Work as a Local

Posted on Sun Feb 10th, 2013 @ 10:53pm by Chief Warrant Officer K'Vaal Th'raas

Mission: Heart of an Explorer
Location: Various

Inspector Krystek, a sixteen solar cycle veteran of the Gargarin Prefect Police Corps had seen his share of both the best and worst of life in what he considered his little corner of the universe.

As a young man, he like many of his friends had joined the military to serve their required eight cycle term, before entering post secondary education. Like his father, and his father's father, stretching back more than five generations, he was expected to continue the family legacy of becoming a farmer, expanding the families prosperity as great producer of agricultural products that later became one of the top Agri-businesses on Maltorra.

While serving in military, Krystek and a young woman he met in basic training were transferred into the M.I.D. or Military Investigations Department. Ten Solar cycles later, Krystek eventually found himself fully diverted from the path of his forefathers and on the one in which he current found himself.

Now in his mid forties, and despite his status as a senior investigator, and the youngest in the department, Krystek thought back to how things had seemed to go wrong so inexplicably wrong:

Missing persons reports seemed to be on the rise as the number of cold cases increased, only to have them suddenly become cleared as people reappeared with no memory of what had happened to them or any account of where they had been. The longest account of one of the "missing" having lasted more than three solar cycles.

In another seemingly unrelated report of what their local scientists called the "Hunger" sickness, a kind of disease in which by all accounts, healthy people came down with a sickness in which they could no longer eat normal food. Intravenous nutrient supplements only kept the disease at bay for so long until one patient, so ravenous with hunger, attacked a caregiver, tearing out his throat with his teeth and feasting on their flesh.

That particular report had been kept quiet by the government and only a few of the senior investigators knew of the report. those stricken with the "disease" were interned at a secret facility deep underground and later disposed of due to the clear and present danger they posed to the rest of the populace. A total of four hundred and sixty three men women, and children were culled with all reports of the instance erased from public record.

Krystek looked up from his terminal and ran his fingers through his sun-bleached hair, he stared out of his window at the hive of activity going on around him in what his co-workers called "the Pit" and caught site of Arina and smiled warmly.

The "Pit" as it was affectionately called, was the command center of the Gargarin Prefect's investigative corps. A circular room arranged into three tiers arranged around three enormous video screens. Each screen was dedicated to one of the Prefects three Wards and each section held workstations complete with miniature consoles.

The lowest tiers seated six controllers who coordinated their units workload communications and resource allocations. The next tier seated four officers who dealt with the normal day to day policing duties which comprised of an intelligence specialist, Social Service specialist, Public Safety Specialist; who coordinated all of the beat officers,and finally, a Liaison Officer.

The next tier, contained what Krystek and his co-workers called the Never-Enders (NE); Senior investigators who dealt with capitol crimes, tracking down cases that had gone cold and cases that often dealt with official misconduct. An offshoot of this tier was a group of specialist who received special training to deal with unusual situations and called for unorthodox methods to get the job done.

Arina, like Krystek, were "NE's" and sometimes collaborated together on a number of different cases. Her specialty was Science and Technology where his was Intelligence and Major Crimes.
It was Arina who confided in him about a number of infected being held in specially created wards around the Prefecture. Krystek used his contacts with other NE's and with their help, realized that there was something going on that needed more looking into. Their collective work had seemed to turn up more questions than answers, and the deluge of information had overwhelmed them all.

Arina was asked to sit in on presentation open only to the most senior of officials to witness the launching of their planets first, manned deep space probe. It was essentially considered an last ditch suicide mission to search for intelligent life, out past the reaches of their solar system.
Krystek accompanied her to the ceremony as twenty brave souls were launched from a sub-orbital platform into deep space.

Seconds after launch, 19 of the the vehicles suffered catastrophic failures and exploded as if there were nothing more than go'jar berries being hurled against a window. Again, all public information about the failure was suppressed with all of the attendees being forced to sign non-disclosure statements.

Two more years had passed amid a string of catastrophic failures, and the situation had seemed to grow even more hopeless. In Sollam Prefecture, millions of acres of once lush farmland had almost inexplicably become infertile. Food shortages were projected and economic collapse predictions suddenly became a reality. People began moving from the countryside into the cities at record numbers. New cases of infected began showing up as the Solam tried its best to get a handle on the growing crisis.

Here in Gargarin, the NE's were focusing their efforts on a string of deadly explosions that destroyed both a chemical research company and their warehouses, a multi-line fabrication company which produced a number of products for both the military and civilian sectors, and a new hospital that boasted an advanced research facility situated underground and hermetically sealed from Maltorran's harsh environment.

Then, the floor dropped out from underneath them: Reports of senior government officials holding high level meetings with non-terrestrials (NT's) was first leaked in one of the many less reputable news outlets, which led to word coming down that all information was to be turned over to the Justice Ministry Advocate General's office and all copies were to be destroyed.