Investigation_Age Of Expansion_A Kurtherian Gambit Series

by Sarah Noffke

  Bailey swung around, her eyes narrowed. “What are you talking about?”

  “Only that you’re Ms. Perfect, with your records and schooling and…” Seeing the look on Bailey’s face, Lewis decided shutting his mouth was a good idea.

  “If you want to keep your teeth, I wouldn’t call me ‘Ms. Perfect’ again.”

  His hand shot to his mouth. “I would prefer to keep everything, including my dignity, so no hitting.”

  She shook her head and turned back around. “Watch yourself, Harlowe.”

  “Yoooou watch yourself,” Lewis said playfully, no real conviction in his voice.

  Vitos slapped him on the arm as he passed him. “My money is not on you.”

  Lewis laughed. “Thanks, buddy.”

  Deck 13, Gable Station, Cacama Station

  The space station wasn’t as clean and organized as Onyx; it actually looked like the place where Onyx’s rejects went. Aliens of various species cluttered the corridor. A couple of Trids were huddled in front of a currency exchange booth, their tones terse as they kept checking over their shoulders.

  Bailey had to resist the urge to question the aliens and check their identification. Her training was hard to ignore when there were so many criminals around. It was almost painful for her not to shake down every lowlife she passed.

  “Looks like a great place to pick up a date,” Pip said in her comm.

  “You mean it looks like a great place to pick up an STD,” she muttered.

  “Where’s your sense of adventure?” the AI asked.

  “I’m here to find those codes,” Bailey argued.

  “No reason we can’t have a little fun.”

  “What do you consider fun?” she dared to ask.

  “Maybe a little gambling, a drink in a dive bar, possibly a fight…” Pip related.

  Bailey nodded proudly. “We aren’t so different after all.”

  “You sort of stick out, though,” he observed.

  Bailey realized the moment they’d stepped into the busy corridor that he was right. She didn’t look like she belonged there, with her shiny, black suit and clean nails. Most passersby were gawking at her and Lewis as they trudged past. Surprisingly, Vitos didn’t draw any attention; there were quite a few Tuetians already on the station.

  “Oh, fiddlesticks, and Jack told us to lay low,” Bailey said, fake smiling at a gang of Kezzin who were leering at her.

  “Maybe try walking a little dejected, and lower your chin like you’ve got something to hide,” Pip suggested.

  “I’m not a freaking criminal,” she argued.

  “I know that! I’ve been over your file fourteen times and can’t find a single offense,” Pip said. “You never even stole a piece of candy from the store as a child.”

  “Why would I have? It’s wrong.”

  “You know, most people don’t like a goody-two-shoes,” the AI told her.

  “I’m about to turn off this comm link,” Bailey threatened.

  “If you’d let me finish, I was saying that most don’t, but that they’re all dumb. I adore someone with a moral compass as strong as yours.”

  She shook her head. “Okay, pipe down. I’ve got to play nice with some criminals.”

  “Start with an insult,” Pip advised. “You’ve got to prove you’re the bigger dog.”

  Bailey ignored him, looking for the right group of thugs to approach. She started forward, heading for an especially rough looking pack of Trids.

  “What are you doing?” Lewis cut off her path, sliding right in front of her.

  She looked up at him, a scowl on her face. “I’m doing what we came here for. Looking for information.”

  “Coffee first, investigation second,” he said, a dimple surfacing on his left cheek as he smiled.

  “But—”

  “Hey, I’m the detective,” he argued. “I’ll sniff out the location of those codes, just humor me a bit.”

  Bailey was going to protest, but decided it wasn’t worth it. They’d all been missing out on things since taking this case; if Lewis wanted a cup of coffee, she could indulge him this once.

  “Fine, but I want a martini. One made right.”

  His eyes widened. “Say what? Are you implying my martinis are lacking?”

  She shrugged. “Where do you get this cup of coffee?”

  He pointed down the long corridor, and addressed their companion. “Hey, Vitos, you were right; Precious Galaxy Coffee has the market cornered here.”

  On the far end of the passageway, Bailey could make out a black and pink neon sign emblazoned with the words, ‘Precious Galaxy Coffee’.

  “Good, and there’s a bar next door.” Bailey set off, pushing her way through the slimy scoundrels.

  Unlike on Onyx station, weapons weren’t banned here. That was a good thing for her, and a bad thing for all the creeps sneering at her.

  “Hey, honey,” one of the greasy Trids called out to her as they passed. “I bet that hair of yours smells good. Why don’t you let me sniff it?”

  “Why don’t you keep your fish breath to yourself!” she yelled.

  Lewis grabbed her arm and pulled her through the crowd, away from the catcaller. “Hey now. No one is going to want to talk to us if you piss everyone off.”

  She shrugged. “He had it coming.” She checked their surroundings, and pointed to a building. “Seriously, there’s a Precious Galaxy Coffee shop right here and over there?”

  He looked in the direction she was indicating, and saw she was right. It was like the chain had exploded little babies everywhere.

  “I’ve heard it’s for high-traffic hours,” Vitos explained. “That way customers don’t have to wait as long.”

  The smell of roasted coffee wafted out into the main area. It had a strangely alluring quality that Bailey appreciated. Suddenly she was taken back to her childhood. Sunday mornings, watching cartoons while her parents shared a pot of coffee, and breakfast baked in the oven. Maybe coffee isn’t so bad, if my parents enjoyed it so much.

  “Damn, that line is long,” Lewis stated, pointing to the line of aliens snaking out the door of the first shop.

  Bailey pointed to the other coffee shop. “That one looks shorter.”

  Lewis nodded, heading in that direction.

  “Meet me over here when you’re done, Harlowe.” She indicated the bar next to the first shop.

  “ ‘The Prickly Cactus’,” he read the green neon sign above the bar. “Sounds classy.”

  “I’m sure they put umbrellas in the drinks,” she joked. “I’m going to be working. Join me when you’re done.”

  “You’re going to get sauced,” he teased.

  “Hey, you’re the one who has a no-drinking policy while working, not me,” she replied, turning and heading into the dive bar—which smelled like peanuts and sliced onion. Gross combination. Let’s see what other nasty things I can find.

  “Sweet baby cheeses.” Lewis took another sip of the dark roast coffee. The smooth flavor of the Tueti blend was unlike anything he’d ever had. “This stuff is amazing!”

  Vitos sniffed at his own cup of coffee, not at all impressed. “Yeah, I guess so.”

  “You ever had this primo stuff before?”

  “Why would I have coffee from anywhere else?” the alien asked. “PGC is the best, and has the monopoly on coffee. There are sources from other planets, but they’re considered laughable.”

  Lewis pushed through the throng of people and aliens, careful not to spill his large, black coffee. He was a traditionalist at heart: no sugar, no milk. And don’t even get him started on the gross flavor syrups.

  “I think the lieutenant had the right idea,” Vitos decided, looking toward The Prickly Cactus. “A cold marmalade daiquiri sounds much better than this hot coffee.”

  “If I wasn’t worried what dragonfly germs and strange diseases I might contract, I’d totally take your coffee.”

  Vitos gave him a look of offense. “I don’t have any diseases.”


  “That you’re aware of,” the detective countered. “As an insect, you might be a carrier of something deadly, like Lyme disease or malaria. I can’t take the risk.”

  Vitos shook his head. “I’m not really an insect. We’re distant relatives.”

  “And I’m not a monkey. We’re only distant relatives.”

  “Funny, you look like a chimpanzee in a trench coat,” the Tuetian joked.

  “Oh, I think I spotted Bailey across the crowd.” Lewis pointed. “Why don’t you fly over there real quick…Oh, wait. You can’t.”

  Vitos laughed, his large eyes that took up most of his head flashed with mock anger. “Very funny. I’m telling the small human that you made fun of me for things I can’t control.”

  “No, don’t do that.” Lewis stood up on his toes, trying to get a better of view of Bailey. She was on the other side of the bar talking to someone. “She thinks I’m cute, and that’s good for my confidence.”

  “What’s wrong with your confidence? I don’t think you’re lacking for any attention.” He nodded to a group of women who were gawking at Lewis as he passed. Two of the girls giggled as they batted their fake eyelashes.

  “They’re enamored with your pretty colors,” Lewis said dismissively.

  “Looks like the lieutenant is already busy searching for leads,” Vitos noted, gazing in Bailey’s direction.

  The detective followed the Tuetian’s eyes, and saw that his partner did seem to be engaged in a conversation, though the other party was obscured by a rather large man. The guy moved finally, and the person Bailey was talking to came into view across the busy bar.

  Lewis dropped his coffee. The lid busted off, and hot liquid shot all over his pants and those around him.

  “Watch what you’re doing!” a woman in a short black skirt said, backing up, wiping the coffee from her legs. A moment before, she’d looked like she was working up the nerve to talk to Lewis; now she looked ready to beat him over the head with her handbag.

  Lewis shook his head, sure he’d been seeing things. He again looked at the person next to Bailey.

  He blinked. His eyes had to be betraying him. But as he neared, the familiar features of the woman’s face did not change. It’s her!

  “Melanie!” he dumbly yelled, pushing around aliens, trying desperately to get to the other side of the congested bar.

  Melanie gazed up, her dark brown eyes looking around blankly.

  I shouldn’t have called out her name; that just warned her she’d been spotted. What was I thinking?

  Melanie’s red lips parted dramatically when her gaze landed on Lewis. He pushed through a large group, the last that separated him from her. She didn’t hesitate. She jumped up on top of the bar and, with no one blocking her path, ran easily along its length to the other side, away from Lewis. When she reached the end, she leapt off and pushed through the mass of people blocking the far exit.

  Lewis lurched forward, pushing through the crowd to try and follow her. However, her display had caused quite the stir, and most were moving in the direction she’d run, anxious to see where she’d disappeared.

  “Did you see that?” the woman in the black skirt asked her friend, knocking hard into Lewis.

  He continued to push through the crowd, yelling as he did. He negotiated around a group of Tuetians, nearly taking off one of their wings.

  “Melanie! Get back here!”

  Even as he yelled, he knew it was useless. He’d seen her face when she’d recognized him. How long had she been running, eluding him? He never expected that she’d be in a different galaxy.

  He poured out of the bar into the only slightly less crowded corridor. A sea of aliens jostled in all directions, and he swept his head back and forth, trying to spy his target’s long, black hair, flying behind her as she fled. Even as he narrowed his eyes, he knew it was too late. Melanie had done what she always did best. She’d run.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Hatch’s Lab, Ricky Bobby, Cacama System

  Bailey had been polite, not saying anything on the way back to Ricky Bobby about the disturbance that Lewis had made at The Prickly Cactus. After his outburst, they all knew that no one was going to talk to them about Monstre Corp, or anything else.

  Bailey had tried to question a Trid with a nose ring, a Kezzin who smelled like old lunch meat, and a man who kept looking at her boobs. No one had known anything more about Monstre Corp, or so they’d said. More likely, they valued their lives more than helping a stranger.

  She suspected that Monstre Corp had gotten many of those on Gable Station into the Precious galaxy. Otherwise, how would they have made it over such a long distance? She guessed the corporation’s gate had gotten a lot of action, thanks to Vance’s lofty goals. She had to figure out what those were.

  After a few hours of getting called every bad name in the galaxy, and nearly punching a few Trids in the face, Bailey had given up.

  Lewis and Vitos had met her at the Q-Ship. The detective’s face was red, his hair matted with sweat. He gave her a cautious look as they boarded, but she decided to wait to question him, sensing that he wouldn’t want to talk in front of Vitos.

  Having slept and been refreshed, Lewis looked much better, though he still looked agitated. Actually, he looked a lot like he did when they’d first met, a cynical expression etched across his face. That’s when Bailey had first heard him call out that girl’s name. Melanie.

  She strode up to where Lewis was leaning against the far wall, his arms across his chest and his eyes low. They both watched as Hatch worked under the hood of a burnt orange Land Rover. He’d told Bailey when she asked that is was a Series 2A, but she wasn’t sure what that meant, only that it looked old.

  She hadn’t liked reporting to Jack that they’d returned from Gable with no leads for the codes. However, it made her feel slightly better to find the doctor busying himself with a side project.

  He’d explained it was how he cleared his head. She hoped it would help; she knew he was stuck on the plans for the GAD-C.

  “So, you ready to talk about it?” she asked Lewis in a low voice.

  He nodded in Hatch’s direction. “The fact that an octopus man is changing the spark plugs in an antique car? Yes, thanks for acknowledging the elephant in the room.”

  “Melanie,” Bailey said plainly, carefully watching the detective for cues.

  “Who?” Lewis asked, his brow furrowing.

  “The name you’ve yelled out twice now,” she stated, cutting past his games. “Apparently the woman I was talking to in The Prickly Cactus, who, upon seeing your face, knocked every drink off the bar in order to get away from you.”

  Casually, he pressed out his lips, pretending to think. “None of that rings any bells. I was busy chatting up a woman in a mini skirt.”

  “Was that before or after you spilled your coffee all over her?” she asked.

  “Damn stuff was hot. I apologized.”

  Bailey drew her attention back to Hatch, who was reaching under the vehicle with two tentacles, while the rest worked under the hood. “Do you want to know what Melanie said to me?”

  “You mean the person you were talking to?” Lewis asked. “I didn’t realize you’d caught her name.”

  “I didn’t.”

  “Oh, well, good on you for getting right to work. Did you find any leads?”

  “I hadn’t gotten to work yet,” Bailey said, slightly exasperated. “Your mystery woman approached me. She gave me a compliment, which I ignored. Related how disgusting the clientele was in Gable, to which I hardly replied. Then she asked me if I knew anything about a corporation by the name of Monstre.”

  Lewis’s tamed expression cracked, his eyes widening slightly as he looked the other way. “That’s interesting.”

  “That’s what I thought,” she agreed. “To my astonishment, this stranger beat me to the questions I was going to ask.”

  “What did you say?” he asked, his head turned clear around so that Bailey couldn
’t read his expression.

  “I didn’t have a chance to say anything. We were interrupted by some nut-job yelling ‘Melanie’. You’ll remember what happened next.”

  He nodded. After a moment of silence, she got to the point.

  “People don’t flee like that woman did unless they are in trouble. And you can keep up the act, but I saw you run after her. Did you track her down?”

  There was a long pause before Lewis shook his head.

  “She looked as surprised to see you, as you were to see her,” Bailey recalled.

  “It’s been a long time; I wanted to catch up. I guess she was nervous and got spooked.”

  Bailey disagreed. “She didn’t look like she was nervous, so much as fleeing for her life.”

  She thought back to how, in a short period of time, she and Lewis had become a good team. He played well off of her, and she appreciated the asset of his keen eyes. However, this had been the challenge from the beginning; Lewis was hiding something.

  Bailey had assumed it involved his ex-apprentice, this Melanie. Lewis had said he’d been training her when something went wrong. However, Bailey hadn’t realized until yesterday that he was mad enough to kill her over whatever had happened. That’s what she’d seen from across the bar; a heat akin to murder in Lewis’s eyes.

  “You said that you’d been training Melanie,” she remembered, trying again to lure some answers out of him.

  For the first time since the conversation had started, Lewis turned and faced Bailey straight on.

  “She owes me money. That’s all.”

  “So she isn’t the reason you quit the detective business?” she challenged.

  A sobering urgency stole any joy in Lewis’s eyes. “I never blame anyone for the things that happen in my life. She was a mistake. What happened afterward was my fault.”

  “Well, as your current partner, I’d like to know why you quit.”

  “Sure,” he agreed, his usual lightness gone from his expression. “As soon as you tell me what you’re running from.”

  Bailey’s mouth popped open without her permission. “Me? I-I-I’m not.” She couldn’t believe she was stuttering.