Murder on the Orion Express

by Nate Streeper

  There was also that associate. Harper. I couldn’t help feeling like I knew him from somewhere. Combine that with the odd exchange with the sexdoll in the red dress, and my gut was doing flip-flops for attention.

  Rule #1 of being a private detective: Always trust your gut.

  Especially when it was full of stew.

  Dejah came back and placed three hecto-goola chips on the table, along with more stew in a to-go container. She sat back down and looked dreamily out the window, speaking to herself more than to me.

  “My husband’s a good man.”

  ∙ • ∙

  It was late when I got back to my studio. I discovered Alice in my bed with the blankets all the way up to her neck.

  “Hey,” she said.

  “Hey,” I replied. “You cold? There’s a wall heater I can turn on.”

  “Cold? Oh no, that’s okay. I’m bundled up because I didn’t toss any pajamas in my carry on. Kind of embarrassing, what I’ve got going on under here.”

  I remembered the lingerie and tried to shot-put the image from my brain. I landed a container on the nightstand next to Alice, took Listic out of my pocket and nervously placed her in her cradle.

  “What’s that?”

  “My ORB. Occipital Roaming Bot. Everyone’s got one here on Fillion, kind of a poor man’s cyberjack.”

  She cocked her head and furrowed her brow. I explained further.

  “We don’t have the hypernet at our disposal on these backwater planets, so rather than having a retinal implant, we just carry these around with us. Some people even opt to have their biological eye removed so that they can lodge their ORB directly in their socket. Being an Orion boy at heart, I prefer to keep my eye intact and carry my ORB in my pocket.”

  “No, not that. I know what an ORB is. I meant that!” She emphatically pointed at the container.

  “Oh. That’s stew. You can have it. It’s my bonus check.”

  She lifted her eyebrows. “It must be really good stew.”

  I sat down in my easy chair and took off a shoe. “Actually, it’s not bad.”

  “Hey, are you really going to sleep over there? You’ll get a kink in your neck. I trust you, you know. Plenty of room in your bed.”

  That ain’t happening.

  “I’m going to take a shower,” I said as I took off my other shoe, “and then I’m going to sleep in this chair.”

  “That’s ridiculous. This is your place. You should sleep in your own bed. I’ll take the chair.” She sat up straighter. The blanket dropped a little, allowing for a glimpse of black lace with red trim.

  I swallowed hard. “Listen, I’m sleeping in this chair. I’m sleeping in this chair, and you’re sleeping in that bed.”

  She lay back, again. “Fine.” She looked around the room. “So you still collect all these art boxes with movies in them?”

  “PDUs. Yeah. Discs, mostly.”

  “They take up a lot of space.” She eyed my Sony flatscreen. “Remind me what that thing is you watch them on? I remember you had it at Margo’s.”

  “It’s an old type of monitor. They called it a television.”

  “So why don’t you use a holoprojector like everyone else? I know they use those on Fillion. This planet isn’t that backwards.”

  “Holoprojectors don’t isolate the scenes the same way. They don’t present movies in the format they were originally intended.”

  She paused to reflect on my answer. “I guess I gotta respect that.” A rogue curl of blue hair fell across her face. She stuck her bottom lip out and blew it out of the way. “Still, what’s the point of just watching a story? Don’t you want to interact with the characters? Be a part of it?”

  “Not really.”

  “But what could you get out of it, if you can’t interact with it? If you’re not involved?”

  “Oh, you’re involved,” I said. “Maybe not with the outcome of the story. But you’re still involved. Emotionally invested, if it’s done right.”

  “Huh.” She looked at the television. “Play movie,” she commanded. Nothing happened.

  “It doesn’t work that way. There’s a remote...” I gestured to my nightstand.

  She looked past the container of stew and grabbed the remote, aimed it at the TV with one hand while holding the blanket up to her neck with the other, and pressed a random assortment of buttons. Nothing happened.

  “You have to press power, first.”

  “Where’s power?”

  “It’s on the top. It’s the red button labeled ‘Power.’”

  She scrutinized the stick. “I’m pressing that one.”

  “Aim it at the TV when you press it.”

  “Aim at the what?”

  “The TV—the television.”

  “I am, Alan.”

  “When you press it.”

  “I’m pressing it! I’m aiming at it and I’m pressing it! Oh my god, this is so archaic.”

  “Hold on.” I reached way over to my right, barely managing to keep my ass in my chair, and pressed the power button on the TV itself. It made the submerged popping noise I’d grown so accustomed to, then a high-pitched whine. The screen grew steadily brighter. “Remote must need a recharge. Set it back down, let it touch Listic’s cradle. It should make that little light glow, then you’ll know it’s charging.”

  She did. “Where do you get this stuff, anyway?”

  “Remy’s.” I waved a hand toward my collection. “Okay, so the movies are kind of arranged thematically on the shelves. The ones on the ground aren’t in any particular order. Sorry, I know it’s a mess. Space issues. Anyway, I’ve got comedies, dramas, action flicks... If you want a real trip, check out the sci-fi stuff. Some of the ideas they had back then were pretty ridiculous. A recurring storyline is that humans keep encountering aliens who try to take over the Earth.”

  “Why would aliens want to take over the Earth?”

  “I know, right?”

  “I mean, wouldn’t the aliens already have their own planet?”

  “One would think.” I stood up slowly. “When in doubt, just watch Blade Runner.”

  “What’s the latest one you’ve got?”

  “Considering it came out in 2027, it’s anything but recent. But it would be Star Wars Episode XII, on Blu-ray 16K Ultra-Ultra HD. Third shelf down.” I gestured toward it. “Commonly believed to be the last PDU ever made. Only it wasn’t. There were actually two more discs made after that. A how-to video on upholstery care, and SpongeBob SquarePants Meets Mr. Snuggles.”

  Alice looked blankly at me. “You’re such a weirdo.”

  “Thank you.”

  She looked back at the television, then scooted over to one side of the bed and patted the space on her right. “C’mere. You can’t see the tele-thingy from over there. Pick something out, we’ll watch it together.” She let the blanket fall a bit as she grabbed the container of stew. Black lingerie.

  I thought of real flesh and dark temptations. I thought of Margo and Dirk. I thought of Dejah, and her husband, and the kind of man I wanted to be.

  “Hey listen, I’m taking a shower, okay? Enjoy your movie, and your stew. Sporks are in the top drawer, next to the refrigerator.”

  “Suit yourself,” she said.

  I closed the bathroom door. What followed was a very cold shower. This time, by choice.

  4

  Shuttle Run

  Alice and I stood in front of Fillport’s main holoboard in disbelief. Her duffel bag hung in her left hand as limply as her jaw hung on her face as she watched the following words scroll by.

  FILLION to NEW GAIA - SHUTTLE 2117 to Orion Express

  OVERBOOKED - OUTSTANDING BOARDING PASSES VOID

  “Fuck,” she said.

  I didn’t really have anything to add to that. She’d summed it
up nicely.

  I scanned the listings for an alternate. Shuttle 2117 wasn’t the only ship taking passengers to the Orion Express. There’d be other passenger liners...

  “Overbooked?” she went on. “What’s with the overbooking? I should have just spent the night in the spaceport. That must have been what everyone else did. At least, the ones who made it on board. Why do they overbook flights, anyway? It’s totally unfair. I mean, my ticket’s paid for, already. How do they get away with this shit?”

  I continued scanning the board. Who was I fooling? Nothing legit was available. Every shuttle said the same thing: overbooked, passes void. Because of all the cancelled flights, the Orion Express found itself overwhelmed with spillover. Unless you were already on a shuttle, you were stuck on Fillion waiting for the next giant starship cruiser to come along for its scheduled subgate jump. At least a couple days.

  There was no way I could handle another night with Alice.

  An obvious option occurred to me. There was plenty of black market potential on the freight schedule. About thirty flights not technically approved by Interlock for passenger allotment were staggered among the glyphs. I refocused my eyes to look through the holoboard toward the freight bay terminal in the distance, at the far end of the main vestibule. It came as no surprise that dozens of spaceport refugees were already flowing toward it.

  “Come on. We’re getting you on freight.” I marched through the holoboard.

  “What?” She hustled to catch up. “Freight? The hell? I’m not excess baggage, you know.”

  I let out a laugh.

  “Well, I’m not,” she added. She matched my pace and looked straight ahead as she talked. “Seriously, what gives? Why is everyone heading there all of a sudden?”

  “It’s like this, on Fillion. Of course, the majority of people who arrive or depart here do so on the cruisers themselves. They either buy access to the full cruise area, with all the special froufrou amenities like floating swimming pools, tiki bars, and massage parlors, or they opt for the passenger compartments. But a significant number go freight, even though it generally costs more, and the flight conditions aren’t as good.”

  “How come?

  “Sometimes they have a trail to hide, sometimes they’re just desperate.” I glanced at her. “In this case, I’d say we’re the latter.”

  “Fair enough.”

  The crowd became denser as we neared the freight terminal. Everyone collectively funneled through an access hallway. People cut each other off, stepped on toes, and acted generally belligerent.

  After a noticeable hesitation, Alice asked, “So... What’s with the flight conditions?”

  “Well, you know all those ugly, privately owned freighters that attach themselves to the backend of the cruisers? We’ll be lodging in the cargo area of one of those.”

  “Like, in a transport trailer?”

  “Something like that.”

  “Fantastic.”

  “Anyway, freight transit still goes through Interlock Security, but the passenger detail never makes it to GalactiCop. Or SpaceFleet, for that matter—which, being the ultimate military authority on all cross-cluster commerce, comes down to willful ignorance. Thanks to some politically acquired loopholes, Interlock gets to list people as ‘meat product’. Tariffs are lower, too. They bankroll the difference.”

  “How do you know all this?”

  “Interlock Security,” I said. “I used to work for them.”

  “After you were kicked out of GalactiCop.”

  I let the sting pass. “Something like that.”

  A few people edged past us as we bottlenecked through the tube. Elbows jutted into inappropriate places. Personal space became conceptually void.

  Eventually the clot broke, and the tube opened up to a giant hanger bay. A dome covered the entire affair, but was bisected into two hemispheres. On our side, a tarnished copper ceiling with structural seams of fluorescent light stretched above us; on the other side, a one-way translucent field kept out Fillion’s dull grey atmosphere, yet still allowed the freighters to take off.

  Passenger shuttles needed to look pretty from the outside; freighters just needed to get the job done. Ships of all shapes and sizes, yet universally ugly, littered our field of vision, towering above a swirling cloud of steam and smoke. There were monstrous brown and rusty bastards that amounted to coagulated bulkhead. There were black and blue behemoths that sprouted jagged, crude antenna. And finally, there were the freighters, the smaller jobs that transported giant megacrates full of smaller cargo crates between ship and planet.

  A number of freighters had megacrates permanently fashioned to their underbelly as a means of expanding their habitable cabin, the space-worthy equivalent of giant, shoddy haulers with imbedded passenger compartments. With any luck, I’d put Alice on one of those.

  Everyone rushed out in every which way toward the motley collection of freighters dotting the far perimeter. Bidding wars were already underway near the bay’s communal loading platform. Bargains were struck, deals were brokered. It was the usual crowded bazaar, although this time there were more of the galaxy’s finest among the plebeians. But as wealthy as they were, this was not their turf. My exchange of favors back at The Boneyard, wholly successful or not, was not an isolated affair. On the backwater planets, favors counted more than goola. And I knew a guy who owed me one.

  Alice observed the expansion of her personal bubble as people rushed to the platform. “Um, shouldn’t we hurry up, now?”

  I walked at a casual pace, scanning the ships in the distance. A lime green luggage cart sped past us, blaring its obnoxious toy horn, cutting us off. I stopped short and considered giving the driver the finger as it sped on, but then I noticed it was rapidly approaching the very ship I’d been looking for.

  The Century Pigeon towered on its launchpad in the backdrop, large and grey and bloated, the ugliest freighter under the dome. Two thirds of the ship amounted to an enormous, cubic megacrate that was permanently affixed to its belly. The remaining portion, being the pilot’s compartment and tail engines, gave it the look of a land-locked bird with a neck injury.

  “No need. I got it covered.”

  She looked up at me and squinted. “And what do you know that they don’t?”

  “Not what. Who. I know Dave.”

  “You know Dave?”

  I set course for the Pigeon. “I know Dave.”

  ∙ • ∙

  Dave and I went back a bit. I shared the occasional shift with him—not to mention the occasional drink—when I worked for Interlock Security. The guy was a little off, and possessed very little in the way of a verbal filter. But he’d do anything for a friend.

  The crowd nearest the Pigeon was substantial, but I hung back while the bidding commenced. Dave was center stage in his blue and gold uniform, his ORB circling his head, acting the role of blow horn as it synced to his vocals.

  “That’s five-thousand goola,” he said like a hammed up gala auctioneer. “Do I hear six-thousand? Six-thousand, anyone...” A finer citizen raised his hand. Dave ignored him. “That’s five-thousand going once...” The finer citizen began waving his hand. “Five-thousand going twice...” The finer citizen was now thoroughly annoyed. “...And, sold! Sold, for five-thousand goola, to the man in black.”

  A man wearing a dirty black trenchcoat and a shifty demeanor, the typical riffraff who frequented Fillion for its less cultured amenities, walked past Dave and into the Pigeon’s airlock, handing off goola chips on the way. Dave looked out on the crowd, noticed me, and tossed me a wink.

  “Well, that’s a wrap, people. May the rest of you enjoy another night on fine Fillion, home of Dan’s Genetically Modified Steak House.”

  “Hey, you said there was another seat available!” someone yelled.

  “You heard me wrong.”

  He disengaged his OR
B’s amplifier and allowed it to halo as he walked back to the ship’s drop plate. A few people gave him the gesture to go fuck himself—a gesture with slight variation depending on one’s planet of origin, yet universally recognized. I especially liked the Foondarian’s gesticulation, which incorporated a twisting motion of the pinky finger.

  Dave easily ignored them. A moment later, they dispersed to try their luck on other freighters.

  “So,” Alice said. “You didn’t even bid. How am I supposed to get on, now?”

  Dave threw on a smile and held his hand out as I approached. Something about his behavior appeared forced. He certainly wasn’t expecting to see me, and it showed.

  “Alan Blades. Been awhile. You miss your days with Interlock? Or are you finally heading offworld?”

  “Dave.” I shook his hand, and then my head. “Nah, you know I love it here. But I have an offworlder in need of offworlding.” I shrugged toward Alice.

  He looked over at her and smiled even bigger. “You don’t say.”

  “Don’t even think about it, Dave. She’s like my sister.”

  “Yeah, we’re like, related, or something,” she added.

  He furrowed his brow and gave me an overly serious expression. “Of course, of course. You know she’s safe with me. I got room for one more. She’s on board.”

  I handed him six thousand of Margo’s goola. Something caught my eye in the Pigeon’s airlock as I did so. My Galacticop training kicked in and I took note of Alice’s soon to be shipmates, a rather suspicious looking bunch, even by Fillion standards. Flying along with my ex-wife’s sister would be:

  A creepy guy in a dirty black trenchcoat who kept his head tucked down and his collar up.