Ten Light-Years To Insanity

Chapter 2

2

“Do you know there’s a body in the cargo bay?”

The feeler hair on Morg’s backside detected a slight variance in the pressure on the bridge so he turned his gyro chair toward the disturbance. As he suspected, the Earthling was walking his way. He had a large food item stuffed in his voice hole and was trying to chew and talk at the same time. It was bad enough listening to the Earthling’s incessant blabbering. But now, he had to watch bits of food eject and fly around the bridge as the kid tried to get the words out. Morg reluctantly turned on his translator.

“Morg, did you hear me? I said, do you know there’s a body in the cargo bay?”

Morg stared at the Earthling, attempting to detect whether this was another of his practical jokes. If the Earthling was screwing around, he was doing a damn decent job of hiding the truth.

“What do you mean, there’s a body in the cargo bay?”

“My god. You’re a military man; a trained killer. You know what death is and you know what a body is, and you know where the cargo bay is. Add them all together and what do you get?”

Morg unstrapped himself from the gyro chair and headed for the cargo bay. He didn’t say a word to the Earthling but made himself a promise. If there wasn’t something dead in the cargo bay, there would be by the end of the day.

The smell coming from the cargo bay was overwhelming. It was the smell of death. Morg had been in enough battles to know the dead thing on the other side of the door was a Yandan. There was only one creature in the universe that gave off this distinctive acidic and sour odor.

Lying on the floor behind a stack of boxes was Morg’s mate. Even in death, she was still attractive and alluring to him. Sticking in her back, lodged between the third and fourth filter gill was a Yandan military slit knife. Whoever killed her knew precisely where to put the knife to cause instant death. Or, the assailant was damn lucky. Morg bet the killer was well versed in the art of assassination.

Morg had conducted hundreds of postmortem investigations looking for clues about the killer, time, and cause of death. This time, he wasn’t anxious to examine the crime scene and corpse. There was something sacrilegious about touching, prodding, and examining the shell of a being he knew so well and spent countless hours of intimacy with.

It took two hours to complete his examination of the crime scene and victim. All the physical evidence was collected, categorized, and stored. Body samples and fluids from the victim were ready for the forensics analyzer to determine if there were any irregularities. The only bit of evidence which struck Morg as unusual was a tiny piece of spongy, two-tone, material lying by his mate’s head. His first guess was that this material was organic and not synthetic. He wouldn’t know if his guess was right until the forensics analyzer spit out its report.

The shell of his deceased mate had decayed significantly and was only a day or two away from falling apart. If that happened, the internal organs and body fluids would flow in every direction like water cascading through a faulty dam. There was already some seepage on the floor around the corpse which he would have to mop up.

It was obvious she had been dead for weeks. He wondered if she died before take-off from Yanda or killed in transit? Normally, the forensics analyzer was able to pinpoint the time of death to within twenty-four hours. But, in this case, the cool temperature and varying atmospheric pressure in the cargo bay caused by the Shadow Drive system would corrupt the time of death estimate by at least a few days, plus or minus.

With all the evidence collected and recordings made of the crime scene, there was no reason to keep her on board. Morg gently lifted her shell onto a gurney and pushed it to the refuse interlock. He put a thermal grenade down her gullet and ejected her into space. This type of grenade didn’t need any type of atmosphere to burn. With a two-minute fuse, it would incinerate her insides before blowing the body shell to pieces. Morg thought this would be a fitting ending for his mate who loved space travel and daydreamed about the stars.

On his way back to the bridge, Morg made a mental note to check the ship’s recording system. It might reveal whether the assassin slipped up and left a recording of himself boarding the ship with or without his mate. He didn’t put much hope in recognizing the killer or watching his mate board the transport. Any assassin who killed with such precision, wouldn’t forget to erase or destroy the recordings from a ship’s playback system. On newer transports, recorded playbacks were transmitted immediately to the nearest information storage facility in the solar system. But, the playback recordings on this old tug were stored in a compartment accessible to anyone with modest technical skills.

Morg wondered why the disappearance of his mate wasn't communicated to him in deep space. Even though his offspring were irresponsible much of the time, they would eventually report her missing. He walked back to the bridge, thinking about what questions to ask the Earthling about the crime scene. Halfway there, the answer to the communications question popped into his head. The Trifect must have put a nocomm on his mission. Nothing could be communicated to or from the transport for the entire time it was in transit to Earth. The last thing the Trifect wanted was for their enemies to eavesdrop and find out who was being escorted to Earth.

Morg couldn’t believe his eyes when he entered the bridge. Standing next to the view-window with a painter stick in his hands was the Earthling. He was drawing lewd and lecherous illustrations on the view-window. To highlight the illustrations he included stars, black holes, and other heavenly bodies. Nude Earthlings, Yandans, Crelons, and other assorted species and creatures covered the entire twenty feet of view-window. All were in compromising positions and acts of debauchery. A few of his pictures were death scenes. Morg understood how the kid knew of Earthlings, Yandans and Crelons, but how did he know about these other beings?

The stupidity of mucking up and using the view-window as a full-length mural was almost beyond comprehension. But, on closer examination, Morg had to admit the Earthling’s illustrations were quite ingenious and artful. One of the human figures caught his attention. It was a female Earthling who was sitting between two male Earthlings. All were nude. The woman’s swept-back hair consisted of the fire red and orange of a neighboring solar system’s gases and reflected lights. Her breast n*****s were two prominent, rose colored stars. And, between her inner thighs was a large black hole. If these drawings had been created by a prominent artist, they would have been taken seriously. But there was no doubt in Morg’s mind that the Earthling was screwing around. This was just another way to amuse himself.

Morg was about ready to interrupt the Earthling’s fun and games when the thermal grenade blew. It could be seen off the starboard side of the ship about a quadrant away. Within two seconds, a minor shock wave hit and vibrated through the transport.

The Earthling jumped back from the view-window and spun around to find Morg staring at him.

“What the hell was that?”

“I discharged the corpse with a thermal grenade in it?”

“Really? Who was that dead guy in the cargo bay?”

“It wasn’t a guy, it was my mate.”

“Are you kidding? That corpse in the cargo bay was your mate? Wow, that’s unreal.”

Morg waited for some sort of condolence but none came. The closest the Earthling came to saying something pleasant was, “Oh, well. Now both of us have lost a mate.”

At first, Morg didn’t know what the Earthling was talking about. Then, it hit him. “No, I lost a life-long partner. You lost a three-week fling.”

Morg’s jab bounced off the Earthling like a wisp of air. Before either of them could say more, the ship’s Roboland system announced, “Please return to your gyro chairs and buckle the harness straps. Arrival at Feltte Six will be in eighteen minutes. Docking will be at gate 12W. Upon disembarking, proceed to the Process Area with your credentials. Be advised that inadequate or no credentials will result in a quarantine placed upon the arriving ship. The current crime rating on Feltte Six is 8.3 out of 10. Have a productive stay.”

“Morg, are we going to have fun, or what?”

Morg didn’t bother to answer or acknowledge the Earthling. All he could think about was the smartass comment about his deceased mate. If that wasn't irritating enough, there was also the question of how the Earthling diverted their flight to Feltte Six without his knowledge. He couldn’t believe they were making a stop at one of the most crime-infested planets in the universe.