The 217th Performance on Our Voyage to Mars

CHAPTER 1 (6)

Jimmy Wuong was quite proud of his ponytail. Should anyone try to touch it or even make fun of it, the gangster would draw out his dagger and make them regret it.

Most unfortunately, that sacred black ponytail of his was being humiliatingly pulled around now like a marionette's strings.

The hairdo of the law enforcement officer that was confronting Wuong was a contrasting crisp blond bob. She was fairly attractive.

Giving the ponytail another menacing jerk, Special Agent Ophélie Ronzik pressed the muzzle of her raygun against the back of Wuong's head. They were at the end of a blind alley.

"Talk to me, Jimbo."

"I've got nothing to tell ya!" Wuong yelled.

Ronzik let out an impatient sigh. She released his ponytail and holstered her gun, but then kicked him hard in the back of his left knee. As Wuong bent over, Ronzik gave his other knee the same treatment. She then followed up with multiple potent punches and several even meaner kicks.

"I'm gonna sue you!" Wuong panted. "Man, you can't do this! You're a cop, damn it!"

"But I'm not," Ronzik corrected him with a smile. "I'm with the SCIB. We do things a bit differently. Now you're going to tell me what Stavo Delginko is up to. Why did your boss order you guys to abduct and kill Weeds?"

"We didn't kill them!" Wuong squeaked.

"Then who did?" Ronzik bellowed.

Twenty minutes later, in District 36, Ronzik glided her flying car into the parking garage of a dark blue fifty-story building, which housed a regional division of the Special Crime Investigations Bureau, a powerful law enforcement agency under the Earth government.

Ronzik took the elevator to the subbasement, which her team, Unit 5, occupied. Each of the four other units in this building had multiple aboveground stories to itself.

Ronzik strode toward the end of the main corridor, where the office of the head of the unit was. But then she spotted a familiar figure in a white coat.

"Hey, doc!" Ronzik waved at a lean tanned man who was in his mid-fifties and sporting beneath his lab coat a pair of ragged jeans and a T-shirt featuring splashes of vibrant colors.

"Ah, just the woman I'm looking for!" cried Dr. Lorenzo, brandishing a small object. "Come take a look at this!"

Dr. Lorenzo was one of the bureau's medical doctors, a specialist of biomechatronic treatment. He was also a close friend of Ronzik's. As she got close enough, Ronzik saw that the object on Lorenzo's palm was an eyeball.

"Another one?" Ronzik asked. "I thought you already installed a new eye for Smishkobian."

"That one didn't connect too well to his cranial nerves," Lorenzo explained. "He kept complaining about poor night vision and color blindness."

Abraham Smishkobian was a fellow special agent of Ronzik's, working in Unit 3. During a mission of capturing a group of terrorists last month, he'd gotten hit by shrapnel and lost sight in his right eye.

"It took me a whole day to make a new one, but this babe is gorgeous!" the doctor boasted as he tapped a proud finger on the artificial eyeball. "You know, I added a digital recording function to it. I can show you—"

"Gotta go talk to Pao!" Ronzik cut him off, already on the move again. "Hey, thanks for performing that autopsy!"

A moment later, Ronzik grabbed a chair in front of the desk of her boss.