Chapter I
He slipped past the door, shielding behind an argumentative Macorra to avoid being seen by the guard, and plunged into the noise and mayhem of the seedy bar called The Nebula. Beings of every description swirled in a dizzying array of color and adornment. The house lights were set at a very low level to allow the multicolored strobes to dominate, distorting his vision as he tried to make his way to the stage.
The Nebula was hosting The Drxn, a group of artists from the planet Alla, who had been banned in three systems for their extreme performances of action and sound. More flexible than many of the bipedal races who enjoyed their shows, the Drxn observed few boundaries of taste or decorum, exercising what they considered to be their artistic expression to the fullest.
He was here to record the show, as it was certainly to be the last to be performed in this sector of the Consortium. The station authorities were unaware of the event and would be moving to shut down the club as soon as they learned of it. In addition to hosting an illegal show of a proscribed group, the Nebula was already in excess of its maximum customer capacity, and more were coming in the door all the time.
A cacophony of languages and sounds assaulted him as he made his way through the undulating crowd. A Telleri triad sat in a tiny island of silence at their table, their pastel hair-like sensor nets waving gently around their heads in the flashes from the strobes. A pair of enormous Macorra wove through the crowd with surprising grace, making their way to a table where two more of their race were seated. Groups of three or more Hori stood and conversed in their growling, hissing native language, ignoring the aliens at the tables behind them who complained of being unable to see the stage. The majority of them he observed as he made his way through the tables were already considerably inebriated and continuing to imbibe.
He skirted the wall farthest from the bar, hugging the shadows. A pale Azoran in a fancy robe, trying to avoid a group of Hori, knocked into him and cursed him absently before moving on. A couple of Donan, giggling in their characteristic high-pitched voices, blocked his way for several moments before darting through an opening in the crowd.
The recording rig he wore was a marvel of current technology, cleverly hidden behind one frilled ear and extending an almost undetectable fiber lens under his hair to peep out at the side of his head. Once activated, it would record whatever he looked at, the tiny audio picking up the sounds of the club, but programmed to mask his breathing or movement so as not to interfere with the concert. Moving cautiously, making sure not to draw attention to himself, he attained his chosen spot at the wall to the left of the of the stage, angled for optimum exposure to take in the performance and the crowd of drunken patrons jockeying for a position close to the edge.
Five loud Thalusians, in the matching uniforms of a trading freighter, occupied a table in front of him to the right. They shouted to the stage and each other and banged their drinks on the table impatiently, clamoring for the concert to begin. As others began join in and do the same, the noise level in the place became staggering.
Abruptly, the house lights and strobes winked out and a single spotlight hit the stage. The five Alla in rushed from the wings, soaring naked on anti-gravity belts and vocalizing an ear-piercing keen. The crowd erupted into cheers, stomps and howls, waving beverage containers in the air and coming close to drowning out the entertainment they had come to see.
The strobes came back on with blinding flashes. The performers leapt and crashed on the stage, filling the club with their own clamor. Keeping his eyes on the group, he was none-the-less aware of the patrons around him, alert to avoid having the recording disrupted by a drunk falling into him.
It was not quite half-way into the time the concert was expected to last, and only because The Drxn had reached a lull in the noise that he heard the shout and crash of a chair. Reflexively, he dropped his gaze slightly to find one of the Thalusians on the floor and the others rising to menace some fancy Azoran and his companion, who were weaving in place with an inebriated and aggressive stance.
Gaining his feet, the downed Thalusian straightened his tunic and snapped an insult to the Azoran as he turned to pick up his chair. A particularly loud howl from the stage signaled the start of another display and prevented the recorder from picking up the comment made by the Azoran to the Thalusian, but from the sudden tension of the Thalusian’s face and his astounded expression, it must have been quite an insult.
He had barely looked back up to the stage when the Thalusian launched himself at the Azoran with a war cry that pierced through the blast of sound from the concert. A well-placed punch sent the Azoran tumbling into the lip of the stage knocking aside several other patrons. Aggravated at having their recreation disrupted, those patrons turned to engage everyone around them, each assuming the other had caused the ruckus.
The brawl spread quickly. The Drxn continued to perform, their particular brand of art creating a counterpoint to the screams and shrieks of the crowd.
He was torn between watching the Alla on stage and watching the fighting, so he angled his head so that he could catch most of the action in the bar in front of the performance, while still recording the antics of The Drxn. The Azoran, far too drunk for sense, hurled himself at the group of Thalusians, determined to extract payment for his bloody lip and pained back. Stepping to meet him, the Thalusian who had hit him before again sent him to the floor. The other Azoran was nowhere to be found, no doubt having realized he was no match for these opponents and so had scampered away.
All over the club people became engaged in beating on their fellows. Because of the close quarters, the weapons used were those that were to hand – chairs, beverage containers, fists. The guard, once concerned with admitting customers into the bar, was now grabbing those brawlers around him and forcefully propelling them out the door. The servers had retreated to behind the bar with the bartenders to watch the melee from relative safety.
Concentrating on keeping his head tilted correctly to capture the combination of the bar brawl with the performance, he decided that the fighting made a very good accent to the show. The Thalusian-Azoran conflict was particularly interesting, and not because they had started the whole thing, but because the Azoran was so clearly outclassed. He seemed to have no hand-to-hand skills and his level of drink-induced impairment caused what swings he did manage to throw to miss by several meters. The Thalusian knocked him to the floor, turned to deal with another combatant, then swung back around and, as the Azoran regained his pedes, decked him again.
From what the recorder could tell, an elaborate act of copulation with instrumental and vocal harmonic dissonance was occurring on the stage at the same time that he saw the first flash of a bladed weapon in the claws of a Hori. Around it, the screams took on a different edge.
Because of the heavy penalties for carrying and using a blaster or projectile weapon on the space station, anyone who wanted to be armed opted for bladed weapons. Generally, these were no longer than a Macorra's forearm, because anything bigger was difficult to conceal. Most were a standard utility knife that served well as a tool and a weapon, easily available from any spacer's supply outlet .
He absently wondered why a Hori would want to use a blade when its claws were already deadly enough to shred anyone in the crowd. Nevertheless, like a quick-spreading virus, the use of blades spread outward into the rest of the brawl. Much more serious wounds began to appear, beyond the bruises, blackened eyes and broken limbs and facial features. Multi-colored blood and ichor began to make the floor even more slippery than the spilled drinks alone, and those patrons who had yet been trying to avoid the melee found themselves downed by sliding and falling fighters.
Quickly sidestepping an unconscious body which slumped to the floor at his feet, he had to reorient himself with the recording when a flurry of movement caught his eye. The nearer Thalusian had just ducked a slash from a panicked Donan and received the only coordinated blow of the night from the Azoran’s fist as it connected squarely with his left eye. The Azoran squealed and clutched his now injured hand, turning away to shake out the pain. With a wordless snarl, the Thalusian drew a knife and slashed out.
He quite clearly saw the knife sink into the unprotected back. He admired the grace with which the Thalusian spun to the side as he yanked the blade out, avoiding a spray of violet blood from the collapsing body. The still-flashing strobes and the noise from the stage gave the whole scene a surreal quality.
The freaked-out Donan who had tried to take on the Thalusian seemed to come to an abrupt realization of what exactly now lay at her pedes and let out a scream that was heard to the far side of the club, actually causing the performers to pause in mid-yowl.
The Azoran on the floor twitched, then stopped moving. Completely.
“He’s dead!” the panicked Donan howled into the abrupt silence.
When the fighting resumed seconds later, it had a different quality to it. Now that a life had been taken, it seemed that some invisible restraint had disappeared, causing the brawl to take on an aura of viciousness that had been missing previously.
The recorder began to edge away, suddenly aware that it was time to leave. The Drxn were in disarray, retreating to the back of the narrow stage and huddling in fear. Making his cautious way toward the bar, he saw several beings on the fringes speaking into links and deduced that the authorities would now be on their way.
Reaching the edge of the bar, he bolted into the employee area behind it, shoving aside servers as he made his way toward the back door. Shouts followed him out into the alley and he heard the first roared order of a security officer. The noise died abruptly as the door slid shut.
He didn’t stop running until he had reached his quarters and secured himself inside with a double-redundancy privacy lock.
As he discovered later that night, the recording was as perfect as he could have hoped. The last performance of The Drxn had been preserved and would be available for sale, with exciting additions. It was going to be worth a fortune on the market.
Then, when he saw the GNN broadcast the next day, with the report that the dead Azoran had been Marcus Colonus, the son of the Azoran Ambassador to the Consortium Council, he realized that he had something more than an illegal concert on his hands.
He had the only irrefutable proof of a murder.
It didn’t occur to him to turn the recording over to the Security office. It did occur to him that the recording was now worth much more than he could have expected to make on just the performance alone. He also realized that he, himself, wouldn’t be able to exploit it as well as others could. He could, however, make a very comfortable amount selling it to someone who knew how to use it to its maximum profit.
It was time to find a buyer, and quickly, before the value of the recording wore off.