Steph Bennion - Paw-Prints of the Gods

“Who are you!” The officer who spoke sported a neat goatee, short blond hair and a terrible attempt at fake tan. Momus thought he seemed strangely nervous. “This facility is…”

“What are you doing here?” his colleague interrupted. He looked young for an officer, with smooth pale skin and slick jet-black hair. “Speak up, man!”

“I’m here for bloody fuel,” retorted Momus. His heart thumped hard after the surprise attack by the cat. “Who the crapping hell are you? Where are the crew? More to the point, if you want to talk and wave frigging guns, can we do it somewhere with some gravity?”

“I am Captain Nyx of the Newbrum Police Department,” the dark-haired officer said.

“And I am…” began his colleague.

“We haven’t got time for this!” snapped Nyx. “Sir, I must respectfully warn you that you are trespassing at a crime scene. I insist you leave immediately!”

Momus warily regarded the percussion rifles pointing his way. He had not forgotten that there was very little between him and the station’s huge storage tanks of highly-explosive hydrogen. “Aren’t you supposed to use plasma guns or something?”

“Plasma rounds cost money,” the blond officer replied, sounding rueful.

“As do bullets!” Nyx said angrily. “Please do not give us a reason to waste any by making holes in you.”

“Shouldn’t we question this man?” suggested his colleague.

“No need,” said Momus. “Just give me a frigging moment to connect up the hoses and I’ll go back to my ship and stay out of your way. Do I bloody look daft enough to disturb the work of Newbrum’s finest? I’m sure you have good reason to be out at the back-end of crappy nowhere. As do I,” he quickly added, acutely aware that he was sweating profusely and babbling like an idiot. “Did I mention I’m only here for frigging fuel and not for anything even remotely connected to whatever it is that brought you here?”

“We’re here on official police business,” Nyx growled. “This is an inquest.”

The blond officer looked confused. “You said we were here to avoid this becoming an official inquest and to cover up any evidence that…”

“Thank you, sergeant,” Nyx interjected quickly. Momus got the impression that unlike his colleague, the dark-haired man had a rather cavalier attitude to applying the law. “We were not expecting visitors. If there’s one thing I hate, it’s mysterious strangers.”

“His name is Momus,” the sergeant replied. Momus saw him smile and guessed the man’s visor had matched his face to a police file. Whatever was on record was apparently amusing enough for the officer to recover from his earlier confusion.

“Captain Momus,” the reluctant pilot of the Indra corrected meekly. “As in space captain, not a proper police captain like your good self,” he added to Nyx.

“It says here your ship is currently grounded at Newbrum for failing safety checks,” the sergeant mused, contemplating the text scrolling before his eyes. “Last summer you were fined and had your licence suspended for a month after crashing a shuttle into Stellarbridge . Then there was that time…”

“Oh,” said Nyx and grinned. “That Momus.”

“And now I’m flying a crappy tanker,” retorted Momus. “I’m glad I amuse you.”

Zotz sat in the VR booth, mesmerised by the view from the Indra ’s flight deck as seen through the eyes of a cat in zero gravity. By now, Momus had been aboard Sky Cleaver for over an hour, but instantaneous transmissions were not possible from the Indra and the communication delay meant the screen was still relaying the tanker’s final approach into dock. Zotz too had noticed the two other ships on the pontoon and was intrigued by the huge silver cylinder lashed to the station. He had a pretty good idea of what it was, but wanted to make sure before he told his father and Quirinus the news.

Seeing the other spacecraft docked nearby gave him an idea. While neither the Indra nor Sky Cleaver had extra-dimensional drives, Zotz recognised the police cruiser as a type of ship that did. Endymion had once shown him a useful hack that allowed any wristpad to bypass usual security protocols and lock onto the nearest available ED transmitter. This was something meant to be used by emergency services only, but the short sequence of code given to him by Endymion opened the channel for all transmissions from any network device. In this instance, Zotz hoped it would allow him to get a real-time link to Ravana’s cat via the police cruiser’s ED drive. It was a sneaky thing to do, but in his mind this sort of hacking was mischievous rather than malicious.

“Hey Jones,” he murmured. “It’s time to go exploring!”

He paused and peered from the VR booth, wary that his father or Quirinus may be about to disturb him, but apart from the goose he was alone. Satisfied, he tapped at the screen of his wristpad and found the file containing Endymion’s hack. Only then did he pull out the VR unit’s keyboard, bring up the booth’s terminal text screen and begin to type.

Despite a great deal of grumbling from the police officers, Momus insisted on doing his job. Under their wary gaze, he checked that the Indra had successfully connected with Sky Cleaver’s refuelling gantry and the pumps were running normally. Only then did he allow them to lead him away for questioning.

The torus of the mining facility was a hundred and fifty metres in diameter, which like that of the larger Stellarbridge rotated twice a minute to generate the illusion of gravity. The main wheel was joined to the hub by four spokes, each of which contained a walkway ladder descending to the cabins at the rim. Once there, the centrifugal force became around two-thirds that of Ascension’s surface gravity or a third that of Earth.

The crew cabins were long and narrow with a floor and ceiling that curved up in a most disquieting way. Momus was reminded of his uncle’s narrowboat, having once many years ago spent several weeks of his school holidays navigating along the heritage waterways of Birmingham. Then he realised he was actually thinking about his uncle’s hamster and the way it kept running pointlessly around its wheel.

The officers led him to the facility’s medical unit. There, upon the examination table, he was greeted by the alarming sight of a long shape beneath a blood-stained sheet.

“Don’t mind him,” said Nyx, nodding at the sheet. “He’s dead.”

“One of the crew?” Momus asked nervously. “Only I couldn’t help noticing it’s a bit too frigging quiet around here for my liking.”

“We found this unfortunate soul in that piece of junk tied to the pontoon,” said the blond sergeant. “We’re working on the theory that…”

“You may know him,” interjected Nyx. “Care to take a look?”

He took hold of the sheet and with an unnecessary flourish whipped it away from the head of the dead man beneath. Momus recoiled at the sight of the pale-skinned corpse. The deceased, who was dark-haired with a neat goatee beard, was no one he recognised.

“Did you kill him?” asked Nyx.

“What?” exclaimed Momus. “No, I frigging well did not!”

“You arrived in the Indra , which belongs to the refugees from the Dandridge Cole ,” said Nyx. “That colossal lump of steel moored next to your own ship happens to be an engine unit from the very same asteroid. Coincidence?”

“Yes!” Momus exclaimed nervously. “Well, maybe not. Wak did say the crew here wanted to talk to us in person about something.”

“According to their records, it was salvaged by the Sky Cleaver crew and brought here with the aim of selling it back to the Dandridge Cole for a not inconsiderable sum,” said Nyx. “Was the price perhaps a little too rich? Is that why you resorted to murder?”