The princess stepped toward me, finger outstretched in accusation as she shouted in the suddenly quiet room. “Arrest the captain. She’s a murderer!”
CHAPTER EIGHT
I should have been shocked, leaping to my feet to scream my innocence, but instead, I found myself laughing.
Whatever reaction Vanessa had expected, that wasn’t it, and she shifted uncomfortably before continuing her attack. “She doesn’t deny it. Arrest her. Turn her over to my king for justice.”
Whatever rage that skipped me seemed to have landed squarely on James’s shoulders. “Stand down! This is my investigation.” His face was practically scarlet, and his voice echoed in the metal room.
She turned to him with narrowed eyes. “If you could do your job properly, I would not need to do it for you. She’s a criminal. We all know it. Now she’s killed a passenger, and no one will do a thing about it.”
I stood up slowly and started to approach her. Maybe I was in the middle of a mental breakdown, but I suddenly felt far calmer than I should have given the circumstances. “The lady doth protest too much.”
She obviously wasn’t familiar with Shakespeare. “What does that mean?”
James stepped in front of me. “Vanessa, you’re out of line. This is a fleet vessel, and no fleet officer will be subject to any court except our own.”
It was hardly a comforting statement, but it got under Vanessa’s skin. Her face turned a deeper shade of blue until it was almost black.
The younger woman placed a hand on her shoulder. “Sister, please.”
The taller male stepped in front of her. “Va’nes’sa, daughter of the Venom Keeper, future wife of the king of Cerulea, future empress of communications with other planets, I must request that we leave. I will escort you to your room to rest.”
With each honorific, she seemed to relax more, as if they were a balm to her soul. By the end of his litany, her face had returned to her normal shade of blue. She took his offered arm to leave.
James watched them go before turning back to me. “Does this ship go any faster?”
I had opened my mouth to answer when alarms sounded. My work unit buzzed, and a light flashed in the corner of my eye. Before I could move, the ship rocked hard to one side and flung me on James.
CHAPTER NINE
By the time I managed to get back on my feet, my gut felt twisted from the scent of James filling my nose. While I knew he was no longer the man I loved, he still tore at me.
Raph raced by, slowing just enough to shout at me, “The engine room!”
Adrenaline quickly overrode my memories. I had been thrown directly starboard. There could be a couple of reasons for that, and none were good.
I fell in step with Raph in an eerie reminder of racing to the site of the murder. Had that been twelve hours ago? Twenty-four hours? Forty-eight? Being unmoored from my schedule and in the middle of a crisis had left my handle on time a bit slippery. We followed the same path, but instead of Chloe heaving next to me, it was James. His footsteps were heavy, which wasn’t surprising given his bulk.
Raph pulled ahead of us as we hit the stairs, but I refused to fall behind James while on my own ship. My side screamed, and a burning sensation that started at my not-yet-healed wound was crawling down my leg and up to my neck. A cold, clammy feeling was spreading over my face, and I was worried I might faint. When the ship rocked again, another wave of adrenaline kicked in. The alarms were still sounding, and the work unit on my leg continued to buzz, a reminder I ignored despite the fact that it would grow in frequency until I turned it off.
Whatever the alerts were saying couldn’t be more urgent than the flashing lights and alarms blaring. I slid to a stop in front of the engine room, one hand on the outer wall. It was hot and getting hotter. Heat was radiating from the open door. Flames licked out of the engine grating. I could see Horton lying facedown on the floor. He was perfectly still, his skin black in the glow of the flames.
“Initiate the override!” I screamed.
Raph shouted something back, but I couldn’t hear him over the alarms.
I took a step toward the door, and James grabbed my arm. “You can’t go in there. Seal it and save the living.”
He was right. That was proper protocol. It was too much of a risk to go in after Horton. It was a fool’s errand to even try.
I shook James off and ducked through the door. Horton was part of my crew. And I wasn’t leaving without him.
CHAPTER TEN
Two steps into the room, half the distance to Horton, and I knew I couldn’t do it. It took everything in me to force my body to keep advancing, knowing there was no way I was going to have anything left to haul Horton out. He had to be thrice my size.
I grabbed one of his thick gnarled hands and leaned back, pulling him from the fire toward the door. The heat radiating off him made me fight my instinct to let go. I tugged him in a jerky motion, relying on my body weight to leverage him across the floor. Pain screamed through me. In the split second I had left before I collapsed, I wondered if this last heroic act would be enough to atone for my failures. Would I be remembered for this or for the crimes I didn’t commit?
I fell backward when Horton’s body suddenly jerked past me. A looming figure pulled him toward the door. Someone had the back of my shirt, but I was too weak to even assist in my own rescue. My lungs couldn’t pull in the hot air anymore, and my limbs were dead weight.
I was a loose ragdoll as I was dragged across the floor and finally dumped out into the hallway. The door to the engine room slammed shut the moment my feet cleared the threshold. The cold air was shocking, and shaking wracked me, but the sensations were far away. My body was becoming foreign to me, and my lungs refused to move.
Time seemed to stretch and shift, reminding me of the time in training when I had experienced near-light-speed travel in an old-school rocket, the outdated method used for travel before intraspace travel was developed. The universe had expanded and contracted around me for an eternity or a thousandth of a second.
While I was in that state, a face appeared in front of me. The eyes intently stared, and a voice boomed. I knew the eyes. They were comforting and important, but I had no idea who they belonged to. I vaguely knew that the sounds meant something, but I couldn’t seem to translate the noise I heard into anything understandable. A moment later, a cold mist enveloped my body, and there was a mild jolt to my system.
Slowly, my consciousness settled back into me, and the noises around me coalesced into meaning.
James barked out orders, his voice harder than I had ever heard it. “I don’t care what it says. I’m shutting it all down!”
Raph appeared in my field of vision. “Hey, Cap, you gave us quite a scare. When I saw the officer pulling you and Horton out, I thought you were both dead. But we got you sorted out. Mostly.”
I shifted, and every part of me from my skin down to my bones ached. My mouth tasted of garlic, a sure sign that a painkiller had been administrated. I brought my hand to my face so I could look at it. The skin was tender and hot but all there. My hand had a silver shimmer that I knew was the medication used to treat burns. I appeared to be in one piece, so I struggled to roll over and look for Horton.
Chloe was kneeling next to Horton, who lay a few feet away. His skin was black, and bits had flaked off him and lay on the metal floor. She pulled his head into her lap as she cried over him. Stroking his smooth head caused scales to float to the ground like black feathers.
“Horton,” she whispered while moving the scanner over his body. The unit beeped in protest, and she growled and slammed the screen with her other hand.
Horton groaned and moved, the darkened skin splitting and sheeting off. “Oy, my head.” He raised a hand to his face.
I fully rolled over and crawled to him on all fours. “Horton! Are you okay?” He turned his head toward me, but I couldn’t see his amber eyes as a black cloud covered his irises.
His long, thin tongue flicked o
ut and across each eye, removing the cataracts to reveal bright-red eyes. “I’ll be okay soon enough. I just need to get to my room and molt off all the burned bits. I was overdue. I’m going to be fresh as a daisy but sore as a cracked tooth.” He struggled to rise to a kneeling position, shifting around to bring his tail behind him without bending it sideways. His skin flaked off in large sheets, exposing the neon green underneath.
I had never seen him fresh from a skin shed since he used his vacation time to rest in his room, but I had previously noted that the green tint of his scales was brighter when he returned.
I was still shaky but moved to his side, overcome by guilt. “I’m so sorry, Horton. The safety override system must have malfunctioned. This is all my fault. I should have…” I let my voice fade out. I had no idea that the ship had genuine safety issues. I would have been able to overcome my concerns with contacting fleet if I had known. Wouldn’t I?
Horton shook his head. He struggled to open his hand, which gripped a jumbled mess of metal. “It was sabotage.” Finally, he let go, and the metal fell to the floor and broke apart into what I recognized as fire-blackened tools.
I picked up a wrench then dropped it when it burned my hand. “I don’t understand. How do you know it was sabotage?”
“I found those stuffed into the grate of the engine. I was able to grab a few out, burned my paw something awful, but then I saw the rest of my toolbox had been thrown in too. I went over to see why the shut-down override was off. Sometimes, the ladies that clean the area turn it off on accident, but the screen was shattered. The last thing I remember was trying to make it to the hallway when something blew, and I was knocked to the ground. I thought I was a goner.”
Chloe threw her arms around Horton. “Liz saved you! Then James saved you both! I thought you were both dead.”
“Senior Officer Markswell,” snapped James. His whole face and both of his hands shimmered.
I ignored him and focused on Horton. “Are you sure?” I knew he wouldn’t lie as I hadn’t seen even a hint of dishonestly in him since we had been working together.
“Absolutely. I have been double- and triple-checking things since… uh… Senior Officer Markswell asked if I could get this old ship moving any faster. I did a full run of systems checks a few hours ago. Got out my tools to try some old-fashioned fiddling when Raph asked me to come to the dining hall for some grub and an important conversation. I wasn’t gone more than thirty minutes.”
I nodded, the facts of the situation all sliding into place in my brain. While I had, at first at least, been willing to leave the investigation to the fleet officers, my crew was at risk. This was personal.
James was also keenly interested in our exchange. “Who would have access to the engine room?”
I suppressed a groan as another wave of guilt rolled over me. “Anyone on the ship probably. The key system has been broken for…” I looked to Raph.
He shrugged. “At least twenty round trips. It was dodgy for a dozen or so before that, so I got a friend to get a workaround. But it finally broke. Sorry to say that anyone could get in if they knew where the room was.”
James’s jaw shifted from side to side, which I knew meant he was in deep thought, working on a theory. I was opening my mouth to ask about what he thought when Officer Halston joined us.
She looked at my motley crew with only passing interest, which was a big step up from the normal disdain she had shown me every other time she saw me. She turned all her attention to James. “Senior Officer Markswell, I secured the remaining crew and passengers, but we have an issue.”
“Get on with it,” said James. “What’s wrong?”
“I couldn’t find the three females designated as custodial staff. I was told that they had taken tea to their rooms. I went to get them, and…” She swallowed awkwardly before continuing flatly. “They’re dead.”
CHAPTER ELEVEN
I paced my room, hoping that the movement of my legs would magically make my brain come up with answers. My ship was floating aimlessly in space, and James had pulled rank to lock us down in our rooms until backup could arrive to evacuate us and tow the ship to whatever docking station they wanted to use to continue the investigation.
But I wasn’t going to sit around and wait. If I sat, I would go to sleep, but it wouldn’t be restful. The nightmares were waiting. Even on my best night, I had dreams of being chased through crowds of people that couldn’t hear me or trying to find something dearly important that was missing. Those were stressful, and I would wake to find my shoulders tied in knots.
If I could just stay up long enough, I would slide into a dreamless, exhaustive sleep. My body was screaming for it. Between the fall and my rescue attempt, pain radiated with every step. I hadn’t slept well in days. Hot and cold were coming in waves as my body struggled to maintain a consistent temperature.
I needed to lie down but just not yet. I wished I had access to my work unit to study the passenger and crew lists. James had not only taken all of them but also locked out all technology from accessing the ship’s computers. I should have downloaded everything earlier, but who would ever think of doing that? Connection lockouts were virtually unheard of.
I was left with just my brain to sort it out, but there were almost no details. My thoughts were ephemeral, like little birds flittering around. I needed to read something to clear my head, but instead of my tablet filled with novels, I veered to the small table next to the bed and picked up a small Bible. It was the only thing I had left from my parents.
My mother had given it to me when I had gone to Earth for advanced flight training. Dad would have given me his, but his chicken scratch filled the margins and was indecipherable. I’d laughed and taken Mom’s, but if I’d known it would be the last time I would see them, I would’ve taken both. Or never left at all.
The Bible was small, meant to fit into a uniform. Since our uniforms had pockets on the outside of both thighs to fit a work unit, the Bible could be slipped in the opposite pocket and kept close.
I opened to a verse that had given me comfort for years, but before I could read it, there was a quick rap on my door. It seemed sneaky, if that was possible for a knock, and I ran over to answer, sliding the Bible into my pocket as I grabbed my weapon from the side console near the door.
Fleet officers had dubbed it a banana—or ban, for short—so many decades ago that the official name was all but lost. The weapon was curved metal and looked exactly like the crescent-shaped fruit but thinner. At the top of my uniform pants was a sleeve in the waistband that I could slide the ban into, which was fine when I was up and active, but when I sat in the commander chair, it dug into my hipbone. After a few weeks, it pulled my whole lower back out of alignment. I switched sides then both sides hurt, and I had finally stopped wearing it except at destinations when I wanted to be prepared.
Given the number of murders, I decided I should be cautious. I moved the dial on the ban to a setting that would stun and incapacitate but wouldn’t be lethal. Pressing my thumb on it for three seconds, I locked in and activated the setting. James had said a full lockdown procedure, so only he and his law enforcement girlfriend would be able to move freely around the ship. I edged over to open the door, expecting James to have returned for more questioning but fearing it could be Officer Halston looking for another fight. They were the only two who would be able to unlock the door. It was neither. Instead, Raph and Chloe were huddled outside my door.
Raph pushed in past me. “Let us in before those dumb cops come by.” He said it with such insistence that I had let him in before I even thought to question him.
I shut the door behind him and flipped the lock. “What are you doing out of your room? Wait. How are you out of your room?”
Chloe walked around my room, eyeing everything in sight, which only took a few seconds. “The lock in my rock has always been screwed up, so I heard when the lockdown was disengaged. I left to get Raph, and his room was unlocked too. Then we grabbed
Horton.” She poked her head into my bathroom. “I didn’t know you had a bathtub.”
Raph grabbed the chair by the window, the only place to sit other than my bed. “Horton should be here any second. He had to grab something first. We need to come up with a plan.” He seemed ready to fight me if I disagreed.
I had no intention of doing that. “Great. We need to find out everything we can about the Ceruleans and the custodial crew that was killed. Where they were before this, where they are going, why they or someone sabotaged the ship? Is it to strand us here? For what purpose? Or did they intend to blow up the ship? There are so many possible answers, I don’t even know where to start.”
Chloe popped her head out of the bathroom, a bar of soap held under her nose. “I might be able to answer at least one of those questions.” She breathed in deeply, closing her eyes. “What is this?”
I did a quick guess as how to translate. Though I was fluent in Universal Language, I didn’t know every translation for all Earth plants, if there even was one. “Lilac. An Earth flower.”
“Like the color?”
“I believe, at least in English, that the pale-purple color lilac is named after the flower.”
Before I could say more, she disappeared then popped her head out again with a dark vial. “And this?”
I sighed as I had no idea how to translate Vitamin C. “It’s a liquid extracted from oranges and other citrus fruit. I put the liquid on my skin to keep it healthy.”
“Oranges?”
“A fruit. Very good on a hot day.”
“So all your colors come from fruits and flowers? Fascinating. What a strange little planet you have.”
I was growing impatient. “Not all colors and this is just English, one language from Earth. You can have both if you just get out here and explain what you meant when you said, ‘I can answer at least one question.’”
She slid the bar of soap and the vial into her pocket and headed over to press her face against my window. “I heard them talking when they took me to my room to lock me in. He didn’t realize how good my hearing is and—there! Come here and look.”
Space Murder Page 5