When Felixia got back to her cabin she kept thinking about the passengers and their behavior. The odd behavior of a few passengers didn’t seem to fit. As far as she knew no crime had happened but her instincts as a detective kept hinting something was wrong. It was a puzzle and one that had several major pieces missing. She knew herself enough to know she would not be able to enjoy her vacation until she solved it. Either find the hidden pieces or resolve what was making their behavior feel so odd. To do that she needed more information about the passengers involved.
Looking around her small cabin she could see she wouldn’t be finding it here. As her eyes traveled around she noticed the cabin monitor was showing an estimated transit travel time of 3 hours to the next station. Thinking about it she decided to take advantage of it and do the transit in the club car. It wouldn’t be as comfortable as her cabin but some of the passengers she was curious about might be there. With a little luck she might fine another piece or two of this puzzle.
As she excited her cabin and headed down the car’s passage she noticed that the man William’s cabin door window curtain was slightly pulled back. Glancing in, she saw him holding that refrigeration box in his hands staring at it. The look on his face was odd. It seemed to be both sad and spiteful. An odd combination if she had to guess. One more piece of oddness she decided.
Walking into the cub car she was surprised at the length the owners took to maintain the motif. Everything from the mahogany looking fake wood trim to the multiple monitors on each side framed to look like windows. Each monitor was showing the same view from slightly different angles of an English Victorian rail station complete with people and carts of luggage. An interesting scene which she assumed was just because they were currently at a station. Just then she felt the train lift up and start to move. Her guess was proved right when the scene on the monitors changed to show the English station moving away.
Inside the car was a collection of small tables. They were designed to look like wood but she could see the faded inlays on the top that identified them as 3D gaming tables in disguise. Along one wall was a bar with an automation dressed like a bartender. It was a bit odd to see a costume like that on a four arm robot but she could kind of understand their trying to make it fit in better. Looking at the corners of the room she saw a virtual reality setup. They didn’t try to make that look Victorian but they did make it look more retro. Instead of a sensory pod they used a settee with an attached head visor.
The club car was not very crowded, only a handful of people scattered around. Checking for the ones she was interested in she saw William’s servant and the woman in the Elvis suite. Felipa decided to start with the man. He was sitting at the bar looking depressed and staring into his drink. His clothes looked rumpled and his hair was in disarray. It was obvious he was having a bad trip.
Deciding to start with him she walked over to the bar and sat on the stool next to him. Felipa asked the automation bartender for a Catnip Twist. She was counting on the idea of a woman who looked like a feline ordering a cup of cream with a sprinkle of spice would make him take an interest. She had used that trick in other places and it was always effective. This time he didn’t turn to look or respond in anyway, just continued to stare into his drink.
Now that she was closer she could smell the alcohol on him. It seems that he had been drinking for a while now. It did explain the lack of a response from her drink order. She decided she needed to be more direct. If Felixia had learned one thing over the years when dealing with drunks it was that being subtle didn’t work. It was better to just come out and ask what she wanted to know.
Felixia had never been to comfortable talking to strangers. Lack of familiarity with someone or their situation interfered with her analysis of their behavior. This gave her a high level of anxiety when trying to interact with them. To deal with that anxiety she would sometimes emulate behavior from videos of characters in similar situations. In this case with the ancient Victorian motif she decided to go with older videos and adopted the accent and behavior of an old movie detective.
She held out her hand to shake and said “The name is Felipa Pinjay what’s yours?”
Most people hearing a short Kemonian woman with cat like ears and whiskers speaking with a bad attempt at a historical New York accent might have been suspicious but he was too drunk to notice.
The man without really looking at her just by habit took her hand and mumbled “Hector”.
It wasn’t said clearly and the alcohol in his breadth made her want to hold her nose. His response wasn’t exactly a brilliant start to a conversation but she could work with that.
“Please to meet you Hector. Are you traveling for vacation or business” she asked.
“Never a vacation” was Hector’s mumbled response
After a few seconds of silence and not getting any more words from him Felixia decided to push harder. Still thinking about different detectives in old videos her accent changed to what might have now been an attempt at a Boston one. She said ”Business huh! Yes, I have to do that too. Your boss has business on Earth or are you both getting off the train early?”
Looking at her with bleary eyes Hector said “Don’t care, doesn’t matter. I’m gone when we get there.”
She was not sure what to make of that but before she could ask anything else the man got up from the stool. He then made a wobbly path to the corner where the VR chair was. She wasn’t sure if she should follow him to continue to ask him questions. Before she could decide to do it he reached the chair and dropped into it. Without putting on the headset he leaned back and closed his eyes. A minute later he was snoring.
Giving up on getting any more from Hector right now Felixia looked for another passenger to question. Of the few passengers in the car the one that caught her attention next was the elegant woman in the Elvis jumpsuit. The woman wasn’t staring at the video in the window monitor anymore but instead seemed to be focused on chess. Looking at the holographic gaming table it looked like she was in the middle of a game against the AI.
Felixia wasn’t sure but thought the woman might be playing the infamous lover’s version. Not a variation she had much experience with. What little she knew about it was that the game pieces where modeled after famous lovers of history. Instead of black versus white the game was male against female lovers. The most well known thing about lover’s chess was instead of the holographic pieces fighting when one was taken they instead engaged in a more intimate activity.
As she approached the woman had just moved the piece with a hologram of a blonde woman with her skirt blowing up. Felixia thought it was that famous 20th century video star. The piece had the role of the queen and it took a spot held by a rook. The rook piece looked like it might have been Don Juan or Casanova; she always got those two confused. They immediately got into a passionate embrace before the rook piece faded away leaving the blonde queen behind. Thankfully she had the decency mode active so that was all the pieces did.
Deciding that her previous approach wouldn’t work this time she decided to go with a friendly competition type personality. When she walked up the woman looked up from her game at the detective. Felixia gave a traditional small bow and introduced herself as Felipa Pinjay asking if she would like another player. The woman looked her up and down giving her the judgmental appraisal women are known for. When she paused at the sight of Felixia’s whiskers, she could see the look of appreciation in the woman’s face.
”Sure, I’m tired of playing the AI, I can never win” the woman said as she waved at the opposite seat for her to sit.
“Thank you, I wasn’t expecting another chess player on this trip” Felixia said.
“I know what you mean; it’s not a popular game anymore. Let me introduce myself, my name is Francie Bonay. I saw you boarded the train at Tau Ceti. Visiting or do you live there?” asked the woman
“Just visiting” Felipa responded “I was finishing up some work there and decided to take the long way home. How about you?”
Felipa’s attempt to redirect the conversation away from herself was a bit obvious but it seemed to work as the woman started to discuss her trip and her home on the Benchee colony. Their conversation continued as the woman Ms Bonay reset the game table and started a new game. From her practiced movements it was obvious she spent a lot of time at gaming tables.
When she finished the setup Felipa was happy to see the game had been switched to one of the battle chess versions. It was still not one of her favorites but it was a bit easier on the eyes when a piece takes another. The woman did put it on the high violence level which was a bit “messy” to play with all the hacking and slashing. Still the extended fighting of the pieces would allow more time to talk while playing.
Felipa learned a few more things about Ms Francie Bonay as they talked and played the game. She was single; financially well off woman who worked in the biosciences. This trip was in response to the recent loss of her fiancé. Felipe didn’t get all the details but it seemed he died in a military training exercise right before their wedding. This trip was supposed to be for their honeymoon and it included a visit to his estranged family on Earth.
She didn’t seem to have any hesitation talking about her fiancé. It had become obvious to Felixia how much the woman had been in love. It also made the air of sorrow around her more understandable. In the beginning she mostly talked about their dreams together and how they planned to start a family. As the game progressed she started to talk more about how they met.
By the time the game was played to a draw Felixia had gotten the long and detailed story about her and her fiancé. The gist was that her fiancé had left home after getting into a fight with his father. He then joined the Alliance military where he spent 10 years moving from one assignment to another. It was when he was assigned to the base on Benchee that they met and fell in love. Wanting to start a family he applied for a permanent spot as an instructor.
This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.
She didn’t say much about how he died; just that it was a training accident. Felixia didn’t push her about the details. Just mentioning the accident made the made the woman breaks out in tears. She decided to send a request to a contact in the Alliance military for the official report of the accident. From her own experience she knew the military didn’t always tell the friends and family all the details when something like this happens.
One thing Felixia realized was the woman seemed to have a serious fixation on the family they had planned to raise. She even explained the names they had come up with for the children. Also, that there would be two boys and a girl in that order and how far apart their ages would be. Felixia didn’t think her obsession was healthy but also didn’t see how it could tie together with whatever this possible mystery she was investigating. Still, it all did explain the air of sadness that seemed to surround her as well as why she was traveling alone.
It was a bit odd that the woman played chess at such a high violence level. Normally she would think that people who like lover’s chess would not be comfortably with such a violent version like battle chess. Not something to off but still something that stood out. With the game ending Ms Bonay thanked her for the game and excused herself to go back to her cabin.
Felipa returned her thanks and wished her a good trip. After Ms Bonay left Felixia sat there for a few minutes reviewing what she had learned looking for connections. Not thinking of any she decided she had better move on with her investigation. It was kind of odd for her to be investigating before a crime had even been committed. Felixia was very aware that there may be no mystery with the passengers but it was distracting her from what otherwise would have been an unpleasant trip.
She looked around the cub car for anyone else of interest. In particular, she was looking for either of the two men that had pretending not to know each other. As she was searching around the windows stopped showing the Victorian videos of the English countryside and switched to the standard monitor screens. A warning was displayed announcing 5 minutes before wormhole exit. Not bad Felixia thought, it was 12 minutes earlier then the estimated transit time.
As the train exited from the wormhole her communicator was again able to reconnect to the interstellar network and signaled that she had gotten a message. Looking at the screen she saw it was from the commander on Tau Ceti. The message was thanking her again for solving their issue and he also stated the attached file was what they had on Mr. Williams.
Checking the time and seeing how much had passed since she sent him the request she was a bit surprised. There was barely enough time for the request to have gotten there and back. That was nowhere near enough time for him to do any active research on Mr. Williams. The commander must have had the information already available to send.
She took a quick look at the attachment with the message. It was a large collection of news reports along with a few court documents. The dates went back over several years time so whatever that Williams person had been up to on Tau Ceti it had been attracting a lot of interest for almost a decade now. Looking at home much there was it would take her some time to get through it all. Deciding to do it in the comfort of her cabin she headed back.
As she finished looking through all the information she sat back to digest it. It seems that Mr. Williams was not a nice person. His name had come up multiple times in connection to company hostile takeovers. In the early takeover stories his name wasn’t mentioned but later articles traced him back to having been involved. One of the articles estimated that he had architected over 23 of them. No criminal charges had ever been filed against him but numerous civil suits had been.
From what she could tell most of his activities involved spreading rumors and encouraging fringe elements to attach the targeted companies. Once the company was in trouble his group would swoop in and take over. In one example for a transportation company he somehow convinces a large number of people that the company was giving large settlements to everyone claiming an injury with their vehicles. Human nature being what it was the number of law suits skyrocketed. The company almost declared bankruptcy from the bad press and excessive legal cost to defend against them all.
One article she found of particular interest talked about his involvement with the Star Train support contract. The article commented about how the contract didn’t fit his usual way of operating. Felixia didn’t believe in coincidences, if Williams was involved with the very contract that was causing issues with the train he was riding on there was a reason. She just didn’t know what it could be. Anything she could come up with had almost no probability of being true.
Looking over at the cabin monitor she saw they were not scheduled to leave for an hour yet. Just enough time to find out a little more about this maintenance contract Williams is tied up in. The best source was direct from maintenance itself. Getting up she headed off the train to see if she could track down the station master. For a way station this small the station master was probably doing all the maintenance himself. It was time to see if the problems Hector had mentioned on the last way station was epidemic for all of them or not.
As she stepped off on to the platform the layout seemed the same as Hector’s station. They must have used a cookie cutter to make all these stations. The only difference she could see was the door that led out to the rest of the station was closed and locked. This station master must take his privacy more serious then Hector does.
Looking at the door it was solid metal. She didn’t think knocking would even be heard. Looking around she saw a panel to the right with a button. There was no label but it was likely a door bell. Felipa pushed the button and waited for a bit. Not getting any response she tried it again, this time holding it in as she waited. It took a few minutes but eventually she heard the door being unbolted from the inside.
When it opened a tall woman wrapped in what looked like a blanket and wearing fuzzy slippers stepped out. Felipa looked up at the face of the woman who must have been half a meter taller than she was. The woman’s face looked tired and her eyes were half closed with bags under them. Seeing how she was moving Felixia thought the woman might be half asleep or maybe even sleep walking. As she started to greet her she stopped when she noticed a large, heavy spanner clenched in the woman’s hand.
Stepping back in caution she watched as the woman without looking at her or even opening her eyes all the way turned to face the panel. Then without warning the woman swung the spanner at the panel smashing it and destroying the button. Without then saying a word she turned back and entered the door closing it behind her. Shocked, Felipa stood there with her mouth open not sure how to respond. It wasn’t until she heard the door being bolted that she closed it.
As shocking as it was Felixia still wanted to talk to the woman. Thinking of the different possible actions she could take she selected the one her analysis gave the highest chance of succeeding. Re-boarding the train she headed to the dining car to get something and hurried back to the door. Staring at where the button had been attached she thought for a moment then reached into the hole to pull out the wires. After twisting them together she then stepped back in case the woman got too upset.
It took longer this time but eventually the woman reopened the door again. This time her eyes were fully open and the spanner had been replaced with a sledge hammer. Felixia quickly stopped her before she could use it on either her or the door panel. Felipa did this be just handing her the hot coffee she just got from the dining car. As the woman stared at the cup in her hands Felixia reached out and untwisted the wires that were keeping the door buzzer active.
The woman stood in the doorway staring at the cup for a minute before sniffing it then taking a big gulp. All this without saying a word.
Once she finished drinking it she looked at Felipa and said “What do you want?”
Felipa was quite pleased that her analysis of the correct approach from the brief action before was correct. Her analysis was that the woman was an ISTP personality type. A bit unusual since they only made up 2% of the population. ISTP personalities are individuals who are practical, hands-on immediate problem-solvers, logical, and independent. Just the kind of person who would solve an irritating buzzard ringing when they are trying to sleep by smashing it.
Not a bad type for station masters operating alone light years from others. She had always found this type straight forward to deal with, no need for games.
Given that type of personality Felipa came out and asked what she wanted to know “Please tell me what is the current support and maintenance situation for the station?”
The woman didn’t hesitate, she just started speaking “What support? I’m running on band aids and duct tape. I’m surprised your train even made it through. Now go away, I got to see if I can keep the link up long enough to get rid of you lot.”
With that the woman handed the empty coffee cup back to Felipa with a brief node of thanks before slamming the door closed. Interesting, Felipa mused, it looks like she’s an ISTP version “A”, that’s even more uncommon then the “T” version.
Felipa still wasn’t sure if the maintenance issues of the ways stations had to do with the puzzle of the passengers. Her instinct was insisting there had to be something tying it all together it was too much of a coincidence otherwise. Looking over at one of the platform monitors she saw the next transit was flashing a dark orange, almost as bad as it gets. But if they could make it through this next transit they would be on Eridani Station.
Eridani was a hub station with a couple of other routes meeting up there. From what she remembered there was even a small asteroid mining community using the station for shipping? It should have a larger staffing level. With all the activity a hub station handles their maintenance support should be a top priority. If they were having issues with their support it would be very serious.
As she boarded the train again she wasn’t sure where to spend the next transit. The estimate was 6 hours which was more than she wanted to spend in the club or dining cars. She should spend it in one or the other if she wanted to check on more passengers but it was going to be a very rough transit. Most passengers who knew that would probably decided to remain in their cabins.
Deciding she would do the same Felipa started to head back to her cabin when her stomach growled. Remembering that she hadn’t had lunch yet and 6 hours was a long time to wait for diner. There was still time to get something from the dining car but she would have to eat it in her cabin for the transit. With that thought she bypassed her cabin and leaded back to the dining car.
Walking into the car it was very obvious no passenger planed to take the transit in here. The car was deserted with the exception of William’s servant Hector who was talking to the wait staff about a snack tray. Looking at him Felipa could see he was suffering from a bad hangover. As she walked up Hector was just finished insisting they hurry his order so he could get it to his boss’s cabin before transit.
Looking at the man and his condition if was obvious this was not the time to talk to the man. Felipa waited quietly until the wait staff got his tray setup. During the wait the man seemed a lot more worried then she would have expected. There was still plenty of time for him to drop the tray off and get back to his seat before the train left. The man stood there tapping his toe unit it was ready. He then grabbed the tray and rushed back to the cabins. Again a bit of unusual behavior Felixia thought but still nothing that stood out as too strange.
Once he was gone Felipa grabbed a sandwich and some fruit and headed back to the cabin. Just as she got to the door of her car she could see Hector coming back the other way. This time he was walking slower and looking down at the floor. Between his not looking where he was going and the narrow aisle he ended up jostle her as he walked by. Felipa juggled the plate her sandwich was on to try to keep it from falling off but wasn’t successful. She looked down at what was left of her lunch scattered on the floor as Hector kept walking without seemingly noticing what he had done.
Looking at the apple in her hand she said “Well I guess you’re it then” as her stomach growled in response.
Sitting in her cabin munching on the apple her mind was busy running possibilities everyone’s behavior. There was nothing that really stood out as likely in her probability analysis. Deciding that was enough analysis and settled in with her small snack and a book to wait out the transit.
