Murder on Moon Trek 1

by Diane Vallere

  But that didn’t make us friends.

  Neptune didn’t ask any more questions. I sulked on my side of the elevator for the duration of our trip to engineering. Neptune acted like he always did: eyes staring forward, arms crossed, biceps flexed, mouth turned down. His lack of personality was taking all the fun out of finally having achieved a position on a security staff. I widened my own stance so my gravity boots were shoulder-width apart and crossed my arms over my chest.

  “What are you doing?”

  “Practicing. Isn’t this the official security team pose?”

  Neptune was not amused. I dropped my arms to my waist and stood in a more ladylike position. When the elevator stopped on the engineering floor, I walked out and headed toward the computer room where the gas leak had taken place. I reached the entrance and turned around. Neptune was still by the elevator.

  “Aren’t you coming with me?”

  “No.”

  “Then what exactly do you want me to do?”

  “Take your time. Walk around. There is no threat. I want you to absorb the scene and tell me if anything strikes you as off.”

  “The whole thing is off. There isn’t any crew at the computer. Shouldn’t somebody be making sure the ship is running in ship-shape shape?”

  “I’ll wait here.”

  I turned my back on Neptune and entered the room. As soon as I stepped onto the industrial carpeting, a chill ran over me from the inside out.

  Members of the crew on the ground.

  Lights flashing overhead.

  Alarms sounding.

  Gas leaking into the room right before I saw the hose.

  I wondered, briefly, if anybody else would have felt the difference in the air quality? Or if I would have noticed it as quickly as I had if I’d been wearing my helmet?

  Unless...was it possible that my helmet wasn’t cracked? And that the gas leak from engineering had seeped up into the uniform ward? Where I’d found a body?

  I closed my eyes and pictured the ship’s schematics. The orientation packet had included a 3D rendering of Moon Unit 5, a diagram that illustrated the magnitude of the ship. The bells and whistles available to the paying passengers on their big adventure to the moons of Jupiter were on the main level, along with the bridge, Medi-bay, The Space Bar, and Ion 54, the after-hours dance club. There were other passenger-targeted entertainment options, but I wasn’t concerned with them at the moment. Because when I pictured the ship, I pictured the only portion where it came together in three layers: The Space Bar, the uniform ward, and engineering. Stacked on top of each other like a sandwich.

  I approached the wall where I’d found the carbon monoxide leak. It wasn’t hard to remember where I’d been when I inhaled the toxic gas. I knelt on the carpet and ran my fingers along the wall, feeling for an opening. I found it between two acoustic panels. I fed my fingers into the seam and wriggled them around. The tips of my fingers connected with the end of the tube, now recessed into the wall. I couldn’t get hold of it, but I could confirm one thing. The hose was pointed down.

  It had been fed into engineering from one of the floors above us. Anybody on the crew would have known where engineering was. The leak wasn’t random. It had been a deliberate act to incapacitate the crew that kept the ship safely running.

  I stood up and glanced around the room for anything else before leaving to give Neptune my theory. I felt a sense of unease like I was still missing something but couldn’t place what. The seizure-inducing red light had been reset, and the room looked normal. Colorful buttons and switches flickered on the control panel, and the orange carpet appeared to have recently been vacuumed.

  The orange carpet. No, that’s not right. When did the carpet down here become orange? It was gray. I remember it being gray. The carpet was gray, and the engineering officers who had been passed out on it were in white shirts.

  White. Not red.

  Engineering officers wore red shirts. Just like the navigation officer. Their assigned positions could be discerned from details like the trim on their sleeves and the color of their collar. Engineering uniforms were bare bones. All about utility. The engineering officers had to be prepared for more physical tasks than other officers on the ship. It was one of the reasons their quarters were on this sublevel and not with the rest of the crew. I’d heard a rumor that Purser Frank had expressed concerns to the captain that passengers might be troubled by the appearance of men dressed in such non-glamorous garb and Captain Swift agreed. It had cost Moon Unit 5 an extra two weeks in design revisions, but the work had been done.

  So why had I seen men in white uniforms on the ground?

  I looked up at the ceiling. The red lights had bathed the whole room in a surreal glow. Red shirts, viewed under red light, would appear white or close to it. The orange carpet was close enough to red that the men would have all but blended in with it. Which meant I didn’t know what color the men were wearing: red like engineering, or gray like flex crew.

  Or both. Which meant one of the victims I’d saved might have been faking.

  17: A New Threat

  My observation led to a troubling theory, but it was my job to tell Neptune. I stepped into the hall.

  “Can you come with me?” I asked.

  “You can give your report to me now.”

  “It would be better if I could show you what I saw.”

  “That’s not necessary.”

  Why must he be so stubborn? “Fine. The tube that dispensed the gas—”

  “I know about the tube. Is that it?”

  “Can you let me talk, please? Or is that asking too much?”

  He—guess what?—crossed his arms over his chest. I mimicked him. I didn’t care if it made him mad. I was done with subtlety. “Check the color of the shirts of the victims against the colors of the uniforms they were issued.”

  “Why?”

  “You’re a smart guy. You figure it out.”

  “Submit your written report by Zulu Seventeen.”

  “Fine.” I stormed past him to the elevator, activated it, and left Neptune alone on the engineering floor while I went to my quarters.

  If this was my grand peek into the world of spaceship security, then to say I was disappointed was an understatement. I’d wanted to feel responsible for the safety of the ship passengers and the crew. Keeping an eye out for malicious behavior against us. Ensuring policies were recognized, protocols were met, rules were followed.

  Security was the silent leader of any ship. It garnered respect without the limelight like the captain or handful of first officers. Even Neptune, who was the head of Moon Unit security, operated in a behind-the-scenes capacity. It strengthened his position when everybody on board the ship didn’t know who he was or what he did.

  But this—this wasn’t what I’d hoped for or expected. I’d acted like any good security officer would when discovering a threat: I’d eliminated it so the crew could be saved. And how had my immediate supervisor thanked me? He hadn’t. Stupid Neptune didn’t care what happened to me. He was just using me to find out what he needed to know.

  Vaan said Neptune had a reputation in the galaxy. Maybe that was it. Maybe he sucked at his job. Maybe he planned to take my name off the report and put his on and take full credit for everything I’d done.

  I didn’t care.

  I didn’t care about any of it.

  I didn’t want to be a on board the spaceship anymore. I wanted to go home. Sure, I’d write up the report as requested. I was going to write it up, send it to Neptune, finish up the moon trek, and go back to Plunia. Employment on the Moon Unit was nothing like I’d hoped. After a lifetime of working in the mines where I’d grown up, I felt lost. Back there, I knew what I was doing. Not only that, I knew how to do it better. I’d built equipment that allowed our crew to double their output and designed fields that maximized the storage of the balls of dry ice we mined before they could be delivered to another planet. We lost a lot of business after my dad was arrested,
but slowly, the existing contacts came back. It was a testament to my mother that she was able to tune out the gossip, rebuild those bridges, and keep us from losing everything.

  Yes, all I had to do was write up my report, turn it over to Neptune, and wash my hands of the whole murder/sabotage thing. We were two days into the trip with only five left to go. I could handle that. I had to handle that. When this was all over, I’d have a story to tell the workers on Plunia who had helped my mom come up with the money to get me to the space station the day the ship deployed.

  I shifted Cat from the table to the chair and opened my computer. The drive had been calibrated to analyze my voice tone and pulse and embedded those statistics into the file properties. It also transcribed the recording into a report that could be read and transferred at the push of a button. I stated my name, employee number, and rank, realized I’d said “uniform lieutenant” instead of “security officer,” and wasted another fourteen minutes determining the spot on the computer hard drive to erase to match my new credentials. I reattached the motherboard and started over. All told, it took me thirty-seven minutes to finish the report. I signed off, sealed the documents, and sent them to Neptune via the ship’s secure network. My job was done.

  I changed out of my black security uniform into my sleep garb and stuffed the uniform into the empty trunk that I’d brought. Instead of putting the suitcase back on top of the closet, I stuck it inside and shut the door. Even if I didn’t plan to make a peep for the rest of the night, there was no way I’d sleep knowing Neptune could hear me.

  I pulled back the thin synthetic coverlet and climbed into my bed. As my weight hit the mattress, the lights dimmed. Cat’s eyes went dark and his quiet motor whirred while he lowered himself to a sitting, and then laying position. I clicked the blue dial on the wall three settings to the right. A soft melody filtered out. The hour was late, I’d had a very long day, and it was time to go to sleep.

  I closed my eyes. The memories I’d tried to keep buried all day flooded to the surface. Vaan and me sneaking off from the space academy. Vaan and me in the carbon monoxide caves on Plunia. Vaan and me lying next to each other, covered only by a blanket that had been handed down from my mother’s mother to my mother and then to me, our fingers intertwined, purple against lavender. The closest I’d ever come to finding someone who made me feel like I belonged.

  The door swished open, and a bright light hit me in the eyes. Cat’s solar panel activated, and his eyes glowed brightly. He rolled in circles, confused by the sudden illumination.

  “Stryker. Get up.”

  “Neptune?” I blinked repeatedly while my eyes adjusted to the light. “What are you doing in my room? Get out! I turned in my report. I’m done.” I pulled the synthetic cover over my head and rolled toward the wall.

  “Your report is wrong.”

  I flung the coverlet back. “How could you possibly have concluded that? I sent it to you five minutes ago. If you’d bothered to check it, you’d know I wasn’t lying. If I was, my report would have been red flagged after vocal analysis. It would have been forwarded to the council.”

  “Come with me.” He turned around and walked out.

  “I’m in my sleeping garb!”

  He stood in the doorway with his back to me. “Come with me. Now.”

  I stood up and slipped my feet into my black gravity boots, and then followed Neptune into the hallway. The ship was unusually quiet. It took a moment to realize Neptune was holding a noise-cancelling device. “Hey,” I said, but no sound came out of my mouth. “You can’t hear me, can you?” He didn’t turn around. “You sure are lucky I don’t sleep in the nude.”

  Neptune stopped. He turned around and glared at me, his brows drawn together and his eyes narrowed. How could he possibly have heard that?

  I gave him my best I-didn’t-say-what-you-think-I-said look. He pointed down the hall. It didn’t seem as though I had a choice about not going with him.

  I reached the elevator first. At night, the halls were mostly empty, and tonight was no exception. My boots left small indentations on the carpet, but the lack of sound was eerily disturbing. Neptune activated the control panels, and we dropped down to the security level. Even if he’d turned the sound cancelling device off, the silence would have remained.

  The holding cell where I’d spent the majority of yesterday sat empty. Neptune walked to the computer and pressed a few buttons. The screen lit up. He set down the noise-cancelling device, and immediately the sound of beeps and boops replaced the silence.

  “You indicated in your report that the second navigation officer was responsible for the gas leak in engineering.”

  “That’s right. He had no reason to be in the uniform ward when I arrived on the ship. There was an empty canister next to him. The uniform ward is directly above the engineering room. He must have gained access, threaded the tube into the crack in the wall, and dispensed carbon monoxide into engineering. There’s a good chance one of the engineers we found passed out was in on it.”

  “No.”

  “Yes. Whoever killed the second nav officer likely found him sabotaging the ship, and he died while they were trying to restrain him from finishing his actions. If we go back to the uniform ward, we might find a timer or a trip wire or something that set the gas leak off. It probably came from The Space Bar. If someone wanted to hide canisters of carbon monoxide, they could have stashed them along with the tanks of nitrous oxide that are kept there. I know Purser Frank says the nitrous oxide thing is a rumor, but I saw the crew loading the tanks when we went to dinner.”

  Neptune’s full attention was on me while I spoke. The details were fresh in my mind since I’d just reviewed them while dictating my report. I stood silent for an awkward number of seconds before he looked away from me to the computer screen and pressed the blue button to the right. A soothing female voice spoke.

  “Analysis of air quality in engineering sector indicates a high level of carbon monoxide. Tissue analysis of lungs of second navigation officer indicates inhalation of carbon monoxide. Conclusion: second navigation officer died from inhalation of carbon monoxide.”

  “So? He accidentally breathed in the gas leak while he was sabotaging the ship. Served him right.”

  Neptune hit another button on the computer. The soothing female voice spoke again. “Analysis of empty canister in uniform ward indicates tampering. Contents incorrectly marked as oxygen. Analysis of DNA on inhaler indicates second navigation officer use. Conclusion: gas leak in engineering sector and murder of second navigation officer connected.”

  “That can’t be true. The canister that I found by the second navigation officer’s body was just like the one I used after my helmet cracked.”

  Neptune reached next to the computer and picked up a brushed nickel tank. It was identical to the ones I kept in my room and hidden in the uniform ward. “This canister?” he asked.

  “Yes.”

  He held it out. “Inhale.”

  I took the oxygen canister and pulled the pin, and then fitted the mouthpiece into my mouth and inhaled. I expected crisp, clean oxygen to fill my lungs like earlier when Doc Edison had treated me. Instead, I grew lightheaded. My lungs convulsed and my body went limp. I lost all coordination and collapsed onto Neptune’s computer.

  18: Space Pirates

  A sharp burst of oxygen exploded through me and I opened my eyes. For the third time in three days, I was inside the holding cell. Neptune knelt on the floor in front of me. He pulled his left hand away from my face and unballed his right fist. On his palm were three round white tablets.

  “Oxygen pills,” he said. “Take one and stay put until it releases into your system.”

  “You knew that canister was filled with carbon monoxide. You knew I was going to pass out.”

  “You weren’t going to believe me just because I told you. It was faster to demonstrate.”

  I leaned back against the wall behind the cot. The exposed concrete was cool through my thin
sleep uniform. As the oxygen transmuted into my system, the feeling slowly returned to my arms and legs. The shaking stopped. My thoughts cleared. I wasn’t particularly happy about the method Neptune had used to prove to me that the navigation officer had been as much of a victim as the men in engineering, but I couldn’t fault him for his reasoning. Experience was a powerful teacher. It was lesson number two at the space academy—that we would learn more from experience than from being taught. (Lesson number one was the enemy of my enemy is my friend.)

  While Vaan had spent afternoons in lecture halls memorizing charts of galaxy alliances and the profiles of past members of Federation Council, I’d been sent on carefully designed tactical missions that tested my critical thinking, loyalties to my team, willingness to sacrifice others for the greater good. It was one of the reasons I’d built Cat. I wanted to know that no matter what happened in the real world, there would be someone I could talk to in the privacy of my quarters. That my confidante was a robotic cat was the subject of much ridicule once my fellow students discovered him.

  “You’re saying Lt. Dakkar died because—”

  “Stop saying his name,” Neptune interrupted. “You’re violating Moon Unit protocol.”

  “Fine. You’re saying the second navigation officer died because he inhaled carbon monoxide from a corrupted oxygen canister that you found in the uniform ward.”

  Neptune nodded once.

  “That means he was as much of a victim as the engineering crew. We’re not safe. The threat to the ship is still active.”

  Neptune nodded again.

  “Then what are we waiting for? Suspicion of a standing crew member is a Code Red. We have to tell Captain Swift. He has to alert the passengers and evacuate the ship. I don’t know where we are in the moon trek, but we must be approaching a space station.”

  “We can’t stop the ship.”

  “Why? Because Moon Unit 5 is a cruise ship and somebody doesn’t want to refund the money?”