Shock and disgust. He felt it the moment the lift doors parted. Something colder too, a sickened feeling of repulsion and anger. But nothing prepared Commander Eidran for what awaited him as he passed beyond the crime tape.

A body, if one could even call it that, the battered and bloody remains of what had once been a young man, now butchered to pieces and splayed across the deck. The Betazoid had served ten years in security before going to command school. He’d seen death in many ugly forms. But nothing like this.

“You weren’t exaggerating,” Commander Eidran said as he found the station’s security chief, who was crouched over the remains. “Hell of a way to start the morning.”

“Better morning than his,” Commander Eriksson nodded towards the victim grimly. “We have our share of petty crimes, the usual station ugliness, even an occasional body… but this?” He looked down once more. “Not often.” The last time had been the occupation, and even the Vaadwaur were cleaner about it. This wasn’t just a kill. It was personal.

Commander Eidran studied the scene with discerning eyes. From the spatter on the walls to the stains on the carpets, he could infer the man had died here, but this kill hadn’t come quick. Whoever had done this, they had taken their time with it. “It’s an exposed position. Lots of opportunities for someone to stumble across you in the act.”

“Yes, one of many things that stand out about this,” Commander Eriksson agreed as he got back to his feet. He wiped his hands on his trousers and turned to face the Betazoid. “But that’s my problem, not yours, Commander Eidran. What can I do for you this fine morning?”

“Actually, it may be both our problems,” Commander Eidran offered. “We just arrived in pursuit of a murder suspect… and well, it appears you too have a murder on your hands.”

“Come again?” Commander Eriksson furled his brow.

“A dead body and a killer on the loose…” Commander Eidran began to say but then paused as he thought about the differences. The murder in the mountains had been precise and impersonal, the victim a Klingon mid-level soldier-scientist. Here, the kill was up close and personal, the victim a Starfleet officer. “Completely different MO though.”

“So why do you think they’re related?” Commander Eriksson inquired. 

“Because we have reason to believe our suspect arrived here yesterday,” Commander Eidran explained. “Could be a coincidence, but as you said yourself, this is not normal here.”

It was enough to pique Commander Eriksson’s curiosity, and his questions came rapid fire. “What do you know about your suspect?”

“Unfortunately, not much,” Commander Eidran admitted. That they’d even found their way to Archanis Station had only been on the hunch of an operator from the USS Polaris who’d tagged along. Otherwise, they’d probably still have been sitting over Ydris V, none the wiser that their suspect had slipped the net.

“Do you have a description of your suspect?”

“No,” Commander Eidran frowned. All anyone saw was the muzzle flash, and then that indentation in the snowy slush on that ridgeline. They still knew nothing about their shooter.

“An affiliation?”

“No,” Commander Eidran answered. Petty Officer Almeida had confirmed that a high-energy nadion discharge had killed Otoc, but such weapons were free floating in the market, so that finding hadn’t helped much.

“Motive?” 

“Not a clue,” Commander Eidran sighed. They had no idea why someone would go to so much effort to kill a mid-level soldier-scientist that Dr. Brooks had said had very little in the way of actionable theories or information about the present multiverse crisis.

“What do you have then?”

“Just a dead Klingon,” Commander Eidran explained. “Killed by a single shot at a distance of six thousand two hundred and fourteen meters, and a shooter that vanished into thin air.”

An impressive shot, Commander Eriksson had to admit, but it wasn’t much to go on. “What makes you think your killer is here?”

“We locked down the colony, but one ship got through.”

“And it came here?” Commander Eriksson inferred.

Commander Eidran nodded silently.

“Of course it did,” Commander Eriksson glared at the young Betazoid commander. “Look kid. I know you’re one of Reyes’ bright young up-and-comers, but next time, call ahead. We could have picked your guy up the moment he arrived.” He looked back at the corpse. “And I might have one less dead body to deal with.”

“We didn’t know….” Commander Eidran began to say, but it didn’t take his empathic senses to tell him not to finish that sentence. “Yes, noted.” He looked at the remains of the Starfleet officer. How had he not thought to do that? Now someone else was dead.

Commander Eriksson could see it in the kid’s eyes that the point had landed, so rather than dig the knife in deeper, he brought it back around. “It’s still more than what we’ve got.”

“What do you mean?” Commander Eidran asked as he looked back up. This was a fairly public thoroughfare in the middle of the station, the sort of place that would have security cameras and other monitoring. “What about the feeds?”

“Scrambled to hell,” Commander Eriksson replied. “Same with the biometrics. Haven’t gotten a thing off either.”

“Is it typical for them both to be down?” Commander Eidran asked. Those two subsystems did not usually share dependencies or control paths.

“No,” Commander Eriksson shook his head. “This was the only junction across five hundred decks where either system was down, and somehow both were throwing off erroneous readings at exactly the same time.”

Commander Eidran’s mind went to the natural place. “Do you suspect foul play?”

“The probability of that happening naturally, without a larger station-wide outage, is… near zero,” Commander Eriksson confirmed. “To me, that suggests this was deliberate, not a random act.” And that wasn’t all. What bothered him even more was the sophistication and effort it would have taken to bring both those systems down for this one junction.

Commander Eidran’s jaw clenched as his mind went to the same place. There was something in common with both of these killings. “What about witnesses? I know it was the middle of the night, but we’re just off the main drag.”

“Sure, but when we arrived, the whole area was sealed for maintenance,” Commander Eriksson shared. “But as I’m sure you can guess, Chief Salazar confirmed he had not authorized any such maintenance last night, and none of his people were down here.”

“So how’d it get sealed?” Commander Eidran asked.

“By order of Fleet Admiral Allison Reyes,” Commander Eriksson replied flatly.

Commander Eidran could not contain the shock on his face. “She’d never authorize such a thing… and… and she’s not even in our universe right now.” Fleet Admiral Reyes had taken Polaris Squadron through the portal at Starbase 80 to recover the Juno and the Decius.

“Relax, kid,” Commander Eriksson assured him. “I know the fleet admiral did not authorize a hit on my station.” That wasn’t what he was implying. “But someone with her access codes did.”

Commander Eidran looked equally confused by the thought. “How does someone have her access codes?”

“When we catch the sick fuck that did this,” Commander Eriksson replied as he glanced at the remains once more. “I’m sure we can ask them.”

But catching whoever did this was going to be a problem, Commander Eidran knew, when they had near zero to go on. “So what’s the next move?”

“We pay a visit to the shadow broker,” Commander Eriksson replied. He didn’t relish the idea, but he was out of others. “Maybe he has some idea we don’t.”