Fox Hunt (Fox Meridian Book 1) by Niall Teasdale Read Free Book Online Page A

would have turned around to see who it was, so they had to be in here already, and he was happy enough to be facing away from them…’
    ‘That just makes things weirder. The ship’s systems detected a problem because his biomonitor indicated a flat-line condition. There was an attendant here inside of a minute and no sign of anyone around this area. The door had to be opened from the bridge. The other two cabins are empty and locked so the killer couldn’t have slipped into one of those.’
    ‘You’ve checked them? Visually, I mean.’
    ‘Right after I drew a zapper from the locker.’
    Fox gave a nod. ‘I’m going to look around. Rooms like this are a bitch for collecting evidence anyway. I doubt we’d have got anything conclusive. Have you got a bag we can put him in for storage until we get to solid ground? And I’ll probably need to contact NAPA.’
    ‘I’ll make sure you have the communications authorisation,’ Morris said. ‘We’ll move you into cabin two, give you some room to work. Call it an in-flight upgrade. Company policy is that we can upgrade a passenger if we have reason, and right now I can’t think of a better one.’
    ‘Thanks,’ Fox said, flashing him a smile. ‘I’m not going to say no. Those cubicles depress the Hell out of me.’
    The captain shrugged. ‘Long term, you either get used to them or you walk out of an airlock one day and don’t come back.’
    ~~~
    Fox stood up and stretched, pushing up onto the balls of her feet and reaching up until her palms flattened against the ceiling. She could have managed another few centimetres with no trouble, but pushing between the two surfaces stressed her muscles a little and felt good. You could not do this in the cubicles. In the cubicles her head almost touched the ceiling, and if you were over six feet tall you had to stoop.
    ‘Subject appears to have been shot with a high-calibre weapon,’ she said, mostly for the benefit of her own ears: the transcript of her words was being typed out by the word-processing software on her implant. ‘Ten or fifteen millimetre with an explosive warhead, judging from the observed entry wound and apparent internal damage. The probability of recovering usable fragments is low.’
    There was, unfortunately, no shower in the smaller cabins. Flight times on the transfer shuttles were not exactly short, but they were also not long enough that you needed all the modern conveniences of planetary living. It was a shame: after dealing with Hunt’s body, a shower would have been nice. There was a small washbasin in the toilet cubicle, however. She had not bothered putting extra clothing on to go to the scene, so she just had to strip off her plazkin bodysuit to wash. The garment was thin, slightly translucent, and purple. Fox had a thing for purple. The print design she currently favoured was long-sleeved, high-collared, string-backed, with enough structure that it acted as a bra. Morris and Parsons had not said anything, but they seemed to appreciate it. She briefly considered the idea that she should have thrown some jeans on earlier, but she was not, technically, on the clock.
    ‘The ship does not run surveillance on the corridors as standard,’ she went on as she dried her face. ‘However, there are no indications that any of the other passengers were out of their cubicles around the time of death. That leaves crew, but the captain is pretty sure of their positions around that time and doesn’t think any of them were near the scene.’
    She wiped splashes from her breasts and stomach, glancing down at the pale skin and the muscles bunching beneath it. ‘A month in one-sixth gravity and you’re getting flabby, girl.’ The processor package did not record her words for posterity, which was probably good given that she was lying to herself to make sure she went to the gym when she got back. She had a good figure, no sense in denying it. She was fit, strong, long in the legs, and with a reasonably