by Kal Spriggs
* * *
Simon paused outside the hatch to the supply closet which Bastien had claimed as his quarters. He frowned though, to see the hatch open. “Bastien Jascinthe?” He asked.
“Come out here you prick, we have some questions for you,” Mandy shouted.
Simon sighed, “Less confrontational please.” He glanced in the hatch. The old man sat with his back to the hatch at a makeshift table, made up of several empty boxes with a metal plate over the top. Papers, many covered in scribbles, lay scattered across the desktop. “Look, Bastien, we just have a couple questions for you.” Simon’s frown grew at the lack of response. The old man sat in a relaxed fashion, one arm propped on the back of his chair, the other lay atop a stack of papers. Perhaps he’s fallen asleep, Simon thought.
He walked up and put his hand on the other man’s shoulder, “Bastien?”
The old man’s head lolled back, his eyes wide and an expression of shock frozen on his face. A broad slash crossed his throat, and his front was covered in blood. Simon jumped back with a curse.
“Huh,” Mandy said, “I guess someone else didn’t like him.”
“Or someone else thought he should watch what he said,” Elena said. She stepped into the compartment, and then came around the corpse’s other side. She looked down at the desk, “This is odd.”
Simon shook his head, “This is more than odd, this is damned weird.” He looked over at Mandy and Miranda, “Find a console, let Mike know what happened… and I guess we better call Run down here as well.” He looked back down at the desk and the scattered papers. One paper caught his eyes though. At the top and bottom were a set of symbols of some kind, sketched by hand. At the center was a sketch of a flattened rectangular box, with more symbols drawn on the surface. He picked it up, “Well, I think this settles whether or not Ariadne imagined it.”
Elena looked at some of the other papers, “This one here looks like a map and this one has coordinates. There’s a lot of other notes here, though some of it looks incomplete.”
Simon looked at the scattered papers, some spattered with droplets of blood. “A lot of it looks like gibberish to me, but I don’t know anything about this stuff.” He sighed. “This case just keeps getting worse.”
“Worse… or more complicated?” Elena asked. “If this were part of a conspiracy… perhaps they are tying off loose ends, nyet?”
Miranda came back before Simon could think up a response. She spoke from the corridor, her voice subdued. “Mike says he’s on his way, with Rastar and Anubus. Once they get here, he wants all the passengers moved from the cargo bay to the lounge, for now.”
Simon nodded. Still, it seemed like too little, too late. The look on Elena’s face suggested she saw it as further proof that someone had orchestrated the murder, most likely with the help of the Captain. And a good part of me is starting to agree with her, Simon thought grimly.
* * *
With nothing much else to do, Simon stared at the fish tank and thought. The cool blue water seemed to settle him in a way that he couldn’t describe. The search for the Arcavian Fighting Eel kept his eyes occupied while his brain wandered. Unlike the others, he’d noticed Mike’s uncertainty when near the tank and he wondered, absently, where the other man’s fear of water came from. That thought, in turn, led to the question of what secrets the others hid.
Not for the first time, Simon wondered if some other members of their crew might have the same purple insides as the Chxor Admiral. He shivered a bit at the thought, some strange alien creature that wore the outside of a person like anyone might wear clothes. He self-consciously adjusted the fit of his suit. He knew that most of the crew had avoided talking about it, partly out of fear, partly because it just seemed too bizarre. Our murderer could be one of them… which means we might never even guess at the motive, he thought.
“We’re going about this all wrong,” Michael Santangel said, his voice low.
“Oh?” Simon asked.
“The Captain has questioned people and he plans to look for this tiny object hidden aboard the ship… yes?” Michael said. “So, even if we find the object, we have no way to link it to the murderer. Perhaps, one of our searchers might well be the murderer so he’ll ‘miss’ it. We need to look at who could use this item, whatever it is.”
“Valuable,” Simon grunted. “We can guess at that. Also…” He paused in thought, “You know, you’re right. When I first started out with the CSB, I was partnered to a customs investigation involving the smuggling of xenoartifacts. When we finally wrapped up the case, it wasn’t common scum, it was major corporations that were involved and the people we took down were just the middle men. Your average criminal doesn’t really have access to the money or equipment to make this stuff work.”
“Resources like that require money and power,” Michael nodded. “So we’re looking for someone with connections to money and power… and someone who can have not just one, but two men killed.”
Simon felt his heart sink… because when phrased like that, the suspect pool dropped drastically. As in, only one person worth consideration. “The Nova Roma Ambassador?”
“She has two Marines to do her work for her, she has ties to their government, and her nation has a history of seizing alien tech that they feel might help them, even if it means invasion of other nations,” Michael snarled. “Or for that matter, invading allied nations to meet their political and strategic goals.”
“Are you talking about Saragossa or this case,” Simon said, cautiously. While the other man had made a valid point, and one that might help them to solve the investigation, he wondered if Santangel was… compromised when it came to the Nova Romans.
“Does it matter?” Santangel asked, and his accent grew more pronounced as he grew angry. “You see them as two separate incidents, I see both as an extension of their foreign policy and their expansionist and imperialist methods.”
Simon raised one hand, “Hold on… now let us take a pause here, we don’t know that she was behind it.”
“Yet,” Michael snarled.
“Before we start flinging accusations about, how would we go about proving it?” Simon said. He hoped to push the other man away from his anger by forcing him to think.
Michael took a breath. He frowned, but it was a look of concentration rather than anger. “That’s the hard part, I’m not sure we could. The three of them can alibi one another… and for that matter, all anyone sees most of the time is that one guard is outside her quarters. We can’t know if she’s in there without access.”
“There’s a way to check, though,” Simon’s eyes narrowed.
“Oh?”
“Look, if she or one of her Marines killed Crowe, they had time to get cleaned up… but they couldn’t have done that in one of the crew quarters restrooms, right?”
“You are correct, my friend,” Michael Santangel nodded. “They would have risked discovery, and not being crew, they could not lock the quarters, correct?”
“Right. But they couldn’t do it in the lounge bathroom, either,” Simon said. “Because there’s too many people coming in and out.”
“…again, you are correct.”
“But, and you don’t know this because you weren’t provisionally part of the crew yet, the Ambassador requested the passenger quarters for herself… and she put up enough stink that Mike agreed. The passenger quarters has its own bathroom.”
“I think they are called heads, aboard ship, my friend” Michael said with a frown.
“Whatever… anyway, if she has her own, then they might have cleaned themselves up… but how likely, do you think, is it that they cleaned up that area?”
Michael Santangel snorted, “Her, not likely. The Marines are a tidy people, but they might not have had time to do so.”
“Especially if they needed to arrange for a fake Wrethe sighting on the bridge to throw us off the trail,” Simon said. Honestly, he still didn’t understand why anyone had gone through that effort. While it h
ad some ingenuity in that they looked for Ghost, it hadn’t kept the crew fooled for very long. Simon was hoping that Mike’s search for where the murderer had hidden the Wrethe vac-suit would bear fruit.
“So… we search their bathroom for blood?”
“And question the Ambassador as to her whereabouts during Crowe’s murder,” Simon nodded. “I’ll get Ariadne down there for that.”
“You trust this woman?” Michael asked.
Simon nodded, “She’s the one person I think we can trust.”
* * *
Both Marines stood outside the passenger quarters hatch. Simon took a moment to study them as he, Ariadne, and Michael Santangel walked up. They both wore their uniforms, stained, torn and bloodied as they were. Neither man had exchanged them for the salvaged clothing. That spoke of dedication and loyalty.
Would that loyalty lead them to murder? Simon wondered. For the Centauri military, he would have given that a qualified yes, dependent upon the bribery or threats involved. He had no real first-hand knowledge of the Nova Romans, nothing beyond reputation.
“We need to speak to the Ambassador,” Simon said as he and the others stopped in front of the two Marines.
They glanced at one another. The older one, Sergeant Carmine Santander, finally spoke, “That’s… not possible right now.” He was stocky, with salt and pepper hair and a lined face.
“Why not?” Ariadne asked.
“She’s… occupied,” the first man said. Both had looks of total discomfort on their faces.
Simon saw a look of anger flash over Ariadne’s face. Clearly she’d had enough of the Ambassador’s behavior. “Well, be better get unoccupied. Go and get her, now.”
The younger man flushed, “We can’t.”
Simon stepped forward, “Listen, we are investigating the murder of a member of our crew. If you don’t get her, she’ll be guilty of obstruction in a murder investigation. Do you know what that means?”
“We do,” Sergeant Santander said, his voice tight. “And I can confirm that the Ambassador and ourselves have nothing to do with the murder of Crowe.”
“Excuse me if I don’t take a Nova Roman at his word,” Michael Santangel snapped.
“And excuse me if I don’t act surprised that an aristocratic prick from Saragossa has accused us based on his own bitterness and anger,” Sergeant Santander said, his voice cold.
“You think that you will get away with this, as you did your other crimes, I know that her father was the Admiral who led the attack on Saragossa!” Michael’s voice had raised to a shout. Simon opened his mouth to try to interrupt, but before he could, the door snapped open.
Simon’s jaw dropped as Eric Striker stood in the doorway. The man wore only a towel. “Hey, guys, what’s all the noise about?” His tall, lean body was covered in a sheen of sweat and an aroma of musk filled the hallway almost immediately.
Ariadne spoke, “Eric? What are you doing here? We came to question the Ambassador…” Her voice trailed off as she finally made the connection between his lack of clothing and the location. Simon saw a flush climb up her face as she realized exactly what had kept the Ambassador so occupied. When she finally spoke, her voice was a mix of embarrassment and surprise, “Seriously?!? You’re screwing the Nova Roman Ambassador?”
Eric gave a cocky grin, “Well… a gentleman doesn’t kiss and tell, right?” He winked and held up his hand for a high-five from Simon… who just stared at him awkwardly. Unfortunately, the towel started to slip from his waist, but fortunately Eric managed to catch it.
Simon tried not to think through the implications. He switched his gaze from Eric to what he could see of the passenger quarters. The front room was a small dining room, as he remembered. Both couches had folded blankets on them, evidently the Marines slept there. The door to the bedroom was wide open, as well and Simon averted his eyes as he saw a flash of feminine flesh in motion there.
He glanced over at Michael, who had flushed a deeper shade of crimson than Ariadne. He looked as if he couldn’t breathe and Simon hoped the man wouldn’t suffer an aneurism. “Look,” Simon finally said, “We think the Nova Roman Ambassador and her Marine escort were involved in the murder of Crowe. We need to search her quarters and Ariadne has some questions for her.”
Erik snorted. “That’s pointless and trust me, I know what I’m talking about. Sergeant Santander and Private Mui almost never leave her side and besides, I know exactly where she was when Crowe bit it,” he winked again at Simon, “If you know what I mean.”
Simon put a hand over his eyes. He suddenly had a headache. “You realize that it implicates you if we find any sign that she was involved, right? For that matter, she might have engineered it so that you are her alibi.”
“But she wasn’t involved,” Erik said with a smile. “I bet you’re here to search the head for bloodstains and all that, right?” He didn’t wait for them to speak before he went on. “Well, that’s attached to the sleeping quarters, I’d have seen either of these folks come back through if they needed to clean up after that. Unless they stood out in the hallway dripping blood and drawing attention to themselves until I went up to the bridge.”
Simon gritted his teeth, but he didn’t have an answer.
“Erik, how could you sleep with that detestable woman?” Ariadne asked.
“Well, she’s good looking and she really has this thing about my scars…” Erik smirked. “And man is she good in the sack.” His voice held such smugness that Simon once again lowered his expectations of the man.
“You can leave now,” Ambassador Vibius said, her voice carried a level of disdain and arrogance that told Simon just what she thought of all of them.
Simon glanced over at Michael, who had a mixed look of chagrin and confusion. “Thank you for your time, Ambassador,” Simon said dryly.
Erik turned around, “Hey, I need to get my clothing-”
The hatch closed in his face.
The two Marines, Simon noted, had very stoic expressions, almost as if they’d seen worse. Simon was certain that he didn’t want to know.
“Aw, that’s great…” Erik growled. He glanced over at Ariadne, “Now you’ve gone and done it, way to ruin my good time.”
Simon closed his eyes and massaged his forehead. He wasn’t sure if they’d proved anything from the entire encounter… save one fact.
He knew for a fact that Erik was an idiot.
* * *
Simon stepped onto the bridge. Most of the lighting elsewhere aboard the ship was somewhat dimmed because of the late hour. Simon had agreed with Mike’s reasoning that they should do a day/night cycle to prevent a host of psychological and neurological issues that cropped up when people didn’t follow those patterns. Still, walking through the quiet, dim corridors had made the hair on the back of his neck rise, especially when he considered that there was a murderer on the loose.
One look at Pixel’s pale face was enough to tell Simon that he wouldn’t feel any better about those corridors… and that he probably wouldn’t get any sleep either.
“You’ve found something?”
“Yeah…” Pixel sighed. “Look, there’s a lot here, and Crowe didn’t index it very well. Really, it looks like he just created random links to some of it.” He took a deep breath, “But I found a very detailed roll up of information on us… all of us.”
Simon frowned, “So? Crowe was a bit of a snoop, why would this matter.”
Pixel frowned, “Look, there’s some stuff on there that I wish I didn’t know. There’s some stuff on there that I really wanted to erase, stuff that I hoped no one else knew about me. It’s biased, what he’s got on me, where it’s not outright false.” He met Simon’s gaze with a level one of his own, “I promise you I didn’t edit any of these files… I’m trusting you. But if you’re looking for reasons that someone may have killed Crowe… well you’ve found them.” He held out the data chip, “Frankly, I’m a little afraid for my own life after reading some of this.”
&n
bsp; Simon felt his heart sink. He already had a building distrust for some of the crew… what secrets had Pixel uncovered that he feared for his own life? For that matter, was this just an act? Had the engineer arranged the evidence to implicate someone else, and to make himself less of a threat? Still, Simon gave him a nod, “Thanks, Pixel. And while I can’t promise I’ll discount you as a suspect, I’ll try to stay impartial.” Simon held out his hand.
Pixel nodded, “Thanks.” He let the chip fall. It seemed abnormally heavy to Simon. How does such a small thing carry so much weight? Pixel met his gaze, “Mike asked me to read through the dead professor’s notes, to see if I can figure anything out. If you need me… well, I’ll be in the lounge working on that.”
Simon took a deep breath. Something told him that he didn’t want to read through what Pixel had uncovered. Part of him knew that once secrets were revealed, there would be no going back.
Simon walked over to his console and plugged the chip into the slot. He saw Pixel give him one last look before the engineer walked to the stairs. Something of the set of his shoulders told Simon that the other man truly dreaded what Simon might think… and that he would face it nonetheless.
* * *
Simon knew that Mike would assemble the others for a crew brief first thing in the morning. That was the forum he chose to address them… to make his accusations and to reveal the murderer. Simon would rather have done it with a full nights sleep and more time to prepare… but he didn’t know for sure who was involved and how far the conspiracy might extend. His information still didn’t quite match up… and with what he knew now, he knew that he had to act soon.
He cornered Mike just before the meeting. Simon gave the other man a smile, “Mike, before we start your brief, could I take a moment to brief the crew on what I’ve found?”
The short Asian cocked his head, “Sure, bro. Though I’d appreciate you brief me first. Then I could brief the crew. Sort of goes with being Captain, you know?”
Simon’s smile grew tight, “I appreciate that.” He’d expected that, and he’d already thought of an excuse, “But it is a lot of information to cover, and it would be easier to have me brief it all.”
