Murder on a Moon Trek

Chapter 10: Who to Trust?

I crept close to the beams of blue-hot light and looked back and forth for signs of security. For all Neptune's talk about keeping me under surveillance, he'd activated the beams, but then he left. If he considered me a real threat, he wouldn't have just walked away. That meant he felt comfortable. Secure that I didn't suspect him of anything.

I returned to the cot and inhaled more oxygen. Was I thinking clearly yet? I didn't know. But I couldn't deny the fact that Neptune's behavior was suspicious.

I'd trained myself to break problems down into what I knew so I could isolate the unknown variables and attack them. I had nothing to take notes on, so I cleared my mind and focused.

What I knew: Neptune had arrived at the uniform ward shortly after I'd called the bridge about the Code Blue. Yeoman D'Nar had dismissed my report. I'd assumed she'd called him anyway, but this was not about what I'd assumed. It was about what I knew. Neptune arrived quickly. He knew the victim. He later returned and removed me and sealed off the uniform ward.

Possible explanations: He discovered the second navigation officer's plan to sabotage the ship and took out the threat to the passengers. He was already close to my sector when I radioed the bridge, so he intervened. He sealed off the uniform ward after removing me so he could destroy any evidence of his actions.

It was possible. More than possible. My years at the space academy had taught me that professional dedication to the job trumped everything. Neptune was the head of security for the revived Moon Unit Cruise Ships. He would not have gotten that job by playing it safe. What I needed was access to a computer where I could pull his files and see exactly how far he'd gone in the name of professional job fulfillment in the past. If I could find evidence that murder was an acceptable part of the job to him, then I'd know for sure.

I rose and approached the hot light beams again. My Plunian core temperature allowed me to get closer to the flames than other people might have gotten, and when I angled myself from the far corner of the cell, I could make out an empty desk at the end of the hallway. The surface was clean and smooth except for a small plastic dome on the right corner that covered a red button, just like I'd had in the uniform ward. Next to the plastic dome was a series of square buttons that lit up in intervals. Red, green, and yellow. From the schematics I'd downloaded from the space library before we left, I knew they were call buttons to different parts of the ship. If I could get closer, I could map the panel in my mind and figure out how it worked. For two little letters, "if" was a really big word.

In the history books that I'd studied in grade school before being accepted to the space academy, I'd learned about what life was like for people who grew up on Earth. There were countries with governments and laws, punishments for behavior that wasn't considered appropriate. People weren't allowed to kill other people under most circumstances. The laws didn't stop the murders from happening, though, which was why Federation Council had come up with a different solution to the problem.

When someone was suspected of a crime, they were tried in front of the council. Twenty-three members heard every case, deliberated, and decided on an appropriate course of action. Smaller colonies in the galaxy became designated living spaces for those who the council deemed unsuitable for life among the planets.

I didn't know this last part from a class in middle school. I knew it because of my dad. He'd been charged with colluding with space pirates to raise demand for the dry ice from our mines. He pled guilty. We'd gone from being saviors to opportunists.

He'd been sent to Colony 13 to live with others who'd turned against their own people. The federation council had determined that anyone who would put his needs ahead of what was best for his planet didn't deserve the freedom he'd inherited. I'd memorized the names of each of the council members who had voted to send my dad away for his crime. Twenty-two out of twenty-three had found him guilty.

Only one had recused himself from the vote. Vaan Marshall. He was the youngest member of Federation Council and that had been his first case.

He'd also been my first real boyfriend.

After the ruling, we broke up. Whether Vaan's recusal from the vote was one of inexperience or loyalty to me, I'd never know. But dating a member of the council that had banished my dad to Colony 13, even if my dad had violated the governing code of Federation Council, wasn't something I could do. It was hard enough to live with the knowledge that my dad was a criminal. I didn't need a reminder of the group that sent him away.

But right now, it would have come in handy to know someone in Federation Council. Well, it would have come in handy if I wasn't currently behind bars myself.

The elevators in the hallway swished open and shut. I braced myself for Neptune's presence. Now that I had concerns along scarier lines than he's-a-pain-in-my-butt type, I wasn't looking forward to spending more time with him. When Doc Edison rounded the corner instead of Neptune, I relaxed.

Doc pushed the button on the wall outside the cell and the beams of light retracted into the ceiling and floor. "Between you and me, I don't know why that big ape thinks you need to be secured in here. You saved two men from suffocation. That makes you a hero in my book and don't think I haven't already made a report to Captain Swift. Have a seat. Let's get you cleared for active duty so you can sleep in your own bed tonight."

He pulled a small scanner out of his bag and held it above my head, parallel to the floor, and then slowly brought it down past my eyes, nose, mouth. He asked me to breathe into a tube, and then he pulled out an ominous-looking device that looked suspiciously like a needle. Instinctively, I leaned away.

"What's that?"

"I need a sample of your blood."

"Why? I didn't cut myself. I inhaled a toxic gas. If there are any long-term effects from the gas, they're going to restrict my respiratory system, not my circulation."

"I'm aware of that, and the preliminary tests I've already run indicate your respiratory problems are self-healing. What I'm more concerned about is the fact that you are part Plunian and I don't have an active panel on you in the medical lab."

"But you must. I had to have a physical to be approved to work aboard Moon Unit 5," I said carefully.

"You have extensive knowledge of the regulations and requirements of working aboard the ship, Lt. Stryker. And from what I saw earlier this evening when you helped the security ape in the engineering room, I'd say you're an asset to the crew. But unless you allow me to draw your blood, run up a panel, and override the falsified documents that are currently in the mainframe, Neptune is going to keep you locked up in this cell. And, since I'm pretty sure you share my doubts about his loyalties, I don't think either one of us wants that to happen."