A Saucerful of Death (Starlight Cozy Mystery Book 1) Read online

  Contents

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Copyright

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  A Saucerful Of Death

  Loretta and Sarah Johns

  Special thanks go out to all of our fans, both old and new, and to a toast to all of the vintage TV shows that have kept us entertained for so many years.

  Copyright 2019 by Loretta Johns and Sarah Johns. All rights reserved. First published in the United Kingdom March 2019.

  Chapter 1

  Darren

  I closed the door to General Peterson’s office behind him. Staff Sergeant Morris glanced up from her typing to give me a brief smile which I returned. I hurried out to report to Doctor Bombay as I’d been ordered. I needed to have a fresh blood test done to certify me ready for flight the day after tomorrow. It was admittedly late notice, but then nobody could have possibly have predicted the change of events that led me to this point. I had a feeling China wasn’t going to see things in quite so positive a light, though, when he heard if he hadn’t already.

  “Hey, I heard you got called into Peterson’s office. Everything okay?” my best friend Stephen said, hurrying down the corridor towards me.

  “Yeah, yeah,” I said, waving his concerns away with my hand. “China got bumped from the flight and he’s bumped me up to take his place. I gotta go have my blood taken so they can finish signing off on my medical. They’re going to put a rush on it.”

  Roger whispered and fell into step beside me. “Man, old China’s not going to like that.” We both nodded to an airman hurrying past with an armful of files. “I bet he'll think you dobbed him in to get his place. Everyone knows you had wanted a seat on this mission to get your flight hours up for your application before the deadline.”

  “Yeah, well, I have enough hours in but the more I have, especially as mission commander, the better it’ll look.” I looked at him morosely. “I didn’t, though. Do him in it, I mean.” We turned a corner.

  “Yeah, I didn’t think you did. I mean, you said he wasn't actually drunk, not by the legal definition, anyway.”

  “He wasn’t,” I said, turning the handle to enter the clinic. “He had several of those disposable breathalyzer kits in his glove box. He’d used one before getting into his car to make sure and then he blew one right there in front of me. He was well below the limit. He just can’t hold his beer, I guess. Anyways, he wrote me a check on the spot for my fence and promised to not drive himself ever again after having so much as one beer.” I approached the receptionist desk. “Hi,” I smiled at the young man behind the desk. “I was told to report here for some pre-flight bloodwork.”

  He glanced down at my name tag. “Ah, yes, Major Nelson. I just had your file delivered to my desk not even half an hour ago. Dr. Bombay is expecting you.” He picked up the phone to ring the doctor in his office.

  My lips twitched. I couldn’t help it. Every time I heard the Colonel’s name, I pictured the comical witch doctor from the sixties TV show I watched on reruns as a kid. The real-life Dr. Bombay was nothing like his television counterpart. For one thing, he wasn’t a witch. For another, he was a thin man who had absolutely no sense of humor. He’s the chief medical officer for the program, though, so it was best to keep him happy. This meant answering his often inane questions and listening to him rhapsodize about the joys of camping and hiking far from civilization and agreeing that it sounded just the thing for a planned leave. He’d then bug you until you either actually visited someplace he deemed suitable for a respite or dodged him by hiding out elsewhere.

  “Ah, Major. You certainly made excellent time getting here.” The Colonel came strolling in, a polite smile on his face. Don’t get me wrong, he’s not a bad guy. He’s just annoying. “Oh, Major Healey. I had no idea you were in need of medical services. Is everything alright?”

  “Oh, I’m fine,” Stephen reassured him, running a nervous hand down his tie. “ I, ah, just ran into Darren in the hallway and accompanied him here while we, ah, discussed the mission we’ll be flying.”

  “Good, good. Have you given more thought about where you’ll be spending your leave once you’re home? If you don’t wish to go far since it’s only for a week, I can recommend a simply delightful spot that Amanda and I went to last year.”

  “Oh, uh, no, I haven’t. In fact,” Stephen said hurriedly, “That was one of the things I wanted to talk to Darren about, seeing as he’ll have some downtime as well. I thought maybe we could do something fun together.”

  “Well, if you’d like the name of the place, do drop on by. You know where my office is, and of course, the major and I happen to be close neighbors. It has lovely hiking trails and if you really insist on not being in a tent, there’s a campground nearby that rents out restored vintage Airstreams. I must admit I thought they were rather charming. We stayed in one as Amanda’s knee was bothering her and she insisted she couldn’t possibly cope with the tent. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I need to give the Major Nelson a check up and send him on to the phlebotomist.”

  “I’ll wait for you,” Stephen told me, tilting his head at some chairs in the waiting room area. “I gotta run to the BX before I head home, pick up printer paper so I can print out copies of that report we’re doing. If you want, you can come with and we can grab some chow at the food court. The Taco Bell still has that Original Bell Burger offer on.”

  That sounded good to me. The deal was the original seventies Bell Burger and a soda for a dollar. Limit of one per customer. Add a taco for another dollar. You could only get the offer on base, too. “Sounds good to me,” I told him before following the Colonel into the exam room.

  He shut the door behind him and waited for me to take my tie off and unbutton my shirt. I placed my cap on the end of the exam bed and slipped off my tie, neatly placing it with my cap. It only took a moment for me to unbutton my shirt, including my cuffs. That left me in my undershirt which he indicated I could leave on.

  “I can listen to your heart without you taking that off. This is only a formality anyway. You had your flight physical not even three months ago and passed with flying colors.”

  He listened to my heart, squeezed the life out my arm while checking my blood pressure, and palpated my abdomen. Then he shone a light in my eyes, looked in my ears, felt my neck, looked in my ears…well, you know the drill. He followed all of this up by having me slip off my shoes and stand on the scale for my height and weight.

  “Unless you have any complaints to report, you’re clear to go,” he said scribbling in my chart. “Unless your blood work shows a sudden anomaly, that is. I'll be very surprised if it does.”

  Yeah, me too.

  He continued. “Get dressed and we’ll go on down the hall for your bloodwork.”

  Less than f
ifteen minutes later the rather attractive redheaded lab tech had sucked out three vials of my blood. “Sorry about that,” she said, fluttering her lashes at me. She was a cutie, all right. I knew better than to fish in those waters, though. She was enlisted.

  “It’s alright, you vampires can’t help yourselves,” I joked back, rolling down my sleeve and refastening my cuff. Then I was off to rejoin Stephen. There was a retro dinner menu calling my name and I was starving.

  Chapter 2

  Darren

  There was nothing like it. The Adventurer IV rocket was built to last and was a far cry from the Jupiter ones back in the early days of the space program. Oh, I still had to strap in to and try to hold onto my breakfast while the lit a bomb under our ass to send us flying, but once the initial burn was done and we separated, it was smooth sailing. The Pegasus module would take us all the way to ISS Zeus, in high orbit around the Earth.

  Then we’d refill the fuel tanks at the station and they’d give us a little shove to start us off and we’d maneuver our way into the desired descent trajectory, somewhere over the Pacific Ocean. Where we went next depended on who we were running supplies for and if we were bringing any personnel back. This time we were bringing up a load of mail. Not paper letters, mind. That would weigh a ton. No, they were all on memory sticks. Any craft projects and pictures sent to them by family or school kids were on them as well. Pictures they could print out, of course, or view in an electronic picture album or frame. Crafted items they could put in the 3D printer and select the materials to re-render them in, whether plastic, resin, or fiber. We weren’t bringing anyone down with us so the U.S. Navy was picking us up and bringing us into Hawaii where we’d be debriefed at Wheeler before being released to take a mandatory two week leave.

  I turned my head and grinned at my co-pilot, Stephen. “Ready to go sip mai tais at the beach and have some Hula Pie at Duke’s?”

  “Yeah, just first let’s get this Roman candle fired off and come back down after searching for alien babes in furry bikinis,” he quipped back.

  “Adventurer IV, this is Mission Control, you’re on air.”

  Oops. We’d better tone it down a bit before we got to out of hand. There were school kids all over the world listening, not to mention everyone else who was space crazy. Things had died down some after the space race ended with a handshake after we planted our flag on the moon. Then ISS Zeus was conceived and built, followed by the Moon base. I call it a base but it’s really more of an astronomical outpost where Tesla Corp, Virgin, and a bunch of investors are building a high end casino and hotel complex, along with a hanger. Tesla and Virgin jointly licensed some space plane plan or other from back when NASA toyed with the idea of building a reusable space shuttle plane. They were going to build there on the moon and pick up people from a new commercial spaceport section being added onto Zeus. They were going to get them there using an Adventurer IV rocket but the module the rich tourists would sit in would be more glitzy to look at on the inside and have a few more amenities. They were calling that module version the Unicorn.

  Mission Control started us on flipping the various switches and then it was countdown time. It still thrilled me to hear it, just as it had as a child sitting glued to the TV screen. Ten, nine, eight, seven, six, five, four, three, two, one, ignition! A great roar and a mighty shake as we shot high into the air, pressing backwards into our gel filled Heinlein couches. Then, suddenly, it all fell away and we weighed nothing. We waited for the AI to release our Pegasus from the Adventure where it’s twin would guide it back to its own splashdown recovery for refurbishment and reuse. “Releasing module,” came her voice.

  “Thanks, Sam,” I told it.

  “Of course, Now burning for course correction. “ A pause. “Correction achieved. You may now take off your restraints. Gravity plates are activated.”

  This was one of the cooler things they came up with. It wasn’t real gravity, of course. It was just where table tops and the decking was magnetized so the soles of our boots and log books and stuff could use surfaces as if there was light gravity. Unlike the space station, of course, which used spin to create actual gravity. Just don’t look up when you’re in the atrium. It messes with your head to realize the station is so vast that the spin on it means that to the people above you, the ceiling is their floor. Yeah. It’s nuts.

  So, we released ourselves and in between keeping an eye on the gauges to make sure Sam wasn’t glitching and missing anything, Stephen and I played Uno with a deck of specially coated cards that would stick to the table surface. We played several hands, agreeing that next time, we’d ask for a Scrabble board. Then Sam was ordering us back to our coaches to strap in for docking as was protocol. We were met in the hangar bay Captain Agnes Bellows. “Good trip?” she asked.

  “Yep. No little green men came to say hi,” I replied. She gave me a tight smile. She gave off a funny vibe. “Is there anything wrong?”

  “No. Just a tech who must have misinterpreted some data and got my imagination going in stupid directions.” She took the duffle bag full of memory sticks from me. “Everyone is looking forward to getting these. I know we get to video chat home regularly but it’s not the same thing.” I thought back to own six month stint on board. She was right. Talking face to face was great, but getting pictures of the events you were missing out on and being able to replicate pictures your baby cousins drew you? That was something else. You could touch those.

  She glanced over her shoulder at us. “If you hurry, you can still catch lunch at the mess hall in PanAsia. They’ve got sushi now, made from fish we have in our own saltwater lake.”

  She was referring to the section of the station originally built by Japan, China, Korea, Thailand, and India in the late 70s. With future tourism in mind, they had designed that section to resemble a small city that was representative of each of them but blended together rather than laid out in separate districts.

  “Sounds good,” Stephen said. “I wouldn’t mind some sushi. Maybe get some pho to go with it.”

  That was Stephen all over. Food, an attractive and unattached man or woman happy to do a no-strings sleepover, and some old sci-fi to read or watch and he was happy as a clam. The food was one down. I knew without a doubt before he was finished with his meal he’d have found the second. As for the third? Well, he had his Kindle and the Zeus had an extensive library of books, comics, manga, and films.

  Chapter 3

  Darren

  “Hey,” Stephen said as he kissed first the handsome older man and then the busty young blonde woman on the cheek before watching them saunter away. The man gave me a smirk and winked. “Catch you later, Steve,” he called over his shoulder.

  “Bye,” the blonde bubbled, wiggling her fingers and then scurrying down the corridor.

  “Hey,” I replied to Stephen. “Looks like you had a busy night.”

  He gave a deprecating chuckle. “Yeah, well, let’s just say that guy can go for a surprisingly long time. It’s a miracle any of us got any sleep.”

  “Uh huh. Right,” I said, clapping my hands together. “I thought I’d come to see if you wanted any breakfast. Looks like you already ate, though.”

  “Hardy har har,” he snarked. “And isn’t it almost lunchtime?”

  “Yeah, it’s around half past eleven. The mess halls will be closed but Captain Bellows recommended this little place in the atrium. They’ve taken scrap metal from the debris field and made this little retro looking metal diner. They got a grant to outfit it with memorabilia and budget to staff it and everything ahead of the space tourism gig.”

  Stephen looked at me in surprise. “You’re telling me they have a fifties diner up here?”

  “Yup.”

  “Okay, I’m in.” He turned to palm his door lock. My lips twitched in amusement as I observed the slight hitch to his step as we made our way to our meal.

  “Speaking of debris,” I said, “Captain Bellows mentioned that the number of unregistered civilian scav
engers ops have increased. Not all of them seem to know what they’re doing and have sent bits of old satellites and whatnot hurtling towards the station. She said to be wary as the changes to the debris field.”

  Stephen cursed. “Means some of the junk won’t be where it was mapped.”

  “We’ll have to compensate,” I agreed. We came to a branch in the corridor. We took it, bearing left. The quiet of the guest quarters in the bachelor wing of the station gave way to the increasingly louder noises of life aboard the bustling station.

  “But I hate manual.”

  “Yeah, it sucks, but it’s better than getting a bolt into our air intake and have it gum up the works. Besides, the A.I. Does most of the work. We just have to pay close attention to what she maps and glance out of the window every now and again to see if there is anything of concern.”

  “You mean like an illegal salvage op making a bigger mess.” He frowned. “I heard some of the rogue outfits have started stealing stuff in active use, hauling them aboard freighters servicing the belt.”

  “Really? Why would they do that?”

  “Miners wanting to get better Tv receptions? Boost their ability to call home to Mom? I don’t know. You’d have to ask them.” We entered the atrium and paused to take in its magnificence. A park complete with trees, grass, and flowering bushes surrounded a section of fields where they grew rice. I craned my head upward. Above the ‘sky’ curved, only instead of clouds, there were more trees, these making up the station’s fruit orchard, and I could spot a pond. That was no doubt the salt water home Captain Bellows mentioned they’d created for the fish that graced our sushi plates the evening before. I closed my eyes and gave myself a moment before reopening them. It was always disorienting to look up and see the world upside down like that. The brain rebelled as it tried to make sense of what it was seeing.