Murder on the Orion Express

by Nate Streeper

  “Okay, let’s go,” I said. Back to the trail of blood.

  Upon turning a final corner, I spotted on oddity where the blood stopped—or, should I say, where the blood started: a wooden crate, roughly the size of a small refrigerator on its side, had been broken into. Splintered planks of wood littered the floor. It didn’t look like the work of a vibroblade, nor a pair of vibroknuckles for that matter. It looked more like it had been torn open with a crowbar, or by a gravman from a mining colony in the Ruvellian Cluster.

  I realized this was the same area that I’d encountered Dave at when I caught up with him earlier. In fact, these were the same wooden crates I’d noticed him scrutinizing. I read the property label on the box: New Gaia, Parsec 17, Government Issue, Part E-33, XO. It was empty near the top, but I could barely make out something at the halfway mark...

  “No!” Listic screamed. She hovered above his desk in the corner. “Say it ain’t so!”

  “What is it?”

  “I was just getting to know him. We’d only transferred a few nanoseconds of info back at the dock, but it was enough for me to know. He was the one, Alan. My true love.”

  Dave’s ORB rested on the ground. Smashed.

  “I’m sorry for your loss,” I offered. Sometimes it was easier to simply go with it. “Any chance you can still sync with it? Grab a pic or two showing us who did this?”

  “There’s not much. Glitchy. Electrons dissipating. But I think this was the last thing he saw.”

  She threw a blurry image on the wall: a hulking man with an ugly mug, impossible to make out clearly. He didn’t look like anybody I’d seen on board this ship. It was possible the face was Bertle in disguise, but the body was twice his girth. The body seemed to belong to Ken Eggshot. Perhaps Bertle wasn’t the only one with profile augmentation implants...

  I focused back on the crate and decided to poke my head in, feeling rather prone in that position. Just as my eyes were adjusting, I felt someone breathing on my neck.

  “What is it?” asked a voice that wasn’t Listic’s.

  I yanked my head out, swung my fists around, and saw Alice pull back.

  “Whoa, Alan! Easy. It’s just me.”

  Simultaneously relieved and embarrassed, I took a deep breath and leaned back on the crate. It was as though Dave’s ghost had compelled her to scare me for old time’s sake.

  “I told you to stay back in our room!”

  “Yeah, well I got bored. Besides, what kind of GalactiCop position will I end up getting without prior experience? You need experience to get a job, but you need a job to get experience, you know? Consider me your intern. Except I don’t fetch coffee.”

  I looked around. “Where’d Listic go?”

  “I saw her floating around overhead. I think I heard her crying. Does she do that? Does she... cry?”

  “She taps into a spectrum of emotions I never knew existed.”

  Alice reached deep into the crate and pulled something out—a bendy tube with a brick of circuitry at its base, kind of like a snorkel, if a snorkel used electricity. “What the hell is this, anyway?”

  It did look familiar. I reached out and she handed it to me. Upon closer inspection, I saw a tiny plate on the bottom of its base: Max P-S 350.

  “A neutron conduit,” I said.

  Alice just looked at me. “A neutron wazzit?”

  “Conduit. One of the three requisite subgate components—along with arc conductors and Gyora-3 isotope. They’re pretty expensive, not normally shipped so carelessly. Usually in a titanium megacrate in the bowels of the cruiser’s main cargo bay, not in a wooden box on board a crappy freighter.”

  Talk about a potential motive for murder. A box full of neutron conduits would fetch millions of goola on the black market. Maybe billions.

  Ever since the horse and wagon—hell, ever since the calloused foot—geographical expansion proved to be humankind’s priority number one. Subgates provided the latest scale of transport, and the components that created them were top ticket items. If neutron conduits were combined with arc conductors and formed into a giant ring and fed a phase-surge of Gyora-3, a starship could dive beneath the surface of space. You just needed to point a ginormous cruiser in the right direction, fly through the subgate, and in a few days it would resurface thousands of light years away.

  Listic, her intuition chip finally kicking in, floated back down and turned on her spotlight so that we could peer into the hole more easily. Alice rummaged around.

  “Well, this is one high stakes box, then. There’s gotta be hundreds of these things in here.” She took her head out of the box and rubbed her arms rapidly up and down. Our adrenaline highs were wearing off and the cold was setting in.

  “Come on,” I said. “You can come with me to the crew compartment. It’ll be warmer in there.” We walked briskly toward the bow of the ship. The metal steps that led up to the compartment hatch were only thirty meters ahead of us when suddenly, from an aisle to our left, Bertle stormed out in front of us, wildly flailing his arms about in the air, wearing the thickest, gaudiest robe I’d ever seen. He was practically frothing at the mouth, like someone high on instaroids.

  “Fuck that bitch!” he said when he saw us, although it sounded more like he was carrying on a conversation with himself. “She can stick her script where the sun don’t shine.” Then he did an about face and began pacing back to where he came from. It appeared by his mannerisms that, despite the cold, he had been pacing that section of the floor for awhile—he didn’t have the look of someone with a destination in mind.

  I tried to think of something to say to convince Bertle to go back to his room without telling him we knew there was a killer on the loose, but nothing came to mind. It was obvious he was avoiding Donna, and his room was the last place he wanted to be. I didn’t feel comfortable suggesting he go to the mess hall, considering Ken Eggshot was currently my number one suspect, if for no other reason than looking creepy. And I certainly couldn’t send him to our room, since there was a dead body in it. Perhaps I could bring him along with us to bridge? No, that seemed like a bad idea too, on account of—

  “Bertle, get back in your room!” Listic blurted. “Dave’s been murdered!”

  Okay. So much for tact.

  Bertle turned right back around to face us. “Murdered? Excuse me, did you say murdered? Like as in Claudius and Hamlet and all of that?”

  Listic approximated a nod.

  “Alrighty, then,” he said, and tore off toward his room, screaming a bit louder as he went. “I’m sorry, Donna! I’m sorry! Unlock the door! Unlock the door!”

  Alice and I looked at each other and shrugged, then followed through on our journey. Warm air greeted us as we approached the giant iron hatch to the crew compartment. “Oh, thank god,” she said, rubbing her arms up and down again. “That feels so amazingly good.”

  I was about to stick Dave’s access card into the slot, then realized something wasn’t right. There shouldn’t be any warm air greeting us. Not yet. The door should have been sealed shut until I used the card.

  Someone else had gotten here first.

  ∙ • ∙

  I slowly opened the hatch all the way, looked at Alice, and put my finger to my lips. She crept in behind me. I assessed the possible scenarios involving the unlocked door. These hatches were notoriously difficult to crack, almost impossible. Either Dave had opened it earlier, or the crew members had used their own access cards to exit their quarters. Or a master hacker was on board.

  Was one of the crew members the killer? Perhaps the unrecognizable person in the image Listic grabbed from Dave’s ORB?

  Speaking of ORBs...

  “Listic, Off,” I whispered. She dropped into my hand before turning on her spotlight. There was no way I was letting her lead the way this round, especially after her shout-out to Bertle. This was more of a covert op. />
  The hallway was dark as hell, most likely a result of the compartment’s designation as “night time.” Simulating a rotating planet’s patterns of night and day helped keep the crew from going batty, being on board as frequently as they were. In fact, the lights gradually transitioned from light to dark, much like twilight, as night approached, to seem natural. Given how dark it was, it was well past twilight. I’d probably have to wake the crew up from a biorhythmic slumber.

  All we had to guide us were tracking lights that dotted the baseboard. They were so dim that if you looked right at them they’d disappear; they only seemed to emit any light at all if you gathered them within your peripheral vision. And the fact that the light came from below rather than above only served to make it seem that much eerier.

  “Stay close,” I whispered. “The cockpit’s at the far end.” Of the hallway to hell.

  We padded along, our eyes gradually adjusting, and I noticed some doors along the left and right sides of the corridor farther down. Probably their sleeping quarters, possibly their recreation room. As we approached, I heard a rhythmic, hydraulic chirp—the sound of a sliding door closing over and over again.

  I leaned against the wall and crept toward the door, stopping next to its frame. My eye caught an aberration in the baseboard line. Something stuck out of the doorway, resting on the ground. It kept the door from closing all the way, but being below the knee-high infrared beam, allowed the door to try closing again and again.

  Someone’s arm.

  I reached down for it, felt for a pulse. Nothing. The arm, and most likely whoever was attached to it, was lifeless. I stood back up, grabbed Dave’s vibroknuckles and put them on—something I probably should have done a long time ago. When the door opened again, I turned into the door frame, blocking the beam and causing it to remain open.

  Pitch black. A sickly-sweet odor met my nose, like rotten fruit. I reached back to find the light switch, found it, flipped it on. My eyes experienced a sharp pain from the sudden contrast in lighting. I shut them instantly, allowing for only a split-second glimpse of what appeared to be a run-down kitchenette. Based on the surprised yelp Alice make behind me, I imagined she shut hers, too.

  But as the afterimage quickly faded from my retina, I realized I had seen something else—there was another person in the room. A person wearing... black? Before I could force myself to open my eyes again, something thwapped me in the face—something flat and blunt and heavy.

  The lights in the room were still on, but my own lights went out.

  ∙ • ∙

  “Alan,” Margo said. “Alan, wake up.”

  Damn. I must have slept through the alarm again. Or perhaps I accidentally turned it off when I meant to press snooze. I was a snooze addict. I know, I know, they say don’t use snooze. Snooze sleep is like nothing sleep. It’s just a tease. Nine minutes is simply not enough time to dig back into that deep state that your brain really needs to rejuvenate, so you just keep postponing the inevitable in stupid nine minute intervals. Where did this nine minute bullshit come from, anyway?

  “Hit snooze,” I said lazily. “Hit snooze.”

  “Alan, wake up.”

  Crap. Margo was getting upset with me. I think I promised her a ride somewhere this morning. Must have been out too late last night. This hangover was awful. Felt like someone had walloped me in the face with a frying pan.

  Then I realized that someone had just walloped me in the face with a frying pan.

  I opened my eyes to find Alice looking down at me, her perfect face framed by dangling blue curls, as though she were at the end of a tumbling, disorienting tunnel. Or a hallway. I remembered the hallway we were just in. I shot up. “Who’s there?” I yelled. My head swam for a moment, and then the nausea hit me. I leaned left and puked into a bucket that someone was holding. I looked up to discover Mannigan.

  He patted my back, consolingly. “There, there, my boy. Take it easy. You must feel awful. Whatever hit you left a mark. Count your blessings, though—at least you don’t have a mustache,” he said, twiddling his own. “They’re a bitch to clean vomit from.”

  I finished throwing up and looked around. “Where are we?” I asked.

  “Mannigan’s room,” Alice answered. “His and Loche’s. Bertle and Donna are in here, too.”

  I looked around. Their room was about twice the size of mine and Alice’s, but just as poorly furnished. Loche was in a chair at their game table, which had his favorite coffee maker on it. Bertle and Donna were standing awkwardly along the wall opposite the door.

  “Hello,” said Loche, nervously.

  Bertle waved, then realized he looked like an idiot, and quickly holstered his hand.

  “What happened?” I asked Alice. “Are you okay?”

  “I’m fine.”

  “Did you get hit?”

  “I’m fine.”

  Well, I certainly wasn’t. I lurched as a new wave of nausea hit me. Note to self: Lay off the soda, get back in shape, kick some ass.

  Loche stepped quickly over to a brown satchel sitting at the foot of his bed. “I have something for that,” he stammered. “Tribuprofin. A rather potent fixer. Great for settling the stomach after a subspace submergence. Good for headaches, too. Which, of course, the campaign trail gives me plenty of. The wife swears by them.” He rummaged through his pack and came out with a small, silver bottle from which he proffered a bright green pill. Alice went to the sink and poured a glass of water. They brought them to me simultaneously.

  Normally, I don’t take pills from strangers. But my head had taken too many blows over the past few days, and I decided to play the odds. It looked enough like any standard fixer provided in the typical first aid kit. If it was indeed poison, it was only a matter of killing me a few seconds sooner—my head was probably concussed from the trauma.

  Besides, death by poison pill wasn’t the killer’s style. Whoever’s been taking down bodies seemed more of a smash and stab kind of person.

  I nodded in gratitude and took the med. Within seconds, my stomach evened out and my head cleared up. I think I even felt my capillaries mending.

  “Did you see who hit me?”

  Alice looked frustrated. “No. When you turned the lights on, I couldn’t see anything. Too bright all of a sudden. And then the guy turned the lights back off as he ran out, and I couldn’t see anything then, either. Too dark all of a sudden. Really annoying. I pulled your ORB out of your pocket to have her scan for the guy, but she wouldn’t turn on for me. Voice recognition?”

  “Yeah...” I rubbed my forehead. “You said ‘guy,’ though. You think it was a man?”

  She realized that was a clue and nodded. “That’s true, I’m sure it was a man. He kind of grunted on the way past me. It was definitely a guy’s voice. A guy’s grunt.”

  So it was a male, and he was wearing black. Of course, the creepy guy in the trenchcoat, Ken, came to mind right away. But then I realized that John Smith, the quiet guy with the briefcase who I hadn’t seen since boarding the Pigeon, wore a black suit as well, and the briefcase he held would make for a wonderful blow to my face. Bliss was both female and dressed in red, and her voice was as far from masculine as they came. Besides, she was a sexdoll, and sexdolls had no such motives. There’s no way it was her. I did a quick scan of the room and discovered Bertle’s gaudy robe to be red and gold, Donna’s frumpy heat-coat to be olive green and grey, Loche’s suit to be black with tan trim, and Mannigan’s suit to be, well... black.

  Why the hell did half the people on board need to be wearing black?

  “How long did it take you to bring me over here?” I asked Alice.

  “Five minutes? You aren’t exactly a lightweight.” She rotated her shoulder to work out a kink. “Oh, if your ass hurts, it’s because I had to drag it down those metal steps outside the hatch.”

  For the record, my ass did indeed
hurt. But the tribuprofin fixed that up, too.

  So, five minutes. No matter who it was who whacked me, that would have been plenty of time for him to get back here before us. Enough time to have changed clothes, for that matter.

  Bertle suddenly shot his hand up and burst out: “I hate to be a drama queen, but can we talk about the fact that somebody got fucking murdered on this ship?” He brought his hand down to his mouth and began rapidly chewing his nails.

  He said “somebody” rather than “some bodies,” which meant Alice must not have told them about the dead crew member yet. I looked at her, and I could tell by her expression that she read my mind. Nope, she hadn’t told them. She was catching on. Best not to let all the facts out of the file for everyone to gather. That just makes it easier for a liar to lie.

  Rule #2 of being a private detective: Keep what you know to yourself. Simply ask questions and gather information first. This makes it more likely for the culprit to unwittingly disclose things that they otherwise shouldn’t have been privy too.

  “Bertle, Donna—why were you in this room rather than your own?” Alice asked before I could.

  Donna rolled her eyes beneath furrowed brows and sighed. “Here we go...”

  Bertle used it as an opportunity to platform his side of their previous argument, immediately losing concern over a murderer on the loose. “Because Donna was being a b-i-t-c-h, that’s why.”

  “Because you were being a prima donna,” she said, monotone.

  “Just because I have good taste, doesn’t make me—”

  “Good taste? Oh, please...”

  “Hold it!” I said. “Okay, seriously. Why are all four of you in here, right now?”

  Mannigan chuckled. “If I may be so bold, what difference is it to you? Are you some kind of detective, or something?”

  I sat up a little straighter.