It was a regular day, with the usual suspects lined up against the bulkheads. Voelker had thought this little trip would be the reprieve he needed after handling the revolt on Pi. The murder investigation was vexing but nothing that would ultimately get in the way of his relaxation. After all, the victim was just a crewman, a mere minion. All that was needed was to keep up appearances, set an example, show who was in charge and reiterate that insubordination would be dealt with swiftly and harshly.
Also as usual, the regulars all volunteered everyone but themselves as the culprit. No matter, Voelker thought with a chuckle. I’ll just do the usual, pick someone at random and have them keelhauled.
Now, keelhauling had its usual nautical meaning aboard this vessel. It involved simply ejecting the offender from the airlock on a short tether. Simple, no mess, and the resultant desiccation yielded the corpse perfectly suited for transport sans spoilage.
Indeed, it was a very normal, essentially boring day. Herr Voelker stifled a yawn. But something bothered him. Nobody knew the unfortunate crewman. More, nobody on the ship claimed to have even met him, which was odd since the mission had been underway for months. Yet the crewman was properly listed in the ship’s manifest. Name, rank, serial number, all that. It was as though he had appeared, dead, out of thin air so to speak, or thin plasma as it so happened.
Word spread quickly through the ship of the “rabbit” who had been pulled out of the “hat”. The Hat, as it was known, was in actuality a plasma vat shaped unmistakably like a ten-gallon hat. There were no signs of a struggle; an autopsy was underway in the infirmary. Accident or suicide would have been considered except there was no way for the rabbit to have gotten trapped in the hat unaided.
Surveillance footage was scoured. From the abundance of data, everything pointed to a single instant when the crewman first appeared on record. Unfortunately, that instant was when the Hat did its hourly change cycle at noon. The monitoring system’s vision algorithm had flagged foreign matter in the chamber. Dead end.
Voelker sat down to a game of chess with the ship’s Captain, Wesley Daggett. If the name evokes a sense of the Old West, you have the right impression of Captain Daggett. His rugged looks and swarthy air could pass for Clint Eastwood in a look-alike contest.
“Now Wes,” Voelker was the only person in the entire Navy who Daggett allowed to call him Wes, “suppose for the moment that you did not want your attack on my queen with your king’s knight to be noticed. How would you accomplish this, keeping in mind what an analytical fiend I am.”
Wes thought for a moment before answering, knowing that like most of Voelker’s questions, this was a double entendre. Also characteristic of Voelker, it was more a statement than a question. The chess game nearly decided, Wesley had the sense that a game of higher stakes was just about to begin. A chill ran down his spine. He shook it off. Picture a face-off at high-noon, composition at holster level as common in American western cinema. Dust rising like the mist from the humidifier under the table. He thought this the opportune moment to announce, “Checkmate.”
Voelker barely reacted. “You haven’t answered my question.”
“Let silence itself be my first answer, then,” Wesley spat. He leaned over and turned up the evaporator fan to quite a din.
Voelker lowered an eyebrow, intrigued. Perhaps this excursion wouldn’t be a total bore after all.
“As for the second, your implication, yes you are correct. The rabbit - blast, even I’m calling him that now - has all the marks of being in Her Majesty’s
employ.” Here Wes paused to sneer at his reference to the Monarch.
“The way you talk of our queen verges on treason, Captain.”
A tense moment passed. They both chuckled almost simultaneously.
“Don’t worry,” Voelker said. “We all have our petty vices. My particular favorite is of a color I dare not utter even with the evaporator running full bore.” Voelker said this with a look Wes could only describe as dangerous.
With that, the mood lightened. In this regard at least, they were on equal footing.
“What are we to do then,” Voelker trailed off.
Wes was of a mind to fashion a portmanteau to describe this grammatical habit of Voelker: declaroggative. He involuntarily flashed a guilty little smile, became embarrassed, straightened.
“Why not a mole or some other rodent. Why must it be a rabbit.”
This is the first chapter of an unfinished story.
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