In the interstellar justice system, the people are represented by two sides: The Green Lanterns who have the will to serve and the Blue Lanterns who hope to protect society from those who would do it harm. But fear is the criminal's weapon. The point of terrorism is to invoke terror. And when Green and Blue Lantern arrived at the home in Sector 2815, terror and fear were waiting for them the moment that they walked through that door.| P L A N E T • G R A X O S • I V |The young monk sank to his knees as the
stench overwhelmed him. He felt the color drain away from his face as his eyes grew larger and larger and the sight in front of him. His mind struggled with what must have been
madness as he fought to comprehend what he saw. He wanted to look away, but he found that he couldn't. His breath choked in his lungs, as his throat seized up on him, so that each attempt to take a breath only sent him that much closer to hyperventilating.
"
Breathe, poozer! Breathe!"
"Heart rate is elevated. Blood pressure beginning to fall. I believe that Green Lantern is about to..."
"Just breathe through it, kid!"
Kai-ro lurched forward, a blue container forming in front of his face as the boy pitched forward and violently expelled the contents of his stomach. Coughing, sputtering, heaving, the young Green Lantern doubled over onto the floor until there was nothing left for him to throw up. That was when he saw it. A humanoid eye, staring up at him from where it lay partially crushed down into the carpet fibers.
"Fracking frell," Ch'p muttered, absently elevating the container away to dispose of it as the H'lven surveyed the massacre in front of them. They had been a family of four. Mom, dad, two kids - an older daughter and a younger son. They had two pets. And they had all died together.
Well, not together. At least, not all at once. And not at the same time. "Fracking frell," the Blue Lantern muttered again.
"I do not understand why it was necessary to kill the pets," Aya commented dryly. "They were incapable of functioning at witnesses to this event."
"They probably died first," Ch'p uttered gruffly. "Consortium business rules. A show of intent. Or of their sincerity. Just some sick frack who thinks that'll get them talking," the H'lven looked at the bodies - or pieces of bodies - in the room, taking in the arrangement of the gore and the splatter patterns. Someone had painted on the walls with the kid's severed fingers like they were crayons, spelling out a message that said:
We want the money."It wasn't a robbery," the Blue Lantern remarked aloud.
"To what do you attribute this hypothesis?" Aya inquired curiously.
"Look around," the Blue Lantern commented, pointing at family heirlooms and glass cases that were still relatively intact. "They want money, but I get the impression nothing was stolen." Holding up his ring, the H'lven said, "Ring, DNA and forensic sweep."
Swallowing against the continued efforts at heaving up, Kai-ro rose on shaking legs as he took a cue from the H'lven. "Ring, DNA and forensic sweep, please," the boy commented, his hand trembling as he put his ring hand out.
And nothing happened.
Ch'p merely grunted, the sound making the young Green Lantern jump despite himself. Poozer was all kind of freaked out. And who could blame him? "Take a break," the Blue Lantern commented dryly, moving on with his investigation. "Aya, start calculating time of death and then get me what you can on all four of our victims."
Elongating one finger into a slender, cylindrical probe, the robot AI carefully examined an open laceration on the chest of the man, the central figure in the house of horrors. "Time of death, one point four solar rotations ago," Aya reported stoically. "I believe that the man was the last to die, and did so while the attackers were still attempting interrogation."
"Give me the play-by-play," Ch'p remarked gruffly, stooping down by the daughter as he swept over the body with the ring.
"The blood spatter on the mother's legs belongs to the son, however, she does not appear to have moved either voluntarily or involuntarily after the blood splashed her," the robot commented in a matter-of-fact tone. "In contrast, the daughter and father also have blood splatter from the son's head being crushed which indicates that they were still alive at the time. However, the daughter has blood from the father on her which indicates that she was still at the time."
The H'lven looked up at the corpse of the Graxion father. "He doesn't look like much to me," the Blue Lantern noted gruffly. "Banker. Accountant maybe..."
"Computer software programmer," Aya supplied in answer. "He was the president of a small software firm that supplied a translator matrix for several languages native to this sector."
"Huh," Ch'p uttered. Merely that, as though what the robot had said had not at all factored into whatever it was the Blue Lantern was considering about the situation. "Not the type to get mixed up with Consortium business. Let alone hold out like this. Why didn't he just give them what they wanted?" Or, maybe he had. And the Consortium did this to convey a message.
"One cannot supply information one does not possess."
The H'lven and the robot both turned their heads to look over at the young Green Lantern. Still pale, the young boy merely said, "Perhaps... he didn't know."
Ch'p nodded faintly. "Sounds about right," the Blue Lantern noted, standing and moving away from the teenage girl. "Whatever did this was large. The physical violations were enough to have killed the mother and daughter. Pulverized their internal organs. They were bleeding out inside even before the tards cut their throats."
"Likewise, the boy's head appears to have been crushed by hand," Aya noted.
"And no DNA on the bodies," Ch'p added dourly. "Whoever did this was clean."
"Actually, I think I have something," Kai-ro noted, holding up a dark strand of hair. As the robot and the H'lven looked over at him, the boy explained, "I didn't think much of it at first. I saw it while I was throwing up. But, neither of the girls have dark hair."
"Huh," Ch'p uttered simply, as a blue light encased the hair follicle and began running an analysis. "What makes you think it's a woman's hair?"
"I don't know," Kai-ro answered sheepishly, giving a slightly shrug as he added, "It's... longish and... just seems like a girls."
"Hardly a scientific basis," Aya supplied in disappointment.
"Well, I'll tell you what it is," Ch'p remarked, looking up at the two. "It's not Graxion. It's Tamaranean."
Aya and Kai-ro exchanged a brief look, before the young Green Lantern asked, "What's a Tamaranean doing out here?"
"That's just one of many questions, my young poozer," the Blue Lantern quipped dryly.
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