Drifter

Eli awoke to the door buzzer. It kept going off, each time it was like a blow to his head. He got up, wrapped the bed sheet around his waist and stumbled over to it, head pounding. He opened the door and found Sateen standing there, looking distressed.

“There’s been a murder!” she declared.

“What?” Eli asked dumbly, not yet fully awake.

“Ka’darka, Ka’darka is dead! Thracia found him. He’s dead. Someone killed him.”

“Okay, okay, shit. I’ll be down in a minute,” he started back into the room but turned back around, “Please tell Gami. She’s in the other cabin.”

Bright pink against the white of the sheet as Azai turned over to face him. She rubbed her white eyes and put her hands against the little segmented bumps on the sides of her forehead. On her arms, and the sides of her stomach there were recesses, in which there were some kind of vent.

As he put on his pants, boots, and pistol belt, he filled Azai in. She was slow to react. His head still hurt and he felt dirty, smelling like her secretions, which were flowery. She began the laborious task of putting her suit back on.

He stepped into the corridor and started heading toward the ladder. Gami came out of her room. She was clad in something like a house robe, carried a big pistol in each hand. Lukas followed behind her, looking a bit sheepish.

They made their way down the ladder and into the guest quarters. All of the passengers were out in the hall. Each looked bedraggled and shocked.

The suite’s door had been set to stay in the open position. Ka’darka lay there on his bunk, stone dead. His blood had soaked the sheets. The look on his face was distressed, but his eyes were shut.

Gami started aggressively asking questions, “Who found him? Who’s been in the room? Get out of there, Eli! You’ll contaminate the crime scene.”

Thracia, the weird, tubular entity stepped forward, “I found him. I panicked. I woke everyone up. I think that they all went in there to see for themselves.”

“Damn. Alright, I’ll take a look.”

“Why you?” Skant demanded, “For all we know, you were the one that did it.”

Eli found himself jumping to her defense, “Gami did time as a cop. I know her, she isn’t the one that did this.”

Gami spoke as she entered the room, “I’ve conducted over two hundred investigations, let me handle this.”

“Fine,” Skant growled.

***

Gami gave the room a once over before she even looked at the body. Nothing looked out of place. All of the cheap, generic furnishings Eli had supplied the cabins with were intact and in place. It didn’t look like his luggage had been gone through.

There were no prints on the carpet. Even if there had been, they would have been compromised by the others.

One single stab wound to the chest. His eyes were closed. His face was frozen in a grimace. A check of his hands and arms didn’t reveal any defensive wounds. There was nothing on his hands or under his fingernails from a struggle.

Gami knew the name of his species. She searched her databases and found anatomical charts. Just as she thought, the victim had been stabbed in exactly the most critical location. A nerve cluster rested above several vital organs. He probably didn’t even wake up, only felt a sudden shift in his dreams, the last few moments of his existence transforming into a nightmare. The perfect silent kill.

“Ka’darka was killed by someone that knew what they were doing,” Gami announced, “The murderer knew exactly where to strike. This suggests that it is personal, or that the killer is a professional.”

Eli addressed her, “Gami, watch them. I’ve got to check on something,” he went to the forward section.

Gami stared them down, looking for tells. They looked around nervously, each passenger’s eyes moving from one suspect to another. If any of them noticed something incriminating, they didn’t show it.

After a few minutes, Eli returned, “I checked the cameras, the footage from last night has been erased and the cameras switched off.”

“You don’t have a password on it?”

“No. I didn’t think that it was needed. I’ll fix that issue when this is over.”

“What about the ship’s auto logs?” Gami asked, “They are hardcoded in and would be very difficult to tamper with.”

“The door to the bridge was opened some time after everyone went to their rooms. Then the door to the victim’s cabin was opened a few minutes later. And a few minutes after that, the airlock was cycled.”

“They disposed of the evidence. I bet that there’s a bloody knife floating somewhere in the void.”

“My thoughts exactly” he addressed the gathering as a whole, “Everyone into the cargo hold. We’re going to figure out who the killer is.”