Alien Victory

by Mark Zubro

  In their off time, a few of the men created sculptures or worked on paintings and had done so since the first days on the colony. Under Grith’s supervision some worked on the mural the artist was creating. Mike thought he was giving them sort of paint-by-numbers directions based on his creativity.

  Those who mastered sculpting with the smaller laser diggers most often carved obscene objects. For a while ten-foot penises seemed to sprout overnight. This phase passed after a few weeks. Now several men had completed fantastic pieces. All work, good or bad, was placed in the great hall, the former storage room. Unveiling of the finished hall and its contents was set for the predicted end of the rainy season which was to be a cause for major celebration.

  Pillows and cushions were also being manufactured in off hours. The packing materials were dried and then formed into bag-like sacks. Another couple guys unthreaded the tattered cloaks. While the packing material even after being treated was tin-foil gray, the threads were multihued. They could be made with one solid color, but they also took people’s requests and used different threads to make the binding more colorful. Joe had requested they put writing on the ones in Mike and Joe’s room. Mike liked the one with the flat black words ‘never again’ Joe had sewn on theirs. He’d learned it when they visited the Holocaust museum in Washington D.C. during his second year on Earth. The threads on the pillows were some of the few colorful things in their rooms.

  Mike hadn’t expected the men would turn the colony into the equivalent of a dressing room in a drag bar at two a.m. on Halloween. He realized early on that translating the clichés about gay people on Earth was pointless. Such clichés were as nonsensical here as they were on Earth. Gay clichés might make a few straight people feel better when they looked down on the LGBT community. And they might frighten a few people or be a focal point for people-of-prejudice to use as fodder for fund raising, but they were useless for classifying gay people on Earth. To expect a new set of clichés was silly, Mike realized. Much less the size of the population of the Hrrrm system, hundreds of billions of people, having the same clichés spread throughout out their world would be improbable. In more ways than clichés they were trying to make it a personal space.

  The Story Wall was the one Mike liked most. Eph’s progress was glacial, but he now had trained two assistants and more wished to be taught. Mike loved seeing the neat rows of script beginning to flow down the cavern-sides.

  And there were the viewings of Death Ball playoff games. As far as Mike could tell, the playoffs were the whole season. He had gotten to be aware of one of the stars, Sku, who the men cheered for lustily. Mike had to admit the guy was hot in a Channing Tatum in the movie Magic Mike kind of way.

  The playoffs had started during the beginning of the rainy season. Brux had discovered that the atmospherics of the rainy season interfered with communication with outer space and within the colony. Through the weeks of rain, he hadn’t come up with a solution to clear up the interference.

  One of the few clear hours, if they happened, would be early in the morning. The men would gather before the day’s work to view games that had been played and were being rebroadcast.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  At the end of a long day of digging, Mike leaned back in his seat. He’d done four miles today. A light flashed on the digger’s console. Then it began to pulse. Mike punched in the computer emergency system. A moment later the sector grid appeared on the screen. A flashing point in the grid gave the precise location of the problem.

  It was one of the newly mined regions. As he rushed through the more established areas, the emergency klaxon blared out.

  The break was in the sector furthest from the living quarters. It took ten minutes for Mike to cover the distance. Every man in the colony raced in the same direction. All feared a cave-in. The engineers guaranteed safety in the construction, but there had been sabotage. Mike had thought everything was double-checked. Even then, there was always a dim claustrophobia under the millions of tons of mountain.

  The eerie twisting glow of hand-held communicators replaced the colony’s automatic lighting system as Mike entered the new section. Only inhabited sections were permanently lit. New areas would not be connected to the automatic system until people moved in.

  Men were already moving rubble from the choked corridor by hand and by vacuum shovel. Several men were grouped together, leaning over something. As Mike approached he saw they were around a body. He glimpsed a pulverized face barely recognizable as Bir. The fifteen-year-olds slight body was half buried under the rubble.

  One of the men leaning over the youngster looked up as Mike approached. It was Gek, the doctor. The others stepped aside so Mike could get closer.

  “He’s dead,” Gek announced.

  Several men gasped. Mike hung his head. Intense weariness crept over him. He knelt next to the body.

  Gek pointed out the obvious. “He was crushed in the cave-in.”

  Close up in the wavering light, Mike saw the purple mottled face with blood around the lips, signs of the oxygen-grasping lungs desperately trying to breathe. He and several others began removing rubble that still shrouded the body.

  It was uncovered in a few minutes. Mike cradled the boy’s head and shoulders, smoothed the mussed hair. He felt rather than saw Sry kneel next to him.

  “The crews are beginning to make repairs,” Sry murmured.

  Mike surveyed the damage to the work site.

  Bir’s body was at the junction of several newly dug and soon to be dug tunnels. He could easily have been buried by half the mountain.

  Mike eased the body back onto the ground. Joe arrived. He handed Mike a blanket. Mike covered the boy, then remained kneeling in silence. The men around him spoke little. Mike felt the emptiness of the caverns gather around him. He closed his eyes. He tried to shutout the silence. He didn’t know what made him more profoundly sad, the idiocy of what put him here or the tragedy of the moment. Maybe it was a mix of the two.

  After a few moments, Mike stood up, turned to the men. “Does anybody know what happened?” he asked.

  Gek said, “I got here first. My room is one sector over. I actually heard the cave-in. Then the sirens went off. I rushed to the nearest computer console to check the exact location. I didn’t see anyone as I approached. At first I thought it was a simple cave-in but then I found this.” He held up a shirt. The gauche stitching on the spangled cloth and the hideous color marked it as Krim’s. The boy had a limited fashion sense. Members of the colony were permitted few personal belongings. Krim had opted for extra clothes. The men often teased the boy about his skimpy, revealing garments.

  Gek continued, “My communicator didn’t give off much light, but I’d seen the shirt. I wondered where Krim was, why his shirt was here and where he was. Then I caught a glimpse of something out of place. It was a color that didn’t belong among the rocks. I assumed it was another piece of clothing. I moved my light closer. I began to reach for it. Then I realized it was the tip of someone’s finger. Others were here by then and we began to dig frantically. There was nothing we could do. He was already dead.”

  Sry came over. He had been inspecting the break in the tunnel. He said, “This was no accident.”

  “More sabotage?” Mike asked.

  Sry pointed. “Look at where the roof and sides broke. The lines are neat and straight. That doesn’t happen naturally. Some one knew how to prepare an area for underground collapse and blasting.” He pointed to a piece of metal the size of a dime. “That was put there deliberately. It’s not tied to a remote activated device. It had to be triggered by someone who could see this area.”

  “So whoever did it would know Bir was here and that he would be crushed?” Mike asked.

  Sry said, “That’s how I read it.”

  Karsh burst out from the back of the group. “It’s because of the poor redesign of the city.” He waved a fist in Mike’s face and screeched at his highest level. “That you instituted.”

 
Sry asked, “Do you always lead with your asshole?”

  “Don’t insult me!” Karsh commanded.

  Sry laughed at him. “I’ll do as I wish, asshole.” He pointed at the walls and ceilings of the tunnels around them. “Actually, this section is being done to the old specifications. It’s designed as a service road for the future. It’s not a dwelling section until farther along.”

  Karsh turned red and subsided.

  Gek resumed their earlier speculations. “The killer would have to know how to set a charge small enough.”

  Sry said, “All the members of the digging sector have had some training in using explosives in mining, but we rarely use them except in special cases. Our diggers don’t usually require such help and the charges are usually used outdoors.” Mike had been trained as well. He preferred to leave the work to those who had even more training than he.

  Mike said, “To kill him he’d have to know exactly when the kid was supposed to be here.”

  Cak moved next to Sry. He too inspected the break points then got down on his hands and knees inspecting the rubble. “What’s that?” Cak pointed. He leaned forward and picked up a scrap of paper.

  He brought the scrap to the group standing near the body. They all recognized it.

  “A scrap of paper from the casing of a blasting charge,” Sry said.

  “Why is that significant?” Gek asked. He still knelt next to the body.

  Sry said, “Every dig is cleared at the end of a work shift. No one is to leave debris for the next crew to clean up. I inspected this one myself. Since it was the first dig in this sector, I wanted to be extra careful. The men left it more spotless than usual, probably because they knew I’d be around after them.”

  “This wasn’t here then?” Mike asked.

  “Nope. It’s strictly forbidden to have blasting charges anywhere near a dig unless actually in use. We all know that.”

  Gek said, “I think he was killed before the cave-in.”

  “What have you found?” Mike asked.

  Gek held up Bir’s hand. They saw a torn brown scrap of work uniform. “This isn’t from his uniform. I’ve checked it. He tore it from someone else’s. And it’s not Krim’s. Not his style.”

  “You can’t be sure of that,” Cak said.

  Gek ignored him. “Who would want to kill him and why? He was a good boy. Everyone enjoyed his humor. He lightened the atmosphere around here. Not overly bright, of course, but then perfection is so boring. What’s this?” Gek bent over, his nose an inch from the zipper of the boy’s pants.

  Cak recoiled in horror. “That’s disgusting.”

  “No, asshole, look.” Gek pointed. The others moved closer. Mike saw several damp spots on the front of the boy’s pants.

  “Cum stains,” Gek said.

  “How can you be sure?” Cak asked.

  With two fingers Gek touched the wet spots. He rubbed the fingers together and brought them to his nose and sniffed. “It smells like cum and feels like it. He had sex just before he died.”

  “Is it his cum or the killer’s or both?” Mike asked.

  Gek opened the zipper. They lifted the body and lowered he pants.

  “This scares me,” Sry said. “I’ve never touched a dead body.”

  Gek took the lead.

  They found Bir’s underwear was also damp and stained and with a rapidly drying pool in the boy’s pubic hair. They replaced the clothes then looked at each other. Mike said, “I think it’s definitely two separate cum stains.”

  Cak said, “Maybe he just came a lot.”

  Mike pointed. “My guess is the residue in his pubic hair is from when he came. From the extent of stain on the outside of the pants, I’d say there’d have to be more than one person contributing. The stains are in separate spots. Can you do an autopsy, Gek?”

  “I can do some basic medical guesswork. I can’t give you a scientific analysis. I don’t have anywhere near the proper facilities. Medical emergencies were not a priority of those who sent us here.”

  Mike and Joe had fought for more medical equipment but had gotten nowhere with any request.

  “Do what you can,” Mike said. “Any information at all would help.”

  Gek said, “I’ll try.”

  Sry and Cak were examining the walls again. Brux entered and knelt next to the boy. The rest of the men had left.

  Brux said, “Who would murder this poor, poor boy? And who would want to sabotage the colony?”

  “Come on, Brux,” Cak said. “Why don’t you try not to be your usual excessively dramatic self?”

  “That’s a double negative, fool,” Brux snapped.

  Mike interrupted before a full-fledged argument could break out. “Brux’s question is right. We’ve got to find out who committed both these crimes, the murder and the sabotage. I assume they’re connected, although we don’t know that for sure yet.”

  “We?” Cak questioned.

  Mike ignored the sarcastic tone of the one word inquiry. “Joe and I will be the ones to investigate and find out who did this.”

  “It should be reported to the central government immediately,” Cak said.

  “I agree,” Karsh added. “They should be the ones to investigate this, not us.”

  Joe asked, “Do you really want a mob of Religionists in the colony disrupting everything? We’re better able to deal with our own.”

  Mike said, “If they would even care enough to send anyone.”

  Cak said, “They may send someone anyway.”

  Mike said, “I’m going to do my best to prevent that. If they decide to send investigators, of course we can’t stop them. I want them here as little as possible.”

  “So are you going to report this?” Cak asked.

  “Yes, I’m going to report the murder. Along with Joe, I’m also going to investigate it, and solve it, even if they do send police of their own out here.”

  “Meaning you want to become the police force up here as well. You act like absolute dictator.” Cak did nothing to hide his disdain and anger.

  “Well, Cak, realistically, under the charter I am absolute dictator, although I’ve done my damnedest not to be. What I can’t believe is that you’d want to make a power fight out of this boy’s death. I also don’t believe that you really want some of their police in this colony. So far we’re fairly free on this planet. Police presence from the central government makes our situation worse.”

  Brux stood up and pointed at Cak. “Don’t give us any of your silly bullshit!”

  Even in the dim light they could see Cak getting bright red.

  Karsh stepped up next to Cak and pointed at Mike. “He’ll fuck it up and probably get all of us exterminated on the spot in the process.” Karsh took Cak’s arm and began moving down the corridor. They could hear Karsh using a stage whisper as he moved farther away. “Let’s leave his lord and majesty and his lackeys.”

  Mike, Joe, Gek, Sry, and Brux glanced at each other.

  “What if the government decides to exterminate us down here because of this?” Gek asked. “Karsh and Cak may be assholes, but their fears might be legitimate.”

  Mike said, “They could try to exterminate us any time they want. They could take us back to distribution camps. Who knows what they would do?” He shrugged. “Right now, I prefer misery here.”

  The others nodded in agreement.

  Mike looked at the walls and ceiling. “Is there any way it could have been an accident?”

  “No way,” Sry said. “The dig was true when I inspected it earlier, and the remnants of the charges tell that it had to be deliberate.”

  “Could somebody have planted the charges hours before,” Joe asked, “And then these two came along innocently later?”

  Sry said, “Like I said, whoever set it off had to be close. There were no charges scheduled here. We rarely use them. This was not an accident.”

  “Why kill the boy?” Brux asked.

  Joe said, “We’ll know that when we find the m
urderer.”

  “What I don’t get,” Mike said, “is the sexual aspect of this. Why have sex with somebody, then kill him?”

  “Did Bir have a boyfriend?” Brux asked.

  “I have no idea,” Joe said.

  Then Brux asked, “Maybe the boyfriend found Bir having sex with someone else and jealousy ensued.”

  Joe said, “No sensible cop, with or without implants, begins to endlessly speculate about possible motives. That way lies madness.”

  Mike quoted Sherlock Holmes in A Study in Scarlet, “It is a capital mistake to theorize before you have all the evidence.”

  “Who’s that?” Brux asked.

  Joe smiled, “A detective on Earth who would come in handy here.”

  Brux went right on guessing. “Or he got finished with sex, the other guy left, and he stayed for some reason.”

  Joe kept the exasperation out of his voice as he said, “Anything is possible.”

  “And why agree to come down here?” Brux gestured to the gloomy cavern about them. “This isn’t a terrifically romantic spot. It couldn’t have been comfortable. They could be just as private in their own room. Wouldn’t you get suspicious if someone invited you to such an out-of-the-way place? It isn’t that warm down here. All he had on was a pair of pants and work boots. Did the killer take his other clothes too?”

  “Who knows?” Joe asked. “We’ve got to find the killer first.”

  “I’m going to do that,” Mike said. “Bir was great with Krim on the ship.” He sighed. “Joe and I will talk to the people most directly involved. Sry, I’d like you to talk to the other men. Start tonight, please. It shouldn’t take that long. See if anyone saw anything.”

  Brux said, “If they did, you’d think they’d have come forward.”

  Mike said, “Maybe. Perhaps one of them at least saw Bir. I want to try and trace his movements, who he was with, that kind of thing. Try and find out if he had a lover or a companion, although this place is so small, I’d think we’d all know already if he had. I want to know what he was doing down here. See if there was anyone that he had even casual sex with him. Get me a list and then I’ll talk to them personally.”