Murder on Moon Trek 1

by Diane Vallere

  “On Plunia?”

  “No, on Colony 13.”

  Pika stopped skipping. Her eyes widened, and she looked scared. “What did he do? Uh-oh!” Before I could answer or react to her sudden change, she sprung across the room and wedged herself behind the closet door where she’d been when I first discovered her.

  The doors swooshed open and Neptune entered. “Stryker,” he said.

  I whipped my head back around from where Pika was hiding to face the giant security guard. “Neptune. I mean Mr. Neptune. I mean, do you have a title?”

  “It’s just Neptune.

  “Why isn’t it Mr. or Commander or Sargent or Admiral? Detective? The doc called you Neptune. Why?”

  “Never mind the doc. He doesn’t like me.” Well, that wasn’t passive aggressive at all. “I need to ask you some follow-up questions about this morning.”

  “Okay,” I said. I remained on the opposite side of my counter, with the structure acting as a protective barrier between us. Depending on the nature of Neptune’s questions, I was toast. “Fire away.”

  He crossed his arms. I suspected he did that when he wanted to look more intimidating. It worked. The fabric of his shirt stretched across his massive chest. He was like a wall. Who was I kidding? If he wanted to get me from the other side of the cabinet, he probably could have reached over it and lifted me by the front of my magenta uniform. He was probably thinking that very thing, considering how his eyes were affixed on my uniform instead of my face.

  Oh, crap.

  I’d forgotten about my wardrobe infraction. I should have changed into a new uniform after Yeoman D’Nar left, but Pika had appeared out of nowhere and distracted me, and now I was half naked in front of the head of ship security. Perky, too.

  Double crap!

  “My sleeves got caught on the cabinet,” I said. “I thought it was more important to stay here with Lt. Dakkar’s body—”

  “Don’t use his name.”

  I hated the detached feeling of calling the deceased officer by his position, but Neptune outranked me and he’d given me a direct order.

  “I thought it was more important to stay here with the body of the second nav officer than to go to my quarters to change.”

  “This is the uniform ward,” he said. “You could have changed here.”

  A whole lot of people were content to point out the obvious. “It’s a good thing I didn’t. You would have walked in on me naked.” Neptune’s eyes went back to my chest. “I’ll change when my shift is over.”

  “I’m afraid that’s not going to be possible. You need to come with me.”

  “I can’t. I’m on duty. And when I’m done I have to go straight to my quarters per Yeoman D’Nar.” Neptune’s forehead scrunched in confusion. I pointed to my arms. “To repair my uniform,” I added.

  “What you wear is no longer a problem. Sylvia Stryker, you’re under arrest for impersonating a crew member of Moon Unit 5.”

  4: Arrested

  I’d been careful from the moment I’d stepped foot on the ship. I didn’t know how he knew. There was no point in arguing the point with him because it was the truth. Even if I was qualified to be on board. Even if I had studied at the space academy, continued with my education after I was forced to drop out, applied for a job like everybody else, and aced the entrance exams. I was more qualified to be a part of this ship’s crew than almost anybody here.

  Stupid Plunian blood. It was one more thing to blame my dad for.

  I left the uniform closet wide open and joined Neptune by the door. He held a space gun, but it was pointed at the floor. The BOP dictated any time security had to manage a crew infraction, they were to have their weapon in hand. I looked at Neptune. “I know the BOP says you have to have your space gun out, but you won’t have to use it on me.”

  “Standard procedure,” he said.

  “Fine.” We walked side by side down the hall toward the elevator. The walls were smooth and white, and the carpet was an industrial orange weave. Even though Neptune was almost a foot taller than I was, I kept pace with him. I wasn’t going to give him the satisfaction of prodding me to move faster.

  We reached the end of the hall and unlocked the elevator. Two men in green shirts—food and nutrition crew—rounded the corner when we did. Neptune held up his hand and the men stopped. We got onto the elevator, and he inserted a key in the control panel. After he hit a series of colorful buttons, the elevator dropped straight down into the basement of the ship. My stomach didn’t get the message, and, for a few seconds, I entertained a little bit of queasiness. I grabbed the railing and turned my back to Neptune while I made sure my breakfast was staying down. I felt, rather than saw, his movements behind me.

  I didn’t trust myself to let go of the railing or to look at him, so I glanced behind me and saw his space gun pointed at my back. “You can put that thing away. I’m not going to try anything. When we arrive at the subsection, I’ll go directly to the holding cell. I just wasn’t expecting the elevator to go so fast, that’s all.”

  He relaxed his arm. The space gun once again pointed toward the floor. The elevator came to a stop as suddenly as it had started and my knees locked. The door swooshed open.

  “Nice ride,” I said. I turned left and followed the hallway to the large console that surrounded a master computer. To the right of the computer was a bare-bones holding cell. “You can’t just lock me up,” I said.

  “Yes, I can. I know you aren’t the uniform lieutenant.”

  “I told you, the original uniform lieutenant broke her leg and couldn’t make the departure date. I was a last-minute replacement.”

  “No, you weren’t.” He turned behind him and pressed a couple of buttons on the computer. The screen lit up with the employee ID card for a brown haired, blue eyed woman who might have looked similar to me if her skin was purple. “Daila Teron was hired as the uniform lieutenant. But Daila isn’t here, and you are. And judging from how you knew exactly where the holding cell was without me telling you, information that has been classified since the ship was designed, I’m going to assume you know more about the Moon Unit than most members of the crew. What I don’t know is what you’re planning to do with that knowledge.”

  I hadn’t expected him to figure me out so quickly, and considering how long it had taken me to hack into the Moon Unit 5 database and replace Daila’s information with my own, I wasn’t in the mood to confess all my secrets. He thought he could figure me out? Let him.

  “I didn’t do anything wrong.”

  “You’re on this ship illegally. You’re impersonating the real uniform lieutenant. And you found a body this morning and didn’t follow protocol.”

  “Hypothetically speaking, if I’m not a member of this ship’s crew, then I’m not bound by protocol, so you don’t get all three of those as points. But I did follow protocol, and if you look into it, you’ll find out I’m telling you the truth.” I walked into the cell and leaned against the far wall.

  When they’d designed the Moon Unit spaceships, no expense or imagination had been spared. Passengers wanted to feel like they were part of a space adventure, and talented visionaries had responded to the call with fiberglass furniture, colorful Bakelite fixtures, and technologically advanced fabrics that could change their appearance through heat and light absorption. But down here in the unseen part of the ship, things were bleak. The floor and walls were coated with magnetic paint to block any communication, location, or radio signals that a prisoner might try to send, which made it slightly more challenging to move about properly since my uniform contained trace metals in the way of closures, zippers, and decorative trim. Either the supplier didn’t anticipate the crew being locked up, or someone had a twisted sense of humor. I’d planned to customize my uniform and remove the metal trim when I had the chance. I just hadn’t expected to get thrown in the clink mere hours after departure.

  “I didn’t lie about who I am.” I reached into the pocket of my uniform and pulled out
a square disc with a small chip embedded into it. “Run my credentials. I’m Sylvia Stryker. My family owns the ice mines on Plunia. We supply most of the ice that’s used to create oxygen on other planets. You should be thanking me, not harassing me.”

  “Your dad is Jack Stryker?”

  “Yes.”

  “That’s what I thought.”

  Neptune pushed a thick red button on the wall outside the cell and beams of blue light appeared from the ceiling and the floor. Where they met in the middle, the light glowed orange.

  Neptune took his finger off the button. “I trust you know what will happen if you try to cross the beams.”

  “I don’t feel like talking,” I said. I crossed my arms and glared at him.

  “Good. I was afraid you’d be a crier.” For the first time since I’d met him, he smiled. His smile was genuine, but since it came at my expense, I didn’t smile back.

  Neptune attached his space gun to his belt and then watched me from the other side of the beams of light. I looked away from him, but after a few seconds, snuck a look back to see what he was doing. He hadn’t moved and was still watching me.

  “What happens now? I mean, you locked me up so you might think you have everything under control, but I had nothing to do with the death of the second navigation officer, so you still have a problem.”

  “I have two problems: the safety of everybody on this ship and a problem in engineering. You’re not a problem. You can either cooperate or get dropped off at the space station. Your choice.”

  The head of security giving me a choice on whether I wanted to stay on the ship? This was great. This was better than great. This was so outside the realm of possibility that my mind spun with the sheer beauty of the moment, which was how I missed what he said next.

  “You won’t be sorry,” I said.

  His brow furrowed. “Did you hear me?”

  “Most of it. Tell me again, just to make sure.”

  “There’s somebody on this ship who intends to cause problems. I’m working on the assumption that if it were you, you would not have followed the BOP, so for now, I’ve decided you’re less of a threat to the ship security than the person who is. I need to find that person, and I think we can help each other.”

  “I can help. Just tell me what you need.”

  “I pulled the passenger manifest. There were discrepancies. I can’t do two things at once.”

  “You want me to take over ship security?”

  “No. I need you to surveil the passengers and crew.”

  “But how will that help me?”

  “I’m not interested in helping you. It’s either that or get dumped on Colony 13 where you can share a cell with your father. Your choice.”

  5: Light Bulb Moment

  “Fine,” I mumbled.

  “I’m glad we have an understanding.” Neptune pushed a large red button on the wall, and the light beams disappeared. “Have a nice night, Styker.” He returned to the computer at the far end of the corridor.

  Well, this was just great. I’d dreamed of this opportunity my whole life and I hadn’t even been on the ship a full day before being found out.

  I’d been so close. The change in temperature upstairs had indicated that we were well on our way to the moon. Captain Swift could choose to drop me off at one of the space stations along the way, but I doubted he would. An unscheduled stop would signify trouble, the last thing the publicity department would want. Discovering me must have been Neptune’s worst nightmare.

  That thought cheered me up a bit. At least until I remembered that the moon trek was a seven-day long excursion and that if I wasn’t going to be dropped off on the way to or from the moon, I was going to spend the next seven days either locked up or ratting on the people I’d hoped would become my friends.

  I activated the elevator and returned to my quarters. I’d pictured a lot of potential scenarios for my first day on Moon Unit 5. Being arrested and placed in the temporary holding cell, even if only for a few minutes, was not one of them.

  My room was small but perfect. The walls were glossy white with matte white circles on top. The doors were orange, as was the bed covering and the chair. I sat on the edge of my bed and removed my boots. The first thing I’d done after boarding the ship had been to unpack and get settled. I wanted to feel like this was my space in space. I spun around and stretched out on the bed, and then put my hands behind my head and stared up at the ceiling, studying the silver paint.

  I read in the history books that it used to take four light years to go from Earth to its closest star. Thanks to technology, Moon Unit 5 could get us from Plunia to the moons of Saturn in a week—the perfect length of time for those in need of a vacation.

  Space travel had originally been targeted toward the rich, but it turned out the rich didn’t quite know what to make of space pirates and all too soon, the novelty of being held up in ungoverned territories lost its luster. The second wave of entrepreneurs to tackle space travel made things interesting. They went with a price-it-low, sell-a-lot model, attracting the attention of the booming new generation. Now you’d be hard pressed to find someone over sixty on a spaceship. Traveling the galaxy had become the thing to do. At least that’s what I’d thought before today.

  I’d taken a huge risk to get here, left my mom alone with the ice mines, and for what? Ever since stepping foot onto the spaceship, things had gone from bad to worse. And it all started when I’d found Lt. Dakkar, the second navigator’s body.

  My reaction to it had been all wrong. Sure, I’d followed procedure, but almost to a fault. A man had died, and I’d reacted like a programmed robot, not like a person who discovered that a colleague had died. But here I was, with all the time in the world to think about what his death meant. And it did mean something. For the first time in a decade, a Moon Unit was in orbit with a ship full of passengers, and before the ship had even left the docking station, something tragic had happened.

  I wondered what the second navigation officer had been doing in the uniform ward. How had he gotten inside? And when? I’d been so eager for today to come that I’d been one of the first crew members on the ship. The only people who had been allowed to board before the general crew were the senior officers: captain, navigation, communications, engineering, medical, and security. The head of individual divisions, too, although I hadn’t been able to get my hands on that list ahead of time. But if I operated with the knowledge I had, I could assume the second navigation officer had already been on the ship before the rest of the crew boarded.

  Ship regulations stated that crew members were to arrive in uniform, so there shouldn’t have been any reason for him, or anyone, to be where he was.

  The questions swirling through my mind gave me anxious energy and I couldn’t lay still. When my mind raced like this, I had to find a way to calm down. I sat up and pulled my boots back on, and then left my quarters.

  I walked down the hall toward the observation deck and stared out a porthole at the vastness of space. The sky was a deep purply-black, dotted with gleaming stars and shifting meteors. The occasional spaceship passed us, far enough away that the only thing I could see were their lights. For a moment, I wondered about the crews on those other ships. Was there another person out there enjoying her first job on a spaceship? Was she flying through the galaxy peacefully or did she have her own set of problems?

  That’s what I had. Problems. I could solve problems. I needed to focus on one and solve it.

  Just one. I could do that.

  When I’d turned fourteen, I took a series of standardized tests like every other eight grader in the Plunian school system. But unlike every other eighth grader, I’d scored off the charts for math, science, and deductive reasoning. Fourteen marked the year when I went from being a nobody to a somebody.

  The change in my academic status didn’t help with my desire to fit in with others my age. If my family hadn’t owned and operated one of the more successful dry ice mines on Plunia,
I might not have had any friends at all. But when space pirates hijack the deliveries of dry ice to neighboring planets and your family is the only one who can step in and correct a mass oxygen shortage, you get a pass on being a little weird. Between that and the way I learned to fry Plunian potatoes with a tweaked thermostat wired to a refurbished radio coil and bucket of oil from the last olive crop, I avoided becoming a total social pariah.

  It turned out I had a natural skill set for science. It’s a strange feeling to learn that you’re really, really good at something other people don’t understand. I couldn’t explain it, but when I looked at a mechanical device, I could almost immediately map out the inner mechanisms and understand how it worked. I could take anything apart and put it back together. I knew how to make modifications so things would work better than they did before. I could fix things and change things and alter things to make life easier.

  I would have been okay with that. I think. But one of my teachers took a special interest in me and arranged for me to take classes at the space academy. Twice a week, instead of English, I studied alongside students who were hoping to get into Federation Council. My parents took over the majority of the work in the mines and made it clear that my only focus was on my grades. And after a couple of classes, I felt like I fit in. Before long, I wanted to work at Federation Council too.

  And then my dad was arrested, and everything changed.

  I lost my scholarship and the very galactic government body I’d hoped to work for took temporary control of the family mines. They kept my mom working in a barely paid role while they investigated my dad. I dropped out of school and helped her survive the humiliation.

  For the past ten years, I’d worked with her, secretly hating my Plunian dad and how his actions had destroyed us. I wasn’t ever going to let greed make me do something that would hurt the people I loved.

  After the investigation, ownership of the ice mines reverted to my mom. Being from Earth, she lacked the upper respiratory tolerance to work in the mines. I took over during the day and spent my nights working on gadgets to make her job easier. One day last year, the news reported that the council had approved the relaunch of the Moon Unit program. I hadn’t even bothered to apply.