The Colossus Collection : A Space Opera Adventure (Books 1-7 + Bonus Material)

by Nicole Grotepas

  Rising again, I dusted off my hands and pen and went to inspect this abnormality. When I got closer, I saw that the hole wasn’t a hole at all, but a small, empty nail. Glancing around the room, I spotted three more like it.

  Using a black pen, I sketched into my notebook the layout of the place and the approximate locations of all the big items, including the dead body at the center. The empty nails in the wall. The decorative gas fireplace. The gray-fabric couch. A console table against the far wall, near the door, there for design. It held the display of an orrery. Ixion, what the humans called the gas giant that held our moon in orbit, was at the center. The Centau called it Muibaus, which they claimed meant “pale mother” But humans had decided at some point that they preferred a word that sounded more human and Ixion stuck.

  I went to the console table and studied the orrery. There were six colonized moons, six shadows that fell on Ixion: Kota, Itzcap, Po, Joopa, Paradise, and Helo. The orrery moved like an old clock, featuring gears that softly ticked out approximations of the moons’ orbital paths around Ixion. The little machines were all the rage sixty years ago, when the Centau finished setting up the first trans-moon zeppelins and they began operation. The victim might have collected old oddities like that. There was an empty space on the table, delineated by a square outline of missing dust. “Something’s goes here,” I said loudly to get Miko’s attention.

  Miko came to stand beside me as I bent to get a straight on view of the dust coating the table like a light fur. She copied me. “It looks square, the empty spot. Maybe slightly rectangular.”

  “Any bets? Think that was the murder weapon?”

  “Could have been. The wound doesn’t look like it was made with a traditional weapon. But what was here could also have been just a box. And he finally moved it.”

  “This is a spot for art,” I pointed out.

  Miko stared at me like I didn’t know art. Or have style. “You’re thinking of my desk at work.” I said, giving her a sidelong glance.

  “It’s a mess, Gabe. I’ve never seen a more cluttered desk.”

  “There’s a reason for that—the clutter. But I know what I would put here, next to this elaborate orrery. It’d be an important centerpiece of the room,” I said, indicating the un-dusted area with my hand, and the line where it ended, where an object had been. “The victim is showing off his wealth and success right here. What went here in this place of honor was something beautiful, like the orrery.”

  She nodded.

  The room suddenly got busy with forensic workers taking photos, measuring distances, and dusting for fingerprints. I felt my chest tighten with anxiety as the walls seemed to close in around me.

  “It’s getting too crowded here. I’m going back to the precinct. You’ll stay to finish managing this?”

  “Sure, Gabe. Was planning on it since you took the one this morning.”

  “Bag it all. When they’re done,” I said, nodding at the forensic workers, “get the body to the medical examiner. We need her report. You talked to any other neighbors yet?”

  Miko made a notation. “Yeah, I canvassed for a bit while the crime scene team set up. None of them heard anything, at least those who were home.”

  I looked around. “It’s not the most expensive condo. But the furnishings . . . He was doing well. Maybe he worked from home? Ok, I’m heading out.” I stopped, feeling like we were missing something. Or someone. “Where’s Meg?”

  “She said—”

  “Oh right. I know what she said,” I smiled.

  3

  “Gabe?” Meg asked.

  “Hmm? What?” My gaze was glued to the suspect chart, but I was lost in thought. We were in our homicide wing, which was tucked into the corner on the bottom of an Ice Jade spire—I’d been back at the precinct managing a hand-off of the dead witness on the Trippel investigation. Since that whole ant’s nest had been disturbed, bodies were showing up left and right and the homicide teams in the Ice Jade district were stretched thin, but I needed to focus on this new case

  Meg waved her hand in a ‘let’s continue’ motion as I turned to look at her.

  “The suspects?”

  “Right. Just the one, so far,” I pointed at the single photo of a suspect, positioned around a photo of the Yasoan body in the condo. The suspect had black hair, blue eyes—I’d seen it before. “The girlfriend. Yes? She’s the one who supposedly still had the code to his lock. Miko already got a preliminary questioning session in.”

  Meg folded her arms and leaned against her wooden desk. “Yes, but the girlfriend’s pregnant, Gabe.”

  “So?”

  “Just, it seems unlikely that a pregnant woman could commit murder.”

  “Not if she was on drugs. Or jealous.”

  Miko looked at Meg, then at me and said. “Pregnant women aren’t high on the list of violent crime perpetrators.”

  “Suspects lie. That’s a cardinal rule. Like how pregnant? What, 4 months or something?” I prodded, trying to put my elbows on my desk, but it was covered in papers and old taco wrappers. I found a spot to settle them and kept talking. “Because at 4 months, that could just be a bit of a tummy, especially if it’s her first.”

  Meg laughed, looking at Miko’s notes from the crime scene. “The girlfriend said she’s due in four weeks.”

  “OK, so then very pregnant. Harder to fake that. Let’s make sure our next photo is a body-shot. For the board. I want to see that belly.” I leaned back, scrubbed my hands through my hair, and stared at the board, thinking. “So, that’s it. We have one suspect. None of the neighbors?”

  Daxan, one of our typical team members and a Yasoan, walked into the area and handed Meg a printed sheet of paper. “Hey Meg, I just got this from forensics. Is that our suspect? She looks lonely up there.”

  “We’re working on filling it out.” Meg glanced at the paper, then passed it off to Miko.

  “Ah, the record of time-stamps of when the door was accessed and who accessed. This goes back three weeks.”

  “Did a building super show on the logs or something?” Meg asked.

  “No, I don’t see one, at least not today, except for the girlfriend this morning,” Miko flipped through the file. “It all looks like the victim with a few odd ones in the mix. Except for the girlfriend this morning.”

  “Sounds like his life was rather dull. Boring.” Given, that was how mine was. The only people who came by my place were Lucy and Meg, when Meg dropped her off.

  Meg paced in front of the board. “I agree. If his life was that empty on the surface, maybe his computer will turn up something. Maybe that’s where he did all his living. Daxan?”

  “Yes?” He was at his desk now and spun in his chair to look at Meg.

  “Grab the victim’s computer from forensics and get searching through the files.”

  “Yes, sir,” Daxan said, standing up and heading out of the room. The young Yasoan was good at the desk stuff, not so much the beat. The natures of humans and Consties still baffled him, it seemed. If a person had never felt the urge to lie to protect themselves or experienced the passion of volcanic rage, then it was much harder to read suspects.

  And I sensed that he was afraid to screw up.

  Miko went to her desk, put her notes down, and began to work at her computer.

  “And we need to check his bank accounts,” I said.

  “Doing that now,” Miko said.

  “Good. Because the rest of the team is still on the Trippel investigation. Waugh is taking over the case from this morning—that dead witness.” I sighed. “Right now, I need a break.”

  Meg scoffed. “We’re not taking a break. We’re going over the suspects.”

  “Suspect,” I corrected. “There’s just the one. We need to find more suspects, because you clearly don’t think it was the pregnant girlfriend. And I tend to lean that way myself.”

  “Then this is hardly the time for a break, Gabe. We need to know what the hell the victim was doing when he died
.”

  “Right. But I need a break. Because I haven’t eaten anything except a couple chunks of leftover brie from that terrible party you forced me to attend a few days ago.”

  “You loved it. And Lucy loved having you there,” Meg said.

  “I can’t think when my blood sugar is this low. I’m not suggesting we stop working on the case. Someone needs to go knock on doors again—check the surrounding businesses to see if anyone saw anything. And one of us needs to go interview the ex again.” I bit my lip and wondered if Meg was going to fight me on this, and how hard I could push back before it turned ugly. My communicator buzzed. “Yep?” I answered.

  “Gabe. Hey,” it was Cassandra Rossum, the medical examiner. “Cause of death is what you thought—blunt-force trauma. Base of the skull. But there are other things you should see. Come down to the morgue when you can and I’ll do the rest of the autopsy.”

  “I can now,” I said, relieved to have an excuse to get out and grab some food on my way over. My mouth watered thinking about the Molten Taco nearby. Although, if I was going to be heading to the autopsy, maybe I didn’t want to eat anything.

  “See you in a minute.” Cassandra hung up.

  “Go then,” Meg said, pouting when I ended the call.

  “I will,” I said. “I have to, though, you know. Don’t have a choice. It’s my job”

  “Right. Can you stop at my condo and check on Lucy?” she asked. “So I can go knock doors like you want me too?”

  “Yes. Go knock doors. I’ll check on our kid. Also, someone make sure Daxan’s scouring the web while you two canvas the area again.”

  4

  The ME’s office was located between the Ice Jade district and the Yellow Jade district, and served both areas. Meg’s apartment was in a fairly nice tower in the Ice Jade district, mid-level in a corner suite. I grabbed a couple tacos for myself and one for Lucy, and headed by her place to eat them with her before I went to watch the autopsy. At least the next fifteen minutes in my life were at peace while Lucy ate her taco and regaled me with stories from school. All too soon the real world pushed its way between my daughter and me. Sighing, I looked at my watch, kissed Lucy on the forehead and hurried over to try to make most of the procedure.

  “These bruises here,” the medical examiner said once I’d arrived and dressed into a set of protective clothing.

  It looked like, judging from the open chest cavity and organs out in containers for weighing, that she was at least halfway done already. Yasaon, Centaus, and Consties had the same color of blood as humans—but organs and such all had slight variations. The stench in the room was one I’d never gotten used to, even though the body hadn’t been dead as long as some, a torso splayed open like that had a terrible scent. The doctor had told me before that even living bodies smelled bad open like that.

  Cassandra brushed her gloved finger along the distinct marks, skirting the bottom bones of the ocular cavity. Beneath the bright lights, the bruises were clearer. They formed the faintest outline of . . . something. “They happened at the time of death—which was about 9:30 in the morning.”

  “I’ll make a note of it. Yeah, the bruises, I’d noticed them earlier. Wanted to ask you about them. So I was right? They happened just before death?”

  “Exactly. They look like, maybe, goggles?” Cassandra’s red hair was pulled back into a ponytail and she wore a lab-coat over medical scrubs and a mask. Only her forehead and blue eyes were visible, though she also wore safety glasses.

  “So,” I looked up, and tried to picture why the victim ended up with weird goggle markings on his face when he died. I recalled the crime scene, placing myself back in it, seeing the room.

  “Goggles,” I repeated. “Like swimming goggles?”

  Cassandra frowned. “No, if they were swimming goggles, then they’d be a snorkeling mask. But this Yasoan didn’t die from drowning. Why would he have goggles on?”

  “Right, right. That makes no sense. What’s the easiest explanation? He was wearing goggles. But they weren’t for swimming. What else is there?” I stared absently at the trough-like sink along the far wall of the facility. “Piloting goggles? Was the vic a transport pilot of some kind? Maybe on an airship between the moons?”

  “Those goggles are generally round and they wrap about the eyes more. If it helps, there was another strange mark on the inside of his left ear. I’ve never seen a mark like it. Could come from a fingernail or something else that happened in a struggle. Only, there aren’t any other signs of a struggle.”

  I moved to her side of the autopsy table.

  “This right here,” she said. “See? Not quite a bruise. Looks like he had an earpiece in. He must have also landed on it when he fell—his head rolled onto it, but his face took the brunt of the fall. Maybe that’s what happened. Because forensics didn’t recover anything at the crime scene, it’s all speculation till they do recover something.”

  “But if you’re right and it’s an earpiece, then we’re looking at something that would use both goggles and sound. Which points to a pilot of some kind. Or something that would be used in a living room. Maybe that Holographic-reality stuff.”

  Cassandra thought about it. Her mouth wasn’t visible because of the mask covering half her face, but her eyes narrowed like she was thinking. “That works with what I’m seeing. If the victim was using a Holo-R setup then it would explain how the assailant would be able to sneak up behind him.“ Cassandra swept her hand out above the body. “There are no signs of a struggle on this guy. No skin beneath his fingernails, none of your garden variety signs of a battle. There would have been two ear pieces in that case, but since he only fell on one side of his head, there’s no way we’d see evidence of that.”

  “But that scenario would also explain the falling forward. Onto his face. And then of course the killer, in order to cover his trail, would take the Holo-R gear to cover his tracks.”

  “Sounds like you’ve got something to go on at least,” she said, then fell silent as she finished the rest of the autopsy. I took a seat nearby and watched. I’d already learned as much as I probably would, but I always stayed for the whole thing in case anything odd turned up.

  Just twenty minutes later, I pulled off the examination gloves, preparing to leave. On my way out, I thanked her.

  “Miko,” I said into my communicator as I exited onto the street and headed for the elevator up to the Spireway platform. I needed to go ask the ex-girlfriend some follow up questions. “I think I know what the victim was doing when he was killed.”

  “Holo-R?”

  I paused, then kept moving. “How’d you figure it out?” I punched the call button on an exterior elevator, tacked onto the side of a pale orange jade tower.

  “Bank records I pulled up. Lennox Fogg ran an in-game store called Fogg’s Toggs. That’s why he didn’t leave his condo for work at regular times. He kept his store open ten to twelve hours a day, sometimes more. The transactions used real Syndicate Marks, not the Coalition cryptocurrency. He’d been doing quite well, it looks like, according to his bank accounts.”

  “I thought the ME would recover something that would tell us about the murder weapon, but she didn’t. It was clean except for organic matter.” I rode the elevator up to a Spireway station—I hated to use the subway. It didn’t work well with my claustrophobia. As big as the City of Jade Spires was, that closed in feeling was often inescapable, but there were ways to get away from it. And one way I broke free of it was taking the Spireway when I needed to travel. “Oh, and time of death was 9:30. So possibly, the murderer knew Fogg was in the game world when he was murdered. We’re potentially going to be investigating suspects that were Holo-R gamers, then.”

  “Meg says we need to look at other ex-girlfriends too. Love and jealousy are often motives. Meg says.”

  “Meg would know, wouldn’t she,” I said, thinking about the reasons we broke up. I sighed. “Look, sorry, forget I said that.”

  “Hm. OK.”

/>   “But she’s right. Have you chased down anything with other girlfriends or possibly exes?”

  “Haven’t yet. I’ll get on that.”

  “And Miko, has Daxan found anything?”

  “He went with Meg to canvas the rest of the tower and the businesses near the residence tower. I stayed at the station.”

  “Then how about if you also make a list of any large bank transactions as well—any big sums going out or in and the names associated with them.” I hung up.

  The Spireway platform was crowded, but I’d kept my breathing under control while I was in line during my conversation with Miko. The next gondola that came to my queue was mine. Voices around me merged with the sounds of the trams skidding along the cables and squealing to a stop. There was the pneumatic sound of gondolas hissing away from the platform once they were loaded up. A blue one pulled up and three humans and two Yasoan loaded out, then I jumped in, punched in my destination, and the boat hissed away.

  I hit the button on the controls to have the windows lower so that I could get some air flowing through and get the sense of openness that I needed. The wind whipped over my arm and through my fingers that were shoved out the window, and came into the gondola and lifted my hair. Evening sunlight filtered with the orange glow of Ixion glinted off the tower spires shooting out into the sky around me. People walked across bridges that connected the upper reaches of the city like lace and spider webs. Sirens echoed up through the slot canyons of stone and glass. The City of Jade Spires was no utopia, though that’s what the Centaus had hoped to make when they built it and invited the other humanoid races here. Humans weren’t quite up to the moral standards of Centaus and Yasaons yet. It was like inviting a snake into Eden—humans were bound to fuck it up. Those Centaus were ever hopeful. Naive, but hopeful.