Murder on a Moon Trek

Chapter 17: A New Threat

My observation led to a troubling theory, but it was my job to tell Neptune. I stepped into the hall.

"Can you come with me?" I asked.

"You can give your report to me now."

"It would be better if I could show you what I saw."

"That's not necessary."

Why must he be so stubborn? "Fine. The tube that dispensed the gas—"

"I know about the tube. Is that it?"

"Can you let me talk, please? Or is that asking too much?"

He—guess what?—crossed his arms over his chest. I mimicked him. I didn't care if it made him mad. I was done with subtlety. "Check the color of the shirts of the victims against the colors of the uniforms they were issued."

"Why?"

"You're a smart guy. You figure it out."

"Submit your written report by Zulu Seventeen."

"Fine." I stormed past him to the elevator, activated it, and left Neptune alone on the engineering floor while I went to my quarters.

If this was my grand peek into the world of spaceship security, then to say I was disappointed was an understatement. I'd wanted to feel responsible for the safety of the ship passengers and the crew. Keeping an eye out for malicious behavior against us. Ensuring policies were recognized, protocols were met, rules were followed.

Security was the silent leader of any ship. It garnered respect without the limelight like the captain or handful of first officers. Even Neptune, who was the head of Moon Unit security, operated in a behind-the-scenes capacity. It strengthened his position when everybody on board the ship didn't know who he was or what he did.

But this—this wasn't what I'd hoped for or expected. I'd acted like any good security officer would when discovering a threat: I'd eliminated it so the crew could be saved. And how had my immediate supervisor thanked me? He hadn't. Stupid Neptune didn't care what happened to me. He was just using me to find out what he needed to know.

Vaan said Neptune had a reputation in the galaxy. Maybe that was it. Maybe he sucked at his job. Maybe he planned to take my name off the report and put his on and take full credit for everything I'd done.

I didn't care.

I didn't care about any of it.

I didn't want to be a on board the spaceship anymore. I wanted to go home. Sure, I'd write up the report as requested. I was going to write it up, send it to Neptune, finish up the moon trek, and go back to Plunia. Employment on the Moon Unit was nothing like I'd hoped. After a lifetime of working in the mines where I'd grown up, I felt lost. Back there, I knew what I was doing. Not only that, I knew how to do it better. I'd built equipment that allowed our crew to double their output and designed fields that maximized the storage of the balls of dry ice we mined before they could be delivered to another planet. We lost a lot of business after my dad was arrested, but slowly, the existing contacts came back. It was a testament to my mother that she was able to tune out the gossip, rebuild those bridges, and keep us from losing everything.

Yes, all I had to do was write up my report, turn it over to Neptune, and wash my hands of the whole murder/sabotage thing. We were two days into the trip with only five left to go. I could handle that. I had to handle that. When this was all over, I'd have a story to tell the workers on Plunia who had helped my mom come up with the money to get me to the space station the day the ship deployed.

I shifted Cat from the table to the chair and opened my computer. The drive had been calibrated to analyze my voice tone and pulse and embedded those statistics into the file properties. It also transcribed the recording into a report that could be read and transferred at the push of a button. I stated my name, employee number, and rank, realized I'd said "uniform lieutenant" instead of "security officer," and wasted another fourteen minutes determining the spot on the computer hard drive to erase to match my new credentials. I reattached the motherboard and started over. All told, it took me thirty-seven minutes to finish the report. I signed off, sealed the documents, and sent them to Neptune via the ship's secure network. My job was done.