Captain Elim and his Ultra-Max Security guards halted in the middle of Shoah Ultramax loading bay where they watched a group of elite soldiers wheeling out two large dull grey metallic cryogenic units from the aero docking port of Battle Fortress 154.
"What's with the two ice boxes? Better be ice cream day…," Captain Elim commented loudly, irate at the fact the Commander sent him to receive prisoners right after a scuffle in Section 8Q of the space station.
The Commander failed to inform him about the prisoners coming in cryogenic units, 'ice boxes' in prison slang. Cryogenic units froze some of the most violent species solid to reduce problems during transportation.
His guards started snickering as a grouchy, middle-aged clerk trudged toward him with a smirk. "Sure, laugh. We'll see who gets the last one."
"Really? Let me guess, violent species today?"
The soldiers left the sarcophagus looking cryogenic units in front of him but stood at attention at the first nearest to him.
"News flash. Not violent."
"Huh?" Captain Elim uttered in confusion and stepped forward to peer at the face in the unit placed nearest to him through the small window.
Long black hair, fair skin, sharp facial features resembled either that of a teenage humanoid male or female.
Much to his relief, the delicate appearance wasn't that of the usual mass murdering Thorian high on stimulants, or a tattooed Satesian. Those came out of the ice boxes, raging and raving stark mad.
He looked at his backup troupe of twenty heavily armed guards gossiping among themselves about the cryogenic units.
"That pretty face will not last long here," Captain Elim said. "Full Ultramax isolation unit? But we are full house."
Fights often broke out over pretty faces when inmates struggled to keep or grab their 'bitches'. The stronger inmates had violently brutalised some prisoners in unimaginable ways that the Commander converted the Ultramax isolation units from punishment rooms to protective custody rooms.
Bad enough that the Great Swirl Council recently incarcerated Perkuna Zhiva and some of his space pirates in the general population of Shoah Ultramax after the whole upheaval in Eden.
Now this bull shit.
The Great Swirl Council used the Ultramax as a convenient dumping ground for the worst of the worst, or political prisoners. The top hierarchy only transferred some prisoners to other space prisons when the overcrowding caused mass staff resignation.
"Black hair one is Kamuy," the accompanying transfer clerk said with an ominous tone while clutching a tablet in one wizened hand and pointing to the large biohazard sign.
"What the fuck is a Kamuy? Some new species?" Captain Elim blurted his question out but soon realised the name sounded familiar.
"Did you play truant in your galactic history lessons during middle school?" The clerk eyed him with a slight expression of contempt which resembled those of his former teachers.
Captain Elim couldn't place the name, no matter how hard he tried.
His finger pointed at the sleep-like face of the Kamuy. "Looks more like a young whatever it is. What are the charges?"
"Charges of a false identity. But—"
"Wait, that's a minor crime. Why is the prisoner even here?" The Captain cut the clerk's sentence off.
Something didn't feel right after the two major political incidents in Eden.
The sighing clerk's bony fingers ran over the tablet to draw up the information and offered Captain Elim the tablet.
"Read it yourself."
"You read it."
"Not paid enough to recite everything. In short, they took samples from this Kamuy. Matches a certain General… if it's the same one, then the criminal list will be much longer," the clerk said.
"What do you mean, the criminal list is longer?"
The clerk shoved the tablet against the Captain's chest. "Read it yourself."
The Captain took the tablet unwillingly and pored over the list, muttering under his breath, "suspected involvement in the killing of a Council general…"
He looked up with his eyebrow raised, then turned to the clerk and mumbled under his breath, "one less corrupted bastard on our backs. I would set this one free for services rendered."
The clerk coughed politely and replied, "read on… it gets even more interesting."
"… destruction of ten Council battleships and destruction of escape pods in War 567… is this a joke?"
He glanced at the face again, convinced it must be a clone. No way would any of the known humanoid species would live longer than 600 galactic cycles and still look frighteningly young.
If this prisoner was those weird amphibious looking species from the Tamtun's territory, then maybe.
"To be honest, I thought so too, but orders came from HQ," the clerk replied while shaking his head. "And I triple verified with them."
The Captain mused over the details while recounting what he remembered from school about War 567 between the then new Great Swirl Council and the Kamuy.
War 567 happened prior to the birth of his great-great-great-grandparents.
Oh yes, the Kamuy species was supposedly extinct from a similar situation that happened to the Inti system.
No wonder he found the species name familiar sounding.
How the heck did this one survive the destruction? Unlike the Inti, the Kamuy hardly ventured out of their system.
"567? Have they made a mistake?"
"Heh. 567 is only the major one. There are a couple more pages to go."
He looked down on the pages and grimaced - over 100 pages worth of suspected crimes going all the way back longer than his family's history.
"The top must've eaten crazy drugs or smoked the wrong shit out of their privileged asses."
The clerk shook his head again and replied, "No. The criminologists have compared biometric records kept in old archives. Matched an infamous operative code of that time named Space Punk. The real name is Tuku Genja. Rank first fleet General back then."
"A clone would do that. Hmm… name unknown. Last assumed identity: Temari of Deridia."
The Kamuy didn't give out any aura like a general. More like a smart scoundrel.
"We know hardly anything about the Kamuy or if they knew how to clone," the clerk pointed out.
Throughout his long career of 30 galactic cycles, the clerk never seen a live Kamuy prisoner until today. Both of them knew the Kamuy met with an extinction level cosmic event similar to the Inti.
"But hey I agree this one may be the descendant of that said general or a clone," the clerk replied.
No one knows where the Kamuy came from or how their society functions. The Kamuy, rumored to be reclusive and territorial, kept to themselves in the red dwarf planetary system known to the Council as the Kamuy system.
The Council historians theorised the Kamuy is one of the first spacefaring species with an unrivalled level of technological advancements.
"Says here, the medical scientists and cyberneticists can't identify all the cybernetic circuitries," the clerk snatched the tablet from the Captain's hands and tapped on the section displayed on his tablet. "Cochlear implants, optical implants, some sort of neural cybernetic relay system running along their organic bones, across the body and limbs."
"Dissect the Kamuy then. Why are the lab rats so scared? Give them a scalpel and off they go happily cutting up a dead body," the Captain sneered while his fingers tugged at the hanging large tab warning of a highly inflammable object.
An elite soldier guarding the cryogenic unit stepped forward, tapped the captain's hand with the rifle. Captain Elim instantly withdrew his hand from the tab.
The clerk cringed at the Captain's careless words and shook his head vigorously. "Just note that there are standing orders from the top not to perform any invasive procedures, whether live or dead. Signed by the Pro-councillor."
The Captain stared while the clerk tapped on the tablet to display the Pro-councillor's encryption code appeared as a floating hologram slightly above the screen for verification.
"The last time, a very very very long time ago, some tried to dissect the dead Kamuy, and the results were dire. That's why the Pro-councillor instructed the Commander and you to look at the aftermath."
"Heh…," The Captain turned pale at the first video.
All it took was three scalpels to slice a body to cause an exploding laboratory. The footage switched to images from nearby surveillance camera footage of the twisted rubble of a skyscraper.
He looked at the clerk in disbelief. "Those things brought down an entire skyscraper?"
"Yeah. Heh, not those things. One Kamuy corpse. If you read the report, not even a tooth left to identify the dead scientists. There are more videos…"
"No need, I've seen enough."
The Captain blinked at the sleeping Kamuy in the cryogenic unit.
Bad enough that the space station housed the scum of the universe. Now they gave him a self destruct gun to shoot his foot with. At least, this one is alive.
The clerk pointed to a section. "Here's the note to the doctors not to perform invasive investigations under any circumstances."
"Alright, I get the picture. So when we are supposed to keep this one frozen until when?"
"Defrost first and put in the general population."
"You are kidding. Gen pop… are they nuts?"
"They don't know if it can tolerate low temperatures for long. If you want your space station safe, better to have the Kamuy walking about. SAFELY TOO. Besides, no misbehaviour noted with this on in the brig."
"Walking about? This Kamuy should be in an isolation unit. And we don't even have enough standing room there!"
"No, they want to observe in gen pop. Just keep him safe."
"They gave us a fucking ancient zoo exhibit to protect? We are in a fucking prison!"
"No offence, Captain, but this Ultramax is A ZOO of a prison."
Pointless to argue with a fellow underpaid colleague.
"You're expecting miracles… you know that type of face is nothing but trouble here," Captain Elim grumbled.
"They will remove the Kamuy once they find a suitable relocation."
The clerk words gave him no reassurance.
"How's that supposed to calm me down… You GAVE us a ticking time BOMB!"
"Uh no. The top, not me, gave you the time bomb. Don't shoot the courier. And I will need you to sign the transfer and the acknowledgment of risk."
The Captain tilted his head over to the other cryogenic unit. "Don't tell me it's a take-one-get-one-free deal."
"Unknown species with Iktomin cybernetic implants. Easy to disable. Just use your EMP phaser. Goes by the name 'Trey'. False identity too, but with assault charges of soldiers and obstruction of justice."
"Those are also petty crimes… we house real scum here. Not petty idiots who got caught."
"No. This one is also of interest in a few murder cases. Suspect only, but not confirmed," the clerk replied.