Kren Orsgirt - The Murder of Kren Orsgirt

[Vedic Koleth]

When I got home from work, there was a note pinned to my door. Paper, which I found quaint. Not many trees left on Cardassia Prime. It read, "Renn Osgott, you're a dead man," in big, blocky letters. Lucky for me, I'm not Renn Osgott, nor do I know anyone by that name. I went inside and called the police. A detective came out right away. He listened to my story, nodding thoughtfully. He was a serious man. He read the note several times and scanned it with a tricorder.

"Are you sure you're not Renn Osgott?" he asked me.

"I already told you I'm not. My name is Kren Orsgirt."

"Well, that sounds a lot like Renn Osgott. Maybe they mixed you two up."

"How would they mix up where I live?" I asked.

He rose to leave. "Look, it's probably just an honest mistake. I wouldn't worry too much about it."

"But whoever this is wants to kill Renn Osgott."

"Well that's not my problem, is it?" He took his jacket down from the peg.

"But you're a cop, right? Aren't you supposed to protect people?"

"Look," he said, "this is Cardassia Prime. People die here every day. You did your job and reported this. Thanks for being a loyal citizen of the Union."

After he left, I took a drink of kanar. Then another. I used the terminal to search for Renn Osgott, but no one by that name lived on Cardassia. That night I had the nightmare about the spiders.

The next morning, a loud knocking on the door interrupted my breakfast.

"Cardassian Intelligence Bureau, open up!" The voice bellowed from outside.

I got up to open the door. Three armed Cardassians in imposing uniforms stood there.

"Renn Osgott, you're under arrest," the one in the middle said. He pushed me to the wall and started handcuffing me.

"For what?" I asked.

"For the murder of Kren Orsgirt."

"Wait, my name is Kren Orsgirt. This doesn't make any sense."

My hands cuffed, he pulled me off the wall and took a long look at my face.

"Well, you do look a lot like him. But we have Orsgirt's body in the morgue."

"I have papers to prove that I'm Kren Orsgirt. They're over there." I pointed my chin at the jacket on the table. One of the intelligence goons went over and fumbled through the pockets until he found the PADD.

"Says here he's Kren Orsgirt," he said, showing the documents to his superior.

"Forgeries. Look, if you aren't Renn Osgott then why do you have this note, written in Kren's handwriting." From the table he picked up the note that had been pinned to my door.

I went to say something, but one of the goons hit me across the head with something heavy, and everything went dark.

When I came to, I was in a dark room. Light slanted in from one window, high up on the wall. My hands were unbound. I felt my head. No lumps or bruises, no pain. Maybe they'd fixed me on the way over.

There was no furniture in the room, and the floor was concrete. I leaned agains the wall and considered my options when the door opened.

A guard came in. "Renn Osgott?"

"No," I said.

"You're not Renn Osgott?" he asked.

"No, I'm not."

"There's a visitor here for Renn Osgott. If that's not you then you can't see them. You're not Renn Osgott?"

"Sure, then, I guess."

The guard let me out and down the hall. There were no other cells and the walls were unadorned. We stopped at the end of the corridor, at a door identical to mine.

Inside was a small metal table, and seated at it was the intelligence officer who had arrested me.

"Sit, Renn," he said, indicating the chair opposite him. I sat down.

"I apologize for not introducing myself earlier," he said, "and for the rough treatment. I hope your head is ok?"

I rubbed my forehead again. It felt fine. Better, even. I felt fine and told him so. 

"Good," he said. "I wanted to talk to you about your case, Renn. It's peculiar. See, a detective from the Cardassian police force said he had visited you the day before Kren died. You called him saying Kren had left a note on your door."

"Someone left a note on my door," I said. "I didn't know it was Kren. I don't know who Kren is."

"You don't know who he is?" He leaned back in the chair and smiled an oily smile. "Odd, since we found a set of forged identification on you under Kren's name."

He showed me the documents. Whoever this Kren was, he looked an awful lot like me.

"He looks an awful lot like you," the inspector said.

They were identification documents under his name, but they were forgeries. And bad ones. If I were buying forgeries I would have got better ones. I had never seen them before.

"I have never seen these before," I said.

He looked at me like I was dumb. Maybe I was. I wasn't sure.

"Come with me Renn, I want to show you something." He walked out the door, leaving it open. I followed him.

The hallway was empty. No sign of the inspector. I walked back down the hallway, the way I came. There was a guard in front of the door. He opened it for me.

The inside of the room was dark except for one window up near the ceiling. The inspector from earlier stood in the middle of the room. A sheet lay on top of a body at his feet.

"Come in, Renn, glad you could join me."

I stepped inside. The door banged shut behind me. The inspector bent down and pulled the sheet off the body.

The Cardassian underneath looked a lot like me. I had seen him before, in the photos the inspector had shown me on the forged documents. His head had been bashed in with something heavy.

"Now you see why you're in here. You're dangerous, Renn. You need special protection."

"Yes," I said, "I am dangerous. Thank you for helping me understand that."

I sat down on the concrete. My head hurt. I reached up and felt dried blood, still moist, on my forehead.

 

 

 

[Nolen Hobart]

Love it, but now I'm thinking there's some kind of connection with Engineers from California writing about Cardassians.

A wild and entertaining ride, though!

Edited May 10, 2023 by Nolen Hobart