by Kal Spriggs
“Protect me?” Crowe gave a manic laugh, “Right, I really want your protection. I’ve seen the company you keep and I know every cop has his price.” Crowe met Simon’s eyes, “You are the last person I want protection from.”
Mike took a step forward, his arms raised, “Look, Crowe, we can resolve this.”
“No,” Crowe said. The Ambassador gave a whimper as he pressed the knife into her side. “We can’t. We really can’t. People on this ship want me dead. I don’t want to be dead. So you will back out… now. I want this door locked down and when that happens, I tell you my other demands.” Crowe’s voice sounded unsteady, a mix of anger, frustration, and terror lay just under his arrogant voice. He could see the man’s hands tremble.
Simon felt an icy lump settle in his guts. Crowe was not thinking rationally… he was past that point. The likelihood that he would panic and murder the Ambassador grew larger with every second that Crowe held her. Then her blood will be on my hands, just as much as if I stabbed her myself, he thought.
Simon glanced over at Mike and he could see the determination on the other man’s face. Mike gave him a slight nod. They would not leave here without the Ambassador. “Okay, Crowe, we’re backing out. Just relax, take it easy.” Mike backed a couple slow steps backwards. Simon could see the tense muscles in Crowe’s arm relax and the slight motion as the knife dropped slightly.”
Simon reached back and drew his pistol in a smooth, practiced movement. The archaic iron sights leveled on Crowe’s chest. Simon fired once. The old pistol gave a deafening roar in the confined space. The other man stumbled back, an expression of shock on his face, and his knife fell from limp fingers. The Ambassador screamed and rushed away even as Mike and Simon ran forward.
Crowe fell back on the deck. Mike kicked the knife out of reach and knelt at the man’s side along with Simon. “Get Run in here, now!” Mike shouted.
Crowe lay on his back, eyes wide. His skin had gone pale with shock and blood spurted from the big wound that Simon’s forty-five pistol had made. “Talk to me Crowe,” Mike said, his voice harsh. “Who was your partner, who tried to kill you?”
Crowe coughed and bright blood splashed on Mike’s clothing. Crowe’s voice gurgled a bit as he gasped, “You… you killed me.” His last breath went out and Crowe lay still. Mike gave a curse and began CPR, but Simon sat back on his heels. He’d aimed that shot well… too well. He’d put it right in the dense bundle of arteries near the other man’s heart and lungs.
Mike continued to try for a few minutes, until Simon put a hand on the other man’s shoulder. “Mike.” He saw the Captain’s head droop. “Mike, it’s my fault.”
The short Asian gave a snort, “I’m, the Captain, what happens aboard this ship is always my fault. That’s why I didn’t want the job.” He looked up, his dark eyes serious. “You did what you had to do. At least we saved the Ambassador.”
Behind him, he could hear her rant at her two Marines, her voice once more the arrogant and outraged woman that they all found so insufferable. “Right.” Simon gave a ragged sigh, “It doesn’t make me feel any better.” He had taken another man’s life, deserving or not, it was a burden that he would have to carry.
Run’s flat voice spoke from behind them, “I was not in need of an additional subject for dissection so soon. However, I will increase my lab space to accommodate.”
“It was Crowe,” Mike said. “Simon shot him because he was about to kill the Ambassador.”
Run walked up and stared down at the body. “Well, this would conclude the inquiry in regards to the termination of Crowe.”
Simon gave a snort at that. Well, when there’s nothing else left to laugh about, there’s always dark humor, he thought. Memories of a childhood game came back to him as he holstered his pistol, “Yes. I did, in the Ambassador’s quarters, with the nineteen-eleven.”
* * *
”What happened?” Elena asked, as they stepped back onto the bridge. “We heard that you confronted him and Run said that he needs a body moved to his ‘lab’ from the Ambassador’s quarters. Do we know more, did Crowe talk?” She looked at the blood that spattered Mike, “Are you alright?”
Mike looked down at himself and grimaced. “Dammit, that was the only decent ship’s uniform I could find in my size from the Sao Martino.” He looked up at Eric’s snort. “Laugh it up. You try finding stuff my size.” He sighed and went to lean on a console, an expression of exhaustion and frustration on his face. “I’m fine, but Crowe is dead and we still don’t know anything concrete.”
Simon shook his head, “This whole thing has us spinning in circles.”
Eric nodded, “Yeah, like some stray dog trying to chase down rats in an alley.” The others stared at him without comprehension. Simon saw that Anubus’s lips had drawn back in a slight snarl. Eric coughed, “Uh, you know, it chases one. Then another cuts across its trail, so it goes after that one. Then a third pulls it in another direction. This goes on four or five times and the stray dog ends up at the entrance to the alley, exhausted, hungry, and confused… Come on, haven’t any of you lived in an inner city?”
“I haven’t exactly spent time staring at rats,” Simon said.
“Nor I,” Elena said.
“Your description is apt enough,” Anubus growled. “And I agree. We keep reacting, instead of taking the initiative. If I start killing passengers, I can flush our murderer out.”
Run spoke up from the hatch. “This seems like a viable plan. Surely with how emotional humans are, the perpetrator would feel compelled to flee.”
“That plan is so far off the table, that you’d need to plot a shadow space jump to find it,” Mike said, his voice tired. He looked back at Run, “Weren’t you overseeing the body?”
“One human corpse is much the same as another. I shall conduct my research soon enough,” Run answered. “I wish to conduct decontamination procedures on you. You have been contaminated with blood which might have contained unknown nanotechnology. It is best to maintain the health of my control subjects,” Run said.
Mike looked down at himself again. “Oh, right.”
“What now?” Elena asked.
Mike held out his hand, “Simon said you were packing?” Elena grimaced, but she pulled one of the small Chxor pistols out of her coat pocket. “That’s it?”
She gave a shrug, “Is small, easy to conceal, da?”
“Right,” Mike said as he tucked it into his waist band. Simon, Elena, and Eric all winced. “Eric, when you get the armory open, I want you to do a full inventory, after that you’re with me as backup. Until then, Elena, you’re with me. We’re going through the passengers again, full interviews.” He paused and looked over at Santangel, “Oh, Michael, good work, you’re part of the crew now. You can move your kit into the crew quarters.”
Simon gave the Captain a nod. “I’ll show him where to put his things.”
Run walked forward to Mike, “You will follow me to my lab now or I will be forced to use my command voice. I will not allow unidentified nanotech to infect my control population.”
Simon really didn’t want to listen to the Chxor’s shrill, shrieking ‘command voice’ after everything else he had been through. Exhaustion had put a haze over everything and he had almost hit the point where he no longer cared that there was an as yet unidentified killer aboard. He looked over at Santangel and gave a nod towards the hatch.
He almost made it before Run’s voice kicked in, “I INSIST YOU MUST IMMEDIATELY PROCEED TO MY LAB-” The hatch closed on the rest. Thank god the Ghornath build good soundproofing, he thought, and I’m not the Captain and don’t have to put up with that crap.
* * *
”It is strange,” Michael said as he put away his things in a crew locker.
“What?” Simon asked, from flat on his back. He had offered to help the other man move his things, but Michael had politely declined. Simon had laid down. He had stared at the bulkhead, in an attempt to will himself to sleep, but his mind see
med unable to rest. Nothing like a complex puzzle to keep me awake, he thought.
Michael shrugged, “On my way back up here with my things, I spoke with Eric and Rastar.” Simon looked over at the tone of confusion in the other man. “Pixel has opened the armory and they already completed the inventory, but there is a weapon missing, a submachine gun.”
Simon sat up, “What?” He frowned, “That doesn’t make sense. I took my pistol, Elena took that Chxor pistol. You didn’t even go inside. Hell, did an inventory before we took our weapons, just to see if anyone else was armed… all the submachine guns were there.” It wasn’t hard to miss those, they only had three, he knew.
“Yes, my friend, a fact of which I am well aware,” Michael said. “For that matter, no one else could get in, not until Pixel unlocked it, and Eric, Rastar, and Ariadne were there. As I said… strange.”
Simon felt a sudden dark suspicion. “At the lounge… when I mentioned Bastien. Where did Elena go?”
Michael looked up, “She said that Mike had asked her to get the next person for his interviews.”
“Yes, but he was arguing with the Ambassador, at the time. He all but told me that he’d be at it for a while, why would he send her for someone else?” Simon asked. He pursed his lips, “And then there’s the bounties… she’s a bounty hunter, but she didn’t say a word about those bounties when I read them off. No shock, no surprise…”
Michael nodded slowly, “She did seem very calm.”
“That’s a lot of money, even I might find myself daydreaming about that kind of payoff… if I let myself,” Simon said. “So our resident bounty hunter, who might well have been carrying a chip with a bounty list just like we found on Crowe’s computer…”
“Or might have given it to him?” Michael suggested.
“…or might have given it to him,” Simon said. “She was near Bastien when he was killed.” He felt his body go cold. “She was the only one who saw Ghost.” He turned to the console and toggled up the intercom. “The Captain is doing the interviews in the lounge, this time, right?”
“I believe so,” Michael said.
“Captain, this is Simon, I need to talk to you, right now,” Simon said over the intercom.
“Can it wait?” Mike sounded distracted.
“No, I think I know who our murderer is,” Simon said. He wished he had some way to know if Elena was in the compartment with Mike. I should contact Eric and Rastar as well, he thought. The lounge was close, maybe he should have gone there in person.
“Ah, that would be why Elena has a gun pointed at me.” Mike said.
Simon felt his blood go cold. His hands activated a relay to the armory and he hoped that it would override whatever entertainment that Rastar and Eric had on. “Elena…”
“What, you wish to ask why?” She laughed. “Because they deserve it, because they are criminals, people that deserve death… and because the pay is very good.”
“Let’s talk about this,” Simon said.
“Please don’t waste my time, da?” Her voice was cold. “I know the one hostage didn’t work well for Crowe and the whole ship didn’t work well for Ghost. I won’t try a losing tactic. Any last words, Mike?”
There was a shout, and then the sound of gunfire.
* * *
Simon raced down the corridor. He skidded to a halt outside the lounge. He still heard the muted sound of gunfire from within. He saw the hatch to the ladder well open only a few meters away, Eric and Rastar, both with drawn weapons, came out at a run. Clearly they’d received the message.
Simon ducked low and opened the hatch and then rolled inside. He put his back to the buffet table and heaved. Plastic cups and dishes flew and the metal trays rattled as it toppled over on its side.
A rattle of gunfire and the sharp whine of ricochets signaled that someone didn’t like his intrusion. A glance to the side showed Mike, huddled behind the bullet-torn couch. Water leaked from a few stray bullet holes in the huge aquarium behind him. Simon put his head around the table. He saw a hint of motion at the back of the room, near the door. “Elena, surrender. Everyone else knows it was you. Eric and Rastar are already here, you can’t take the whole ship by yourself.”
“Nyet, but I can go down fighting, da?” She let loose a roar of gunfire into the bulkhead behind Simon and Mike, too keep their heads low, he guessed. As water splashed his back from the holes, Simon bit back a curse. No, he realized, not the bulkhead, the aquarium.
Simon leapt over the table and landed atop another. A glance behind him showed that Rastar and Eric had just begun to come through the hatch. Behind them, dozens of holes leaked water, and the entire crystoplass wall was stared and cracked. The aquarium wall shattered. A wall of water — filled with one very irate Arcavian Fighting Eel — washed across the lounge. Much of it went right out the door and carried Rastar and Eric with it. Mike gave a shriek as the water dragged him away as well. Simon clung to the top of the table as the water lifted it up and then slammed it down again. He almost managed to surf the wave, but the table rolled and Simon lost his grip. The water slammed him into the bar, where he clung desperately as the water surged through the room.
Simon bounced to his feet as soon as the water began to recede. He waded through the water to the back door and palmed it open. The surge of dirty water spilled into the corridor beyond, but no gunfire came to meet him. The back door led directly to a set of corridors that connected with the bridge lift, the rear airlock, and the passenger quarters. She could reach the rest of the ship, through going up or down, as well, but Simon felt that she wouldn’t. She’d chosen this exit for a reason… just as she’d chosen her other actions with caution and care. She even got close to me to find out what I knew, he thought, and to turn me against the rest of the crew.
That thought galled him and as he drew his pistol from his back holster, his knuckles were white from the clench. He had trusted her… and she’d manipulated that trust to endanger people who had deserved better from him. She had manipulated him into the position where he had no choice but to kill Crowe.
Simon stalked forward, pistol at the low ready. Some part of him wanted nothing more than to shoot Elena down like the murderess deserved. This is not me, he thought, I care about law and order, right and wrong, Justice, not vengeance.
He forced himself to take calm breaths. Memories of his training at the Confederation Security Bureau’s Academy on Greenfall came back to him. Oaths, which had seemed so important then, seemed so abstract and distant now. Elena was a killer, worse, she was one who had the law on her side, she had killed criminals. That didn’t make it right, but it made it legal, if she could prove that she had done so in the performance of her bounty contracts. But now, with the whole ship against her, what would she do?
Hide, Simon thought, that’s what the guilty always try to do… hide. He gave a quick nod, if she’d chosen this exit for a reason, it was because it was the shortest route to the rear airlock. From there, she could work her way along the outside of the ship to the Wrethe Prowler. She could secure the small craft and hold it against attacks until they reached civilized space. With a radio, she could make her case to whatever authorities they met. An outsider, who didn’t know the exact circumstances… they might rule in her favor or at least give her a chance to escape, he thought.
He hurried along the corridor to the rear airlock, pistol held low. He stopped outside. The inner hatch still lay open, she hadn’t yet cycled it. Simon brought his pistol up, no longer filled with rage, but willing to use lethal force to stop her. He felt his heart beat faster, he had already taken one person’s life today… would he add another to that tally?
A cold prick of metal against his throat made him freeze. “Simon,” Elena purred, “A shame you got caught up in all this, you’re the only one who doesn’t deserve to die.” She pressed against him, hard and angular in an armored vacuum suit as she reached around him and pulled the gun from his fingers.
Simon felt sweat bead his fo
rehead. “If you planned to kill me, you would have done it already.”
She gave a slight chuckle as she backed away. A glance over his shoulder showed she had his pistol aimed at him. She also wore Ghost’s armor. “I didn’t plan any of this last part… well, not except as an emergency contingency. My plan was to get the others to turn on one another, let the criminals do the work, da? You all surprised me, really, both with how thoroughly you searched, and at how you refused to fight among yourselves.”
“What can I say, honor among thieves?”
“Ha, very amusing,” Elena said. “Into the airlock.” He walked forward. As he did, he saw a device, with a number of wires and plastic containers, all lashed together with tape, was attached to the outer airlock door. Great, he thought, Eric and Pixel have been at it again. She saw the expression on his face. “Da, it seems that Mike’s telltales were a bit more… thorough than I’d like. But you have explosives knowledge, so you will fix it.” She sighed, “Really, I wish I could have brought you in on this…”
“Murder, mayhem, extortion?”
“No.” She toggled the inner airlock door closed. “A big payday for making the universe a better place, erasing scum that don’t deserve to live. You read those bounties… Anubus alone is a threat that shouldn’t be allowed to live. He has killed hundreds, Simon, hundreds. Eric is a killer, he’s killed cops, bounty-hunters, mercs… you don’t get a bounty like his from being a mall cop, either, whatever ‘private security’ stuff he did, it was dirty.” She locked the inner hatch.
Simon’s stomach roiled, yet some part of him understood her. Anubus was a threat, he would agree, and Eric’s shady past bothered him too… but not enough to murder them, not in cold blood. “What about Crowe, why kill him?”
She chuckled, “I didn’t kill Crowe, remember? That was all you.”
“Answer the question,” Simon growled.
“Get to work on your friends’ toy first,” she said. She tossed him a multi-tool.
Simon knelt down and began his examination. Pixel and Eric were what he would term ‘talented amateurs’ which meant, in reality, that they were more dangerous to experts than other experts. Expert explosives handlers did things carefully, by the book, and they basically put things together to a standard, every time. This thing looked like Pixel and Eric had cobbled it together from whatever scraps they found lying around. “I’m not sure that I can disarm this,” Simon said.