Fort Meadowland had its own separate dome, a slightly smaller cage of titanium frame and tri-layered panels that was connected to the colony via a road enclosed in the same protective structure. It was a testament to the technological prowess of the designers that the inhabitants of Fort Meadowland could still breath cool, fresh air, and even feel the breeze pushing its way through their fur and soothe the skin beneath.
Judy had expected to meet the infamous Commander Mansa Bogo in a big, utilitarian office on the highest floor of the largest building; not in the middle of a hallway in which the only other mammal was a boar cleaning the floor.
If he had the intention, he'd have probably been the most intimidating mammal Judy had ever met. Dressed in plain khaki and built like a titanium outhouse, if such a thing existed, the cape buffalo had one thick arm folded behind his back as he bent at the waist and reached out the other arm to greet her.
"Miss Hopps." He said pleasantly enough as he shook her paw with a hoof that was bigger than her head. "Or is it Doctor?"
"Just Hopps will do, sir." Judy said cheerfully and saluted. Embarrassment ensued as she realized that he'd probably respect her more if she behaved less like a genki girl. Her eyes strayed past his impressive set of curled horns to the skylight, a plain glass square right above their heads. Beyond the skylight she saw the octagonal frame of the dome. "I'd like to know how the dropship was able to get through the dome." She made sure to sound serious this time.
Bogo released her paw and straightened to his full height. When he wasn't talking, his mouth was pressed in a thin line. Judy had the sense that he wasn't happy to see her. She didn't know why. After all, it was he who had requested her. "There's a hatch built into the top of the dome. It's almost invisible when shut, but if you look closely enough you can see the motors that control it. It doesn't look it from this distance, but they're massive. About as big as the Avellanos's cannons."
"Incredible." Judy breathed. "When do I get to speak with Administrator Hornbull?"
"He's away from the office at the moment. As the closest thing to Head of Security, I will be briefing you in his place."
"Briefing?" Judy asked, now wondering what had been left out of the file that he had to tell her.
"The situation has changed, Hopps. If you don't mind, I'd like to save the expositing for my office." He gestured down the hallway.
Slightly taken aback by his bluntness, Judy nevertheless followed him out the hangar to a waiting vehicle. After a ten-minute drive on a road that cut through a short-grass field reminiscent of the plains she'd left behind in Bunnyburrow back on Earth, they reached the Headquarters building. As they made their way to Bogo's office, Judy took in her surroundings yet again. Where the hallways of the colonies she'd visited were generically hexagonal in shape, these rooms were square and rectangular. Where the colonies were colored bronze and silver like integrated circuits, Fort Meadowland was silver and blue like tempered steel. The refrigerated tone of the hallways was contradicted by the lightly clothed mammals which occupied them. Many of them were dressed in plain khaki shirts, showing off their arms. Judy noted that not all of the marines had big muscles, but none of them were smaller than a wolf. Some looked at Judy as she and Bogo passed by.
The colony and the marine base did have one thing in common. Every now and then they'd pass a circular hatch for the ductwork that ventilated air through the complex.
Judy had always considered the size of those ducts a security risk; even a fully-grown tiger could fit through them no problem. In fact, one of the cases she'd assisted with involved a hatch just like this. On a space station called Monica Port, a lion had attempted to break into a storage room used for spare ship parts. Not wanting to pay for a new compression cylinder, he'd tried to steal one by using a duct just like this one.
He'd almost reached the final junction before a hatch suddenly closed on his pelvis.
Security found him still alive but almost completely cleaved in two, connected only by the skin holding together the crumbled remains of the pelvis. Judy had seen the pictures and had visited the scene after the victim had been extricated. It was the first case that had required her to take counseling afterward. After being forced to pay millions to the victim, the Company designed mandatory hatch sensors to prevent such a costly tragedy from happening again.
Bogo's office was almost exactly how she imagined it. The ochre glow of a Nordic style ceiling fixture made the room seem much warmer than the ambient iciness of the rest of the building. Two massive maps adorned the walls facing each other, one depicting the layout of Zootopian Prospect and the other depicting a map of the entire planet. On Bogo's ebony veneer desk sat a closed file, a paperweight which resembled an aquarium, and two picture frames which faced away from her.
Bogo showed Judy to her seat and sat down in the equally black office chair on the opposite side of the desk. He crossed his arms on the desk and looked her in the eye.
"First off, I'd like to express how relieved I am that you and the Vidar crew survived that incident unharmed. You are damn lucky to be alive."
Judy knew that Rochewool and Cudson, who by now would have been escorted to their temporary quarters in Sahara Square, were thinking the same thing.
"Thank you, sir."
"And I assume that by now you will have read the files I sent you."
"Yes, sir."
"And you are confident that you are up to the task? There's been twelve cases of sabotage now. That could be a lot of evidence to work with."
Judy understood what he meant, and why he looked so unsure about her. "Sir, I think there's a misconception about what exactly my job is. Minerva, the AI who runs the crime lab, is the one who analyses the evidence. I just collect the evidence and conduct basic maintenance."
"I see. But you haven't answered my question."
"Yes, sir. I am more than up to the task."
"Good. Because something happened here after you set off for Rhamnusia." Bogo opened the file, spun it round and pushed it toward Judy. Judy first noticed the tungsten ring on his finger, almost perfectly camouflaged against his grey fur except for a smaller brown stripe. Then her attention was drawn to the photograph pinned to the inside of the file's cover.
Bogo proceeded to give an abridged version of the file's contents as his frown deepened, enhancing the creases on the corners of his mouth. "Seven days ago, engineer Marco Green was sent to repair a damaged power line on the outer border of the Rainforest Sector. When he didn't report back for two hours, two more engineers were sent to check on him. And found this."
Judy swallowed. Marco Green was a leopard who'd worked in Zootopian Prospect for three years. He'd been found several yards from the damaged power line with a gory pit in place of an eye.
"The CME has already concluded that he'd been killed a gunshot to the head. We've not found the bullet, but as you've made clear, collecting evidence is your specialty."
Judy nodded. "You want me to examine the scene of the murder first."
"I've had the scene under armed guard since the body was taken to the morgue. You have my word it hasn't been tampered with."
Judy let out a sudden groan and pressed her fingers to her temple. "Aw crackers. My equipment. My protection suit. It's still on the Vidar. I can't conduct my analysis without the suit or I'll contaminate the crime scene!"
Though visibly irritated, Bogo held up a hoof. "It's alright, Hopps. As much as this situation irks me, it not your fault. Once the UD-7 refuels, it will return to the Avellanos to pick up another group of marines. I'll have equipment brought on board with them."
Judy nodded, still feeling furious with herself.
Bogo seemed to have a sudden thought. He stroked his chin as he pondered this though and then smiled in satisfaction with himself. "Actually, about the suit and equipment, I may have a solution for that."
He tapped a few buttons on his intercom. "Ben, it's Mansa. You there?"
A cheerful voice responded. "Always, Chief! What do you need?"
"Is Hornbull available?"
"Sorry, he's still out with Dr. Ewetani."
Judy's ears pricked. What was a member of the Company's founding family doing here?
Bogo grumbled under his breath. "The CST I requested arrived earlier than expected. I could use some help making sure she doesn't get herself lost."
"Sure thing, Chief! I'll take care of it personally."
Bogo snorted with a smile. "Ben, I've told you before about calling me Chief."
"To not to. But ending my sentences with Commander sounds weird on my tongue." Bogo shook his head, his smile broadening. "Let me just check where she's staying… apartment 26, row C-5, D block. Burrows Sector."
"After that, call Dr. Carthusia in the Rainforest Lab. Hopps will need to borrow some PPE, a camera and a collection kit."
"I'll call him on the way. Tell Hopps I'll meet her at the monorail station near the south gate."
"I appreciate this, Ben. I'll show you just how much tonight."
Ben laughed. "Tell Hopps to look for the cheetah with the clipboard. See you tonight!"
Bogo took his finger off the intercom and looked at Judy. "That was Benjamin Clawhauser. He's the assistant administrator for the colony. I assume with those ears you've heard all that."
Judy nodded. "South gate?"
"It's straight across the road, you can't miss it. Someone will escort you from the base."
"Thank you, sir. I'll contact you when I get started."
"I'm not done, Hopps." Bogo leaned forward. Judy felt unable to breathe under his penetrating stare. "The Administrator and myself had some debate as to whether we should request your services. Hornbull especially thought that we could catch the saboteur by ourselves, and they'd turn out to be just some disgruntled employee lashing out against Corporate Animerica. But Marco Green changes everything."
He closed the file and returned it to his desk drawer.
"You can't leave the colony without an escort. You can't tell anyone why you're here. You can't do anything relevant to the investigation without telling Administrator Hornbull or myself. You can't go to any sector that isn't residential on your own. Am I clear, Hopps?"
Judy nodded wordlessly. "Hornbull will likely give you the same spiel when you meet him. There is a killer on Rhamnusia, and the last thing we need is him thinking he'll need to do it again."
The serpent raised its arm up in front of its eyeless face and flexed its fingers. Six lethal claws glinted like blades in the sparks that burst from exposed, damaged cables. The gash in its mesoskeleton, where the endoskeleton had broken in the crash and pierced its silicon-based skin, had almost completed closed. Blood still oozed out, dripping into a ragged sizzling hole in the floor of the spacecraft. The other wounds it had sustained, including the gaping hole in its chest where a piece of metal had impaled it, had long since repaired themselves.
Deep in hibernation, the serpent had sensed a change. It hadn't heard any signs of life, nor had it smelled them. Yet somehow it had understood that life was near. The impregnators had sensed it, too. The serpent had felt their agitation as it awoke, their instincts driving them to scrabble and lash their tails against their prisons in futility.
When it had awoken, the first thing it had done was return to the room where the impregnators were being kept. But the thick, acid-proof door which had thwarted it so long ago had still been sealed and impenetrable.
Then the ship made impact, gouging a hundred-foot-wide canyon through a tropical mountain range. The door had malfunctioned as cables and circuits were ripped apart. The tanks had broken free and shattered against the walls, floor and ceiling like test tubes. The impregnators now scuttled around the ruined ship, never straying too far from the only creature that could provide them with hosts. The bodies of the masked beings it had killed, preserved by the manufactured, sterile environment, lay smashed to pieces among the mangled metal.
The serpent extricated itself from the alcove in which it had slept and began to look for a way out.
Pushing aside cables as thick as vines, the serpent found its way to the bridge. The elder hunter lay in a crumbled heap near the control panel, the front half of its neck ripped out many decades ago when the serpent had snuck up from behind. Through the clear thick windows, it saw a forest of blue-green leaves and tree trunks as white as bone.
The serpent caught a unique scent. It peeled back its lips and lowered its jaw, allowing the piston-like inner jaw to emerge. The inner jaw opened and closed, turning left and right as it tasted the air. It soon understood that it was tasting the scent of the plants outside the ship. Escape was close now. So close. It retracted its inner jaw and followed the scent to a crack in one corner of the window. There was a chittering sound as the impregnators crawled out of a broken duct hatch and surrounded the serpent. The serpent hissed and planted both hands on the cracked glass. It lowered its jaw once more.
The inner jaw locked straight and rigid, and then shot out with incredible speed, striking the center of the crack with enough force to push the glass outward. It felt no pain, only furious fortitude as it retracted its deadly tongue to try again. The next strike created a tiny hole. The serpent used its head from there, striking the glass with the forehead of its long, shelled skull to widen the hole within seconds.
It crawled through the window and perched itself on the smoldering hot surface of the spacecraft. The impregnators followed, and one of them crawled up the serpent's leg and fixed itself to one of the dorsal tubes that adorned its back. It was an instinctive act attributed only to the queen impregnator, intended to ensure the safety of its precious cargo.
The serpent flared its tusks, taking in the sights, the sounds and the scents of this new world. The sweeps of its long tail quickened in its growing restlessness.
Hosts were plentiful here. It could also smell them through the countless smells emanating from the plants and dirt.
It just had to find them.