Paw-Prints Of The Gods (23 page)

“Just one more thing,”
said Verdandi. “Is it me or can I hear a chicken clucking?”

* * *

Momus gingerly pulled
himself through the
Indra
’s outer airlock door and
shuddered. The dimly-lit steel corridor that ran the length of
Sky Cleaver
’s docking pontoon creaked ominously. The
cloud-mining station was one of the oldest human constructs in the
Barnard’s Star system and Momus tried not to think of what would
happen when the years spent orbiting in Thunor’s fierce gravity
well finally took their toll.

The passageway was
deserted. Directly opposite was another hatch, with two more on
either side of the corridor several metres away to his left. Momus
drifted across to peer through the small viewing port in the door
opposite, then gave a startled yelp as the
Indra
’s hatch
suddenly hissed closed behind him. He grabbed a handrail, pulled
himself along the corridor and paused. He had heard a distant clunk
and murmur of voices.

“Hello?” he called.
“Is there anybody there?”

The quiet groaning of
the superstructure was unnerving. His heart racing, Momus strained
to listen for signs of life, but all he could hear was the
omnipresent murmur of life-support systems and occasional beep of a
control panel. Then he heard another thump, this time from the far
end of the pontoon. His glance darted from one end of the corridor
to the other, but saw nothing. A muscle on his face seized the
opportunity to develop an annoying nervous twitch. He pushed back a
floating lock of hair with a trembling, clammy hand.

Momus cursed. In his
startled movements back and forth, he had lost all sense of
direction and forgotten which of the four hatches led back to the
comforting familiarity of the
Indra
. It was then he heard a
scratching noise, followed by another thud as something soft bumped
against a nearby airlock door.

“Who’s there?” he
whispered. “Stop playing frigging games!”

The scratching came
from the hatch behind him. Momus turned, slowly raised a hand to
the nearby control panel and pressed the switch to open the
door.

A black bundle of fur
shot through the opening towards his face, hissing violently. Momus
released a blood-curdling scream and leapt away from a sudden
onslaught of flailing paws and claws. The electric cat shot across
the corridor, bounced off the opposite wall and with another hiss
wrapped its limbs around a convenient handrail.

“Crappy frigging cat!”
yelled Momus. “You evil spawn of a waste-disposal unit! You mangy
heap of fake fur! You scared the bloody frigging life out of
me!”

He heard another
series of thumps from behind him and in a panic turned again.

“Stop right there!”
came an angry voice. “Put your hands where I can see them!”

Momus grabbed the edge
of the airlock door to stop himself spinning and stared at the two
police officers standing at the far end of the passage. The men
were clad in matching pressure suits in starless black, with the
only concession to high visibility being a fluorescent yellow
stripe up the arms and legs. They had removed their helmets and
carried them in a net fixed to their bulky backpacks, ready within
arm’s reach in case of unexpected depressurisation. Both wore
magnetic boots and stood firm in the pontoon corridor, leaving
Momus feeling distinctly at a disadvantage as he bobbed uncertainly
before them. The eyes of the men were concealed by enhanced-reality
shades; only police-issue visors worked on the various networks in
the Barnard’s Star system and the god-like omniscience it gave
officers unnerved Momus. He knew their unprofessional smirks were
for his benefit.

“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?”

“I have never seen
that man before in my life!”

“Are you sure?” asked
the other officer. “We have ways of...”

“I am not a frigging
murderer!”

Nyx paused. “I believe
you,” he said at last. “Look at you! You’re shaking like a leaf
just thinking about it. As it happens, the crew met their untimely
end long before you showed up, so as theories go it doesn’t really
work.”

“They’re dead?” asked
Momus, regarding Nyx warily. “All of them?”

“We can only vouch for
the few we found.”

“You haven’t found all
of them?”

“Sorry,” said Nyx. “I
meant for the bits of crew we found. Mostly on the walls.”

“Crapping hell,”
murmured Momus.

“Exactly,” replied the
blond sergeant. “Someone came here, attacked the crew and then took
off with their ship, leaving this half-eaten body behind. Who knows
what...”

“Half-eaten body?”
cried Momus, interrupting. “You mean that man lying under the sheet
has been... well, eaten?”

“Half-eaten,”
corrected Nyx. “Arms and legs, mainly.”

“That’s frigging
gross.”

“And it definitely
wasn’t you?” asked Nyx, smiling slyly.

“I’m no cannibal!”
Momus cried. He wondered why he was being told the gory details and
decided Nyx just wanted to see him squirm. “Who did this? Where are
they now?”

“The stolen ship was
found abandoned in Woden orbit,” the sergeant said. “But...”

“It’s of no concern,”
Nyx said swiftly. He fixed Momus with a steely stare. “Trust me
when I say that what you have seen here is for your eyes only. This
is a delicate situation. We do not want our operation here and in
Tau Ceti influenced by outside conjecture.”

“What operation? You
said we were to destroy all...”

“Shut up!” snapped
Nyx.

Momus pretended he had
not heard the blond officer’s slip and nodded sagely. “I saw
nothing,” he confirmed. “No blood, no body, nothing.”

“I would hate to have
to censor you by more permanent means,” added Nyx.

Momus gulped as the
officer mimed cutting his throat. “I saw less than nothing,” he
said hurriedly. “A black hole is a frigging supernova next to what
I saw here.”