Return to Quarters

You don’t pay much attention to your surroundings as you head back to your quarters.

When you arrive, you pour a glass of water—there was running water at least, that and the artificial gravity made Unity a hell of a lot more friendly than most of the spaceships you’ve been on. Then you sit back, turn on some scramrock, and close your eyes.

Okay. You’ve visited the scene of the crime. You’ve interviewed the witness (as best you could). Now it’s time to start putting the pieces together. First things first: establish where everyone was during the time of the murder.

Hours pass as you build a map of the locations and activities of all the humans on Unity. At the moment, there are several hundred personnel posted to the station. At least half are civilians, but fortunately, they were all vetted and authorized, either by the military or the League diplomatic corps. Which means you have the legal authority to access the tracking information for each and every one of them. On any human station, that would make your job a cinch. But here, on this alien creation, the signals used to locate people are often blocked by Unity’s internal structure. Hell, you wouldn’t put it past the station mind to be intentionally jamming comms just to make life more interesting.

So there are gaps in the record. And as you study the gaps, more and more questions pop into your mind.

Information. You need information. Otherwise you’ll never be able to solve this puzzle.