Friday, June 8, 2012

The Jita Ripper - Part 8 - A Loss of Life

"So.... do you have a place we can go where it's a little more private" the woman purred.

Marcus smiled. He would enjoy this one. She was smoking hot and had an amazing body. He was sure the capsuleer would appreciate this one too. She looked fit and strong too, she should be able to last a while too.

"My ship is docked here and my quarters are rather spacious."

"A shuttle or a frigate" she asked, clearly testing him. As always, this one must have seen the interface socket on his neck but had not mentioned that she thought she knew that he was a capsuleer.

"Slightly larger. Trust me, you won't be disappointed."

"I don't know, I don't like small ships. I get claustrophobic."

Marcus smiled again and brought out his datapad. He keyed a passcode into his datapad and brought up the security feed capsuleers could access to view their hanger remotely. He showed the image to the woman.


"So, is that big enough for you?"

The woman smiled and nodded.

Marcus paid the bar bill and took her by the hand leading her to the lift. He keyed in the pass code for the capsuleer deck and they walked in and the door slide closed.

"I've got something for you" she said seductively as she leant back against the rear of the lift facing him. Her hands dropped to her skirt and she started to slowly lift it. Agonisingly slowly she exposed more of her slender, long legs. As her lace stocking tops came into view, Marcus saw something bulging in the top of them. She quickly reached into the top of her stocking and pulled out a mini-blaster and pointed it at his face.


"Freeze! Navy Police!"

Marcus indeed froze, his hands going up instinctively. At the same moment the lift stopped and the doors opened, the controls being over-ridden by security. Suddenly there were screams of voices telling him to lay on the floor. He slowly turned to see half a dozen SWAT troopers pointing carbine-blasters at him, the laser sights dancing over his torso. He was frozen in fear.

-o0o-

"Inspector Avi. We have him."

Avi almost spilt his coffee as he rushed to the comm panel.

"Are you sure? It's not another copy cat?"

"No sir. The glue on his fake sockets is a 100% chem-match. DNA profiling has matched him to a worker on Jita planet 4 moon 4 who apparently committed suicide after the third murder. We've also checked his datapad and it shows logs to numbered bank accounts where he transferred the money from his victims. Seriously sir, we have him banged to rights, we couldn’t possible have more incriminating evidence. Congratulations need to be given to you sir. You identified the three possible stations on his route, you said it would be a larger pod vessel like a battlecruiser or battleship and you suggested the bait. It worked exactly how you said it would"

Avi smiled for the first time in weeks.

"Have you got the murder weapon?"

"No sir. We intercepted him before he got to where he was going. But you were right sir, he was heading for the capsuleer hangers. We think he was on a Drake, we're trying to prevent any more from undocking but several of them have already left."

"Never mind, we have him and he's the one that matters. Please keep him secured in holding on the station until a task force arrives to take custody"

"Sir...... I’m….."

"What?"

"He's already left sir. The decision was taken to get him the three jumps to a hi-sec station. We placed him in an unmarked transport as not to attract attention. He was deemed too high a risk for our security services to hold. Also with the bounty on his head, this station isn’t equipped to handle high value prisoners. We need a station covered by CONCORD."

"You transferred a high value suspect, who has a huge bounty on his head, and MAY in fact be working with a capsuleer, on a transport with no escort?"

"Er..... well yes sir"

"Put me through to the captain of that transport NOW! He needs to dock up in the nearest station before it's too late"

"Yes sir! Putting you through now sir........ Sir..... I'm not getting a signal from the ship."

-o0o-

The small escape pod rocked as the powerful tractor beam pulled it towards the battlecrusier. The two guards had their guns drawn but looked panicky. As the pod spun Marcus saw the burning wreck of the transport out of one of the view ports.


Suddenly the pod stopped moving and there was a metallic crash. Instead of darkness outside, there were now bright lights shining through the view ports. They were inside the cargo bay of the battlecruiser. The two guards exchanged worried glances. The comm panel lit up showing an incoming communication. One of the guards pressed the accept button.

"Let me make this quick. Open the door, let your prisoner out and close the door. The escape pod will be jettisoned back into space so you can be picked up by search and rescue. They’ll never even know there was a third person in the pod unless you tell them. Nobody needs to know. Of course, you can resist. I've killed about 50 or so of your corporation colleagues so far today in that transport. Another two won't make any difference to me."

The escape pod door was opened and Marcus was pushed out, with the door being closed behind him very quickly.

The Capsuleer told the truth about jettisoning them back into space, and technically he didn’t lie about the salvo of missiles he fired at the pod as soon as it cleared the ship, he just hadn’t mentioned it before.

-o0o-

Inspector Avi entered the Chief Inspectors office.

"So quite the fail over in low-sec" the Chief Inspector remarked.

"Yes sir. But now we know who he is. The perp's name is Marcus Kerjin. He was working on a factory on Jita 4-4 moon-side. After his third kill he was reported as committing suicide. A note was found. We now know he started taking Interbus shuttles to various stations to try and avoid detection whilst continuing the killing. It was in one of these where he met a capsuleer, who has been aiding him and ultimately rescued him from the prisoner transport resulting in the deaths of 47 crew members."

"So, what do we do?"

"The capsuleer is easy. As soon as we retrieve the flight recorder from the transport wreckage we'll know who he is. All we know is that it was a capsuleer Drake class battlecruiser. But we'll have his name soon enough. Then we can posts guards at his clone revival unit. We simply need another capsuleer, or capsuleers, to take him down and he'll re-clone straight into custody. This Marcus is a different matter. The only way we’re likely to get him is by destroying that Drake. We think there is around a 30% chance of him escaping the destruction of the ship if and when it finally goes down.

"So we're 100% sure we'll get the capsuleer alive and it's a 70/30 split on the main perp whether we take him dead or alive?"

"That's pretty much it sir. The bounty on the capsuleer is now at 50m ISK. Best we could get for aiding-and-abetting. Rewards for the capture of the perp have risen to 250m ISK following the last murders. We just need to feed the media reports on his location when we have it and wait for the eggers to do their thing. There is just one fly in the ointment."

"Ogushi!"

"Yes, my sources say the bounty for live capture of the perp and discreet delivery to the Director is now a billion ISK."

"You know the Navy cannot and will not match that. You have no idea how much trouble it was to get 250m. That's all we're going to get you know with this war on."

"Yes, well lets hope the capsuleer who captures him does the right thing."

As soon as Avi had said the words, he knew it was far from certain.

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