“Oh Gods, I think I’m going to be sick,” Detective Freela said as she clamped her antennae tightly against her head. Her superb sense of smell, usually a great asset in her line of work was overloaded with the stench of blood, viscera, and something else… An acrid chemical smell that seemed to cut through the mucus that was desperately trying to shield her sensitive chemoreceptors.

“Yeah, this is a mess,” Inspector Shawn Vance said as he surveyed the scene, two dozen lifeforms, mostly human, scattered about in an industrial warehouse. He calmly pulled out a multiscanner and started to survey the scene, careful to avoid scattered viscera and detached limbs.

“There are reports of rapid multiple explosions from people in the area,” Detective Freela said as she also started her scan.

“I wouldn’t doubt it,” the inspector said as he crouched and scanned a small metal cup. “Terran, 45 caliber ACP from the looks of it. There are plenty more of them too,” he said as he surveyed the room. “Short tactical shotgun casings as well… too many of both to be semi-auto.”

“Terran?” Detective Freela asked. “Here?”

“Why not? They are surprisingly easy to get. It’s just that most of us Federation types don’t use them.”

“Do you think it was humans, maybe Terrans?”

“Doubt it. Or at least it wasn’t just humans,” the inspector replied.

He pointed at a human that had been literally torn in half.

"I don’t know of any humans that can use what did that,” he said calmly.

“Urp… What… What did that?”

“Well...” the inspector said as he walked over to a masonry wall with a huge slash across it.

He took a stylus from his pocket and scraped the wall and it crumbled at his touch.

“We will need the lab geeks to confirm it but my money is on a modified ultrasonic jackhammer. One powerful enough to do this sort of damage would be big, heavy, and more importantly the vibrations would be far more than a human could handle. Definitely non-human.”

He looked at the carnage.

“Whoever did this could wield it like it was a glow-stick. Just look.”

“Ugh. I see your point,” Detective Freela said as she looked at the string of pulverized bodies.

The inspector surveyed the scene with a practiced eye. He had been a lawman for over one hundred and fifty years. He had seen similar scenes but most of them were from the Sol Wars, not on the capital streets. He suppressed a flashback until he realized that it was important.

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“Grenades,” he said.

“What?”

“They had grenades. Look,” he said as he pointed to the worst of the mess.

He carefully walked over and started scanning.

“Yep. Slivers of metal wire all over. It was hot too… plasma grenades with fragmentation.”

“Wha? Do those even exist? Where would they get something like that?”

“They didn’t get them, they made them,” The inspector replied. “It’s an old human trick that was quite popular with the Terrans. You get a high capacity powercell, usually one for a weapon, hack it, disable the safeties and regulator, and then a simple circuit can get the whole thing to instantly discharge causing a plasma explosion. Wrap it in wire and presto, one plasma-frag grenade,” he said continuing to scan. “You really need to know what you are doing though, one slip up and it goes off in your face. Even I wouldn’t risk it anymore. I’m too rusty.”

“So… Terrans did this?”

“As much as I would like to say yes my gut says no,” the inspector said.

He had plenty of reasons to hate the Terrans, plenty of them. The fact that he and so many other arcology dwellers had absolutely nothing to do with what happened didn’t matter to them. Hell, he would have arrested the assholes responsible himself… if there was any court left anywhere in which to give them a trial. It didn’t matter. They were hunted down and killed just because they were guilty of being able to pay the rent or even if they just had a job in one like he did. They were driven right into the clutches of the raiders like sheep to the slaughter. Gods he hated them but he had a job to do. He would hate them on his own time.

“Terrans haven’t made plasma balls in a very long time,” the inspector continued. “If they wanted a grenade they would just use a Terran grenade, not fuck around with a power cell. Plasma balls are more the providence of insurgents… insurgents… Terran weapons… Terran techniques… Fuck. I know who did this.”

“Who?”

“Z’uush.”

“No!”

“Yes. This has Z’uush written all over it, even the jackhammer. Terrans don’t use those. They use explosives. Sonic jackhammers are Federation mining tools.”

“But the Z’uush? They are so… nice.”

“Not all of them, not anymore,” the inspector replied. “They were fighting for quite awhile, plenty of time for the nice to wear off.”

The inspector continued his scan.

“The people who did this were experienced professional soldiers, not thugs.”

He walked over to the doors.

“They blew the doors open… using Terran detonation cord,” he said as he scanned the shattered frame. “Then they hit them with the grenades and swept in with Terran boarding shotguns and forty-five caliber submachine guns with the jackhammer taking care of anyone who got too close. These poor bastards probably didn’t even know what hit them.”

The inspector then went over to a knocked over table and pointed at some bags on the floor.

“They didn’t take the drugs…”

He then scanned the room again and pointed at another bag on the floor across the room.

“Or the cash. They were already paid. This was a hit. We are dealing with a mercenary squad. This is bad, really bad.”

“A Z’uush mercenary squad?” the detective said incredulously. “I just can’t get my head around it.”

“Better start bending that noggin. It makes perfect sense. After any war there are unemployed soldiers, the Z’uush would be no exception. A group of them join up and start selling their skills to the highest bidder. Hell, even I almost did it after the Sol Wars.”

“Really?”

“Yes, I was all fucked in the head and just couldn’t shift gears. I had been fighting for so long, not as a lawman but just as a killer at that point. Killing was all I knew for a very very long time. It took a whole lot to be able to crawl out of the abyss. My Martha was what saved me. If it hadn’t been for her, things could have been a lot different. These guys… I get it. Nowhere to go, unable to go back, and someone is willing to pay good credits for them to keep on doing what they do best. Now we have a team of professional killers scuttling around the capital and we only have ourselves to blame. We are going to be dealing with these guys and others like them for a very long time.”

“I still just can’t believe it. The Z’uush were just so… nice.”