in the armory, which surprised Balthazar. It was one thing to smuggle equipment and small arms but warframes and the like are strictly regulated. Only the men at the top of the underworld could do something like that and they don’t allow others to do it. So, he began to worry that it might get Robert into unnecessary trouble.

“Let us get out of this place,” said Balthazar as soon as he saw the warframes. Though the models were not the latest ones, these were currently under strict regulations as the only use they could have outside the border areas is as a terrorist weapon. He turned to Richard and Lucius. “You can check out anything else you want. I am done,” he continued.

“Why?”

“I am not going to find anything useful here that I could take. These are all very old ones. Don’t want to even bother about it,” said Balthazar. “And I would like to have a good meal and a bath. Don’t you feel the same?”

The talk about meal and bath immediately put all other thoughts out of Roberts mind. He had been bearing the stench of his own vomit for quite some time and he really wanted to get out and have a decent food too. So, the pair of them went back to the ship while Lucius told that he would remain behind.