Ravens of Eternity

Chapter 56

56 The Seven, Pt Eva, Miko, and Amal immediately met up after the meeting. They were joined by a handful of others who wanted to help take down Nightmare.

Although many of the people in the room certainly wanted to help, Eva had to turn them away from front-line work. It wasn’t that they weren’t willing to take their help, but what they were going to do was incredibly dangerous.

After all, hunting down a violent, abusive, and dangerous individual such as Nightmare no doubt would lead to various conflicts, including firefights. Many of these people wouldn’t survive such a skirmish. Not against Nightmare’s brutes.

Eva didn’t want to endanger them unnecessarily. Instead, she convinced them to help out privately and in the background, while the team did the legwork.

Those she allowed on the team had to have special training, otherwise they wouldn’t survive what they were about to do.

Although Amal didn’t have training, she was a refugee player, and had innate advantages. Plus she absolutely needed to be on the team.

She was the heart of it.

Everyone was promised an equal share of any spoils, if they came across any. No doubt Nightmare and his crew had nice, fat bounties on their heads. And if they didn’t, well they’d have to help themselves to their equipment instead.

Regardless, they were going to bleed Nightmare dry.

.....

Like Eva, Miko, and Amal, the others who had joined them for the hunt were rather exceptional.

There was Alita “Xylo” Bradford, Fred “Fluke” Chu, Hashi “T-Rex” Tribanin, and Peter “Locke” Dontescue.

All four of them had taken some form of military or police training, and were familiar with a range of personal weaponry and unit tactics. But it was their specialities that made them truly valuable.

Xylo had training as a recon scout and worked a few odd bounties. She had light brown hair and was the shortest of the four. She was in her late 20s, and was in the prime of her athleticism. She hadn’t done any recon work in a couple of years, and was eager to get back in the game.

Fluke was a journalist in his early 30s, and wrote some articles for a small publication on Helios. He was slim and relatively short, the perfect size for anyone who trained in infiltration. He had a penchant for sneaking into places, and hearing the right things at the right time.

Meanwhile T-Rex was a refugee player that had trained in basic police work in both his old and new life. It was originally his goal to become a highly-paid bodyguard for the wealthy. But he found that he had a real head for numbers, and ended up investigating financial crime instead. He was also in his late 20s, and was a beast of a man – tall, extremely muscular, and square-jawed. He looked like he could break people by accident.

Locke was a former detective, and he had a whole rack of skills they needed, from surveillance to deductive logic. He was in his late 40s, and had graying blond hair. He was rather tall and athletic, but was getting a little soft in the middle.

Together, the seven of them made for a rather well-rounded and lethal team. It was perfect in terms of taking down Nightmare. Hell, they were probably an incredibly adept team no matter who they were after.

As a group, they rented out one of the other rooms in the precinct. It was a simple office that was large enough for all of them to work in.

A handful of dusty desks lined a couple of walls. Each of them came with a secure terminal and a nice-looking chair, which a few thought was rather nice.

Off to the side were a row of lockers, which were made with solid titanium, and were secured by genetic locks. Though they seemed secure, they were rather standard, and were the Helios equivalent of gym lockers.

One of the walls had a large display, which was flanked by a number of smaller ones.

Miko quickly went over to configure them while the others picked their desk and sat on their chairs.

Eva configured one of the lockers and swung it open. She had half-expected it to have something in it, like leftover ammo, a moldy fruit, or a pair of old socks.

She was pleasantly surprised to see that it was clean and spotless on the inside.

Amal hung around, but didn’t feel quite right. She honestly wasn’t sure what she was doing there. Everyone else was a gun-toting badass, and she was just some art-loving farmer that could sell trinkets and pilot ships.

“Guys,” she said, “I’m not sure what use I’m gonna be in a firefight. I’ve never shot a gun in my life. Well, okay once, but I literally dropped it right after I fired it.”

T-Rex immediately piped in, “So, eh, you want us to teach you? Issat whatcha mean? Gun control’s easy once you get the hang of it.”

“Not what she means, man,” said Locke, “she’s sayin’ that she might be a liability out in the field.”

“Yes, exactly,” affirmed Amal.

“Not a problem,” said Xylo. “We’ve just gotta teach you to use one, that’s all.”

“I don’t know if I can,” she replied. “I’ve always been nervous holding them. I... I don’t...”

“It’s fine, don’t sweat it,” said Locke. “You don’t need to know how to use it to catch Nightmare.”

Locke got up from his seat and drew his old service pistol. He unloaded it and activated its safety measures.

“But you still need to learn, ‘coz you might end up needing to save your own life.”

He placed his gun in Amal’s hands and stepped back.

“It’s empty, so you don’t have to worry about it doing anything. But hang on to it for a few minutes. Just get used to it.”

“I don’t like it,” she said.

“Neither do I,” he replied. “But sometimes you gotta force yourself to use it.”

Amal weighed the weapon in her hands. Despite how light it was, it felt heavy to her. Weapons like this had done more to ruin her life than protect it.

She turned it over in her hands, and felt its curves and edges, as though she was trying to understand it.

A moment later, she handed it back to the old detective.

“I’ll try to figure it out, sir.”

Right then, Miko had activated the displays and filled them with all of the information they had. She had organized everything so cleanly that everyone was completely amazed.

One of them whistled.

In the middle of the display was Nightmare’s dossier. It was surrounded by a number of other dossiers, all of whom were the thugs that Eva and Miko had encountered.

Their dossiers were thin, but ready to be populated.

“We will need one of those dedicated terminals to house all of this data,” said Miko. “Regardless, our operations are now active. All of you should have access to this, correct?”

Everyone quickly checked their DIs and saw that they did indeed have access to the display, and confirmed.

Miko then locked it so that only they would be able to access it, then transferred storage duties to the nearest terminal.

“Good,” Miko continued. “Then let us work on filling this up with as much information as we can.”

“What’s all this for, anyway?” asked Xylo.

“If I ain’t mistaken, it looks like we’re building up evidence,” replied Locke.

He had seen this sort of thing dozens of times before. When he was a detective, he had been part of a number of task forces. They were put together with the best of the best, and were designed to fulfil that task to the best of their abilities.

“Exactly that,” said Eva. “We’re gonna take him in and provide enough evidence for them to charge him with everything that he’s done.”

“The evidence we pull isn’t gonna be trusted just like that,” said Locke. “The courts’ll have to verify it with Helios Police first.”

“Should be fine if we do our due diligence, right?” asked Fluke.

Locke nodded with a grin.

The group immediately got to work.

They entered whatever data they had on him, particularly their own encounters with him. Eva and Miko had contributed a fair amount, considering they had already done some research.

“Look,” said Fluke. “Someone put up a bounty on him recently. Not bad, fifty thousand.”

He added the information up onto the display.

“Do a search on his lackeys as well,” said Miko.

Fluke did so, and added their bounty data to their dossiers.

Amal opened up Nightmare’s dossier, and read it briefly.

—

IDENTITY

Full Name: Guy Johnson

Callsign: Nightmare

Aliases: n/a

Piloting Licenses: Civilian Commercial Industrial

MEDICAL

Age: 23

Gender: Male

Hair Color: Blond

Eye Color: Blue

Ethnicity: Human

Height: 175 cm

Weight: 68 kg

Build: Athletic

Markings/Scars: n/a

UNLAWFUL ACTIVITY

.....

Crimes Against Persons. Assault x 16 Murder x 4 **** x 8 Robbery x 2

Crimes Against Property. Burglary x 0 Larceny x 5 Theft x 0 Destruction x 19

CRIMINAL ASSOCIATES See Datafile Nightmare Known Associates

—

When Amal saw the number of assaults he had committed against others, she felt shocked. Partly because she was expecting much more. In fact, having heard everyone’s stories, she was certain that there were more.

She also wasn’t so sure about the other numbers – they just seemed lower than they actually were.

“I don’t believe the number of assaults he’s done,” Amal said. “I’m certain he’s assaulted way more than sixteen people. He’s definitely murdered more than four.”

“Nn,” said Miko. “Those numbers only represent what has been officially reported to the Sol Federation. I also believe they are all fractions of what he has actually done.”

“Makes sense,” said Xylo. “If he’s killin’ most of his targets, then there ain’t anyone who can file a report.”

“And also there’s his thugs,” said T-Rex. “If they’re the ones pullin’ the trigger, then it isn’t going on Nightmare’s rap sheet.”

“Can’t he be charged for leading them?” asked Amal.

“There’s the typical conspiracy charge, with a buncha notes about their role. ‘Gave orders’ or ‘financed org’, that sort of thing. The roles are pretty well defined. The more roles they can nail on them, the better.”

The old detective suddenly became somewhat pensive, as though he was recalling an old memory.

“And that’s just one of ’em. There’s all sorts of crazy charges out there that could apply. Don’t you worry – he’s gonna get his.”

“Can’t we just, you know, shoot his ass?” asked Xylo.

It was a valid question. He had plenty of felonies on his rap sheet, and qualified for a kill-on-sight bounty award. It was definitely way easier than what they were doing now.

All they had to do was find him, and put a bullet in him. Done.

Eva sighed.

“I really would have just preferred to space his ass,” she said, “and I’m sure everyone here would’ve loved to have done the same as well. But he deserves to be punished with the weight of all his crimes. Not just mine, or yours, or Amal’s but everyone’s combined.”

“We have also thought about simply holding him somewhere and beating him cycle in, cycle out,” said Miko. “But I do not believe he would last very long against some of us, much less all of us.”

What she said shocked the others greatly. No thirteen year old they had ever met would have said anything like that. Ever.

“Ultimately not very satisfying, either,” added Eva. “I mean, after a while, he’d just be a hanging sack of meat, right? What good is hitting him if he isn’t gonna yell or scream or something?”

She then further expanded on the practicality of any available torture methods, and how they ultimately weren’t worth it. Even if they artificially kept him alive.

The others were astounded at the two. They realized just how amoral they were, at least in regards to dealing with Nightmare. Who were they? And why did they do so much research on torture?

Not that he didn’t deserve it, but none of the others even thought about it, much less analyze the logistics and feasibility of those methods.

But they made their point, in their own morbid way.

No matter what they did to Nightmare, it wouldn’t have satisfied everyone he had hurt. The best they could do was turn him over to the authorities and let them mete out the punishment he so deserved.

“Let the Feds take care of him,” said Locke. “They’ll make sure he’s proper punished, and it’ll make most his victims happy. Even the dead ones. Besides that, Nightmare’s more than one person. He’s gotta whole gang, and they all need taking out.”