Murder on Moon Trek 1

by Diane Vallere

  Yeoman D’Nar stood next to him, unsmiling. I wasn’t particularly in a smiley mood either. The ship had departed less than twenty-four hours ago, and already I’d determined my three least favorite people on the ship. Worse, they were all in front of me. I looked back and forth between the doc and my boss, and then at Neptune, who stood slightly behind them. His surprise-you’re-going-to-lockup visit had been the main reason I’d never made it to the medical ward, but my boss and the doc didn’t seem to know about that. Why not?

  Neptune moved forward and held out my helmet. “I found this in the uniform ward. I trust it’s yours.”

  “Thank you.” I took the clear plastic bubble and wrapped my arms around it. Until I had a chance to check that it wasn’t cracked and reattach the oxygen hose, it wasn’t going to do me any good. And as long as I had an audience of people who could potentially have me booted from the ship, I was going to pretend I wore the helmet for cosmetic reasons. Hey, it could happen. I’d seen stranger accessories in a catalog of Venusian fashions.

  I felt weird sitting on my cot while the three senior officers stood in front of me, but I also knew Pika was underneath my cot, and there was a better chance of her staying hidden if I didn’t stand up. Pika was the only one of the four of them who hadn’t yelled at me or accused me of something. That put her on my side.

  I got the feeling Doc Edison and Yeoman D’Nar expected me to say or do something, but since I wasn’t sure of what (the BOP didn’t have a protocol for post-passing out after discovering sabotage aboard the ship), I didn’t say or do anything. Seconds passed. My hands grew sweaty on the plastic bubble of my helmet and slipped down the convex surface. I wiped my lavender palm on the side of my aqua dress and then wrapped my arms around the helmet again.

  Yeoman D’Nar spoke first. “Security section has advised me of your assistance in the engineering room. Dr. Edison will check your vital signs.”

  “I’m all right,” I said. “Nothing a good night’s sleep in my quarters won’t fix. I’ll be good as new tomorrow.”

  “You won’t be spending the night in your quarters,” Neptune said. Three lines appeared between his eyebrows, and he tipped his chin down. His forehead took over the top half of his face.

  “Until security section can debrief you on what happened in the engineering room, you’ll remain in Neptune’s custody,” D’Nar added.

  “What? No! I want to go to my room.”

  Neptune crossed his arms and stood with his feet shoulder-width apart. He looked at me and then at Doc. “Lt. Stryker seems to be doing better. I need to take her report while things are fresh in her mind. Can this physical wait until tomorrow?”

  Doc glared at him. “It’s not a good idea to put off the health of the crew while we’re in flight,” he muttered. He reached into his bag and pulled out a second canister marked O2. “After the ape is done with you, breathe this. It’s pure oxygen and will equalize your lungs and drive out whatever you inhaled down there in the engineering room. Come see me tomorrow for a complete workup.” He smiled warmly. “Thank you, Lt. Stryker. What you did may have saved the lives of two men on the crew.”

  I set my helmet on the ground and took the canister. Doc closed his bag and turned to leave. “Yeoman, are you coming?”

  “Not yet,” she said. “Who’s going to manage the uniform ward? I can’t. I have other responsibilities on this ship.”

  Neptune spoke. “Uniform Ward will remain closed until I say so.”

  “But the crew—” she started.

  “Fine. I’ll take over the uniform ward. It’s my call.”

  Yeoman D’Nar didn’t look happy with Neptune’s answer, but she also didn’t look like she thought she’d win in a battle against him.

  Doc Edison and Yeoman D’Nar left. I sat on the cot and waited—for what, I didn’t know. The doors at the end of the hall swished open and shut. Neptune remained in front of me with his arms crossed over his chest.

  “Get out,” he said.

  “Get out from where? You just told them I was spending the night here!”

  “Not you. The Gremlon. Get out from under the cot.”

  My helmet bumped forward on the floor and Pika rolled out. She stood up, a little disheveled, but still relatively pleasant. “I’m sorry, Mr. Giant.”

  “Get lost,” Neptune said, jerking his thumb over his shoulder toward the hallway. “I don’t want to see you in here again.”

  Pika took off without being asked twice. As soon as she was around the corner, Neptune hit the button on the wall, and the blue beams of light appeared. I stepped backward to avoid the heat.

  “Why didn’t you lock her up?” I asked.

  “She’s no threat.”

  “She’s a stowaway.”

  Neptune glared at me. “I’ll be back,” he said. He turned around and left the direction Pika had gone.

  As soon as I was alone, I pulled the pin on the O2 canister and inhaled. Pure oxygen flooded my lungs. It felt like an itch I couldn’t scratch from somewhere deep within me had been doused in a calming agent. I closed my eyes and held the air in my lungs for a few seconds before exhaling. The irritation subsided, and I relaxed. I didn’t want to overdo it. The sooner I became acclimated to the air on the ship, the easier it would be for me to do my job without raising questions. More questions. Neptune already knew too much about me, but to the rest of the ship, I was just another employee. I wanted it to stay like that.

  See, that didn’t make sense. If Neptune knew I’d hacked my way into the position on the ship, why hadn’t he told Yeoman D’Nar or Doc Edison? The physical would have outed me even before breathing the toxic air in the engineering room. Neptune must have had some other reason to keep my secret for now. He threatened me with prison time on Colony 13, but hadn’t mentioned that to my boss or the doc. Why not? It was starting to feel like Neptune was keeping an eye on me for reasons other than protocol.

  As the oxygen erased the effects of the gas, my thoughts became clearer. I’d been on the ship for less than a day, and already there were questions I hadn’t expected to have to answer. It was the job of the security officer to make sure the ship was safe, and twice now, security had failed.

  As the convulsions in my lungs subsided, I stood up and wandered back and forth across the ten-foot by ten-foot cell. Without the minor annoyance of the magnetic floor and the gravity boots, I felt light, which gave weight to my thoughts in contrast. Go back, Sylvia. Go back to your first minutes on the ship. What had I figured out? The second navigation officer had no reason to be on the ship when he was, and earlier I’d concluded that he was there to sabotage it. Pika had been in the very same quarters. Lt. Dakkar could have been the one to set up the gas leak in the engineering quarters, and Pika could have been there to help him. But Pika was given the run of the ship while Neptune treated me like a criminal. That made no sense. Unless Neptune knew more about the murder of the second navigation officer than he claimed.

  Neptune had shown up in the uniform ward despite D’Nar dismissing my report to the bridge. Almost like he’d already known what he’d find when he arrived.

  There was only one department on this entire ship that could terminate a crew member if assessed to be a threat and not be challenged on their action. Security. And who was security? Neptune.

  Neptune didn’t care about the murder in the uniform ward. Maybe I’d been wrong. Maybe he was the one with something to hide.

  10: Who to Trust?

  I crept close to the beams of blue-hot light and looked back and forth for signs of security. For all Neptune’s talk about keeping me under surveillance, he’d activated the beams, but then he left. If he considered me a real threat, he wouldn’t have just walked away. That meant he felt comfortable. Secure that I didn’t suspect him of anything.

  I returned to the cot and inhaled more oxygen. Was I thinking clearly yet? I didn’t know. But I couldn’t deny the fact that Neptune’s behavior was suspicious.

  I’d trained myself to
break problems down into what I knew so I could isolate the unknown variables and attack them. I had nothing to take notes on, so I cleared my mind and focused.

  What I knew: Neptune had arrived at the uniform ward shortly after I’d called the bridge about the Code Blue. Yeoman D’Nar had dismissed my report. I’d assumed she’d called him anyway, but this was not about what I’d assumed. It was about what I knew. Neptune arrived quickly. He knew the victim. He later returned and removed me and sealed off the uniform ward.

  Possible explanations: He discovered the second navigation officer’s plan to sabotage the ship and took out the threat to the passengers. He was already close to my sector when I radioed the bridge, so he intervened. He sealed off the uniform ward after removing me so he could destroy any evidence of his actions.

  It was possible. More than possible. My years at the space academy had taught me that professional dedication to the job trumped everything. Neptune was the head of security for the revived Moon Unit Cruise Ships. He would not have gotten that job by playing it safe. What I needed was access to a computer where I could pull his files and see exactly how far he’d gone in the name of professional job fulfillment in the past. If I could find evidence that murder was an acceptable part of the job to him, then I’d know for sure.

  I rose and approached the hot light beams again. My Plunian core temperature allowed me to get closer to the flames than other people might have gotten, and when I angled myself from the far corner of the cell, I could make out an empty desk at the end of the hallway. The surface was clean and smooth except for a small plastic dome on the right corner that covered a red button, just like I’d had in the uniform ward. Next to the plastic dome was a series of square buttons that lit up in intervals. Red, green, and yellow. From the schematics I’d downloaded from the space library before we left, I knew they were call buttons to different parts of the ship. If I could get closer, I could map the panel in my mind and figure out how it worked. For two little letters, “if” was a really big word.

  In the history books that I’d studied in grade school before being accepted to the space academy, I’d learned about what life was like for people who grew up on Earth. There were countries with governments and laws, punishments for behavior that wasn’t considered appropriate. People weren’t allowed to kill other people under most circumstances. The laws didn’t stop the murders from happening, though, which was why Federation Council had come up with a different solution to the problem.

  When someone was suspected of a crime, they were tried in front of the council. Twenty-three members heard every case, deliberated, and decided on an appropriate course of action. Smaller colonies in the galaxy became designated living spaces for those who the council deemed unsuitable for life among the planets.

  I didn’t know this last part from a class in middle school. I knew it because of my dad. He’d been charged with colluding with space pirates to raise demand for the dry ice from our mines. He pled guilty. We’d gone from being saviors to opportunists.

  He’d been sent to Colony 13 to live with others who’d turned against their own people. The federation council had determined that anyone who would put his needs ahead of what was best for his planet didn’t deserve the freedom he’d inherited. I’d memorized the names of each of the council members who had voted to send my dad away for his crime. Twenty-two out of twenty-three had found him guilty.

  Only one had recused himself from the vote. Vaan Marshall. He was the youngest member of Federation Council and that had been his first case.

  He’d also been my first real boyfriend.

  After the ruling, we broke up. Whether Vaan’s recusal from the vote was one of inexperience or loyalty to me, I’d never know. But dating a member of the council that had banished my dad to Colony 13, even if my dad had violated the governing code of Federation Council, wasn’t something I could do. It was hard enough to live with the knowledge that my dad was a criminal. I didn’t need a reminder of the group that sent him away.

  But right now, it would have come in handy to know someone in Federation Council. Well, it would have come in handy if I wasn’t currently behind bars myself.

  The elevators in the hallway swished open and shut. I braced myself for Neptune’s presence. Now that I had concerns along scarier lines than he’s-a-pain-in-my-butt type, I wasn’t looking forward to spending more time with him. When Doc Edison rounded the corner instead of Neptune, I relaxed.

  Doc pushed the button on the wall outside the cell and the beams of light retracted into the ceiling and floor. “Between you and me, I don’t know why that big ape thinks you need to be secured in here. You saved two men from suffocation. That makes you a hero in my book and don’t think I haven’t already made a report to Captain Swift. Have a seat. Let’s get you cleared for active duty so you can sleep in your own bed tonight.”

  He pulled a small scanner out of his bag and held it above my head, parallel to the floor, and then slowly brought it down past my eyes, nose, mouth. He asked me to breathe into a tube, and then he pulled out an ominous-looking device that looked suspiciously like a needle. Instinctively, I leaned away.

  “What’s that?”

  “I need a sample of your blood.”

  “Why? I didn’t cut myself. I inhaled a toxic gas. If there are any long-term effects from the gas, they’re going to restrict my respiratory system, not my circulation.”

  “I’m aware of that, and the preliminary tests I’ve already run indicate your respiratory problems are self-healing. What I’m more concerned about is the fact that you are part Plunian and I don’t have an active panel on you in the medical lab.”

  “But you must. I had to have a physical to be approved to work aboard Moon Unit 5,” I said carefully.

  “You have extensive knowledge of the regulations and requirements of working aboard the ship, Lt. Stryker. And from what I saw earlier this evening when you helped the security ape in the engineering room, I’d say you’re an asset to the crew. But unless you allow me to draw your blood, run up a panel, and override the falsified documents that are currently in the mainframe, Neptune is going to keep you locked up in this cell. And, since I’m pretty sure you share my doubts about his loyalties, I don’t think either one of us wants that to happen.”

  11: Physical

  Doc Edison reached for the wrist that still wore the thick magnetic cuff. He flipped my hand so it was palm-side up. His eyes took in the security bracelet and then returned to my face. I slowly extended my arm to make it easier for him to draw the blood he needed.

  When he finished, he removed the vial from the needle and sealed it with a plastic cap, covered the cap with reflective security tape, and dropped the whole thing into a small bag that he also sealed. He nestled the vial in a black case filled with gray foam and sealed that too. He picked up his scanner and wanded it over the spot on my arm where the needle had been. The pinprick healed in seconds.

  “I’d say I have everything I need. I’ll notify Yeoman D’Nar that you’ll be in your quarters for the duration of the night.” He closed his medical bag and stood up. “Good evening, Lt. Stryker.”

  I kept my eyes on the magnetic floor by his feet. “Thank you, Doc.”

  He put his finger under my chin and raised my face. “You did a brave thing tonight. Neptune is an idiot. We need more crew members like you, not less.” He smiled. “Now the important question: sugar pop or sugar shot?”

  “Pop,” I said.

  He handed me a blue sugar pop. “Hang tight. You’ll be back in your quarters soon.” He turned around and left.

  The realization that he knew my secret and wasn’t going to turn me in overwhelmed me. I took the sugar pop to the small sink and ran water over the outside of it to dissolve the sanitary casing, and then stuck it into my mouth. The pure sugar would help return my body to its normal equilibrium after having given blood. Other members of the crew might have chosen the shot because it was immediate. Plus, sugar pops were associated with
kids. After everything that had happened today, I didn’t much mind taking a moment to return to the days when it felt like someone else was taking care of me.

  A few minutes after the doc left, the doors to the elevator swished open, and the entertainment director who had been dining with Yeoman D’Nar walked in. He wore the same dress whites he’d had on at First Dinner. I would have expected him to change as soon as he could to avoid getting it soiled.

  The entertainment director pushed his white glasses up the bridge of his nose with his pointer finger and then stepped into the cell and held out his hand. “We haven’t been formally introduced. I’m Purser Frank.”

  “Sylvia Stryker.”

  “I know. I heard about what happened in engineering tonight. Doc asked me to escort you to your quarters.”

  “I’m sorry if I—we—disrupted the dinner service. From what I saw before we left, it was going to be an exceptional opening night.”

  “Opening night is a bit of a testing ground. Meet the passengers, mingle, find out what it is they want from their trip aboard Moon Unit 5. A surprising number of them asked when the nitrous oxide would be released.” He chuckled. “Someday I’ll find out how those rumors get started.”

  “So there’s no laughing gas in The Space Bar? I thought I saw tanks of it being wheeled in.”

  “You must have been mistaken. Oxygen—that’s what keeps people alert and vibrant. One hundred percent pure oxygen is piped in from the minute we open at Zulu Sixteen until we close at Zulu Two.”

  Zulu Sixteen referred to the sixteenth hour after midnight on the ship. Zulu time had been adopted on most spaceships because the personnel came from various planets, and interplanetary travel had become the norm. The hour the ship was sealed became Zulu Zero, and we all operated on Zulu time until we were docked at the space station regardless of where we’d come from. It was the best way to keep us all in sync.

  “I didn’t realize The Space Bar was open that late.”