We're Done Here

[Ugoto Chivaro]

THE HELIX SYNDICATE

As part of the Helix Syndicate’s ever-increasing, ever-bolder bids for more power, wealth, and influence, a string of casino-resorts had been commissioned for construction. Cantras Gola, Moltok, and Anemcoro all laid on important hyperlane junctions within the Pentastar Sectors. Their capitol cities were perfect locations for such dens of inequity and greed. On Cantras Gola and Anemcoro, construction was proceeding as planned. It was on Moltok that problems were actually starting to arise.

Members of the construction crew were turning up dead. Equipment was being sabotaged. The workers were getting restless and the Helix Syndicate did not want to involve local law enforcement. Families were informed that it was a workplace accident and subsequently bribed or intimidated into silence. Pollux did not like having to make these sorts of bribes. It was a waste of money. While they had considerable amounts of it, it was better spent elsewhere. The murders had to stop. Construction had to be completed as planned.

Eugene was the lieutenant selected to oversee the resolution of the issue. Already, the former Deathwatch commando suspected the Waylon Syndicate to be responsible. Waylon was on the decline while Helix was on the rise. Such was the story of the seedy quasi-legal corporate underbelly of the Pentastar Sectors. Waylon would resort to whatever tactics they could get their desperate hands on if it meant even the smallest chance at hampering the Helix Syndicate’s progress. Even killing innocent construction workers.

Then again, the Helix Syndicate would also assassinate the construction workers of their enemies if it ever came down to it. Maybe. It had never come down to that. Yet. Largely because the Waylon Syndicate didn’t build anything worth tearing down these days.

A datapad containing the relevant information on the casino was slapped into Eugene’s hand. The resort had been lovingly christened Pyne’s Legs. What a charming name. Sounded like a name he had heard someplace before, but he couldn’t remember now. Must not have been too important. With this in mind and a five-man squad of Specialists at his back, Eugene departed aboard a shuttle and landed at the construction site the following day.

 

[Ugoto Chivaro]

MOLTOK
PYNE’S LEGS RESORT AND CASINO - FOREMAN’S OFFICE

“We got six dudes dead, all of them in different theaters, never the same one twice. I did like you guys asked.” The foreman, a Weequay named Umpakk, reclined back in his office chair, eyeing Eugene suspiciously. The Guavians milling around behind the lieutenant didn’t bother him like it did others. He had built stuff for criminal outfits before. “Nobody outside the crew knows they were killed. Families’ve kept quiet so far.”

Eugene already knew this. If the foreman hadn’t done that much already there would have been problems. Pollux would have ordered Eugene to beat the daylights out of him while he was there. Refreshingly, this did not seem to be necessary. “How many dead?”

“Seven.” Umpakk worked up a glob of mucus and spat it into a trashcan, then wiped his mouth on his sleeve. “Strangled. Some kinda long fibercord, I think. I got a mortician looking after them over in the feezer.”

“...Freezer?”

“Yeah, we don’t exactly got a morgue to work with here.”

Eugene was no expert on corpse containment. Neither was Umpakk, he guessed. The cold would keep them from smelling at the least, wouldn’t it? Then again, the mortician was with them, so maybe he could work his mortician's magic to make the containment a little more hygienic.

“I’ll be looking at the bodies myself”

Umpakk shrugged, opening a drawer and rooting around for something. “Sure thing. You want anything else?”

“Gotta talk to your workers too. See if they saw anything.”

“I’ll spoil the surprise for ya and let you know they didn’t.” Umpakk found the cigar he was looking for. “But be my guest.”

Umpakk was certainly at ease for someone whose workers were being picked off one by one. It would have made Eugene suspicious, but considering Umpakk was a regular contractor for people whose enterprises were prone to enemy attacks, he must have been used to it. Either that or he thought himself well protected in his office. Probably had a sidearm of his own.

There were other factors Eugene suspected exonerated Umpakk of any suspicion, but he wasn’t ruling anything out just yet.

 

[Ugoto Chivaro]

MOLTOK
PYNE’S LEGS RESORT AND CASINO - BREAK ROOM

Eugene lined up all the workers he could find in the break room and proceeded to drill them. In one sense, Umpakk had been wrong. In another, he had been right. All of the workers present swore up and down they had seen something, be it the murdered or the murderer. The problem was that not a single one of these morons told the same story.

“I thought I saw an Ithorian. Big dude, like, thirty feet tall.”

“He wasn’t thirty feet tall, Mitch, you idiot.” Mitch’s friend shoved him aside to better address Eugene, who by that point had mentally checked out. “He was twenty-five, more like, and it was definitely a Maelibus.”

“A malignant bus?”

“No, like, a demon!”

“No way he was a demon, Sedge. He didn’t have any wings.”

“Kark off, Frank, what do you know?”

Frank puffed out his chest and got in Sedge’s face. “I know demons got wings. You got a problem with that, dipchit?”

The Guavians waiting outside the room were silently snickering among themselves, muted by their helmets’ systems but more than audible in the comlink in Eugene’s ear. These men were already on edge on account of murders happening all around them. They were hearing and seeing things that simply weren’t there. Of course all these murders had to take place before the camera system was up and running. It’d be another month before it was, provided those technicians weren’t murdered.

Pollux made it clear to Eugene that he didn’t have a month to settle this.

Eugene zoned back in just as Mitch was referencing a Zabrak Power Ballad published in ‘39 that dealt with a similar situation. Complete nonsense. “Alright, thanks guys. That’s all for now.”

Sedge shoved Frank away long enough to ask a question. “Don’t you want a physical description? Y’know, for the wanted posters.”

The snickering grew louder in Eugene’s ear. “No… No, we’re good. I’ve got everything I need.”

 

[Ugoto Chivaro]

MOLTOK
PYNE’S LEGS RESORT AND CASINO - CASINO 1C

“You sure it wasn’t Vulgrim Blackwell, boss?” One of the Guavians was joking as they crossed the resort. “I heard he used to string up farmers he didn’t like.”

Eugene shook his head in disgust. “Don’t talk about Blackwell too much, it’s bad luck. Creep’ll pull your arms off and beat you to death with ‘em.”

“Yeah, that’s messed up.” Another Guavian said. “He’s got no business stealin’ Rahgot’s thunder like that.”

All the Guavians shared a nice laugh over that, except Eugene. Eugene was more transfixed on the fact that it would be his head on the block if this problem didn’t go away. All of the witnesses, if they were even witnesses, were out of their annoyingly tiny minds. Eugene could only hope that the actual, physical crime scene they were walking to would turn something up.

“Eeeeey, strangeah.”

Eugene and the Guavians stopped abruptly and looked around, finding an elderly Peripleen perched on some kind of driveable vacuum cleaner. Charming. The contraption was currently deactivated and the Peripleen was reclining luxuriously with his hands behind his head. Hopefully he was supposed to be on break.

“You need something?” Eugene was eyeing the janitor impatiently. If the actual construction workers had the collective intelligence of a bag of rocks, how dumb would the janitor be?

“You tha guy comin’ to investigate the murdahs?”

“That’s right.”

“Well, I bean here ‘round these parts ah long time, strangeah.” The Peripleen sat up, leaning forward and nodding sagely. “I’ll tell you somethin’ tha other guys don’t know. Back inna day, this used to be an oprah house. Classy place, big Sith Lord patron.”

Why did Eugene already have the sense this was going to be stupid? “Yes, and?”

The Peripleen bristled. “And, whenee died, they shut tha place down. Made ‘is spooky spirit angry like Sith spirits get. He started hauntin’ tha place. They call heem, the Force Ghost of the Opera.” The Peripleen nodded sagely, as if this wasn’t the largest heap of gobbledygook Eugene had ever been fed. “Now you guys comin’ in to bulldoze it and build a casinoh on top. Ee’s angry. Ee’s killin’ people.”

“Alright, do me a favor.” Eugene walked over to the Peripleen and shoved him back into his seat on his little vacuum scooter. “If you see me again, don’t talk to me. I don’t have time for this chit, alright?”

Rubbing his chest, the Peripleen looked indignant. “Whatevah you saye, strangeah.”

“Get bent, you idiot.” Eugene stormed off in the direction he had originally been going, silently fuming while the uproarious laughter of the Guavians cackled over his commlink.

 

[Ugoto Chivaro]

MOLTOK
PYNE’S LEGS RESORT AND CASINO - STAGE F3

Stage F3 was only partially constructed still and a few workers were cautiously moving about, setting things up. They were still wary. This was where the first murder had taken place- a man named Mickhel Shedd was found strung up by the overhead lights while moving around backstage. Eugene was under the lights now, staring up at them and the length of rope that still remained.

“What was his job again?” Eugene looked away from the lights and to the supervisor. A Skakoan.

The supervisor bowed his head, twisted a knob on his pressure suit. “Mr. Shedd was installing the seats out there in the audience.”

“How close was he to finishing?”

“Him? Er...” The Skakoan paused, tilting his head to one side. “He had only been here a week before he was killed. There were still quite the amount of seats left to install.”

Of all the people the spooky ghost could have murdered, they started with some random nobody? Not the supervisor? Didn’t make sense to Eugene, but then again, Skakoans were hard to strangle with rope. Other supervisors had turned up dead since then. “If he was supposed to be installing seats, why was he backstage?”

“I am not sure.”

Eugene eyed the Skakoan. Couldn’t be this guy, could it? No way. Bumbling around in that giant pressure suit, someone would have actually seen him. Those kooks in the breakroom were a few bulbs short of a Life Day tree, but they would recognize a Skakoan if they saw one. Especially if it was this Skakoan, the only one working on the whole construction site.

“How has progress been?”

“I told my workers to be careful, stay where others can see them at all times.” The Skakoan nodded again, congenially, adjusting a different dial. “It has been slow, but better to err on the side of caution, I think, if it saves more lives-”

How… Nice of him. Eugene didn’t meet a lot of nice people in this line of work. The Skakoan must have been new here.

“The killer hasn’t visited the same theater twice.” Eugene informed him. “Ramp up construction. This casino needs to be finished. I’ll station one of my men in here to keep watch. Alright?”

The Skakoan fidgeted. “Alright.”

Eugene nodded curtly and moved to leave, only for a Guavian to suddenly skid around the corner. “Sir?”

“What now?”

“Another body.”

 

[Ugoto Chivaro]

MOLTOK
PYNE’S LEGS RESORT AND CASINO - STAGE G2

Eugene rubbed the back of his head, glaring at the still-swinging body in dismay. “You have got to be karking kidding me.”

Up in the rafters of Stage G2 was the Peripleen, hung by the neck. The small simian’s eyes were still wide open, and he was so small that the air from the vents was actually blowing him back and forth. Like a goddamn pendulum. One of the Guavians was moving forward to get directly under the Peripleen, but Eugene stopped him.

“Careful- hey! Back up, Mort.” Eugene indicated the steady drip. “He pissed himself.”

The Specialist’s head snapped upward and he immediately backpedaled. Someone laughed.

Stage G2 had already been finished. There were no construction workers present, so Eugene had assumed there was no risk. Now the murderer had demonstrated otherwise. The Peripleen was in here by himself to polish the stage. When he didn’t answer on the radio, someone went to check in on him. Assumed he couldn’t hear it or had finally keeled over from natural causes. Neither was the case.

Eugene decided to direct his ire to the janitor that found him. “He was in here alone? There’s a murderer on the loose and you guys are still walking through theaters alone?”

Before the janitor could grovel or protest, Umpakk showed up in a swirl of cigar smoke and with a cleanup crew behind him. “Oh, no! That bastard, that was Jilembi!” Umpakk huffed on his cigar, blowing smoke everywhere. “He was close to retirement, you know. Big shame. Someone cut him down!”

Umpakk sniffed the air. “And watch out for the piss!”

Eugene noted Umpakk’s impressive sense of smell. Not that it was terribly relevant. “Umpakk, I’m putting an armed guard in each theater that hasn’t been hit yet. Nobody goes anywhere without someone else with them.”

“You’ll slow down construction.”

“You’ll speed it up again once this is over.” Eugene snapped back. More annoying than the death of the Peripleen was the fact that it seemed to somehow validate this whole “spooky ghost” narrative. Eugene would unravel this whole thing and leave it behind him as soon as possible.

 

[Ugoto Chivaro]

MOLTOK
PYNE’S LEGS RESORT AND CASINO - CASINO 1G

Eugene was marching through the casino, alone, a million thoughts buzzing through his head. He was walking through a maintenance corridor when a sound gave him pause, like somebody whispering. Eugene stopped in his tracks and looked over his shoulder, seeing only a maintenance closer with the door half open. Again, he heard something that sounded like a whisper. He let a hand rest on his sidearm as he moved closer-

A hand lashed out, grabbing Eugene by his forearm and yanking him inside. “Don’t shoot!” Something warbled. The closet smelled like sweat, this guy- an Aqualish judging by the fur -had been in here for a little while now. “Listen to me!”

Eugene responded to this request and unwelcome grappling by punching the Aqualish directly in the face. The creature whuffed and released him, and Eugene used this lapse to pistol whip him across the skull. The Aqualish started begging on the floor, holding its hands up defensively while Eugene pointed the gun at him. “What… The hell?”

“I saw it! I had to hide!”

Eugene jammed the gun into the Aqualish’s chest. “Saw what?”

“Jilembi! I saw him getting strangled!”

Eugene’s eyes widened for a moment as he processed this. The killer missed one. The Aqualish must have been in there to check on him even earlier than the other guy. He witnessed the murder. Had he seen who carried it out, then? Eugene pressed the blaster farther into his chest. “Who did you see?”

The Aqualish just whuffed in panic, repeatedly. Eugene pressed the gun even more, causing pain. “Who?”

“I don’t know- it was- it was someone I’d seen before! They worked here!”

“Who? Where did they work?”

“Uh- one of the- Shedd! It was Shedd? I couldn’t tell… He was glowing!”

Eugene pistol whipped the Aqualish a final time, rendering him unconscious. How could Mickhel Shedd be the one responsible? He had been the first victim. His corpse was in the morgue! One of the first things Eugene did when he got here was inspect then, and they all had the same strangulation marks, cause of death. Then the mortician zipped them back up… Was this supposed to be Mickhel Shedd’s ghost joining the original strangler?

What was more likely was that this Aqualish was responsible, whether partially or fully. Trying to shift blame on an already dead man. Idiotic. Eugene radioed for someone to drag the Aqualish to a holding cell.

 

[Ugoto Chivaro]

MOLTOK
PYNE’S LEGS RESORT AND CASINO - BASEMENT LEVEL

Eugene closed the door behind him, stretching his hands. He was really going to hurt himself one of these days. He sighed and looked over at the waiting Specialist.“Give me that.” He ordered, and the Specialist dutifully handed him a rag to wipe the blood off his hands. How many times could an adult Aqualish be punched before he stopped believing in ghosts and fessed up?

Aqualish were a hardy species, but not that hardy. Not physically. A lot of them were hardened criminals who could take a beating. This wasn’t one of them. This one was a weakling, but he stuck to his story no matter how many times Eugene hit him. In Eugene’s line of work, that usually meant they had to be telling the truth. But there was no way this whole “Force Ghost of the Opera” thing was anything even remotely approaching true.

Even if it could be, it certainly wasn’t going to be Mickhel karking Shedd, the guy who died a week ago.

What it probably was, Eugene resolved, was the Aqualish’s guilty conscious. This clown had been paid by Waylon to murder his co-workers and now he felt bad about it. And while strangling that poor, idiot Peripleen until his eyes bulged and his bladder gave out, he started seeing phantoms. The brain was a poorly understood organ, it could conjure all sorts of phantom images. Especially when it was wracked with guilt.

Eugene ran that by the Aqualish, but that just made him more upset. Angry, even. That Aqualish considered Jilembi his friend, or whatever. All it sounded like was just another reason for him to feel so guilty. This guy was a janitor. A janitor. How much money could he be making that he wouldn’t crack when Waylon offered him some obscene amount to start strangling his colleagues, dress them up to make it look like a ghost?

Something crackled in Eugene’s ear. The comlink. He forgot he had it in, heat of the moment and all. “Hey, we got a situation in Theater H1.”

Eugene clenched his teeth. “Another body?”

“Nope.” There was a pause. Almost dramatic, mostly annoying. “Interrupted the killer before he could finish this last one off. Guy got away, though.”

Eugene looked at the door he had just walked through, picturing the bloody and beaten Aqualish clinging to consciousness and weeping behind it. It was then, he realized, that he might have been mistaken. Just a little bit.

 

[Ugoto Chivaro]

MOLTOK
PYNE’S LEGS RESORT AND CASINO - STAGE H1

Eugene had to wonder why there were so many goddamn people hanging around in here. Did they all come to gawk at the rescued construction worker? Pat the interrupting Specialist on the back? Uppak was hanging around there too, chewing his cigar and talking in an obnoxiously loud voice. He kept patting the responsible Specialist on the back. The Specialist remained relatively still, helmet reflecting nothing but stoic indifference. This was his job, not an act of valor or courage.

“Where’s the witness?” Eugene demanded. One of the now-idle construction workers pointed to a forlorn Duros sitting on a stack of timber, rubbing his throat and sipping water from a thermos. Eugene shooed off the one or two construction workers lingering around him.

“Did you see who it was?”

The Duros nodded.

“Who? Did they work here? Did you recognize them?”

Again, the Duros nodded, taking another deep drink from the thermos. That probably wasn’t water. All the times Eugene had almost gotten himself killed, water was never the drink he went for.

“Who was it?”

“Mickhel Shedd. He was glowing.”

“Son of a karking-...!” Eugene was about a hair away from punching and kicking some inanimate objects, face flushed red. Steam would have come out his ears if he got any angrier. He pointed at the Specialist. “You, with me.”

Uppak waved dismissively, swirling some of his smoke in the process. “Hey, we’re celebrating here.”

Eugene was already marching out of the room in a hurricane-force rage with the Specialist behind him, yelling all the way. “Celebrate when we’re karking done here!”

 

[Ugoto Chivaro]

MOLTOK
PYNE’S LEGS RESORT AND CASINO - UNFINISHED RESTAURANT, FREEZER

“Wait out here.” Eugene ordered. He didn’t actually need this Specialist’s help, he just hated the idea of him partying with the rest of those morons while the target was still on the loose! He could be strangling another of those hapless idiots at this very moment. Eugene did not like the feeling of running out of time. He had been here too long, too many days spent, too many hours seemingly wasted. And the only two leads that turned up pointed at a dead man and the supernatural.

No more.

Eugene flung open the doors to the freezer. There were eight stretchers, each with a body bag on top of them. The mortician, a human with red hair and a patchy, public beard, looked up from his datapad. “Hello?”

“Mickhel Shedd.” Eugene said, bluntly, moving to a body bag that had “one” stitched into it. Before the mortician could say anything, Eugene had practically torn the bag open he unzipped it so quickly and with such force. Mickhell Shedd’s face was made visible.

Eugene stepped back, opening his datapad and comparing it to the image of Shedd he had on hand. They were completely the same, but something… Wasn’t right. Eugene stepped forward, now ignoring the mortician, and gave a closer look to the corpse. It seemed real, but somehow too… Shiny. He reached out and touched the chest, tentatively.

Plasteel.

This was a plastic corpse.

“What the hell?”

The mortician, at that moment, whipped out a vibro knife and lunged at Eugene with an animalistic snarl. The former Mandalorian scarcely had time to react, twisting himself around and using the datapad for a shield. The mortician stabbed right through it, fortunately sparing Eugene but destroying the datapad. He tried to wrench it away, but the Guavian was faster, twisting the datapad and tossing it away, disarming the Mortician in the process.

He came in for a right hook, but Eugene easily weaved out of the way. Who was this amateur? Eugene had fought and killed his own Mandalorian brethren on Roche, slaughtered some of Mandalore’s best on Keldabe. This was cake. In only a single hot minute, the mortician was pinned. And punched. And punched. And punched. And punched.

At some point the doors to the freezer opened behind him, the Specialist having elected to just check in. “Ah, sir?”

Eugene released the mortician, allowing the man to slide to the floor and remain in a seating position. Eugene wiped the blood off his hands and onto his shirt, turning to look at the Specialist.“We’re done here.”

 

[Ugoto Chivaro]

THE HELIX SYNDICATE

The mortician, against all odds, survived his thorough beating. Uppak was exonerated of having any knowledge that he was an agent of Waylon, just as he was exonerated of having any knowledge of why Mickhel Shedd was. Upon regaining consciousness, he fessed up to where the real Mickhel was hiding, not wanting a repeat of the beating Eugene had given him in the freezer.

They found Mickhel in a hidden chamber under one of the theaters, one that wasn’t scheduled to have any repair crews in it for a long time. Among Mickhel’s personal effects included a jury-rigged holoshroud that gave him an almost spectral appearance. The only people who had gotten a good look at him only did so briefly. If any of them had stared at Mickhel for more than a fleeting moment before he darted away, they might have realized.

Now they did.

Mickhel and his fraudulent accomplice were unceremoniously executed after they admitted to being Waylon agents. In accordance to a new “less than zero tolerance” towards Waylon, their heads were severed and mailed to the closest Waylon outpost on Moltok. Then, elsewhere in the Pentastar Sector, a decisive raid carried out by Helix Syndicate Specialists claimed the lives of fifty of their hired guns and annihilated one of their last, most profitable spice smuggling operations.

Eugene suspected that, despite all of that, Waylon would not get the message. They would continue to try and recapture their glory, clinging to whatever small hopes they could. Complete destruction was the only thing that would cease their meddling. And after this tiresome, virtually pointless debacle, Eugene was especially happy to oblige them.

And now here’s where the credits roll. Again.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iNPQx_Bb2Fo​