The day before, Trent brought the cruiser closer to the transfer ship. They slept in their respective cabins and ate in the galley. They could not bring themselves to spend any more time than necessary in the transfer ship.
They secured the crime scene and Genghis Khan exited the ship and headed for the cruiser. Jeff Trent stood in the middle of the second deck of IPPT 964. He overlooked the common room, surveyed the room from one end to the other. He could imagine the echoing sound of gun fire ripping through the ship. The sounds of screaming, wounded men. The fear one feels when they’re about to die. And now, it was eerily quiet. Except for the normal tapping and popping sounds a ship makes when it’s completely shut down. He gave the room one last look then turned and headed for the stairway.
Trent stepped out of the back of the Divco. He shut both doors and walked over to the cruiser. Genghis was emerging from below decks and hopped over the console between the bucket seats and took his place in the passenger side. Trent slid behind the steering wheel, closed the door and started the engine of the replicated 1959 Ford Thunderbird.
“I got a communique back from headquarters. I put a copy on your desk in your cabin,” Genghis said.
“I’ll read it later, what did it say?”
“Well, to paraphrase,” Genghis stated, while flipping through pages that were grasped between his canine digits, “they're pleased with our investigation up to this point and they’ve looked into Mallton’s background. He's been with the Force for twenty years. Not a stellar member, he was written up a couple of times for protocol breaches. He was a field agent for five years until he roughed up a suspect in a high stakes bank robbery. Turned out, the suspect was an informant working for us who had infiltrated the group two years earlier. After beating up a high profile informant, his fate was kind of sealed. Shortly after that he was demoted to a correctional officer and had been a prison guard for the past fifteen years.”
“From a field agent to corrections? That had to hurt. One usually starts a career in corrections.”
“No doubt.” Genghis continued, turned over a couple of pages. “One wife, Marnet, married for ten years with one daughter, Kaylee. It seems that they were having money problems for the past couple of years. Which would explain why he got involved with Moffit.” Genghis looked up to Trent. “Obviously, he wasn’t thinking straight.”
He read on. “Oh, yeah, the so-called safe place Mallton moved his family to? It was a second house that was in his wife’s name. It was given to her when her parents died. Now, here’s where it gets really depressing. We found the house in about an hour, which means, it probably took Moffit’s fans about two hours to find it. The house was empty when we got there, and it appeared empty for quite some time. There were signs of a struggle. A little girl's shoe was found by the back door.” The Doberman looked up to Trent, his voice cracking, “Jeff, she’s only eight.” He looked back at his papers, shuffled through them, cleared his throat and said, “They’re out now trying to find them. As of yet,” he threw the papers into the duffle bag that was on the back seat, “no luck.”
“My God,” Trent said, looking into the clear blue Earth sky. “Prodor Moffit is a million miles away and still inflicting pain on people.” He put the vehicle in gear and slowly pulled away and onto the roadway, leaving a cloud of dust in their wake.
“Oh, and on a side note,” Genghis added as they drove on, “they’re sorry and can’t explain why I was replicated into the form of a human canine. They think it might be a computer programming problem. They're running diagnostic tests now to determine what exactly happened.”
Trent looked at his partner and started to smirk. “They think it could be a computer programming problem?” He glanced at Genghis from nose to tail. The smirk started to turn to a chuckle.
“Yeah, that’s what they said.”
Trent started to laugh, as he hadn’t in such a long time. He wasn’t sure if it was the stress of the mission or not. But he thought it was pretty funny.
“What’s so damn funny?” Genghis asked.
Trent looked at his partner – the partner he’d been with for so many years, his friend – and started laughing even harder. “They're running diagnostics . . . to find out why you’re a dog?”
The laughter was contagious. “Yeah, well they better. I could get fleas, you know.” Genghis started to laugh as well. This got Trent laughing so hard the Thunderbird started to weave back and forth.
Trent looked at Genghis then did an overly dramatic double take. “Hey, what the hell! You’re a talking human canine!” They both broke out in hysterics.
“Yeah! I know. Go figure!”
“Hey! There’s a tree. Do you need to use it?”
Genghis laughed, then paused and looked at Trent, “What do you mean use it?” That got Trent going even harder than before. He could feel muscles in his new face beginning to ache. Genghis continued as well.
This went on for a few more minutes.
The top of the Thunderbird was down, the sun was high and the cool air rushed in as they proceeded down the road. Genghis took a paw to his eye and wiped away a tear and sighed loudly. He asked for his holographic computer to be displayed and started to access several different screens. After a few moments, “Scuttling charges are armed and ready.” He
