The Space Opera MEGAPACK ®. Jay Lake

up with, after all—she would simply contact the nearest ship and have them contact her father.

      And then she would wait.

      Although she probably needed some kind of guard.

      There wasn’t a lot of choice. Everyone from the ship was a possible murderer, and there weren’t a lot of people on the station.

      But all of the murders she knew of took place while the victim was alone.

      So the next key was to be with someone at all times.

      Except right now.

      Right now, she needed to contact Daddy.

      After that, she find a companion—and find a way to stay awake until help arrived.

      * * * *

      Anne Marie Devlin was no longer drunk. She wasn’t even under-the-surface drugged-sober drunk. She was so far past drunk that she felt giddy.

      Actually, the excitement made her feel giddy. She felt useful for the first time in months.

      If she didn’t know herself better—and she knew herself quite well, thank you—she would say she had become a drunk because she was bored.

      But she had been a drunk long before life ceased to be a challenge. She knew that excitement was just a temporary high, while alcohol numbed the senses, which was usually what she preferred.

      Right now, however, she needed all the senses that she had. She was inside yet another room—this one a favorite of hers—standing over yet another corpse that had been murdered by yet another tampered environmental system.

      The question was, how had it been tampered with? And why?

      She was peering at the system itself, noting something off, when she realized one of the ship’s passengers was also in the room. A tallish white-blond man with pale blue eyes.

      The man who had fetched her. Richard Something-Or-Other.

      “I prefer to work alone,” she said.

      “So do I,” he said.

      They stared at each other for a moment. Hunsaker, who also preferred to work alone (she knew that because he had told her half a dozen times) stood near the doorway, his shirt soaked with Fergus’s tears. She’d managed to get Fergus out of the room and down to the kitchen where the chef could watch him. Fergus was quite pliable most of the time. Right now, he was damn near catatonic.

      Perhaps anyone would be after crying that much.

      She turned toward Hunsaker. “What the hell were you thinking? Sending those two to work in these rooms with a murderer on the loose?”

      “Who knew that the killer would come after one of us?” he said.

      “I don’t think the killer did,” Richard Something-Or-Other said. “If you’ll allow me.”

      He shoved—shoved!—Anne Marie out of the way, and peered at the control panel himself.

      “You do realize if this man is the killer, he now has access to the evidence,” she said to Hunsaker.

      “You do realize if this man is the killer,” Hunsaker said, mimicking her tone, “then you just gave him a reason to kill us.”

      They glared at each other again.

      “I’m not the killer,” Richard Something-Or-Other said, “but whoever is has some serious engineering skills.”

      She couldn’t resist: she peered into the controls as well. These older models had digital readouts and mechanisms attached to mechanisms. She had just looked at the one in the room where Agatha Kantswinkle died—and that control did not have a secondary digital readout. This one did.

      She looked at Richard Something-Or-Other. He raised his eyebrows at her, as if he were surprised as well. Then he touched the whole thing with a single fingernail. The second readout was loose, but had been attached into the control’s mechanism. She peered at the mix. When Dillith had been in here, the atmosphere’s mix had been the same as it had been with Agatha Kantswinkle died.

      Anne Marie frowned. She glanced over her shoulder at the door. Hunsaker was still leaning on the jam, glaring at her. He seemed to disapprove of what she was doing.

      Or maybe he disapproved of Richard Something-Or-Other.

      Or maybe he always disapproved of everything.

      She sighed and walked to the door.

      “Move,” she said.

      Hunsaker didn’t.

      “I mean it. Move. I need to see something.”

      “What?” he asked.

      “It’s easier to look than it is to explain,” she said pushing him aside. Then she peered inside the locking mechanism. Another small digital readout had been attached.

      “This door was closed when Fergus got here, wasn’t it?” she asked.

      “I don’t know,” Hunsaker said. “I didn’t ask.”

      “You didn’t bother to tell them to keep the doors open?”

      Hunsaker’s glare changed to something filled with a kind of fury. “Of course I did. It’s part of the general instructions, anyway. The door should always be open with the staff is inside, even if no one else is.”

      “Hmm,” she said.

      “What?” Richard Something-Or-Other asked from his position near the environmental controls.

      “This is a timer,” she said. “It closes the door.”

      “And this timer,” he said, “changes the environmental mix.”

      “It couldn’t have been put in here when Dillith was here,” Anne Marie said.

      “Someone set it up earlier than that,” Richard Something-Or-Other said.

      “Which means that the killer wasn’t after Dillith,” Anne Marie said.

      “He was after Susan Carmichael.” Hunsaker said that last, breathed it in fact. Anne Marie could hear the shock in his voice. “If I’d gotten her just a little too late, then—”

      “You would’ve died too,” Anne Marie said. “We have to brace this door open.”

      “I doubt the room will kill again,” Richard Something-Or-Other said.

      “But the other rooms might,” Anne Marie said.

      “I moved everyone out of the older rooms,” Hunsaker said.

      “Let’s hope that’s enough,” Anne Marie said. She actually felt a little chill. She liked the chill. Excitement—she had missed it so much. “Maybe he’ll start coming after the rest of us too.”

      “Oh, don’t get your hopes up,” Hunsaker snapped and left the room.

      Richard Something-Or-Other raised his eyebrows again. “What was that all about?”

      Anne Marie shrugged. “I guess he’s upset by all of this.”

      Richard nodded. “I think it would be surprising if he were not.”

      * * * *

      Hunsaker stomped down the stairs. Now he didn’t know what to do. Did he warn Carmichael? Did he put all the guests in the same room and let them duke it out until a ship arrived and got them out of his resort?

      He stopped halfway down the stairs and leaned his head against the wall. All of his training, all of his long and fancy education, all of his experience good and bad did not train him for any of this. He could just imagine the lecture titled How to Handle a Murderer Loose in Your Resort.

      Simple: Call the local authorities.

      And if there were none?