> “Didn’t you lose your kiddo in a game of hearts?”
>
> “You don’t have to keep bringing that up.”
>
> ~Vinnius Cicero, Ano DiBattista
Cargo Bay 6 was huge, a maze of crates and shipping vehicles, forklifts, cargo lifts, and so on. The walls and floor were the same dull grey lined with attention-getting fluorescent yellow tape, delineating sections for different types of cargo or lanes for the vehicles.
In fact, the walls, ceiling, and floor were all lined with agrav plating, standard practice in cargo bays. It allowed a ship captain more floor space. To access the cargo planted on non-floor surfaces, one simply walked up to the corner and stepped onto the wall. The gravity could be turned off, to assist in easy transport of large cargo elements.
The candidates followed Vinnius and DiBattista into a little open area among the crates. Stacked transport containers gave the area a roomlike feeling, big and metal and painted dark red.
Smaller boxes haphazardly placed around the ground labeled with stenciled alphanumerics obscured the dead body for the first few moments. Hortensia gasped and looked away. “Oh goodness,” she said frowning in surprise.
“What’s going on here?” Razer asked.
“Okay everyone,” Vinnius jumped onto a nearby box. “Listen up. Behind me is the body of your old pal Reeve, fellow candidate. Your job today is to find out who killed him here and why.”
Vio raised her hand. “Do we know why he was here?”
Vinnius rolled his eyes. “She thinks I don’t know about the hacking,” he muttered to himself. “You have access to any shipboard records you need. That means you know as much as I do.”
He waved his hands. “Get to it.”
DiBattista cleared his throat. “This is the scene of the crime, so be careful about evidence, but not too careful because we’re not bringing Enforcers on for this one. Ping either of us when you’re done; we will be watching the sec-cam feed in case you need anything.”
Vinnius hopped off his box and began walking back to the entrance to the bay. “Happy hunting,” he lowered his voice, “you teamkilling fucks.”
“Well that was certainly something,” Hortensia said eventually. She sat down delicately on one of the nearby boxes.
“So the Reaver is finally dead,” DeMoss mused.
Vio slammed her face into her hand. “The Reaver. So that’s where I saw him before. I knew it!”
DeMoss chuckled. After a moment Hortensia joined in.
“You knew, didn’t you?” Vio asked.
“Yes.” Hortensia shrugged nonchalantly. “I said to you, didn’t I. I am not going to be giving everything I know.”
Arabel stood. “Shut up,” she told them.
“What di-“ DeMoss began.
“Shut up,” she screeched, clenching her fists so hard and so suddenly that one of her knuckles popped quietly.
She waited a beat for the startled silence to descend. “We have a murder.” She looked at them. “The ship is a closed system. It was either a crewman or one of us. And the crewmen are Malfian Mafia, handpicked and controlled by Salieri.”
She paused to see if any of them would interrupt. Arabel hated interruptions. “We have a cross-functional team.” She walked deliberately over to Hortensia. “Interrogator,” she said. She moved onto Vio. “Hacker.”
She moved to Razer, looking him up and down. She frowned. “Capture,” she said eventually. “If the suspect resists.” She looked at DeMoss for a moment and then back at Vio. “First, we must establish a timeline.”
“Hey,” DeMoss protested. “Wait a minute. Who-”
She wheeled about to face him. “I know your real name,” she blurted.
Fury bloomed behind sea-grey eyes, but his mouth snapped shut.
“Let us take the deep breaths, everyone,” Hortensia held her hands up. “It was not meant the insult.”
Vio agreed. “Let’s all calm down,” she said. “We don’t get anywhere fighting.”
DeMoss pressed his lips together, and then nodded.
Arabel fidgeted. “A timeline, now.”
“This is not the first step,” Hortensia said. “It is necessary to know who this man was, and who wished him to die.”
“Who didn’t?” DeMoss muttered.
“You knew him,” Razer said.
He stood up and walked over to the body. “A thoroughly unpleasant man,” DeMoss said quietly. “To know him was to want to strangle him.” He straightened. “But more formally, he owes the Golden Peaches a lot of money, and he had a thing for killing Guild whores. Gender irrelevant.”
“And he recently had a falling out with his voxwave producer,” Arabel snapped. “Can we get onto the timeline?”
Hortensia frowned. “That is correct. I remember that. Something about the contracts.”
“So the killer may have worked for the Peaches,” Razer commented.
“Or the Guild,” Arabel said. “Or his producer. Or anyone who knew him personally. Let us not rule anything out prematurely.”
“The Peaches are known to hire assassins. The producer is not,” Razer said. “It is not an unreasonable inference.”
“The Peaches make more money off of him than they do off of the drugs,” DeMoss commented. “It doesn’t make sense.”
“There’s always you,” Razer said.
He walked slowly in a wide arc, centered on DeMoss. Knees bent. Hands casually at his sides.
There was a long moment. Arabel’s hand moved conspicuously inconspicuously to the inside of her jacket below the arm. Hortensia tensed, opened her mouth, and then closed it.
“Beg pardon?” DeMoss’ voice was low. He did not move for a weapon the way Arabel had, but the fluidity with which he turned, slowly, to keep Razer perfectly within his line of sight was like a tightly wound spring.
“You knew him. You didn’t like him.”
“That doesn’t mean anything,” DeMoss said. He glanced around the cargo bay, taking in the layout of shipping crates, the viable exits.
“Suggestive,” Arabel cut in. “Not conclusive.”
“Um,” said Vio.
The weight of their collective attention came to rest on her. Razer and DeMoss had not stopped staring each other down, but Razer paused in his circling.
Vio shrunk slightly. “I have your timeline.”
“Finally,” Arabel said quietly.
“What is it that you have found?” Hortensia asked.
“Sec cam footage,” Vio said quietly.
“Please,” Hortensia snapped. “Will you stop hissing at each other like a pair of pit vipers! All are suspects now! We will know nothing if you are too busy to learn!”
There was a pause. Razer and DeMoss stared each other down.
Slowly, slowly, DeMoss put his hands up. “Okay,” he said. “Let’s see what the data says before we go for anyone.”
Razer relaxed, uneasily. He took a step back. “If you are the killer,” he said calmly, “you will not be able to escape me. I have hunted lords before.”
“We’ll wait to find out till then,” DeMoss said.
Slowly, deliberately, Razer turned toward Vio, keeping his eye on DeMoss until the last possible moment. “What do you have?”
“Sec cam footage,” Vio said again. She swallowed, mouth suddenly dry. “Um. Our boy has a heated argument with Hortensia at 19:12. No audio, I dunno what it’s about. And then he stomps off to the cargo bay, looks like for a smoke. Arrives at 20:09. Smokes for two minutes, and at 20:11 the footage cuts out on all cargo bay cameras for twenty seconds. Then,” she gestured at the body. “They didn’t even move him.”
“Does that narrow it down?” Razer asked. He looked at Hortensia.
“I made the deal with him that I made with all of you,” she said, straight-backed. “He deals in bad faith. Lies and exaggerations. I had told him many valuable things.”
“Can anyone lip-read?” DeMoss asked suddenly. Razer shot him a sidelong glance.
There was a pause.
“I,” Hortensia said. “I can lip read.”
“You are the suspect in this interaction,” Arabel snapped. “Useless testimony.” She turned to Vio. “Our killer can destroy camera footage.”
Razer looked very unhappy. “And kill in twenty seconds. Surely she’s not the only one who can take footage down.”
“Were they working together?” Hortensia asked.
“Vio was with me the whole time,” Razer said. “Maybe it was you.”
Arabel wheeled around and stalked over to the body. “Strangled,” she commented. “Vio and Hortensia do not have the upper arm strength or the reach.”
“Arabel,” Vio snapped. “You’re not team leader. Sit down.”
“By scores I am,” she said primly.
Vio began to retort but Hortensia’s voice cut through the confusion again. “This will serve no purpose,” she said loudly. Firmly. “Vio and I are not tall enough to strangle the man Reeve.”
Arabel grinned a savage grin. “No one here is, but,” she looked at DeMoss.
He bent his knees. “I said I didn’t do it.”
Razer flicked his wrist and a knife appeared in his hand. “Don’t run,” he said. “This is a criminal organization. Murder need not be the end of your candidacy.”
“Murder so poorly carried out might be,” Arabel snapped.
“Do you work for the Golden Peaches?” Razer asked. He twirled a knife idly.
Hortensia raised her voice again but they all took to arguing. Yelling. Vio swiped through the sec cam footage.
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At 20:11 DeMoss had been doing body shots off a gunnery sergeant on deck 11C.
Vio frowned. She looked at the body again. She looked at her dataslate. “Give me,” she muttered, thinking, “give me actor Claudius Glycon’s exact height.” Her fingers swiped through databases of public knowledge.
Her eyes flared green. She looked around. Looked at the crates near Reeve’s final moments. “Give me,” she muttered, reorganizing her HUD, “give me a measuring stick. 188 cm from the ground.”
A hovering green indicator flared to life in her visual field. She hopped on top of a smaller crate, and then clambered around to a larger one, and did a little hop over to the miniature shipping container behind where Reeve had died.
She hooked her legs over the side, spread them wide and crossed her ankles midair.
The green indicator floated. Yes, it might just be –
She realized the others had stopped chattering.
“What?” she asked.
“Um,” Razer asked, cheeks flaring red, “what are you doing, Vio?”
Arabel was the first to get it. “Legs,” she said. “He was strangled with someone’s legs. Sitting atop the shipping crate.”
DeMoss shot her a grateful nod. She nodded back.
“What have we gained from this?” DeMoss asked. “It could have been any one of us.”
“You have an alibi,” she told him, smirking. Vio hopped down from the crate.
He had the grace to look faintly embarrassed.
“Who else has one?” Razer asked.
She checked. “Hortensia is good. Hmm. Arabel is unaccounted for.”
“What about you,” she snapped back.
“I was in my quarters at that point,” she said.
“No alibi,” Arabel said. She was annoyingly smug about it. “What about the other one?”
“I can vouch for her,” Razer said. “We were together most of that day.”
“What were you doing?” Arabel asked, at the exact moment that DeMoss’ eyebrows shot up. He waggled them at her and gave her a thumbs up.
“No,” she protested. “It wasn’t that.”
Razer suddenly found the floor very interesting.
She was going to protest more but Hortensia’s voice cut in. “It isn’t that.”
Arabel narrowed her eyes, annoyed, but nodded.
“They were working together,” Hortensia said. “They have formed a team.”
“Access to the security feed,” Arabel snapped. “Capable but no motive. You’re a freelancer. Hired to sneak aboard and kill him? Canvas shoes, finger-tight gloves popular in the cliff districts. Reeve operated out of studios in central-south. Neon hair popular in certain dance scenes. There would have been a go-between.”
Vio looked desperately at Razer for help, but he was glancing between the other candidates, studying them.
“Wait,” she said, “if I had cut that footage from the cameras I would have run a loop overtop. Or pulled footage from elsewhere. I wouldn’t have just cut it.”
“So, you’re more than competent enough to pull this off,” DeMoss said thoughtfully.
“Hey, how about some gratitude for the height thing?” she ground out.
“I don’t think she would have done it,” Razer said. “Come on, Hortensia, you don’t think she did it do you?”
“You and she have become a unit,” Hortensia scoffed. “This is not admissible.”
“Let me think,” Arabel screeched.
This did not silence them sufficiently so she yelled. It was a wordless, raw, short exclamation.
“The fuck,” Vio said.
Arabel hopped up onto a box. “There are more clues here.” She pointed. “Watch her. If she’s guilty, she will try to escape. If she is innocent, she will be willing to prove it.”
“Yes,” Vio said. “Yes I will.”
“Of those present, we know for certain that Vio is capable of climbing the crates. That would rule you out, dear Auntie. No offense,” Razer did a quarter-bow toward Hortensia.
“None taken,” she smiled.
Vio looked over at Razer. “Gee, help me out a little less, okay?”
He sat on the crate beside her. “I’m sorry,” he said quietly. “Ever since Hortensia ID’d our alliance, the more I defend you, the less credibility I have. I’m saving it for when I have something worthwhile.”
She took a deep breath. “What happens to the person who committed the murder anyway?”
“Probably Salieri spaces them,” Razer shrugged.
“That’s terrible!”
He looked flustered again. “They’re not gonna space you, Vio.”
“How are you going to stop them.”
He opened his jacket a little. Just to show her the array of knives waiting inside. “They’re not gonna space you. Vio, did you do it?”
“No.”
“Then if you are accused, it’s not going to be because of facts. Just panic. It will be me and you against the rest of them. And I am the one with the knives.”
“What!?”
To her surprise he hugged her. “You’ll be okay, alright?”
She could feel the flat metal blades under his jacket. “Okay.”
----------------------------------------
“Vio’s alibis are no longer trustworthy,” Arabel said. “She is our prime suspect at the moment. And she admitted earlier that she is capable of producing forged footage.”
“Why didn’t I just give an alibi to myself then, dumbass?” Vio was getting annoyed.
“I will vouch for her,” Razer said again. “We were together pretty much the whole day.”
“Pretty much?” Hortensia asked.
“Obviously there were bathroom breaks,” Vio glared. “Food. Interviews.”
“The whole thing only took twenty seconds,” DeMoss mused. He looked at her carefully.
“According to her,” Arabel pointed out.
They fell to arguing again. Hortensia came and sat by Vio, put her arm around the smaller girl’s shoulder and squeezed. “I know it was not you,” she murmured.
“How?” Vio squeezed her arms around her torso.
Hortensia just shook her head. “You are, kindhearted. This may be not the place for you, Seneschal on a ship of murderers.”
“At this rate I’m just trying to get out of this alive.”
“Your friend,” Hortensia said. “He is, he is careful. When there was news of alibis, he was trying to conceal that he was,” she searched for the word, “was stressed. And it is strange, for one with his, his many skills in killing to try to become Seneschal of a void-ship.” She looked Vio intently in the eyes. “He has been kind for you. He has defended you when he could. But I must ask. Were you truly together at 20:11 shiptime?”
Vio took a deep breath. “Don’t exactly remember. But we can check the hallway sec cam to see when he entered and left.”
She found the requisite camera and set viewing speed to 6x. “Okay there, it’s 18:24 and he leaves.”
Razer fast-walked back to the room, and tapped the doorbell. The door opened.
“18:56,” she commented. “See, he’s back.”
“Mm,” Hortensia said. “No, there is he is gone. What time was that?”
Vio checked. “19:24.” She slowed the footage down to 2x.
They waited. Around them, the sounds of heated argument. Razer defended her passionately, but Arabel was either convinced, or very contrarian – she wasn’t sure which, at this point. The footage speed clicked forward.
“He’ll be back,” she said. “I remember he was there.”
20:05 passed. Vio’s jaw dropped. She looked at Hortensia.
“Watch,” the older woman nudged her. “Your friend, he may come back just before.”
20:09 came and went, and he was not back. Arabel had evidently insulted DeMoss again, and he managed to get enough words into her stream-of-consciousness to constitute a valid response.
At 20:10 DeMoss’ comments had needled Arabel enough that she had started screeching wordlessly again. Razer was still not back from his trip.
20:11 came and went. Vio let out a long breath. She looked at Hortensia. Hortensia looked back at her.
“Excuse me,” Hortensia addressed the group. “Excuse me. We have something.”
“What?” Razer asked.
“We have, we have investigated the alibi claim of Razer and Vio.” She looked shakily at DeMoss, Arabel. Razer walked up to Hortensia and stuck a knife into her neck.
“Razer,” Vio screamed.
Arabel screamed wordlessly and roughly jerked a handgun from her side. She pointed it, shaking, at Razer.
Hortensia clawed at her neck, gasping, making throaty sounds. Razer swiped the blade cleanly through, and the older woman crumpled to the floor with a dull thud.
“Hortensia deals in convincing lies and half-truths,” Razer said calmly. “The killer was working on behalf of the Golden Peaches. Hortensia worked for the Peaches, she said so in an interview. We can pull up the relevant clips.”
“That is not conclusive,” Arabel shrieked.
The intercom bleeped.
Razer wiped his knife clean using a little handkerchief already stained with blood.
“By the Emperor’s testicles,” Vinnius growled through the speakers. “I just don’t fucking know anymore. I just don’t. Whatever’s wrong with you people, just sort it out yourselves. Goddamn it. You have two hours before I space all of you and start over with a new group”
There was some small off-mic conversation, and then Vinnius returned.
“Okay look, my associate has advised me that we still need a Seneschal. So I’m popping a couple guns in at the entrance. You guys figure out who it’s gonna be. McDaniels? Get your fat ass over here-” and then the mic cut.
DeMoss glanced up at this, but there was no more. The intercom was silent.
Razer began to move, but Arabel hissed at him. “Stop.”
“Let’s put the gun down,” Vio said.
“What are we supposed to do now?” DeMoss asked, backing up. Arabel whirled and pointed the gun at him. “Me? What did I do?”
“One Seneschal. We’re supposed to kill each other,” Razer said. The gun snapped back to him, but he seemed unconcerned.
“Nobody goes for the guns,” Arabel growled. “Wait. Let me think.”
DeMoss took a slow big step back from her, and then another.
“Let me think,” she shrieked, whirling and pulling the trigger. DeMoss dove out of the way, rolling behind a nearby crate. Two other shots took out chunks of the crate, revealing a shipment of assorted dishware.
Vio accessed the light controls for the cargo bay and brought them down to zero. Then she ran for it. Two more shots sounded behind her, and some frustrated screaming.
The bay was now dimly lit, but not pitch black. The emergency channels, she couldn’t access those. A sickly green glow shone around the edges of the bay. Random lanterns, access hallways to other parts of the ship still let the light shine in freely. Vio hit her microbead. “Razer,” she whispered, flipping channels. “Razer?”
“You sound like you are running,” his voice, soft in her ear.
“Why’d you kill her,” she hissed.
“Her association with the Peaches was damning. If she had time to retaliate she would have.”
There was a pause as she tried to get her bearings. The entrance should be to her left, and there were guns there. Not that she knew what she’d do with them. Vio wasn’t sure if she wanted to kill her way through this.
“Where are you, Vio? I can hear your footsteps on the line.”
She was running loud, stomped footsteps echoing against the metal floors of the cargo bay. She stopped, panting. “What? What are you going to do?”
“We can team up. Take down the rest of them.”
“Why? I’m useless.”
“You have control of the lights.”
Vio moved to the left, but quietly. She was abandoning any hope of making it to the weapons first. “You don’t need me to take them down. Are you going to kill me?”
“I wouldn’t do that.”
She bit her lip. “You killed Hortensia.”
She saw the light first and then heard the ear-shattering bang, felt the impact of a bullet slamming into a crate past her right shoulder. Vio screamed a little, diving for the opposite wall.
“There you are,” Razer whispered in her ear.
“Antionette,” Arabel moved forward, a shadowy figure in the dimness. “Canvas shoes and finger-tight gloves characteristic of the cliffs districts. The manner of a native lower Sibellan and a westside accent.”
Another gunshot, another bullet slamming into the ground. Vio scooted away as quietly as she could, but her sneakers squeaked against the ground.
“Neon green hair characteristic of certain dance scenes, but high quality implants. Ocular, and in your right hand little dots characteristic of a defensive shock weapon. Much higher quality than westside freelancers.”
The problem with the hand-taser was that you had to get pretty close to deliver it. Vio curled up between two crates, trying to place where Arabel was by her voice.
“But take away the eyes, the hair, the tattoos and your face is reminiscent of a young aristocrat who's been in the uncharted territories for the last ten years.”
Three gunshots, three flares of light. “You don’t make any sense.”
Vio lunged. Her hand flared with electricity, ready to discharge but she misjudged in the darkness, clawing at nothing. The gun went off.
In the end it was her mechanical arm that saved her. The bullet lodged in the edge of her palm, blowing her thumb clean off. Vio swung again.
Arabel gave her that look she always gave things, like she was subjecting them not so much to a careful look but an optical scan. She twisted to Vio’s left, and Vio flailed out with her flesh arm.
Arabel grabbed it, yanked. Vio went down, conveniently bashing her head against a nearby crate. She saw the muzzle of the gun, saw the spark catch somewhere down the barrel, threw her hands up instinctively.
It went into her mechanical elbow. A foot came crashing down, sweeping the arm aside and stepping down, hard, hard enough to crack the plastic. The electric contacts on her fingers sparked impotently against the rubber of Arabel’s sole.
The gun pointed down again.
“Last words,” Arabel barked. “They matter to some people.”
Vio blinked, still trying to clear her pounding headache. “Aargh,” she tried.
Arabel nodded. “Grlgrh,” she said.
Vio shook her head, squeezing her eyes shut and then open. “What?”
Warm liquid dribbled lightly down onto Vio, her face, her hair, her arms. Arabel swayed for a moment, then fell down backwards.
Vio scooted away. “What?” She squinted.
Razer could barely be seen in the dimness. She was pretty sure it was him because of the shape, and because of the glint of light between his fingers, shaped long and thin and edged and lethal. “Shit,” she snarled, scooting backwards.
“Vio,” he tried.
“Stay away from me,” she swapped to coms, whispering as quietly as she dared.
Another gunshot. Vio whipped her head around, thinking that maybe Arabel had returned from the dead. Razer dove for cover.
But Arabel was still on the ground, glinting with pooling wetness. This was the work of a marksman. The only one left was DeMoss, and apparently, he was more dangerous than he’d seemed.
As quietly as she could, Vio ran for it, hoping no further shots would take her as she went.
In all probability, if she was hit she wouldn’t even know it.