maestro876
Spaceman
This is the beggining of the fanfic story I said I was thinking about writing last week. I'll be working on it and posting parts of it as I go. I'd love thoughts, comments, and feedback as I add stuff. The story takes place on Earth, and for the most part the characters are completely new. The working title is "Trust".
(The whole first part is too large to post at once, so I'll cover it in two posts).
Part 1
2668.191
0346
The buzzing sound was what jolted her awake.
Shit.
She rolled onto her back and reached out towards her alarm clock. She pressed the snooze button several times, but the buzzing failed to cease. She squinted her eyes and peered at the clock—3:47. After a moment she realized it wasn’t the clock buzzing, but her PDA. She sat up in bed and yawned, stretching her arms above her head.
Dammit, too early. She groped for the device, and switched it on.
“Yeah?”
“Sam? You awake?” a voice asked. Her grogginess must have come through her voice.
“No. What is it?”
“There’s a body for you. In the factory district on the river.” It was Dale Jackson, her lieutenant.
“Couldn’t it wait until morning?”
“Sorry Sam. The brass is interested in this one, and they want us on it ASAP.”
“Yeah, yeah, I’m going. Be there in half an hour.”
Samantha Mastros pulled herself out of bed, and threw some clothes on. In five minutes, she was out the door.
0418
She arrived at the scene while the CSI team was still finishing up. The body lay in an alley between buildings, wedged between a dumpster and some packing crates. Sam flashed her badge to get inside the police line, and approached one of the other detectives.
“What do we got James?”
Detective James Beckett was scribbling some notes on his PDA. “Not much yet. Dead white male, looks middle aged, somewhere between 35 and 40. Still haven’t moved him, but we’ll get around to that as soon as the CSI team finishes its sweep and—” He stopped when he noticed she was scanning the scene herself with her PDA. “You know, the CSI team already did that.”
“Yeah,” she said, “I know, but I like my own perspective.” She pocketed her PDA. “I’ll get CSI’s work later on, once they’ve processed everything.”
“Whatever floats your boat, Sam.”
Sam waited until CSI gave the ok, and she approached the body, crouching down to examine it. Beckett was right, though she would have put the age closer to early 40s. The cause of death was apparent—laser shot to the head. It looked close range to her, point blank even. There was some scorching around the left temple, and a large exit wound on the right side of the head, indicating that he was probably shot on the left side. He still had his clothes on, but they looked more like sleeping clothes rather than daytime wear. She felt his skin, which was slightly warm.
“Any idea as to time of death?”
“Body temp and lack or rigor points to it being pretty recent. An autopsy will say for sure, but it looks like within the last four or five hours,” the other detective said.
She lifted one of the arms and examined the wrist. There was a dark red line encircling it, and a quick glance showed the same line around the other wrist.
“There’s bruising on the wrists, looks like he was bound before he died.” She stood up and brushed her hands off. “He wasn’t killed here,” she said.
“No, we didn’t think so. There’s no blood anywhere except on his clothes and his body, and that’s dried. He died and bled out somewhere else, and was dumped here.”
Sam nodded and began to look around the body. There wasn’t much, though, and she rooted around the alley.
“Whoa!” she cried out, calling the other officers over. She had moved one of the packing crates, and clear as day on the ground was a footprint. It was dried, and brownish.
“What is that stuff?” she asked. One of the CSI crew made a quick scan of the footprint with an imager, and then bent down over it.
“Let’s find out,” he said, aiming a small device at the print, and then firing a small laser into it. “It’s some sort of industrial lubricant, like the stuff they use in machinery.”
“Is that what this place is?” Sam asked, pointing to the building the body had been discovered next to.
“Something like that,” said Beckett. “It’s a factory owned by a company called CimTech. I’m not sure exactly what it is they produce here, though.”
“We’ll study this print more,” said the CSI man. “We can get you a basic suspect description—sex, height, weight, build, etc. as soon as we analyze it.”
“Thanks,” said Sam, stepping back and looking down the alleyway towards the street.
“How was the body found?”
“Patrol stumbled across it,” said Beckett. “There’ve been some complaints by these factory owners about vandalism and B&E lately, so the department tasked a patrol car to give the area a run through every night.”
She nodded, thinking. Close range gunshot, hands bound. This was an execution.
“Detectives!” yelled one of the CSIs.
“What is it?” asked Sam.
“We got a hit on the deceased’s prints in the system.” The tech handed Samantha the data print out.
“Well,” she said, “this just keeps getting more and more interesting.” John Ridgeway, Deputy Undersecretary of State, lay deceased in a dark alleyway of Washington, DC.
0503
Reports of the armistice dominated all the news outlets. Sam switched off her radio as she sped towards Georgetown. She had long since stopped following the details of the war, and the high, urgent voice of Barbara Miles did nothing except aggravate her. She had enough to deal with on her own, and she didn’t need the extra stress of worrying about events taking place on the opposite end of the galaxy.
John Ridgeway, it seems, resided in a very nice upper-class apartment in Georgetown, along with all the other Foggy Bottom senior diplomats. Traffic was almost nonexistent, as it was still far too early for the normal rush hour crowd. She arrived at the apartment building along with Detective Beckett, whom it seemed had also been lucky enough to catch this late-night case.
They were let in by a security guard, who was quite surprised to find himself confronted at five o’clock in the morning by a pair of homicide detectives. The guard led the two to Ridgeway’s apartment and let them inside. It was a large four-room apartment, living room, kitchen, bathroom, and bedroom, with a balcony overlooking the city. Even a fireplace graced the living room.
“Guess not all government jobs are as lousy-paying as ours, eh?” joked Beckett.
The apartment was deserted, and they could detect no signs of forced entry or struggle. No obvious signs, anyway. To Sam, the place looked slightly off, as if her subconscious detected something but her conscious mind couldn’t place it.
“James, do you notice anything…I dunno, weird about this place?”
He paused, and looked around. “Now that you mention it, you’re right. It doesn’t feel right.”
“It’s like there’s something…off about it.” She approached the fireplace, and examined the shelf above it. There was a clock, and several pictures of Ridgeway with people she supposed were important State officials or visiting dignitaries. There was a layer of dust covering everything, but upon close inspection she noticed clean spots on the shelf that were slightly off from the objects that should have rested there.
That’s it, she thought.
“James,” she said, motioning for him to join her. “Look,” she said, pointing to the shelf. She walked to a coffee table and noticed the same phenomenon. A look at the bookshelves revealed the same. “Someone searched this place, then tried to put everything back,” she said.
Beckett nodded his head in agreement. “This case is getting better by the minute. What the hell was this guy into?”
Seeing nothing of further interest in the living room, they entered the bedroom.
“Whoa,” said Beckett, looking at the bed. “Call CSI, I think we’ve got our murder scene.” The bed was covered in blood, as well as the wall behind the headboard. They could see bits of brain and skull matter littering the bed and floor.
0801
“You’re serious?” asked Lt. Jackson.
“Yes sir,” answered Sam, handing over her PDA to the Lt. “All our notes and photos are in there.”
Both detectives were seated in Jackson’s office, back in the 27th Precinct. The CSI team had gone over the apartment with a fine-tooth comb, and had revealed nothing except the blood of the victim.
“Shit,” said Jackson. “Shit, I don’t need this, not today.” He rubbed his temples. “Every single man and woman in this precinct has someone out on the line, and with this damn armistice, now every single one of them is calling in sick.”
Beckett smiled. “Well, Lt., it’s nice to know that we’re your most dedicated detectives.”
“You laugh,” said Jackson, “I’m the one who has to run this place. You try telling someone whose wife or husband has been out on the line for a decade that no, they can’t have the day off because someone still has to police this goddamn city.”
“All right, all right,” said Sam, “back to the case. This guy had something of an important slot at State, so we’re gonna have to inform them that he’s dead. Seeing as they’ve probably got their hands full today, we’ll wait until tomorrow to talk to his coworkers and staff.”
“As far as we can tell,” said Beckett, “he lived alone. No family, no next of kin to notify. The apartment didn’t reveal much, besides the obvious and our little, ah, oddity.”
“Yeah, about that,” said Jackson, “You guys sure there couldn’t be some other explanation?”
“Well it’s perfectly possible, but my gut tells me someone was looking around for something in that place.”
“Perfect,” said Jackson. “You know, this guy was a federal employee, and technically, we should give the case to the feds.”
Sam smiled. “We won’t tell them if you don’t.”
Jackson sighed. “All right, but you know they’re gonna try to take it away from us when they find out.”
“We caught the case to start, we’ve done all the preliminary work. The more we do, the harder it’ll be for them to take it. Besides, you know some people over there. If it comes to that, make some calls.”
“Fine, fine. What’s your next move?”
“Well,” Sam said, “I thought I’d go home and get some sleep, seeing as I’ve been up since four this morning.”
“Oh no. You want this case, it’s yours, but that means it’s your number one priority. Meaning it takes precedence over sleep.”
“We’ll head back to the apartment building,” said Beckett, cutting in. “It’s a high-end place, right in the middle of Georgetown, probably has some high-tech security systems.”
Sam nodded. “Yeah, at least cameras, hopefully more.”
“All right, get started. And call me if you find anything.”
(The whole first part is too large to post at once, so I'll cover it in two posts).
Part 1
2668.191
0346
The buzzing sound was what jolted her awake.
Shit.
She rolled onto her back and reached out towards her alarm clock. She pressed the snooze button several times, but the buzzing failed to cease. She squinted her eyes and peered at the clock—3:47. After a moment she realized it wasn’t the clock buzzing, but her PDA. She sat up in bed and yawned, stretching her arms above her head.
Dammit, too early. She groped for the device, and switched it on.
“Yeah?”
“Sam? You awake?” a voice asked. Her grogginess must have come through her voice.
“No. What is it?”
“There’s a body for you. In the factory district on the river.” It was Dale Jackson, her lieutenant.
“Couldn’t it wait until morning?”
“Sorry Sam. The brass is interested in this one, and they want us on it ASAP.”
“Yeah, yeah, I’m going. Be there in half an hour.”
Samantha Mastros pulled herself out of bed, and threw some clothes on. In five minutes, she was out the door.
0418
She arrived at the scene while the CSI team was still finishing up. The body lay in an alley between buildings, wedged between a dumpster and some packing crates. Sam flashed her badge to get inside the police line, and approached one of the other detectives.
“What do we got James?”
Detective James Beckett was scribbling some notes on his PDA. “Not much yet. Dead white male, looks middle aged, somewhere between 35 and 40. Still haven’t moved him, but we’ll get around to that as soon as the CSI team finishes its sweep and—” He stopped when he noticed she was scanning the scene herself with her PDA. “You know, the CSI team already did that.”
“Yeah,” she said, “I know, but I like my own perspective.” She pocketed her PDA. “I’ll get CSI’s work later on, once they’ve processed everything.”
“Whatever floats your boat, Sam.”
Sam waited until CSI gave the ok, and she approached the body, crouching down to examine it. Beckett was right, though she would have put the age closer to early 40s. The cause of death was apparent—laser shot to the head. It looked close range to her, point blank even. There was some scorching around the left temple, and a large exit wound on the right side of the head, indicating that he was probably shot on the left side. He still had his clothes on, but they looked more like sleeping clothes rather than daytime wear. She felt his skin, which was slightly warm.
“Any idea as to time of death?”
“Body temp and lack or rigor points to it being pretty recent. An autopsy will say for sure, but it looks like within the last four or five hours,” the other detective said.
She lifted one of the arms and examined the wrist. There was a dark red line encircling it, and a quick glance showed the same line around the other wrist.
“There’s bruising on the wrists, looks like he was bound before he died.” She stood up and brushed her hands off. “He wasn’t killed here,” she said.
“No, we didn’t think so. There’s no blood anywhere except on his clothes and his body, and that’s dried. He died and bled out somewhere else, and was dumped here.”
Sam nodded and began to look around the body. There wasn’t much, though, and she rooted around the alley.
“Whoa!” she cried out, calling the other officers over. She had moved one of the packing crates, and clear as day on the ground was a footprint. It was dried, and brownish.
“What is that stuff?” she asked. One of the CSI crew made a quick scan of the footprint with an imager, and then bent down over it.
“Let’s find out,” he said, aiming a small device at the print, and then firing a small laser into it. “It’s some sort of industrial lubricant, like the stuff they use in machinery.”
“Is that what this place is?” Sam asked, pointing to the building the body had been discovered next to.
“Something like that,” said Beckett. “It’s a factory owned by a company called CimTech. I’m not sure exactly what it is they produce here, though.”
“We’ll study this print more,” said the CSI man. “We can get you a basic suspect description—sex, height, weight, build, etc. as soon as we analyze it.”
“Thanks,” said Sam, stepping back and looking down the alleyway towards the street.
“How was the body found?”
“Patrol stumbled across it,” said Beckett. “There’ve been some complaints by these factory owners about vandalism and B&E lately, so the department tasked a patrol car to give the area a run through every night.”
She nodded, thinking. Close range gunshot, hands bound. This was an execution.
“Detectives!” yelled one of the CSIs.
“What is it?” asked Sam.
“We got a hit on the deceased’s prints in the system.” The tech handed Samantha the data print out.
“Well,” she said, “this just keeps getting more and more interesting.” John Ridgeway, Deputy Undersecretary of State, lay deceased in a dark alleyway of Washington, DC.
0503
Reports of the armistice dominated all the news outlets. Sam switched off her radio as she sped towards Georgetown. She had long since stopped following the details of the war, and the high, urgent voice of Barbara Miles did nothing except aggravate her. She had enough to deal with on her own, and she didn’t need the extra stress of worrying about events taking place on the opposite end of the galaxy.
John Ridgeway, it seems, resided in a very nice upper-class apartment in Georgetown, along with all the other Foggy Bottom senior diplomats. Traffic was almost nonexistent, as it was still far too early for the normal rush hour crowd. She arrived at the apartment building along with Detective Beckett, whom it seemed had also been lucky enough to catch this late-night case.
They were let in by a security guard, who was quite surprised to find himself confronted at five o’clock in the morning by a pair of homicide detectives. The guard led the two to Ridgeway’s apartment and let them inside. It was a large four-room apartment, living room, kitchen, bathroom, and bedroom, with a balcony overlooking the city. Even a fireplace graced the living room.
“Guess not all government jobs are as lousy-paying as ours, eh?” joked Beckett.
The apartment was deserted, and they could detect no signs of forced entry or struggle. No obvious signs, anyway. To Sam, the place looked slightly off, as if her subconscious detected something but her conscious mind couldn’t place it.
“James, do you notice anything…I dunno, weird about this place?”
He paused, and looked around. “Now that you mention it, you’re right. It doesn’t feel right.”
“It’s like there’s something…off about it.” She approached the fireplace, and examined the shelf above it. There was a clock, and several pictures of Ridgeway with people she supposed were important State officials or visiting dignitaries. There was a layer of dust covering everything, but upon close inspection she noticed clean spots on the shelf that were slightly off from the objects that should have rested there.
That’s it, she thought.
“James,” she said, motioning for him to join her. “Look,” she said, pointing to the shelf. She walked to a coffee table and noticed the same phenomenon. A look at the bookshelves revealed the same. “Someone searched this place, then tried to put everything back,” she said.
Beckett nodded his head in agreement. “This case is getting better by the minute. What the hell was this guy into?”
Seeing nothing of further interest in the living room, they entered the bedroom.
“Whoa,” said Beckett, looking at the bed. “Call CSI, I think we’ve got our murder scene.” The bed was covered in blood, as well as the wall behind the headboard. They could see bits of brain and skull matter littering the bed and floor.
0801
“You’re serious?” asked Lt. Jackson.
“Yes sir,” answered Sam, handing over her PDA to the Lt. “All our notes and photos are in there.”
Both detectives were seated in Jackson’s office, back in the 27th Precinct. The CSI team had gone over the apartment with a fine-tooth comb, and had revealed nothing except the blood of the victim.
“Shit,” said Jackson. “Shit, I don’t need this, not today.” He rubbed his temples. “Every single man and woman in this precinct has someone out on the line, and with this damn armistice, now every single one of them is calling in sick.”
Beckett smiled. “Well, Lt., it’s nice to know that we’re your most dedicated detectives.”
“You laugh,” said Jackson, “I’m the one who has to run this place. You try telling someone whose wife or husband has been out on the line for a decade that no, they can’t have the day off because someone still has to police this goddamn city.”
“All right, all right,” said Sam, “back to the case. This guy had something of an important slot at State, so we’re gonna have to inform them that he’s dead. Seeing as they’ve probably got their hands full today, we’ll wait until tomorrow to talk to his coworkers and staff.”
“As far as we can tell,” said Beckett, “he lived alone. No family, no next of kin to notify. The apartment didn’t reveal much, besides the obvious and our little, ah, oddity.”
“Yeah, about that,” said Jackson, “You guys sure there couldn’t be some other explanation?”
“Well it’s perfectly possible, but my gut tells me someone was looking around for something in that place.”
“Perfect,” said Jackson. “You know, this guy was a federal employee, and technically, we should give the case to the feds.”
Sam smiled. “We won’t tell them if you don’t.”
Jackson sighed. “All right, but you know they’re gonna try to take it away from us when they find out.”
“We caught the case to start, we’ve done all the preliminary work. The more we do, the harder it’ll be for them to take it. Besides, you know some people over there. If it comes to that, make some calls.”
“Fine, fine. What’s your next move?”
“Well,” Sam said, “I thought I’d go home and get some sleep, seeing as I’ve been up since four this morning.”
“Oh no. You want this case, it’s yours, but that means it’s your number one priority. Meaning it takes precedence over sleep.”
“We’ll head back to the apartment building,” said Beckett, cutting in. “It’s a high-end place, right in the middle of Georgetown, probably has some high-tech security systems.”
Sam nodded. “Yeah, at least cameras, hopefully more.”
“All right, get started. And call me if you find anything.”
