The Space Opera MEGAPACK ®. Jay Lake

casino at least covered a big area. It would be hard to tamper with the environmental system.

      Maybe he should just force them all back to their ship, and if they killed each other, so be it. Hell, if they died from smoke inhalation, so be it. It wasn’t his concern.

      While they were here, they bothered him.

      While they were on their ship, they had nothing to do with him.

      That’s what he’d do. He’d get the maintenance guys and make them act as security guards. Even the chef and the blackjack dealer could work security (so long as she put her shirt on). They’d round up these horrible people and put them back on their own ship and if they died, they died.

      His stomach turned.

      Maybe if they all died, he could just jettison the ship into deepest darkest space. He’d set it on autopilot and get it the hell out of here.

      For a moment, his spirits rose.

      Then he remembered he’d already charged their accounts. There was a record he couldn’t tamper with of them being on his station.

      Dammit.

      He had no idea what to do.

      * * * *

      Richard helped Anne Marie get the corpse down to the medical wing. He’d had enough of carrying bodies. By his count, this was the fifth this trip, and the only one he hadn’t met while she was still alive.

      The medical wing was in the farthest part of the station, and certainly didn’t deserve the appellation “wing.” It was a medical suite at best, a smallish group of rooms set up as an afterthought.

      Agatha Kantswinkle lay on one table, naked—which was an image he’d never get out of his mind again—and, to his surprise, the other two bodies from the ship in clear refrigeration units, looking no worse for being dead the last few days.

      He set Dillith on the closest table, and stretched his muscles with relief.

      “Thank you,” the doctor said in that tone all professionals used which actually meant you’re done, now get the hell out.

      Which he did.

      And as he stepped into the corridor, he realized he’d been going about this investigation all wrong. He’d been looking for common ties, for suffocation deaths, for motive, and he, of all people, should know that motive mattered a lot less than the entertainments said it did.

      His motive for most of his early killings had been because his mother had hired him out to do the job. The later killings had been because he could make money at it. Only the first killing had had a real motive: the man had murdered his father and ruined Richard’s life.

      Richard didn’t need to look at motive.

      He needed to look for experience. Technical experience.

      With environmental systems.

      He scurried back to the hotel’s main entrance, and hoped that Hunsaker’s horrible aging database had at least enough information to solve all of this.

      * * * *

      She wasn’t hysterical. Hunsaker could’ve dealt with her if she had been hysterical. He had training in hysterical. High-end hotel guests often got hysterical about nothing. And here, which was decidedly not high-end, people got hysterical because…well, because they were here.

      Susan G. Carmichael had every reason to be hysterical. She could’ve died in her room had he not taken her out of it. But she had already figured out that she might die and she was calmer than he was.

      She had even found a way to contact her father, who was such a famous Vice Admiral that Hunsaker had even heard of him, and he was sending a ship that would be here in 18 hours sharp, along with some kind of back-up that would take care of the problem.

      Whatever that meant.

      But she wasn’t returning to her room.

      To any room, really.

      She wanted to remain with Hunsaker, thinking that somehow, Hunsaker would be safe.

      He sat on his chair with his back against the wall, no longer sure what safe was. She was sitting on the edge of his desk, surveying the area as if she ran it instead of him.

      He was still debating whether to get everyone else out of their rooms when Ilykova burst through the doors.

      “I need your database,” he said.

      “Whatever happened to please and thank you?” Hunsaker muttered, knowing he was being a complete ass, as he handed over the pad.

      Ilykova ignored that, although he did glance at Carmichael. He didn’t seem that surprised to see her. Then he leaned against the desk and started trolling the database, his fingers moving faster than Hunsaker’s ever could.

      The three of them didn’t say a word as Ilykova worked. Carmichael watched him. Hunsaker kept an eye on the doors and the stairs, not that it had made any difference in the past.

      Then Ilykova looked over at Carmichael. “Were you and Agatha Kantswinkle ever alone?”

      “Here?” she asked.

      “On the ship,” he said.

      She looked down. “I talked to her once. After that incident—you know. I felt so sorry for her that—”

      “What incident?” Hunsaker interrupted. It wouldn’t have been his business had everything happened on the ship, but the ship’s problems had spilled into his little resort, and he felt he had a right to know.

      She looked at him. “We had a dinner hour on the ship. We all got fed at the same time, and the room wasn’t that big. We got to know each other better than you usually got to know people on passenger ships, which wasn’t necessarily a good thing.”

      Ilykova nodded, although he kept his head down, still searching the database as he listened.

      “Anyway, just after Professor Grove died , we were all on edge, and Agatha started into how we needed someone to take charge, to make sure things wouldn’t get worse, and Mr. Bunting had enough. He told her she was a nosy snobbish old woman who would know how to treat other human beings even if she had special training, and she certainly couldn’t be in charge of anything, and he didn’t believe anything she said about herself and—.” Carmichael shook her head. “I was agreeing with him at first, she was an unpleasant woman, and I would’ve given anything to avoid her as much as possible, but he didn’t stop, and by the end, she looked just devastated.”

      Ilykova was looking up now. Hunsaker was surprised as well. He couldn’t quite imagine Kantswinkle looking devastated.

      “I waited until everyone left,” Carmichael said, “and told her that we were all on edge and that he had no right to lay into her like that, and she started to cry, which made me very uncomfortable. I walked her to her room, and told her to get some rest, that it would all seem better in the morning, and then I left.”

      “Then what?” Hunsaker asked, expecting more to the story.

      “Then we found Trista’s body and the fire and we barely made it here,” Carmichael said.

      “I got the distinct impression you wanted nothing to do with Ms. Kantswinkle,” Hunsaker said.

      Carmichael looked at him in surprise. “I thought I hid that.”

      “You avoided her in the lobby, checking in,” Hunsaker said.

      Carmichael looked down, sighed. “She was clingy. Halfway through our discussion, I realized she was bombastic because she was lonely and needy and I’d made a huge mistake trying to comfort her. If this had been some kind of normal flight, I wouldn’t have been able to shake her for the rest of the trip.”

      “If it had been a normal flight,” Ilykova said, “you wouldn’t have spoken to her in the first